My house gets an unwanted county makeover, cultural inappropriation at the football game and a teacup Corgie sings "I Shot The Sheriff"

 

Last thing I remember, I was running for the door. Except, unlike the Hotel California, Golding Ranch was being gutted by a small battalion of county workers, its siding and wallboard unscrupulously  stripped of its decrepit antiquity, so where the door should have been, there was a full length opening, with only a few studs left in place between the living room and the outside world. 

The inside of the house was similarly in shambles, missing drywall exposing its brittle Romex wiring and seeping, green-tinged plumbing and making a public display of all the substandard construction. 

"Will someone please tell me what's going on here?" I asked one of the workers.

The tight lipped county drone carried on with his deconstruction orders, ignoring my inquiries. A few more attempts of this nature all proved unfruitful, so I decided to seek out the foreman, or someone in charge, to get answers. I quickly discerned that this person must be the man in the grey pinstripe business suit, an imposing, dough faced, rosy cheeked man, reminiscent of the shady mayor of Amity, only taller, with hints of Tim Robbins.

Much like the evasively unethical politician in Jaws, I wasn't getting any answers from this guy, but not for lack of words coming out of his mouth. I wanted to know who, what and why, but what issued forth from his speech hole was an endless stream of sound bites and jargony red tape that I found completely unintelligible. He was speaking a dialect of Building Inspectorese, designed to sound like English, but conveying no actual information. He was a Sim, just jabbering away, meme-like, with his nonsense.

Outside the house, the property was being leveled by bulldozers and excavators, and all traces of rock, grass and vegetation were being tidily removed from the premises. What was left was a perfectly graded surface, slick as chocolate cake frosting, glistening in the morning air.

I went back into the house where I found my brother, played in this dream by Georgie from Young Sheldon. He was the only one who was willing to talk to me about the unauthorized renovations. 

"I think someone dropped a dime on you," he said. "Code violations. You're probably going to have to pay for all this."

"I don't understand," I said. "When I bought this place, everything was disclosed. It was understood that these things were grandfathered in. But if I have to pay for...all this...well, I'm going to sue Century 21!"

The inside of the house was coming back together in rapid fashion. The living room walls had been replaced with a fresh set of drywall panels, taped and texture coated, with a cheap, low-gloss enamel finish. The decorative wood of the vaulted, high ceiling was similarly covered over and its height lowered, presumably to make room for insulation. The whole place was starting to look like a characterless apartment in the city.

----

Later on, I was at a football game. It was halftime, and there was a Native American contingent doing a tribal dance, marching around in a semi-circle. I decided to join them, but my style of dance, and the fact that I was a white man, was not much appreciated. From mild scorn to outrage, words of disapproval came my way as I sort of slam-danced my way through the line backwards.

I did receive a bit of solace, though, from a comical talking Corgie, who was lip singing a perfect version of "I Shot The Sheriff" directly to me. I laughed, and it eased the sting of embarrassment I felt from the crowd's reaction to my culturally inappropriate dancing.

Requiem for a bully and Aunt Arletta and Cousin Tim's Junk emporium

I dreamed I was in Norwalk, an old neighborhood from my early childhood, in the area where the state of California later appropriated a large tract of homes to make room for the 110 freeway. All of my photo memories of this time seem to be in black and white, however, this was dream was in Polaroid color, a little pale and washed out, but color, nonetheless.

In this neighborhood, there was a bully. He was also a little pale and washed out, having age progressed appropriately for the year 2022. He looked like a cross between Albert Finney's Ebeneezer Scrooge and the "Thou shall not pass" bridgekeeper in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He had a shrill, shrieky voice that one had a hard time taking seriously, were it not for the fact that he was still a pretty good pugilist for someone with Methusela's years.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

He was riding a child's bicycle, a red Schwinn sporting sparkly red hand grips with tassels and the matching metal flake vinyl banana seat with a sissy bar. It was the deluxe edition and the envy of all kids within a certain age group. 

