Oh, the horror

 

I love a good nightmare, but I have so few of them it seems. I had a good ol' fashioned Phantasm style creep show going on last night. 

I don't even know the nature of what it was that was pursuing me, only that it was something that was seemingly inescapable once it locked onto you. It appeared to be a horseshoe like device that was suspended in mid-air and traveled faster than you could ever hope to run. 

It was spinning like a thrown boomerang and could change direction, but it did suffer from a kind of slow response time in getting turned from one angle of attack to another. So your only hope was to duck down when it got to you and let it pass over you while you ran quickly in the opposite direction. This would only buy you a small amount of time, though, because once it reoriented and re-targeted you, the distance would be halved, incrementally, until it finally got you.

I have no idea what would happen to you once you were "gotten" by it, but it was understood that you wanted to avoid that at all costs. Something akin to the soul-stealing, life-draining ball in the Phantasm movies, where it latches onto your forehead, drills into your skull and starts pumping your bodily fluids and life essence out in a graphic, gory display. Then, presumably, you'd become its un-dead zombie slave for all eternity, so the stakes were pretty high. 

It was creepy, but at the same time, invigorating, having such a dream, with the fear-based motivation to flee activated at the primal level.

My friend Martin is staying here for the a couple of days, and we've just been hanging out and catching up on basic old-timey friend stuff. Going out to eat, having a beer and shooting tin cans off my front porch. 

I even corrupted him by getting him to smoke pot for the first time in his life. I figured that if he hadn't tried it at this point in his life, he probably had a moral or other ethical reason for eshewing it for all these years. Turns out, he just didn't really have the opportunity and "didn't know how." 

So I obliged him, giving him the proper instructions on how to light it and inhale. We watched a bunch of hippie music Youtube videos after that, and it appeared to not affect him too badly, other than making him very zoned in on watching them intently.

I went to bed early, having tired myself out with the one beer earlier. But once in bed I got a message from Lesa, and we chatted until after 2. So I'm now in a tired-eyed state, but I have a fulfilled, well-rounded sense of accomplishment.

More fire, evacuation dreams

 

It's becoming such a common theme, it is hard to find anything remarkable or different about them. The column of smoke rising up in the distance, the wind blowing fiercely and the panicky feeling that it is already too late to gather up the animals, as I must flee with only moments to spare. 

I keep having the same thoughts and paralyzing feelings as I did when I was forced to flee in 2017. There's just not enough time to salvage anything. But there's the guilt as well, because every second I spent deliberating whether or not to attempt it was time I could have spent actually saving something or someone. I always wind up leaving everything and just getting my own cowardly ass out. Shit, if it's just a dream why can't I at least die a hero's death and attempt to save the kitties?

Meanwhile, I'm trying, in my real life to salvage what I can of my relationship with Lesa. I keep having my doubts, but I won't let on to her this time. I just feel like there's a whole other life that she's got going on down there that I'll never be a part of, and I can only engage with her in the nice, pleasant side of our little fantasy life of pillow talk and sweet dream wishes. 

I know how ugly insecurity looks to the outsider. It is jealousy's creepy cousin. It just makes a person look selfish and weak, probably because that's truly what they are, if they are honest about it.

Lesa is going to go out to a concert with Danny and his girl gang of friends. They've had this whole life together, and I'm just an outsider looking in with a sense of longing to belong to something. I really have no place in that world. It was forged through decades of sticking together through all kinds of times. I'll always be playing catch up and never achieve that kind of long-term camaraderie. 

I will have to settle for whatever it is that I actually can be to her: a long-distance secret love, her "what if" wish for a plan B or her cheerleader/admirer from afar. I feel I've lost the privilege of confiding my deepest, most honest thoughts to her when I questioned her her roughly a few weeks ago, as to the nature and future of our relationship. It caused her to pull back, seeing just how insecure I really was and how that could cause me to be unstable and, ultimately, not very lovable.

I may have regained the ground that I'd lost by back pedaling and relinquishing my right to speak as freely as I want with her. I suppose I needed to come up against a boundary somewhere. No one should have to endure the entire contents of my addled brain at any one time. I was just a little too unfiltered and put my not so best foot forward. 

It's a shame, because I was feeling like I could confide anything to her without judgment. That is too lofty an ideal to hold about anyone. It sounds nice, but in reality, we all have judgements all the time, whether we express them or not. So a constant stream of negativity will surely tip the scales of someone's opinion about you no matter how kind and forgiving a person they are.

