Within

I'm sitting at a familiar wooden table and wondering what happened to the walls that used to surround it. The last time I sat at this table it was indoors, inside my apartment, but as I look around, the only walls I see are those of tall, grey, monolithic  buildings set several hundred feet away in any direction. I'm in some sort of enormous courtyard, the sky is a dull beige but the ground is composed of a single gigantic marble slab, bordered by terraced steps leading up to a walkway that runs parallel to the buildings.

There are people along the edge, walking in a dark and somber procession; as they walk, a trail of litter and debris forms in their wake, cluttering up the otherwise pristine area. I consider getting up to approach the group to admonish them for their carelessness, but I have no body and I cannot move, I can only watch. Staring closely, I recognize a few of the distant faces and one of them turns to me and smiles, a cheerfulness that is at odds with the grim clothing and funereal pace of his companions. Something comforting is said, but I don't hear it, I'm distracted by a faint metallic tinkling sound behind me;  it sounds as if small, muted bells are approaching slowly from a distance. I can't turn around to look but that seems normal in my incorporeal state, not a cause for alarm.

A pale, slender hand reaches from behind  and sets an empty wooden bowl on the table in front of me, and at this moment I discover that I have regained my body; my right hand is clutching a wooden spoon that is nearly as broad as a spatula and my stomach is crying out for food. I try to turn around, but I can't, I'm held fast in my seat and this upsets me-what use a body that cannot move?

After a moment of panic, I feel a hand rest itself on my shoulder.

Shhhh. It is going to be alright.

Alright? I'm not sure that I understand what is happening, but it is good to know that. A sense of enveloping calm wraps itself around me, a blanketing, benevolent mist and I am not at all surprised when an unseen voice asks me a series of questions in a mock-serious tone.
I already know the answers.

Will you be having porridge today, sir?

"No, thank you. Gruel will be fine."

Very well, then. Will you be taking bananas or dried apples with your gruel? And to drink?

"Oh, neither. I'll have rice cakes...and I'll take a glass of tap water with them, please."

The bells are laughing now.

Wake up, wake up.

Riiiiing!

"Oh!"

"Oh!"

"Oh...wow. What...is...this...thing?"

"Don't stop!"

"But...there's a giant TV screen on the wall above your bed. It wasn't there a second ago."

"Goddammit, don't stop...are you high?"

"No, I'm not. This thing is huge."

"Don't stop- and don't flatter yourself. Mostly,don't stop... hey!"

"There's some sort of counter or timer on it...it says 'K' and there's a lot of numbers after...what does 'K' mean?"

"Hey! Are you paying attention to me?"

"Yes."

"Mmmmm."
"Mmmmmm."

"Wow...the numbers changed..."

"Mmmmm."
"Mmmmm."

"I think it's counting how many times we kiss and timing each one."

"Stop talking about that thing...are you paying attention to me?"

"No...I mean yes! But look at this thing up here..."

"How? I can't see it from here...dammit, do you want me to get up?"

"No! But..now..there's a red bar across the bottom off the screen...it gets bigger when I piss you off."

"Goddamn you...wait...I can see the glow now. Where is that light coming fro... oh!"

"Oh!"

"Oh!...you are paying attention."

"Wow...there's a pie chart above the red bar now...the pie is sliced into shades of green...here...oh...see, it changes whenever you do...oh! Oh!"

"Oh!"

"Oh no."

"Don't stop!"

"No, really. I think I'm dreaming."

"Oh, yes!"

"No, seriously. This isn't happening, it's really a dream, poof, I wake up and this is gone...that sort of thing. There's even a timer that looks like my alarm clock on this weird screen TV .
I think it's getting ready to ring."

"Stop talking and hurry up then!"

RIIIING!

Rope

My eyes are closed but I know where I am. I am at the top of my favorite hill, a seaside cliff of dreams. Any moment now, I will hear the cries of gulls circling overhead and that is when I will lift my eyelids and see what I already know is there.

Someone will be waiting for me here, someone always is, but I'm in no particular hurry to find out who is here today. For now, I'm content to listen. I hear nothing, not even the sound of waves breaking on the shore far below. This worries me. Perhaps I am not where I think I am.

I take a few steps forward before I realize that my eyes are still shut. If I am at the peak of a cliff, I had better open them before I start stumbling around.

Even in dreams, accidents can happen, I think, and am immediately struck with the thought that I am probably wrong. Dreams may be the only place where accidents never happen.

I take a look around.

Something has changed and there is no one here to explain it. The large rocks at the top, which , until now, have always been spotted with lichens and punctuated with small, hardy shrubs, are barren. At my feet, I see a familar path cut into the stone but there is no sign of life, no tufts of grass sprouting in the cracks, no birds above, nothing.

