Go ahead and pee on the hotwire

 

I don't remember anything but my last image from my last dream. Whisky, old and fragile as he is, was marking his territory by peeing on the fence near the front gate. Only in my dream there was hotwire about 2 inches from the ground running along the fenceline. 

I used to actually have this configuration to prevent my dog Daisy from digging out from under the fence. I removed it after I had Whiskey and Shadow for a while. It was after Shadow zapped himself good a couple of times peeing on this 10,000 volt wire, and I saw how spooked they were to even go anywhere remotely near a fence, that I took it down. 

It had done its job too well. They were too permanently terrified to even go near the fences. It killed not only their will to escape but quenched their inquisitive nature as well. Shadow began peeing like a lady dog after that, and neither one of them went near anything that looked like a fence to pee on it.

Since Shadow passed, and I have been taking Whiskey out for more walks in the morning, he has regained his confidence and taken up the hobby of peeing on things again. Mailboxes, fence posts, trash cans, anything that sticks up out of the ground. 

In my dream, I was watching him do this newly adopted habit. I saw that his pee was going directly on the wire, which I presumed to be about to administer the shock of a lifetime to my poor old dog. I waited for it and mentally cringed in expectation, but it never happened. Somehow he had gotten away with it. A long and satisfying pee directly on the wire. Hmm, must not have been energized after all.

This was a dream, so the threat was not a real life situation that still exists. And if I did ever see a bit of hotwire running along a fenceline I wouldn't recommend taking a leak to find out if it was energized or not. 

For me, this dream represents a turning point in the release from the shackles of programmed fear. If you want to do something as basic to your nature as a dog peeing on a fence, go ahead and do it. What's the worst thing that could happen? You could get zapped with 10,000 volts of electricity straight to your junk, that's what. But fuck it, you'll never know til you try it. It's worth it, right?

**later**

I was out walking, as I do every night, but tonight it started to thunder and lightning all around me as I was headed home. As thrilling as it was, I was a little concerned because I was carrying an umbrella which might serve as a lightning rod. 

To make matters worse, I had to pee, which reminded me of my dream about Whiskey and the hotwire. I took a chance and relieved myself on the side of a desolate stretch of road, illuminated only by the occasional lightning strike. I figured if Whiskey could risk it, so would I. 

Much ado about nothing, all this fuss about possible electrocution. Go ahead and pee in a lightning storm too while you're at it.

Tommy: the traveling soldier and the light under the bullshit (er, bushel)

I'm not feeling like anyone is reading this blog, with the exception of maybe my dad and the occasional Russian bot. According to my pageview monitor, even they have been absent for a while. All for the best, I suppose. I tend to cramp up and guard my thoughts when I feel the invisible scrutiny of a possible reader. So, here's a bunch of random, stream of consciousness bullshit, with which I will bore my non-readership.

I think I don't know who I am anymore because of a lack of predefined purpose in my life. The old me, the one people remember is a facade. What's going on inside of me is a bunch of nothing. I follow a routine which pretty much insures that nothing new or exciting will ever happen to me. I stay inside the box, because that's where I'm most comfortable. Even though the creature comforts are pretty luxurious, I'm still in some kind of prison. Technically, I can walk out at any time, but I'm like a dog that has been zapped by an invisible fence too many times. Why bother? It's not worth it.

I guess I am like Tommy. You know, the deaf, dumb and blind boy, who really was just suffering from some manifestation of PTSD brought on by childhood trauma. He'd withdrawn, Pink Floyd-like, behind a wall. He wasn't faking it, he was really crippled, just not in the sense where it could be detected with the usual medical diagnostics. Whatever mechanism fucked his brain up, he really was blind, deaf and dumb to the world. And the spiritual cure for his disease was pinball. Whatever. It could have been anything. It was his connection between his inner self and the world outside of himself. His buddha "aha" moment of zen that brought him back into equilibrium.

So, I guess I could stand to have one of those epiphanies. Except that I don't even play pinball or do much of anything besides watch TV or look at Facebook obsessively. So, when is this enlightenment going to strike me? In between cooking my omelet and shooting tin cans off the front porch? When I'm out on my walk, talking to cows or befriending stray praying mantises?

Does it even need to come at all? I'm a functional cripple, kinda. I don't contribute much anymore, in the way of work. If that's what it's all about, go ahead and shoot me, for that reason alone. I'm a waste of taxpayer money. I'm sure someone in accounting will decide when to pull the trigger, after it has been determined that my net contributions have been exceeded by my subsidies. I'm just waiting on the decision from upstairs.

So, the fact that I'm not contributing, even intellectually, could be considered a criminal act. This little light of mine, well, fuck you, it's mine and I'm gonna keep it right here with me inside the box, under a bushel. It's getting pretty dim, due to the lack of oxygen, but hey, it's windy outside and no place for my little light to be stickin' its little neck out. I used up my personal identity and ability to function when I spent ten years as a caregiver. I played to an audience of one and became more and more molded into a character that even I didn't like. So, whatever talents or skills I'd convinced myself I possessed but was just too busy to pursue--well, they've all dried up and migrated back into the cosmos, to be utilized by more deserving hosts.

I feel like the traveling soldier in the Dixie Chicks song, who had no one to write a letter to. He picked some young girl in a diner and made her his star-crossed pen pal. Of course, in the song he dies in Vietnam and the little high school piccolo player is left crying under the bleachers. So I have my thoughts, my long ago dashed hopes and what's left of my life to live but no one to share it with. No one to tell my troubles to other than the faceless ether of the internet. I'm dead already, but no one is crying about it but me.

Summer is done and over, and I can't blame my springtime hormones anymore for whatever life is trying to spring out between the chinks in my bricked up heart. Blame it on the Beach Boys. Blame it on neuro-chemical reactions triggered by random memory associations. I'm a walking, breathing bundle of inappropriate responses waiting for the poor unfortunate who crosses my path. Woe to that person, indeed.

