Try a little charity

I dreamed my Mom, Greg and I were having a family discussion about the virtues of charity. The way family discussions usually went was that I was in trouble for something or other, and they were endeavoring to straighten me out by means of punishment of some kind.

"We want you to give your allowance to charity," Greg said, in his usual "I'm asking, but I'm not asking" tone of voice.

"And what if I don't?" was my reply, which roughly translated as "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" in teenage speak.

Greg gave me a smoldering glare, his patience growing thin. "In that case we're just going to have to start charging you rent, let's say $1000 a month, starting now."

"I think if you really want to help people, you should help them directly," I said philosophically. "Let's say you buy a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly. Make them a sandwich and give them the loaf and the jars. You've fed them and given them food for a week. Done." I was pretty happy with myself for coming up with such a practical solution on the cheap.

"No, that's not going to cut it," said Greg adamantly. "We want this to come out of your savings. You need to feel this."

"The only thing I'm going to feel is resentment," I shot back. "If this is about charity, doesn't that have to come from the heart? All you're going to do by taking my money is cement in my mind how much I don't like this." 

That last retort may have been me arguing with myself as I woke up from the dream. I was still mad, as the dream had been going on for some time with a lot of back and forth on the subject, and I was getting nowhere.

Catfishing

I dreamed I was walking in a mountain valley, and I came across a little creek unostentatiously winding its way though the grassy meadow. People had spoken of this creek as having some of the best fishing spots in the area, although you would never know to look at it. Just a humble little gurgling stream with a couple of large rocks on the banks from which an angler could stealthily cast a line. 

It was narrow enough to hop over, so I leapt from one side to the other and climbed on top of one of the big rocks to observe the fish as they made their way upstream. There were sockeye salmon and steelhead visible in the clear shallow water. I grabbed a fishing pole that someone had left on the rock, already rigged with a fly, and cast it into the stream. 

I could see the fish reacting to the lure as I jerked and reeled the line through the water. I got a couple of tentative bites, and then I pulled up hard and hooked one.

"Yeah, baby! Whoo!" I whooped, reeling in the weighty creature as it bent the pole in half.

When I got it out of the water, however, it turned out not to be one of the salmon or steelhead but my next door neighbor's cat Olaf, who used to come over to play in my backyard a couple of years ago. He'd been missing for a while and was presumed dead, since we have a lot of foxes, hawks and coyotes prowling around.

I quickly pulled the hook out of his mouth and cuddled him to comfort him from the trauma. He seemed to remember me, and we played around a bit before he wandered off, presumably to jump back into the stream and resume his new life with the fishes.

That's all. Just a simple dream about catfishing.

----

To  continue with this theme, I had a similar dream on another night, but since I didn't write it down immediately, I will retroactively place the little that I remember here. It went like this:

I was fishing at the end of the Santa Monica pier, casting my line into the monofilament jungle, where too many anglers were angling for the best spot. It reminded me of an eleven year old version of myself doing exactly the same thing and pissing off the weathered old fishermen as my line came dangerously close to crossing theirs. I could hear the admonitions of my dad, warning me that if someone else caught something, etiquette would demand that I cut my line. 

"I'll be real careful," I said. "Plus, what if I catch something?

"Not likely," said my dad. "But try if you want to."

I made the perfect cast, sailing my little sinker and baited hook well past the others. I didn't have to wait long before I was getting bites. I felt my pole jerk downward, and instantly I was engaged in the familiar battle, reeling and tugging against an unknown foe.

"Reel in, guys. He's got something!" an old fisherman shouted, and the rest of them grudgingly complied.

"This had better be good," said a particularly salty crustacean, wearing grey rubber boots and a red and black flannel overcoat. "I just baited up."

Similar complaints were muttered by others, and I reeled as fast as I could to try to get my catch landed. But when it broke water right in front of the pier, I caught a glimpse of my prey, and it sickened me. Not a mackerel or bonita, perch, cod or barracuda, not a stingray or a shark, not even a sea bass or a crab--it was my cat Eddie. 

