Morning Pages Day 4 -- Jan 7, 2022

 

Morning pages (afternoon number 4)

This is going to have to suffice. I woke up too late to get my morning pages done before 10:00 AM. At 10 AM on Sundays, I have my weekly Google meeting with my mom. And since I was up until 3 AM, I wasn’t able to do get up early enough to do much before it was time for the meeting.

I am out walking on Loma Rica Road. It’s not my favorite place to go for a walk, but it is conveniently paved, and in the winter time, when the ground is muddy, that makes a big difference. I just started breaking in my new hiking boots, and I don’t want to get them soaking wet with mud and dew from the grass, which would surely happen if I were to go walking in the wilderness area. Being Sunday, you would think there would be less traffic. You would be wrong. Same amount of traffic. Loma Rica Road rather sucks ass in that regard. When I’m out walking with an audiobook, I pretty much have to hold my phone up to my ear or the cars will drown out half of the narration.

So, what’s new? I pulled the trigger on my amp purchase on Friday. I woke up and I placed the order on Reverb.com. It is a silverface ‘79 Fender Twin Ultra Linear. I fell in love with the sound while watching a short demo. Pictures insured that the amp was pristine inside and out. Did I spend more than I wanted? Absolutely! It will cost me just over $1200, delivered to my house. It is coming from a music shop in Louisiana.

While I am excited to have this delivery to look forward to, I am still waiting on the tubes to repair my old amp. My philosophy of never settling for a repair when an upgrade is possible led me to buy an amp that is more than twice as big and powerful as the one that failed. It is going to take up more space in my little room downstairs than I anticipated, and I may have to rehome my cable spool coffee table. When the tubes finally show up for my old amp, and they don’t fix their problem, I will have to take it to a guy in Sacramento.

When all is said and done, I will have three guitar amps, a bass amp, and a powered mixer. I should probably thin out the herd, but I am reluctant to get rid of anything that might prove to be a valuable back up later. I am currently using the bass amp to play guitar, although I have a Crate acoustic amp upstairs that I use to practice my coffee shop material. I run guitar and microphone into it and send the signal out the back into the powered mixer to play through my 4 x 12 and 1 x 15 cabinets. That’s a lot of amplification for someone who is too timid to play in front of more than one person at a time.

The good thing about these dumb morning pages, as I see it, is that it allows me to ruminate without recrimination. I am doing my morning exercises, I tell myself. I am not obsessing over amps or God knows what other mindworm has hacked into my brain. I am performing a valuable function. I am liberating my consciousness from a bunch of thoughts that cling to it like lint.

The bad thing, I don’t have much desire to do any blogging, since this happens to supplant any other writing done at this time of day. I haven’t had any dreams to write down, either, so it isn’t just the morning pages that are to blame. For that, I blame a nasty habit that I have picked up of smoking a bong hit before I go to bed. It’s not making me a better dream journalist, or a better writer in general. It is making me lazier and more forgetful, two traits that could do without amplification.

Oh, the sound of chainsaws buzzing in the distance! Music to my ears. Chainsaws mean work is being done. Work to improve someone’s landscape. Dead trees plague my neighborhood, and the foothills in general. The rain, which is supposed to be the salvation of these dying trees, turns out their undoing, as the over-saturated ground becomes too loose to support their top-heavy structure. At any given time there are one or two dead trees that I must contend with lying on my property somewhere. Many more are dead and simply awaiting the next wind storm.

And now, the jingle jangle jingle of cows with cowbells attached to their necks. That has a musical sound too, although I bet the cows get tired of hearing the same sound all day long. I don’t know if it would be better than what I am hearing in my head all day long. If I could swap with a cow, I’d like to give that a try. They would probably go nuts hearing all the crappy dialogue as it plays out between my Id, super ego, ego, inner critic, God, the devil, Monty Hall and Cal Worthington. The cowbell would be much simpler to deal with.

How will I know when I have reached three pages? My phone has a tiny screen. Do those one or two paragraphs per screen pages count? I guess I will have to find out when I upload this into Word.

Let’s just pause for a minute, shall we, and marvel at the variety of technology at my disposal to enable me to do word processing. Growing up, we had pen and paper. The typewriter was a luxury. I eventually did get a typewriter for Christmas, right about the time word processors started becoming available. Word processors were computers with a single function. They were an extravagance, but one which could save a lot of time and paper when doing rewrites. Now we have smart phones with voice memos and speech-to-text capability for transcribing notes.

One would think that having free access to these super user-friendly digital formats would make the chore of writing a breeze, like cleaning the stovetop with 409. I don’t feel any more inspired to write, however, just because I have an army of digital assistants ready to take my dictation. Possibly, because they are numbskulls, and I am forced to do all of my own transcription anyway. Voice to text is the worst when it comes to putting your exact thoughts into writing.

I’m going to guess that I’ve only completed about a page and a half. My reasoning is that last time I did my morning pages it took me two hours. I am out walking, and I am only a little less than halfway in. I plan on giving up on or before the halfway point. I simply can’t talk to myself for two full hours.

So earlier I was correcting my iPhone's interpretation of the phrase "shall we." Siri misinterpreted it as “Shelly." Saying the name Shelly in my notes reminded me that I haven’t talked to my Facebook friends for nearly a year. I abandoned them last year, saying that I needed to take a break and that I would be off Facebook for the foreseeable future. I offered my contact information, I left my account open for a week, but only one or two people actually messaged me to get my phone number. Out of those people, zero have called me. Yes, I am still butthurt about the whole Lesa thing.

One good thing out of that whole debacle with Lesa was that I finally cleaned the soap scum in my downstairs shower and have been rigorously maintaining it ever since. Every time I take a shower, I wipe down the shower stall and the tub with a towel to prevent hard water deposits. When I originally cleaned it, I used vinegar, baking soda, bleach, CLR, Ajax and some foaming cleaner with scrubbing bubbles. None of those made much of a dent, and the majority of soap scum had to be scraped off with a pocket knife.

A similar phenomenon was taking place simultaneously with my stained teeth. There was a layer of plaque that no brushing could address, and it was getting stained. I tried tooth whiteners, but apparently, they don’t whiten plaque. Nothing like scraping with metal instruments.

Have I had even one single, solitary thought worthy of the time and effort spent in transcription? Is there anything at all in these Morning Pages to warrant the use of high technology or the effort involved to re-edit and correct errors? No? Good! I’m saving my “good writing” for a much better venue. Now, if I could only figure out what that venue is…

Morning Pages Day 3 -- Jan 6, 2022

 

The next day. Well, here I am. I showed up. What prize awaits me? Uh, hmm. A big box of NOTHING, that’s what.

I woke up at 9:00 AM. How do I know that? Because my new atomic clock was staring me in the face the moment I opened my eyes. Conveniently located above my TV, I can look up at it without craning my head to the east, as I previously would have had to do.

Why is this important? Well, for me, it is about perception. When I am facilitating my DBSA support group, I have to be mindful of the time. It doesn’t look good, however, if I am constantly looking down at my phone or gazing off camera. Someone might think I am being bored by their share, feel slighted or get the impression that I can’t wait for them to finish. This conveniently located clock allows me to glance up without breaking eye contact with the camera.

Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it. I wrote a paragraph, just to state some mundane fact of which the world was previously unaware. As my friend Emery says, “So, now you know.”

Except that I wrote almost the exact same thing on Day 2 about that stupid clock, and now I'm just repeating myself, re-telling the same useless minutia that barely passed for news the first time around. 

**Note -- rant from the future

Here's a fun fact:

I bought this clock at Walmart and kept it for around 3 weeks. Being a fancy atomic clock, I was never going to have to set it, and I could always be assured of having the correct time. But right away, I could tell something was off. The minute hand was not synced up with the second and the hour hands. I could never tell which minute we were supposed to be thirty seconds into or 30 seconds out of.

To make matters worse, it was loose, and the hand would nudge forward a little extra with each tick of the second hand, making the discrepancy a little greater every time. The cumulative effect was that the time displayed was off by several minutes every day. Even when it reset itself, the hands were still out of sync, so it never read correctly. 

I returned it and searched in vain for a replacement. They'd pulled the remaining stock, or sold out or something. I stared at a nail on the wall above my TV set for a month. That might have worked as a primitive sundial, but it wasn't gonna cut it for timing my meetings.

A month later, I checked the shelves, and low and behold, there was the same clock that I had returned, sitting on the shelf. It was the only one of its kind: atomic, large numbers, second hand, etc. I bought the same motherfucker again, hoping against reason that perhaps it was a different unit, or maybe it had been reconditioned. 

I should have known better. When I returned it, I'd put it back in the box upside down, so the clock and the packaging were out of sync, just like the stupid clock. The clock in the store was packaged the same way. 

