It was 5:01 when I woke from the dream with a sense of profound loss.
As usual, I was hurrying at the end, worried about getting back in time to get out the newspaper.
But this time, I knew I wouldn't make it.
I was in a fishing village in B.C., one with steep hills and a sharp salt smell in the air redolent of fish and tar.
I could barely climb the winding narrow stair while carrying my bag, all the while thinking, "They have enough to get out the paper without me," also thinking, "But I have to get back in time." Getting back involved train schedules, and finding the station in the first place.
I had wandered the streets, stopping by a ramshackle pub where a 400-pound black bear had lumbered into the lap of the man sitting across from me for a cuddle.
Walking the irregular streets, I had happened on a woman in her 70s, with coiffed hair and an ankle-length fur coat, tapping her sensibly-heeled foot to the time as she blew the shit out of a harmonica solo that I'd heard around the corner, drawing me in.
The town had the quaintness of a New England fishing village, Oysterville Victorians that weren't quite restored and had a dark underbelly, fishermen's bars where everyone accepted everyone else's eccentricities, while muttering under their breaths.
I didn't want to leave this place. It filled me with a wild longing to wander all over it as the sun set and the sea glimmered murkily.
I wanted to live there until I died in some cheap attic room in a boarding house, where drunken men passed me silently on the stairs. One of them would have been my lover, but we weren't speaking, and it didn't matter.
But then I woke, having to pee at 5:01, too early the morning after getting the paper out. And no, I wouldn't have had enough on the page yesterday to miss the deadline. I never do.