"Damn it, Eddie!" I cried. "What have you done?" 

I managed to land the soaking wet sulky feline amidst titters and tsks from the crowd, who by now were back to baiting and casting. I pulled the hook out of my cat's mouth, alternately making apologies and issuing stern warnings that I might just as well have left her on the line as shark bait for pulling such a stunt.

I woke up feeling sick to my stomach, but that was likely the effects of some antibiotic ointment which has been wreaking havoc on my GI tract for the last few days. It was so bad that I wound up going to the clinic to get tested for CDiff. The test results should be in soon, so I'll be back to report should there be anything interesting.

Anarchyland

 

When I first arrived at Orange County's most infamous deviant travel destination, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. If Disneyland is billed as the happiest place on earth, then Anarchyland should get credit for being the most dangerous dystopian amusement park known to man. Conceived as a vacation for the Id, Anarchyland is like Sturgis, Burning Man, the Hunger Games, Mad Max's Thunderdome and Westworld all rolled into one. The first rule of Anarchyland is that there are no rules. 

One thing I noticed right off the bat was that people liked to break a lot of shit. Little shit, big shit, it didn't matter. People were setting things on fire, using earth moving equipment to knock buildings off their foundations, picking up random objects and hurling anything at anything else to see what would break. 

This included other humans. A girl my age that I knew from somewhere saw me and grabbed me by the arms. Whirling me around in a merry-go-round kind of dance, where I was the volleyball and she was the pole, she lifted me off the ground with centrifugal force and flung me into the lake. 

I didn't land directly in the water but along an embankment of loose crumbling earth that was too steep and slippery to climb. Once you landed there, you were going in the drink for sure. Another guy that she'd just hurled landed next to me, and as we tried to scramble back up the slope, both of us slid into the water at the same time. 

Half dog paddling and half crawling, I clawed at the side of the mountainous embankment, trying not to sink any deeper into the water. There was nothing to grab onto to pull myself out of the water, and bits of loose soil kept coming off in my hands. The best I could do was to try to keep moving sideways until I might eventually reach a spot where the shoreline was more level.

The other guy she'd thrown in followed this course of action and managed to get out. In a few minutes, I had done the same, and the both of us were panting on a sandy beach with the girl staring down at us from atop the cliff.

"See?" she yelled down jovially, "I left you an easy escape! How nice of me! Want to go again?"

I did not want to go again, so I turned away and looked for another place to be. All I could see were things on fire, groups of people chasing other groups of people, cars being ghostridden into walls and exploding, and everywhere broken and dead things. The bodies of horses and humans lay dissected and decaying on the scorched and bloodstained grass. It was ghastly.

The next day, God knows why, I found myself at the gate, presenting my pass for day two of the event. Security was tight, and a diminutive black security guard, who looked suspiciously like Gary Coleman, was shaking me down for any contraband items.

"We're going to need you to turn over your umbrella, sir," he said. "Nothing from the outside that might be used as a weapon can be brought in."

I didn't know why he was being so nit-picky, considering the park's "no rules" policy, but he was adamant that I surrender my cheap, rickety old black umbrella, or I wasn't getting in.

"Can I get it back after the event?" I asked.

"Sure," he said. "It'll be in the lost and found." 

He looked at his fellow officers and smirked, then threw my umbrella on a pile of other confiscated items. Somehow, I knew I wasn't going to get it back. Oh well, I thought, I hated that umbrella anyway, always turning inside out in the wind. Let them keep it.

On the slab, and a springtime renovation confessional

I woke up on the operating table with my hospital gown pulled up to my chest and a surgeon asking me "Do you feel this?" as she sliced into my leg. 

"Yes," I said. "But my pain was in my stomach. I thought you were going to operate on that."

"Well, we certainly can," she said. "Just let me place this electrode, and I will suture up your leg. Then we'll get to work on the stomach." The surgeon placed a small red wire into the incision and then glued the flap of skin back in place.

