No movies or potato salad for me, I'd rather get lost and fall in a ditch

 

I was attending the funeral of a disabled boy named Timmy. The family was one familiar to me from my cult days, the Gervais family. 

**True story: Carey Gervais was a roommate of mine and was, in fact, the person responsible for recruiting me into the cult in the first place, with his relentless witnessing while we worked together at the fingernail factory in Westminster. He was also the only person I've ever known to be ejected from a church, cult or otherwise, for masturbating during a worship service.**

"We're going to have potato salad after the service," said Mama Gervais."Then we're going to watch Mamma Mia."

Earlier in the day, I'd been in a conflict with one of my roommates over someone leaving a bike at the house and then going AWOL for months. My other roommates were getting pissed at me for keeping the bike, thinking that I should have somehow tracked this person down and forced them to take the bike back. 

"What we have here," I said, "is a simple case of abandonment. After 90 days, possessions left in a rental are legally forfeited. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, after all." I was pretty proud of my legal knowledge, drawing from a similar situation in my cult days, in which a member had exited the cult, leaving all his stuff behind. 

"Well, I want it out of here," said Beth. "Maybe you can just take the bike for a ride and not bring it back."

"No can do," I said, my tone surly. "If I come across a free bike, I'm going to ride it, and I'll be bringing it back home with me. Bikes can live in the house as far as I'm concerned."

Beth shook her head, clearly displeased. 

Meanwhile, back at the funeral, we'd come to a break in the service. It seemed to be dragging on, so the family suggested we take a little outing up to the hills for everyone to clear their heads. We were still going to come back and finish the service and then watch Mamma Mia, but a trip to the hills seemed warranted. 

We all piled into the station wagon, and the father drove us up some winding roads to the top of a mountain. Everyone stood around admiring the view for a moment, and then Mama Gervais said it was time to get back. 

"I'm going to stay a little longer," I said. "I'll walk back and catch up to you later." 

I wasn't in a hurry to get back to the boring service, but I figured I could make it back in time to catch the movie. Mama Gervais protested a bit, but she wanted to get back to that potato salad, so they didn't press the matter. They all got back into the station wagon and left me alone with my thoughts.

The first thing I thought was that I'd forgotten the directions to get back to the house. I started following a small drainage ditch with water in it back down the hill. I knew I'd have to cross the ditch at some point, so I looked for a narrow spot and attempted to hop over to the other side.

I got a bad start, however, and landed ankle deep in water in a soft spot on the other side. The ground was mushy, and I started to sink. I somehow managed to make a backwards hop and wound up back where I started. I kept walking along the side of the ditch, and per dream protocols, the bank became unstable and slanted me towards the now deepening water. 

There were some pallets on the bank of the ditch, and I was forced to use them as stepping stones. Due to the angle of the bank and the muddy soil, it was just a matter of time before I slid off into the ditch and found myself up to my neck in water. Somehow I had the presence of mind to unholster my phone and hold it aloft while I scrambled back to the bank.

Soaked and muddy, I was now at least on the correct side of the ditch. I walked down a few streets, and failing to see any recognizable landmarks, I looked at my phone to see if GPS could bail me out. I realized that I didn't know the address of the house I was looking for, so I scrolled through a bunch of emails to try to find the one Mama Gervais had sent inviting me to the funeral.

I never did find the email, so I missed out on the movie and the potato salad. I could just hear them tsking and muttering about how disrespectful I was to flake out on the rest of the funeral. I woke up soon afterward, with the cats clawing at my bedroom door and a hole in my gut from some chronic GI issues that I've been having. 

Happy Saturday.

Just another day at the Greek

Working as an apprentice at a Greek restaurant was challenging, but not without its rewards. It was an outdoor venue, so floor cleaning wasn't required. Picnic tables were scattered along a grassy hillside with trees and natural lighting during the daytime and candles and moonlight at night. I had a lot to learn, so most of my time was spent shadowing the boss's son as he performed almost every job involved in the running of a small restaurant.

"Get those hotdogs for me, will you?" he barked. "They've been in the water too long."

I hastened to retrieve the drowning dogs from the steaming tub but soon realized that I had no tongs with which to grab them. 

I remembered a fellow at YMCA summer camp who bore the scars of what he called "hot dog gloop" from an incident working at his father's restaurant in which he dropped his wristwatch into a vat of boiling hot dog water. Without thinking he reached in to rescue the watch, a gift from his father, and was instantly scarred for life by the scalding water. 

