Again...

There it is again...a restless night full of dreams, another version of the same dream I've seem to have had forever: Everything has gone to hell, but somehow I'm happy, living on next to nothing in a efficiency apartment. It's just me, my surfboard, and a bunch of empty beer bottles. Nothing much else matters, because I'm across the street from where I like to surf, and no matter how horrible my job is, I've got time to hit the waves every morning. There is nobody else in the dream and I'm acutely aware that I might die any time and I'm not really sure who would handle the details, nor am I that concerned about it. I'm not sure if this represents my happy place or is it just the final solution to problems I can't fix..

The Dream Day

I've had an infrequent dream for years, that I'm 15 years old, skipping school and learning to surf with my friends. A lot of it is some sort of twist on a real life event. The water is perfect glass, I'm wearing cutoff jeans and riding on the bruised banana, a 8 foot yellow surfboard, with a large brown softspot on the deck. For some reason in the dream, it is important that the fin is a clear red plastic. I'm not sure if that is a dream of lost innocence, or some kind of perfect happiness that I have been pursuing, but today I caught it.
We pulled up to the beach this morning and saw waves right off. They should have been smaller, according to the forecast, but we saw many surfers out and many catching waves. Old guys on longboards, paddleboards, girls, young ones on short boards and it just seemed to be a picture perfect day.
I looked to the south of the pier, and only saw 3 surfers there. We headed that way and got right out. It was nothing but fun. Hooting, hollering, laughing and cheering each other on, it seemed to be that my dream day had come to life. There were so many ridable waves, that we finally had to let some go, just to rest up.
When it was time to take that last wave in, I stalled a bit, thinking I wanted a memory that would last a while. I got it when I took off across the face of one of the larger waves in the set and saw my friend watching from the beach. This wave held me through the middle section and actually started curling over my shoulder. The perfect end to this was not the wave, but seeing a young surfer girl paddling out, getting that perfect camera view of me coming towards her down the line. That's when you know it really happened, when you see the look in their eyes.