These Nightmares

Marco strictly adheres to the premonitions he harvests from dreams and
visions. It is a defense mechanism that keeps him alive. Last summer
he dreamt he contracted flesh eating bacteria from a spider bite at a
picnic in San Antonio, Texas only three days before a scheduled flight
to that same location. He promptly canceled the flight and avoided the
bacteria.

The verses of this song deal with two such premonitions. The first is
an abstract of a nightmare Marco had weeks before he was to accompany
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission in October 2008 as part of
the Lunar Precursor Robotic Program to explore the feasibility of
human spaceflight missions to the moon. He withdrew from the mission,
and the launch was delayed until June 2009, by which time NASA had
realized the unnecessary danger of putting a human on what was
originally designed as a solely robotic reconnaissance.

The second tells of a dream he had before climbing Mount Shasta in
August of 2006. Although terrified by the sight of his body plummeting
down the side of the mountain while reaching for trees that were only
matchsticks, he defied its warning and proceeded with the climb. "It
was incredible," he said of Shasta. "I am glad that I was unwilling to
let a nightmare prevent me from reaching 14,179 feet."