Friday, March 31, 2023

My tiny girlfriend and the sleepaway party, Shirtless Mario stikes again, and Hope trolls the dregs

I dreamed I was at a fancypants sleepaway party, the kind attended by pedigreed people named Biff or Chazz, long on titles and short on courtesy and common sense. I had a girlfriend, also born of privilege, a wispy little pixie who looked like a miniature Winona Rider in her blonde, Edward Scissorhands days. She was small enough that I could pick her up and hold her aloft like a little child, which was something that I would do on occasion in order to talk face to face.  

"I'm glad you invited me to this event, darling," I said instinctively grasping both shoulders and raising her up to eye level. She smiled and squirmed a bit in her pink chiffon dress and nodded approvingly before asking to be put down. 

"I need to get back to the party," she said. "Make yourself at home, dear. And try to fit in." I set her down, and she was off to mingle with the Biffs and Bradfords. 

I decided I'd better try to take a shower, so I availed myself of one of the estate's many bathrooms. Upon entering the room, I noticed that the floor was completely flooded. At first glance it appeared that someone had simply overflowed the toilet.

"Great,"  I thought, "these hoity-toities don't even know how to properly flush their fancy turds, and now I'm going to have to clean up the mess." I geared up for a messy job, and I wasn't disappointed.

The toilet had not only been plugged, but someone, in a fit of post pooping remorse, had sought to remedy the situation by taking the toilet off of its mounting base, disconnecting it from the drain and leaving it laying on its side. As a result, there was a constant stream of water from the inlet and no drainage.

First things first. I needed to stop the flow of water onto the floor, so I loosely reconnected the drain pipe. Placing the toilet in its proper upright position allowed the reservoir to fill, and finally the inlet shut off. I tightened the fitting between the toilet and drain, which was just a copper ring, but since it was already distorted, I had to bend and twist it like a twisty tie to achieve a somewhat less than satisfactory fit. I made a mental note to mention to the staff that the ring would need to be replaced. 

I finally got a shower after all this, and I felt much better. I went out to the party to find my girlfriend but was immediately accosted by a shirtless Mario Lopez. He gave me a hug and then started making moon faces at me, comically pursing his lips like a goldfish and kissing me on the mouth.

"Stop it, Mario," I laughed. "You're making me like you too much."

He finally relented as my tiny girlfriend arrived and whisked me away. Now, however, instead of Winona Rider, my little girlfriend resembled Hope DeLeon, my first punk rock lover from high school days. We were not exclusive then, and apparently this was still the case, as she seemed to only be toting me around for arm candy while she trolled the party for other guys. 

"I like you, Andy," she said, "but I don't think you're it. I hope you don't mind." 

I didn't mind. Her arm felt nice wrapped around my shoulder, and I was enjoying walking with her, side by side, my arm around her waist joining us at the hip like Siamese twins. We ambled along in this way across a parking lot and into a nearby Starbucks, where she placed an order that took 20 minutes to recite, using an entire Thesaurus worth of words, none of which sounded even remotely like the word coffee. Hope always was a fancypants.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Chelsea's mean football dad, Ilene, her little boy and some baby rattlers

I dreamed I had a guest staying with me, Chelsea from group, a bright young quadriplegic with the endearing habit of interrupting whoever might be speaking with the most incisive questions. Disabled with cerebral palsy, she has to struggle to get words out, so whenever she has the energy mustered, and a thought is formed, it will come bursting out of her, catching the speaker off guard, like some random heckler throwing a jibe. 

Because of her disability, and due to the insightful nature of her questions, she is generally given a pass for her constant violation of the group's guideline that prohibits "interruptions and side conversations." Like a reporter, she tends to say what we are all thinking but are too polite to ask. 

She was sitting in my living room in her wheelchair, and I could see that she needed some help. For one, her hairbrush was full of hair. Someone had been brushing her hair very roughly, and it had come out in clumps. I began pulling the hair from the hairbrush, and I soon amassed quite a large ball, as big as a ball of yarn. Not knowing what to do with it, I stuck it in my coat pocket. 

Next, I noticed that all of her wardrobe, which was hanging in the middle of my living room on a long metal clothing rack, similar to the kind in department stores, was in disarray. Coats and blouses were thrown haphazardly on hangers, and the rack looked like a Walmart after Black Friday. My own work uniforms were also interspersed among them, and I felt compelled to arrange things neatly, so everyone's clothes would be easily accessible. 

For some reason, I struggled to get even one coat to hang correctly on a hanger. Part of the difficulty was that I was being taunted by Chelsea's footballer dad. He was a Brit, so the football I am referring to is the one we call soccer. His taunts might have been customary, even expected protocol on the pitch, but they were very off-putting in the venue of my living room.

"Ahh, you suck!" he roared. 

"Can't hang a bloody coat! What an ass!" His friend, another thuggish brute of a fan, egged him on  while I struggled to get the most menial of tasks done. 


In another life, my high school sweetheart, Ilene Skuratofsky, was still alive, and we were living in a well-lit modern house with high ceilings and skylights. She had a 6-year-old son, who was also living with us. 

I'd just gotten out of the shower and was putting on a bathrobe when I noticed a baby rattlesnake on the sleeve of the robe. It slithered its way around the back of the garment, and I craned my neck around to see where it went. That's when I noticed four or five more of them hanging out in various crevices and folds of the robe. I decided that if I didn't panic, they would most likely not bother me, so I went about my business.

Outside, in the front of the house, I saw Ilene standing in the driveway. She looked so lovely, with her long mane of golden locks, and between the waistline of her faded jeans and her cropped T-shirt, an exposed midriff with the most exquisite little belly roll. I instantly wanted to hug her, so I did.

"Hey!" she said, startled. "What's all that about?"

"I can't just hug you?" I complained. "I think I need about a hundred more of these just to catch up."

"Well, you can start with him," she said, pointing to her little boy, who was standing there grinning.

I went over to the kid and gave him a giant hug, and he began picking the baby rattlers off my coat and tossing them into the stairwell that led into the house. Those might come back to haunt us, I thought, but no matter, all seemed well with the world for the moment.

Somewhere between the rattlers and the hugfest, I had been doing some awkward climbing around inside the house. I was up near the ceiling, sort of pressing against two adjacent walls, suspended isometrically with my hands and feet spread out between the gap. I was getting extremely tired, as it was taking all my energy to keep from sliding down to the ground. 

Those are just the remaining fragments of my vague impressions. I make no apologies for lack of narrative or cohesive storyline. They are just my dreams, as I remember them, no more, no less.

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Two Poles


A lot of stuff happened leading up to the end of this unfulfilling dream, but all I'm left with is the frustration that I get when some well-intentioned friend of mine pulls a bonehead move, and it winds up costing me. In this case, it was Silva, and the cost was two fishing poles.

I was a Friday night, and there was a multiple family group who liked to hang out together. We'd go to movies, walk around the town afterward, get ice cream, maybe look for parties to crash. We were all pretty spontaneous, and sometimes we'd all stick together, other times we'd splinter off for a bit and regroup afterward.