I had my doubts about the procedure. I felt like one of those people who gets the wrong surgery because the doctor has gotten ahold of someone else's chart. I tried to get up, but the anesthesia had me immobilized. 

The next thing I knew, I was in a different dream, and my friend Richard started asking me questions about some weed that I'd been growing.

"Do you know how popular this kind is?" he asked. "Does it really taste like blueberries? How strong is it? That's funny that they named it after a singer. Did you know they named it after Barry White?" He kept on and on with the questions until I finally had to stop him.

"I know, I know," I said, a little fatigued by his excitement. "Berry White, because it is a cross between Blueberry and White Widow, both popular strains of high end cannabis." 

----

I haven't been sleeping well, so my dreams are suffering as a result. Here's another scrap from the following day.

It was early spring, and the weather hadn't fully committed, although the trees and grass had all gotten on board, putting out flowers and foliage in advance of the change. I was driving home from somewhere on rain soaked roads, and my car kept swerving off into muddy culverts as I struggled to keep it on track. 

At one point, I had to get out and push the car with one foot on the ground and the other on the accelerator. Although it seemed unlikely, somehow this awkward skateboard technique worked, and the car gained traction, peeling out so fast that I barely had time to jump back in.

As I got to my house, I noticed a lot of debris in the middle of the road. Someone had been doing some excavating, leveling and clearing the front of my property, and they left all the rocks and muddy tree stumps in giant piles blocking the road. The equipment had done a fair amount of damage to the asphalt as well.

"Andrew, you need to water your plants," Greg's voice came from somewhere up my driveway.

I didn't think I had any plants, but I went up to see what Greg was talking about. The whole front of my property had been stripped of all of its trees and vegetation, and all that was left was a smooth, graded surface with some roads carved into the slick, chocolate colored earth. 

"They left some junk on the road out in front," I told Greg. "They are going to have to remove that, right? I mean, they can't leave it like that. Once paved, always paved. We can't regress."

"We can't regress," Greg agreed.

That's all I remember. Not worth publishing, but I had to write it down, regardless.

----

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I am struggling with my own identity. Springtime is here, and I am feeling the hormonal pull of wandering affections. There is a girl in group that I am becoming friends with and have developed feelings for. I am giddy with the nervous energy of a teenage crush, and there is a debilitating obsessiveness to my thought patterns. Hung up, is what they used to call it, I believe.

My current relationship with Denise is in a stagnant stasis, held there firmly by my refusal to move forward or back. I don't want to hurt her or "break up" with her, but since I never fully accepted the designation of boyfriend and have staunchly refused her the words "I love you," words that have come so easily in other situations with other people, I don't know what I'd be breaking up, exactly. We are still just friends, two lonely people settling for occasional companionship. 

I'm conflicted, because I do care about Denise, but in a sentimental, sad kind of way. I don't feel the spark that I do with this new girl. I would surely miss Denise if she were gone, and I'd think about her and our times together with a sorrowful regret. How could I just abandon her to her lonely life, with her tiny, aging dog in that dark apartment? How could I throw away a person with whom I have had intimate relations, gone places and shared experiences? She has invested in me, and I have given her little in return emotionally.

My dream probably represents the fact that, yes, spring is busting out all over, like my hormones. Recklessly, I am destroying my current configuration, my relationship with Denise, in favor of something new. I am breaking ground in this new relationship, but it is still in the early stages, and I haven't cleaned up the mess from the deconstruction yet. I need to water the plants, but I don't even know if there are any plants to water. 

Where do we go from here?

Sharon visited me again last night, and I didn't want to lose the wonderful feeling, so I re-entered the dream several times, even after waking up to go to the bathroom.

In my dream, we were married, but things had become strained enough that we were living apart. She was still bedridden, but in this timeline, I'd chosen to keep working when things got critical, and she required full-time care. We didn't keep the house, but with the money from its sale, and with her disability income, she was able to get a pretty nice place of her own. I would still come over to visit occasionally, but seeing her lying in bed was so depressing that I couldn't manage to stay for long.