So, once again, this blog is a place to which I can retreat and let my darkness roam about unbridled. I can explore every nook and cranny without anyone's recrimination. 

Well, there's a couple of outliers that I've foolishly given access to, but I've already written off any hopes of impressing them with a facade of virtue. I can belch and fart around them, so to speak, because they already know I'm a pig. Not a pig they'd care to be around, but one they don't mind calling a friend and playing nice with on Facebook. 

I still feel that the more one truly knows me, the more unlikely it is that they will like me, let alone love me. That kind of unconditional love doesn't exist in this world, and may not even in the God realm, if He's as persnickety as the Bible makes him out to be. Oh, well, I'm gonna make nice and pretend I'm a good person, in hopes that one day I may turn into one. 

If I apply enough coats of paint to the bullshit that I am on the inside, perhaps it will eventually form an outer layer of substance that makes up more of my being than that evil, rotten core that I'm painting over. I'm pretty sure that core will never go away, though, and will always try to seep out through the cracks in my pretty, "nice guy" paint job. 

That's what happens when you do a half-ass renovation and don't just raze the whole lot to the ground. Trying to salvage the good part of the ego and build on it just doesn't work. At some point you have to say, "This whole apple barrel is too questionable to be of any use." 

I suppose if someone had enough time to sort through each and every apple and discard the wormy parts, they could make a jar of applesauce or two. But that's a lot of work, and I'm not sure I am worth the effort. The apples just aren't that sweet.

So today I'm going to clean up some space in the garage and move the majority of Sharon' horse tack from the guest bedroom. It is my goal to make that room inhabitable again. That way I can feel like I've got some kind of level of control over my space and can offer a place to guests that isn't awkward like, "Here, sleep on my ratty old couch that I sleep on. Or the bed my wife died in."

I could use a fire to come and rid me of all my contaminated possessions, but I'd be paralyzed trying to decide what I'm going to try to salvage. It's difficult for a hoarder and a sentimental sloth to part with anything willingly. So a fire would be the kind of incentive to just abandon all that and leave with only my life and nothing else. Just my true core and none of the accessories or attachments.

I'm still gonna have my morning fun, on account of it's Saturday. And I'm still lazy enough to sit here and document my folly, so, I'd say I'm ignoring the fire for the moment and just fiddling while my empire is in peril. 

Yep. Just being aware of shit isn't really working out as a religion that transforms anything. But it is the easiest one to adhere to for the someone who is an apparent conscienceless sociopath like myself. And I'm quite aware of my self-deriding tone, in all its passive-aggressive, narcissistic, attention-seeking glory. And I'll do something about it just as soon as it bugs me enough to do so.

Robbery with friends

 

I dreamed I was with a couple of knucklehead friends who had been robbing the same bank over and over and getting away with it. They didn't even make much of an attempt to disguise their identities. The only flimsy token gesture was to wear mechanics jackets with mis-matched name tags and wear latex gloves. 

I let them talk me into accompanying them, but I had misgivings. For one, their getaway car was a beater that they were borrowing from one of the guy's sister. It was Saturn with a donut for a front tire. It had been driven too long in that condition and the transmission made strange "wah-wah-wah" sound from the odd sized tire. 

I had to watch as they refueled the car from a rain gutter, which poured some really dark blue concoction into a trash can, from which they would finally pour the fuel into the vehicle. The fuel had to travel in a long arc through the air, and the trash can was precariously positioned some 20 feet away from the downspout. In the process repositioning the trashcan to avoid spillage, I wound up getting some of the thick, bluish fuel on me.

"Great. Now I'm gonna have to wash up. I can't be robbing the Mechanic's Bank, dressed as a mechanic and dirty as well. I'll leave an oily residue which they can trace," I put forth my concerns.

"No worries. Just put on these gloves. You'll be fine," they persuaded me.

As the sister drove us closer to the bank, she was reluctant to give up the car. How long would we need it? Did we have a good plan to get it back to her? Those kinds of issues. Not, "No you can't use my car to rob the bank that you've been robbing every day for the last week."

We passed some burning buildings and I saw a huge column of smoke in the not too distant sky. 

"Maybe we ought to hold off. There's a big fire," I offered, but nothing was going to deter the hardheaded crew. 

We got to the parking lot and were strategizing on whether or not to let the sister be the getaway driver and how they'd integrate me into the procedure which had previously been a two man job. I still wanted out, but it looked as though it was going to happen.

