My guitar retreat

I have only few impressions from last night. I was living in a large compound in the hills, kind of like a summer camp setup, with lots of pine trees and cabins for visitors to stay in. I had a couple of guests with whom I was going to play some music. I had lots of guitars and amps all scattered among the many cabins. 

I was in one cabin with James Reed who was playing along with "Superstar" on one of my better guitar and amp combos. Although it was a Carpenters song, Joni Mitchell was seeping through my nocturnal music playlist, which always seems to land on her during my REM cycle. I grabbed another backup guitar and had to settle for my crappiest amp, the Peavey Audition 10.

"I'll have to make do with this one," I announced proudly, hiding my disdain behind a smile.

I next had to locate a patch cord. Damn. I couldn't find anything of any better quality than a very cheap curly cord, the springy telephone cord style. I knew for a fact that it was one that had a tendency to crackle, which was gonna suck.

"Fine, fuckin' fine!" I griped. 

I really didn't want to have to go to the other cabin to fetch one of my many other nicer cords, but I was gonna have to. Besides just being extremely averse to having to actually do anything resembling work, I knew it would spoil the moment and the jam would be lost. I left Red playing there, and I went to fetch the cord. On my way to the other cabin I met Richard Leon, who had been jamming with me earlier and was now taking a break.

"Hey, check that out!" He pointed to a white bird perched on a feeder.

"Is it a hawk?" I asked, not really knowing my birds. "On account of he's bullying the other bird." 

I also observed the strange shape of his head, marked by small catlike ears. This would have made it an owl, but no matter. I was on a mission. I retrieved the cord and was on my way back to jam with James before the dream ended. It did end, however, without any real accomplishments or cohesive story to speak of.

Earlier in the dream, I'd been walking down Stonehedge, and I noticed that someone had taken a lot of the logs left by PG&E's tree trimming crews and made a kind of decorative hanging Western themed framework for the street. Kind of like the typical ranch gate theme with logs for gate posts and a log suspended in the middle where there is usually a sign that indicates the ranch's name. 

It was a pretty elaborate and frivolous way to get all the excess lumber off the ground, but I liked it. A lot of work had been done to get all those pieces cut and suspended with chain. The result was an impressive promenade, worthy of an old-timey Western parade. Anyway, a picture would do a better job of describing it than I am capable of, though I doubt anyone has actually designed anything that resembles this just due to the amount of work involved to achieve the resulting decorative motif.

The Tibetan Book of.....FIRE!

I was dreaming once again to my my nocturnal subliminal programming book, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and having my usual success of the book penetrating my consciousness with its non-dual philosophy. I had to wake up several times to pee, but each time I settled back into some dream in which this soundtrack made its presence felt.

In one of the dreams, I was a guest at someone's house and the whole "unity of all things" theme was seeping into the dinner conversation and pretty much every word out of anyone's mouth had some kind of direct quote from the book in it. We were all very passionately trying to explain our beliefs to one another, not really catching the fact that we were all basically saying the same thing.

The final scene was a familiar one. I was in the bedroom with Sharon. She was disabled, bedridden as usual. I was listening to the audiobook on her old familiar Braille and Talking Book Library mp3 player, which looks like an old school tape player except that it accepts thumb drives instead of tapes. I was about to go to sleep just as I had many times, with the player playing into headphones. 

I had to get up in the dream, as I did in real life and when I did I went to investigate a smell that was making me very nervous. Smoke. I went to the front door and opened it. I couldn't see across the front yard, so thick was the cloud of smoke billowing from down the neighbor's driveway. I was slowly processing this emergency situation, not wanting to make the obvious connection. Where there's smoke there's...

"FIRE!!!" I screamed.

I ran around in a couple of tight circles on the front porch, scanning for the source of the smoke. I spotted it right away. A giant patch of bright orange flame penetrated the fog-like haze. It was coming from the bottom of my neighbor's driveway directly down from my house. It was an intense blaze having the luminosity to shine through the darkness of the smoke. 

I felt for wind and noticed it was picking up and coming from the exact direction of the smoke and flames. Not good, not good. I ran back in to get the phone but not before noticing my neighbor's front fence erupting in flames.

"911, what is your emergency?" 

I could barely hear the black lady's voice on the phone because that damned player kept preaching on and on about the realms of existence, karma and intermediary states that occur after death. Damn that Book of the Dead. It was going to get me killed if I didn't kill it first. 

