Dreaming my life away

Had another incredibly vivid dream. This time off for a semester in Britain, but a kind of alternate-reality Britain, more of a small never-never land - not supernatural, but still a bit fanciful, simplified, innocent. I remember being housed with the boys, but 'lessons' consisted of meeting up with your opposite-sex buddy and entering one of the two great balloon auditoriums. There we would sit together and try to concentrate to lift the balloon into the sky and keep it aloft, preferably above the competing balloon. It wasn't really a competition, though, as long as you kept it airborne, so most of us sort of slacked off once we were in the sky, and got to chatting softly or watching the sights.

My buddy was a girl named Jackie, and I grew to be really enamored of her. She was cute in a tomboyish way, with beautiful blonde hair, and was always a bit put-off, exhasperated, or negative, but in a way with a sweetness underneath it that you knew it was a put-on. She tried to act like it all didn't matter, and was a bit roguish and coy, and was not given to saying much, but she was always polite to me, and even acted a little pleased when I held her hand going to lessons or, later in my stay, braved a quick peck on her cheek. During our last lesson, before the final social gathering and soccer match with the Americans, she told me "if you come up to me with a wedding proposal or something, I'll never speak to you again." She let me know that she thought my crush on her was "quite silly," but at the same time she never refused to hold my hand or to hang out with me during the odd moment, and in her simple dress with her stubborn, slightly freckled cheeks she was even cuter to me. I asked about her one evening after the lesson but she'd gone back to the girls' cluster of residences, and I was not allowed.

Just before semester let out, some of the guys and I were able to walk through the hills just beyond and emerge in Chino, California for some reason. There I was surprised at the roughness of the street speech (we'd not been allowed to curse at all, nor had anyone really given it much thought for that matter) and the lackadaisical culture. But we met up with a group of guys who wanted to play street soccer in the parking lot of a gas station, and they turned out to be pretty cool. They knew we were from somewhere else obviously but they didn't really inquire too much about it. We couldn't tell them how we'd gotten there or they'd never have believed us. I remember on the way back through the hills seeing Saturn almost filling the sky, huge and bright in the crisp air with stars crackling all about it. I was sad that I might not see Jackie again. I knew it was silly to propose marriage but I didn't want to let her go. I meant to ask her if we could date or something, but I couldn't find her that night, although I was told by another of the females that she'd asked where I was earlier. This made me feel rotten but when I got back home, I pulled Heath aside to tell him all about my adventures, about my girlfriend and about the amazing things I'd seen and done. It was all so real. I woke up with a real sense of loss.