I took it home anyway, put a battery in it and hit the reset button. The hands quickly moved around to the twelve o'clock position, and the minute hand stuck out again, like an offside football player on the line of scrimmage. "Foul!" I called, and I boxed the bastard up for a second time. Fool me twice, OK, but no more. 

Today, I ordered a clock that runs backward and has the numbers on the wrong side of the dial. It is a month out on Amazon, and it's not an atomic clock, but I don't care anymore. I have been looking at a nail in the wall for 2 months now. We never start the meeting on time anyway, it's always 3 minutes or so after the hour, so what does it matter?

**end of rant from the future

In other news, I was going to drive to Vacaville today to check out a tube amp for sale on Facebook Marketplace. It is a 1978 Traynor YGT Mark III. This is a vintage, handwired amp head with a 4-12 speaker cabinet. All for the low, low price of $600. I checked out some YT videos, and similar amps from that era have a sweet Fenderesque tone.

The thing is, I don’t have a need for another 4-12 cabinet. I actually just want to replace my Blues Jr., a much smaller, bedroom type amp. It unceremoniously expired on Christmas Day, leaving me with no tube amp with which to fiddle around on Saturdays. Saturdays are sacred, too sacred for solid state amplification.

This big tube amp would most likely live in my living room along with the cats. Both the cab and the head have covers to keep the cats from clawing the grill cloth. I have to give my cats credit; although they have destroyed two mattresses, a couch and the hallway carpet, they have left my Marshall cabinet grill cloth alone. <retroactively knocking on wood>

I do most of my rocking out in my downstairs room, though, and I don’t know how I could squeeze a giant amp like this down there. It would certainly be overkill for the room.

Other considerations are the fact that tube life can be short in these amps unless one has the original vintage replacement tubes. New old stock tubes for this are a rarity and commensurately expensive. I already have one tube eater, the Blues Jr., and I don’t really want another hungry hippo in my menagerie.

Hey, this isn’t so bad. I’m just thinking out loud. I could do this quietly, and to myself, but this way I am fulfilling my obligation to the Morning Pages exercise. And I get to continue to obsess over my latest folly: the pursuit of the perfect tube amp.

So, my friend Emery asked me to facilitate for her tonight at the meeting. This will mean that I have to be back here by 5ish in order to be ready to go at 5:30. I walked for 5.4 miles yesterday. It was a drudging bore, but at least it was sunny. Today, it is foggy and 51, but since it isn’t raining, I have no excuse. If she hadn’t called to swap days with me, I would have gone to Vacaville, perhaps bought this obnoxiously big amp and definitely skipped my walk.

I booked a room for 2 nights at the Anchor Lodge in Fort Bragg. Denise hasn’t ever been there, and I wanted to give her the whole waterfront room experience. It’s been 2 years since I last visited there. On that trip, I brought along Sharon’s ashes to spread around on the various beaches we’d visited on our many vacations. This will be kind of reclamation of the venue for new experiences.

When Sharon first took me to Fort Bragg in 1999, we had only been dating a couple of years. It was a magical time for me, since I’d never been anywhere on the coast north of  Zuma Beach in my life. I spent all my beachgoing years in Santa Monica and Venice, occasionally taking side trips to Malibu, Redondo, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach. Going back to crowded beaches like those now seems as unappealing as a Christmas Eve trip to Walmart.

Not much else is going on right now. Let me recap:

Still looking for an amp.

Gotta go for my walk.

Facilitating my meeting tonight.

Going to Fort Bragg with Denise in a couple of weeks.

What the hell else do you want from me? I am only obligated to finish 3 pages per day, content unimportant. Fill 3 pages with anything, she said. So, here is is. Done and done.

Please tell me that these pages aren’t as long as they seem to be. I was just thinking I was done, and then I scrolled down to see more blank area at the bottom. Unfair. I protest. More time expended on filler, willy-nilly gibberish that no one wants to read. Thankfully, this isn’t supposed to be read at all, even by me. I am pretty sure that I’ll be violating that rule at some point, however. I just can’t help looking, like after a very satisfying dump, just to check out what has been expelled from me.

I’m a “save old parts” kind of guy. I wish I could have kept my melanoma and lymph nodes in a jar. I’d keep them in my curio cabinet along with my collection of coyote teeth and my No. 5 premolar, which was prematurely extracted from my mouth in 2015.

Oh, come on! Still no page break in sight? Fuuuuucck. This is hereby and henceforth the end. I put in an extra couple of lines yesterday. I am going to draw on my account, and leave off now.

Third day running. Will I continue this daily exercise, or will it prove to be too much for me? I am having some doubts. Here are my doubts:

Why should I spend all this time writing just for the sake of writing. Hmm. I guess that question answered itself. OK, let me rephrase that.

Why should I spend all this time writing about writing, or writing about how I don’t want to write? If I had a decent, inspired topic, or a purpose, such as, say, writing an email to a long lost friend, or even keeping a dream journal, then I might be more inspired to do it. It would seem to have a purpose. This “wake up and complain journal” is getting a bit redundant.

 “Well,” says I, “then go ahead and give yourself a better topic. Who’s in charge here, anyway?”

I have an email that I need to compose, and I have been procrastinating. Yet, here I am performing an exercise with the very brain cells that I could be using to get that task accomplished. Why is that? Am I expecting to get credit for keeping up with one obligation while failing to even start another?

Here are some of the thoughts that come to mind when I contemplate writing the email. Well, first, here is the context:

Jennifer, a dear friend of Sharon’s, recently sent me a Christmas card. I hadn’t heard from her in nearly 4 years, the last time being shortly after Sharon’s death, when she came down to visit and console me, bringing me soup and beer and all manner of condolence gifts. Before that visit, she had been absent from Sharon’s life for 8 years. Time flies, I know, and she was busy with career and kids and marriage. I responded to her Christmas card with a text, promising to catch up with her soon, but given her own lengthy absences, soon could be a relative term.

So, why not just knock out a quick reply? Just stick to some basic milestones within the last 4 years. Paint a picture, a sketch, if you will, even a thumbnail, just to say, “Hey. I’m still here. Here’s a little of what’s been going on with me.” Would that be so difficult?

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, it will.”

“OK,” I reply to myself, bifurcating once again for the sake of dialogue. “But can you elaborate on what exactly you find so difficult about the task?”

“It is the same reason that I find it difficult to start any writing task,” I complain. “I have a problem condensing my thoughts, reducing my story to bullet points. I tend to feel that it has to be laid out like a technical manual, discreet chapters, verses, chronologically accurate and progressing in a linear fashion towards a clear conclusion.”

“Well, you know that isn’t any reason to avoid sending a little note to a friend saying how things have been,” rational me argues.  “It doesn’t have to be your magnum opus. You aren’t writing an autobiography. Think smaller. Think postcard sized. After all, she sent a Christmas card with a minimal amount of personal prose written on it. It’s the gesture that counts.”

“Hmm. Good point,” I reply. “I’m still not feeling the inspiration, though, to do even that.”

“OK. So, don’t do it then. Don’t do anything that you don’t feel inspired to do.”

“Like write these goddamn Morning Pages?” I snark back.

“Touche. I get it, Mr. All-or-nothing. You want to do what comes easiest at any given moment.”

“Well, isn’t that what the Taoists say?” I offer weakly. “’Be like water, my friend.’ Bruce Lee said it best. That’s what I am doing, being like lazy, uninspired water. Stagnant water, just evaporating in a pond, a thickening layer of scum forming on my surface.”

“I would offer that you are being pretty conspicuously meticulous about comma placement and sentence structure for pond water,” I jibe. “You are using the backspace key in a highly motivated fashion. Perhaps, you are more of a seeping artesian well than a stagnant pond. Some fresh stuff comes to the surface, but at its own pace. Quality, not quantity.”

“That’s where we disagree on this whole Morning Pages thing, I think,” my contemplative guy chimes in. “You are treating it like an obligation, and therefore you are resisting it.”

“No, I’m not,” I counter. “I’m just resisting doing it correctly.”

“That’s not possible, and you know it,” says the inner cognitive therapist. “There is no right way to do stream of consciousness. Just because it’s called the Morning Pages doesn’t mean that it has to take the form of a well thought-out newspaper article. Anyway, if you want to type gibberish, go right ahead. No one is judging you.”

“Yeah, well, since you tell me to be all free form, loosey-goosey, that is just what I won’t do!” I rail, rebelling for the sake of rebellion. “And anyway, I’d like to talk some more about amps, and how I am having difficulty narrowing my search. It’s becoming a daily obsession, doing all this research. And for what? I’m just dreaming and fantasizing about having some great sounding amp, when all I will ever do with it is play around with it in my little room downstairs.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” the encouraging me pipes up. “What about your living room venue, Andrew’s Coffee Shop? You have been slowly making progress towards a complete set list.”