But it never did. I found myself talking to one of them about Bible Study. It was RJ, a brother of the pastor and of my friend Richard. They were still going to Bible Study events, though everyone had been kicked out years ago. I asked RJ why he chose to do this and he gave me some lame excuse, but it was mainly because those events were just so damn cool he couldn't help it.

I finally woke up to the safer reality I'm currently inhabiting, just in time to type this recollection. The one in which my power will be shut off at any moment and where Lesa and I have patched up our argument and are as cozy as ever, despite our physical distance and the fact that she still hasn't broken up with her current boyfriend. Ah, life. Better shut my computer off before it is done unceremoniously by the power company. Peace out.

My soul in retrograde

 

I took my walk far too late today. Taking a nap at 4 didn't help. It kind of sucked the last of the daylight away and I had to resort to walking in the dark. I took a flashlight along, mainly to ward off oncoming cars. 

The whole experience was rather hellish, watching my shadow sail past me in reverse as cars approached me from behind. It was like seeing my soul in retrograde, seeping backward into the oozing blackness from which it had come. 

Ahead of me were the occasional cars also, pinpoints of blinding light, the unwelcome alternative to walking in 95% darkness. Painfully squinting my eyes against each passing high-beam, I said to myself, "This shit sucks. I'm gonna stick to walking during daylight hours."

I did have twinge of envy as I strolled past the open gate of my neighbor's house. A thoughtful spouse left it open so that his wife, who would arrive a little bit later, would not have to get out of the car to open it. Another neighbor was waiting on the front porch of their house as their significant other returned. These images reminded me what it was like to have someone waiting at home for you, anticipating your return. 

Something I guess I took for granted was that Sharon would always be there, because while she was ill and confined to the bed, she always was. It's not easy going from having someone around 24/7 to having no one around at all, save cats and guinea hens, and my poor old, deaf dog, Whiskey. I guess it's a family of sorts. Whiskey and the guinea hens do look forward to my presence, and the cats do compete for my attention.

Not sure where I was or what I was doing

 

It may come to me in a bit, or it may not. I have vague recollections of being in a bar, or in some way or another associated with some bar that I would attend (shirtless, apparently). It was one of those situations where you are that comfortable that you can just go in and be yourself. So, I walked in, everyone greeted me and I maybe ordered a sandwich, I don't know. 

Someone was explaining to me about the latest drug they were on and why I should try it. I explained that, while I want to feel good as much as the next guy, my left brain doesn't like to suffer at the expense of my right brain's pleasure.

"This drug just makes your left brain and your right brain feel really good," the person countered, drawing me a crude picture of a divided brain with two happy faces inside it.

That seemed to be all the scientific evidence I needed and I set about to procure a sample. Or order a sandwich, I not sure which. In either case, I never did actually get around to the good stuff, drugs or otherwise. 

I seemed to be on some unending errand for the barkeep, who was a slightly pudgy middle aged black lady with long curly hair. She was someone I recognized from TV, but can't name without doing an IMDB search. Ok, fine, it was Pam Grier. Or someone who looked an awful lot like she does these days.

That's about all I can recall from the timeline. So, now I'll go on about how I'm slowly trying to win my way back into Lesa's good graces. I've been careful to not overstep, but gauging by her reactions to my tentative moves, she is warming up past the tepid climate of the friend zone. We've reinstated the midnight tucking in and cuddling messages. Emojis are starting to return to the dialogue, along with some of the familiar terms of endearment.

Give me an inch and I'll give her the whole, um, enchilada. So, the shirtless part does make sense, because yesterday I sent her a picture of myself, smiling, showered and shirtless, to which she responded favorably. I'm even less mature than I'd imagined, getting caught up in this texting relationship like a teenager, but as long as it's well received, I'll make no apologies. I'll wait to get slapped before doing that. 

Chicks dig confidence. Or so I'm told. Until you make a complete ass out of yourself. And even then, it's in how you manage to extricate yourself from your ass-ness that makes the difference as to whether you are just being sweet or if you are a genuine reprobate. I am probably both, but I'll work on convincing her otherwise.

So, as usual, this blog and everything else suffers as I pour my best work into creating the best possible persona to win this woman's heart. Part of that, though, also includes making some positive forward progress in getting my life back in order. 

I'm not allowing myself as much recreational slack or mopey downtime. I have to find things to do to improve my living situation. You know, to make the entire package more than just a facade. This means getting down to business and cleaning shit, decluttering and in general not living like I don't give a crap. 