"Well?", I call out. The word doesn't echo off the stones, it simply leaves my mouth and drops into nothingness. My eyes track the imagined descent of that syllable and are led to the small, secluded beach far, far below me. The sand should be starkly white against the dark grey stone, but it isn't. I can't distinguish the point where the ocean ends and the land begins. The endless stretch of water- which should be bright blue- is as dark and motionless as the boulders lining the nearby path.

This sucks, I complain to myself, I will have to walk all the way to the bottom alone, with no one to talk to. Until this visit, I have always had a guide in this place- a character from a book or TV show, a favored pet, a stranger- but there is no one here.

I decide against walking. I take a running start and leap off the cliff's edge. Despite the changes, this is my place and in this place gravity obeys me, not the other way around. I'll glide gently to the surface below and find out what has happened to the beach.


I fall fast and hard, landing in a reeking pile of dead fish. The smell and the impact leave me breathless for a moment, all I can do is lay there, looking up at the clifftop I have plunged from.

Wow. That's a hell of a jump. I should be dead. It's a good thing these fish broke my fall.

I peer more closely at my heap of lifeless benefactors. At first glance they look like black flounder; flat with two eyes at the top of the skull but as I gaze at them, I notice that they have triangular bodies and long, trailing fins resembling those of angelfish. Their skin is smooth, scale-less and transparent, their bodies are swollen with thick black liquid. What I had first thought were eyes are actually lesions, horrific, pustulent boils full of dark poison- these transparent fish are eyeless, blind and diseased. They look like they were meant to live in a leper colony deep underground.
Their bodies litter the narrow beach- it's why I couldn't see the sand from the clifftop. Did the tide leave them here?

No. There isn't any tide. The ocean is flat, black and silent, not even a ripple disturbing the opaque surface. I don't know what the dark liquid is, but the color matches the fluid inside the surrounding fish. They have drowned in this quiet, deadly sea.

This needs to be cleaned up, I decide. I have power here. With a single thought, I can transform these stinking fish into helium balloons and they will float away into the sky. Watch.

Nothing happens.

I don't want to be here anymore. I have visited this place a dozen times or more but I have never felt trapped before. I will myself to wake up.Nothing happens. I control the local gravity. I can fly here. I should be able to float back to the top of the cliff.

Nothing happens.

I start feeling panic. I need to return to the top even if it means walking the entire distance. As I walk, my steps cause the bloated fish underfoot to rupture and spill, the black death inside them pulls at my feet like quicksand, making each succesive stride more difficult than the one before.

This is going to be a long walk.

Finally, I reach the bottom of the cliff. The upward path should begin here but it doesn't. There is nothing in front of me but cold, vertical stone. Again, I try to wake up and fail. I'm stuck here.
I feel despair filling me and I suddenly know what killed the fish and murdered the ocean.

I could use a little help here, I think desperately, I have reached the end of my rope.

Rope? There is a thick, braided yellow rope hanging directly in front of me.
From above, I hear a woman's voice.

"Dude. I spent all day tying knots in that thing. The least you could do is climb it."

I don't know what to say so I say nothing as I climb. It doesn't take long for me to reach a good-sized ledge about halfway up the steep, rocky wall. There is a house built into the cliffside,a large, surprisingly solid structure. I recognize it but the doors are gone- the rope has been lowered out of a window, but it is not open wide enough for me to crawl through- it feels good to be off of the beach but it would be better if I were inside.

I peer through the window, looking for assistance and see a large white screen mounted on the opposite wall. It flickers slightly but there is no sign of life inside the house.

"Hello?"

"Hold on.I'm busy back here. I'll be out in a second."

"Whew! Thank God...hey,I see you got a plasma TV. That's pretty awesome."

"Don't watch that.It's broken. Just hang on."

The TV screen shifts into bright blue, then yellow, finally settling into a steady image.

"Hey, is this thing connected to your computer? It's showing email...now something is downloading...do you trust this unknown sender?"

"Do I what?", asks the voice, sounding annoyed.

"I'm just reading what it says on the screen. The download is almost complete."

"Damn you, I told you not to look at that. It's broken. Stop."

I disobey and watch through the window as the screen changes and the email background becomes a highway map.

"Hey. This is a map with directions to your house. They left out the part about the cliffs and ocean though."

"I TOLD YOU IT WAS BROKEN", the voice replies in cold anger. The rope, which I had been idly holding onto, writhes and jerks out of my hand, snaking it's way through the window and vanishing into a shadowy corridor. The window, untouched, slams shut.

Denied, I rest my back against the wall of the doorless home and cry myself awake.

Who To Ask?

Grey metal door. Push the horizontal bar to exit.
Push.
No exit.