I ran to find the player to shut it off. I finally succeeded in quieting it down, though it was still not silent. I apologized to the 911 operator and finally managed to get her my information. She wanted to know if it was ok to video me.

"I don't have a cellular phone," I explained to her. "Well, I do, but I don't. It's just a wifi device. Can you somehow hack into it?" 

I wasn't thinking clearly, so I didn't have any of the usual workarounds in mind. Anyway, I was calling from my landline, so I couldn't figure out how this was going to work. I was more concerned with how I was going to evacuate Sharon, as this was shaping up to be a repeat of the 2017 fire. 

It turned out that the operator was just trying to give me something to do to distract me until the firefighters showed up. The next thing I heard was the sound of fire hoses wetting down my house with their high pressure rainstorm.

I opened the front door and thanked them as the fire and smoke settled into a steaming memory. It was going to be OK. They had arrived and staved off the fire's imminent threat. They would remain on site in case of a flare up. I was still trying to figure out how to turn off that annoying player so we could enjoy a minute without being droned on to about the afterlife, but I don't think I ever did. In fact, it is still droning on right now.

Same sex workplace harassment

I was in a weird cooking class, somehow associated with the Honda dealership. It was almost like one of those chef shows, where people contested for the approval of some higher up management type. I was not really much into the whole competition, but I was doing my best to put together the meals as prescribed. 

One of my competitors was a black Cajun woman who would sing while knocking out the meals with startling efficiency. I was duly impressed, until I noticed a few items that had been insufficiently cleaned, giving her the edge in her times. 

I made some notes to tell the judges. Tomato sauce on the blender, a giant cheese mess that had dripped behind the stove like some volcanic lava flow--these were things that couldn't go unreported. Never mind that I had a pocketful of unaccounted for raw, marinated meat in my jacket.

So, sometime later I was talking to Reiner. I noticed he was reading over a paper on which I had written some notes. "Oh, great," I thought. Now he was gonna try to rope me into writing for them in some technical position. This was how this kind of thing always went. Once they get a sample of my prose they are hooked. 

I was thinking of how to wiggle out of working for him again, but instead I said, "You know, I have to find a way to still get my hands on Honda swag, now that I no longer work here." I was referring to my black windbreaker, which had previously held the pocketful of meat and Reiner was now dutifully examining.

He motioned me to sit down next to him on the couch. He was presumably mulling over my request while fondling my jacket, running his fingers over the velcro and zippers. I don't know why but this made me sleepy, so I closed my eyes for a minute. Joni Mitchell was playing  (both in real life and in the dream) so this could have contributed to my sleepiness. 

Perhaps Reiner misread the vibe from the mellow music because the next thing I knew he was putting the cat moves on me, creeping up my motionless body and rubbing his chest on mine. 

Part of me was thinking, "Oh, hell, just go with it. How bad could it be?" The rest of me was just disgusted and petrified, so I just froze, pretending to be asleep. 

I was relieved that he withdrew after he didn't get a reaction. He seemed to buy my act, so he went off unconcerned about any possible repercussions for his inappropriate advances. No harm, no foul. I was sleeping, so I couldn't report him, right?

And I didn't. I just went through the rest of the dream feeling a little diminished and deflated. And just, yick. That's all I can say about it. 

I had other things I remember dreaming, but they were being overshadowed by my brain trying to process how I was even going to record this when I woke up later, so great was my self-disgust for having dreamed up the Reiner thing. It was something about a mall cop training academy and my job as a security guard, watching a bridge over a small creek. I kept losing locks to the gate because they would fall in the creek.

"Drain the creek, we'll find 'em all," was my brilliant suggestion.

Not only would we find the locks, but we would never lose another single item to the creek's ravenous appetite. Somehow the suggestion was not deemed acceptable and I found myself at the training academy, presumably to reacquaint myself with proper lock custodianship. 

I had company, a stereotypically fat and bumbling guy who reminded me of the Jerry/Barry/Gary character on Parks and Rec. I really shouldn't binge watch TV shows like that. The characters become part of my consciousness like the real people for whom they become surrogates. 

I am finally awake, I guess, but I'd like to go back to sleep and find a new dream to wash away the lingering distaste from the last one. I can think of plenty of people I would rather be sexually harassed by.

And, seriously, these Honda dreams have got to stop.

