all night I dream of
Chrysler Minivans. Actually, it might be a
Dodge Caravan. I'm bad with cars, despite the efforts of
certain persons. Anyway, it's
red. It has
my school's logo
stenciled on the side. The school owns a fleet of them in real life, and I spend a lot of time on them, because they take me back and forth to
Ithaca NY for
classes,
punk shows, nights on the town,
coffee, and shopping trips. Let me explain that there is
nothing in Aurora, NY, except the
college. The drive from Wells to Ithaca is about 45 minutes, so by the end of a
year at Wells I've spent a considerable amount of time on the
vans.
In the first dream, I'm driving down Lakeshore drive in Ithaca coming from Wells. A Girl is with me, either in the back seat or in the passenger side. The strange thing about this is that I can't drive a car in real life, and although I'm actually doing it in the dream, I remember about being awake and unable to drive so I feel like I shouldn't really be in the driver's seat. The only part I vividly remember is the Girl talking to me, either trying to distract me or warn me, but there is no danger. I pull on this lever by the steering wheel and discover the left and right turn signal. I make a note in my head, which way is left and which way is right, and then I make a turn successfully. I know there was more but I can't get the details.
In the next dream I am in the van and I am supposed to be in Ithaca. Honestly, it looks more like what I've seen of Rochester, NY but it's "Ithaca". I have the van, and my first memory of the dream is of pressing the break as hard as possible and not being able to quite stop. The front bumper of the car touches this concrete building I didn't want to hit. There's not damage, but it still pisses me off, because I meant to stop. I put the car into reverse and successfully get it out of the parking lot it's in and up to this hill, where I park it. Then I am inside a church. It's huge and grey stone and reminds me of this United Methodist church I crashed at in Manhattan in January for the WEF protest. One of the Deans of the college is there, she has on a good Sunday suit and this fabulous hat. There are lots of junior high and high school kids at this church service, and the sanctuary is covered with colorful banners. At the end of the service I go outside, and accross the street where I left the van, it's gone. So I run and ask Dean Green where the van might be, and she tells me disdainfully that it's been towed because I hadn't parked in a legal space. I think to myself that of course I wasn't paying attention to legal spaces because I don't really know how to drive. Then I realize that although I can afford to pay the towing guys for the car, they'll probably want to see my driver's license, and not only do I not have one, but my learner's permit has been missing for several months now, and hasn't shown my real address in something like three years. Everything about my learner's permit is true, so that I wake up in a panic about what I'm going to tell the Dean of Students Office about their van, and how I'm going to explain how I got the van in the first place.