One day, after having spent the previous night out on the town, I was chilling on a nice comfy sofa reading a book. I came across a quote that I felt would be memorable, but of course I can't remember it right now. Something nice, about helping people and it being beneficial to all parties involved. I bookmarked the page to read to one of the children. Kids always need to hear shit like that. 

The group was busy making plans for the evening, and everyone was getting antsy to go. Aunt Carol (not my real aunt, but a composite of a lady I used to work with and Alice from the Brady Bunch) was going to go on a hike. She laced up her construction boots and donned an orange down vest over her flannel shirt. 

"I'm going to see the wildflowers," she said enthusiastically.

"Do we need to order pizza before we go?" I asked my mom. I wanted to buy some more time  before we headed out for whatever activities she had planned for the night. "This couch is feeling really comfortable at the moment."

"I don't think we have time," she said. She was right. The kids were already waiting in the car.

I dragged myself off the couch and went downstairs to find the whole group loaded into two vehicles. My mom was driving her red VW camper van, and inside I could see all the kids taunting me, their mouths open in contorted grimaces as they pressed their faces up against the window glass. My mom smiled broadly.

"So that's how it is," I said grumpily. "One only need suggest that it's time to go out, and the whole lot of you are already loaded up, engines running?" I felt bad about being the stick in the mud, however, so I got on board with the idea that we were all going to go out and see a movie, perhaps get some dinner at a restaurant, then who knows what.

Just as I was getting ready to get in the van, I saw Silva talking with a couple on the Santa Monica pier, which was just a stone's throw from our apartment. He'd borrowed two of my fishing poles and then lent them to a couple of strangers. The guy was a ringer for Danny Trejo, and his lady was a plump little thing about two feet shorter than him. This was Silva in a nutshell, always generously accommodating everyone, even when the resources weren't his to give out.

I wanted to get my poles back, so I approached the couple just as they were casting out. They didn't look pleased to see me, knowing that I was about to spoil their fishing party.

"There's better fishing down at the end of the pier," I told them. "You can rent some poles down there, too. But I'm going to need my poles back for now."

"We just baited up," he said with defiance in his voice. "Maybe we don't want to fish down there. We like it here. And we like these poles."

"But there are different fish down at the end," I pleaded. "You'll like it. And these poles aren't that good, really."

He must have bought my story about the bigger and better fish, because they reeled in and began walking toward the end of the pier. They didn't relinquish the poles, however, and soon they disappeared into the crowd. I just knew that was the last I'd be seeing of my fishing poles.

Sunday, March 26, 2023

A lady, a dog and my cousin Tim


I dreamed I was in an staying in an apartment with my cousin Tim and a lady who was a few years younger than us. She had dishwater blonde curls and a face that looked like rough hewn cedar, rugged but fair. "A truck," as Sharon would have indelicately put it. 

I was folding socks and practicing for my podcast while my cousin Tim was busy whittling a baby doll sized wooden garden cherub that was disturbingly realistic. This highly polished maple figurine evidenced an impressive talent, despite its mildly pedophilic pose.

"You been doing this for a while, Tim?" I asked. "This is the first I've seen."

"Yes, these are all mine," he said pointing to a row of pantsless infant statuary lined up on the kitchen breakfast bar. 

I got myself some orange juice, and the Truck asked me about my podcast.

"It's still in the preliminary stages," I confessed. "I need someone to produce it and help with the content." 

I knew my cousin Tim had some education in the communications field, so I asked him if he'd mind helping me spitball some ideas. 

"Sure, cousin," he said. "No problem. But if I get involved, I'm going to want full creative control." 

I thought this might be the case, so I hesitated. Just then some kittens came into the room, distracting everyone from what might have been a tense moment.

"Look at this cutie!" I gushed, picking up a tiny furball and pressing it to my cheek. The kitten rewarded me with some claws to my finger. "Ouch! Little Bugger!" I said, putting "Little Bugger" gently down on the carpet.

Later, I was out walking down by the docks on an oceanfront walkway reminiscent of the boardwalk in Marina del Rey. The truck lady was sitting in a cafe at an outdoor table with a golden lab at her side. 

"That's a fine looking animal," I commented, sitting down next to her.

"He's not mine," she said. "He comes with the territory." Before long, she got up to leave, and the dog stayed seated, looking up at me expectantly.

"All right, boy," I said. "You got me." I couldn't stand the look in his eyes as he saw me getting up to leave as well, so I grabbed his leash and untied it from the chair. "You're coming with me."

He wiggled all over with excitement as we strolled along the harbor. When we got to the boat docks, I saw the truck lady again, out on one of the little piers. I let the dog off his leash, and he bounded over to her, leaping across a gap between the pier and the boardwalk. I leapt after him, and we all had a tearful reunion, the dog licking both of our faces and me chiding the lady for leaving us so quickly at the cafe.

"I know," she said. "It was wrong of me to do that. I'm glad you brought him along. Someone's got to look out for him. He's pretty loyal."

We sat down at a table with some other people, the lady seated across from me. As we talked, our faces began to fall under the gravitational pull of mutual magnetic attraction. Soon we were practically nose to nose. It seemed only natural that we should kiss, so we simultaneously leaned in and shared a brief, exploratory smooch. 

The lady's features softened, and we tried another and another. This seemed nice, I thought, and she suddenly became very appealing to me. She and I (and the dog) stayed there on the docks for a while and made plans for later on. 


Saturday, March 25, 2023

Life before existance

I may be going back too far with these regressions. For one, I keep having a hard time visualizing the white light. All I get is a field of empty space with distant specks of many faint colors. I tried to visualize the bridge, but the only image that popped up was a bridge in San Diego that I walked across in 2021 on my family reunion vacation, where I was walking alone on a mission to find a piece for the guitar my mom had given me. It was a long bridge of cement that spanned the inlet to Mission Bay.

Once on the other side of the bridge, I was told to imagine a blue mist. I couldn't really imagine that. I was back in the field of empty space with the distant faint spots of light. I was asked to imagine my home, and nothing appeared. Just empty, vast space. I saw the beginnings of a purple mist, with little tendrils of energy swirling and reaching out.

I was asked what I was doing. "Trying to multiply," was my response. The mist looked like smoke, tiny particles forming wisps that grew brighter the denser they got. They kept dissipating, though, never forming any solid image. 

I was asked to visualize my home and asked about people. There were never any people. Only for the briefest of moments did I get an image of a dense forest. Kind of a tunnel made of trees and foliage. There was a faint light seeping through the canopy. The colors of the tree tunnel were deep forest and emerald greens, with browns for the branches. "Tree dwellers," was my response when asked about people in my life, although I never actually saw any of them.

Then I was back in space again, nothing solid. No people or other consciousnesses. Just me and this vast emptiness and the purple mist. I was the purple mist and the emptiness. There was nothing else remotely close. I'm not sure what the flecks of light in the distance were, if they were other consciousnesses or just another aspect of my seemingly infinite space body. I couldn't really separate myself from my environment.

When I was asked to imagine the day before my death, I saw a flash of light streaking across the empty space, like a meteor or something. It was heading toward a dark, solid mass. I think it was Earth or some other formless planet. The light struck the dark object, and a mountain started to form. It was a solid rock mountain made up of granite or some kind of dense white rock. I was the mountain. I was happy because I had finally achieved physical form. 

