I dreamed a dream

The following is the text of an email I just sent out to those going on the Williams Choir Tour to Bolivia next week.

Last night, I dreamed we were in Bolivia, but apparently tensions among the populace were running high and we were recommended not to leave our hotel. After about a week Brad decided it was hopeless and that we had better leave the country in case anything bad really happened, and told us to be packed up by a certain time so that we could depart ahead of schedule (in case anyone was planning to try to stop us). I remember being disappointed that we didn't get to sing any concerts. What a waste of time! And here we are trying to sneak out (like we're in the Sound of Music or something, escaping over the mountains to Peru?) For some reason (not the kind that makes sense) we all decided to wander out to the town square in search of food and cheap souvenirs before we left. Unfortunately, we were quickly spotted as foreign tourists and rounded up. A policeman somehow guessed that we were planning on leaving early and in an apparent attempt to delay us, ordered us to circumambulate the square, stopping at certain "stations" along the perimeter which he pointed out to us. We had to go one by one, and no two people were allowed to be at a station at the same time, nor were we allowed to rush from station to station. It seemed a rather strange way of holding us up, but effective nonetheless as we figured it was better to go through with it then cause trouble. Maintaining a cautious distance from the person in front of me, I arrived at the first of the stations and realized that they were the Stations of the Cross, so I knelt in prayer before continuing on to the next. Things continued in this way until a couple of stations later, when the policeman approached me as I was kneeling in front of a station partially obscured by a street vendor's display. In unaccented English, he asked me if I was upset...

"No," I told him, "Should I be?"
"I'm upset that your friends have been buying cheap souvenirs and destroying the rainforest," he said, shoving some kind of gaudy native handicraft in front of me, much like those being displayed by the street vendor. It was labelled 'Not harmful to the rainforest.' "They say that they're not harmful to the rainforest," he told me. "But they are!"
"I'm sorry to hear that," I told him. But he wasn't listening. He was pointing at a faded mural on which I could make out the words "National Geographic" and a splash of the magazine's signature yellow. "I saw your friend reading National Geographic," he said. "Do you read National Geographic?"
"Sure," I told him, "I used to read it all the time."
"National Geographic is destroying the rainforest!" he shouted. Grabbing me by the neck, he said, "Are you upset that I made you all walk around the square?"
"Not really," I answered, honestly, a little worried that things were about to turn ugly, but unwilling or unable to put on a good show of being upset for his benefit."You're not upset enough!" he screamed, tightening his grip on my neck with one hand and drawing back with the other-

At this point my extremely vivid recollection of the dream ends, and I suspect things did indeed turn ugly, but my subconscious sees fit to spare me the details- which is uncommonly thoughtful of it, I think, and probably for the best. Anyway, just something to put you in the mood, and no, I didn't make any of this up. You were probably hoping that I would admit something of the sort, so that you could write off as feeble humor what you now have no choice but to acknowledge as the surreal hallucinations of a dangerously unbalanced mind. I'll understand if you are never able to take me seriously again. I myself gave up on that years ago.

But please, leave your National Geographics at home.

Joe

On a related note, I need to start taking my malaria pills this week. Side effects are reported to include vivid dreams...