The Alter-World Diner, Flashing Forward, And Rewriting The Good News

The Alter-World Diner
So the other night I had a dream. I walked into this diner that I've never been in before. As soon as I walked in I saw this girl I know sitting with some guy I didn't recognize. She didn't see me even though she was looking right at me, so I didn't bother her I just went and sat down. The people who own the comic shop I frequent apparently ran this diner in the Alter-World. It was a very busy place. Lots of people coming and going. I don't remember any waiters or waitresses bringing food though, it just sort of appeared. So I sit at this table on the other side of the diner from the girl I knew, I sit right up against a divider so she can't even see me. I don't want to somehow embarass her. But suddenly she's sitting just on the other side of the divider chatting with the guy. Now I feel creepy being able to hear their entire conversation, but I can't really move too far without her seeing me and I'm afraid she'll think I was eavesdropping. So I move to the counter which wasn't there a second ago and I begin to chat with the couple who owns the place. They don't seem to know they own a comic shop in the real world. They just know they own the diner in the Alter-World. I find this amusing. Now I'm back at the booth, my father is sitting across from me and we're talking about how well the diner is running. My father thinks maybe he wants to run a diner. A guy I knew from college is a few booths away from us. He hasn't seen me yet, when he does he doesn't know me. My father is gone. There's this girl I've talked to a few times there. She's cute. But she knows she's in a dream somehow. She's bothered that I'm dreaming about her. I try to explain how the Alter-World works but it's not making much sense. The girl and the guy from when I walked in are now back except we're all sitting at the same table. I'm trying to explain how the dream works, but only two of us know we're in a dream at all. Now they're all gone and I'm sitting across from the guys who seem to have all crammed into one side of the booth, we're all just having a normal conversation even though everyone else in the diner is quiet now and watching us. Now I'm sitting just with the first girl I saw when I walked in. I'm glad the guy is gone, I didn't like him. I don't know why, he seemed alright. She's talking, but I don't hear any of what she's saying. It's not that I'm not paying attention, I am, it's just there are no words coming out of her mouth. I want to shake her to break her out of it, but the Alter-World police are there and say I absolutely can not touch her. I'm walking into the diner again. The sun shines brightly through the windows. The room is absolutely empty. I stand there for a moment and I can feel the warmth radiate through me. I'm walking into the diner, there's this girl I know sitting there. I feel weak.



Flashing Forward
So last night as we sat in Applebees I became confused for a moment. It wasn't last night. It was next week. We weren't the same group of people. Different things were happening, different conversations were going on. Someone referred to tomorrow and for the second time that night I was uncertain as to what tomorrow was. In large part because I wasn't sure what today was at the moment. It happened again on the car ride home. Just a momentary, uncharacteristic, confusion leaving me unsure of when it was. For some reason it reminded me of a dream I had about Alter-World Disneyland a number of years ago. I don't know what sense that makes.



Rewriting The Good News
I never actually practice my talk in front of the team for Antioch. I used to. But after Antioch 2000 I sort of got a pass on a lot of things. Talks are due on the 25th, I won't be practicing mine yet again. But I want to have it done by then. I wrote a talk months ago. I thought it was pretty good. I liked it at least. It was actually about the talk I gave nine years ago. It was about how much I changed that year, about how many things I understood that I hadn't understood before. I could point at a single moment in my life and say that was where I came up. It was a nice feeling. How do I balance that with where I'm at now though? So I'm starting again. Rewriting from scratch and we'll see what happens next. Anyway...I'll be back with more later.