My 27 attention-needful 3rd graders had snuffed me out like just another candle on a birthday cake. You can imagine all that unbridled human breath, and all the human karma riding on it. Thoroughly exhausted after a full day of teaching summer school, and after all the July 4th festivities the day and night before, I took a long and sweet late nap on Tuesday afternoon.
In the dream that ensued I found myself at a party, this time with a few Mexican rancher friends - dream companions that I'd never seen before - strapping, jovial guys wearing tight fitting jeans, thick black bigotes, shiny silver belt buckles, and eye-catching cowboy boots and hats. We were laughing and drinking, corny jokes tossing back and forth like corks on the ocean.
Shooting the breeze beneath a palm-thatch palapa like this, my habitual train of self-thought was utterly derailed by the good time I was having. Self-concern had bled into the surrounding scene, and I had lost track of myself as a result. That's when one of those handsome caballeros called out to me and asked, "Hey! So, what've you been up to lately?"
"Me?" I replied rather matter-of-factly. "I've just been coloring myself in."
"Coloring myself in." I awoke with these provocative words spilling audibly off my tongue. I could not stop thinking about them either, their myriad of implications, for the rest of that night and the following morning.