Think I feel a little something comin' on

Ok. I don't know how long this connection will last. If it's even there at all. But here goes:

You've got to choose your battles. In this game of life, nothing is really any more important than anything else. Just decide what it is you want to focus on and dig in. Don't be afraid or give up. Unless you want to. Then, just move on. Pick another battle. You can't die on every hill. Live to fight another day. Fight through the pain. Or don't. Run away and nurse your wounds for a while. Don't be afraid to die. What is death but the re-absorption of your individual, limited-time offer of a personality into the whole.

You exist because you struggle to exist. You exist because it's fun. You are a part of the big ocean that suddenly rises up to become a wave. How does that even happen? Events and external forces disturb the calm surface of the water causing a reaction. Wind, seismic events, cross currents, splashes from giant asteroids--in other words seemingly random natural events--conspire to create a wave, which is you. The wave takes on a life of its own. It travels great distances, changes shape, becomes a giant crest as it nears it's destination in the finite universe of its ocean, then crashes and subsides, back into the water, becoming formless. It forgets its previous existence as a wave and just sits in the big stew of water, waiting for the next random event.

Or not. I really don't know if this metaphor even holds out on its own merit, let alone equating it to the journey of an individual within the conscious collective. It is cyclical, however. You're a wave. You're the ocean. You're conscious. You're unconscious. You're everything. You're a separate individual. Light. Dark. Up. Down. In. Out. And so it goes. Is there an all encompassing consciousness, supervising the whole event? Who knows, really? Who can know this? Only the all encompassing, supervisory being. And since he's both inside and outside of the matrix of reality, encompassing the whole of existence and non-existence, who's he gonna tell? Himself? That's because he's all there is, ultimately. I'm using he, but you get the idea. The God concept. The all-that-is business.

So, he/she/it can't really do much socializing without it getting awkward. "Are you talkin' to me?" and such embarrassing posturings. So a little amnesia is in order, I suppose. A giant subterfuge called "Limited Human Perception." Let's make 'em just smart enough to know that they exist and let them figure out the rest. Maybe plant a few intuitions and basic instincts in there, you know, for survival and such. And let their basic inner true nature be a mystery, which nags at them, just a little as they go through lifetime after lifetime wondering, "What's it all about, this life thing?" Some will figure out a few things and try to pass the knowledge along. However, none of them are going to fully grasp, or come close to being able to explain the true nature of everything, given the equipment they are set up with.

Let's keep the game fun. Leave some mysteries and levels for the experts who must exit the game upon full existential awareness. Don't spoil it for everyone else. Plenty of people still think it's fun just to go on the rides and eat cotton candy. They don't want to know how the park was built or what intricate mechanisms are making the rides move about. Let everyone proceed at their own pace. Let them throw snow cones out of the gondolas if they want. Sure, some kid is gonna get slushy syrup on his shirt and it might really fuck up his day. But what's to stop him from waiting til you get off the ride and pummeling you with a corn dog? Not a goddamn thing. So, pretty much don't throw the snow cone, if you don't want a corn dog lashing, is pretty much the lesson there.

Ok, any other questions? Where do you go when you die? Who is the "you" that dies? Does that you continue to exist in some non-physical form? Why the suffering and other shit? We'll have to wait until next time to answer those and other philosophical questions, as the quarter has run out on this parking lot rodeo pony ride.

**note to critics--

"So you can suck my dick if you don't like my shit,
Cuzz I was high when I wrote this so SUCK--my DICK
Cuzz I don't give a fuck if you don't like--my shit
Cuzz I was high when I wrote this so SUCK--my DICK."

Eminem, Under the Influence


**and furthermore--

The paragraphs are simply for a visual easement and do not necessarily indicate a cohesive grouping of thoughts or serve any other purpose than to give your eyes a little break as you listen to me ramble.

I sneak some brownies, avoid the human shredder and try to solve Ann Perkins' rat problem

I was dreaming that I was in a customer's car at at, you guessed it, YC Honda. It was a late 90s CR-V or some equivalent.  I needed to access the very rear area, where they had a lot of personal items in tow: clothing, books, papers and tray of delicious looking brownies. I made note that the brownie tray was completely full, and this disappointed me because it meant I wouldn't be able to sneak any without risk of it being detected. 

But as luck would have it, the car came back for several visits and on one of these visits there was some activity on the brownie tray. Someone had eaten a few portions of the squares from the left side and the right side. This was perfect! I started whittling away at the least noticeable side, shaving off just enough to go unnoticed. 

But like a late night refrigerator raid, where you start incrementally removing tiny portions of a cheesecake and making justifications for each bite, I found that I needed to keep going until I had removed a substantial portion. 