“True,” I concede. “I may just play a concert for my cats soon enough. Plus, I really have always wanted another tube amp head to sit atop my Marshall cabinet. If I don’t get one, what is the purpose of owning a big speaker cabinet, anyway?”

The speaker cabinet in question, a 1980s 4-12 straight floor cab with wheels has been with me since the early 90s. I bought it to use as a PA cabinet for a band I was playing in when I lived in SoCal. I bought a powered Yamaha 6 channel mixing board to use as an amplifier. I was the singer, and this was my vocal rig. I did have a Marshall head at the time, too, that I purchased to go with it at some point, but I kept it at home, rather than leave it with the band in their garage. They already had a guitar player, and it wasn’t me.

The head died in the early 2000s, and like a dumbass, I sold it for $100. It probably had a blown fuse, for all I know. It had been working fine, but at some point it became a doorstop, an ugly reminder of why I can’t have nice things. They always break, and I just wind up with broken junk to look at. This was one instance where my hoarder gene failed to kick in, and I feng shuied it right out of my life. I’m still kicking myself for that.

If I find something comparable, it will cost me in the thousands of dollars, and I am reluctant to buy someone else’s doorstop. I want it all, I want it now—and I want it cheap.

Blah, blah, blah. And I really have to pee right now.  

There. That was an easy choice. Get up and pee, for god’s sake. Even race car drivers make pit stops.

“Not to pee,” I counter. “They go ahead and pee in their racing suits.”

I have no idea if that is actually true. I heard it once, and it stuck with me. Race car drivers are a soggy lot, pissing themselves willy-nilly rather than lose valuable time making a stop. Every 500 lap race has to have at least one pee-soaked participant, or else when they were up on that podium, they would be dancing the hurdy-gurdy. Note to self: google “hurdy-gurdy” and “NASCAR urination strategies.”

Oh, are you going to wait for me to actually do it? Am I even allowed to while I’m writing this exercise? Wouldn’t that be breaking protocol? And what about my getting up to pee? Was that breaking protocol too? If something is bugging you, by all means relieve yourself. Scratch the itch.

And, say, what happened to your neat little dialogue? You just abandoned your post on that one, changing formats in midstream. No quotation marks denoting the change of speaker, no consistent perspective, just a vacillating, oscillating, wishy-washy guy questioning everything. Ooops. I went over. Well, hallelujah. I wanted to be done anyway. Now I have this ugly widow at the top of the page. Can’t have that.

What now? I’ll tell you what now. I will put this keyboard back in the drawer and play a quick game of Words With Friends, aka Words With The Computer, on my phone and then grudgingly get off this couch. After that, exercise, breakfast, then…who knows? Go for a walk or drive to Vacaville to check out an amp that is too big for my needs, but might just be a steal at $600?

Morning Pages Day 2 -- Jan 5, 2022

Hrumph. Something new to dread waking up to, great. The Morning Pages can suck my ass. I get it. I gotta get past this shit, or I will never be able to write freely, effortlessly, about things that matter, should anything like that ever occur. Right now, my brain is struggling with the whole “I don’t wanna!” aspect of the exercise.

“I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna!!!” said the gelatinous fatty cranial lump, from its perch atop my decrepit arthritic neck.

“So, don’t,” a voice from the corner says, as it strikes an imaginary match against the wall, lights a phantom cigarette, takes a deep drag and pauses for dramatic effect.

“This doesn’t help you get your day started,” another voice chimes in. “You will be stuck here in bed writing this crap until 10:30. How productive is that?”

I look up at the clock. It is 9:05. The voice is probably right.

“You aren’t even doing this exercise properly,” says a familiar voice. This one is my inner critic. He never offers any advice. He just throws quick jabs and retreats before I can question him.

“I don’t care,” I say. And I don’t. I’m doing this exercise out of a stubborn determination to improve my writing skill, to become more mentally fit. Practice, practice, practice. Like playing scales on the guitar. Like doing pushups and situps. This exercise is not an end in itself, but a means to a better, more finely tuned me.

Hrumph. I still don’t wanna.

I stole a case of cat food from Walmart yesterday. This is the second time in a 6 month period that I have forgotten to scan a major item and wheeled my cart out the front door holding my receipt up as I passed the security greeter. The first time it was a big bag of  Purina cat chow. This time it was the wet stuff, Friskies Poultry Blend. So, I’m a serial cat food burglar. Now you know.

9:20. I keep looking up at the clock. It’s easy to do, since it’s right above my TV screen/monitor. I bought the clock (yes, bought) yesterday at Walmart. I’m still getting used to it. Previously, I would have to look over to the east, craning my neck uncomfortably, just to get a glimpse at the time.

I bought the clock so that when I am hosting my support group meeting on Zoom, I won’t have to keep turning my head to see what time it is. I need to be aware of the time so that things don’t go over, but I don’t want to appear distracted or disinterested by constantly looking away. And people tend to think you are bored if you look at a wristwatch or check your phone while they are talking. Now I can look directly past the camera at the clock without appearing to break eye contact. How sly am I?

Harumph. This isn’t going so well.

That’s my voice, by the way. No quotes. If I’m honest, those voices are all me. I don’t buy into the external devil theory. I take ownership of all those thoughts in my head.  This contradicts the whole “automatic thought” premise of cognitive behavioral therapy. Thoughts appear in my head because they were conjured up by me. Why? I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.

Ok. I thought about it. Perhaps, every thought is a survival based impulse, a stab into the darkness of the void, a match lit to dispel the fear of non-existence. “I think, therefore I am.”

“Whew! I’m glad we got that one figured out,” says my brain. “I was worried there for a minute that I might not exist. Now all I have to do is keep on thinking, every minute every of every day, like a shark swimming to stay alive.”

These thoughts, these beacons of intelligence (well, some of them) exist to prove that I exist. So we’d better keep a constant stream of them coming. No matter what, don’t stop thinking. Quality control goes out the window. This is a fight for our existence. Let’s get those thoughts out there. Come on!

I guess I can get on board with that. I won’t judge the quality or content of these thoughts, since they are just fodder. They are the sounds of a running engine. Brumptity-brum-brum—down the road I go. It’s the silence that worries me. Am I just coasting? If I stop thinking for a second, can I start back up again before, well, you know.

“No, I don’t know,” I say, doing that thing that cells do when they divide. The word will come to me. Mitosis. It didn’t come to me. I had to google “that thing that cells do when they divide.”

“No, I don’t know,” I say, self-bifurcating just for the sake of having a dialogue with myself.

“I think you do know,” comes the reply, “what will happen when you stop thinking.”

It sounds ominous, so naturally, I’m afraid. But I really don’t know. It hasn’t been tried, or at least, not successfully. Like when one holds their breath, it can only be done for a brief moment, and then it must resume. I’m not a swami or yogi, so I can’t prolong those moments for any meaningful length of time.

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack. Once you’re gone, you can’t come back. I keep the train rolling at all costs. Stoke the engine with number 9 coal. If you run out, use the number 8. It’s inferior, but it will go. When that is exhausted, throw in the tables and chairs from the passenger cars, hell, throw in the passengers. The latent heat in the boiler and the kinetic momentum of the wheels and pistons will keep us going.

It won’t get us anywhere, though. I suspect that this train is on a giant loop. I could swear that I’ve seen some of this scenery before. After a while, it all starts to look the same anyhow. The train is moving too fast to really get a look at the details of some of the small towns it is rolling through. Look but don’t linger. The arrow of time does not halt in its path, but travels ever forward, on a graceful arc, returning eventually to its point of origin.

10:07.

Not easy treading water like this. I can’t imagine spending a whole lifetime doing this kind of mental treadmill stuff. When are we done training? When can we start playing the game for real? Besides, writing about something isn’t as good as living it, right? Shouldn’t I be up and about actually doing something? Can’t write about life if you are too busy writing about life to even live it.

 That was also me, although it sounds a lot like the inner critic or the anti-cheerleader.

The real me, the guy typing away here, is getting stiff. And bored. Bored stiff. Stiff as a board. Riffing and fiddling, fidgeting, bitching, itching, twitching, reaching for a moment that hasn’t come, will never come. All I know is, this one isn’t it. This moment, insufficient as it is, claims to be all there is. I know that’s wrong. There’s more. There’s always more.

Sharon used to say that. “There’s always more.” It was a dark aphorism she used, to say that just when you think you’re done cleaning up all the shit, there is always more on the way, up around the bend, waiting pop its poopy head out.