In my own childhood, I owned one of these beauties, which I continued to ride well past the age of enviability, to the scorn of the kids on my street, all of whom had progressed to riding dirtbikes stripped of all accessories except for a numbered racing plate zip-tied to the front handlebars.

The bully saw me walking and he let out a sneery taunt as he passed by. I don't remember what it was, only that it irked me. I responded by returning a taunt of my own:

"I don't suppose you are going to DO anything about it, though, are you?" I challenged.

Upon hearing that, he made a quick U-turn and parked his bike, snapping down the kickstand with a vicious flick. 

I was in for it. This aged street tyrant, toothless and and balding with long, stringy hair the color of fireplace ash, was still agile and ninja-like in his movements. 

"What did you say to me?" He shrilled as he quickly narrowed the gap between us.

Without missing a beat, I stepped forward before he could mount his attack. I was carrying a single drumstick in my right hand, and I began wielding it like a sword, alternately waving it like a conductor's baton or a magic wand. 

"I said--You....Are...A...SISSY!"  punctuating the final word with a thrust to his chest. I simultaneously stepped on his big toe, causing him to lose his balance and landing him on his backside. 

I felt a surge of self-congratulatory pride as he went down, although I have to admit, there was still some fear, since he didn't appear too injured, and he might still prove to be a threat. 

He got up slowly and dusted himself off, but he didn't pursue the matter any further. He got back on the bike and carried on, presumably in search of more diminutive, less equipped targets.

----

Later, much later, I was in another geographical location. It was some conflation of Lake Isabella and Long Beach. I really can't place it, exactly, but elements of both were there. One of the elements was my cousin Tim.

Tim and I were walking down a pathway, adjacent to an industrial drainage canal. In LA, they call them rivers, but there isn't anything natural or river-like about them. Mostly, they just accumulate garbage, and they function as a footpath for the homeless or intrepid bicyclists. 

We skirted the perimeter of the aquifer, making our way towards the site of the old Western Auto building. This was a landmark specific to Lake Isabella in the late 70s. It used to be an auto parts store, then it became a thrift store, and finally a residence, but without any of the accoutrements of its prior incarnations. An older couple had let the business go to ruin, and were living there in a hospice type situation. 

By now it was completely sealed off, and only an upstairs room remained accessible. This single room was the residence of Aunt Arletta and Cousin Tim. 

As we approached the building, Tim said, "I'm going to hang out with family today," and he bid me farewell.

I felt a little shocked and hurt. "I thought we were family?" I said, pouting just a little.

He opened a big sliding metal door and went into the building. I followed him inside, not wanting our hangout session to finish so soon. Inside the spare and empty (by aunt Arletta standards) room, I made note of my cousin's recent hairdo. It was a punk rock style, dyed bright orange, ala Johnny Rotten, but with a pink rat-tail in the back and some fancy shaved rainbow steps right above it.

"Pretty cool doo, cuzz," I told him, hating to admit to the fact. "And here I had you pegged for a mullet man." He said nothing, just sneered, having affected the entirety of my coolness repertoire. 

At this point, Arletta entered the room bearing a set of boomerangs, presumably brought up from her junk emporium downstairs. They were held together in a triangular interlocking puzzle configuration, with each boomerang slightly smaller than the next. I remember having owned a boomerang of this type as a child. It was the fancy kind, straight from Australia: dark oiled wood, feather-light, but durable and made for competitive sport.

"Um. Those are really nice," I said, as Arletta handed the set to me. "Do you know if they are ever going to open up the emporium downstairs again?"

I woke up before she could respond, so this question will remain unanswered for the time being. Also, it is getting late, and I need to eat something before my stomach eats me.

Three Dreams, in short order

First, I dreamed that Denise was here in bed next to me, getting ready for sleep. She was uncharacteristically mad at me. I don't remember what for, just that it was a side of her that I'd never seen. She's so calm and unrelentingly peaceful, mostly. It's like she took some notes from Sharon's and my playbook, and it was her turn to run the anger ball down the field.

"I can't take this anymore...You...This...All of it..." She scowled the words out, leaving me with lying there with my shocked sense of hurt, as she threw the covers off and gathered up her things to go.