"Never mind," the son said in disgust, pouring off some of the water and skewering the dogs with a fork. He could see that I was paralyzed, lost in my daydream of summer camp and the horrid purple and white scarred hands of my campmate.

Next, he proceeded to show me how to prepare the sauce for one of their main dishes, the Miso Burrito.

"Do you know what Miso is?" he questioned me. 

"Tomatos and corn meal," I said promptly. I had recently learned this, after many years of passing this item over in the supermarket, when Emery brought some home from the food bank. 

(Now that I think about it, it wasn't Miso after all, but polenta. But for the purposes of this dream, I'm still going to call it Miso, error or no.)

"Correct. So you can look at this as a Greek Tamale, or as we like to call it, the Miso Burrito." He went on to explain how the sauce was also tomato based but had a strong chili component. 

About that time, one of the new waitresses, a ringer for Patricia Arquette with notes of Reese Witherspoon, began causing a bit of a stir at one of the tables. 

"Dammit, Patty!" the owner said under his breath, looking up toward the fracas. 

The pretty blonde had taken her top off and was serving the patrons in true early Greek fashion. She was certainly not getting any complaints, but the loud comments from some of the more inebriated male customers became a bit much for the normally sedate atmosphere. The owner suggested that I attempt to rein her in, and a foot chase ensued.

Giggling, still topless and flopping about, Patty ran off behind some apartment buildings, maintaining a pretty good speed despite her natural encumberments. 

"You keep after her, and I'll try to head her off," said the owner's son. 

His strategy didn't work, and soon she'd disappeared completely from view. We came upon a chair that was placed strategically at the top of a decrepit old staircase so that if anyone sat in it, they would most certainly fall backward to their death. I touched the arm of the chair with one finger, and it plummeted into an empty chasm where the staircase had fallen away in ruins.

"That was a close call," the son said.

At the same time, at the bottom of the hill on the other side of the ravine, I saw a man with a hat and briefcase standing in a drainage culvert. Behind him, in the side of the mountain, a set of elevator doors suddenly appeared, and he took one step backward and disappeared into them. The doors then vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving no trace of the man or the passageway.

Back in the restaurant, a heated discussion was going on between the owner, his son and I on the subject of toplessness, and breasts in general. 

"It's not appropriate in a dining establishment, and that is that!" exclaimed the owner.

The son and I took a different view, but our stance was puerile at best. 

"I think it depends on the breasts, really," I stated. "Some of them are quite nice and could be appreciated in any venue, purely on artistic merit." 

"Poppycock!" said the owner. "You boys just like seeing a nice set of tits. You don't give a damn about art or any of that."

I did not disagree with him. The dream ended on that note. Springtime rages on, apparently, at least in my dream world.

Aaron Rodgers is fat and has a tapeworm

I dreamed I was being vetted as part of a welcoming committee for Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. He was always a fave of Sharon's, and being from Chico, he attended Butte College around the same time that she was working there. She accumulated an extensive (and expensive) collection of signed memorabilia which, due to market fluctuations, I am unable to part with without losing a ton of money.

In my dream, this sports icon had fallen on hard times. He was still a celebrity, but he had to take his act on the road during the off season, making appearances at drugstores and grocery outlets to try to earn some extra scratch. It was at one such appearance at the local CVS pharmacy that I was summoned by local law enforcement to be part of a special backstage welcoming team. 

Our job was to conduct an informal interview and get some publicity shots with him before he addressed the crowd of fans that had gathered in the parking lot. But first the cop had to make certain that I was going to be a stable enough member of the general public to draft into this position, so he strapped a camera on me and proceeded to observe me while I was locked in a storage area in the back of the drugstore.

It was easy enough to convince him that I was no threat. I didn't try to climb the walls or burn the place down. I just waited around until they decided to let me out, and soon enough, I was a part of the team. Just like that.

"I'm sorry we had to put you through that, Mr. Golding," the cop said ruefully. "9/11 and all that. You can't be too careful. You never know who might just be a pressure cooker ready to pop."

I kept a stone face, deciding not to acknowledge his dark terrorism pun referencing the Boston Bombing. It's always too soon for that. 

Soon Rodgers showed up and made his way into the back room where I and the rest of the committee were waiting to greet him. He gave hugs all around and thanked us for being fans. I didn't tell him that I was not really a football fan, since he really seemed to need whatever boost he was getting from this event.

The first thing I noticed was that he'd put on quite a bit of weight since his last appearance anywhere. His belly protruded so that his hug was more of a belly bump than a hug. 

"Sorry about that," he said. "That thing is always getting in the way. I have a tapeworm, you know. It's been with me for a while, so I've been eating for two."