There, I hit all the points in the title. Whoop dee dee. Points taken away for not utilizing better paragraph structure and for the overall poverty of the subject matter. But who cares? Until my critics speak up, they can just suck it. I'm writing letters to the wind. From the wind to the wind. Nothing more.

Sinkholes and the looming power outage

 

The last thing I remember, as I try to work my way backward into a dream I was having, in which Uncle Steve was present, was the sudden appearance of two giant sinkholes in my backyard. 

Steve and I were wiping our butts and tossing the toilet paper into a cardboard box when I commented, "This is the part of the job I don't like. This would represent the end." 

I have no idea what job we were doing, only that there was an empty cardboard box, presumably from some kind of product we were assembling. 

Steve gave me that look, like, "Yeah, whatever, kid. Cute, you think you've arrived at the point where you can make commentary. Almost makes me smile. Almost." He smiled an almost smile as he silently judged my remark. At that point I looked out my back door.

"Holy Shit!" I exclaimed as I noticed a giant sinkhole, about six foot in diameter. 

It was only about three feet deep and perfectly round. Might make a nice wading pool if it didn't keep getting deeper, I thought to myself as I looked around the backyard. 

"Holy shit, again?!" I screamed as I saw a second, larger sinkhole. This one was twelve feet around and similarly symmetrical, a nice little swimming hole. 

I was impressed by their placement and precision. They hadn't disturbed any structures or other landscaping. It was like they'd been purposefully placed. Their sudden appearance was upsetting, but I was already working myself into putting a positive spin on being the proud owner of two rather well-formed natural anomalies. I could still put the gazebo over there...

That's all that's coming to me. The sinkholes jarred me awake with their sudden appearance, so they robbed me of whatever storyline preceded their arrival. 

Oh, well. I got a lot more pickin' to do today. Then PG&FuckingE promises to shut everyone's power off for the next two days due to imminent wind conditions and a red flag warning of fire danger. 

I am almost out of groceries, but I am going to wait until this event is over before I go to the store. I don't want to spend the money on food that's just going to go bad. They expect everyone to have a backup generator and be able to just deal with these little outages, but it just ain't that way. Lots of us rely on the electrical grid every moment of the day. This is really gonna put a crimp in my routine.

Fortunately, I've got a few things to do outside during the day that don't require any electricity. In fact, I'd do well to take some time to run my well pump wire through the remaining 220 feet of conduit that I bought. Hurmmmphh! Wasn't looking forward to that. It's a tight squeeze, as I bought the smallest, cheapest conduit available to do the job. Pushing the wire through almost requires two people, as it binds up and requires a lot of cajoling to feed it.

This is It

 

“Spiritual practice is just a way of being. It’s an honest way of showing up in life and is not limited to any particular moment.”
~ Adyashanti

This is how I get out of going to church. Or meditating. Or praying, except if I really need something (and cursing at the sky doesn't count). And sometimes the honesty takes the form of being honest about how dishonest you are. How you constantly delude yourself to pacify the niggling little voice of conscience, which you suppress at every turn. How you spin your story to alter perception. Who doesn't do that to some degree?  

That's the beauty of this simple non-practice spiritual practice. You don't have to alter your behavior, just be conscious of it. You'll be the judge of when and what to change or not change. You do you. I'll do me. It's easy. Look, I'm doing it right now.

"Be authentically who you are. No more no less."
~ Andrew



I must have hit a patch of oh-shit-weed when I indulged in my Saturday morning C & C routine. Actually, it should be C & C, B & G. Coffee and cannabis, breakfast and guitar. Why not mix a few of the things I like and cram them in all together? Maybe their interaction will magnify the enjoyment I get out of them versus doing any of them singularly. 

I only engage in this weekly, my own self-administered prescription. Is it working? I dunno, but if it wasn't doing anything, I wouldn't make a practice of doing this once a week rain or shine. Barring a crisis the level of, say, a well water outage, I don't alter my plans on Saturday for nuthin'. Things can get done Saturday afternoon....or Sunday. Or Monday. No rush.

But the oh-shit stuff, well, that's just making me stupider. Although, I could actually feel myself grooving with the guitar, so maybe it's worth it. I suddenly had a moment or two where things were flowing naturally and the positive feedback connection was perfect. From what I was playing, to my ear and then back to my fingers, everything meshed. It grooved. There was this groove, and I was in it.  

It is like riding without training wheels, standing up surfing, ice skating, skiing or anything you might successfully do for the first time. After a bunch of stiff, mechanical attempts of mimicking what you see others do, following instructions but mostly flailing -- BOOM! All of a sudden, you are dancing with the stars. A ballerina doing the perfect twirly thing.

zzzzzzYeah!

The Northwest Passage behind Walmart

 

We'd all heard of a secret shortcut through the desert wildlife refuge that led to the Walmart parking lot, but so far no one had actually been able to map it out. I was riding a quad through some chaparral and inadvertently wound up discovering the elusive coveted route. 

It was somewhere in the area of where the terrain changes from chaparral to lower foothill pines. But whether there was some kind of forgetfulness spell that won't let you remember the details, or whether every cactus and pine tree just look alike, making written directions impossible, I don't know. I just know that once I'd arrived at my destination, I had a hard time recounting just how I'd gotten there. 

I was attempting to befriend some frightened birds who were feeding on McDonald's leftovers under a stone table in the outdoor dining area when reality intruded, and I found myself awake.

I gotta get an early start today, so I can't ponder the insignificance of my mindless reverie.

The Turning Point -- Insomnia and Matters of the Heart

 

I usuallymanage to get to sleep alright, I just keep waking up around 3am and am unable to get back to sleep. Last night was difficult. I put on some Enya and begged, pleaded and prayed for Sharon to visit me. The music elicited some strong emotions in me, some of which didn't help me sleep. We'd played Enya during various trips to the coast, so I got transported into random memories of those trips. One was a particularly upsetting recollection of when Sharon was first experiencing MS symptoms while we were out walking in Fort Bragg.