Exit to where? Anywhere but here, I think , because I don't know where here is.
It's indoors.
My good dreams are always out-of-doors.
I am in-of-doors.
The door.
I am in it.
Push it to not exit.
Goddamn it. I try to kick it, but I don't have enough control, my legs aren't connected.
Push.

Push it and it becomes a pinball machine. Silver streaks and yellow flags spinning, strobe lights in the bumpers going crazy; multi-ball action; target scores 'Special' when lit and the machine cracks like a starter pistol, K-POW!
Free game.
When is a door not a pinball machine?
Now.
It's ajar, then open.

It's gone and I'm on a large grassy field. I recognize this place.
It's a sort of gigantic outdoor horseshoe-shaped amphitheatre, with a beach and ocean at the top of the 'U' and a surrounding series of hills and steep, cutback-trail cliffs providing enough sitting and standing room for the population of a small city. It's currently deserted.

This is the first time I have ever been on the field, I'm usually up there, on the cliffs, watching the show with my friends, real and imaginary.
My friends are not here. No one is here.
There is no show. No audience.
There's usually a stage set up on the beach's far end. It is not there.
There's usually an ocean beyond the beach, but it isn't there either.
There's nothing but sand.

If there is a horizon, I can't see it from here.
When awake, we tend to take the horizon for granted.
Here it's a luxury.

The only thing missing is a sun-bleached cattle skull, I think, and suddenly a skull appears.
I cannot determine how far away it is because it's difficult to gauge distance without a horizon. It has a sense of bigness to it, at least the size of a tall building and it's human-shaped, not bovine.
The cranium is distended and warped, like a Dali canvas viewed in a carnival mirror designed by H.R. Giger.
It ripples like water.

I wish that it would go away.

Something is wrong.
There should be a stage with a good band playing and some bonfires for dancing.
This is a party beach, a fun place to be. There's always something happening here and there's always someone to share it with.
My most frequent companion on this beach is the character 'Willow' from the old 'Buffy' TV show- not the actress who plays her, but the character herself.
I wish she was here.
She isn't.
There's just me , a twenty-story tall surrealist skull and the sun, which is suddenly scorching hot.

I'm naked and afraid of getting sunburn.

"Hey, you are gonna miss the race."

Willow? I hear a voice, but there is no one here.

Out in the desert, beyond the deliriously grinning skull, a cloud of dust is rising.
It's getting larger, faster. A vast army is approaching.
I feel panic.
I am in no mood for armies.

"Don't worry. They are only horses."

It's Willow. I can't see her, but she is talking to me and she is right.
There are thousands of horses rushing towards me from the non-horizon.
The stampeding herd circumnavigates the bony monolith, reforms on the other side of the giant misshapen thing, gallops closer.
I close my eyes.
Listen.
The sound of their hooves is very loud and comforting.
They aren't far away.
I can't move, but I don't have to worry.
They are horses and I am not afraid of horses.
Horses won't hurt me.

For a time, I am surrounded by thundering animals, the beasts moving so rapidly that I can barely distinguish one from the other.
A mane. A flank. A hoof. An eye.
The horses become a wall, moving at the speed of stripes.
I am protected. I won't be trampled.
Horses know me. I am safe with them.

Then they are gone.

There are no tracks in the sand.
Did I imagine the stampede?
Who can I ask?

Willow's voice has vanished.
The skull has nothing to say.

A Holiday of Now

I promised myself that I would never talk to my father again.

Then why is the phone in my hand? I said I was going to erase his number, yet it's ringing and I'm holding it.

It doesn't matter. My father is always drunk, so he never answers his phone. I'll leave a message and he won't reply. That is the way it is with us.

Or it was. Before I stopped talking to him.

Why am I doing this?

And why does Dad answer the phone? He never does that.
Is it because he is sober?
He is, I can tell.

So there's this fake holiday to break the ice and maybe for one second I stop hating Hallmark for inflicting these landmine holidays on us.
One second.

Happy Father's Day.

He sounds genuinely surprised to hear from me, but we do need to talk. It's a bit urgent.

My father tells me that I need to be prepared, that his mother probably won't ever leave the convalescent facility she is in...she is gravely ill.
He wants me to know that it is serious.
Really serious.

I have been anticipating this conversation for months. Dreading it.

See, I know his mother is sick. I know all the details. I have been visiting and calling her for the last two months.
My dad, on the other hand, was missing on a multi-week bender, so he didn't find out how bad it was until he came home and slept it off...which took him days. My twin brother flew in from Chicago to help sort him out. It's a miracle that booze hasn't killed our dad.
Anyway, if Dad hadn't been lost in a drunken stupor, he wouldn't be so surprised to learn that his mother can't take care of herself anymore.
Taking care of her was his job, but he won't even take care of himself.
I use him as a model on how not to live my life.