No matter, I thought, it served them right for leaving it in the car day after day. It wasn't any worse than changing their radio station while on a test drive, and less obvious, since they would probably not figure it out right away.

Later on, I found myself in Chico. But this version of Chico had a very weird manufactured home motif. All the restaurants and bars were located in the middle of what would be the Avenues. There were no trees, and the whole place looked like a run down temporary housing development. 

Someone suggested that we go to a bar, so I reluctantly agreed. But there was an incredibly long line, stretching for blocks, just to get into a standing room only situation at some piece of crap version of a long-time Chico establishment, now housed in this double wide mobile.

"Not worth it," I told my friend. "You know what they have in there? A shredder. All these people are lined up to go in and after waiting for an hour or two, when they finally get to go in, they are just going to get shredded by these giant steel grates. Ker-Shwang! Ker-Shwang! Ker-Shwang!" I made the sound of two giant sets of claw like teeth meshing and decimating row after row of humans.

We opted out, after my somber assessment, and sought refuge in a nearby mobile home. It was occupied by Ann Perkins, a lovely character on Parks and Recreation, a TV show I just recently finished binge-watching. 

There was a pizza on the counter and some salad in a plastic container. She offered us a meal, which we graciously accepted as we tried to find room on her one tiny couch. There was a bit of a mess, as she had a child who left the usual amount of Doritos and other snack debris on the carpet. He was fixated on his video game, which was also pretty much normal.

But there was an unfortunate mouse/rat problem. One particularly bold little asshole of a mouse made his way to the salad and started helping himself, right as Ann was attempting to serve us. This would not do. Up from the couch I sprang.

"I'm gonna do a little redecorating," I said, as I grabbed some handy two by fours and placed a barricade over a sizable crack at the baseboard of one of the walls. "This is obviously where the little fucker is coming in," I opined. However, noting the debris from her video game playing child, I gently chided Ann about perhaps taking a little better care of the carpet.

The mouse came back in a matter of minutes and this pissed me off further, so I set out to find the owner or landlady of her mobile in order to set this business straight. She was going to get an earful from me. 

Ann Perkins was delighted to see me taking such a firm stand and I could tell I was scoring points with my "I'm gonna fix your rodent problem" superhero approach. 

I went about the neighborhood, finally locating the owner's apartment, but it was security gated and I couldn't get in. A tenant leaving the building let the door slam as I tried to make my way in.

"Aww, come on," I begged, "I need to see the landlady about one of her units." 

The woman looked at me, as if she was reconsidering letting me in, but the result was still a no. 

Fine! I gave up after exhausting my search for another way in to her 4th floor apartment and went back to Ann's place. I told her the story of my failed crusade, but vowed to stay on the case until it was resolved. 

It was at this point that I found myself on her crowded couch again. As I gently touched her arm, attempting an appropriate yet engaging level of body contact, she leaned in responsively. Further, our hands touched briefly, then remained in contact as I noticed her leg was winding its way through the crook of my knee. 

"You're cuddly!" I declared, having no reason to hold back my rather simple observation at that point. 

We leaned even closer to one another as I reaffirmed my commitment to fixing her rodent issue, having no other real selling points for my actions at this point. But it did look like she was pretty receptive to making out with me, so I had pretty high hopes that this was going to happen at some point.

Of course it didn't. One thing or another brought me out of the dream gradually and, although things were left on a pretty good note with Ann, ultimately it will have to wait for next time.

Dreaming of dinner

I found myself dreaming I was at a friend's house for dinner. It was a rather nice affair, with mashed potatoes, turkey and all the fixings. 

As I was sitting down and about to help myself to a serving of turkey, the father figure asked me if I had washed my hands in the last ten minutes. Not knowing the exact number of minutes, I made a rather evasive statement and hoped that it would go over without question. It did not.

"We'll all just sit here and wait, then," he declared, and all plate passing and serving of food stopped in its tracks.

Cursing, I got up from the table and went to the bathroom to wash my hands. When I got back, food service had resumed. 

I took a bite of mashed potatoes and then attempted to serve myself using the same fork I had just used to take a bite of food. I was left with my fork sticking out in midair as the plate was whisked away. Why did I not know this was going to happen.

"Thou shalt not serve the potatoes with the same fork off of which one has eaten," I quoted the edict, beating the father to the punch. "Yeah, yeah...geez!"

I waited while another serving fork was procured and dinner could resume again. I figured if I didn't play along no one was gonna get to eat, and my stomach was getting holes in it from hunger at this point. 

