Saturday, June 07, 2008

Translated but not Interpreted

I’m home again, you insidious bastards, and curse your eyes for failing to greet me at 11 pm when I arrived back, four hours late due to high winds and bad weather, with a kegger and a massage table.  No it’s too late now.  But you’re welcome to send the masseuse anyway if you still feel like trying.

Speaking of feeling like, and trying, and such, I’ve just barely started writing stuff again, which occasion was marked by my losing YET ANOTHER delightful little notebook full of my most intimate thoughtlets.  Authors I wanted to read, stories I wanted to write, people I wanted to stay in touch with and various important bits of phone-numberage are now consigned to the scrapheap of history, along with about six free drink coupons for Southwest Airlines I’d stored in the little pocket in the back cover (which is what really hurts, to tell the truth).  The notebook has my phone number written clearly inside the back cover, and is lavishly inscribed with the name and logo of this website.  Someone found it; there’s no way it’s just lying on the floor of a popular restaurant and it was definitely not left behind in my exhaustively-searched hotel room.  It’s just that the finder has chosen to be the keeper.  Ergo, the loser is the weeper.  So okay, interloper-who-appropriated-my-inmost-thoughts, I hope you’re happy now.  I hope we’re all happy.  Some of us more than others. 

Given these conditions, I am falling back now on something I generally consider to be among the cheapest and least-inventive forms of blogging, which is saying quite a bit: the dream journal.  I do have a journal for jotting down the most bizarre or portentous of my dreams, though I don’t keep up with it as well as I might, no surprise there.  Some weeks ago I had a couple of doozies in one night and decided to memorialize them, but didn’t have the right journal with me so I just put’em in my regular writing book (as if what I put in it on typical basis are “regular” writings).  However, since I do most of my blogging out of that particular journal, I now feel as if those dreams are fit subjects to unleash on a foolishly-unsuspecting blogsylvania, and thus:

I was dying.  Something was wrong with my heart.  I passed out and felt the life ebbing out of me; I sensed the hallway of the eternal journey beckoning to me, dimly lit, unthreatening.  I came back, but not strongly, to consciousness, and got myself into bed.  I was a little anxious about leaving some things behind - incriminating, hurtful, inconvenient.  I didn’t want anyone to see my truth but I felt my heart so weak in my chest that I didn’t think I’d be able to do anything about hiding my shame, not even a simple computer file erase.  Kel got back from somewhere with Zach and was concerned, she seemed to recognize the gravity when I told her, barely moving my lips, “it’s my heart.” Z naturally didn’t understand and wanted to climb into bed with me.  We let him.  It was a great comfort to feel his small body, to stroke his hair and smell his presence. 

Then I woke up to his plaintive cry in real life, and went to his room to fix his covers.  That done, I returned to my own bed, remained awake for fifteen minutes or so, got up again to drain the pickle, and then, returning once more to my bed, fell back asleep, dreaming as follows:

Kel and Z and I were driving in the hills in the middle of the city on a bright sunny day, sightseeing.  The hills were grassy and undeveloped, with a rough road that lead to a little lodge/restaurant we had been seeking.  The paved part of the road ended but we continued along a set of worn tracks in the dirt.  I saw the lodge and a ranger; we stopped so I could ask directions.  He politely assisted us, pointing down the track, but when he realized we’d driven a car over the grass past the end of the road he took me into custody with a firm hand on my shirtsleeve.  I protested but knew it would be to no avail.  He took me into the lodge; K and Z followed.  In the lodge we settled down quite nicely with some other visitors - I didn’t seem to be under arrest anymore.  The lobby was rustic and featured an open display of small wild animals; K and Z pointed out some fieldmice or something, which scrambled over to us so we could play with them.  My attention, though, was drawn to a big pit housing several snakes.  I peered over into it and two big ones came out to slither over my shoulders.  I was letting the snakes play with me when I woke up.

Now I’m not so sure I should be divulging these lurid windows into my subconscious, but hell, I already typed it so it’s too late.  Lord willing I’ll sketch up some additional bloggage for y’all soon, unless I get mired in the final of my six-book series of novels which I have yet to start.  Anyway, I’m home, my heart is strong, and I actually rather like snakes.  And isn’t that what the internet is all about?