I will dispense with the scatological analogies for the time being. It’s not conducive to me getting on with my day. I need to brush my teeth, exercise and make breakfast. After that, I need to go for a walk. During my downtime, I will continue to look for guitar amp options on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. My amp died on Christmas Day. Merry Christmas, from Fender.

Hey, the good news is: I am almost done. I can see the end of the page coming up soon. Praise Bob. It’s a good thing, too. I am loathe to expand on any of the dead-end tidbits that my brain keeps throwing up for story ideas. I don’t see the value of describing a day spent chasing a fly around the house.

I do like the idea that I can hit the enter button at any time…

…regardless of whether or not I am finished with a thought or not. Who cares? I make the rules here. It’s a paragraph if I say it’s a paragraph, see?

 Oh, great. I’ve got a wiseguy here. Let’s all start speaking in Casablanca Noir, shall we? Nope. Not gonna do it. I mean, recycling is great, good for the environment and all, but novels are meant to be just that: novel. Unique. Not rehashed trash from a bygone era. I won’t get sucked into writing fan fiction or relying on a stylistic crutch. I did manage to reach the end of today’s exercise, though. And I even went over by a couple of lines, thanks to my liberal use of the enter button.

 

Morning Pages Day 1 -- Jan 4, 2022

Morning pages, my wazoo. I don’t relish the idea of spewing out this kind of tripe first thing in the morning. Oh, GOD, single spaced—this is going to take FOREVER. Hmm. Maybe a few paragraph breaks will ease the burden.

Tada. I’m racing through this exercise in free associative writing like a barrel racer with a grudge. So what? So, who will care? No one is ever supposed to read this, not even myself. It is only an exercise.

I would much prefer to be daintily extricating my dreams from the milieu of my foggy morning consciousness, liberating them before their entire world collapses into a 2 dimensional folded cardboard box, compressed, zipped and archived in my subconscious. To bring dreams into the world of reality seems like a more worthwhile task than, say, taking what is akin to a literary dump first thing in the morning.

The Morning Pages are an exercise that I am trying out as a way to become unblocked. It isn’t even meant to be practice writing, more like scribbling with the pen to get the ink to come out properly before even attempting to write. It is just one of many such exercises recommended in the book "The Artist’s Way," a new age classic about how to release your inner artist or some such pop psychological bullshit.

I don’t know about any inner anything. I just know that three pages of this shit is going to get boring real fast. Actually, this has been boring right out of the gate. And if I’m bored, you’re bored. Let’s be bored together.

“Bored, floored, Ford, Fjord,” Floyd Patterson prattled on about the pot roast.

Egads. This is like trying to fill a life up with the minutia of the daily activities of living. No major events, just – get up, pee, brush teeth, pop onto my phone for a quick game of Words With Friends (against the computer, of course, my friends don’t have time for such a wasteful expenditure of resources).

It appears to me that I’m just trying to get through the day, the week, my life without any fanfare, milestones of achievement and especially, without any struggles.

“No work, no reward,” superego Bob says. I call my superego Bob.

When I was talking with my mom the other day, I sneezed, and she said, “Bob bless you.” It’s a joke she picked up from one of the grandkids. I don’t know what the joke is, but I appreciate any nod to irreverence, so I think I’ll try out the practice. Now I just have to wait for someone to sneeze.

Maybe I’ll redact all of my writing, replacing the word God with Bob. If anything, it will elevate some random guy to god status, and the real God, whomever He/She/It is, wherever they reside, will just remain that much more of a mystery, something one doesn’t talk about or refer to by name. Perhaps He will appreciate me not taking His name in vain, although vanity seems to be one of His more abundant traits. 

I don’t know how Bob is going to feel about all the extra attention, though. He’s going to be getting a lot of unwarranted blame and become the go-to guy for rounding out curses. “Bobdammit, I wish to Bob that hadn’t happened. Look what a Bobawful mess I’ve gotten myself into.” Perhaps Bob will appreciate all the credit that he’s going to get for things he had nothing to do with. “Thank Bob that whole cancer thing worked out. Praise Bob. What a beautiful sunset.”

Hmm. That wasn’t much of a filler. This is going to be, like I said, an exercise in wasteful expenditure of writing and time resources. I’m burning my candle--and for what? I could be writing about things, people, places that matter. I could be putting my REAL thoughts on paper, not just opening and closing the water valve to make sure that stuff can flow out.

Oh, wait. I know. This is just the warm-up. The pre-game show. The sound check. Nothing needs to be accomplished here. Kind of like how I am living my life these days: no goals or expectations, just one foot in front of the other, plodding down a familiar path, inching toward my final destination, just going through the motions -- I am on autopilot, the conscious decision maker having exited the airplane.

I’m obsessed with my friend Emery’s life. She confides her little (and big) daily struggles with me, and I find myself in a mentor uncle confidante role. She is 27 and lives at home with her mom and dysfunctional dad. That is a redundant phrase, “dysfunctional dad.” Aren’t they all dysfunctional?

Why did I mention Emery? Oh, yeah, because she is doing things to make sure that her life doesn’t turn out like mine, a stale routine of mundane non-activities, bland days, strung together into a monochromatic tapestry of sameness. She’s jumped out of an airplane, taken a trip to France, rage quit a job she didn’t like, in short, lived like a badass, like a fat kid at a buffet. I want to be like that.

So here I am, doing this exercise from the book she recommended, flapping my wings in the wind and waiting for liftoff. Am I flying yet? Let me check…nope. Not even close.

I am, however, eating up valuable time. Perhaps, that is what is to be gleaned from this exercise. Learn the value of currency by wasting it. Soon (although not soon enough) I will have reached the end of these three mandatory pages. Then I will have squandered my daily allowance of creativity on gum, a substance of no nutritive value that just makes your jaws tired after all that practice chewing.

Dumb dee dee. I should be making a shopping list right now. I have to go to the store today, and I’d like to get an early start. I’ll never get done with that chore if I spend all morning on this one. I’m thinking of what constitutes writing, anyway; is it the mere plopping down of words on media, paper or electronic? Maybe, I will just include my shopping list, and that way I can multi-task this bitch.

So, without further ado:

Walmart

Kitty litter

Mouthwash

Toothpaste

Kitty food (wet and dry)

Prescription at pharmacy (and inquire about COVID booster)

There was something else, I was hoping it would come to me. I don’t know. Look for a belated Christmas gift for Denise? I don’t know what to get her. She got me some white chocolate (wrapped in a Dove soap box). Remind me to relate that story later if I’m still on this exercise, and I’ve run out of content. She also got me a flannel nightshirt and some scented candles, all thoughtful gifts.

I’m not doing well with being a thoughtful boyfriend. And I don’t know that I really approve of that term “boyfriend.” I mean, she’s a couple of years older than I am, but we are both full-grown adults.

I refer to her as my “lady friend.” It sounds more ambiguous, less committed, I know. I got it from my Uncle Bill, who used to refer to a novelty blow up doll as his lady friend. It was a non-functional inflatable hooker that someone had given him as a gag.

I don’t mean to imply anything about Denise by this association. I just think we’re both too old to be calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe I’ll broach the subject next time she refers to me as her boyfriend, and request that she henceforth refer to me as her “gentleman friend.” Tit for tat, or tit for other tit, as it may be.

I need to get going on my shopping day duties, so guess what? This is going to be my last paragraph. Oh, lookie! There’s the end of the page. Thank Bob!

 

Parking Lot Thievery and Cabbage Patch Genealogy

 

As usual, I don't know where this dream started, nor where it ends up, but I recall some salient details of the middle, so I am compelled to write them down. Here are the "facts" as I remember them:

I was walking across the K-Mart parking lot, and I dropped a ballpoint pen on the ground. As I reached down to pick it up, a group of street urchins surrounded me. One of them snatched the pen up before I could get it. They had a nice game of keep-away, passing the pen back and forth to one another as I grew more and more frustrated. 

They circled me, and the circle grew wider and wider until I was chasing them all around the parking lot. They laughed at the ease with which they were able to manipulate my sluggish senior brain with their tricks. I was such an easy mark. 

I soon noticed that my backpack was lying on the ground about 50 feet from me. I forgot about the pen and ran towards it, hoping to snatch it before the kids noticed. But of course, one of them beat me to it. He was a snarky little blond boy of about twelve, a real Dennis the Menace. 

I chased him out of the parking lot and through some apartment buildings. Something told me that I'd never catch him, but I really needed to get the backpack back. It had my wallet and credit cards and every other bit of important personal data. A perfect one-stop for an identity thief.

He climbed over a fence, and I followed, but I lost him before too long. They had practiced this routine many times, and I was clueless as to where he might have wound up. I gave up the chase and went back to the parking lot to search for clues. That's where I met the first of several young females who were associated with the little band of thieves.