At this time I woke up, famished and went to the kitchen to get myself a snack. I've been sick, so I was glad that at least my appetite was coming back, even if it meant my overactive stomach acid was part of the deal. Well, better get some breakfast.

Just a theme, no dream

Another zombie themed dream. This is the second time I've had this feeling in a dream that I can't remember, of being semi-apologetic when someone in the dream asks, "What is this dream about?"

"It's a zombie dream, I suppose," I offer, feeling that I really shouldn't be dreaming of such things for some reason. But it's like I have the sense that this is the reality that I'm in, the ominous foreboding, the constant need to hide from lurking flesh-eaters but no real story. Just flashes of that world. 

This time I felt a sense of how a zombie perceives a person, which is kind of like an x-ray, a black and white image, visible in small frames. To sense motion they have to compare the slides in a rudimentary, binary kind of way and make a reasoned decision:

"This picture not like that picture. Target has moved. Target is alive. Pursue target." 

If one can remain still or move slow enough, the pictures will appear enough alike to not arouse suspicion and one can slowly slip away. But once you panic, the chase is on and it is difficult to reset their target acquisition button.

Meanwhile, my self-isolation due to the real-life pandemic is making me a little more batty each day. My only weekly socialization, a depression group at Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health, has been cancelled, along with every other public function. People are only supposed to leave their homes for necessities like grocery shopping or medical emergencies. 

Most non-emergency medical appointments have been postponed indefinitely, so I'm going to have to wait for my GI specialist appointment. I wasn't looking forward to it anyway, and would probably much rather just get this whole dying thing over with, since that seems to be where I'm headed. Perhaps the virus will fast track the process for me, I could only hope. I don't wish to die, but this kind of living is a long torturous business that seems kind of pointless, really.

Yuba City Honda...and...again

I wasn't even pretending to work on cars this time. I was just shooting the shit with Reiner, literally, I guess. I had to poop, and I was finding novel ways and places to do so. I was discussing the pros and cons of selling unauthorized Honda swag, like stickers and things and at the same time defecating in the shower stall area of their public restroom and in other locations. 

Reiner was setting out a bag of baby carrots for the customers, placing them in a bowl. I told him that those carrots had all been up my butt. That didn't deter him from leaving them out on the counter as a kind of disgusting courtesy snack.

We were listening to a podcast of some lady that was describing the odd situations that she would find herself in, such as riding a horse as a tsunami approached. 

"The important thing is to stay on the horse," she was saying, stating the obvious. 

She described the scene so well that I could visualize the entire event, from the sucking out of the tide to the slow surging of the amber, molten water rolling in like a thick, lava-like lager which swept the streets, carrying away everything in its path. I thought it was an interesting podcast, but that it was too bad that it was relegated to Sunday afternoon, which seemed like the least popular time slot for some reason.

We were in the middle of that street, Reiner and I, discussing the off-label Honda merchandise, such as country version of the Honda logo, complete with a horseshoe and old-timey western font on a bumper sticker. 

A car was bearing down on us, barely keeping in its lane and ticking ever closer to heading straight for us with each flick of the steering wheel, as if the guy in the car was lazily playing a game of "she loves me, she loves me not, run them over, let them live." 

Suddenly, at this moment, I was transported. I found myself squatting in the tiled shower stall, laying down a chocolate soft-serve with the precision of a cake decorator along the bricked tilework of the shower's perimeter. 

Soon I woke up, in a fair amount of gut pain, wishing I could do just about anything to relieve it, even if it involved the kind of inappropriate nonsense that I was just dreaming about.

Conversations with the spell checker

 

Girl Nuro notes Miral Duracell Nuro Nuro Nuro thank you you’re on your own you’re off stupid wonder fabulous plenty of punctuation mark fatigue euro Nuro Nuro euro bureau Nuro euro Miral Miral urinal Nuro neuralgia you’re our you’re always on your own euro funeral you are LOL euroEuro euro euro euro euro Bureau Nuro your rail you’re off euro euro when you’re off neural life Nuro

All that to say neural. Neural notes. Thank you thank you very much. I have left the building.