I was asked about my lessons, things I'd learned from this life. I guess it was that physical life is difficult to manifest. It takes a lot of energy to make the purple mist turn into a complex cellular being. I couldn't do it. All I could manage was a rock. I was glad enough for that achievement, I guess.

My biggest regret was still that I was alone throughout all of this. I was the source of all that I could perceive, and as such, there was nothing to interact with. I wanted to be something and relate to something else. All that existed was me, in the form of this shapeless, shifting purple mist, this energy mass. It kept wanting to reach out, to form things, but it couldn't. It was mostly frustrating and a little bit sad.

----

I'm back in my body, back in my bed in Loma Rica. It is Saturday, and I have a DBSA walk scheduled for later today. Denise wanted to get together this weekend, but I told her I wasn't up for a visit. I've had a sore throat, and I just don't feel great. I still want to go for this walk, however, to interact with the people from group. I may still go, since I don't seem to have a sore throat this morning.

I have mixed feelings about inviting Denise there. She's been wanting to be a part of my life, to go to functions with me. Like my high school reunion, for example. I feel like I want to have some areas of separation. Some things where I am just me, not a part of a couple. I feel guilty about this, like I'm not being honest with her. I don't like the idea of being her boyfriend. I'm just not comfortable using that word or having to face those expectations. 

Now I'm feeling like my dad, and as much as I don't want to admit it, I'm pretty much like him in this respect. I'm all about me, and others only inasmuch as they can feed or stroke my ego. True empathy, love and the like elude me, just like the white light. I'm shallow and selfish, and I've come to accept that about myself. I'm a scoundrel at heart. Just rotten. A fox, a crocodile, a spider, a rock, nothingness. A big, sucking emptiness wanting to be filled but recoiling when interaction requires commitment. Easier to just remain alone in my empty space.

I don't know if I really even want to go to this reunion. It is in June. I won't have finished with my dental implant procedure by then. I'll still be this missing tooth guy. That's no biggie. I've been that guy for seven plus years now. It's just that I only know a couple of people from my senior class, and none of them have kept up with me post-Facebook. 

I don't have anything to prove and nothing that I'm proud to show off, other than that I am alive, I guess. My story is too sad and convoluted for a social event like this. I could go and just reminisce about the past, but really, I only knew a few of those people, and we weren't all that close. Most of my friends were from outside my school, or were a year ahead or behind me.

Today is Saturday, and if I don't go to the DBSA walk, I have a regularly scheduled standing ritual to perform. Music, caffeine and cannabis. Simple hedonistic religion, really. A day of self-indulgence. But like the purple mist, it does get lonely. All the music and practicing of songs feels like it is meant to be shared. 

I'm happy in my little energy bubble, but I'm scheming towards grander things. But these things are so much more difficult than living in my imagination. They seem to require many, many little baby steps, and I want to emerge from my egg fully formed, rather than some little duckling that can barely quack. 

And this is the quality of writing you get from me when I don't go back to sleep after one of my many nighttime bouts of insomnia. I put on the past life regression MP3 and was asked to write down my impressions. I have done so. Good night, or good morning, as the case may be.

Friday, March 24, 2023

For lack of a cord


I was running with a pack of shirtless skinheads, punks from a band I used to play with in the 80s. Rick Johnson was the leader. At this point they were more like a nomadic group of feral thugs, and musical instruments were still something on the distant horizon of their evolution. I thought to change that by bringing a guitar into the mix.

"I don't see as it could hurt," Rick agreed. "We need more noise. Screaming is only getting us so far. Let's say you bring one of these guitars to our next session."

"I'll do it," I said, and I set about to secure the proper equipment.

The group was sharing space with some other bands, people who played actual music, and I figured I'd just borrow some of their stuff. I had my own guitar and cord, and someone had an old Marshall combo that was in pretty rough shape which they said we could use. I'd brought my guitar, but I failed to bring my patch cord, having left it in my car, parked some blocks away.

The amp had its own very short patch cord, however, and it was hardwired to the amp. I could either use it and stand two feet from the amp, or I could go and retrieve mine from my car. I wanted to be less restricted, so I opted to get my own cord. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember where my car was parked, and after wandering around for what seemed like hours, I had to return to the practice empty handed, and some other guys were playing at that point. 

In my desperation to be part of the band, I wound up buying a drum kit from some speed metal guys who were hanging out on the periphery. It was a pretty decent rig, with the exception of one of the tom-toms. The drum head was blown out, and the rim had been fashioned out of a bicycle chain. After attempting a few solos, I knew I'd have to replace the head in order to get the gig. 

I pulled out the ruptured paper machete drum head material and began stretching a new skin out of a Mexican poncho that I'd been wearing. It didn't have quite the resonant properties of the paper machete, but it would do the job. By the time I managed to get it together, however, the band had lost their spot, and another band was set to play for the night.

(Mike)

"And introducing, on drums, our own Michael Cardenas," an announcer proudly proclaimed.

 I looked at his drumset, and it was familiar. "Isn't that?--" I started to ask.

"Mark III," the announcer finished. "...and they are GOOOD."


Damn Mark III, I cursed to myself. Of course they were good. Everybody liked them. Damned likable kids, full of that kid energy. They weren't second or even third generation punk, they were something different entirely, some kind of boy band pop with their roots in dad's retro rock, playing a mix of original songs and covers of 80's, 90s and 00's hits with a tight, fresh enthusiasm. 

Damn them, anyway.

I went to the music store to try to buy a real drum head, and while I was at the counter, someone made note of the fact that I wasn't wearing any pants. I looked down, and sure enough, I just had on some tighty-whiteys with the remnants of the cloth I'd used for the drum head hanging from the elastic like a tail.

"Never you mind that," I told the man at the counter. "I've got someplace to be, so just the drum head, if you please."

That's about all I can remember. I woke up with a case of pinkeye, or dry eye with extreme prejudice, for the second time in two days. It's the same eye as the flint projectile injury from Sunday, but it doesn't necessarily feel related. I get eye injuries frequently while sleeping, and this feels more like one of those.

Thursday, March 23, 2023

Past Life Regression


I had difficulty imagining the white light. I was only able to muster up the faintest of light, always a purple mist, just the beginning of luminescence. I got relaxed enough, finding an open state at the point where I was told, "You are now in your natural state."

After being told to cross the imaginary bridge, I had a faint image that it was night. I was in a city with a some neon lights. It appeared mostly black and white, maybe sepia, with some faint pink and brown. I was wearing a dark brown suit, rather stylish. It was the 1930s, I think. My shoes were a pull-on leather type, polished black and shiny. 

I was walking across an empty street towards the neon light. I was happy. Something to do with music. I think I was a musician in the swing or jazz era. I don't recall seeing any other people. 

I was told to imagine my house. It was small. I only had very faint images of an older, smallish gas stove in the kitchen. It looked like a single person kitchen, mostly empty. Just the stove. The living room had a wooden rocking chair and a standup bass. I think I lived alone.