These are things I thought I was going to say to him if we ever spoke again.

But I don't say any of those things. For a moment they slip my mind.

I ask him how he is. I already know, but it's important that he knows I'm asking because I care.
Now.
Yesterday, I didn't care. Tomorrow I may not.
So it is very important that I ask him now.
It's for my sake as much as his.
I care now.

He is OK, he says. It is a lie, but a forgivable one.

My father is very close to breaking as he tells me what I already know.
Yes, I agree, we need to be ready for the worst.

Any day.
Oh, yes, there's always the false alarms...keep hope alive.
Remember last fall? Haha. Boy, were we scared!

We laugh at some of the close calls and false alerts of the past. None of it was funny then, but some of it is now.

And now is where my father is.

So we talk about now.

I know where he was , I know where he is, but I know better than to ask about where he will be. I don't ask for or make any more promises.
His promise to stay sober mean less to him than my promise to disown him means to me and I've already broken mine.
It's only a matter of time before he breaks his.
I know that.
He knows it too.

But he is here now, and for now, we are speaking again.

Salt Free

Everything is bright grey.

Bright grey?, I wonder to myself as I look through the bars of my cell. Is there even such a color as bright grey?

And what am I doing in a cell? I have never been here before, I know that much.

I look around and I notice that it's not really a cell at all- it's an apartment, one of many inside this building. Nicely furnished, soft furniture in dark colors.

Through the bars and across what is probably a street I see another building, the facing wall has been removed; I am reminded of the bombed-out buildings of Baghdad or Beirut, but there is no rubble or jagged edges- it's as if the wall were never there in the first place.

Inside the neatly-partitioned apartments people are moving.

Look: There's a fat man shaving. He's nicked his lip and he's desperately trying to staunch the blood with bits of tissue paper...it works on the third or fourth try, but it's a bit undignified to look at. I laugh, but I hope no one else does- I hate shaving cuts.
Good luck, Fat Man, I think. Rub your belly, maybe you'll get your wish.

Look: There's a woman undressing. She's talking to someone in another room as she pulls a sweater off over her head. No bra.
She looks over at me and we make eye contact, which is odd, since I am staring at her breasts. Oh, of course.
She's got eyes in place of nipples.
I've seen this before and it's not nearly as frightening as it sounds.
Her left nipple winks at me. It's OK to look, it says.
I blush anyway.

Look: There's a family of four sitting at a table, two adults and two children of grade-school age.
They are waiting for someone to pass the salt. There's untasted food on their plates and I can feel it growing cold from here.
Pass the salt!
Nobody is moving, all four are waiting.

I look around some more. I could use some rubble right now- I'd like to throw a rock at the family and get their attention:

" You haven't even tasted your food yet! How do you know that it needs salt?"

Christ, I wonder how many perfectly good meals have gone to waste because some fool waited too long for salt that wasn't needed in the first place?

Behind me, a man speaks.

"Is this what you're looking for?"

It's my friend Scoe. He's got a book in his hand. Scoe has given me many books in the twenty years we have been friends and every one has been a winner. I bet he can help me out.

"Damn. I'm glad to see you. I need a good brick and I left mine in my other dream."

"Here."

He hands me the book, which has become a baseball. I take it from him and I'm pleased to find that I still remember my two-fingered pitcher's grip. Oh, yeah, this thing was made to be thrown.

I go into my wind-up and throw a perfect strike into the family's dining room but they are gone already and my effort is wasted. The ball bounces off the inside wall and rolls back towards me, falls off the edge.

I hear a splooshing sound. I look down and see that there is no street between the buildings, only slow-moving dark water.
I wonder if baseballs float?
I wait, watching to see if the ball bobs to the surface.

It doesn't.

"Hey, man, did you see that? That family. Where did they go? "

But Scoe is gone too, and gone with him are the fat man and the woman with the winking nipple.
I'm alone now.
Below me, the water is visibly rising, moving thickly.
It's only a few feet below floor level and it's black as pitch.
I laugh at my own horrible pun and wish that I hadn't thrown my baseball into the water.

I reach for the bars in front of me.
They are made of smoke and the motion of my hands blows them away.

I steel myself, reach down and extend a finger into the dark , roiling liquid which is now just a few inches below. I expect it to be blood, or even the ichor of some long-forgotten demon, but it's nothing but cool, clear water.

The darkness is due to depth, not pollution.

Ka-pap! Ka-pap!

That's the sound of a baseball bouncing off concrete.
It's behind me. Has Scoe returned ?

I turn.