Honestly, I have forgotten what the fuck I was going to say. Neural notes. Hey, thank you! It’s self corrected from your old notes to neural notes. Gretchen fucking relations. Well that didn’t work out. Congrats-you fucking-lesions. Period.………… Dot. Probably FM FM FM nothing everything everything EFFING. Conversations with the spellchecker texting wise voice to text whatever the fuck you are insane shit came with this phone LOL how old are you graduations you suck. Congratulations. You suck. Period. Oh yeah, I remembered what I was about to start making notes about. Neural notes. Your own notes. Euro notes. OK one of them was right. Guess which one? Your old notes. Not quite! Your own notes. Neural notes. Neural notes. It’s enough for now, pig. Fuck me running. And OK, here goes. Once upon a time, there was this boy, Who, after everything was said and done had regretted the fact that he had ever gotten involved with a certain girl. That boy was me. That girl was you. So at the moment, this boy, me. Wait, no. Period. Not waiting no, no. Not wait no., No. No. No, period. That’s it, that’s all I wanted to say. For now. Ha! Motherfucking stupid ass recording shit for brains piece of crap ass motherfucker. Oh, did you get all that? Wonderful! Thank you. The end. I mean it, this is it.

Your all notes. Neural notes. That’s better. Notes. Euro notes. Neural notes. Neural notes. Neural notes. No. No. No. Neural notes. No. Neural notes. No. Notes. I mean wait, yes. Neural notes. Yes!

Hello, that’s rich.

Scored a dime a dozen. I’m trying to say

Sorry dime a dozen. Ha ha. New paragraph. It’s all in the pies. Pies. Pause not pies you freaking won’t! Why old really????? No seriously who are you calling all. Old. Not all. Stupid Abercrombie motherfucking piece of Finch. And that’s the way it was, in all hours. Period. Play VA! Boy. Oh hi! Oh OK oh OK oh OK I have boy

Partner in crime

I dreamed I had a girl that I would walk home on an infrequent but semi-regular basis. She was the kind of a girl who would find mischief in just about any situation, so walking down the busy street was a smorgasbord. 

I liked her for her witty banter, the trouble was just a bit of side drama with which I was willing to put up.  She had the most amazing skill of finding someone's weak spot and aggravating it from the tiniest loose thread, until they came completely unraveled.

I saw her as she was leaving her class and hailed her over and we began walking down a long stretch of city street, ripe with trouble. Today we were walking and enjoying our little snide commentaries about all things academic and having a nice time ridiculing other students.

We were walking, talking and sniping when she whips out a semi wet chamois, the kind used to dry cars at a church car wash. Of course, she had no such use for it in mind. Without the slightest hesitation, as if she was making a point about something that needed a little flair, she hurled it at the front windshield of a passing car. 

It struck dead center and splattered its milky opaque moisture all over the window, sending the car careening off to the side of the road. The driver emerged, fuming. He was an older Jewish man, the kind who wore overly thick plastic framed glasses, unflattering polyester pants and perhaps sported a stub of cigar which he didn't need to smoke in order to be annoying with.

We continued walking, acting as if we had nothing to do with it. But as we reached the end of our trip it became clear that he had followed us and was closing in. It seemed that we were bound for justice, and although I was merely an innocent witness to the event, I was guilty by association. 

We found ourselves being interrogated by an equally witty and attractive school counselor. I got the impression that this was her nemesis and that these meetings were pretty regular. We were all discussing my friend's good qualities, such as her aim, and the fact that she could pinpoint a flaw in someone's personality from just the slightest social cue.

After being asked about my part in the event, I simply said, "I'm her friend." 

The female interrogator left us for a moment and the angry old Jewish guy took the opportunity to confront us. He began by calling her on her mischief, saying all manner of mean things about her, which were mostly true, but he didn't have to be so mean about it. 

Then he slapped her multiple times across the face in almost a comedic fashion. Left cheek palm, right cheek backhand over and over, like the three Stooges. I got mad and told him to lay off, but clearly he was exacting the justice she had coming. 

The system, for all of its witty interrogators, would simply categorize her and let her back out into the wild, to presumably engage in more delinquent activity. I was proud to know her, so I stuck around and waited for her to get released so I could walk her the rest of the way home.

Scobb

Scobb--{noun} a person who is unaware that a joint is being passed to them, which causes the joint to go out.

I dreamed I was in a car with Uncle Steve at a rock concert/fireworks show. It was kind of a drive-in affair with everyone parking their cars in a favorable direction to see the sky. We were driving around, pre-show, attempting to smoke a joint while not getting caught. That was our old-school mentality anyway, as it was perfectly legal to do so in the proper venue, though we were ignorant of the actual laws.