A game we used to play, whenever we'd go walking or driving through nice neighborhoods, was to point out certain properties and fantasize about what it would be like to live there. She'd always notice the properties with acreage, of course. That was priority number one for a horse person. But sometimes she'd notice a house with a particularly nice deck or a picture window, and we'd play the "what would we do if we won the lottery" game.

But lately, when walking or exerting herself at all, her eyesight would get blurry, and she had difficulty seeing anything at all. On this trip we were walking past some construction that was going on near the beach, where someone was building their dream house. She was asking me to describe, in detail, what she could not see. I became frustrated with the level of exactitude she was demanding and said something to the effect that I didn't want to play this game anymore.

In life, there are pivotal moments when things shift from one trajectory to another. I didn't feel the weight of my words that day, although I could see they upset her. I'd just wanted things to be the way they'd always been, with us enjoying carefree vacations. She was experiencing a frightening new MS symptom and wanted me to reassure her that I'd be there to fill in for her lack of visual ability with my own words. 

It was an opportunity which I blew miserably. I could have painted her a picture of that dream house, in all its fine detail, and she could have pictured it in her mind. I could have given the fertile ground of her own imagination the seeds to place us there, in scenarios of fantasy, living like king and queen of this beautiful castle overlooking the ocean. We'd dreamed of such things and coveted many people's lives as we'd strolled along beachfront property in the past.

But this was the beginning of the end of those dreams. I couldn't or wouldn't even describe the house being built to her. I couldn't picture us in it any longer. Her near blindness would spoil the perfect lives we'd hope to live in any future house, fantasy or otherwise. I was not taking the "worse" and "sickness" aspects of our wedding vows as gracefully as the more positive "better" and "health" parts.

Laying in bed, listening to Enya, I felt the emotions she must have felt at that moment. Reaching out for some kind of sympathetic support from her husband, instead she got a cold slap of the reality that she'd married a selfish brat, a narcissistic, fair-weather spouse. 

She must have withered inside at the thought of being married to someone who couldn't muster up the slightest empathy. Someone who couldn't see past his own thoughts to give their sick spouse what they were desperately needing at the time: comfort, reassurance and the promise to make things better when they were taking a turn for the worse. Prince Charming, I was not. I was a royal turd.

These and many other flashes of memories played in my head to Enya's, sometimes melancholy, sometimes hopeful soundtrack, eliciting tears. The good times that we shared are all painted blue, when revisited in my mind, filtered through the lens of regret and loss.

I finally did get to sleep and wound up dreaming of Sharon. This time she was in her bedridden phase, in a critical stage of decline. We were in some different surroundings, having come out of a care facility, back to a residence which was new to us. The situation had the exact same feel as when we returned home from our fire evacuation in 2017.

At some point during the transition, I had stopped the daily personal hygiene routine and forgot to start it back up. I noticed that sores were developing on her backside as a result. These were the beginning of the unfixable type of sores which lead to infection and are present in the end stages of illness. I felt the complete crushing responsibility of having caused this to happen through my negligence. If only I had kept to our routine, this never would have happened.

Sharon and I experienced many of these milestones as we went down the path of her illness together. At each turn, I met the event with resistance instead of acceptance, anger instead of empathy. I was a soulless, graceless complainer, with whom she had the sorry misfortune of being paired, on a journey she never chose. I will never get to apologize now. 

All I can do is try to fill my days with enough distraction to block out the thoughts that would drive me to suicide, the only fitting end to a life so poorly lived. I'm sure that's not what Sharon would want for me, were still she around to want anything anymore. Sometimes, though, I think I'm kidding myself thinking that her soul, if such a thing even exists, would bother to hang around this miserable prison watching my wretched life play out.

I want to be one of those people who can make their ordeal into an inspirational story. One that can give people who might be going through something similar, hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel. So far all I've done is describe the tunnel in great detail. 

I'm the quantum version of the story where Papillon dies in prison, a broken man. Maybe in another universe there's an Andrew turning his trials into gold, who has the world's greatest lemonade stand with lemons hand picked from the tree that life has given him. This one is just a rat in a self-created cage, festering in his own waste. In this case, the waste is my excessive verbosity. 

 

Born this way

 

"You brought me into this world, a suffering abomination tortured by the duality of its being, but I shall finally know peace when I watch the life drained from your wretched body." -- Abradolf Lincler.

 "Abradolf Lincler is a humanoid experiment debuting in Ricksy Business. He was created when Rick combined the DNA of Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler, in an attempt to create a morally neutral super leader. He failed and the end result was a cognitively dissonant and morally-confused emotional trainwreck" -- Rickipedia, Rick and Morty Wiki

The premise for this character is one I can relate to viscerally, as a conflicted being, uncertain of his purpose and resentful of his "creator" for engineering him with such incongruous and irreconcilable components, a Frankenstein composite made up of humanity's best and worst traits. 

I am the reason for the biblical injunction forbidding clothes woven of two different types of fabric. "An abomination" whose inner torment will cause misery and chaos to those around him -- and quite a bit of chaffing in the thigh area. 

My alien overlords decided on a whim to mix sinner and saint, hero and fool in equal parts and sat back to watch the results. I'm sure I've been providing them with hours of entertainment since my conception.

Meanwhile, I feel like I'm being slammed about in a turbulent airplane ride going from zero gravity to 9gs in an instant. FML. So, my prayer is, "Now I lay me down to die. Please." That's it for now, assholes. Peace.

Odd Jobs with Brian Clampitt

 

There's a seemingly endless supply of people I can conjure up to slander in my dream life. Last night I found myself in some kind of probationary temp job situation, working with various people, each of whom I had varying degrees of difficulty getting along with. 