Later, I was told to recall a significant event. I recall seeing a stage with one guy on it. He was wearing a white button down shirt and sitting in a chair, playing a stringed instrument. I'm not sure if it was me or if I was down at the front of the stage, critiquing the person playing. The person playing was nervous, like it was an audition or a recital. It was just me and this one other person, and I'm not even sure who was who. 

I was told to imagine some other significant things, and I saw an airplane and a steam locomotive. I get the impression that I traveled a lot. I don't recall seeing any other human beings or interacting with anyone. I have the feeling that I was an itinerant musician, a very lonely person, but successful enough to survive and at least dress stylishly and secure lodging. 

I was told to imagine the day before my death. All I could visualize was a bed with white sheets and blankets. No one was in the bed, it was just empty and made up. It was a small metal framed bed, not a twin, but the next size up, a double maybe. That's it. Just a bed. There were no people, and I don't remember speaking to anyone throughout the whole of this experience.

I was asked about my biggest regret. I suppose it was that I never met the love of my life. I had no friends. My life was just that of a lonely itinerant musician. I'd perhaps achieved some level of success, hence the neon lights. But it wasn't a large venue, more like a late night club. 

When I was told to go back to the spirit realm, that I was now in my spirit or light body, I got no visualization of any brightness. Mostly black with that faint purple mist. More or less a void with only the beginning of some kind of energy, never quite forming into anything. Some faint speckling of very distant stars or planets or galaxies in the vast blackness. Maybe the blackness contained "dark energy" or something. It felt like this was my essence. Not evil, just dark. 

I tried not to fabricate, but the impressions were so faint that I had to extrapolate from the various brief images and interpret their meaning.

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

A Few Details More


 

This is a song I wrote in 1989 about an old lady I met while looking for an apartment and planning my escape from the cult. 


I went looking for an apartment the other day,
Cause I kind of desperately wanted to get away.
So I stopped by one that had a sign on the way,
Located about a half a mile from City Hall.
 
Anyway, I was just looking for the manager,
So I knocked on a door, and an old lady answered.
“Come in,” she said, repeating it several times.
She was hard of hearing, so I told her I was just looking for an apartment.
 
She was going to move to a trailer park in two months.
She said, “Maybe you can move into this one.
Look in the kitchen, you could have table.
And for 300 bucks, you can have this bed. It’s brand new.
 
“Now, the bathroom is a little different, see the toilet
Has something on it, cause it’s too low for me to use it.
I hurt my toe. It was broken. I had a bad fall.
You know, my son and my daughters don’t care for me at all.
 
“My mother died when I was twenty, and I miss her still.
Here, listen to a poem about her funeral.
My other two sons are gone. One died of cancer
From eating K-Rations in the war, died two years later.
 
“My one son who’s still living said I was crazy.
Told me they were going to put me away.
Well, it hurt my feelings, and as a Mother’s Day present,
He borrowed my car and took it in for a trade in
(Bought himself a new car).”
 
All this time I was nervously wishing
I’d have knocked on a different door.
At the same time she would tell me
Just a few details more.
 
Her dog, Teddy, was drowned when she took him to the groomer for a bath.
Fido, her concerned son-in-law had put to sleep so she wouldn’t have to grieve his death.
Her previous landlord kicked her out after forty years.
She wanted to beat the sugar out of him, reading the eviction notice in tears.
 
So many people had hurt her so,
And here I was wanting to go,
But she kept me there with one detail more
 
This apartment will be open. Soon I’ll be gone.
The one on the sign is a different one.
A lady died there. She was old like me
I was born in 1906.” (that made her 83)
 
Her face was chiseled with the stories she told.
She’d worked in many factories and as a cook in Chicago.
She told me about a band of angels she saw
Coming for a baby, rejoicing like it was a million dollars.
 
When she said “a million dollars,” her mouth got real tight.
Her voice began to to get shrill and intensify.
Tears welled up in her eyes.
For a little while, she started to cry.
 
She only asked me one or two questions,
Which I answered, but she hardly listened.
Content she was to tell me about her life,
How just last December she was robbed by some guys.
(They loaded up two trucks and took off—said they were helping her move)

I didn’t know, I still don’t, what I’ve learned,
Except that life is hard and getting old no fun.
So here I am. I still haven’t found an apartment,
But I’m still young, and I haven’t given up yet.

Jeff the Jerk

 

I was beginning to feel unsafe on my own property. My neighbor Jeff, the retired correctional officer, was living on the Hutchinson property to the east and had taken up target shooting. He'd also taken up drinking, and the combination was making me uneasy, as bullets would frequently stray onto my property, making a simple trip to the mailbox a life threatening proposition. Furthermore, he appeared to be enjoying my discomfort, and he seemed to be picking targets right in my path, so I'd have to play "Mother May I" just to get past him.

"Come on, Jeff!" I protested. "I need to get back up to the house."

<pew> <pew> <pew> <laughter>

"That's not funny!" I cried. "Do I need to call the cops?"

"Do I need to remind you that I AM the cops?" he retorted, invoking his sacred status as a retired law enforcement officer. 

<pew> <pew> 

"Look at him squirm!"

 <more laughter from Jeff and his drinking buddies>

"Jeff, we used to be friends," I said, appealing to some long buried shred of humanity inside the oafish brute. "You built my deck for me. You're not like this. What happened?"

His brother-in-law, a dark skinned man wearing a Panama hat, stepped out of the shadows. "What happened is...I thought you knew. Isn't it obvious?" 

He looked around the property and then back at Jeff with a gesture that somehow conveyed what should have been apparent to anyone with two eyes and a brain. The front yard was littered with beer cans, and the flower garden was untended. Quad tracks scarred the lawn, and a couple of vehicles sat on blocks with their hoods up and engines missing, hoses and wires issuing forth like entrails from their gutted carcasses. 

"How long has she been gone?" I asked.

"It's been four years," the brother-in-law said. "It was cancer. It ate her alive. But as you can see, what it has done to him is far worse."

I felt a wave of empathy for my neighbor and his misfortune, and guilt for my own inattention. I should have been aware of his struggle, but I'd been shamefully blind. How many times must I have passed him by without a word, without even the faintest inkling that something was wrong? And now it was too late. He'd turned into something unrecognizable, a feral bully of a man, an archetype, a meme, reprobate and inhuman.

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Mario's Matchmaker --- and the Universe Kicks My Ass (again) With Its Gentle Persuasion


I dreamed I was taking a meeting with Mario Lopez, TV host and actor of Saved by the Bell fame. We were sitting at a lunch table with Robert Redford in one of LA's lesser known eateries. It was a buffet type restaurant, and the 4x6 folding tables were arranged banquet style, grouped together in rows two deep and six long, and covered with cheap plastic table covers. The topic of discussion was the dating difficulties of the Hollywood elite, and I was trying to sell my matchmaking services to the younger actor.

"But Mario," I insisted, "Don't you want to find a woman who appreciates you for you?"

"That has been a difficulty, yes," he admitted. "All they see is my money and my fame."

"Exactly," Robert Redford chimed in. "It's like feeding pigeons in the park."

Jenny Bennett, who had been sitting at an adjacent table, took this as her cue to get up and hit the buffet. The two men watched her walk away and then leaned in closer to talk a bit more privately.

