evil I-25

so, i'm driving back down to denver last night, for callbacks for '18 holes,' and somewhere between windsor and the first loveland exit, the car in front of me runs over a folded-up, mangled old sign. it flaps up and i am on top of it before i can do anything about it. but whereas the thing burst out from under the car in front of me, when it got under my car (a ford exploder, mind you, with some pretty high clearance) it gets jammed into the frame right by the rear right wheel.

so i'm looking back out of my rearview, hearing this godawful scraping sound, and i see sparks flying out the back of my car.

lovely.

i pull off the freeway, and attempt to dislodge the sign, but it's jammed in there pretty good. finally some guy stops and gives me a hand (thanks, random stranger in the white pickup) and we get the thing free. of course, now i don't know if the brake line or fuel tank or anything unimportant like that has been damaged, and i'm not going to find out on the way down to denver.

so i didn't make it to the callback. :( i'm going to call the director today and see where they are at, if they are doing another round of callbacks or what.

ah well. at least the thing didn't fly up off the road into my windshield.

***

anyway, here's a dream i had last night. i think i might be under some stress...

03.11.08

I am leaving a late-night party of some kind that has gotten out of hand. It is a night of celebration all over the city, perhaps the world. But I left the place where I was and decided to walk home, although it was a couple of miles.

The city/town seems to be State College-esque, dark streets lined with older, conservatively built houses. I cut through a wooded area at one point, and slog through some mud, but I am of high spirits, and dial my phone to inform someone I am on my way home. I come out of the woods behind an old strip mall/office complex, a low, long building made of brick and steel, circa 1965. I circle around the building and am walking through its narrow parking lot along the street when I see the car for the first time. it is a long, older vehicle, perhaps a Taurus or something like that. It is careening back and forth across the roadway, with only its parking lights on, not changing speed or seeming to even attempt to avoid parked cars. I watch and begin to back away from the road as it continues its approach when I realize that it probably isn’t going to stop, and that it certainly wouldn’t stop just because a person was on the sidewalk.

The car finally slams into a triangle splitting the road into two, and comes to rest on the curb there. I tell my friend that I will call them back, hang up and start to dial 911 as the driver gets out. It is a big shirtless white guy, completely out of it, but with a drugged determination about him. He gets out and stumbles toward the building, where people have now come out to see what’s going on. I am at the far end of the building, and so I am not in his line of fire as I tell the police dispatcher there is an obviously drunken man who wrecked a car. But then he begins to harass the bystanders, berating them, asking what they’re staring at. He begins to get physical, shoving some of them around, and threatening them, and I duck around the corner of the building and make it clear that the situation is more urgent for the police. When I peek back around the corner, he is swinging a hoe or a rake or something at some people in the crowd, when finally the flashing blue lights pull up.

Next we see the man, now hastily dressed in a ripped green sweater and a t-shirt he found somewhere being pulled out of the basement of the building in cuffs. We (the crowd) commiserate on the situation, relating our versions of the story, pat each other on the back etc.

At some point, however, I am at a huge, sprawling chemical plant. I get out of the car, an old Thunderbird or some such, with a guy who looks suspiciously like a young Ray Liotta, and who holds a gun on some guy. We lead him toward the back of this plant area, which is seemingly abandoned, past several fences and gates that are wide open, and past a final row of curtain-like cloths that are hanging from a line a few dozen feet before we reach the back wall.

I hang back as my partner takes the guy back behind these flapping curtains, which don’t really cover up what is happening back there, and he shoots the guy in the head.

I remember I wasn’t really disturbed by this; it was an inevitability.

But I turn and am walking back toward the car when something goes wrong. The plant’s sirens and lights begin to flash as if there is a shutdown or something. A crew of workers streams out into the yard, which is a muddy, rocky, rolling area, and proceed to throw the football around. They are diving in the muck, sliding through the standing water, not caring.

But my partner is trapped somehow behind the curtains at the end of the plant’s grounds, and I have to get the car and drive up there and get him. I get in the car and start to ease my way past the workers and their game, across a gulley and up a rock face that protrudes from the muck. At some point I explain to the footballers what’s going on and they get out of the way gladly.

But by the time I get the car near where I need to go, the next round of plant procedures has started. There are sirens and lights a plenty now, and gates swing closed. The footballers, when I look back, have all disappeared, taken shelter somewhere. The car gets stuck and I proceed on foot, only to be stopped when a giant sprayer, like an agricultural watering system sprays out a huge burst of pink, jellied fluid, like a thick antifreeze, spraying down the whole area like a lawn sprinkler. I turn and flee, passing through several of these sprinklers, and make it outside the gates. I go back in several times, but I am beaten back by the jellied chemicals every time.

I have no idea how I will save my partner now.