One was a bit of a knuckleheaded fellow, a Joey from "Friends" type, who was asked to read aloud by our instructor/job coach. He surprised us by not being completely illiterate. I sensed, though, that he was insecure about it, and, if corrected for some of his minor errors, there'd be brawling.

Next I was working alongside Brian Clampitt and another fellow, who I'm going to have to reach way back to pull up a name for. I want to say Kevin McClosky, a red-headed kid I attended grammar school with. 

Like most of us back then, Kevin was slightly off-kilter, a trait which only seemed to have become magnified over the years. He had developed into a full blown disabled person, with speech and mobility issues. Being paired with Brian and myself to work in a paint store only brought out his disabilities.

Brian fancied himself to be the foreman, although this wasn't a job he was officially sanctioned to do. For a guy who'd appointed himself to the lead role, he wasn't very conscientious in his handling of the product in the store. I caught him stacking 5 gallon paint buckets with a fork lift, placing them upside down on the shelves. 

Because I already was predisposed to dislike him, due to his typically condescending air of superiority (both in real life and the dream), I decided to call him on it.

"You see what you did here? They are upside down," I told him as I flipped over each of the wrongly placed items.  One of the paint cans had a loose lid and paint was already leaking out from being upside down.

He didn't take the criticism well and proceeded to rail against me at every opportunity in a tit for tat manner. His complaints went more to my personality type, as he found my weaknesses the perfect target for his pedantic speeches about slacker types. 

He showed me up good by doing a thoroughly precise job of diagnosing, categorizing and packaging a fishing rod and reel. 

"This would be labeled as a component failure," he proudly proclaimed, as he wrapped up the item for shipping, with overtly perfectionist spite.

I found my similar attempt at wrapping up a fishing pole was, in fact, rather sloppy by comparison.

Though we'd exchanged heated words after the paint cans, he was now going out of his way to display the softer side of his normally obnoxious paternalistic patter. He even engaged Kevin, the more vulnerable target and likely candidate for bullying, with a surprising degree of compassion. 

"See, Kevin. You can do some things. You can sit there just fine. You can listen to the radio and tap your foot to the beat. Just do that. Groove to the beat. Just like that. There, you're doing it," he said, gently assuring the disabled Kevin.

I guess he was being sincere, though you never can tell with those snobby, east coast types. He was actually from Arkansas, or somewhere less refined, but had long ago shed the okie dialect, replacing it with something that resembled George Zimmer, the Men's Warehouse spokesman. "You're gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it." That guy.

Well, things are winding down in my recollection of events. I'm not sure there's even a story to the moral of this dream, just some impressions, fading like footprints in the tide. 

I try to keep the hypnagogic state alive as long as I can while transcribing these dreams, but, as you can see, the editor-in-chief resides in this reality and has a way of coloring the narration. Simple word choices bend the whole perception of events, and soon I'll be writing a completely fictional version of my dream.

Which begs the question, "Who cares anyway?" I mean really, it was just a dream, why not play fast and loose with the details? Who's really gonna know and call me on my inaccuracies? Are there points for giving an impartial account?

It's my dream. Can't I just be the hero every time? Leave out the parts where I'm the obvious fuck up? I mean, there's enough of that in my day to day life already. I suppose it is an exercise in journalistic integrity. Just the facts, ma'am.

Humnuphphmmf! Pissed at the Almighty--again

 

I thought I'd turn out to be better company for myself than this. It turns out, I can't even stand being around me. It only takes one little crisis or two to turn me back into a raging cow. When I was waist deep in caregiving duties, and life was a seemingly never ending series of unpleasant tasks, I consoled myself with the notion that nothing lasts forever. Once Sharon passed, my life would revert to some former version of itself, where I could pursue the things I previously enjoyed, unfettered.

I had times, when I was cleaning shit of the messiest variety, as would be the case with diarrhea, which would inevitably find its way into the vagina and eurethra, that seemed to go on forever. But whether I screamed or just internalized my frustration, nothing would make the event go by any quicker. Shit takes as long as it takes. Resigning yourself to that fact early on would seem to lessen the amount of time and energy you waste wishing things would go faster or differently. 

Always, no matter what, there comes a point when you are done. For the moment. In some other moment, in some future time, you may look back with sentimentality at that time, which you so desperately wished would end, and wish for it again. You'll long for the reminiscent comfort of the familiar. You'll want what you can no longer have, though when you had it, you didn't want it.

During that moment or two between shit and then next thing, I was supposed to grab some me time. Unwind or go out and blow off steam in like a normal person would do. I don't suppose I ever did. Or if I did, it didn't register, because I was so busy being pissed about what I'd just dealt with or contemplating the next obligation that I'd have to attend to. 

I was as much a prisoner of Sharon's illness as she was. Except that I could walk and perform the daily functions of life, something she never tired of reminding me about. So I had all this added burden of guilt on top of my frustration. My expectations for a happy life were being eroded as I watched my wife laying there week after week, year after year, slowly dying.

She was always good at telling me, "It could be worse." But she stopped doing that when it failed to provide any consolation. It seemed to be more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than a positive affirmation. "It will always get worse," is what she should have said. I don't know how she managed to not scream daily at God, the universe or whatever for her condition. 

I guess she had the inside scoop. Even though I'm still walking around, I can feel it happening to me, too. I learned that in life, things do get worse. Your health will get worse, things will fall apart around you, and your ability to do the things you used to enjoy will slip away. And then you will die.

Where's the consolation, then? At least I won't have to deal with broken plumbing or phones that go out whenever it rains? Or I won't have to worry about which tooth is going to break in half and require extraction? Like when you total your car and tell yourself, "At least I'm glad I didn't bother washing it last week."

And another damn thing. This whole being grateful for stuff because it can always be taken away. Really? Is that all you got, God? Some threatening parental control freak method of getting us to appreciate stuff? Gratitude at gunpoint. How authentic can that be?