Instead of her leaving, however, it was I who took leave of the situation. I decided to go for a meditative walk to get some perspective. 

I walked down the road, a narrow, dark, house lined walkway, with a gate at the end of it. Beyond the gate was dimly lit staircase, descending into blackness. 

I felt fear. It was intangible, a vague conceptional fear. I wasn't going to be dissuaded by a concept, so I closed my eyes and proceeded.  

The ambiguous fear began to materialize in the form of a hoodied figure, a mugger perhaps, ascending the long staircase toward the gate. Bravado be damned, I turned and walked hastily toward home, looking back occasionally over my shoulder to see if I was being pursued.

----

I was in a hospital hospice wing, just visiting, as the corner square in Monopoly firmly asserts. But someone I knew was in this hospital, and that someone was my dad. I didn't want to be there, and at first I walked past his room. He was sitting upright in bed, in full control of his faculties, and in possession of all his disdainful superiority. 

Christ, can't this guy at least die humbly, I thought.

I walked down the hallway and found that I'd been mistaken. This person, Paul Golding, this white bearded man of intellectual certitude, man of screenplays, of self-aggrandizing condescension, was not my father, but his twin brother. 

I did a double take, and walked down the hall. I walked on down the hall, like Jim Morrison in This is the End, and I saw another man. A helpless, puffy version of the man I knew to be my father.

"You never told me you had a brother," I started, accusingly.

No glasses to focus his critical stare, this was a rosy cheeked Santa Claus of a man, completely supine, breathless and weak, meek as a sheep and barely able to speak. This was his deathbed, and I was there to witness this redemptive moment. 

He smiled at me as if to say, "I've fucked up, son, but it's all going to be OK."

----

Meanwhile, back in Las Vegas, I was on a road trip with some friends of mine from Bible Study. Martin, Johanna and a few others, I don't recall exactly. We were at a restaurant, and things were taking too long for my liking.

"I'm out of here," I said, standing up from the booth in dramatic fashion. Always the drama with me.

I began walking home, but I soon realized that home was several hundred miles and a mountain range or two away. This stubbornness of mine was going to cost me a couple of pairs of shoes at least, not to mention the wear and tear on my feeble knee joints.

As I made my way down a side street, strip adjacent but hidden from the towering luminescent glow of Sin City proper, I encountered two females. They were attractive mixed race siblings of undetermined origin. Black, white, French, American--hybrid model types--mocha skinned, with hair that fell past the shoulders in a cascade of perfect ringlets. They were dressed in summer clothes of a whimsically skimpy nature, the kind worn by prostitutes who cater to a certain type of clientele with mildly pedophilic leanings. 

I eyed them with suspicion as one approached me. I looked into her eyes, and my suspicion melted into bliss. They were a brilliant hypnotic blue-green, and staring into them, I  appeared to be gazing into a more vibrant version of my own dull, world-weary hazel eyes. I saw limitless potential, mischief, undying love and everything that makes a man fall head over heels. She was trouble, and I was already in deep.

"Hello, kind sir," she said, weaving a web she'd undoubtedly woven for many unsuspecting tourists in the past.

"I don't have any money," I blurted out, although I did have my wallet with all my credit cards in my pocket.

"We don't care about that," she said. "Come sit down with us." She then invited me to sit on a padded leather loveseat that functioned as a park bench. You gotta love Vegas.

I sat down, and the second girl sat in between me and her sister. She playfully began to kiss me, flicking her tongue about like a snake and tickling my lips and teeth. I found this amusing, and reciprocated a bit, but it was not her that I was drawn to, but her sister, who reminded me not a little bit of Lesa.

I extricated myself from this frivolous activity and began to address the first girl, who was now going through the contents of my wallet. I think she'd expected me to carry on a bit more with her sister, but she was unfazed by my sudden shift of attention. She put all the contents back in my wallet and handed it to me. 