On one such visit, however, everything changed. She was there in bed as always, but it appeared that her condition had worsened. She was lying there so still and rigid that she looked like cemetery statuary. Her face had taken on a deathly pallor and her entire body had the appearance of marble. I tried to make small talk, but it felt pointless. How could I talk to a statue? But then she surprised me by getting out of bed and making her way to the kitchen. 

"Do you want some tea?" she said, as if there was nothing unusual about her instant resurrection.

"I can't believe it!" I said, "You can walk again! How long have you been hiding that fact from the world?" I was elated, but also concerned about the financial angle of how such a drastic recovery would affect her disability income.

"Oh, they know," she said, winking at me. "I'm a special case."

I suddenly had a memory of us on the day of her original diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. We were sitting in Dr. Forner's office in Chico, anxiously waiting on the results of some tests. I still remember this comic from the New Yorker that I was thumbing through nervously to pass the time as we sat there. It made Sharon laugh. Silly cat.

After an interminable wait, the silver haired neurologist breezed in and told her, "You have MS," as if it were nothing more than a mild case of sunburn. He recommended some pharmaceutical drugs and was off to make his three o'clock tee time. 

One thing he did say was that she had the relapsing remitting kind of MS, but we later believed that he was simply making that diagnosis in order to push the drugs that were available for that type of MS at the time.

"He has get his quota in order to qualify for more pens and wall clocks from Teva," Sharon said conspiratorially. 

She took the drugs briefly, but the course of her disease was unaltered, and she saw no point in enduring the injection site reaction and other side effects. Within 3 years she was in a wheelchair and by 2010, she was completely bedridden--a straight course of decline with no remission, only relapses and exacerbation.

"I bet you want to kiss Dr. Forner now," I told the ambulatory, recuperated Sharon. "He was right. You do have the relapsing remitting kind."

"He was still a jackass," she said, smiling as she said it.

I couldn't believe it. I had a walking, talking, sassy Sharon back. I felt so bad for having abandoned hope. I hugged her, and we talked about throwing a party. 

"First things first," she said.

She had me lie down on the bed with her. Things progressed, and soon my hand was exploring her nether regions. Cheeky monkey, I thought, she had trimmed down there. No more 70s afro-pubes, just a well-groomed little strip. 

"You like it?" she laughed. "The nurses do such a good job with me. I get anything I ask for."

We were interrupted by a knock on the door, and able-bodied Sharon jumped up to answer it. It was a couple of people from DBSA. Apparently, word had gotten around, and there was going to be a party. People started arriving with dip and condiments. 

"This is a special dip," one girl told me, standing a little too close and whispering in my ear. "It has been infused with my meds." She showed me a prescription bottle with a long list of herbal ingredients, most of them psychoactive.

"I think I'll have to pass," I said, scraping the dip off my plate and back into the serving container.

LeeAnne from group had brought a dog with her, a mangy stray that she'd recently adopted. It was a kind of lab/sheep dog cross, very sheddy and incontinent. He immediately peed on the floor, soaking the carpet, which was already being covered with clumps of black hair. 

I started to worry about the fact that LeeAnne appeared to be homeless, and wondered about the extent of Sharon's hospitality. She surprised me, however, and said that everyone could stay, as long as the dog got walked regularly.

"Don't worry," Sharon said. "The nurses will take care of the cleanup. They do everything."

After a few days, the party wound down, and it was just me and Sharon again. I'd stayed there a couple of days, and I was feeling nervous about whether or not she'd take me back after I'd been absent for so long. We were discussing the logistics of me perhaps moving back in with her full-time when a nurse showed up for Sharon's hair coloring appointment.

"Just tell me what color you prefer," the nurse said, pointing to a photo of various shades of blonde hair, curled and highlighted.