Prior to the joint passing incident in which my uncle would refer to himself as a "scobb," we were in the parking lot/amphitheater, which just happened to be freeway adjacent, and we had to vacate our spot due to some sort of atmospheric debris or space junk landing in our prospective seating. 

We had to go through some hoops to settle the misunderstanding with management, so we proceeded on foot, Steve walking and myself bounding like a gazelle, down the freeway. 

"Hey look at me. I don't run like a girl. I run like a gazelle," I made mention of my bounding, skipping gait to whoever was present. I was pretty proud of the effortless acceleration I had while proceeding barefoot down the freeway's shoulder, almost keeping pace with traffic.

There was a long hallway, the kind athletes or rockstars use to make their entrance, through which we made our way backwards. We needed to reach the office in order to straighten out our seating arrangement due to the space junk issue. We went through a door at the end of it and into a theater lobby type of place, complete with concession stands. 

We spoke to a police officer, who assured us it was going to be OK but that we needed to get back to the parking lot before it filled up. The door to the parking lot entrance appeared to be closed, which would have thrown a wrench, but fortunately, a kindly lady police officer had been holding it ajar for us the whole time. We thanked her and continued down the hallway and into the parking lot where we found our car, which now had to be moved. 

That was about the time we decided we needed to start smoking joints if we were ever going to get properly baked before the show began. I kept having to light the joint, as my uncle was preoccupied with driving and looking confused. The joints were of a pretty low quality, both in content and form, so he wasn't entirely to blame, though he graciously didn't mention it, as I had both grown and rolled them myself.

"I'm just a scobb," he said, assuming responsibility for the unsatisfying way in which the whole joint smoking process was going. I guess that's pretty much where we ended the dream, driving around with a poorly lit joint, waiting for the fireworks/rock concert to begin.

Buying a $20 guitar

I was dreaming I was at some guy's place, not sure the original reason, but I happened up a miniature guitar in a bag while snooping around his place. 

It was an oddly shaped instrument, made out of something between wood and ceramic, but finely crafted in a mostly cylindrical fashion. It had the same number of strings, but the fretboard was tiny. I attempted to make a chord, but my fingers weren't accustomed to the strings and it was tuned to some weird tuning with which I was unfamiliar.

I picked it up and he told me, "Twenty dollars and it's yours." 

This sounded too good to be true. 

As I fished about for the twenty bucks, the guy went out on his balcony and unceremoniously shed his clothes for an impromptu photo shoot being assisted by some bikini-clad models. I didn't know what to make of it, so I went about packing up the guitar into its bag, hoping to perhaps sneak out without paying. 

No luck, he was back before I knew it and I had to explain that I didn't exactly have the money on me, but I'd perhaps return with it. In the meantime, I was going to just take the guitar, if that was alright. 

I don't recall if that ever went through or not, as I woke up soon thereafter to another cold, gray day.

Tea

Or teabag, to be precise. Teabagging, to be even more accurate. And why Sharon would allow me to do such a thing, in a dream or otherwise, I fail to grasp. But that's what it was, in a nutshell, so to speak. 

"In my dreams," would have been her response, had I actually made such a request, though she probably would have been curious enough to try it. 

So, that's about it for my degenerate dream description. I hope you're happy, my faithful truth-in-reporting fans, cuzz I don't relish the retelling of this little gem. But there it is there, or there it was, or they were, as it were. 

There! Satisfied? I wasn't. Though, it was nice to see her again, and I know there was more to the story, that little detail superseded all the other details and overwrote the rest of the story.

Unsatisfying hotel sex

And what was the deal with the dog, anyway? 

So, I had this weird situation in dreamland. I was with a girl in a hotel or other type of pay by the night rental accommodation, and sex was being proffered in exchange for something, I don't know what, exactly. I think "they" were after our vital essence. You know, some vague Strangelovian conspiracy to steal our bodily fluids type of thing. 

The collector was a nice enough girl, though a bit clinical, offering just enough interaction to get the necessary body parts to cooperate. But like a jaded Russian spy, her heart was not in it. She barely spoke, except to give directions if things didn't seem to be progressing satisfactorily enough.

As if I didn't already feel the lack of enthusiasm, I had to wait while she guided a dog through a similar process, which he found equally as unexciting. And this was a dog, mind you. They can get aroused at any suitable appendage, or even a non species appropriate stuffed animal. 

After the dog's lackluster performance, it was my turn. Cue the "ooh, baby you're driving me wild" <yawns and files nails>. Still, I really wanted this to happen, so I employed every technique of mental self-stimulation to convince myself that this wasn't what it felt like, which was something like a compulsory Sunday church carwash.