It's not Scoe. It's the woman with the chest that stares back. She's wearing one of my t-shirts. Why be modest now?, I wonder without panic, the water is rising and we are going to either swim together or drown apart; in any case , clothes aren't gonna help.

She reads my mind and smiles. The shirt is gone but she's got a clean white sphere in her left hand, tossing it up and down, following it with one eye while the other three study me.

That's mine but it looks good in your hand.

More telepathy and another smile, this time accompanied by laughter and a single word.

"Catch."

Lucid in the Sky

My dreams have changed.
I know this because I keep a sort of dream-journal.

What I try to do is scribble a few notes as soon as I wake up and then I review them after I have my morning shower- this helps with recalling the details, but it took me longer than I would have thought to notice the bigger picture- the change in framework, if you will.

It's all about the starting point. I used to begin my dreams at the bottom of cliffs; the interior of labyrinths; the doorways to tall and forboding buildings; inside strange familiar rooms with only one exit-into some form of darkness...always a daunting position to be in, one in which I felt like I was in a mad flight of escape- from what and to where was not usually clear- and when I awoke I was often more tired than when I went to sleep. All that climbing and running can wear a man out, even in dreams.

There are roughly a half-dozen fixed locales that I visit in my dreams, but instead of arriving lost and afraid and struggling to escape, I am now at the top of the Dream. There's no panic- I feel a great sense of calm when I see the people and things that I have come to expect.

And if things seem awry?

I can change that.

I'm on the roof of a tall apartment building. There's a low brick and mortar fence around the ledge and a small wooden hut smack-dab in the middle of the tarpapered roof, the sort of structure you might expect to find a pigeon roost in- or a stairwell. It has a flimsy plywood door and one of those infuriating combination locks found in Dream- no proper numbers on it, just shifting and unrecognizable characters that make it impossible to open.

I have spent endless hours fiddling with that lock.
Spin. Twist. Whir.
Yank.
Nothing.
PULL HARDER. TWIST MORE.
Nothing.

It seems as if years have passed and I still can't get that goddamned lock to open.

Well.

Like I said, I can change that.

I've spent too much time in the center, trying to solve the unsolvable. It's a waste of time and energy, which are precious commodities, even in Dream.
If I want change- and I do- then I must move away from the center and investigate the edges. What lies beyond?
Might as well take a look. My footsteps are steady and sober- no reason to fear a fall.

Wait. This is a tall building. I should be able to see other buildings from here, but I don't.
It should be loud but it's quiet.
I should be cautious when peering over the edge of the building, but I'm not.
There is no fear as I look over the side and see nothing but turquoise water, clear, deep and stretched to the horizon- which is exactly 100 miles away.

In Dream, reality extends 100 miles in every direction and then ends. I don't know exactly how I came to this knowledge, but it's true. Or it was.

For a while I watch the water and forget where I am. Right. Now I recall...
I came to this particular edge because I noticed a loose brick here during an earlier visit. It's still there, loose and wiggly as a baby tooth. I work it free and feel it's weight in my hand. Heft.
It feels right.
This brick will work.

I carry my new prize back to the little shed. I hold the brick up, it's quite ordinary-looking, but next to it , the lock on the shed's door looks profoundly delicate.

Didn't that lock used to have the word 'Master' printed on it?

I don't see that word on you now, motherfucker, I think as I smash the corner of the brick down upon the lock.

It shatters like fine crystal.

I walk back to the wall and carefully set the brick back into it's original position before returning to the shed. Behind the unfinished wooden door is a flight of solid-looking wooden stairs descending rather steeply. I could have a flashlight or torch if I wanted one, but I already know what's down there.

I've been through every room on every floor of this building, tracing and retracing my steps in a vain search for an exit and have never quite found it. That's because it's not in there. I don't live in that building and I have no business trespassing in it, even should I desire to.

On a whim, I pull the door loose from it's hinges and kick it down the stairs, where it clatters and disappears.
There.
That should make it easier for the next poor son-of-a-bitch who winds up here. I think this is my last visit, so I want to leave my mark, and I hated that locked door.
Enter if you dare, but I'm done with it.

I walk back to the ledge.

From here I can fly anywhere- 100 miles is a lot of world for one man- or I can dive and test the water. I wish that I could do both, but I only get one choice.
This is my last visit to the roof.

But I remember that I also have beaches- amazing beaches- and at those beaches I can swim as much I wish- I have gills, you know- so today I choose flight.

Up, up, and away and suddenly the roof is a tiny gray square in a field of endless azure.
Bah. Who needs rooftops?

I look around me and I see the world. It is curved, round.

It's much larger than one hundred miles.

It is forever.

I begin my flight.