"I'll try the highlighted part," she said, pointing to a lightened section of the wavy locks in the picture.

"Good choice, Mrs. Golding," the nurse said.

She got out her hair dye and began asking me whether or not I'd be availing myself of the services of their nursing staff. 

"We still have some psychiatric options available for spouses," she said. "The Covid funding has almost run out, but you still qualify if you are living here full-time."

That was the million dollar question. I woke up before it ever got answered, but I had the sense that Sharon was willing to take me back despite my having strayed from her during the worst of her illness. I can't describe the feeling that it gave me, knowing that she was better and that we might soon resume our lives together.

Some more random scraps for the scrapbook

I dreamed I was at Bob and Hannelore Orricks's place in Paradise. It was a different location, slightly up the hill from their place on Bennett Road. I borrowed their truck to go check on a septic lid that someone had taken off and forgotten to put back. I was going to replace the lid, but as I went to pick it up, I found myself staring at a nest of wasps attached to its underside. They immediately started swarming, and I panicked, running down the street and leaving the truck with the keys in it.

I got to the Orrick's house and told them about my encounter with the wasps. Remembering that I'd just abandoned their truck, I glanced up the street to make sure it was still there. It was not. I told Bob that I was pretty sure his truck had been stolen, but perhaps someone had just moved it, since it had been parked out in the middle of the street. 

"I'm sure you left the keys in it," Hannelore said flatly.

"We'll go look for it," said Bob, in his usual calm, methodical manner. 

When we were certain that the wasps had vacated, we went back to replace the septic lid. Afterwards, we looked around the neighborhood for the truck, even expanding our search to some local tow yards before deciding that it had indeed been stolen. The day wore on, and we never did find the truck.

That night, I stayed with them in their spacious, two story log house.  It was raining, and the roof leaked in so many places that the entire floor was wet despite the many pots and bowls they had distributed throughout the place. They gave me the room in the attic, which turned out to be the only dry space in the house.

Although it was late, and the weather was inclement, I still wanted to go out. I had a clandestine sexual encounter in mind, a kind of temptation that occurs to me from time to time. I looked through some random personal ads in a sleazy newspaper, and found some possibilities, but the fear of getting caught by my Seventh Day Adventist hosts prevented me from acting.

On another day, I was in a warehouse of specialized oddball auto electronics, browsing the shelves. I found an old control module wrapped in paper. It was for some unique exotic car of which only a few models had been produced. I'd been pimping side jobs for my former co-worker David, and this part seemed like it would be something useful to his enterprise. I put the part back on the shelf and made a mental note to come back for it later. 

Skipping around in time and space, I found myself with Gracie, in a house that contained some of Bill's old nasty porn newspapers. I tried to distract Gracie while I hid them down my shirt. God help me, I was still thinking of that tempting encounter idea. 

Jumping again without segue, I found myself helping Teddy from Snowfall do some unauthorized house sitting/cleaning for a friend of his. We had been rummaging through the guy's possessions and were barely finished cleaning up after ourselves when the homeowner returned early, nearly catching us. He did not notice any of this, however. He was just unhappy that we couldn't stay and meet the family as Teddy had promised.

From there I went to David's garage, where I found him working on a classic mini car. It was a perfectly restored Morris Minor, and it just needed the control module that I'd seen earlier. I'd set the job up for David, and he'd agreed to take 10% of the profits from the job as his cut. Apparently, though, he'd renegotiated with the client directly and was now going to get 50%, leaving no finder fee for me. This didn't make me too happy, but what was I going to do? 

----

I woke up with too many things on my plate for the day to really make sense of any of this or to write down any but the briefest of notes, which I filled in later. It still has no real sense or purpose, and I don't expect that it really needs any. I am just keeping a record of my impressions for later use, should I find the need to psychoanalyze myself. My real day was probably more interesting, but I'm saving that kind of journal writing for another time.