It didn't matter, I thought, she'd had more than enough time to copy all my credit card numbers and had probably run up quite a tab already with the old click and buy on Amazon. I guessed I'd have to get all that sorted when I got home.

----

Each of these dreams ended somewhat prematurely, as I had to wake up and dry my sweat drenched thermals in front of the small infra-red space heater in the bathroom. God, I hate winter.

My weepy, weepy heart -- is suddenly cracking wide open

 

It's all too much for me to bear, 

My tear strained eyes can barely see. 

My walrus-like blubbering heart heaves, 

My reason leaving me for a spell. 

It's no use, I can't begin to even tell you, what's wrong in my world, 

My little world, my incredibly dense, foggy, 

Everlasting world of shame, loss and hurt.

"What's wrong?" you ask, like something can be said.

"I can't...I don't know how..."

"It's  all in your head."

It's true, I guess. That's where it began. 

Some tiny, mad thought, that I believed until the tears ran. 

In trying to tell you the source of my pain, 

My reason takes over, and I become mute again. 

These complex human emotions, love, guilt and shame. 

Sentimental longing to see you again. 

It's been four years, and the memories fade, 

My picture of you and and what once could've been, 

Gets melted into a river of day to day sameness.

So this is Christmas, I wanted to sing. 

But I don't know how. Can I learn my lines? 

Can I make the music, rhyme and keep time? 

I suddenly rebel, as my eyes have done. 

I'm done with this poem, if that's what you call it,

Done with it all. With everything. Just done.

I've said nothing, and this hurt is too big for words.

Paula won't shut up

I dreamed I was working again, at a different Honda dealership, this time in Oroville.

 <sigh> OK, fine, I thought. I'm here, let's get to work. 

I started performing a safety inspection on a gold 2001 Civic that had been brought to the shop as a trade-in. It didn't look too bad on the outside, a little dirty, but nothing visibly wrong with it. I took one bolt out on the side cover for the timing belt, so I could inspect the condition of the belt. 

As soon as I loosened the bolt, coolant started to pour out from the side of the engine. I took the bolt out all the way and, lo and behold, the water pump and the starter just fell out. Somehow, this one bolt was responsible for holding the entire engine together.

"Um..Something is terribly wrong here," I said to the service writer, a short, fat, dark haired mustachioed fellow that resembled Luigi, the other Mario brother.

"Don't bother with this one," said Paula, the service manager, who had been hovering nearby. "They aren't going to keep it," she confided with a wink and then turned and walked away.

Paula was a shapely black woman, late 30s to early 50s, with long straight hair, full lips and a set of thick black horn rimmed glasses. In real life, she plays a TV character named Maxine, head of the crime lab on CSI Vegas, but in my dream, she was using her real name, Paula Newsome.

Not knowing the ropes yet, I wanted to follow up with her and ask just how much "not bothering" I could get away with. I'd been familiar with the flat-rate system, and performing an unnecessary safety inspection on a car that was going to be wholesaled anyway seemed like a waste of time. If I skimmed though the process, I'd certainly be able to clock more hours.

I followed her around as she talked with other employees. I waited politely for a break in the conversation, but this lady wouldn't stop talking.

"We're from Canada, you know. This country is a whole different box of animal crackers, if you know what I mean.We do things differently up there," she just kept droning on about non work related stuff. 

I was trying to be respectful, but her non-stop chatter was making me impatient. Time was money, and I needed to maximize both.

----

I finally woke up and turned off my audio book, "Memories of the Afterlife" by Michael Newton. It was a PDF being read by an AI voice named David. David is one of the free voices, not the premium, more natural sounding ones. He sounds a little like the classic Stephen Hawking robot voice, but perhaps a tinge more human and smoothed out. 

Today is day three with an eye infection. It looks like a stye, but it has swollen up pretty big, making me nervous that I might be facing another couple of months of facial deformity. I had a chalazione a year ago and it took 4 months and a steroid shot to the eyelid to make it finally recede. 

I'm trying to do the whole "What the fuck is the Universe trying to teach me?" thing, but I really am annoyed with these Gestapo tactics. "Vee have vays of making you vake up!"