As usual, I was left with that dissatisfied feeling, since nothing ever wound up happening. There was another guy, whose turn was presumably next, who was already scheming on whether or not he'd be able to smoke pot in the bedroom after she was done with him.

"What about if I open the window and just blow the smoke outside?"  He tried to convince me, though I really didn't have any stake in the matter.

"I think she's going to be concerned about her clothes smelling like the stuff," I said as I pointed to all of her opened suitcases, which seemed to take up a good amount of space in the rather small room. 

"Besides, there are balconies you could go out on," I pointed out. But he really seemed to enjoy the idea of smoking in bed without having to get up. Such laziness.

That's about it. As collectors go, she really wasn't very good, although I think she was convincing enough for the dog. I woke up before the pothead got his turn, so here I am awake and not even the least bit aroused. Pretty sad considering it is springtime, and this constitutes a sex dream.

Something, something, something, Rienna

No, I don't have any more details than that. I'm not remembering things that well from my dreams these days. I was talking to Rienna at what I guess was her place. There were a few other characters in the dream, including, I think, a puppy. Lots of people were crashed out there, and I just walked in with a spoken "knock knock" as I made my way through the security door.

Meanwhile, on planet earth...I have to get moving so I can take my H Pylori test before I eat anything for breakfast. I don't look forward to what that citrus drink is going to do for my already acidy morning stomach. But the next round of tests, I look forward to even less, so this is pretty tame compared to a colonoscopy/endoscopy duo. Life just gets more and more fun, doesn't it?

The House of Buggery

I don't like recording these kind of dreams. So I won't publish it. How about that? I'll record it for my own benefit but avoid the eyes of judgement ever falling upon this until after I'm dead. Or get hacked.

Anyway, I guess it was a gay sex dream I was having. I was in some kind of flop house situation where everyone was buggering everyone else. And there I was right in the middle of things. Doing stuff, or not quite doing stuff, because in a dream seldom does anything actually get done. But I wasn't opposed to it. It was just expected. Stuff was going to be done. I wasn't not altogether looking forward to it. Regardless, certain things did happen and that's all I'm going to say about that. 

 

**Editor's note: Who gives a fuck? I'm gonna re-publish the previously unpublished, back-dated draft. I don't know when I had this dream, but I'll just leave the date as is, even though I'm sure it's not correct.

Something about puppy dogs and smiling with my pirate tooth

 

That's all. Just the one impression. I felt the need to smile. I have a missing tooth even in my dreams, apparently. And something vague about a puppy dog that captured my heart. Now my ear is ringing. Oh, and my wayward ring left my finger, and I had to shake out the bed sheets to find it. And I quite possibly have an ulcer, colitis and gastroenteritis. Now you're all caught up.

The Lord of the Rings

This isn't a dream so much that I'm recounting today, although I do vaguely remember some dream activity last night. Ok, the dream activity first. 

I was a wandering beach person, looking for the simple things in life such as a place to wash my hands, perhaps. Someone asked me what I missed about home life.

"A place to get laid, maybe?" they asked.

"Yes, please!" was my response.

 

 

That's about it for that. So, on to my real life phenomenon which has something to do with dreaming. Most nights I will put on several pieces of jewelry before retiring to sleep. They consist of my and Sharon's wedding rings, another ring with a pearl and some fake diamonds that she had made up for herself, a gold chain with a couple of her grandparents wedding bands and a gold chain with a sun pendant that I bought for her. 

The gold chains sit in my display cabinet during the day, encircling a crystal pyramid and small mini urn containing Sharon's ashes. I wear the jewelry at night in an attempt to make a dream connection with Sharon, though by now it is more of a routine that I do unconsciously.

Well, for two nights this week I've woken up in the morning to find that the pearl ring, which I placed on my index finger the night before, has migrated to my middle finger alongside Sharon's wedding rings. 

When I look at my index finger to see it empty, I'm first thinking that the ring has simply slipped off during the night. That would be logical, since it is a very loose fit. But then I see it there on my other finger, next to the other rings, and my logical mind doesn't have so ready an explanation. 

Am I removing and repositioning the the ring in my sleep? Is someone else doing it? It's not the kind of thing that can happen on its own, that's for sure.

That's it for my mysterious magic phenomenon for now. Once was enough to be noteworthy, but twice in one week? I have no explanation. Maybe I'll try putting them on in that configuration on my own and see if that sparks anything, dream-wise.