Pranking Cousin Tim, Emery meets my brother Mike (aka Mark & Mark) and takes a dip in the water ivy

 

Only a few details to report. Cats gotta eat, and I can't spend all day at this. Here's the raw data:

I dreamed that I was out with a group of friends, and the intention was to attend a dinner theater somewhere in the foothills, possibly Grass Valley or Nevada City, although no real landmarks stood out. We were on foot, so it didn't seem likely that we were going to make it to the theater on time, but we were just enjoying the night out together. 

Somewhere along the way, I'd collected some pieces of promotional material printed on adhesive backed vinyl, similar to bumper stickers. I was looking through the letters and numbers of the glossy adverts with the idea of making a ransom note type collage, spelling out something of my own choosing. I planned to cut out the letters Mi:7 and surreptitiously slap them on the back of my cousin Tim's T-shirt, in the way that one places a "kick me" sign on the back of a person being pranked. 

I spent quite a bit of time holding onto these letters and trying to keep them hidden from Cousin Tim, and as the evening wore on, I never seemed to find the right opportunity to pull my trick. I kept dropping the stickers and having to rearrange them, like cards in a hand of gin. Such an easy prank, so difficult to achieve. After a long night of walking and getting lectured by Johanna Scott, an ex-cult member, I finally abandoned the idea altogether.

On our way back from the theater venue where, indeed, we did not get in--too late, too many people in our party--we were walking along the avenues next to a college. My brother Mike was walking with Emery a few feet ahead of me, and I could hear them making awkward introductions. Mike was not really Mike, but a composite of my brother and two other people, Mark Ginter, a mental patient at Esplanade Manor in the 90s and Mark Goldsmith, a friend from Play Mountain Place, my childhood alternative school.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Emery," said Mike/double Mark in a shy, unassuming voice. He then leaned in and kissed her once on the cheek and once on the lips.

"You're going to love him," I said, unable to suppress the sarcastic glee in my voice. I looked forward to seeing her response to my brother's inappropriate greeting.

"Well, um...OK, then," she said. "Pleased to meet you, as well." 

I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more of a reaction. It seemed their individual nerdiness and awkwardness had cancelled each other out, and the two of them began talking as if they were old friends. After a while they parted ways, with Mike heading off in one direction, and Emery and I continuing along the avenue. 

We were walking by some cement planters containing water ivy. They were about curb height, and they separated the sidewalks from the street in place of the grass strips that one usually sees in a residential neighborhood. As we walked, Emery put her foot into one of these hydroponic beds, and the dirty water stained her stocking up to her knee.

"That's not pretty," she said, looking first at her one soiled sock and then at the other, still pristine and white and new.

Without losing a beat, she decided to lie down in the planter, fully immersing herself in the mucky liquid. When she emerged, her clothing and skin were a uniform grey. She looked like she'd been mummified, embalmed in a silty coating of industrial wastewater. 

I felt bad for her, having ruined her clothes like that, so I decided wade in and sit down next to her in solidarity. I didn't submerge my head in the muck, however. I wasn't going to risk getting all that filthy water in my ears, and I just wasn't that committed to the look.

----

Biographical factoid: Mark Goldsmith's mother was born with a birth defect called ectrodactyly, also known as cleft hand, or lobster hand, which gave her only two opposable digits on each hand, a thumb and one forefinger. As a child, I was haunted by the image of these pincer-like hands. 

In googling this condition, I was inundated with pictures of deformities of all kinds, and what started as a curious recollection has left me feeling sad and guilty. There are so many things in this world that I guess I'd just rather not know about, but having seen them, I can't turn away. A kind of morbid fascination compels me to look, even though doing so leaves me somewhat tarnished.

Birth defects and rare diseases have always terrified me. My mom had a medical book with pictures of people suffering from all kinds of horrible conditions: elephantiasis, leprosy, African sleeping sickness. My little brain stored up these traumatic images so that I was afraid to go to sleep for fear that I'd wake up looking like the little child on the cover of Concert for Bangladesh.