April Wine (A Love Story)

My doctor recently gave me a prescription for a pill called Ambien. It's intended to help with my insomnia and it really does work.
However, there are side effects.
One of them is dreams.

Ambien gives me kick-ass weird dreams...not your typical nightmares or Freudian fantasies, but really bizarre, fun and even educational visions.

Of course, this may just be the onset of schizophrenia, but for now I'm rolling with the dream theory.

Last night as I readied for bed, I took one of those magic little pills and didn't even realize I was asleep when the dreams started.

The phone rang.
I answered.

It was my Dream Girl. She was concerned about me- you may have heard in the news about some bad things that happened in my home state of Virginia. I'm not ready to get into it here, but I did need someone to talk to more than I realized.

So we talked.

One of the things I love about my Dream Girl is that she always makes me laugh, even when I really feel like crying...I think I may have cried a bit, but she didn't get scared or hang up; she stuck with me until it was time to laugh again- which didn't take long.

"These pills kick ass", I thought to myself between giggles. "I'm having a great dream and I don't even feel like I'm asleep."

We discussed the childhood traumas inflicted on us by various album covers- their artwork and the packaging...which led me to bring up King Crimson, which of course led to a discussion about the most awesome Canadian band ever- April Wine. (Hey, I already said it was a dream)

Dream asked me about a particular April Wine song. She was very persistent about it - I didn't remember the song and at that point I didn't even know April Wine were Canadian- Dream actually talked me into firing up my computer and Googling April Wine song lyrics, which is not something I would do in a non-somnambulatory, undrugged state.

"Do it!" , insisted my Dream Girl.

"Do I have to?"

"Yes! I don't have a computer and I need to know...NOW! You have to. "

"I don't really want to...", my objections were even weaker than my willpower.
Honestly, I'd do almost anything she asked me to, so Googling crap-ass power ballads from the 1980's was not so bad, all things considered. Women have asked me to do far worse things than that- and I have complied, so...

...against whatever was left of my better judgement I typed the words " I rock myself to sleep" into the search window.

Bam! There it was. Sheer bloody brilliant poetry it was- I couldn't help myself -I began reading the magical verses to my Dream, who started laughing.

"Laugh all you want, woman", I thought, " but you started this. I'm not stopping until I have read every single goddamned lyric of this wretched Poodle-Metal masterpiece to you."

So I did.

Here are the words (even when I'm dreaming, I keep my promises)- with a bit of commentary.

I Rock Myself To Sleep- April Wine

Everynight I rock myself to sleep
Everynight I rock myself to sleep
Everynight I rock myself to sleep
Thinkin' about you
Thinkin' about you

Now I wanna say
It's not the same since you went away
And it's not right
You're not here with me tonite

(If you have heard this song, you will understand that it's even sung mis-spelled. "Tonite"...pft. ...tonite is a suffix, not a word-as in "kryptonite"-duh. )

And it's a crime
Just a lying here wasting my precious time
I'm so lonely and I'm so blue
Thinkin' 'bout the things I could do to you
Everynight I rock myself to sleep
Everynight I rock myself to sleep
Everynight I rock myself to sleep

(Thinkin' 'bout the things I could do to you?
...I rock myself to...what? Huh? What does this mean?)


Thinkin' about you
Thinkin' about you
And I wanna know
Don't you see how you hurt me so
Goin' outa my head
Yeh I'm feelin' it since you left

And it's a crime
Just a lying here wasting my precious time
I'm so lonely and I'm so blue
Thinkin' 'bout the things I could do to you
Everynight I rock
Everynight I rock myself to sleep
Thinkin' about you thinkin' about you

* * * * * * *

"Uh, er, ah..." , I sputtered into the phone , feeling a bit awkward.

"Yes? Yes?," queried my Dream, who was breathing just a little heavier than before- must be from all that laughing, I thought.

"This song...I think it's about a guy, uh, er... jerking-off while he's fantasizing about some chick who's ditzy enough to think that this is a sexy tune."

"Yeah, it's fuckin' horrible isn't it?"

"Um, yeah. So...what are you wearing?"

Diagnosis

We can't escape our pasts, we can only survive them.

I survived twenty-odd years heavy drinking. Just barely, but I did.

Now I have to survive the smoking. Mine and that of others.

I have never smoked cigarettes, but I used to work in some of the smokiest bars on the planet. As a child, I used to get sick when the adults would fill the car with smoke. This was attributed to "road -sickness", but I knew better.
And of course there's the weed. Apparently, it's not quite as harmless as I'd fooled myself into believing.

My X-rays show that I have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD. Until further tests are done, I won't know the severity of my disease, but I do know it's incurable and irreversible.
With luck, I'm in the early stages (0 0r 1 ) and with the help of medicines, I can lead a fairly normal life. No oxygen tanks or surgery needed, just a bit of lifestyle change. There are yoga-based breathing techniques that can help as well. Or so I am told.

