I Have a Dream Too, Man

            I have a dream, and I can tell ya right now—Liz is going to hate it.

            I want to go back to Alaska.  Only this time, I want to drive there.  And I want Liz to go with me.  I want the two of us to buy a car, take our time meandering through the majestic American west, up through Canada, down the southern coast of Alaska to Seward, where we would take the ferry to the island of Kodiak.  Where we would live for the summer.

            Liz can’t spend more than an hour in the car at a time.  She does alright for an hour or so.  But, after that, you might as well sit on her chest and spit water in her face.  She gets antsy.  And irritable.  Anxious. 

            I’ll tell ya what got me to thinking about this. 

            Our bedroom window is open.  It’s five o’clock in the morning, the crickets in the treeline out back have been singing all night, it’s peaceful.  So far so good.  It’s quaint.  I’m alright with it. 

            But then, I heard what sounded like the gentle roar of a mighty grizzly in the distance.  In the dark shadowy depths.  I figured, we are on the outskirts of town.  The country woods are not that far away.  Sound carries.  It is actually possible.  They turn mountain lions and whatever loose to control the deer population.  You never know.  There could actually be a frikkin’ grizzly out there!  This is what I’m telling myself.

            Then I realize, no.  It’s Liz.  She’s snoring with her face buried in the pillow.

            It sounded like a bear.  Got me to thinking about Kodiak.  Home of the Kodiak brown bear.  I’ve traveled a decent amount and we moved around a lot when I was a kid, and yet, there’s only two places I’ve ever considered home. 

Olney, and Kodiak, Alaska.

            Home of the White Squirrel.  Home of the Kodiak Brown Bear. 

            Cute couple.

            Anyway, Kodiak was an amazing experience.  And not so much for any one thing in particular.  All I can say is, the overall experience was picture perfect for where I was in my life at the time.  And I know better than to expect a return trip to be just like the first one.  That’s why I want Liz to come along.

            The whole time I was there, the whole trip home, and throughout the ten years since, I’ve been telling myself that I was going to write my first novel in Kodiak.  It was a grandiose notion with heaven’s gates in sight.  When I was there, it was just a feeling I had.  I just knew it.  I would eventually go back and write my first novel there.

            I don’t know what a psychic premonition would feel like.  But the feeling I had was pretty much spot on for what I imagine it to be.  And yet, even if I did somehow miracle Liz’s butt into that car for the whole trip, ya kinda have to wonder, if you sit around and talk about it for ten years before you finally up and do it, does it still count as a premonition?

            I’m thinking probably not.  Sounds more like procrastination and inevitability. 

            Still, I would love nothing more than for the two of us to take this trip.  Whether it’s destiny or just a sexy dream, I don’t care.  I just want to do it.  Liz is going to be a bear, alright.  About this she is. 

            I’ll tell her my idea and she will give me a flat no.  A big fat flat no.  No sir-ree punkerdoodle.  No way, no how.  Huh uh.  Kiss my big fat flat no.  Michael Jackson has a better chance of coming back from the dead and catching a ride with the boys from NASA so his ghost can look down on creation whilst grabbing his ghostly crotch and flipping us all the bird while he moonwalks.

            This trip ain’t gonna happen.

            This is what she will tell me.

            I will remind her that here before her is a man torn between two worlds.  My love for her, and my lifelong quest to be a messenger of God and man.  It’s like nights when Myranda and Teresa both come over and they bring Allie and Lexie.  A man torn between two babies.  I just wanna scream to the heavens, “You can’t make me choose!”  And she’ll laugh and tell me I’m full of it.  But I’ll tell her I’m deadly serious.

            She will spend a few days, if not a week or two, listing every possible reason that this is a bad idea.  She will go so far as to insult my faith in the ridiculous, even though that wasn’t her intention.  She is a wonderful and amazing woman, but she will make me beg.  This, too, is inevitable. 

            So I’ll do it.  I will beg.  For the good of my own selfish interests, granted.  But also for the good of her soul, that exposure to the mountainsides and the desert sunsets and the ocean.  And for the good of mankind.  Provided I do finish that novel and it turns out to be as good as I’m sure it prob’ly will be.