Last night’s dreams were a barrage of chaotic events and images. I vividly remember most of them (it?) because my left calf cramped. Pain shot me out of dreams into full wakefulness. Working the cramp, I remembered the dream.

I was travelling with my wife. We were hurrying through an airport. She was carrying all our baggage. It wasn’t much but included a brown paper shopping bag full of papers. “I can help,” I kept telling her. “Let me carry some of that.” I tried taking some. But no, she dismissed my urging and raced ahead. The airport was immaculate and wasn’t busy. We rushed through doors and across terminals and concourses.

Things were coming beginning to come out of the shopping back. “Here, wait, you’re losing things,” I told her, catching up. Slowing her, I tried re-organizing materials in the bag so they were more secure and suggested I take it, but she was too impatient and started off again.

And then we headed for an exit. I was bewildered. “But we didn’t go anywhere,” I said. “We didn’t fly anywhere.” Wordlessly, carrying the baggage, stopping to put papers back into the shopping bag, she prodded us to the exit.

Act two commenced. We were in a vehicle, I think. I never saw or heard it but we were on a divided white cement four lane highway. I couldn’t tell who was driving. Lightly traveled and free of potholes, the road followed curving green hills. The weather was pleasant. I could only see ahead of me and nothing of us or the car.

A bright orange car burst onto the highway ahead of us. Emitting blue smoke and loud noise out of its single large chrome exhaust pipe that came out the back, it looked like it was a home-made fiberglass creation on a shortened VW Beetle chassis. The car seemed barely under control. Accelerating to overtake one vehicle, it jumped lanes and almost hit another. Swerving back, it barely passed between two other vehicles.

We were commenting on the lack of control, what was going on in the driver’s head, and the vehicle’s construction and design, when they did lose control, spinning out as its engine gave up with a smoky, “BANG.”

We were on the scene instantly and then passing it, talking about stopping and helping – but then this crazy motorcyclist roared by. The rider was a young, well-groomed white man with short dark hair. He was driving insanely, cutting off a semi, causing it to crash, and then doing the same to another car.

This time, he wrecked. He got off his motorcycle, stared down at it a moment, and then started walking up the highway.

We were walking behind him. I could believe he was walking away from the mayhem he’d caused. His indifference appalled me. I raced up to him. Catching up, I began calling, “Hey, excuse me, hello,” before finally tapping his shoulder. Taller than me by at least eighteen inches, he was extremely skinny and white, and dressed in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves and a red neck tie that was loose around the collar. I began telling him, “Do you know what you did back there?” Unimpressed, he began leaving, but I held firm, holding onto him, taking him by his arm, and then his shoulder. I was amazed how muscular he was under his shirt.

I told him what he’d done. “So what?” he answered at last. “I’m working from home and McDonald’s has the right to send and receive faxes at my house. I can’t get any rest and I can’t get anything done.” Then the truck driver, a swarthy man a little shorter than me, caught up and entered into conversation with him.

My wife and I went on. We entered a terminal through a double metal door without any markings. Inside was messy and crowded with an old military base feel to it. Not much energy was put on decor. Food was available. We were hungry and perused the menu. Nothing was calling to us. We still wanted to order something but weren’t sure what we wanted to order, nor where to do it, but were beginning to grasp their system amidst the disorder.

Then it got chaotic. A disheveled greasy man appeared behind us. White, with stringy hair and a few days of beard, he was being disruptive. I didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He was just standing and grinning whenever I saw him. But I didn’t trust him. He was wearing sandals with no socks and baggy, dirty green pants.

Eventually something he did caused a commotion. He disappeared. Two police officers arrived. I could hear them talking about him but only heard fragments. They were attempting to find him. Slipping past them, I decided I could find him.

From here, the dream fractured into true incoherence. At this point, the point of view became external. I was watching myself and these scenes as though I watched a movie except I knew it was me and I wasn’t just sitting somewhere watching someone else. There was something about cutting our grass a certain manner and a bevy of strange rules being issued, rules that would undo what had succeeded. I was being urged to conform and obey. “They will ticket you if you don’t,” they told me. Everyone was worried about being ticketed.

“Enough of this,” I basically said. “I’m not doing that stuff.” I walked out, coming toward my watching vantage. My wife and others hurried behind me, talking to me, asking me to re-consider what I was doing but I was adamant. My dream’s last words were, “They’re just pieces of paper,” spoken by me.