I was having one of those agonizing nights of insomnia that come from where I don’t have a clue, that I finally fell into fitful asleep about 5 am and dreamed one of my vivid, Cinematic Dreams.  I’m talking a dream complete with fully developed storyline (albeit a bizarre one), actors with dialogue, even titles and credits that roll at the end.

(I had the first one at about age 5 or 6, and I only remember the title, “The Figger”.  The distinguishing feature was in fact the credit roll.  I don’t remember whether I directed, but I was definitely the lead actor.  A couple years later I would write and direct my first play, staged on my front porch with my friends Dot, Linda and Bridget as actors. The title was “Mary’s Party” and we charged neighbors 10 cents admission.  I also wrote my first book that year, written on lined paper and bound with staples, illustrated with my own crayon drawings.  The teacher made me read it in front of my third-grade class, an event I remember because it was my first inkling of the stage fright that was to haunt me for years.  I was also a poet then, and one of my first featured the lines “sometimes I hear that train outside/and I think I want to jump on it and ride/but I know that it’s here I’ll always abide”.  I was 9 years old, and already thinking of ways to get out of Tupelo, Mississippi... but I digress.)

So in this morning’s dream, I’m an adult in a girl scout troop which has a wounded baby elephant on its hands.  This elephant had been decapitated in a car crash, while riding in the back-seat of a convertible Fiat (we see a flashback of this, during the film).  Now it is forlornly standing along a wall outside the scout meeting house, its head re-attached and bound with bloody bandages, surrounded by a crowd of people, including a guy who resembles a photographer I used to work, with, who is pointing a shotgun at it, ostensibly to put it out of its misery.  Horrified, I run into the scene, grab the gun and threaten to shoot anyone who tries to kill the elephant.

I get on a cell phone, which inexplicably has a long, long cord which I walk around the yard with, stretching the cord to its limit, trying to find a veterinarian who will give me a better prognosis for the elephant.  Meanwhile the elephant’s owner shows up.  She’s a tall, pretty woman who tells me that she can’t afford the medical treatment this elephant will need, because she is fighting an immune system disorder herself, and agrees that it should be killed.  Her huge eyes convey a real sadness and pity for the creature.

I give a moving speech to the crowd, pointing the gun at each of them, screaming things like, “Should I just kill any one of you, because we can’t afford to treat you?!”, with great passion. I still have the phone to my ear. Finally the scratchy voice of a vet comes on the phone, he sounds like he’s driving in traffic, I can barely hear him.  I recognize him as one of those guys in that Animal Planet series, Animal Cops.  We see cutaways of him driving as he asks me a series of questions; one of which is, “Can the elephant hold its head up?”

I look over and see that the elephant is in fact attempting to change its own bandages, all by itself.  I tell this to the vet and he says, “that’s a good sign.  I think he’s going to make it.”

Then I see someone walking toward the elephant, with a syringe.  The photographer puts his hand on my shoulder and says, in a tone that I don’t understand, “It’s all been decided, J.C.”  I wonder what the syringe contains – antibiotics or a kill shot.

Before I can find out, my cat jumps on my ass, waking me up. Head groggy  and achy from the sleeping pill that didn’t work - and neck kinked to high hell, I realized, I was probably just waiting for a call from Greg.