A few nights after getting the second Moderna shot, I was back in Hawaiʻi, going on some sort of victorious night-time hike by myself over terrain through the the city and through the countryside too, even though there were roving bands of thugs that I had to keep a constant watch out for.
I climbed down my apartment through the building’s walls instead of using a stairwell, falling down through the ceiling of a restaurant below my place, and got cussed out by the chef and wait staff for it. Diners looked up at me through the chunks of drywall falling into their main courses, scowling with disdain. I apologized profusely and continued onward.
I started my journey somewhere around Ala Moana Shopping Center, planning to walk to Waikiki and maybe even as far as Mānoa after that. My first stop was at a vast field — perhaps in Kapiʻolani Park? There was a huge tree in the middle of it, and it contained a tree house that had been built by hippies decades back.
It was abandoned and full of rats, all of which had somehow died while looking out the many windows. I stared up at their dead, vacant eyes in awe, as they peered back lifelessly at me. The other trees on the border of the park twisted up endlessly toward the sky, singing an electrical, warning hum.
I walked along Ala Wai Canal and ended up in a part of town that disoriented me. There was a row of restaurants there, so it might have been a refurbished Ward Warehouse in Kakaʻako. Cars careened and skittered through parking lots and down the streets, honking and smearing their paint against the thickening night sky.
Everywhere I looked, things were getting distorted and blurred. I kept bumping into walls and tripping over the sidewalk, becoming thoroughly disoriented and dizzy. My glasses and debit cards were gone. My purse melted down my leg, pouring my keys into a storm drain.
As I peered out into the vast horizon, nothing looked familiar to me, and everywhere I could choose to go stretched out into miles and miles of gothic cityscape that I had never seen before. I was looking desperately for familiar terrain but found none.
I began asking people for help. Their general response was indifference and, when they deigned to pay attention to me, absolute disdain. "Maybe you should be more responsible for your own actions," they admonished me when I told them I was lost.
"I can't help you; I'm busy," an impatient woman working at a cash register told me before I slipped her a ten-dollar bill to convince her to call me a taxi, but she just took off with the last of my cash, never to be seen again.
In a last-ditch attempt, I tried calling my husband, whose phone number I couldn't remember to save my life, and when I pulled out my cell phone to try to find his information in it, mung beans began sprouting from its glass surface. "Nooooo!" I remember shouting as I dropped the phone onto the ground, where it quickly took root and began growing into a beanstalk that wound its tendrils up my body as I struggled to break free.
It was then that I woke up, to be comforted by my husband. I relaxed in relief and fell asleep again. The dream continued, but luckily I found a nice couple with a cute dog who drove me around in their car, letting me hang out with them at their apartment for a while, and feeding me copious amounts of huge, luscious strawberries.
"We've been through the same journey you have," they told me with sympathy. The woman flirted with me and the guy gave me magazines to read. They played soothing music from their stereo, their dog licked my hand, and the sun shone over everything, removing the blur from the world’s surface. Reality was evening out again and I was at peace.