"Like that one," Mario said. "You can just spot a gold digger a mile away."

"To be fair, she just doesn't know you for who you are. You never know, she might wind up being your soulmate. But you've got to let people past the layers, Mario. Let them see who you are on the inside."

I don't recall much more. It was pretty short on story, and I feel like I'm fabricating as it is. When I get some time, I'll recount the story of how I almost put my eye out yesterday while trying to re-flint a cheap plastic lighter.

----

 

OK, so let me relate, as briefly as possible, the story of how I almost blinded myself while attempting the most insignificant of tasks, the re-flinting of a lighter.

Lighters are cheap, right? Like, under a dollar for a disposable Bic. Well, the one that I had was even cheaper, since I found it on the ground while walking on Loma Rica Road. I've found a lot of drug paraphernalia on the side of the road, including several industrial grade butane torches and a couple of glass pipes. A lot of people, smoking a lot of stuff, walk down that road, apparently.

The lighter I was repairing was a little black plastic number. It has "My Fucking Lighter" printed on the front along with a graphic of someone's middle finger. In small writing on the side are the words "Eco Friggin Friendly! High use of Recycled Material. 3X more durable. Don't Throw Me Out! I'm Reffillable, Reflintable, and I'm collectible, too!" 

Being the Eco Warrior that I am, I picked up some butane at the store, so I could keep refilling it. It became my Saturday Morning Special, and I was proud to call it "My Fucking Lighter." OK, I wasn't really getting that sappy over it, but I really am that cheap. I'll spend ten bucks to save a dollar, if the math works out that way. 

After nearly a year of use, the flint began to wear out, so I decided to replace the flint with one scavenged from a dead disposable Bic. You know, the kind that have zero butane left in them, but you keep them around hoping to get one last light out of them. What, you all don't do that? And I suppose you don't take the dead batteries out of a TV remote and rub them around in your hands to warm them up, just so you don't have to get up and change them right then? 

Anyway, armed with some forceps and zero knowledge of the task I was about to undertake, I began disassembling the lighter. I took off the metal shield, then I pried the little wheel out from its plastic bracket. This didn't seem to be the the most well planned replacement procedure, because the wheel's bracket was a rather tight fit, and I couldn't see very many people being able to remove it without breaking the plastic. 

The instant that I popped the wheel free, what was left of the flint, which was spring loaded, came flying out and disappeared somewhere into the carpet or furniture. I looked for it for several minutes before becoming exasperated. Fucking universe disappearing bullshit, I inwardly cursed. Actually, I'm pretty sure I vocalized it. I do that whenever I encounter the slightest difficulty in life.

"Damn you, fucking piece of shit! I'm not done with you!" I growled. 

I wasn't going to be deterred, so I went to find one of those dead Bics and rob the flint from its cadaver. Parts is parts. I spent another ten minutes or so looking for a lighter that was actually dead. Most of the non-functional lighters I own still have one or two lights left in them. True, you have to make ten or twenty attempts before you get that one lucky spark that ignites the weakest and briefest of flames. 

Finally, I found one. It was a white mini Bic, so old that the plastic was disintegrating into puffs of smoke when you turned the thumb striker. Its sacrifice would serve the cause nicely. I pried it apart with no regrets, and when I got to the wheel, the same thing happened with the flint. It flew out with such force that it ricocheted off the ceiling and bounced several times on the floor by the back door. Because it landed on linoleum, I was able to echo locate it with minimal cursing.

The flint from the Bic was substantially larger than the one from My Fucking Lighter, probably twice as long. That would be great, I thought. Longer flint, longer life. I gripped it with the forceps and began the first of many attempts to load it onto the spring and push the assembly back into its tiny hole. 

The problem was, as soon as I let go of the forceps, the little flint would rocket out. I was unable to get the wheel positioned on top of it while bending the bracket to accommodate its installation. I needed more hands and smaller fingers. I decided to use a paper clip, fashioning a makeshift brace to hold the flint under pressure while I removed the forceps and installed the wheel. 

Many times, I would get as far as having the wheel halfway positioned on the bracket, but I couldn't get the second side to seat. The flint would not go down far enough, it seemed, and eventually my finger would slip, and the flint would forcefully self-eject. 

"FUCK YOU, LIGHTER!!!" I screamed. "YOU THINK YOU'VE WON? FUCK YOU!!!"

That's when the universe decided it had had enough of my shit. After 20 or so attempts, I'd finally gotten the spring and the flint down in the hole, and I was all set with the paper clip. But when I released the forceps, the paper clip slipped off the flint, allowing the full pressure of the spring to shoot the tiny metal projectile directly at my face. 

I felt the sting in my right eye immediately. 

"FUCK!!!" I screamed. "IN THE EYE?!! You hit me in the FUCKING EYE? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?" 

I got up from the chair and ran to the bathroom to make sure my eye was still intact. I couldn't see any blood or ruptures, so I calmed down a little. This could have been so much worse, I kept telling myself.

I abandoned the lighter project and went upstairs to make breakfast. I was probably hypoglycemic by then from being hyperfocused on my stupid task and neglecting to eat. As I was placing some vegetables on the cutting board, I got a good look at my eye in one of the mirrors next to the kitchen sink. In the cornea right above the pupil, nearly a bullseye in the middle of the iris, I could see a circular impression, a crescent shaped dent left by the end of the flint. 

I DENTED MY FUCKING EYEBALL.

This visual caused me to panic, and I began to pour sweat. My knees became weak, and I had to sit down on the couch for a minute. Both cats immediately came to my aid, providing the service of comfort for which they are on permanent retainer. 

"It's OK, kitties," I lied to them. "I'm OK." I kept telling myself how much worse it could have been. I could still see. The dent was just above my line of focus, and it didn't seem to be causing any visual anomalies. 

I got up and finished cooking breakfast, looking in the mirror every five minutes to confirm the damage. It was only visible from certain angles because of the eye's tendency to reflect images, hiding the damage its surface. Certain angles made it look obvious, however, and it went from a dent to a small bubble after an hour or two.

I read up on injuries to the cornea and made a few desperate texts to Emery and to my mom. Both of them suggested making an appointment with the ophthalmologist as soon as possible. Because it was Sunday, I was going to have to wait at least a day to be seen. 

I took some ibuprophen for the pain, as my eye was still stinging. After a few hours the pain lessened, and I spent the rest of the day mostly listening to TV shows. Every so often I'd look at the writing on a sign that I have on my wall, trying to determine if my vision was the same, better or worse. It mostly went from the same to worse, since all the stress and worry over my dented cornea was making my brain fatigued.

Then next day, I couldn't see any remnant of the dent from the day before, but I wanted to make sure there weren't any microparticles lodged in my eye. I managed to get an appointment with the Walmart Vision Center doctor. It had been 5 years since my last eye exam, and I figured I'd probably need a new prescription. The doctor gave me a regular eye exam and also put some dye in both eyes to check for abrasions.

"You got lucky," he said, and I agreed with him. 

I don't know if luck has anything to do with it. I think I was being taught a specific lesson, and my reprimand for being stubborn was a really good scare. I have since learned, or re-relearned, the principal that if you are struggling excessively with something, it is best to take a step back and re-evaluate your approach. You are probably doing something wrong.