 

I don't remember her name, but she looked like a young Rhea Pearlman, no older than 25, but still retaining the less than refined features of the 80's sitcom actress. I asked her about the group of kids who had stolen my wallet, but she wouldn't give them up. She did say that one of them was her brother, so I kept her as a person of interest in my investigation.

There was no tactic that was below my ethical standards, no ruse I was not willing to employ, in my quest to retrieve my wallet. I began by begging, but soon resorted to a more effective means: I came on to her like a teenager on a first date. That strategy seemed to work, and soon we were making out, right there in the parking lot. 

She told me all kinds of things that I found interesting, but still I was no closer to getting my wallet back. For one, she bragged that she was the owner of a rare Cabbage Patch doll of immeasurable monetary value. Something about its genealogy made it a highly prized possession. I stored this information for later use.

When it became apparent that I was going to get no additional wallet-related information from her, I extricated myself from her arms, leaving her there to protest my rather abrupt exit. I left the parking lot and went back to the apartment buildings where I'd last seen the young wallet snatcher.

Inside my apartment, I commenced a campaign to discredit the parentage of the girl's Cabbage Patch doll. After a few phone calls and viral internet posts, a controversy began brewing, then a scandal, surrounding the girl, the doll and some kind of antiquities fraud. Her parents were implicated, and the mother, in particular, became enraged and sought to destroy me.

In the meantime, I tried my strategy of meeting with young girls who were peripherally involved with the group of young thieves. If nothing else, I was perfecting the intel extraction process: meet with a young female, start making out with her, and wait for her to spill the beans. I didn't care how far I had to go, I was committed to my cause. Goal oriented, yes, but the process was pretty enjoyable, too.

The next girl threw me for a loop, though. She was a knockout, with long blonde hair and a shapely figure. I wasn't able to get any information out of her, but she was winning me over with her wiles.

"Why do you want to go with that Ugly Betty, anyway?" she said, referring to the Cabbage Patch owner I'd interrogated earlier. 

Catlike, she straddled me in the bed of her El Camino, pawing her way up my chest and giving me kisses as she disrobed. Soon, we were a fully involved tangle of naked limbs, engaging in the most enthralling of illicit parking lot activities. She was good. I was beaten at my own game, and I knew it.

"I don't know," I said dumbly, having already forgotten her question. All I could think about was how good she felt, how good she was making me feel.

"I can do this for you all the time," she said. "Just stay away from that Cabbage Patch girl. She's trouble." I got the feeling that she was the one who was going to be trouble, but I didn't care. 

Soon, however, I was back my apartment, where I saw my stepdad Greg outside, retrieving a bicycle from some bushes. I jumped from my window into the bushes to help him out. He was not just a little concerned about my recent activities.

"You're going to have to cease and desist with the slander, Andrew," he said pointedly. "And your investigatory techniques are highly unethical. This is reminding me of when you were a teenager." 

I smiled. It was reminding me of those days, too. 

We shared a laugh over what we both knew was an incorrigible aspect of my personality, perhaps a universal aspect of any perpetual teenager. "The dog returns to its own vomit..." as King James crassly puts it. I like to think of it as a perverse form of integrity. I may be bad, but at least I'm consistent, a scoundrel through and through. I am dependable like that. There is no jelly in my peanut butter, as my mom would say.

We still had to solve the problems that my slanderous accusations about the Cabbage Patch family had caused. Rhea Pearlman was heartbroken, and her mom was pissed. She was threatening a lawsuit that could take down me and my family. And I still didn't have my wallet. 

"So let's start at the beginning," Greg said to me. "You were in the parking lot at K-Mart, and you dropped your pen..."

Sashay Chantay

 

The first day at police academy is always rough. The initial jockeying to establish a pecking order makes every interaction a power struggle. No one is exempt, and even the tone or inflection of a hello can determine where one shakes out. Who makes eye contact or breaks it first can signal one's role as an alpha or beta. He (or she) who can dish out the cruelest barbs is usually determined to be the the leader.

I'd been there exactly ten minutes when I got first ribbing. Of course, I'd also arrived late, so I had to run the gauntlet of cadets who were already in their places.

"That's a lovely color of lipstick, cadet," one sophomore cadet teased.

Wondering what the comment was about, I went into the washroom and was shocked to find that my lips were indeed a very bright shade of hot pink. Rather appealingly full and pouty lips, I thought to myself, however incongruous they might have been, placed on the rugged terrain of my stern and manly face. I rubbed them with a paper towel, and some of the pigment came off on the tissue. 

I wondered how it had gotten there. I seemed to remember someone pulling me aside and giving me one of those shocking Bugs Bunny style kisses the night before. It had been at a pre-academy bash, a last hurrah before training day, and one of the more flagrantly gay cadets had singled me out for the drive by smooching. I hadn't minded. All in good fun, I supposed.

The lipstick pigment remained, however, no matter how much I tried to wash it off. I realized that I was just going to be stuck with a mouth that looked like I'd been necking with a hooker, so I tried to play it off like it was intentional. Leaving the restroom, I walked past the cadet who was working reception, the one who had teased me earlier, and did a little sashay, affecting a swishy gait for the occasion. 

I found my seat in the training hall. It was a big white room with cheap molded plastic chairs and a blackboard at the front of the room. I'd been there less than a minute when I was approached by one of the staff. 

"You're going to have to come with me, cadet," the burly uniformed officer said. "There's been a complaint about you filed with HR."

"If it's about the lipstick, I can explain," I said.

"No," he said, "this is a much more serious matter."

He led me to an office where another cadet was seated in one of those cheap plastic chairs. She was a rather attractive black girl of about 25 or so, with short, lightly tinted orange hair. She was wearing a sundress, and she was smiling and joking with a couple of other cadets in the office. When she saw me, her demeanor changed.

"That's him!" she cried. "He was the one who tried to choke me." She put her hands up to her neck in a Strangelovian, self-choking gesture.

"I certainly did not!" I exclaimed. "I would never!"

It didn't matter. The incident was going to be reported, and it would be in my file forever. Assaulting a fellow cadet, a black female no less, racist and sexist allegations would most likely ensue and dog me for my entire career. I couldn't let this stand, but I couldn't fight it, either. I waited around in the office for a while, but no one ever came to interview me, so I left to return to the training hall.

I wasn't able to find the training hall, however. I wound up stuck in a long hallway that had a conveyor belt walkway system. It wasn't the traditional type, where one stands on a rubber belt. It was more like a ski-lift, the kind where one is dragged along by holding onto nylon ropes. Instead of snow skiing up a hill, one was propelled down the hallway by skidding across the smooth polished linoleum floors. At least that's how I thought it was supposed to work.

The belts were a nylon mesh, about 4 inches wide. The top belt was moving in one direction, and one would hold onto it to travel in that direction. The bottom belt was on the floor and seemed to be moving at twice the speed of the top, in the opposite direction. I accidentally stepped on the floor belt and was hurtled back to the beginning of the line and unceremoniously flung against the wall. 

I decided I'd had enough for the time being and left the academy to go to K-Mart. I didn't really have any shopping to do. I was supposed to be at the academy, but I couldn't bring myself to get back in that line on the conveyor belt, or return to the HR office to face the charges against me. 

I looked at my watch and it had gotten very late. K-Mart would be closing soon. I realized that my window of opportunity at the academy was closing, if it hadn't indeed already closed. It was 6:30 PM, and I was all out of options. 

Luckily for me, I woke up, and that was that. I hit the eject button, and joined the land of the living, or semi-living, at any rate. My lady friend is fast asleep, and even the cats aren't moving from their warm beds. Why I am here, retelling this uneventful dream drama, is beyond me.

Mr. Constuction Fraud, Esq.

 

I dreamed I'd been unable to work for some time, but my company was loathe to let me go. I'd been out on family leave, and now it was time to return to work, only my position had been filled in my absence. Technically, they couldn't fire me for taking the leave, but instead, they offered me a position that I was in no way qualified for. I suppose the plan was to let me flounder for a bit and then fire me for incompetence. 

I never was told exactly what my job title or description was. I surmised that I was a construction supervisor, architectural consultant or customer liaison. I was to oversee the projects brought to us by famous people who didn't know exactly what they wanted but had boatloads of money to make their dreams a reality. 

I wandered around the facility, which looked like a lumber mill but also had a functioning automotive repair facility inside of its sprawling structure. Silva, my ex-coworker, ever the archetypal worker drone, was deconstructing some pallets to reclaim the wood for a future project. I thought I'd build a table to set parts on, so I asked about the status of the stacks of wood he had piled up against the wall.

"Can I rob you of a few pieces of lumber?" I asked politely.

"Rob all you want," he said. "You're the boss, right?"

