Un beau rêve

I've been dreaming more lately than I have in a long time. I don't know why.

Late this morning, I had the most exquisite reverie, that my wife and I were back in Paris. It was my brain's delicious cocktail of legitimate memories, mixed with the idealized fantasy of things and places I've never experienced, but had every mark of realism for the dreamer.

It's funny in that way: I dreamed of this small, neighborhood bar, and not for the first time. It was on the ground floor of a crowded group of shops and restaurants, lots of brick, and even had a pool table. Since we never went to a bar in Paris, I'm sure we've never been to such a place, and yet I know I've dreamed of it before. This time, it had even changed in the small ways that places change when you haven't visited in some time; ways that the regulars never notice, ways that are given contrast only by periodic absence.

I seated my wife, and stowed our bicycle (bicycle?) in our "usual spot" (again, never happened), and greeted the bartender in French and ordered our drinks. I was taking in the joy of "being there again" and noting my still-lingering newness to the French language when my son cried out in his sleep from the next room. I didn't snap out of my womblike vision right away; rather, I luxuriated in my happy hallucination, and willed myself to remain, to bask, almost baste myself in the false-but-convincing sensory perceptions of the time and place. Slowly and inevitably, I did drift away, but thankful that I had a few brief moments to say goodbye to the second home of my heart.