How about making everything just so super-overwhelmingly over the top fucking good that we can't help but be in awe? 

None of this, "Here's your crappy oatmeal with flies in it. Oh, you don't like it? Well, how about a big bowl of NOTHING then? You like that? Now, you worship Me and praise Me and love Me because I'm so goddamn worthy. In fact, I command you!"

No, thanks. I'm out. Why can't You show up and explain stuff once in a while, like to each and every person, not just in some isolated event in a far flung region, way back in some mythical fairy tale? Why do I gotta "take it on faith?" Fuck that. Show me the money. Burden of proof's on you, Mr. Invisible Omnipresent Everything. 

We're so limited, why is it we're expected to do so much to bridge this gap which we didn't create? We were thrust here into this world, naked, innocent and ignorant of all of that super-great invisible spirit shit that we're supposedly responsible to know the rules of. 

The Bible? What? Seriously, you're going with the Bible as Your great revelation? A diluted, degraded account of some events that may or may not have happened, interpreted by one race of people, that condemns vast continents of "heathens" to eternal damnation? Please.

Nope. Bye. See ya when I see ya. And when I see ya -- You'd better have a good explanation for all this. Geez, I sound like Bill Maher and I can't even stand to listen to him. No wonder I'm such lousy company.

Well....

 

No, literally. My well is acting up. I have no water. Right after I got out of the shower (fortunately) I noticed a drop in water pressure. Now, I've dealt with this well not putting out before, so I went right to the pressure switch. I found the pressure dial indicated that the pressure was low enough that the switch should be on and the pump should be running. I opened up the box and saw that the contacts were indeed closed, but no pumpy-pumpy.

I checked the circuit breaker and found that one side had tripped on the double pole switch. I reset it and it held. Then I went back to the switch and tried to start the pump manually. The switch would not stay engaged, indicating something wasn't right with the wiring or the pump. There should have been some kind of electrical spark when the contacts closed, and the pump should have started up. Nothing. 

I got out my multi-meter and checked for power there at the switch. I had power on both sides of the contacts when I held it closed and only on one side when it was open. Normal. That would only leave me with the wiring going to the pump or the pump itself. I have no way of testing a piece of wire that long, nor of providing an alternate source of power to test the pump independently.

So, basically, it's time to throw up my hands and call a well service company. Just what I wanted to do tomorrow. Blah, blah, blah...something about being grateful for the things that are going right in my life. Oh, wait, I hadn't agreed yet that there were any. I was still in the "bitching about the state of affairs of the universe" mode that I've been in for the last, I dunno, decade or so. 

This could be a costly repair, just to get me back having water again. And unless they address the root cause of the wiring issue (direct burial romex wiring with no conduit) I'll be dealing with this issue time and again, as the underground rodent population chews at my wires.

So, to sum it all up. The long and the short of it, "FU------uuuuhhhhhCK!"

There. That solved nothing. And I don't feel any better. Let's see. Oh, yeah, at least it's not a complete power outage. There's plenty of stuff I can do still. I'm not in the dark. But no water is a major setback. Kinda need that for basic life stuff. 

It's gonna be difficult sleeping when my mind is going full steam in problem identification and solving mode. But I've hit the end of my ability, so I'm going to have to let it go or I'll be a mess tomorrow. More of a mess, I mean.

Sugar Tits and the Diminishin' Republic

Ever have a phrase looping around in your head for no apparent reason? 

"Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox, they tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe." 

Thank you, John for that descriptive, insightful tidbit. One place they tend to stop over on their journey, however, is the inside of my skull, where they become trapped for a day or so before continuing on their trans-universal migration. Today, the phrase "Sugar Tits" ended up making a nest, joined later by an unrelated companion, "The Diminshin' Republic."

Let me just say straight off that the words "Sugar Tits" don't find their way out of my mouth, or into any of my communication regularly, or, like, ever. So, don't get the wrong impression. I may, in fact, be a lecherous old coot, but I don't somehow ever find myself in situations where that choice of monikers would ever suit my conversation. But I had the funny thought of a completely obtuse version of myself pondering the fact that my creepiness precedes me in any given situation:

"Could it have anything to do with the fact that I address every single female that I speak with as 'Sugar Tits' irregardless of age, status or the social context of our interaction?" 

Nahh! What then?

I guess the thought just struck me as funny due to its incongruity and complete inappropriateness in pretty much any social setting I could possibly imagine using it. "Hey, Sugar Tits--I mean-- Mom, pass the biscuits." I picture people fainting dead away at the offense as I look around, sniffing the air. "What? Did I fart?"

Some people get a pass based on age or generational status. I'm not sure if it's limited to people of a certain century or whether the date will keep rolling forward based on the person's birthday. Once you reach 50 and get grey hair you can start calling females "Sugar" or "Sweetie." My good friend, Chris Knoll, a Christian, no less, has such a card. 

Whether chatting up some lady in a supermarket or addressing the wife of a friend, he may use the words "Sweetheart" or "Darlin'" without reprisal. He manages to pull it off gracefully, even in today's strictly enforced, politically correct social climate, due to his genuine, if anachronistic, gentlemanly charm. I'm pretty sure Sugar Tits is off the menu, though, even for someone with his clearance.

The Diminishin' Republic is the autonomous region formerly known as the United States of America, in some imagined dystopian future. Huh, I just typed, "The Un-tied States of America." A Freudian typo. Same concept. The idea is that we are becoming so polarized in our thinking that the inevitable outcome must be a complete undoing of our system of government. 

The nation will heretofore be split up into two regions. One will be the left leaning so-called socialist side, inhabited by the "hippies, slackers, snowflakes...insert judgemental right-wing epithet here."  The other region will house the "intolerant, uncompassionate, mindless followers of a hateful demagogue...paste favorite idiom for Trump supporter here." 

