I Have Dreamed A Dream

    Is it really a dream if you have actually lived it ?
 Over the last almost 28 years I've had the same reoccurring dream and lately it has become more frequent. But since I actually had the experience I question if it's really a dream. It's always the same with no variation to it, it's in color, and it seems so real I feel as if I'm actually there. It's an event that marks what I call my "Independence Day. 

  It's the first week of October 1994 at 3:30 AM. I'm sitting at counter seat 7 at Little Pete's Diner quietly celebrating a new beginning. BTW I always sat at counter seat 7 because of the night time window view. The celebratory events were my fiance dumped me, I quit my day job, rented a huge loft in Old City, I was able to spend as much time as I pleased on art and was working nights in a well known bar on South Street. Believe it or not this is one of my better memories that as I get older I often ponder. But something has changed about the dream. Usually it's the visuals of the color and people that stand out, now it's the sound. Like the volume has been turned up I hear the cook repeating my order to the waitress. I hear the change from a 75 cent of coffee hit the counter. The loud "cha-ching" of the cash register seems to reverberate through the diner. The conversation between taxi drivers about their weird fares seem loud and clear and not drowned out by the third shift police officers radios while they're grabbing a quick coffee and bagel. But what stands out the most is the buzz from the diners 24 hour neon sign which seems like something out of a David Lynch film. After almost three decades what is this memory now trying to tell me?

          Believe it or not it was this one night that influenced the way I documented the diner many years later.