That was indeed the case with my lighter project. The following day, I googled "re-flinting My Fucking Lighter," and I came up with a precise tutorial that didn't include launching dangerous projectiles at one's face. No prying or bending of brackets either. The entire assembly actually comes out, and the spring and flint are loaded from the bottom and screwed into place with a cap. Duh.

Why did I waste all this time recounting the minutia of such a pathetically stupid event? Well, I guess because this is my life, and this was something that happened. I also needed more practice doing the sentence writing thing, so there's that as well. 

And yes, I am grateful to be able to write this with two eyes that can still be corrected to 20/20 vision with the proper lenses. I'm also getting some safety goggles for my second pair of frames when I get my new glasses from Walmart in a week or so.

 


Sunday, March 19, 2023

50 round clip


 

I dreamed I was in an auditorium with wooden bleachers. A crowd was gathering, and the seats were beginning to fill up. In the center of the auditorium was a long row of antique cabinets, the kind you might see in a print shop, with lots of specialized cubbyholes and little doors with brass knobs. I watched as man in a trench coat put a machine gun into one of the lower shelves and quickly walked away. 

I tried to be nonchalant as I walked over to the cabinet. A lady was watching me, so I pretended that I was just admiring the cabinetry. She began talking to another lady, I and took the opportunity to disassemble the machine gun and unload its ammo, shoving the bullets into my coat pockets. I counted out 50 rounds, ten groups of five, as they came out of the magazine.

The lady kept looking over at me, but I managed to do my work stealthily enough to avoid detection. I closed the cabinet doors after kicking the disassembled firearm into the storage compartment. In my haste to get out of there, I wound up grabbing someone else's Kleen Kanteen, which I only discovered after taking a sip and finding it contained coffee instead of water. I felt guilty for taking it, and I hoped that whoever wound up with my water bottle was satisfied with the trade. 

Later, as I was walking down the street, and away from the auditorium, I put my hands in my pocket and pulled out one of the bullets to look at it. As I was examining it, the bullet got sizzling hot and began to come apart in my fingers. It started hissing like a firecracker getting ready to explode. I immediately threw it, and it detonated on impact with the pavement. I noticed that what remained after the explosion was a chunk of lead far larger than the original bullet. It was the size of a tennis shoe. 

A man walking next to me went to retrieve the giant slug, and holding it up for me to see, began explaining to me the expansion properties of lead. The physics of his explanation eluded me, and I woke up, ending yet another useless dream fragment.


Friday, March 17, 2023

Tiny watermelons and seaside American Idol stalking

 

My mom, Greg and I have been taking some strange ocean themed vacations lately, it seems. The latest one involved us loosely following the American Idol crew along their itinerary in some coastal towns in Northern California. I was unaware of the agenda at first, but it turned out to be one of my mom's elaborate schemes break me into the business of producing the show. 

It started out that we were just enjoying the ocean, doing some wave watching, as there was a nice winter swell, and surfers were out in abundance, riding the giant breakers. Greg and I approached a beach with turquoise blue water, and I noted that the waves looked a bit flat that day.

"Don't let them fool ya," Greg said. "There are some sneakers out there."

"I know all about that," I said. I was savvy to the ocean's wiles. I'd been lured too close to the water a time or two, only to have some rogue wave come out of nowhere and overtake me before I could turn and run.

We watched from a distance as the waves began to grow, and surfers paddled further out to sea to avoid getting caught inside. They began to take their places in the lineup, and soon a surf competition was underway. We watched for a while and then rejoined my mom who had been doing something on her own in the town.

We found ourselves in an alleyway next to an old lady's beach-adjacent house. The lady didn't appear to be home, so we poked around the property a bit. She had a garden in the back with some vines that produced a cluster of tiny melon-like fruits. I thought they looked like watermelons, but my mom insisted that they were some kind of grape.

"Only one way to find out," I said, and I picked one of the oddly shaped green and white striped fruit from the bunch.

I was just about to break it open, certain that I was going to find the innards of a baby watermelon, when I was startled by a voice from behind me. It was the old lady.

"Do you want some chili?" she said, pointing to a table set for four that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

"How did you...? You just can't go scaring people like that. We were just...admiring your fruit," I said somewhat defensively, although I knew that we'd been trespassing and probably deserved a good scare.

"Let me know if it's too hot," she said, noting my mom's expression as she sampled the dish.

It was actually a plate of spaghetti, but apparently seasoned with chili spice, so my mom gasped a bit after taking her first bite. I thought mine tasted fine, but the old lady proceeded to douse each of our plates with some water, which she poured directly from a cooking pot, effectively thinning out the sauce. 

I continued to eat my spaghetti-chili with the unabashed zeal of a child, sloppily slurping the noodles and leaving little red whip marks across my cheeks. As we ate, we were admiring the view from the lady's property.

On one side was the unassuming alley that had been our mode of entry. But on the other side was the beachfront promenade, which hundreds, maybe thousands of people would traverse in a day. That would be a lot of spaghetti, I thought, mentally calculating the percentage of random trespassers that would be stopping by to admire her strange fruit.

From my seat at the table, I could see the waves breaking in perfect tubes, and the angle was such that I could stare down the barrel into what seemed like an endless tunnel. Their form was so perfect, and they held their shape so long, it looked as though one could just walk down the middle of one and reach the other end of the beach without even getting wet. I pointed this out to my mom, but she didn't see it.

"All I see is the tent awning in front of those businesses," she said.

I looked, and I'll be damned if that was all I could see now, too. My perfect wave turned out to be nothing more than an optical illusion created by some man made sunshades. I was a bit disappointed.

Later, we were in a dingy hotel room, the kind with faux walnut wood panel wallboard and sandy shag carpet that never gets vacuumed. I was watching a black and white TV set that had a live feed of the American Idol set. It was just raw, unedited hidden camera stuff, where they were hoping to catch the contestants in those rare unscripted dramatic moments which they would later re-write and re-enact in their typical overproduced reality show style.

A knock came on the door. It was a black lady of about 30 with long hair, not straightened, but neatly worn in a pony tail. She wore a navy blue dress with oversize white buttons down the front and a white belt that accentuated her figure.

"Are you ready, Andrew?" she asked me.

"Ready for what?" I asked, unaware of who she was or what I was supposed to be ready for.

"To help us produce the show," she said. 

I started to get excited as I put the pieces together. We'd been surreptitiously following the Idol tour, and somehow we were now in the mix. 

"Oh, that would be awesome," I said. "I've always wanted to see some of that stuff up close." (I make no apologies for the embarrassing fact that I've watched the show since its inception.)

"OK, we'll get started soon. Do you need some of this?" She held out a joint and offered to light it for me. 

I looked down and saw that I already had one in my hand, which I endeavored to hide quickly. "No, thanks," I said, casually putting my hands in my pockets. "Let's get to work, shall we?" We discussed details for a minute, and she promised to fetch me within the hour. 