Since these two groups will never get along, it will be necessary to let them evolve into their own separate experiments in democracy. They can choose whatever version of government or no government they see fit. One side will look like the Mad Max version of the wild west, while the other will take on the sinister supernanny hue of Orwell's Big Brother. Both represent negative utopias in my estimation, but whatever. Once you start down a path you tend to follow it to its conclusion.

Those were the two thoughts flitting about in my head as I tended to the seasonal business at hand in my late September's outdoor gardening. 

At this time of year all the weeks of watering and waiting turn into one gigantic stack of work, as the hay is meticulously cut, sorted and baled. Imagine cutting down the Black Forest with a pair of scissors. Best to get an early start or the frost will be on the pumpkin before the hay even comes close to making it into the barn, to use as thinly veiled a metaphor as possible for what I am actually doing.

It just occurred to me where these two phrases came from. They didn't come slithering and winding their way across the universe to nest in my brain. They were spawned there. 

As I was gently manicuring my forest with a pair of scissors, I was being mindful of the "sugar leaves," which one would wish to leave intact when trimming away the larger fan leaves. The tips, though, need to be cut off to prevent degradation of the final product. Hence, the sugar tips, which devolved in my own whirlpool of a brain to Sugar Tits, which I may now just go ahead and claim as my stripper name, should I ever find myself being asked.

Diminishin' Republic, likewise came from my focused attention on the task at hand. When one brings in the hay too early, there is a loss of potential growth and ripening that one wants to avoid. But harvesting too late can mean rot and fungus or pests make your hay unpalatable. So there is a point of diminishing returns for leaving your hay in the pasture to ripen for too long. 

That phrase morphed into diminishing republic, which sounded like a south American country. It wound up leading me down the unlikely and unwelcome path of contemplating the two prevailing political thought processes in our country right now, which in turn made me ruminate about the sad future we are making for ourselves in that regard. Something I normally don't like to think about.

So, I was really not thinking about breasts or politics to start out with. It only just happened to self-generate from repetitive thoughts while performing seasonal horticultural obligations. Plus, I may have smoked some of that hay earlier in the day with my Saturday morning coffee. That's my story,  and I'm sticking to it, innuendos, vague drug references and all.

Someone else's shoes

 

No, I'm not going to rehash that tired old admonition about judging a person only after walking a mile in their shoes. Rather, if you find yourself in a situation where someone has stolen your shoes, go ahead and steal someone else's shoes. The sum total of shoes to feet will remain the same, so fuck it. Last night's dream was pretty lame fare, so that's all I'm pulling from it. 

I was in the odd situation of having walked from Loma Rica to a college somewhere nearby. I was taking a side trail that went through someone's farm. I stopped to talk to several dogs along the way. One was a pitbull whom everyone described as "a real pussy." I felt my normal kinship to all animals as I listened to the conversation of the dog's owners.

I managed to get to the college without being late, which is unusual for any dream I have regarding school. At the entrance to the school was a gym locker type of place where everyone left their shoes, for some reason. It was odd because, while walking around the school, one didn't necessarily need shoes or feel barefoot. But when the time came to go home, one would need to be wearing shoes again.

It was late in the day as I was leaving, and there were gatekeepers and gates one needed to be sure to be on the right side of before dark. I was having a hard time locating my shoes in the locker room. I went through each and every pair before determining that mine were just not there. 

I began asking around, and no one seemed interested, even the guard whose job it was to guarantee their safety. I tried on a pair of shoes of a different color, but equally ratty appearance from the ones I had lost. A little loose and worn on the insole, but they'd do.

"Someone stole my shoes," I announced to the thinning, indifferent locker room crowd. "So, I'm stealing these. Fuckers!" 

I felt the pride of defiance as I sprinted toward the rapidly closing gates. One had already closed, but someone was holding another one open for me. 

"Thanks," I told them, as I sailed past. No need abandon my manners just because I was now a shoe thief.

I was now in the process of trying to remember where exactly I had parked my car. I jogged past a girl wearing a jacket that said "Soho Chic" or something like that in large, luminous stencil type letters on the front. I was sure that I was going to find my car, but I eventually woke up without finding it. It only occurred to me after awakening that I had walked to school, so I would have been looking for my car for a long time. 

My LED blinked off as I've been typing this. I have a lot to do today, so presumably I'm being prodded to get off my ass and get to it. Or maybe the electrons are just doing their own scientifically explainable thing irregardless of my day's activities. I really don't know. I really do have a lot to do today, though, so au revoir for now.

Ha! A final blink for "OK." Love you, too, Sharon.

Alftred HItchcock presents....Alfred Hitchcock

 

I'm sure I dreamed a lot of different things last night, but unfortunately only one image survived, burned in my mind through many fitful awakenings. It was Alfred Hitchcock, laying naked in all his flabby glory on a couch. 

To make matters worse, he was trying to hit on me. 

I don't know how you tell someone as famous as that, in a polite, appropriate manner that, although you're flattered (I guess), your primary reaction is "Ick!"

"Sir, while I appreciate the offer, even if I was attracted to you, which I'm not--you are simply too fat." 

I felt bad for him, a fat old hedonist just trying to get his scam on. And yet his Jabba-like flesh rolls were just not doin' it for me. I suppose his nudity wasn't even technically indecent, as his belly fat covered up his privates like a flesh apron.

I had other thoughts late in the evening brought about my insomnia and late night Facebook reading. I was pondering a reply to a couple of posts that my new friend _______ had put up, but I'm going to have to provide a little more context. I'll have to backtrack in order to synchronize my Facebook personal life with this blog, which functions as an adjunct to my social activities. 

Facebook houses my more publicly visible social side, while this blog is kind of a darkened broom closet, an after hours club inhabited by dreams, thoughts and confessions which need to find a home somewhere outside of my head but aren't ready for prime time.

