The "house" dreams, the "car" dreams: We all know that we are the house or the car and the whole flipping thing is a mental metaphor for our life. And there have been times in my life when I've been interested in such studies, when I've had the patience to care what nocturnal notes I'm amassing.
But those halcyon days are gone and the dreamscape is just one more thing about which I simply do not give a shit. I've had dreams, recurring ones, about finding a room in a house I'd long inhabited which I never knew existed. I've had dreams about going from room-to-room in my parents' house where, once I'd cleared a room, they'd taken something out of it. I've had the dream where I'm on the outskirts of town and either:
A. it's spooky and dark and "they're" looking for someone (I'm getting gas, looking on),
B. I'm circling an old oak tree on a climbing boardwalk which doesn't exist in the light of day,
C. there's a new, or previously hidden exit onto or off-of the highway and I can't seem to figure out where it goes and how to navigate it.
I've had car dreams about driving to a spot where a bridge that shouldn't be there is washed out, where I'm running from danger, or where I'm angrily skidding into the trouble. And those are the most normal of my dreams. When I was a kid, my big scary repeater was one where I lived in a crooked black house on the side of a hill in the mountains which is drenched in a midnight rain that threatens to wash it away. It and I are saved that fate from a bolt of lightning which lights the place afire, sending it crumbling and tumbling to the bottom of a rocky chasm with me inside. Happy times.
What all that says about me, who knows? The only truth I can touch is that all the posturing and pondering such questions require is not in my repertoire at present. I don't have the mental nor emotional staying power for such endeavors. The truths I can handle are the tiny microcosms of washing the dishes or sweeping the floor. Of studying a pebble gone wet on one side and harboring the distant dream of husbanding a patch of moss. I can only look as far as I can stand to see. Instant purpose, completion, meaning. Books, as I've said, take me two years, relationships take forever and you still never know if you got it right.
But I did do one good thing last weekend. I helped that friend with the similar name I told you about. She's beginning to rethink the whole damned thing while the rug of all that has ever been is quietly being pulled out from under her. So I listened. Where as I had spent an earlier hour concentrating on one dog hair at a time from one area rug at a time, I now took the flying strands of her life, her torn shards, the strings of her broken web and attempted to help her weave them into next steps, into hope for a future.
That was as far as either of us needed to see that night. And in reality, those moments are all we ever have. Nothing's real; it's all just busyness. Not one thing is guaranteed to last. There are no answers. Life is just a series of short trolley rides that stop off at fleeting attractions: the medical carousel called "healthy living", the merry-go-round of "political world view". You pays your ticket and you takes your chances, you may even cheer for a while or feel some glee. But you always wind up back where you began because every new study and every new poll shows something different. Pickles are good for you; pickles will kill you. We should educate the slave states; we should just cut them loose. Circles hurt over time.
Triangles aren't much better. I'm currently caught in the triangular triumvirate of my bane-filled days: Easter, Spring Equinox, and Mothers' Day. (If you've read this blog for long, you know all about my bad luck on these hideous occasions.) During this "Springing back to life" time of the year, the return of the light, the greening of nature, I am swirling lost in my own private Bermuda Triangle. I haven't gotten "disappeared" yet, but I do tend to drop out of radar contact. If I didn't live in a rectangular house in a square state, there would probably be no hope for me at all.
Speaking (well, whispering) of not looking too far ahead, I found myself whisked from doc's office to hospital yesterday to facilitate testing on the pain in the neck. Thyroid goiter. Jesus. You'd thing goiters would have gone the way of small pox or the plague by now. So I gave blood, images, and heart beats for the perusal of the medical staff. Little drops, little pictures, little noises. Just as far as you need to see or hear. It's funny because you know how you get to feeling so lousy, you feel so freakin' sorry for yourself that you fantasize about the world stopping to consider you? Well when it does, you freak out. Wow, I am sick. What the hey?
Right now my dearest one, Woody, is having ACL surgery at the vet's. UPS-chasing injury, most likely. They say he's gonna have a tough and painful few days after, then should start to mend relatively quickly. The people doctors should have a plan for me within those same few days. I have no idea what they will say or want to do, and Googling such things never makes you feel any better. But I know I can take care of my little dude while I sit and wonder. I can take that narrow and reasonable view for now. And as long as he's okay and comfortable, I think I'll be able to look up from my life and see just a bit farther into the future. Just one silly little frame at a time.
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