Jenny Bennett brings a snake and a dildo to a sleepover

...and guess which one winds up up my butt? There is no good answer to this question, but I'll cut to the chase: It was the damn snake. I'm not so concerned about the psycho-sexual implications of my latest round of dreams. I'm just glad I woke up when I did. 

 

I was in an apartment in a beach town, if I had to guess from the interior alone. It was a nice enough little unit, cozy but with enough windows to make it light and breezy. A few people were there socializing, and it was apparently going to turn into a sleepover. 

 

Jenny Bennett arrived, wearing a kimono, loosely fastened in the front, as all good kimonos are in dreams of this nature. She gave me a hug and her bosom pressed up against mine in a most familiar and appealing way. She presented me with small garden snake and staked out her place on the floor before spreading a blanket and lying down.

I held onto the snake as best I could, but the little guy was pretty wiggly. I had to grip him firmly so he didn't escape, but not so firmly firmly as to crush his delicate anatomy. I was going to hand him back to Jenny when I noticed something that made me do a double take. 

It was probably just the angle from which I was viewing things, but Jenny appeared to have a penis. I mean, what I saw was definitely a penis, but from my particular vantage point, it looked like it was right about where it would be expected, kind of protruding from the front of her kimono.

Still holding the wiggly snake, I circled around got a better look. I discovered that it was simply a dildo, positioned in a rather comical fashion, and not a part of her actual anatomy. I lay down beside her and asked her for some advice about how to handle this wayward snake that seemed to be intent on exploring parts of my body that were strictly off limits to members of his species. 

"He wants up your butt, doesn't he?" she asked bluntly.

"Yes. Yes, he does," I protested, as I felt the his little snake head make entrance.

I gripped him firmly by the tail and managed to pull him out before he got too far in. Jenny didn't seem concerned and went back to whatever she was doing. Within a minute, the little bastard had wiggled free of my grasp and made a beeline straight for my bunghole, this time getting in so far that all I could grab was the tip of his tail.

Fearing the tail might come off in my hand, I could only grip him so tight. It was a very tense few moments, as this battle of wills reached a seeming stalemate. He wanted in, I wanted him out, and neither of us wanted his tail to break off. And then, in slippery snake fashion, he escaped my hold and -- ploop -- in he was. 

I was horrified. I'd heard about things like this, urban legends mostly, and anecdotal hospital stories of bestial sexcapades gone bad. Fortunately, I was relieved from further trauma by the sound of my telephone. Never have I been so glad for the random intrusion of a telemarketer.

No volcano trip today

I woke up at 3ish because of these persistent night sweats, damn them, already. I finally got back to sleep around 5:30AM, and then Emery texted and woke me up at 8AM, just as a dream I was having had promise of getting somewhere. I won't damn her, though. You just can't go about damning your friends because you were too dumb to turn down your own ringer.

I was in an elevator, headed for the eighth floor of a motel on the outskirts of a town located somewhere near a volcano. I was with my nephew-in-law, Dylan and Tommy Lee Jones. I'm not certain about that last one, but since I was sleeping with The Sunset Limited playing in the background, it was either him or Samuel L. Jackson, and I am pretty certain it wasn't the latter. 

Me and craggy faced, hang-dog depressed Tommy Lee were just in the restaurant below the hotel, and I was trying to persuade him that we had to go on an adventure. He wasn't too thrilled about it, but then, he was never thrilled about much of anything. Dylan provided the spark, since, you know, kids...

As we made our way through the restaurant we got some stares from the diners. I don't know what their problem was, but we played it cool. I overheard one of the more forward gossipy ladies making a comment about us to the rest of her little group:

"They must be secret agents or something. Look at the way their cheap glasses reflect. When they turn their heads to look around, you can't see who they are looking at. Very professional. Well done boys."

I did a slow turn, acknowledging her statement, and in the process I got a good look at her. She was a mid 30's mom type, a little heavyset, brunette with long straight hair. She was ensconced in her chair at the table, and very confident, as the spokesperson of the group. 