Oh, and my LED, my Sharon communication device has been trying to get my attention since last evening. I don't know what she is trying to tell me this time. It came on yesterday, as I was thinking that I wasn't so crazy for connecting the synchronistic LED illumination and a particularly poignant episode of The Andy Griffith show, the one with Sharon, Andy's long lost love. Just as I had that thought, it popped back on. It was too perfect. 

Sure, it is schizophrenics who typically think that secret personal messages are being beamed to them via television programs and other electronic devices. But who's to say that they don't have the inside scoop on such things? Who can say whether or not their hallucinations and delusions are actually glimpses at other dimensions and realities, no less real than ours?

So, what are you trying to tell me, dear? Are you warning me I'm in danger of making an ass out of myself? Well, that ship has sailed, darling. But if you're just showing up to watch and cheer me on from the sidelines, I appreciate that, too. 

Perhaps in the afterlife there's no good drama, and spirits are forced to watch the reality TV of our daily lives for entertainment. If that's the case, sorry for all those boring hours where nothing happens. It's hard getting the script writers and actors off their asses. Something about benefits and working conditions, I dunno. 

I guess if all the world's a stage, I'd better get out there. Even if I belly flop, I suppose at least it'll be good for a laugh. Even if it goes over like Alfred Hitchcock's naked couch proposal, it's still entertainment.

Stay tuned.

Salad Situations

 

Just two fun facts from dreaming about insignificant, mindless traveling. Houa Vang can be a real pain in the ass to ride double with on a bicycle. Somehow we were riding double on a bicycle in Anaheim, with him tagging along on the back, while I was doing the pedaling. Despite his diminutive stature, he was making it difficult to get anywhere when going uphill. 

Funny, I don't remember any hills in Anaheim. But we found ourselves going up the smallest of inclines and having to do a million switchbacks to get any kind of forward progress.

Once we reached the top there was a gate preventing us from going any further. I wound up bitching loud enough to attract the gatekeeper or superintendent of the housing authority. 

"I'm just trying to get to my old high school, and it took me five whole minutes to get up this part of the hill and another minute and a half to figure out that the gate was locked. I don't have time to go back now," I complained loudly.

She was sympathetic and let us through, but warned me, "I hope you don't still have your locker key. They never changed the locks, so your key might still work."

"Ok, no problem," I said, although I was pretty sure I did still have my key.

Vang and I were also in a supermarket, going around the aisles while I picked up my groceries. He was not exactly helpful in that situation either, mostly just making cracks about my food choices.

Next I was in a completely different scenario involving my mom and Greg and a planned road trip. For once it wasn't me that was holding up the trip. Greg was working or doing something and was going to be late. 

"He may just want to take a nap when he gets home," my mom told me.

"Fuck that!" I said, not wanting to give up any of the vacation time so that he could nap.

My mom tended to agree with me. "I'd like to get there early, too," she said. "If there's enough time I'd like to see about playing 'Salad Situations.' That's the TV game show about ordinary people having lunch with a celebrity and all the hijinks that develop when people order salad."

That sounded like a whole lot of fun to me, too. I'd never even met a celebrity, much less had salad with one. So, I pondered who I'd like to have salad with and imagined a future in which I might be lifelong friends with people like Oprah, all stemming from a single game of "Salad Situations." 

It's not any weirder of an idea for a show than "Carpool Karaoke." It could work. It would serve the dual purpose of humanizing celebrities and also getting people to eat more salads. I need to pitch this to my agent.

Mental note, get an agent. Pitch idea.

Mary, don't you weep

 

I've had insomnia the last few nights. Waking up at 3 am and barely getting back to sleep before 6 leads to me doing weird things to get sleepy enough to fall back asleep. I put on some Kingston Trio, and it led me to have dreams with a weird melancholy soundtrack.

I'm not sure how Gina, my wife's hospice nurse figured in, but she was there in spirit, encouraging and exhorting me to the tune of "Mary, Don't You Weep." I was in some kind of post-zombie apocalypse world. That's a world so desolate that even the zombies have vacated. I was the lone survivor, left to roam the empty landscape with no purpose.

That's all I remember, but it leads me to my thought for the day: I am somehow still alive. I am still doing the things I remember to do, trappings of my previous life, although it doesn't seem to matter. I shave my face and head, to look tidy for who? I pick out my shirts and clothes to wear, as if there was someone who might notice or care. 

But most days no other human beings even see me. The dog, cats and guinea hens could care less what I look like. I do my housekeeping routine to keep up a level of human dignity, but none of it makes me any more human. I'm just a shell, going through the motions. TV programs and other distractions provide me with just enough mental stimulation to keep my brain from eating itself from starvation.

It's tough being the survivor when there's no reason for living. No battles left to fight, no one to impress, just me and my compromised integrity. Who am I kidding? Who am I even writing down this meaningless, meandering soliloquy for?

The tears on my pillow bespeak the pain that is in my heart

 

"The tears on my pillow bespeak the pain that is in my heart!" Barney shouted, after his high school flame failed to recognize him at the Mayberry High School reunion.

The episode of the Andy Griffith show came on tonight simultaneously with the reappearance of my LED. I always strain to find a connection, but this time it was easy. A reunion was being held in Mayberry and Sheriff Taylor was getting sentimental, looking forward to seeing his long lost high school love, Sharon. 

Towards the end of the night when she still hadn't arrived, he was a little melancholy about it. As he was finally settling into the reality that she wasn't going to show, people began pointing to the door.  He somehow misses all the cues, and finally, Barney, beaming, turns him around. There she was at the door. Everyone watched expectantly as their eyes locked, and they approached one another, magnetically drawn by a lifelong connection.

They danced and enjoyed each others company for a while, then decided to go for a walk. Andy is recreating the night of the high school prom, as they reminisce about the events of that evening. He reminds her that he'd wanted to get her alone in the garden back then. 

