Walking on a Dream

It’s the day after Halloween. The past 10 months have gone by so quickly it’s frightening.

On my break between classes, I went and sat in the lounge of the student union. I felt sane and grounded, until the song “Walking on a Dream” came on. This was one of my go-to songs on my prison MP3 player, I realized as I heard it for the first time in a long time.

Walking on a dream

I blinked and I was on the bleachers on the rec field, wearing gray mesh shorts and a gray t-shirt, a white baseball hat, with the song being played through an old-school MP3 player with over-sized Koss clear-plastic headphones, listening to the song under the California sun surrounded by brown earth and barbed wire.

How can I explain?

I blinked and I was sitting in the lounge of PSU’s student union, the song playing out of speakers, surrounded by students clacking away on laptops or scrolling through their phones. I’m just another student wearing trendy clothes waiting for my next class. Everyone is dressed differently, the genders aren’t separated, and within this very building there are dozens of food options. I’m here now, in this world, in this universe, the one with freedom, individuality, choices, and internet.

Talking to myself

But I can blink and feel like I’m back in that world, the one with the barbed wire and scorched earth. But it seems like that world and this world can’t possibly coexist; they are mutually exclusive. Only one of them is real, but both are in my memory, competing for space.

Will I see again?

Blink, prison. Blink, Portland State. Blink, then. Blink, now.