My little cranial pivot gave them all a thrill, and there was a tittering of applause and murmurs of approval, as if I'd just performed a magic trick.

"And on that note," I said, "I will perform my vanishing act," as I thrust my arm between the closing elevator doors and hopped past the threshold.

I got lucky, and the elevator was actually still there. It hadn't departed and left me stepping into a dark chasm, as elevators are known to do in dreams. I checked first, because believe me, you can't be too careful with these things.

My two companions had taken the adjacent elevator, and it dawned on me that poor old Tommy Lee was going to be completely at a loss as to which floor we were headed. No, worries, I thought, he had Dylan with him, and Dylan was an old hand at these adventures. Dylan knew exactly where we were going.

Where we were going was to the volcano. Dylan rode dirtbikes there, and he was familiar with the layout. I'd been there before in my car, and I'd had a devil of a time with the treacherous mountain roads. It was a deathtrap of washed out switchbacks and thousand foot dropoffs. The bottom of the volcano was full of a slimy gravel soup, a mixture of rainwater, dirt and roadbase. The last time I was there, I'd barely made it out.

I was kind of excited to be revisiting this area, excited and nervous, since there was always the threat of imminent death. Plus, I was experiencing deja vu in a dream, and that can sometimes be a precursor to lucid dreaming, of which I am a huge fan. I'm a huge fan of anything more exciting than my normal day to day life, though, so even a dream about school or work rates above that.

Anyway, I don't recall too many more details, but I will spend a little time searching my archives to see if I can find the blog entry which corresponds with the previous dream. I'll provide a link if possible, but if not, I'll just have to set my intentions before bed, and maybe I can plan my next trip a little better.

I don't know WHAT you call this

***Trigger warning--sexual content***

I don't exactly remember the whole context, but the dialogue and some of the action loosely followed Pulp Fiction. There were a couple attempts at sex involving me, Fabianne and Butch.  So here's the business:

Fabianne and I were outside somewhere on a picnic table. We were partially clothed, and she was straddling me and imploring me to declare my love.

"Say it!" she begged, whispering in my ear.

"I want you to be with me," I said, dutifully repeating Bruce Willis's lines.

"Forever and ever?" she continued, mixing her lines slightly with mine. 

"Um. Forever is a long time, babe," I said, fearing my honest answer would kill the mood. It did not. She continued to dry hump me without comment until the scene changed. 

Atop a ladder outside my house, under the eaves on the northeast corner, in a configuration that was confusing to all involved, Butch was straddling me. Neither of us were clothed, and private parts were being made quite public.

"I don't know how this is going to work," I said, as we both fumbled around, deciding who was going to put what where.

I grabbed both of our tools and clasped them together in my hand in a kind of penis handshake. Some arousal was felt on both ends. It was determined that since he was on top, that was how we were going to proceed. I was kind of looking forward to it, but just before the moment of insertion, I noticed that a tree which had fallen up against the raingutter earlier this year, and was still somehow present, was on fire.

It wasn't a large fire, just the tip of the tree that happened to be leaning against the house. Butch didn't think it was much to be concerned with, so he tried to convince me to keep going. I thought about it for a minute, but the flames were starting to blacken the wood of the eaves, and fearing it would catch,  I had to decline.

"Let's at least get this fire out," I said, extricating myself from the awkward entanglement of limbs. 

I started grabbing handfuls of dirt to douse the flames. The fire was soon out, and the smoky, steaming mess smoldered in a less threatening manner. Surveying the damage, I noticed that my water heater enclosure was open, and the tank had fallen over, still somehow connected and not leaking, but not optimal. It was covered with dirt as well.

Butch left, and although I kept searching for him, we never did hook up. Probably for the best. I had too much work to do on my house to be fucking around on a ladder anyway. 

I am refused a handgun, Maggie pees on me and Hope DeLeon finds this to be justified

 

The title says it all. I woke up in a cold sweat. That was unrelated to my dream about the gun or getting peed on, but it seemed like a salient detail to include since it really pisses me off. Additionally, Google made me go through a bunch of security hoops to log in on this device, adding to my frustration. 