So, that much is a healthy side effect of being pretty much in stupid, blind, hormone-crazed love. I at least will get a clean bathroom and trimmed hedges out of the deal. My lazy routine of "just get me through the day" has been replaced by "just get me through the day, and let me accomplish at least three things over and above maintaining the status quo."

Speaking of which, I gotta get up and get to some of that. I don't have a plan for today yet. I was hoping one would come to me. Now I'll have to engage my Aunt Carol technique of making a list of all the lists I need to make in order to know what goals I have and how I'm going to go about achieving them. And perhaps I'll tidy up a few things as I'm circling around the many projects and taking a whack at each of them while finishing none of them. 

Damn my ADHD and crippling OCD hording gene. Everything just seems either too sentimental or potentially useful to throw out. But clearly there needs to be some kind of a limit to my storage of things which I haven't used in over ten years and are probably obsolete or inoperable at this point.

Love you, Sharon, aka my LED angel. Still on. Still nagging me from beyond the grave. I don't know what she's actually saying, but I was with her long enough to have her most likely thoughts imprinted on my mind. Right now that thought would be, "Get up, lazy bones!"

The hazards of a dream journalist

 

One of these days all my depraved kinky dreams are gonna get blasted on a mass email to all of my friends and they'll find out what my subconscious has been doing with them at night. 

Last night, Suzanne was up to bat again, with James, the somewhat sulky but unrepentant brat, who was about to stand idly by while I deflowered his wife as a part of some required ritual sex exchange. It went like this:

Because they had just gotten married, it was a requirement that she was to have the nuptial act of "first married relations" performed in a timely manner. There was a window of opportunity for this act to have to occur, or there would be some unknown consequences. 

James was dragging his feet, but Suzanne was unwavering. It had to be done, even if performed by an outsider such as myself. I was all set to accompany her to a hilltop location of her choosing, but I thought I'd ask James one more time.

"No, man. You go ahead," was his pouty, self-pitying reply.

"It is going to happen," I told him, "Unless you call me on this telephone." I produced an oversized cellular phone reminiscent of the earliest '80s models.

Naturally, I was conflicted. There was gonna be sex. Woo-hoo. But I had to deal with the guilt of betrayal of my friend and his hurt feelings. Oh, well, the imperative was that this ritual take place, regardless. She led the way, sprinting on ahead and leaving me with a crude drawing of a map to the location where she'd be waiting for me. 

I was planning my route when, you guessed it, my quarter expired and dream time came to an end. Until next time on Andrew's Inappropriate Dream Theater...

On an unrelated note, I'm still experiencing things in this life that need a bit of attention. One is my lovely LED which is on at the moment. It has been blinking like crazy lately. It has been enough to make me pull up a Morse code chart to see if it's an actual transmission of that nature. I haven't gotten any full words out, but I could make a case for a few random letters and numbers. 

But when I was speaking to the chatty LED last night, having a conversation with Sharon about my business with Lesa and the guilt I felt over it, I got a distinct response when I said the words, "I love you." The little light blinked back, as if modulating the syllables precisely. 

I don't know what more I can really ask for to be convinced. I should take the win and not question it any more. But I probably will, designing more complex tests and hoops for my dearly departed to have to jump through.

My decluttering mode got an ugly infusion of necessity last night as I was scavenging through the bedroom dresser looking for things to throw away. I found some new and slightly used bathrobes in a drawer with evidence of mice and other pests inside the wrapping. There were some bugs crawling around in there, as well as mouse poop and hidden bits of cat food, all clinging to this garment. 

I took them outside to shake them off while I went back to vacuum out the drawers. Then I thought to myself, "Why the fuck am I gonna try to save these anyway?" They hadn't been used in the ten years I've had them, and now they are infested with bugs and poop. Am I really going to wash them and repack them up, to be broken out at some future time? MMmm, not likely. Into the trash they went.

This looks to be the start of a process of long overdue deep cleaning and inventory of my pathetic hoarded possessions. Hopefully, I won't require (or be blessed with) more disgusting findings as impetus to thin out my junk. But I am now on the path to getting to the bottom of my layers of stored crap at least to make certain I'm not just collecting bugs and feces. 

Out walking, out of my mind, apparently

 

I was out walking, but as usual I was inside my head, with a million thoughts vying for my attention. I let them pass by, grasped one or two, gave them the eye and moved on to the next and the next. 

I felt like I was schizophrenic, multi-tasking in the 12th dimension. The all seeing eye, I could calculate the terminus of PI, following fractals to their space between their smallest parts. 

Nothing was invisible, my comprehension all-powerful, I just needed to focus my attention and I could solve it. Life's riddle came to me in an instant. Like I could do the crossword without the clues. 

