Last night I had this dream: Although I was fairly certain I never had any, I knew I'd somehow lost my golondrinas.

For class I've been reading "On Being the Object of Property" by Patricia Williams and "Decolonizing the Mind" by Ngugi Wa Thiongo. In a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to free myself from bottomless nausea, I grabbed my battered copy of Dharma Bums, read it, re-read it, and imagined myself not-here. Out of here. There.

Maybe that's why I had this dream of tracking down my golondrinas. Beautiful afternoon, in my dream, wearing shorts and flipfloppers, no shirt, a red bandana over my hair, sunglasses; and I was drinking a glass of milk for some reason that began to bother me after I realized what I was drinking. I'm not quite sure, but I think that's when I started thinking about my missing golondrinas.

It was a pretty heartbreaking moment, actually, oddly, not frightening or making me panic, but so sad that I knew I was about to lose it--right there in public. The next part of the dream I can't quite remember, though I have an impression of a strange hike to my apartment, dodging streets and bars where I believed people might recognize me--and I don't remember why I was hiding; maybe it was an extension of not wanting to break down in public. Still, I wasn't really sad anymore. I just wanted to get home unnoticed.

I'm pretty sure this home I was trying to reach was not where I live now; on the other hand, I'm pretty sure I've never lived in the apartment that I eventually located and entered. At this point I'm excited, anticipating the telling of my adventure (fleeing home, not searching for golondrinas) to my girlfriend. When I finally open the door to my apartment, she's lounging in a huge beanbag drinking something clear and icy, wearing a light, intricately flowered summer dress that covers fewer important things than a long t-shirt. She's watching the Food Network.

"I made it!" I hollered. I'm happy as can be. She giggles. Then she asks me what's the problem.

I'm stumped. I can't think of any way of telling her what I've just been through. Then I realize that I'm not sure what I've just been through--the one thing I can remember at all is that my golondrinas are missing. And that's when I wake up.

And that's also when I realize I have no idea what the living hell "golondrinas" means. I was pretty sure "golondrinas" was Spanish for something-or-other, or it was simple gibberish that my brain had scrounged together for uncouth reasons unclear.

So I get up, 6 AM, piss like I'm sourcing the Nile, and Google my "golondrinas."

Tree Swallows. I need more coffee.

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