I was told that even twenty years of pot smoking alone was unlikely to have been enough to cause this, nor would have the years of second-hand smoke- but together it was almost inevitable.
Then again, some people never smoke at all, second -hand or not- and get COPD anyway. This is 10-20% of the cases. It may be hereditary.
That is not reassuring.

I had to leave work when I found out. I called my Grandmother. We talked for a long time. I told her how scared I was, how I just cannot get the images of my mother's slow death from lung cancer out of my mind.
Even at the age of 40, I still need my Granny to tell me everything is going to be OK.

But she needed something from me too.

She was tip-toeing around it, so I answered her unasked question for her:

No, I am not going to start drinking. There is a good chance that I will live for another twenty years or even longer, but if I drink, I won't last a month.

And, by Godzilla, if I only have a short time, I don't want to waste it drinking.

I don't know what to do , but I need to be sober, I know that much. No more pot, of course.

So I'm trying to get a plan together. I need to clean my mental house and decide what is most important - what needs doing and what doesn't. What I can and can't do.

I have been told to just relax and take it easy until a full battery of tests can be done this weekend.
This is good advice, but I'm finding it impossible to follow.

A Good Morning To You

You know what I like to do on Sunday mornings? I like to get up at 5:30 am, have some coffee, collect my LPs and CDs, drive to the radio station and play music that I like. Hopefully, the audience enjoys it too:

FUNKADELIC- THANK YOU CHOLLY STEVE HILLAGE - UNIDENTIFIED CAPTAIN BEEFHEART- TROPICAL HOT DOG NIGHT LARRY GRAHAM- HAIR FRANK ZAPPA -STINKFOOT SAVOY BROWN -TROUBLED BY THESE DAYS AND TIMES BE BOP DELUXE - SWAN SONG BOB MARLEY - CRAZY BALD HEAD PAUL SIMON- LATE IN THE EVENING BOB DYLAN- SARA LOREENA MCKENNITT- SACRED SHABBAT CLASH- CLAMPDOWN DAMIEN DEMPSEY-MARCHING SEASON NEIL YOUNG-LIVING WITH WAR ALAN PARSONS PROJECT- DON'T LET IT SHOW XTC- I AM THE AUDIENCE SWEETWATER- MOTHERLESS CHILD EMERSON,LAKE AND PALMER -FROM THE BEGINNING DIRE STRAITS- LADY WRITER KINKS- POWERMAN LOU REED- KILL YOUR SONS PRETTY THINGS- BITTER END IRON BUTTERFLY- ARE YOU HAPPY? GONG-CAN'T KILL ME ELENI MANDELL- I BELIEVE IN SPRING

You know what else I like? I like turning on the radio on Saturdays and hearing the DJs who I have scheduled for our local broadcast- River City Limits- doing bang-up, enthusiastic shows that tell our audience that we give a damn about them, the music that we play and the world around us.

You won't find that on any commercial FM station in this city but you can find it here.

Tell me how great I am.

I Dream of Jinx

Yesterday I got a series of phone calls from London and that was cool. An old friend was listening to me play records that I used to play when we were housemates long ago.
Nice cycle, that.

Then I got a phone call from southern France, which was odd- who do I know in France?

Well, I'll be damned.
I thought you wuz in Australia!
Haven't seen you in ages- you found me on the internet?
Hahah! I guess it helps that my phone number hasn't changed in ten years.
I thought you were dead- you've been reading my blog and you haven't said anything till now ? You ass!
Last time we spoke, I was still drinking...oh.
That's why you stopped calling.
...I said that?
Sorry, mate, I really am.
The booze...
Yep, 17 months sober! You have been reading...how've you been?
Oh man.
That's bloody awful.
No?
You mean it's all sorted in your favor? Kids too?
Well bloody good job! Ha hah, I'm already talking like you!

Here, since you are paying for the call , let me spend 20 minutes telling you about how much better my life is right now - of course, I'm bloody sober, let me finish- a lot of good things have happened, even the bad stuff is damned funny in hindsight...

la la lala la la la la life is good and I go to bed feeling like Monday might not suck.

I step into the shower and notice the shampoo runs right through my fingers.
Shampoo?
I shave my head almost every day. I don't own shampoo.
I look down and my hands are skeletal, the shampoo runs across my bony knuckles and drips onto a mass of wet brown hair at my feet...holy crap, that's my hair!
Now there's blood.
What's going on?

