Dreams happen at night, sometimes on a bed with all the lights off, but this wasn't a dream- or at least I didn't think it was. It all seemed very real. The cushion of the mattress under which supported myself, pinned between it and a nearby dresser, and two others- one in the middle sitting up against the headboard and the other stretched across the bottom of a window pane that we all stared out of at the skyline of Chicago- was completely lost to me. The cushion molded so well to my body that the blankets were like jet streams keeping us aloft in midair as we simply enjoyed looking out over the city and talking silently, not to disturb the peaceful piece of mural art that we were staring at; though if one of us wanted, they could have easily acted as though they were taking a bite out of the Sears Tower, through proportion distortion, and used it for a profile picture on Facebook. Instead, we all laid there kind of in our own heads. I imagine that not everyone on the mattress was thinking about what the others were thinking like I was, but it was nice being partly in the moment nonetheless. 


For me, I have always liked looking at airplanes and wondering where they are coming from or going to- it kept me positive every day on the South Side of Chicago. When I saw a plane flying around Midway, it would remind me that the summer coming up would be the one where I would be on my way to experience Europe. But the planes flying about the sky in our time back on the mattress could have been coming from anywhere- Europe, Africa, Asia, you name it. And think, on every one of those flights could be around a hundred or so people. I was watching from such a great distance that the planes appeared to be close stars but I still noted the significance of the people on the flight and the people I was surrounding myself with to enjoy this moment Kodak would approve. It is amazing to me how I survived that long without them.