I tried not to look too disgusted, as this kind of thing could happen to anyone. "Don't worry about it," I said. "You still have a huge fan base out there. Now you go and give those folks what they want."

He did just that, and the parking lot crowd received him with a warm round of applause. It was but a faint smattering of the stadium sized roar that he was accustomed to, but it was sincere. He was still their guy--fat, tapeworms and all.

Meanwhile, the committee had another job to do. We were tasked with writing a review of a used mattress that had been listed on Ebay. It was very similar to the one I own, an Electropedic adjustable Cal King with two twin latex mattresses. I volunteered to review the mattress portion of the bed and quickly began making notes on some of the defects that I saw.

"This thing has been clawed by multiple cats," I surmised, noting the shredded foam protruding from giant gashes in the mattress's sidewall. "I think you are going to have a hard time unloading this. It's basically a piece of crap." My own mattress is in similar condition, and I'm pretty much stuck with it, since it would be too expensive to replace.

That's about all I've got for this dream. I am recording it late in the day because my time in the morning is spoken for by a couple of zombie cats with razor claws who demand feeding under threat of further terroristic vandalism to my mattress.

Drive-in Crush and the Poopy Barbeque

 

I dreamed Sharon and I were out on a date at a drive-in movie theater, only there was no movie and no other cars, and it was just her and I making out in the back seat of a 1960s American luxury sedan. 

As things began to heat up, I put the passenger seat back to demonstrate how the whole interior could be made into a giant bed. I forgot to tell Sharon to move, however, and she was temporarily crushed between the two black leather upholstered seats.

"Are you OK?" I gasped frantically. "I'll get you unstuck, I promise."

I pulled the lever, and the seat retracted. She was fine, but this put an end to the backseat lovemaking. We went home to our apartment in town and decided to have a barbecue out in the courtyard. I threw some steaks on the grill and headed to the apartment to get some spices.

On my way to the apartment, I stepped in some dog shit. Great, I thought, and I was barefoot, naturally. I wriggled my toes to try to rid them of the smushy poop, but I only made it worse. 

Inside the apartment, I used the sink sprayer to rinse my feet off. The hose must have been extremely long because I wasn't anywhere near the sink. I was in the hallway, and the poop was getting rinsed off onto the hardwood floor. I made a mental note to clean it up later and went back outside to the grill, where an amorous Sharon awaited me.

I somehow managed to regain the mood despite the dog shit, and soon we abandoned the steaks and headed into the apartment for a quickie. I grabbed her by the back of both thighs, hoisted her up and carried her reverse piggie-back into the bedroom.

I'm through with love

"I'm through with love, 

It's only a madness.

I'm finished with this,

This torment was never my joy.

Who needs a heartbreak?

Don't want anybody to call my own..."   

 

                                                                ~Basia 

 

"What do you get when you fall in love?

A girl with a pin to burst your bubble.

That's what you get for all your trouble.

I'll...never fall in love again.

I'll...never fall in love again." 

                                                                 ~Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello

A day at the beach

I dreamed I had two black friends, and we decided to go to the beach in Santa Monica. From our starting point at 1124 Bay St., we headed down the hill, joking and throwing a basketball back and forth, until we got to 11th at the bottom. At that point, our paths diverged when one of them threw the ball, and I chased it down Grant, while the two of them continued on Bay St. 

Arriving at the beach, we dug a little sand bunker and started setting up for a day of partying and girl watching. We had an ATV parked at the top of a little sand dune that must have served as an "Open for business" sign, because within minutes, a pretty blonde came up to our sand fort and asked for a demonstration of our ATV.

"Go ahead, General," one of my friends told me. "Show her what it can do."

I jumped on the quad and proceeded to make tracks across the beach, doing tight little turns and throwing up a spray of sand and mud. I went back to the group, and saw the girl looking very impressed, despite the fact that I'd tracked a bunch of mud across the walkway where a bunch of street merchants had set up shop.

"Can you teach me to do that?" she asked coyly.

"Certainly," I said. "Let's set up an appointment."

"Also, my friends and I would like to see you dance," she said, naming some very hip sounding dance with which I was completely unfamiliar. "Do you think you can do that, as well?"

I conferred with my two friends, and they did some quick internet research. After watching a few Tik Tok and YouTube videos, they whispered to me, "Tell her yes, dude. It's easy. You can do it."

I nodded yes to the girl, and after agreeing to the appointment, she went away to tell her friends. I now had my work cut out for me, since I am decidedly unhip, and I don't fancy myself much of a dancer. All in a day's work, I supposed, so I got down to learning the steps. 