I'm hungry, I'm dirty, I'm losing my mind... 

EVERYTHING'S FINE!!!!!! 

Thanks, Tracy Bonham, Veronicas, et al. I needed a good scream. 

OK, I had breakfast. The dream evaporated, and I'm OK with that. Who needs a handgun or to be peed on, anyway?

A broken hammer and a laughing fit

 

I was dreaming that a spiritual guru who looked like a biker—bald, burly, tattooed and rough around the edges—was giving out hammers that were alleged to be talismans. He had five of them, all different, and he picked out several people on the street upon whom to bestow specific hammers. He handed me a claw hammer with a blue rubber grip and two broken claws on the business end.

 

"Here," he said. "Take this one. You'll need it."

 

I told him that I had one just like it already, except mine wasn’t broken on the claw end. 

 

"Can I keep it anyway?" I asked, not wanting to pass on something free.

 

He told me to keep it, and if it didn’t serve me, I could give it back. I kept it and walked on. Then I woke up.

Before that, I was in a rec room somewhere, with my friend Emery. I was laughing at a kid outside the window who was doing something funny. I can’t remember what it was, but Emery found it amusing because I was laughing so hard that I had to lie down next to her, wiping the tears from my face with her garment as I did so.

After the hammer-guru-biker segment, I was awakened by a text from Emery. 

 

"I'm annoying you now. I'm annoying you now. I'm annoying you now," came the familiar ringtone. 

 

"I couldn't sleep last night," she said. "I kept having nightmare after nightmare." 

I told her about my dreams, omitting the detail about wiping my tears on her skirt. It somehow seemed inappropriately weird, and although I make no apologies for anything that happens in my dreams—my dream, my universe—still, I didn't want to creep her out first thing in the morning, or at all, really. 

 

Anyway, there you have it, another faithfully reported dream fragment, frivolous as it may be, and insignificant in the scheme of things.

 

Quibbles and bits

 

I love it when I'm right about something. It's still good, even when tempered by the fact that it was something I was being stubbornly stupid about, rebelling against my own best intuition. I get to say, "See? I told you so!" or "I told me so" and feel the smug satisfaction of being in possession of The Truth. (I'll save the diatribe about absolutes for another time.) 

Last night, night 2 of no pot before bedtime proved my theory about cannabis suppressing dream activity to be correct. I "scienced" it by simply abstaining, and the result was conclusive: I dreamed. I'm still trying to piece together the fragments, but after a good 4 months of dreamless nights, they are back.

The first fragment involved a random sampling of characters, four of us to be exact, who were somehow involved in a motion picture production. I don't recall who they all were, but if I were to guess, I would say it was my mom, Denise, myself and an ex-YC Honda co-worker named Mike Cardenas, aka Carnitas aka "The Little Chocolate Teddy Bear." 

Although were all working for scale, there was a big deal being made about clocking in for each scene. I don't know how scale is supposed to work in real life, but here we were paid for each take, whether or not the footage was used. As usual, no one was clocking in, and after a lot of useless quibbling, it became clear that we were going to have just split the acting budget equally four ways. End dream one.

Dream two began with Crystal Mitchell and myself in bed. Crystal was the wife of Randy Mitchell, the drunken, barrel-chested macho man who used to run the YC Honda service department like his own personal business enterprise, offering cut rate repairs for off the books cash payments. He was an intimidating figure who, upon hearing that a fellow employee had complimented his wife, choked said employee, holding him against the wall a foot off the ground. 

Now, Crystal and I were just sleeping, mind you, no hanky-panky. But as we lay there lazily refusing to get up, a knock came at the door. 

"You'd better go see who it is," said Crystal.

I got up and peered out the front door. It was an Amazon delivery driver holding several packages.

"You Randy Mitchell?" He asked. "Sign here."

Not being Randy Mitchell, and not wanting to add forgery to my list of offenses against him, I deferred:

"No, but his wife Crystal Mitchell is here. Can she sign for it?"

