Prelude:

My first college dorm room was - I am sure like many, if not most - a double occupancy large closet. At the time, I was a heavy smoker, and a seriously reclusive geek. I did, however, have a fairly large cadre of friends who were constantly trying to get me out of my dark, smoke-filled dungeon of a room to do what college kids to best - drink beer and get high. I was not usually adverse to the idea, at least when they came to get me.

Now, I am dreaming, and I've snored myself awake (the head having slipped backwards, hanging back against the top of my desk chair). Except there was a problem. When I awoke, I was very disoriented - not just because I awoke sitting in a chair (come on, I was a night owl who had 9AM classes) - but because I was sitting at my roommate's desk. It was, of course empty (my roommate hated me and my chain smoking and rarely entered the room). But then I realized that I was not alone.

Sitting calmly across from me, at my desk, typing at my computer was none other than ac_hyper*. Now, this was strange. I've never met the girl, though I frequently enjoy her non sequitur outbursts in the catbox. I have exchanged the occasional /msg of encouragements, but I can't even really call her an acquaintance. Anyway, after what seemed an interminable time, she stops typing, and turns to me. She was small, slight you might say - sort of hunched over a bit at the back, as if carrying a heavy burden; she had medium-length straight dark hair - not quite black, but with a few highlights of amber and honey. And she wore a pair of those great thick, horn-rimmed glasses that were so popular circa 1950. She smiled vaguely at me, as if we were perhaps sitting next to each other in a library, or waiting for a bus. But she was sitting there at my computer! I must have been stoned** or something, because this just wasn't phasing me.

And then she starts to talk to me, in a slow, measured pace (which, from everything I know about our dear Ms. C., would not be so). She begins to espouse a new philosophy, one that has something to do with electroshock therapy, marijuana, and absinthe. Not that crap absinthe you can get today, but the stuff that drove Van Gogh to cut off his ear. As she's giving me her philosophy it occurs to me that she sliding her (my?) chair closer,that we're moving closer together, that she's trying to do it without me noticing. I can smell Lily of the Valley and roses. Then she suddenly grabs my hand, pulls me out into the night and we flee from my dorm down to this most beautiful of places (a place that does actually exist at my alma mater). We sit down in the grass. We talk about the stars above us and the growing things around us. It's early springtime.

I went on and on about something (at this point, my object viewer-mind knew I was stoned). When I asked a question, and received no response, I turned, and she was gone.

Such is life, eh?

* Mind you that, until her insistance, I'd not seen a pictures her until today (after the dream). And as I told her, my dream ac_hyper wasn't too far off from the real thing. (Hmm... "my dream ac_hyper" - maybe that didn't come out quite right... but you get the point!)
** I think I'm always stoned in my dreams, except when they're nightmares. Then I think I'm on LARGE doses of LSD. Must be because I don't have a dealer anymore.