Spontaneously generated in my cranium, blooming like a geranium and enriched like uranium. The koan suddenly became clear, like a map to the stars homes, I instantly knew the reason why we're here.

"Perception requires duality."

I heard it in a rap song. It can't be wrong. It was a throwaway verse, but I should have known it all along. It's inherent, it permeates our reality. Without existence, there would simply be nothing to see. Kind of a no-brainer, a preliminary before attending pre-school. 

But I've stumbled around and around trying to figure out why things have to be the way they are. Why is there a me and why is there a you? 

The "why" is a "because" and, if true, the corollaries would naturally follow. You can't even say love is the answer. Without an object, love doesn't mean anything. 

To have perception you must have separation. Something to perceive and someone to do the seeing. Or else you just have a self-aware gelatinous blob in the infinity of gelatinous blobness that is the entirety of everything. 

Even that model of non-duality is linguistically flawed. Everything means lots of things, distinct from one another yet making up a whole. That can't happen without the duality within the non-duality. Like trying to draw a picture using only one dimension. No reference point, no definition. 

Good defines bad, bad defines good, hot summer nights and cool autumn breezes and rats and cheeses and everything under the sun and the moon is in tune. It's a symphony, a cacophony, a jigsaw puzzle, and it's what's for lunch. Get used to it, it's going to be around for a while.

Well, it made sense to me while I was out walking and mentally composing my shopping list: eggs, turmeric, cinnamon, kitty litter...

I feel a rap coming on, but, of course, my meter and cadence is off. And don't even get me started on my rhyming.

 

It began, unassuming as it was, 

two friends,

communing and reminiscing in the ether.

 

Neither one of us expecting it would ever go far, 

just a harmless little fun, 

to pass away the empty hours, 

and take some solace,

in one another's consolations.

 

Life had been hard, so we both had that in common, we had a well of deep emotions in our different lives that we could draw from.

 

I began to get comfortable, sharing all I had with you, and I could tell by the emojis that you began to feel it, too.

 

At some point it became love, we said it and we longed to hear it, every night and every day, so much our hearts could barely bear it,

 

Just to go a couple hours seemed like days and weeks and minutes, just waiting for that one next message just to see what you'd say in it.

 

It never takes too long, for things to go wrong, I usually see to it, like fucking things up was my plan all along.

 

I said things and acted out in ways to make the scales tip, from love back to like, and from like, further back to zip,

 

Like we never met, or never did remember each others names, just faces on a page we might have overlooked and never glanced again.

 

I'm glad I knew you, I'm glad I let you know me, too, so even if we're through, we still existed, and at some point in time, we do.

I might go back there, revisit in a millennium or two, and check up on you, to see if you can still remember, too.

 

So, bye for now, I find myself without a plan, nothing to do, no one to hold my hand.

 

Just an island underwater, and my castles made of sand, like my mind and my body, deteriorating daily as the seasons pass.

I'll never say never, I always say too much as it is, in darkness waiting for sparks to fly out of the abyss.

I'm like a bird

 

I found myself homeless last night, in my dream world adventures. I was living out of a backpack and some plastic bags. I had a scam which seemed to be working pretty well. The idea was to find some domicile of any kind that was unlocked and unoccupied, temporarily hang out there, using the facilities, hopefully managing to remove myself before the occupants returned.

I guess I'd been doing that for a while before Lowell, a deceased friend of my uncle Steve, invited me to stay at his tiny board and care facility. It promised to be a haven with free accommodations, including meals. 

There was just one problem: I couldn't remember the address. So I flitted about from one mistaken locale to another, packing and unpacking my backpack and trying to escape unnoticed, while I struggled to recall the exact location of the place he had offered to put me up.

I thought to call Lowell and get the address, but his number wasn't in my Rolodex, which was curiously devoid of any numbers at all. I tidied up my latest squatting room, and was about to leave the hotel, slipping past the check-in girl who just happened to be Janet Knoll, ex-cult member and ex-wife of Chris Knoll. 

"I'm not checking out. I was never checked in," I told her as she positioned herself to bar my escape. 

"I know, Andrew," she said, startling me with her recognition of me. "I know exactly what you've been doing."

I was terrified, as she seemed about to summon the authorities to have me arrested. I was preparing to make a football charge past her and run for freedom, but, thankfully, I awoke before it got any uglier. This homeless hotel bum lived to squat another day.