It still hadn't sunk in that I was actually in charge of anything. I was just looking for some busy work, in case the real boss showed up. I grabbed a few scraps of wood and began laying them out. 

"I don't guess you guys need a table right here, do you?" I asked. We were right outside the men's washroom.

"Probably not," he said, "but take all the wood you need."

I realized that I was completely deficient in even the most rudimentary carpentry skills, so I put the wood back and wandered around some more in search of a purpose. 

 

That's when I spied my first customer. It was Goran Visnjic, an actor who seems to always play Frenchmen or Europeans of indeterminate descent. He was a big deal, and when he arrived, I was supposed to assure him that his project, however extravagant, was in safe hands with our company. I had no such confidence.

"Hello, sir," I said, trying to conceal the fact that I didn't even know his proper name. Everybody just referred  to him as "Frenchie."

"How do you do, sir," he said, returning my vague politeness tit for tat. "Have you ever seen Japanese rice paper art?"

He pulled a red leather pocket organizer from his trenchcoat pocket and opened it. He handed me a small calendar, with pictures and fancy calligraphy, printed on the thinnest of translucent rice paper. It was so delicate, I hardly wanted to touch it, for fear of tearing the paper.

"I can see you are a man of refined taste," I told him, a bit obsequiously, but not too over the top, I hoped.

I showed the calendar to my co-workers and they all agreed, but in a less tactful fashion:

"He's a pansy," one of them said under their breath.

"He's the boss. Got it?" I whispered harshly in my underling's ear. "We're going to have to give him whatever he wants, so you'd better tool up for whatever kind of production he wants -- pansy, fancy-doodle-do or whatever. " I was still getting used to the idea that I was in charge of anything or anybody.

My co-workers hustled to make themselves look busy, leaving me alone with the client. I figured now was as good a time as any to come clean.

"I'll be honest with you Mr...." I still didn't know his name. I wanted to call him "Mr. Depardieu" because I always mistake anyone even slightly French for the famous 70s actor. "I'll be honest with you, sir, I don't know why they hired me for this position. I have zero experience in construction, or management, for that matter. I am a retired auto mechanic."

He looked at me quizzically. I wasn't selling myself, that's for sure, but I felt honesty was the best policy. 

"You'll do fine, Andrew," he told me. "I researched your firm, and I think your company is the best suited to make my vision a reality."

I still didn't know what his vision was, but looking around at my ragtag crew and our scant inventory of wood scraps, I had my doubts. I woke up soon thereafter, never having even begun to grasp the nature of his project or my role in it.

It would seem that's the way of things. I escape the responsibilities of life by retreating into a dreamworld, but as soon as there is the vaguest hint of responsibility, I wake up and return to my regularly scheduled routine of minimal and mostly procrastinated obligations.

Sick Day

 

It's 4:07 AM on Saturday. I guess I am going to get in the habit of writing these dreams down in the middle of the night, since I can't get back to sleep right away anyway.

I was living in Paradise, though the house was my current house. I was still working at Yuba City Honda in a limited capacity and taking care of Sharon. Although bedridden, she was somewhat able to self-ambulate using a wheelchair. Transfers were tricky, and she'd frequently wind up on the floor while was at work.

"I'm just so glad you are back," I told her, bending down to give her a hug.

My affection was genuine, and my tender administration of personal care was without rancor. I realized that Sharon being alive again was a miracle and that I was being given a chance to do things better this time. She smiled up at me, glad to not be the recipient of my anger and frustration for a change.

I was, however, getting frazzled. The time was getting close for me to leave for work, and I had the usual number of duties to perform before I could safely leave her alone for the day. Each last minute item ticked precious minutes off of the clock, and doing the math in my head, I realized that I was going to be late no matter what I did.

I had been planning to drive her power chair to work. Rolling into the shop in a wheelchair always garnered sympathy from my co-workers. When I looked at the clock, and it was already 8:07, I knew that I'd have to take my car instead. It was an hour commute down Hwy 99 by car, so I don't even know what I was thinking with the wheelchair business. It would have taken all day. 

I was still picking up things from the floor, trying to ensure that Sharon would have a trouble free day. I had about three pair of shoes that I was planning to take to work, but I couldn't find the shirt to my uniform. I looked around in all the drawers, but I only made a bigger mess rifling through the clothes.

There was a UV strobelight that was blinking at a frequency that resonated with the plaids and patterns on my shirts, making everything appear a uniform blue. This made it impossible to identify my uniform from the other clothes in the drawer. I shoved the clothes back in the drawer and looked around for the source of the strobelight, but I couldn't find it.

I looked at the clock again and it was 9:15. I was well past late already, and was likely considered missing in action by now. I picked up the phone to call in. I figured I could talk to someone down there and ask how busy they were, and perhaps I could use a sick day. 

"Yuba City Honda. How may I direct your call?" It was Sherry. She was always sympathetic, and was usually able to gauge the likelihood of my absence causing a problem. 

"How busy are you guys today, Sherry?" I asked, wincing as I waited for her reply.

"Not too busy," she said. "Are you planning on calling in sick? I think they have enough guys to cover it."

I was relieved. I thanked her, and that was that. I wasn't going to work after all. I knew that my not being missed at work wasn't altogether a good thing and didn't bode well for my future there. I didn't care, though. I couldn't. Things had been at their breaking point with my juggling of work and caregiving for some time now.

I slowly began picking up the items that I'd carelessly strewn about when I'd been so frantic to leave. I woke up, a little anxious still, but glad for the overall outcome of the dream. I had made the right choice, staying home with Sharon. Seeing her alive again, up and about in any capacity, however limited, is always such a pleasant surprise. 

5:07 AM. Back to sleep, to try to catch the sequel.

Warehouse Position

 

I dreamed I was working a temp job in a warehouse type environment down by the sea. The air was a gray mist of soot and clammy fog. The floor of the warehouse was concrete, spotted with oil stains and covered in a layer of beach sand. In the middle of the floor, there was a swimming pool size hole in the cement, filled with unfathomably deep seawater which was presumably adjoined to the ocean. 

The working atmosphere was one of continual chaos, as the conveyor belt of new hires like myself required constant training. No one really knew what they were doing except for the boss, and he had to keep referring to a chart on the wall for basic operating guidelines.

"Get yourselves acquainted with this chart, gentlemen," he said, pointing to a list of about 4 items, written on white paper about the size of an eye exam chart, taped to a blackboard in the break room.

I couldn't make out the writing no matter how close I got. The chart was up too high and the angle was impossible. I had to guess at the items and try to piece together the instructions from several other posters and flyers that were taped haphazardly across the blackboard in a cryptic, ransom note fashion.

One of my co-workers hopped into one of the semis and drove off in search of an empty trailer. On his way out, he turned the corner too sharp and clipped the side of another work truck, causing extensive damage to its cab. He kept on driving, even though there was quite a bit of damage to his own truck as well. I knew when he got back, the shit was going to hit the fan, and he would be called out for his recklessness.

I decided to go fishing in the seawater filled hole in the floor. I grabbed one of the available fishing rods and immediately hooked something pretty big. I reeled in what looked like a grouper or a cod. It was so heavy that it threatened to break the pole. I grabbed the line with my hands, and it dug into my flesh, so I put on a pair of work gloves and hoisted the fish out of the water by hand.

I got a look at the fish as it squirmed on the line. It had been bitten in half. The bite was clean, with jagged tooth marks, as if the fish had been cut in half with a giant pair of pinking shears. I surmised that it had been partially eaten by a shark. I ran with the still squirming, half-eaten fish and tried to locate the boss to show him.

I couldn't find the boss right away, so I ditched the fish, tossing him back into the sea hole. No point bringing my boss half a fish anyway. I was curious about my co-worker who had damaged the truck. He was now in the boss's office getting chewed out. I lurked around the corner, trying to listen in.

While I was waiting around outside the office, I grabbed a necktie and a suit jacket from one of the lockers. It was a mustard brown polyester job with a pink tie, not the snazziest outfit, but it would do. I was trying to impress the boss, since I hadn't crashed any trucks that day.

He looked around the corner and gave me the thumbs up while continuing to bawl out my careless co-worker. I went back to the charts, trying to decrypt the instructions, but I never could. I woke up soon thereafter, remembering that I'd dreamed something, but like the half a fish, this was all I came up with. 

Valerie Murders Sharon At Funeral

 

It's 3:50 AM, and I am as mad as I've ever been. I was in a dream, a horrible dream, where Sharon was near death but still very much alive. She and Valerie had planned some elaborate living funeral/assisted suicide drama which was to be performed as a dramatic exit for Sharon. It was to take place at a church, in front of the entire family, and it was staged to resemble a hunting accident.