He recalls that he'd used the smooth line, "Ain't you awful chilly?" as a trick. "So's I could do this," he says, putting his arm around her, as slick as the devil on ice skates.

She plays along, "And then what happened?" 

It is inevitable. They kiss. They cuddle, and for a moment it looks as though things are going to pick up where they left off after high school.

She recalls that they had also gotten in a terrible fight back then, though neither seemed to remember what it was about. 

But when he asks, "Why do you suppose you and I never...you know..." suddenly it all comes back to them. 

She had wanted to pursue a life in the big city, and he was in love with his hometown, Mayberry. Sharon thought he wasn't living up to his full potential by staying in his small town. 

"But isn't happiness the true measure of living?" Andy countered. 

The same issues they had fought about long ago still stood between them. The years had softened the rancor of their disagreement, but their positions were the same. It was not destined to be. They enjoy one last dance together, as two old friends, and part ways again.

After the event, while Andy and Barney are cleaning up the dishes, Andy ribs Barney, "Do the tears on your pillow bespeak the pain in your heart?"

"Yeah. They do," he says, owning it without embarrassment.

"Me, too," says Andy.

The End.

I'm not embarrassed to say that the coincidence of this timely episode with Andy and Sharon, and a long hoped for reunion of an ill-fated relationship, left me with tears in my eyes. The tears, like the LED, are intermittent these days. But I still have the story written in my heart about our lifelong love that was not lived out in the way we had hoped for. 

I'd love to go back and re-write it, or at least my part, but I don't know if I would be able to play it out any differently. Perhaps with hindsight, I could. But this story, in this lifetime, is over. Except for the little LED...

I love you Sharon, more now than ever. I need that part of me that you provided. The smart, stable side. The voice of common sense and decency. I'll never forget a single thing you said or thought or did when you were alive. It's all a part of me now. 

I just want to know that the person I've known all those years is still ok. Are you ok? I'll take the little sychronicities, if that's all the rules will allow. But I still want more. More dreams, more messages, an apparition of some sort. Whatever you can conjure. 

I appreciate the little things, it's just hard to keep going on faith, on a daily basis. I get so worn down by my body and life in general. I need your sunshine to help me see the good in things. You always were my bright spot, as I'm sure I was the salt to your sweetness. 

I've been doing stuff, trying. I haven't totally given up. But I need the kick in the pants that only you were able to give me. Ya know? 

Don't leave me now. Even though I might seem like I don't care about much, I still do. And I'm not moving on. Life can move on around me. I'm staying put. 

Can't we just have one more dance? One more kiss? So I'll know it's all not a dream, that you do still exist somewhere? Pleeeeaase?

Why, Bob Orrick, why?

 

I dreamed I had a pretty impressive weed garden, but it was on my father in law's property. We had a previous agreement that it was ok, so I was quite upset to find that one day he had ripped out all of the plants for what appeared to be no reason. 

I confronted him about it, but first I had to wait through one of his interminably long stories. Then he proceeded to give me the long and convoluted reasoning behind his destruction of my garden, which infuriated me. It had to do with taxes and soil depletion, not even so much to do with the whole old school anti-pot reasoning that I was expecting. 

I told him it would have been nice if he'd discussed it with me, as the plants were only days away from harvesting. I began scheming my next garden, which was oddly to be located at 2814 3rd. St. in Santa Monica.

Somewhere else in time, a girl who I was seeing socially (and by socially, I mean sexually) was demanding a threesome. That much might have been ok to my sex-starved dream sensibilities, but it was the way in which she demanded it that almost, just for a second, put me off. The yelling, the screaming, the nagging, the getting down on all fours, stripped and self-flagellating. 

Ok, ok...I can see I'm going to have to address a few of my less than subconscious issues in therapy. If my shrink ever decides to start keeping her appointments.

The zombies are us

 

I keep dreaming about zombies for some reason. And not because I'm watching a lot of zombie related television. Well, not exactly. It's all zombie related. The post apocalyptic zombie world that is inhabited by walking, creeping, dead shells of humans, who are determined to devour us, is a metaphor for our own plight in this world of inescapable death. In these scenarios, the living are forced to be constantly vigilant, always on the move and can never get comfortable. Because, in the moment you rest or become complacent for a minute, there they are at your back, ready to eat your guts and devour your brains.

That is the nature of the life we live. Keep moving or become food. If not mountain lions, bears and coyotes, then bacteria or some other opportunistic parasite will find us. If we are not in motion our bodies become weak and stagnate, and the creeping forces of our demolition are never far away. We keep moving in a cat and mouse game that we will ultimately lose, but feel compelled to attempt to win by various strategies. Working, saving, planning, having goals, doing projects, investing in some future or worthy cause--all flailings at the death which pursues us relentlessly.

I had that revelation last night while dreaming of yet another zombie-filled world, in which I had to keep myself alive by never resting, even for a moment. In the dream, I was riding a horse in an arena, assisted by my Aunt Carol. I was putting to use the wealth of information Sharon had instilled in me about how to mount and ride horses. At one point, I fell off and heard myself utter the cliche: "You must get back up on the horse." It was imperative, especially in zombie world, where the flesh-eaters were always lurking nearby.

I could feel the connection to my everyday life, where I'm faced with the choice between stagnation, hastening my eventual demise, and motion, fending off the inevitable for at least one more day. When I choose sleep over activity, isolation over socialization and TV over real life, my body gives inches, feet and yards in the battle. My options become more and more limited as I retreat to "safer" ground, seeking only to be done with the fight. 

Ha. You're never done. There is no rest in zombie world. To rest is to die and become one of them. And even then there is no rest, at least until someone does you the kindness of piercing your skull and killing what's left of your brain.

Ok, maybe I have been watching a little too much zombie TV. Sue me. It's become embedded in our culture.  I have met the zombies and they are us.