---

My immediate take would be that the homeless condition would represent my relationship status, and my squatter's scam is my tendency to glom onto any person or situation which can temporarily fulfill my needs. I know I'll never be getting comfortable, so I keep my belongings ready to travel. 

The promise held out by my uncle's friend represented my most recent hope with Lesa for a legitimate, more permanent arrangement, but key elements were missing. Namely, where the hell was the damn place I was supposed to be staying?

A rough interpretation for sure, but it's all I've got at the moment. I've awoken today back in my real world of aloneness, which is inhabited by friends with good intentions, but not that permanent, stable relationship to hang my hat on, which I seem to have been seeking. 

I have been friend-zoned by Lesa, which is, I suppose, better than being cut off entirely. But after the level of sharing we'd been doing, it leaves me feeling like I'm not likely to ever achieve that kind of closeness again with her or anyone else. So I'm packing up my emotions into my backpack, and off I go into the world again, a homeless transient, relationship-wise.

Don't clean mad...or do

 

"Don't clean mad...just clean," I would think to myself whenever Sharon would punish me with the silent-treatment-while-house cleaning routine. 

Notice I said "think to myself" and not "said." I may be a fool, but I'm not insane. That kind of remark might get any number of household items thrown at a fella, followed by something worse than silence. 

I am trying to see if cleaning while mad or frustrated or extremely agitated is of any value. I can say this. It does take the wind out of your sails rather quickly. Most likely you'll wind up depleted of energy with only half the job done, depending on how much anger or frustration you start out with and other factors like age or physical stamina. 

No moral here, just an observation.

Is this what I'm reduced to?

I imploded my relationship with Lesa, if you can call what we had a relationship. We'd never talked on the phone or seen each other in 39 plus years. But all the "I love yous" and such seemed to indicate that something was there. 

Then I asked about the possibility of some kind of future time when she'd bring me out into the open, tell her best friend about me and so on. What I got was an "I'm not ready." Not a yes or a no. 

So, I went on and on pressing the matter, as I am wont to do. And now I've said things that can't let us return to the happy state of just not knowing what the future might bring but being hopeful about it. 

When you put so many eggs in the basket, and the basket gets dropped, that's it. You just lose hope altogether of anything ever working out. I pushed for too much, and now I'm left with nothing. And so much of my core was invested, I'm back before square one. I'm locked outside of a gate, with square one hidden even from view.

I wanna scream, but I'm too exhausted. I want to cry, but that's played out. 

I want to try to explain myself, even just in this stupid blog, like that is going to make a difference to anyone or anything, but I'm too exhausted to even start. I'd have to go through pages and pages of online conversations that I had with Lesa just to catch this dumb blog up to speed on how I even arrived at the place of hopefulness that I did. 

What I've shared on here has been incomplete, as I spent all of my mental capacity on the conversation I was having with her. I must have been somewhat charming to have elicited such emotions, even if they turned out to be an illusion.

Now everything seems lifeless and empty. I'm contemplating just how I can commit suicide by inactivity. I never want to move again. I'm just tired. And life seems so pointless. You gain and you lose. In the end, who knows? You get swallowed up by death, and maybe you come back or continue, and maybe you don't. "Signs point to no," as the Magic 8 Ball would say. 

And my level of pessimism will surely create just another hell for me anyway, should the universe turn out to be a subjective manifestation of my pathetic inner consciousness. Why, why, why do I exist? The joke part I don't get, the cruel part, sure. Life is cruel. What else is there? I'm falling so deep into my own negative thinking that I can't believe anything anymore.

My LED is trying to tell me otherwise. Blinking on and off to get my attention. Why can't Sharon speak to me some other way? I don't understand the intermittent, seemingly random operation of an electrical device as a language. 

I need to do something different. Sitting around here will kill me, as surely as a bullet. Just not as quickly. I'm ready, though. I've lived and suffered enough. The rest is just bullshit. All my talking, my relationships, my persona--all bullshit. I was as real as I could have ever been with Lesa. It turns out, she wasn't really being real with me. Or so it would appear. I'm just too stupid and damaged to be in a relationship anyway; who was I fooling?

Yuba City Honda (yet again)

 

I don't stop dreaming about my former place of employment. Usually it is an indication that there is a lack of something in my life which makes me dream about it at night. So, not surprising that I'd be having dreams of my old place job to kind of fill in the need.