It started as a normal memorial service. Sharon was lying in a casket, wearing a wedding dress. After the priest said a few words, Sharon rose up from her casket, and she and Valerie floated up toward the ceiling, suspended by wires. I didn't know what to expect, so I was watching, breathless, as the two of them faced each other above the crowd.

Then Valerie pulled out a shotgun and blasted Sharon in the chest, killing her. Blood sprayed the crowd below as Sharon's limp, lifeless body was lowered back down into the casket. Valerie took her seat with the rest of the family and sat smugly, as if waiting for applause. It never came. The family was silent, all waiting for my reaction.

It seemed as if everyone was in on the surprise ending but me. They were expecting that I'd go along, or perhaps even be pleased with this dramatic event. I was the opposite of that. Covered in blood, I stood up from the table where the family was seated and told them all off. I went around the table and yelled in each family member's face, starting with Valerie:

"You evil bitch! Bitches, sons of whores, all of you! Murderers!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

No one tried to console me, and everyone dispersed, each to their separate hotel rooms. I was still fuming when a maid came in. She told me that she thought there was something fishy about how the whole thing played out. Like maybe Sharon wasn't in on the surprise, and this was actually a case of murder, rather than some bizarre funerary euthanasia ceremony. 

"I saw the two of them talking about the upcoming event," she told me. "Sharon wasn't supposed to die. It was just going to be a mock shooting, with fake bullets and blood. But I saw the one girl, Valerie, was it? Yes, her, loading the real shells into the gun."

Armed with the testimony of the maid, I confronted Valerie and the family again:

"How could you do that to Sharon? You're supposed to be her sister! Sharon was still alive. Now, you've killed her. This isn't over. And the rest of you, fuck you all! I never want to speak to any of you again, you hear? Ever!"

I felt the finality of my words, as final as Sharon's death. I vowed to myself to avenge Sharon. My mind was racing, and I couldn't focus or plan anything, so I just woke up instead, still agitated and full of adrenaline. Sorry, if my little thumbnail isn't as detailed or amusing as you might like, but this one isn't meant to be entertaining. I simply had to jot it down before I forgot.

I'm going to try to go back to sleep now. Maybe I'll get revenge, or maybe Sharon will let me know that it's OK, it was just a horrible, horrible mistake, a joke that I will never understand. I may have some difficulty falling back asleep, though. I'm still pissed.

----

The next day, back at the hotel, the family was still torn in two over my outburst at the funeral. The two camps consisted of me vs. everybody else, since the maid was no longer present, as her shift had ended. I was still mad, but I was going to wait for a sign from Sharon before making my final decision. I didn't want to hate her family forever.

I walked into the conference room, which had been reserved for the funeral/wedding party. It was brightly lit and appointed with pew-like seating, made to resemble a church or perhaps the waiting room in heaven. It was themed white, with gold trim. Everything had a slightly overexposed look, but not hazy or blurry, just radiantly bright.

I spied Sharon sitting on a pew next to her brother Harold. She had a little darker hair than usual, and it was a bit shorter, but it was her. I walked over to her and looked her right in the eyes to be sure I wasn't mistaken.

"Are you really here?" I asked. "I can't believe it! You are OK!"

I noticed that no one seemed to be paying her much attention, like she was invisible or something. 

"Am I the only one who can see you?" I asked.

"Pretty much," she said. "Harold is the only other person who can see me."

Harold and I exchanged a few words. I apologized to him for my outburst against the family. Next, I sought out Valerie and gave her a hug. I realized that the whole ordeal hadn't been easy for her. I still didn't have an answer from Sharon as to why she had chosen such a dramatic exit, but she'd assured me that she was OK, so my questions just evaporated.

Last Job

 

Living in the Paradise house with my mom was cramping my style. I was part of the Pulp Fiction gang, pulling jobs with Jules and Vincent, and we were in between capers, planning our next gig. Winston Wolfe was trying to give us our instructions and discussing logistics like where to stash bodies, how to elude authorities and get from point A to point B, etc., but my mom's presence in the living room meant that he had to speak in code, which annoyed him.

"Andrew, I suggest you sell the front half of your submarine, and buy a boat," he said cryptically.

"I don't know what that means," I said.

He and the others went outside to finish the discussion in the driveway. After all of the roles were assigned, I found that I had been cut out. The last job had went OK, a little shaky perhaps, but we had gotten through it. I was confused, so I asked him what he wanted me to do. Lookout perhaps? Play an innocent bystander, hanging around for backup in case things got dicey? Surely, there was something.

"I told you to sell that submarine," he said firmly. "We can't use you. That was your last job. You're out." 

They sped off in Winston's Acura and left me standing in the driveway, picking gravel from my teeth. I was bummed, and I went in the house and began lamenting to my mom. 

"But they were my friends!" I blubbered, "and I'm going to miss them!" We'd had some good times together.

"You'll make new friends," my mom said. "Besides, I never liked that bunch. They always seemed like there was a criminal element they were concealing." She didn't know the half of it.

I had always told her that we were doing improv, or rehearsing for a play at the local playhouse, and she'd bought it. I knew I should have conveyed that to Winston, so he didn't have to tippy-toe around with his instructions. It could have worked, I thought. It still could. I jumped on my quad, determined to go after them, hoping to plead my case.

I'd lost sight of them, and after driving the quad out of Paradise, I found myself in the southeast section of LA, near my old apartment on Imperial Highway, in Downey. I was still a couple of towns away, and there was traffic and the threat of law enforcement to contend with. My main problem was the quad. I was driving an unregistered off-road vehicle on the busy city streets.

I tried to remain inconspicuous, but that's hard to do when your vehicle will barely keep up with the flow of traffic. Some gearing problem was keeping me from reaching top speeds, so I kept it slow and stayed in the bike lane, weaving in between parked cars and driving on the sidewalk when necessary. To make matters worse, the engine started bogging down and stalling, and I had to keep restarting it.

I drove through a department store, timing my entrance with the opening of an automatic sliding glass door. The quad barely fit through, and once inside, I found that the rear exit doors were smaller and wouldn't accommodate an easy escape. I'd have to get it up on two wheels and try to drive through leaning sideways. That's when the first security guard saw me.

"You can't go through there," he said amiably. 

"Thanks," I said, quickly putting the vehicle in reverse. I put my finger to my lips, giving him the signal to shush. "Let's just keep this between us, shall we?"

That must have activated his cop mode, because I saw him reach for his radio. I wagged my finger at him, and he stopped. He seemed to be fearful that I was armed, and he smiled and pointed me to the front entrance. While I was distracted and looking in the direction of the door, he reached over and pulled the key out of the ignition. Cheeky monkey. He wasn't so dumb after all.

I snatched the key out of his hand, jammed it in the ignition, and away I went. Too close for comfort. I knew he'd be radioing for backup soon. 

Down the road a ways, I encountered another obstacle. The police station lay directly in my path to get back to the apartment. It was a huge building, taking up a whole city block. I found a narrow alleyway between two sections of the building, and I putted my limping vehicle through the opening. That's when I encountered the second cop.

He was a real cop, not the mall security variety, a middle-aged diminutive figure, Caucasian, of Scottish descent, with thinning strawberry blond hair, combed over Trump style. His face was wrinkled and scarred, as if he'd seen some action in his day. The wrinkles were crow's feet, though, and belied a slightly devious and mostly friendly demeanor.

"You're going to have a hell of a time getting this thing home in this condition," he said, hopping on the back and riding double with me slowly up the alley.

The terrain got steeper once we reached the other side of the alley. With its current engine trouble, having two of us on the quad slowed our progress almost to a standstill. We inched up the hill, with me revving the engine full throttle to zero acceleration. It stalled several times, but I kept restarting it. We finally made it to Imperial Highway, and the cop got off the quad. 

"You should be fine from here," he said. "You can pedal if you need to."

"I really appreciate your help," I told him, surprised that he'd put his cop job on the line to help me get my illegal vehicle home.

"I don't know what that is," he said, smiling. "I love that line from Pulp Fiction. The one where Winston says, 'I don't know what that is.'" 

I laughed and agreed with him, although I didn't remember any such line. It was just good to have a friend in the cop business. I explained to him that I was in an improv group, and we'd just been doing a theatrical version of the story. He seemed satisfied with that and waved me on as I fired up my sluggish quad one more time.

It sputtered and coughed as the last of the engine's nine lives expired. I supposed it could have just run out of gas, but I had no way of knowing. There were no gas stations between me and my destination. I looked down at the pedals. They were silly little things, the size of moped pedals and had an annoyingly short stroke. I was only a couple of blocks away at this point, so I resigned myself to the task.

