Riding with Ghosts, Angels, and the Spirits of the Dead

Going Bananas

I’M SOUND ASLEEP in my home in Florida, and I’m aware that I’m having a lucid dream (a lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming)� I decide to not try and control the dream but to just go with it and see where it takes me because the experience, so far at least, is a very pleasurable one because in it I’m riding my motorcycle�

I’ve owned a few motorcycles in my life, starting around the age of 15 when I first became a biker, but I’ve never ridden any of them in my dreams���until now; in this dream I am riding my latest motorcycle, a Honda VTX 1300C, which is a big, black, shiny, fast, powerful, throbbing v-twin named Melissa� I know that is her name, because when we first met she told me so�

My dream is so real that I can feel myself sitting in the low-slung leather seat of my motorcycle; I can literally feel myself holding onto the handlebars; and I can feel the wind in my face as I ride down the road� In my dream these sensations are every bit as real and pleasurable as they are in my waking state and I’m enjoying them immensely�

As my dream progresses I notice that I’m riding down a long, straight two-lane country road, as is often my habit in my waking state; Florida has a lot of them� There is no other traffic; I am alone on the road� Sometimes that’s not too unusual for Florida back roads either�

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 going BAnAnAs

The scenery is pleasant but mostly unremarkable, as is the scenery alongside many of these typical Florida backcountry roads: some pine woods here and there, some smaller trees of varying types, some scrub brush and saw palmetto, all disrupted by the periodic breaks in the trees and vegetation which allows me to see flat farmland, ranchland, or undeveloped acres of land� An occasional house here and there� Some horses or cattle grazing� I describe it as unremarkable, but in reality it’s uncommonly beautiful to me, and I’m enjoying watching it as I glide along effortlessly on my powerful machine�

What a great dream.

Up ahead on the right-hand side of the road I see a familiar sight: a green rectangular city limit sign� It’s just a small, ordinary, nonde-script city limit sign like those I regularly encounter when I’m entering some small Florida town or another but for some reason this particular sign really piques my interest� I begin to get a tingle of anticipation and I can’t wait to see what it reads� It seems important to me that I should notice this sign and pay careful attention to it, so I begin to slow Melissa slightly as I approach the sign so that I can read it�

Now I’m close enough to the sign that I can see it clearly and the town’s name to which the sign is welcoming me reads���“Banana�”

I stop alongside the shoulder of the road before I pass the sign, and as Melissa quietly idles I sit on her staring at the city limit sign�

It’s taking a little time for this to sink in� Banana. And then I begin to laugh�

I shake my head� “Banana,” I mutter�

Okay, yes, I think to myself in my dream, I live in Florida now. The word banana connotes the semi-tropical and tropical environments I have come to know and love in this state� Carrying the word association game further, banana trees even grow in the city in which I live, and a couple of my neighbors have them growing in their yards� I also remember that in some of the Florida state parks that I frequent I’ve seen bananas growing on the banana trees, in the wild� And I happen to love bananas as a food item���give me a good banana split and I’m in food heaven�

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 Riding with ghosts, Angels, And the spiRits of the deAd In my dream I bring my thoughts up short� Yes, all of the things that I’ve realized in association with this word are true, but my lord; what a bizarre thing to put into this dream� Why would I have a lucid dream in which I ride my motorcycle for miles down an empty road only to come to a town in Florida with a cliché for a name, and with no apparent meaning or significance beyond the trivial and the obvious?

Banana. Again, why such a powerful lucid dream in which I can literally experience it with all five of my physical senses that has only led me to a sign emblazoned with a cliché in the middle of nowhere? I smirk, and then I shift Melissa back into gear, and again I shake my head as I pass by the city limit sign� Banana indeed� In my mind the experience has taken on a very sophomoric tone because the Other Side (I’m assuming) chooses to convey to me, through such a simple and clichéd association, facts with which I’m already well aware� Hey, guys: I’m fully aware that I live, work, and play in this beautiful state of Florida���and as I’m thinking these thoughts as I’m accelerating Melissa to go on down the road I glance once again to the right-hand side of the road and I’m suddenly seeing tombstones� There are small tombstones, and medium-sized and large tombstones; some are ornate, some are very plain, and most of them are very old, weathered, and worn� They stretch for a short little distance down the highway before normal scenery resumes again, and about midway along this stretch of tombstones I stop Melissa, shut her off, dismount and walk over to inspect these old grave markers, many of which date back into the 1800s, and I think to myself that if the town of Banana, Florida ever did indeed exist it must have long ago faded away because it looks to me like all of its inhabitants are deceased�

Wow���what a puzzling dream this is turning into� Why would the Other Side show me all of these old tombstones in