 I dreamed I had to go back to work for them, but since I'm no longer qualified to do my previous job, I was hired as an entry level lube tech. I was tasked with training under the lowest of the low. It didn't feel demeaning, it was actually nice to not have the level of responsibility that I did before. So, all I had to do to impress them was to not throw trash on the floor like a common monkey sloth. Sweeping up the floor earned me extra points. Such an easy job!

I noticed that most of the old crew was not present, just a cast of new characters who had come up after I'd left. They were uninitiated in the finer points of shop cleanliness, so I felt a bit superior with my knowledge of a broom and mop. I was contentedly sweeping and self-congratulating when I met up with David Chanh, aka Jackie Chan. He remembered me, of course, and set about to help me reintegrate by showing me around.

There was a new "Day Room," a small token nod to the service department, built during the million dollar makeover which had occurred a couple of years back. There wasn't much in it that hadn't been included in the old lunch room, with the exception of a cheap stereo, which no one had bothered to hook up. I began hooking up the speakers, unraveling the familiar paired wire and attaching the ends to the usual clip-on connections in the back of the receiver. 

"Red is striped, black is plain. Same as usual," I confirmed to myself out loud, with David standing by and watching me, grinning at my simple enthusiasm. "At least we can listen to the radio," I went on, "Or I can bring my little transmitter from home and we can set up our own intercom or radio station. I'll just tune it to 88.1."

That was where I was at when I finally woke up to find myself in my new normal old life, here on the couch. This life seems like a different reality, though it has elements of my old life still in it. I'm still me, my past is still my past and all the old parameters are still in play. But thrown into the mix is this new love interest, my girlfriend, Lesa. See how casually I worked that in there? Not subtle at all. 

It's been just over a month since we've reconnected in earnest, but things have come along so far in that short time. "I love you's" are exchanged regularly, and sharing has gone on at a level unprecedented, even for me, Mr. Oversharer-Guy. Nothing I say seems to faze her, and we both have fallen happily into a dependence on each other's complete and uncritical acceptance and emotional support.

At this point, I'm ready for her to move in with me, though she hasn't even been up to visit yet. She's hinted at possibly Christmas, and suggested that bringing her daughter along would be a part of the "package deal." I don't find that objectionable, since being a part of her daughter's life would be in the cards in the long run anyway. Why not see what the whole package would include, and that way we'd know if it is a good fit for both of us. 

She and her 29 year old daughter currently live together and are extremely close, an inseparable pair. I'm not in the business of separating people from their loved ones, so I say, ok, bring it on. That's just more loved ones for me. If for some reason her daughter hates me, well, that could be a dealbreaker for Lesa. We'd need to find that out, regardless.

In other news, my little LED is back on. I maybe should have led with that noteworthy item, because it is an answer to a troubling feeling I've been having recently. That feeling that I need Sharon's permission move forward, not move on or away from her memory, but to get her approval for my newly blossoming love affair. 

I'd like to think she was somehow ok with it, if not, perhaps even actively promoting it with some behind the scenes string-pulling from beyond the grave. I had a long talk with her, while out walking the other day, begging her to give me some kind of sign to let me know she hadn't abandoned me. So, when I was in the midst of typing a little cute note to my new "girlfriend," what should happen but the LED starts blinking on again.

Superstitious, sentimental me, getting so excited over the intermittent operation of a Christmas strand bulb, I had to share this with Lesa. While not as overtly impressed with my "miracle" as myself, she wasn't put off by my kookiness in the least. She is a sensitive, who is in touch with energies and other things of a subtle and spiritual nature, although her formal religion is Catholicism. We've had a few discussions on religion and our views vary widely on the surface, but there is possibly a common thread in there somewhere.

Anyhow, life calls me. My neighbor Stan has dug up half my property making a trench to bury my electrical conduit for my well pump. All I need to do is finish it bury place the conduit in its forever home, and he can return to back-fill it and patch up my driveway, which is currently impassable. Oh, and I gotta pee. So, bye for now, my neglected and forlorn faithful readership.

A sickly sparrow

 

I met a poor, sickly sparrow in my yard yesterday. He was just standing there in my path and made no attempt to move or fly away as I come close to stepping on him. I stopped and bent down to ask him what was the matter. His eyes were squinted and he still wouldn't move despite my close proximity. I continued to talk softly to him, trying to offer what comfort I could and touched him, gently stroking his feathers. 

I probed around to see if there was an injury, just lightly brushing him with one finger tip. He seemed intact. He even moved a step or two but made no effort to escape. Occasionally, his little eyes would widen, as he took a closer look at me, but then go back to squinting, as if it took too much energy to keep them open. If I had to guess, I'd say he had a fever or a cold or whatever birds get. I went in the house and washed my hands.