<cue exit music>

I woke up to Miserlou by Dick Dale playing on my TV stereo speakers. Playing the same movie over and over as a sleep therapy has its advantages and disadvantages. I can fall asleep relatively quickly and stay asleep all night, but my dreams become infiltrated by the soundtrack's seepage into my subconscious. Perhaps Harvey Keitel was telling me that I need to find a new set of characters to cast in my nocturnal improv.

Runnin' and Gunnin'

 

I was in near the waterfront in Marina del Rey, walking along the bike path next to the bay. It was a fairly busy day, people were walking dogs, biking and playing Frisbee on the grass. Some were reading books, laying on towels in the afternoon sun. I was carrying a backpack on my back and had a folding chair in a bag slung over one shoulder.

I passed some apartment buildings, where I noticed some men crouched down behind some bushes. My spine tingled when I noticed they were aiming guns in my general direction. I kept walking and tried to remain calm. They were engaged in a standoff with some other guys down the beach from me. Shots were being fired, but since the guns had silencers, no one on the beach seemed to notice. 

As I passed by the building, I looked down at my feet and saw a submachine gun stashed in the sand. I picked it up and looked at it. It appeared to be in good condition. No sand had gotten into the barrel. It's bad when sand gets in the barrel, I thought to myself, everyone knows that. It should probably be cleaned before using it, but in a pinch it might do. 

I rearranged the backpack and chair, slinging the firearm over my shoulder by its strap. I tried to conceal it by carrying it next to the folding chair, but it was an uneven load and the gun kept poking out, plainly visible to passersby. Eventually, I stopped in my tracks, put everything on the ground and re-balanced the load. While I was at it, I fiddled with the safety, making certain that it was in the off position.

Just then, a man ran past me, and I got the idea that I should run with him. The men in the bushes were in pursuit. We got to a parking structure and ducked inside, and I examined the gun a little closer. The barrel had come loose from what looked like a plastic stock. Cheap-ass workmanship, I thought. I hadn't dropped it or anything, but the barrel looked completely bent.

"Manuel isn't going to like that," the man told me as I fumbled to straighten out the barrel.

I assumed that this was Manuel's weapon and that Manuel was some kind of gangster, associated with the current shootout/pursuit in progress on the beach. I got the weapon in a semi-workable condition and fired a few test shots in the direction of the pursuers.

"Seems to be ok," I said. "Let's go."

We resumed the chase, circling back around, hoping to ambush our attackers from the rear. After going through a few buildings and narrow alleyways, we were nearly upon them. I looked at the gun and now the barrel had completely broken off. It seems that the barrel was constructed mostly of a wood, with only the smallest metal ring at the tip where the sight was located.

Try as I might, I could not make the pieces of wood go back together. It looked like a broken broomstick. I examined it further and noticed that the firing mechanism, which consisted of a chain with some gears and latches, was completely out of sync. Stupid machine gun, I thought. Who designs a wood and plastic chain-driven machine gun of such low quality, anyway?

Fortunately, I woke up before Manuel showed up to inquire about his firearm. I was glad to be back in the real world, where I don't have such concerns.

Mario Saves My House (and I may now smile again)

Another fire dream. I'd better really start taking these to heart. I'm racking up quite a collection. This one was brief, but to the point:

It was a warm summer morning, and I was in outside on my front porch, gazing out towards the south, lazily observing the flight of birds across the sky, thinking of nothing in particular. I had a lovely view of Payne's Peak, the minuscule mountain where my internet comes from, rising up out of the canopy of oaks and digger pine that fill the small valley. The treetops were all green, but beneath them, the grass was dead and orange, typical for this time of year.

From just beyond the peak, I noticed a faint wisp of smoke rising up, creating the steamy aura of a piping hot meatloaf, fresh from the oven. I rubbed my eyes, not wanting to believe what I was seeing. A second look confirmed my deepest fears. Little orange spots were showing up on the top of the peak, and it in a matter of seconds all of these incendiary dots connected, forming a giant blaze that covered the entire mountainside. 

"FIRE!!!" I screamed. "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" 

I poked my head into each room of my house shouting my warning to no one in particular. I don't know if I had houseguests or not, but it was imperative that I made sure the message got out. I ran outside, screaming loud enough to alert the entire neighborhood. I was going to get the jump on this situation. There was no wind, and it didn't appear that the fire was moving particularly quickly at that very moment, still the urgency remained.

I spotted former cult member Mario Huante in my front yard. He was running a network of garden hoses, setting up sprinklers and aiming them at my house. I had a moment's relief as a light breeze started blowing the fire and smoke away from us, to the south. Suddenly, the wind began to shift, and now the fire was racing across the tiny valley that separated us from the fully engulfed mountain. It would be upon us in minutes. 

The wind picked up, and soon embers were flying past us, above the rooftops and starting small fires in the dry grass that lines the periphery of my property. A wall of flames was approaching from south, eating up huge swaths of real estate along Loma Rica Road and eliminating any chance of escape. There was now no way out except on foot, and the fire was moving far too fast for that.

"We're going to have to ride it out," I told Mario. "Let's get the animals into the house."

I don't know why I thought that inside a wooden structure would be any safer, but Mario had done a pretty good job of wetting down the roof, and my house does have a small defensible space of mowed green grass surrounding it. We dodged the sprinklers and piled into the house, which was dripping wet from the prophylactic soaking.

Inside the house, Mario's menagerie of hybrid farm animals made a ruckus as they rooted about in my living room. There were pig-donkeys and goat-pigs and donkey-goats all running around squealing, braying and bucking, slipping and sliding and leaving muddy hoof marks on the tile floor. I wasn't so worried about all of that, although I did have to grab one pig-donkey-goat by the leg to prevent him from kicking me in the face.

I looked out the front window and noticed that the sky was clear again. The giant wall of flames had evaporated, and the fire had raced past us. The fiery angel of death had passed over us spared our house and our little ark full of oddities. 

"Look!" I cried joyously, "We've been spared! The threat has gone!"

"Hallelujah!" Mario exulted. "God is good."

I didn't know about all that. It was actually Mario's quick thinking with the sprinklers and garden hoses that did the saving. Simple physics, combustion properties and fire dynamics. But if it walked and talked like a miracle, I wasn't going to dispute it.

"Now, about these animals in my living room..." I said, gently herding them out the front door with celebratory slaps on the flanks. A few remained, choosing to make a new home with my cats on the couch. I guessed they could stay, if they behaved themselves.

----

Meanwhile, in the real world, I may now find myself one smiling motherfucker, as Marcellus would say. For months, I have been mourning the slow death of my pearly whites, having lost the battle (or so I thought) to enamel erosion. My teeth were looking like candy corns, stained at the tips, as if I'd been sipping wood stain from a teacup. No amount of brushing, flossing or Waterpic use could remove the tarnish. I even tried that 5 minute teeth whitening gel, leaving it on for the maximum of 20 minutes, twice a day, for weeks at a time. Nothing. 

I had resigned myself to the idea that I'd just go to my grave a tight lipped, grimacing ogre, never smiling for pictures, timidly hiding my teeth in conversations. It was destroying any hope I had for the illusion of a happy, smiling me. I contemplated implants, veneers, false teeth -- but since those all involve going to the dentist, I assigned them to the category of "things to procrastinate, hopefully until after death."  

Last night, after brushing my teeth, I noticed that the toothbrush had done an incomplete job of cleaning between my teeth. That's nothing new. I've been achieving less and less satisfactory results, despite all of the above mentioned rituals. I'd been brushing twice a day, and things just seemed to be getting worse. 

But this particular bit of plaque looked fresh, and I decided to poke at it with a sewing needle. It scraped off easily. I ran the needle over the stained bottom tips of my four front teeth, the ones I used to do my smiling with. Slowly, but surely, I noticed that I could etch off the rough surface staining and reveal the smooth enamel underneath. In a matter of minutes, I had brought back the front surface of my choppers to a uniform color. No more tobacco colored sunburst. 

OMFG! This was amazing. Why hadn't I thought of this before? I finished up with the needle, just on the outside of my upper front teeth, and they felt smooth again. This wasn't erosion, it was simply hardened plaque. 

I went online and ordered a proper dental scaler, you know those curved picks that the professionals use to gently (or not so gently) scrape the plaque from your teeth. I will be glad to have this instrument in my arsenal, being mindful not to scrape too hard, as one can easily go past the plaque and into the actual tooth enamel if one isn't careful. 

But even now, waking up to teeth that don't look like a homeless tobacco chewer, even if it's just the fronts of the fronts, is like a dream come true. I think I'll smile at inappropriate times, just because I can, maybe even take a selfie or two. Yay, me. 

Who knows, I may even subject myself to a long overdue visit to the dentist for a proper cleaning, something I've avoided for most of my adult life. The last time I went was 2015 for an extraction. I said maybe. Baby steps.