As the words came out of my mouth, thoughts were racing around in my head. Why was Randy getting packages delivered here? What was his wife even doing here, and in my bed, no less? And mostly, what was Randy going to do to me when he found out? This signature business was going to be the death me. I went in the house to give Crystal the news.

The dream ended there, as my fear and pain avoidance response kicked in. I went on to have several other aborted dream attempts, but my conscious mind kept trying to get back into the drama that I'd left with Crystal in my bedroom. What, you thought I would rather get back to quibbling about wages on the movie set in dream #1? Please!

I traded all my dreams away

I've been on hiatus, having had nothing to write about. 

Having had nothing to write about, I've been on hiatus. 

I'm not writing these days. I'm on a break. No dreams, no typey-typey.

I'm unsure of my own voice, except insomuch as it intones in my head in moments of frustration, egging on the anger like a gleefully antagonistic cheerleader. 

Vegetable on cutting board: I think I'll take a floor vacation. I hear it's nice this time of year.

Me: Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! 

<violently picks up a scrap of vegetable and rinses it in the sink>

Me (cont.): You thought you'd get away that easily? You are going into the pot, you intolerable piece of FUCK!

or

Casually playing Words with Friends (against the computer; my friends won't play with me), I stay in bed until 10AM, cursing the occasional loss, which occurs despite my employing a word unscrambler app and utilizing the numerous in-game hints and points boosting cheats. I don't like to lose. I am stubborn, so even though I really don't enjoy playing the game for hours, I am determined to clear the board of challengers before I get up.

"FFFFF-UCK!" I scream, pushing replay for the third time.

A sound of unease from behind the closed bedroom door gets ignored by me. It is the cats, undoubtedly hungry for their rations. Soon enough, I'll get up, I tell myself, so they can wait. I have to finish one thing before starting another. My inability to press the pause button on anything is another of my faults. Once I begin something, I'm like a dog with a bone. Don't even try to pry me away from it.

Today, I have a meeting at 5:30. That's about it. Nothing else on the agenda. 

 I've texted with Emery briefly, and likely that will occur again at some point in the course of the day. These texts are like the wild cards in my deck, and out of them, I can fashion myself into something that looks legitimate, almost like a real person with a life. 

I have a friend. She confides things to me, asks for my opinion and constantly tells me that I'm awesome or amazing, you know, those apex adjectives millennials use to express admiration or awe. I think she's top shelf, and I never pass up an opportunity to tell her. It's nice to be able to compliment someone without setting off their creep alarm.

Regarding my dreamless nights, well, I know the reason for them. It's the weed. Duh. I've been using it as a "sleeping aid." Sure, buddy, tell yourself that. It has nothing to do with that. It just happens that I do it at night, when I am supposed to be getting ready for bed. The effect is that I stay up longer, fiddling with my Ipad, doing childlike scribbles with a sketchpad app. The weed doesn't make me a better artist, but it does make me more receptive to the idea of playing around with an artistic medium. 

The weed also makes me more easily frustrated during the times when I'm not on it, which is most of the day. It is a very exacting toll taker, and there is an incremental tolerance that develops, requiring larger and more frequent doses to achieve the desired effect. Once I got off of the gold standard of  "only once a week and only on Saturday," I started down the reckless road of addiction. It's nasty, and I'm not enjoying it nearly as much, despite exponentially increasing my usage. 

FUCK! 

I'm going to have to start from scratch. Rebuild the framework of my critical thinking on the marshy swamp of my pot addled brain. See what's going on here? I'm using cheap phrases like "pot addled" in a desperate attempt to punch above my weight class. Like that last metaphor, and like a hundred others, I just pick things from the scrapbook of overused memes and sayings and offer them up like hash at a diner. This is Dollar General writing, not even Walmart quality fare. 

Let this be a cautionary tale: If you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall, tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar has given you the call. 

I'm just going to stop right here, not  because I have finished a thought or expressed it satisfactorily,  but because, well, just fuck it. I guess I just had to address the absent elephant that used to occupy the room upstairs.