When I wake up I'm covered in sweat even though the covers are on the floor.
Someone has placed one of those Roadrunner cartoon Acme anvils ("16 tons") on my chest and it's making it hard to breathe.
Just because I can't see this anvil doesn't mean it isn't there. The sun is rising and slowly the weight lightens enough for me to make it downstairs and gobble a couple of panic pills. I haven't needed them for a couple weeks, but I am glad I have them.

I need to piss , shave , shower and get ready for work but that dream was too vivid- I'm not ready to enter my bathroom yet.
That bathroom is where I started dying and sometimes I think I should move just to get away from it.

I sit downstairs in silence and pretend to read an old Superman comic; eventually my breath returns to normal and I call into work. My boss knows that I have days like this and agrees that it's better that I not come in after taking my emergency meds.

By noon the drugs are working and I'm fine, just tired ... I see that I have received an email from a beloved High School friend- I want to tell her about all the great new things that I'm feeling, because overall things really are good, but I'm afraid I'll jinx myself if I share too much good news.

Pretty strange sentiment coming from someone who disdains superstition.

Last Night's Missiles

The first thing I notice is the feel of a rubber band around my right ankle. It's on there to keep the baggy leg of my Army surplus trousers from getting caught in the chain of my Huffy 10-speed bike...
My vision clears just in time to swerve madly, barely missing a car that's parked in the middle of the road - it's facing the wrong direction, am I in England?



I stop, dismount, lean the bike against a tree that wasn't there ten seconds ago and walk over to the car.
It's a familiar model, something I've seen a million of but I can't quite place the name now.
It's got Maryland tags.
So I'm in Maryland, a glance inside the empty vehicle shows a Baltimore Sun newspaper folded neatly on the front seat. The large banner headline catches my eye and I reach in to grab the paper- holy shit!
The headline ,dated Sept 15, 1984, reads:

Missiles Launch at Midnight



Suddenly I remember that I'm in a real hurry to get home. Goddamnit, I sure wish they'd left the keys in the ignition.
I toss the paper back into the car, hop on the bike and zoom downhill. I've had this dream before and I know that my dreamyard has a really good view of the Apocalypse .
I don't want to miss the show.

Back up, hold on, wait a sec...OK, I'm back at the car and this time the keys are in it - as I said, I've had this dream before and I've learned to control parts of it.
Like the keys- I just wished for them and there they were...but I know somehow that driving isn't going to be so easy.
It's not- there's a mob of pedestrians and parked cars nearly blocking both lanes, HONK HONK HONK , no one budges or even looks, everyone is staring up at the sky between the trees, waiting for the missiles.

" Run them over"

What?

My Granpa is sitting next to me- how strange to see him in the passengers seat, Granpa was always driving. Granpa was not the sort of man to advise his grandson to run over pedestrians, this is a new twist. I'm losing my tenuous control over the dream.

"RUN THEM OVER!"

Granpa is mad. He was almost never mad. This scares me.

"But..." , I can't speak. I can't run over these people- look, some are just kids, some are old...
How can I do that?

"DO IT!"

I try to press the accelerator but my foot won't move.

"GO!"

The car rockets into motion and plows into the crowd, touching no one. The people are like water, displaced for a moment as we speed through, gradually filling in the space left in our wake, none the worse for our passage.

Hot Damn! Granpa will be so proud- he never did get to see me drive. I turn , beaming , to look at him but he's gone and I'm back on the bike, riding it up the dirt road to the little white farmhouse where I live during Missile Dreams.

There's a small crowd in the backyard, mostly gathered around the old brick BBQ grill- out of habit I guess, since there's no coals, no food, just some old leaves in the bottom that would make decent tinder if needed...I wonder where they came from- there are no trees nearby. That's why the view is so good from here.

Sara starts talking to me. I know a few Saras, but this woman is a stranger, I just know that she is a Sara, no H. It looks like she's been crying and I want to hold her but it's not my place to do that...so I try to listen to her instead.
Sara No H is worried about her boyfriend- he isn't answering his cell phone and it's almost midnight, where is he? As she tells me this, the people surrounding us start vanishing, but there's nothing to be done about that right now.

"Look", I explain, "it's 1985 and he doesn't have a cell phone-no one does- what are you talking into anyway?"

She pushes her long brunette hair back from where her ear used to be- Sara No H holds out her bloody hand, palm up.

There's something red and lumpy cupped in it.

"My knife", she says.

The sky goes bright yellow. It's missile time.

Above us there are twelve parallel columns of smoke rising into the sky, a tiny glowing dot at the head of each one.
They are already miles above us by the time the sound reaches us...the sound. Sound reaches our ears...all three of them. Oh God.

Sara! What have you done to yourself?

But she's not Sara anymore and it's OK for me to hold her now.

I whisper "I love you" into her ear and she is whole, there's no blood except what's in our hearts.

Together we watch the sky burn.