When she left, my mom stumbled out of the hall closet where, apparently, she'd been hiding. Some smoke wafted out with her, as she'd been cooped up in there the whole time, nervously smoking a joint of her own. This was a twenty-something version of my mom, with long, straight auburn hair and thick, black plastic framed glasses.

"No, thanks, Mom," I said when she held out the half burnt remnant in my direction. "I guess I've got some work to do."


Monday, March 13, 2023

Redneck Towing Scam

Bad things always happen when I play hooky from work, but I had that "you deserve a break today" feeling, so I decided to take my chances. I packed up my Fender Twin and decided to park out on the Skyway, just wanting to listen to some tunes while I sat there in the car not going to work. Not much of a plan, and certainly not very well thought out, although I did bring along an extension cord long enough to run from the gas station on the corner to my unlikely parking spot on the busy road.

I spent an inordinate amount of time just deciding whether or not to park parallel or perpendicular to the curb. I tried both, but since there were no other cars parked anywhere in sight, I had no frame of reference. I decided to compromise and went with the angled approach, although there were no lines indicating that this was the correct choice. 

I sat there for a while listening to the radio, as played through the Fender's two twelve inch speakers. It didn't sound particularly good, since it was a talk station anyway, but that was OK. It was me, doing what I wanted, making shit work while I avoided going to the job that I hated. Feeling a little proud, I stepped out of the car for a minute to have a beer with one of my friends who lived in a nearby apartment building. 

"Come on in," the friend said, seeing my half empty beer bottle and offering me another. 

"OK," I said, "but I can't stay long. I'm parked out on the street, and my amp is in the car."

He convinced me to stay long enough to finish the beer I had with me, plus the one he gave me. We talked about various conspiracies, from aliens to Armageddon, and I was starting to get that uncomfortable feeling one gets when something is not right somewhere. You don't know what or where, exactly, just that you have to leave. So, I excused myself and walked back out to my car.

Or, I should say, I walked back out to where my car used to be, because when I got there, it was gone. I kicked myself for staying too long in my friend's house, for ditching work and bringing my amp along with me, and for leaving my car parked in such a ridiculous spot. I should have known it would get towed.

I went back into my friend's house to ask for his assistance. I'd been looking on my phone, trying to google towing companies, but I couldn't type the words into the search bar for the life of me. I asked my friend if he knew the name of the towing company that was most likely to have towed my car.

"Death Suddenly," he said.

"Excuse me?" I said. "I just had my car towed, possibly stolen. I don't have time for any of your weird conspiracy shit."

"No," he said. "The name of the tow company is Death Suddenly Towing. That's the one my landlord uses, anyway."

I still couldn't get any words typed into my phone's search bar, but I had a brilliant idea: why not just ask the landlord? He'd know for sure whether or not he'd called the tow truck and what company he used. I excused myself and went to go knock on the landlord's door.

Silva from work was also hanging around, and he decided that he needed to go with me. The landlord wasn't a nice person, and I might require his particular diplomatic skills to get anything out of him. Silva was nothing if not a people person, so I agreed.

After a few knocks, the landlord opened the door a crack, squinting out at me suspiciously. He was wearing a wife beater and lazily dangling an empty beer bottle with one finger stuck in the mouth hole. 

"What 'choo want?" he drawled. 

Damned rednecks, I thought. He knew damn well what I wanted. He'd probably concocted this elaborate parking scam, in cahoots with his tow truck buddies. There weren't any "No Parking" signs on the street, probably because he'd torn all them down. They were probably hanging up in his redneck clubhouse with all of his other bullet-ridden trophy signs, right below the deer heads and between the Nazi and Confederate flags. I kept these thoughts to myself, however, and asked him directly about the car.

"I was wondering. I have a silver Honda Accord. No, I mean gold. Wait, no it's silver." For some reason, I couldn't remember the color of my own car. "It was parked right out front, and now it's gone. I'm wondering if it might have gotten towed, by any chance?" That was pretty diplomatic, I thought. I didn't need Silva after all.

"Well, I didn't have it towed, if that's what yer askin'. That would be Rodney. He's up in Number 8. But you best not bother him. He don't take kindly to interruptions. I better go wit 'choo." 

We went to Number 8, and through the window, we could see Rodney, a fat black man in his 50s, fast asleep in his Lazy Boy. In front of him, just inside the door, was a big board with a lot of keys hanging from it. I spotted my keychain right away. 

Geez, I thought, had I been that careless to just leave my keys in the car? I quietly opened the screen door and reached in and grabbed my keys off the rack. This was going better than I had thought. I had the keys, now I just needed to find the car.

The landlord told me that all the cars that got impounded for improper parking were stored in a loft in the back of the property. He led me to a decrepit old wooden building with broken windows and no visible ground floor entrance. We were going to have to climb up some rickety redneck fire escape made up of two extension ladders placed one on top of the other. 

The landlord, who was apparently part squirrel, made it up no problem. I stared up at the unlikely configuration from the ground with unease, but I was determined to get my car back, so I nervously began to climb the first of the two ladders. When I'd gotten near the top, the second ladder fell away, and the ladder I was on suddenly became a lot less stable. It was barely catching the corner of the building, and it began to sway in breeze.

Before I had a chance to contemplate my long fall to the ground, and without getting any closure on my car situation, I woke up. I was none too pleased with myself, so rather than go back to sleep, I punished myself by staying up to dutifully chronicle the event.

Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Canoe Tip


 

Here's my tip: If a kid asks you to go on a boat trip with them, and it turns out to be a canoe, pass. 

I dreamed I was standing on the veranda of a seaside hotel overlooking the harbor, when a young girl approached and began flirting with me relentlessly. She was an attractive, if slightly mousy, dishwater blonde of 15 to 20, or thereabouts, no more than 5 foot tall in heels. Because of her diminutive stature and indeterminate age, I felt it was inappropriate to respond to any of her flirtations. 

To make matters worse, she had a brother (or a sister with a shaved head, I couldn't tell which) who kept inserting him/herself in between us and trying to steal kisses Bugs Bunny style. I kept having to fend off this androgynous sibling's amorous advances in order to keep up a semi-normal conversation with the other one. 

"What do you like to do?" the little Lolita asked, looking up from her Ipad and batting her eyelashes in a comically practiced manner.

I looked up from my own Ipad and told her, "I don't know. Do you do much boating?"

"I'll see what I can arrange," she said, and she and mini-Sinead scuttled off to find a boat.

I waited there, and in a moment they showed up with a canoe. I looked down from the veranda at their pitiful vessel. It was a fifteen foot plastic Coleman, a two-seater, and it was overloaded and half-full of water, a mere 2 inches from going under completely.

"Don't you think you should empty out some of that water?" I asked. "I'm certainly not getting in that thing as it is now. I'd have to sit on the bottom of the boat, since there are only two seats."

She attempted to right the situation by tipping the canoe back, so as to drain some of the water out. This resulted in the boat going full Titanic, sinking the stern and tilting the bobbing bow skyward. The bald-headed kid abandoned ship, while the other savvy wharf scamp wrangled the teetering craft back into an upright position. She maneuvered the boat back to the boat launch area, picking up her drowning rat relative on the way.