I woke up with Steely Dan playing "Hey Nineteen" in my head.

Uninvited

 

 

I dreamed last night, but I didn't remember it until later in the day, so details are sparse. 

I was at a large event put on by Yuba City Honda, some kind of annual party for all the employees, where food and drinks were served and there was dancing, and a general good time was being had by all. Although I was no longer employed there, I had been getting invited every year, so I kept up the tradition of making an appearance.

This time, however, was different. People looked at me as if I were a stranger or a vagabond just looking for a handout. I felt an unwelcoming vibe as I walked around from table to table picking up hors d' oeuvres.

"I didn't think they wanted him back," I overheard one woman say as I skewered a pickle and put it on my plate.

"It's just a one time thing," another lady replied. "Joellen will see to it that he doesn't come back next year."

I felt crushed, since all of my interactions with the boss lady had been positive, and this chilly reception, coming out of the blue, caught me completely off guard. I found Joellen out on the dance floor, and I sidled up to her.

"Is it true that I am being uninvited?" I asked her bluntly.

"Yes, Andrew, it is true," she said.  "Your time here has passed. I hope you understand. We wish you well, but this will have to be the last time."

I felt about two inches tall, and I slunk off the dance floor with my head held low. 

----

I know there was more to the dream that I'm not remembering, but this was the basic theme. Rejection. Things ending. 

I experienced some rejection in the last week in my personal life from the girl I was having a brief moment of infatuation with. We had been friends for a while in group, and then we started meeting for lunch occasionally when I would go to Yuba City to go shopping. We seemed to be hitting it off quite nicely, and she'd even come up to my house for a visit on my birthday.

We discussed dating, and at first she said no, but she finally relented, and we had a couple of days texting back and forth, things of a somewhat emotional nature. Words were said that caused my hopes to soar, but abruptly after our first official date, she texted me and said that she didn't want to see me anymore. The friendship seems to have been rescinded as well.

As quickly as I'd gotten my hopes up, I became deflated, and sank into an abysmal depression. All the songs on my new "romantic" playlist have been ruined for me, at least for the time being. I feel mocked by the happy, hopefulness of people singing about love. 

Sure, I know that this is exactly what I deserve for just leaving Denise after a year and a half. I don't deserve a happy ending, or at least not an easy one. I'm going to have to pay back my karmic debt and suffer the same fate as I inflicted on another, so I can experience what it is like to be dumped. And Denise is still pissed and won't talk to me at all.

I never meant to hurt Denise, and I never meant to lead her on. Apparently, though, I did both. I don't know if there were ever any really good, safe moves to be made, where no one would get hurt. If I had stayed with her, I'd have been unhappy, and that would have translated into a less than adequate version of me for her. 

Getting my mind right would have been the only solution. Learning to accept things as they are and being content with what I had. Being grateful for what is instead of chasing after mirages. Those are the words of a depressed brain, telling me not to go after what I want and disguising it in the cloak of sagely wisdom. The truth is--I just don't know. 

What I do know is that I feel like a shithead. 

I replaced my kitchen faucet today. It had been leaking for about 6 months. I wanted to just replace the washer, but I wound up taking the whole unit out because I couldn't figure out how to access the nut to unscrew the tap. I wound up buying an inferior replacement without a sprayer, and now I'm having to relearn how to use a sink. 

Life just seems like a series of downgrades, of settling for "what is" and being told you have to love it. The guy who sold me the faucet, a fat New Yorker whose sales strategy is to use his vast knowledge of plumbing to humiliate every Ace Hardware customer with whom he comes into contact, actually told me, "You're gonna love that faucet." Like the George Zimmer, the Men's Warehouse spokesman, he guaranteed it. 

"Life is full of empty promises and broken dreams....

That's rock bottom, when this life makes you mad enough to kill
That's rock bottom, when you want somethin' bad enough to steal
That's rock bottom, when you feel like you've had it up to here
'Cause you mad enough to scream, but you sad enough to tear"

I don't mind quoting Eminem when I'm feeling as immature and pouty as I have been these last few days. Anger is a step up on the scale of depression, whereas enlightenment may be some bullshit level of detachment that is less than human, less than being alive. 

Love this, bitches! <middle finger extended>

**Do I really have to add the disclaimer that I'm not using the term "bitches" in its misogynistic sense, but in the universal? I feel like I have to, although I also feel that it shouldn't be necessary. Do you even know me at all?

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ahh, you suck!" he roared. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Poles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A lady, a dog and my cousin Tim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life before existance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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