flipping mcdonalds hamburgers. and I asked for tabasco sauce, and since I’m clumsy, I dropped the bottle and vinegar cayenne spilled all over the counter, everyone in the classroom was ******, man, and I’m telling you this because it’s a good dream, and you look like you could use some livening up, so bare with me. So I’m shunned, I’m embarrassed, I’m angry, a cocktail of awful, stressful emotions surround me, upsetting, and I feel there is no way out. But something inside of me, that anger perhaps, that part of myself that hates my mother and wishes I was never born, that part seem to unshackle itself within my soul, and I jumped out of my seat, ignoring the last few bites of my second double cheeseburger, and I flew out the front door, and I’m outside the house I grew up, los altos, Jay street, nice place, and I run, out of my mind, I run left because that’s the fastest way to get out of sight and onto a busy street so I know I can get away easier. Behind me I hear my father crying, WAIT, WAIT, seany, but I don’t LISTEN, I RUN and it feels like keroac when he went mad, yeah it feels like a cheetah must feel, all that hatred made me run faster, and I was making my way down the adjacent street el monte, and my father wasn’t following me anymore, and for a moment there was relief. Then, of course, with any story of escape, there is conflict. A ******* bear. it sounds funny in retrospect, but I swear to god it was a bear, Chris, big and mean Grizzly in the middle of el monte street, no cars, just me and the bear. I was petrified, almost enough to head back to the house, but the hatred stopped me, **** it all man, that’s what it was, so my gut lead me another way. No! I didn’t fight the ******* bear, Chris, that’s stupid, didn’t you see the revenant?. So I took a detour, running up north elmonte, the other direction. The bear wasn’t chasing me anymore. next thing you know, my hands are moving over a picket fence, and I come to an immediate clearing. It’s the beach in Santa Cruz. I swear. Where my grandma lived, the same beach, at the point where we used to make our daily walks to put our toes in the sand, cold beach. and there was something, something getting in the water, a rodent of some kind, a squirrel, a raccoon, and it got into the ocean and began swimming against the waves. And I wasn’t running anymore, and I felt like I had crossed a finish line, like I had done everything I needed to do in this world, I was ready to go. My mind was clear, in that moment. and in that moment, my grandmothers voice was trailing off in the distance, not saying anything, just murmuring at the end of a sentence as she does “so it goes” in acceptance. she has acceptance in her voice. And I woke up to my girlfriend’s alarm.