Soon we were right back where we started, with the two of them trying to convince me to join them for a little pleasure cruise. I don't know what my dumb ass was thinking, but the next minute, I was sitting in the bottom of that soggy canoe, clutching my Ipad and gritting my teeth against the cold. 

They paddled around the harbor, and soon it became obvious that we were lost. There were inlets and outlets, islands and abandoned areas, and very little traffic of other vessels to indicate where the main port was. The two of them seemed unconcerned, but I was getting antsy. The weather was growing colder, and it looked as if it might rain. 

That's about all I can recall. I woke up soon thereafter, my audiobook Papillon still playing from the night before.

 

Monday, March 6, 2023

Don't Stop

Sometime close to Thanksgiving 2011, I was in the midst of caregiving hell and just beginning my version of what people like to call a spiritual journey. I remember having a conversation with a co-worker named Pao Lor, a likeable, hardworking, young family man of Hmong descent, who asked me what I was most thankful for.

"My pain," I told him, with all sincerity.

"You've got to be kidding me, Sparky," he said, astonished. "Why would you be thankful for that?"

"Because it is giving the greatest opportunity for spiritual growth," I said. 

Really, I said that. And I had a straight face. I had been listening to a ton of self-help and spiritual audiobooks, beginning with David Burns' book "Feeling Good," and then "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. By the time I was having this conversation with Pao, I'd been listening to the Tao Te Ching and had begun to piece together some sort of generic non-dual New Agey belief system from the hodgepodge of various Eastern philosophies I'd encountered.

I don't know why I suddenly remembered that conversation tonight, but it came after the song "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac popped into my head while I was brushing my teeth. I've had Covid for the last week, in addition to recovering from dental implant surgery. Tonight, however, my pain was at a minimum, and I'm on the rebound from Covid, so the song kind of germinated a seed of hope, reminiscent of the Clinton inauguration party back in '93. The feeling that better days could actually be ahead.

That song has an older memory for me as well. I first heard it when I was around 11 years old and living with my father in Santa Monica. Without going into all the drama again, I'll simply say that my mindset at that time was one of a prisoner awaiting the end of my sentence. I read the book, Papillon, by Henri Charriere, about a prisoner who made multiple escapes from a penal colony in French Guiana while serving a life sentence for a crime he didn't commit. Like Papillon marking time during one of his long stretches in solitary, I had the days until I turned 18 penciled on the wall on the inside of my closet. 1,095 down, 2,920 to go.

During the summer days, I would ride my bike around the neighborhood listening to a transistor radio. Nothing fancy, I can't even remember what brand it was, just something cheap and plastic. But on it, I could listen to all the top 40 hits on local pop station 93 KHJ. "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Stairway to Heaven," "Killer Queen" and a bunch of stuff that is now called Classic Rock or Oldies. There was also an oldie station, K-Earth 101, which played what I will always consider the real oldies, stuff from the 50s and early to mid 60s. Once you get into the acid rock era, I cease to consider them oldies, and things get more complicated to sort out.

Anyway, while riding around listening this little bicycle radio, I remember hearing the song "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac. Something in the way they struck the note in the chorus, "It'll BEEE..better than before," rang my 11 year old heart like the fricken Liberty Bell. Oh yeah, it was the Bicentennial, and "Philadelphia Freedom" by Elton John was also in the charts around that time, another in my soundtrack of get me the fuck out of here songs. 

I know I'm digressing, but I haven't lost sight of the bike path. Not yet anyway. 

I was planning to run away to Mexico on that little white Gitano tenspeed of mine. As I listened to "Don't Stop," I got myself pumped up, doing laps around the block, up and down parking structures, trying to build my endurance for the big escape. I was Rocky doing the steps, jogging at 4AM, drinking raw eggs. 

(Umm, the 11-year-old me actually did go through a Rocky phase around that time, where I joined a local boxing gym and did some puny version of that whole trip, including the raw egg beverage--and yeah, it tasted really disgusting. This was in between my Westworld phase and my Jaws phase. Thank god I never had a Star Wars phase, cuzz that's just geeky.)

So, back to the moment I had in the bathroom, thinking of "Don't Stop" and Pao Lor's question about "what am I thankful for?" I can truly say, with a straight face--but only in retrospect, looking backward on what has made me the person that I am, with the memories and recollections that I possess: "MY PAIN."

So, thank you to all the players in my life who took the karmic hit and played the villains and petty tyrants in my little drama. To everyone who ever made my life hard: you are all beloved of me, and I treasure your gifts. The pain you inflicted cut the grooves of my record and gave my life purpose, direction, meaning and focus. Sure, I was screwed up psychologically for a while, but no worse than the kid who gets everything he wants and eats a diet of sugar and McDonald's every day. 

And the story is now mine to tell, to embellish as I see fit, as I cloud up the ether with my uniquely distorted perceptions, adding my little twist to the big kaleidoscopic lens of humanity's hazy, monocular vision. This is the voice you've given me, and I am...truly... <evil laugh>  grateful.

 

The Morning Pages March 6, 2023

 I thought I'd use this format today, since I have a lot of disparate thoughts to squeeze out of the tube, and I don't know where they are all going to land. I'm not sure if I want them to be read, or if they ever are, I'd like someone to feel as if they really shouldn't be reading them. Like a parent snooping around in their daughter's room discovering a secret diary marked "private." 

So, I've had Covid for the last week, and I can't say it's been the worst thing I've ever experienced. It has been multi-faceted, kind of like life, with some moments of extreme FUUUUCCCKKK, long stretches of them, it would seem at times, but also, some interesting moments with random interjections of something which I can only classify as joy. 

Back it up, whoa! What? 

Yes, I'm going to say that again. Joy. Some kind of feeling of internal well-being. Like the pilot light suddenly ignited, and the furnace came roaring to life. Like the feeling of a warm blanket, a cup of hot cocoa on a cold day, brought to you by an old friend with whom you are about to catch up after a lengthy absence. Like waking up and stretching, feeling actually--good. Not a transient feeling like an orgasm, with its regret tinged fading afterglow, but a substantial feeling, one with real estate, with trees and good fences, in a good neighborhood, and your kid just landed a scholarship at the college of their choice.

I had one of those kinds of feelings. 

It starts in the toes, and goes up to your nose...la la la la. Actually, it starts in the belly for me, but it winds up making me smile. An irrationally exuberant, Clinton playing the saxophone kind of smile. The emotion elicited in the Disney movie after the big orchestral swell, once you've shed those tears of hope against hope, the happy people are reunited with the lost pet, the lovers have gotten married and are swirling in a flurry of white rose petals, and everyone is singing "for he's a jolly good fellow." 

It's the kind of happy feeling druggies chase, except this one is gratis, a pro bono freebie, whereas the drug version exacts higher and higher premiums for ever diminishing returns. This is a newspaper subscription paid for by an anonymous donor that just keeps showing up at your door, a lifetime membership to the cheese of the month club.

So, why am I going on about this? Why the fuck not? I haven't had this kind of feeling for exactly--I have no idea, it has been so long.


*Note: Sadly, this feeling lasted only about a half an hour. I talked to my psychiatrist about it, and he said he has heard of several cases of Covid induced mania, but nothing, as yet, has made it into the scientific journals.