Later in the day, I looked for him in that same spot but he had gone. I think I saw him out in the field when I was repositioning a sprinkler. If it wasn't him it was another bird in a similar state. He didn't try to fly away when he saw me approach him, but his movement was better. He was hopping just a little and he appeared not to be as completely paralyzed as the bird I saw previously. No moral here, I just wanted to record this for future reference. Maybe some kind of meaning will attach itself then. For now it's just a report.

When it's time to break up with your homeless hitchhiker

 

I dreamed I gave a ride to a homeless man, and after a while, it seemed he had moved into my car. I began to notice an accumulation of extra clutter, not my own, in the car. At some point, he said something that pissed me off, and I told him point blank: "Ok, that's it. Get out." 

It started to get ugly at that point. I had a little fear that he'd refuse, perhaps try to carjack me, or just plain assault me. But it was just your typical bitter breakup bickering that was going on, as I made him start unpacking his stuff. 

I realized that he'd gotten too comfortable when I saw that he'd somehow moved a couch in, as well as all his handyman tools, along with the usual fast food wrappers and things that accumulate in a car when someone lives in it. 

He was pretty pissed, but managed to keep it together after I threatened to call the cops. He even offered to repair some damaged door lining with a few of his golden thumbtacks.

Prior to that, I'm just remembering, I was in a medical type building, seeking advice from a sagely woman doctor of unknown ethnicity. She reminded me of Lesa, perhaps maybe because everything does these days. Or perhaps it was because of her kind and patient advice, which she went out of her way to dispense to me, despite her being in some considerable pain from her own illness. 

I thanked her profusely and went on my way, realizing that she was in a more dire state than she'd let on. I took my newfound sense of imperative and began jogging along a river bank.

I was in that dreamlike state of wonder, just taking in the details of the scenery, when I noticed the river was rising along the banks. I tried my best to keep my shoes from getting wet, but to no avail. I wound up sprinting through a section of rapidly sinking wet sand before turning around and heading home.  I had the sense that I'd been scouting out this section of river as a place to take Lesa on her visit, which was coming up.

In real life, there is a possibility that she may actually visit me, perhaps as soon as January. I've always seen things like this fail to materialize, but I am going to have to work on cleaning up my house just in case. We've talked about all kinds of things, and she's been enchanted by my descriptions of my idyllic lifestyle. 

Can I help it if I'm just such a charming salesman that I could sell snake oil to a snake? Even though I've given her many reasons to bail, with disclaimers and full disclosure of my failings, she appears undaunted. 

I may have gone too far, in disparaging my own product, however, by stating something like, "This product may contain no actual snake oil and has little or no value, medicinal or otherwise." I tend to always push the boundaries when it comes of oversharing about my own inadequacies.

Time will tell, and we shall see what we shall see. I've given myself completely to the idea, though, that we can make something, her and I, of our two disparate, yet interconnected lives. She's made it more than clear that there are strong feelings on her side, so it's not my usual one way love affair. 

I can't shake my creeping doubts, though. I've fucked up far too many things in the past to not have a dismal view of my own approval rating. I'll stop ruminating for now, and get to cleaning. That's what I should have been doing all along, anyway.

Just below the threshold of comprehension

 

That's all I've got at the moment. A working title for a concept that needs expansion. It occurred to me, in the vacuum of my mind, that I'd settle for that being the level of communication that I'm seeking to achieve. Subtle enough to be non-invasive, but kind of entering your consciousness in a roundabout way. 

You feel me? Like music, with or without words, I want to work on you in a hypnotic manner, to make you buy into whatever it is I'm selling. Mystery? Magic? A fish fry? Yeah, baby. 

Let it be said, that I never said a single thing I didn't mean. Unless I meant to not mean it, you know what I mean? Man? I'm not tryin' to be mean, just me.

What can I say that hasn't already been said? So why not just invite you to crawl inside my head? And listen to the birds and squirrels instead? Or just beam out a pure tone vibration, colored purple?

I'm a poet who never wrote a verse, a guitarist who never learned a lick. A open mike comedian who's deathly afraid of public speaking, coming to you live, from you know not where. Perhaps a radio, tuned and playing audio on sub-perceptible frequencies, like wi-fi, invisible but permeating everything around you. Within you, without you. Om mani pad me om. A hyper-chromium infusion, a mesmerizing laser-strobe light show in the periphery of your vision.

Yeah, ok, beam me up already. Can't you see I've been waiting here forever?