The Grad School Diaries: In My Recurring Dream

In my dream, I close the door behind me and start off down the street. As I arrive at the bus stop nearest the house, a bus pulls up and I get on. Normally, a bus ride is a boring and uncomfortable few minutes that seem like hours, but this one is not; before I know it, the bus pulls up in front of an airport terminal, and I disembark and enter the building…

Normally, passing through an airport terminal is a boring and tedious experience that seems to last for days, but this time it isn’t; I pass through at a slow walk, the people around me insubstantial as mist. They’re present, I know they’re all around me, but I can’t hear them and can only see vague forms drifting about. After only a few minutes, I come to a gate, and find the doors open and a plane waiting. I get on…

Normally, an airplane ride is a boring and uncomfortable few hours that seems to last for eternity, but this one is not; the time seems to fly past, and in just moments, I find myself emerging off the ramp and into Terminal 1 at LAX, an airport I’ve come to know much too well over the years…

Terminal 1 is the most familiar to me of them all; I know every brick, board and stone in the place. I walk past the small food court with the Starbuck’s and California Pizza Kitchen on one side, the Waterstone bookshop on the other, and the escalator between them drops me quickly to street level. A quick walk takes me across the loop road and out to Sepulveda Boulevard and the bus stop there. The people here are real to me; jostling, sweating, talking, moving in all directions. I can feel the familiar air, and the smell of home…

This time there’s a short delay before the bus arrives, but I spend it staring into the swirling traffic patterns; an experience I’ve also come to know too well. Eventually a bus comes along, and I climb on and start dumping quarters into the fare box until it beeps to signal a full fare has been paid. This time it’s a real bus ride, too, but I hardly notice; I’m watching the familiar sights stream past me. There’s the dim, flickering light of the Sepulveda Tunnel; here’s the Unocal station where I used to fill my propane tanks; the supermarket with the Starbuck’s and Robeck’s stands in the parking lot; the oil refinery reservation, and the new and old malls in Manhattan Beach…

Finally, my bus arrives at Sepulveda and Manhattan Beach Boulevard. I dismount and start walking down the street and then up the reverse slope of the modest costal ridge. This isn’t dreamlike either; I know every foot of this road; every rise and fall; every tree and dip. As I reach the top of the ridge, the ocean finally comes into view; the clear, vast, blue expanse of the Pacific, extending to the horizon. And in the foreground, the main street of Manhattan Beach, California, leading down to the pier, with the dear old Roundhouse on the end…

Standing at the end of the pier, I inhale deeply, savoring the smell of the ocean. To the south, the great bulk of the Palos Verdes Peninsula rises out of the blue water like my memories of Diamond Head, in Hawaii. To the north, the broad sweep of the Santa Monica Bay and the familiar mottled brown of the coastal range beyond frame the great city where it all begins and ends for me. I’m home…

Even in my dream, I know I can’t stay here. I have work to do; tasks yet to accomplish; challenges still to meet. Even if I am successful, and that remains to be seen, there is no guarantee that I will ever come here again as a living man; let alone get to make my home here again, on the shores of this sapphire bay. But until that time comes, if indeed it ever does, part of me will always be here, on the end of the Manhattan Beach Pier, behind the Roundhouse, watching the tide roll in…