The Body of Christ...

During a phone call a while back, a friend was bemoaning the fact he was spending Easter alone. I thought, “Easter alone...so what? What happens on Easter anyway?” The difference between his and my families is that they were Italian and ours, Irish. His family threw out the great spread of food and everyone shows up. He missed his now long dead relatives, but mostly all that food they would bring over. The Irish, who have NO culture of food to speak of, don't throw spreads out like that. We're incapable. As a kid, I remember very little if anything was done on Easter except give us kids candy. If our families were going to do anything, it would be to invite each other over to drink, but on Easter? The Irish can be drunkards but not that bad. Not on Jesus's biggest celebration. So that holiday took a back burner. 

One Easter, my brother's sick humor got the best of him as he was watching me eat miniature chocolate bunnies. He gets up and runs to the kitchen to tell my Mom an awful lie. “Mommm! Ronnie's only eating the heads off the chocolate bunnies!” That caused her to come find me and only to find out I wasn't. We both could hear my brother's guffawing from the kitchen over that. I swear at times he was trying to convince her I was a serial killer in the making. Sibling rivalry...go figure? 

I have scant memories of most Easters.

One sticks out though, but it wasn't on Easter but close enough to it, First Communion. We kids were put through our rehearsals, dressed up and ordered not to Fuck It Up. That was a huge day when every Irish family in this town showed up at St. Joseph's. (As important as an event as this, there still was no food offered afterwards). We public school kids had to go to a catholic school once a week for catechism. It was called “Released Time” and it was when I discovered how Catholic schools were just as violent or if not more so than public. It wasn't the nuns, the one I had was actually human despite the horror stories I heard about them, it was the other kids who were headbreakers. The first day we public kids showed up, the toughest, meanest Fenian bastard Catholic 8 year old chose to pummel John W. in the schoolyard. The nun's broke it up with a, “well, this is first of six fights today” attitude. 

Our classes consisted of this: Repeat the Lords Prayer and Hail Mary a thousand times till we got it stuck into our heads. The other lesson was our First Confession. Either we were stupid, rambunctious or both, the nun had a hell of a time trying to get us kids to remember what to say in the confessional booth, how to line up, what to do after. I can remember some of the boys hoping to tell the Father their most vile, disgusting and worst sins. They were proud of it! I heard one weird looking kid telling me he was going to say he was “sorry” for pulling a clump of hair out of his sister's head once. I told him perhaps he shouldn't as telling the world his little crimes as the people will adjudge him a sick mofo. He was the type of kid with a barely misshapen head topped with a bad crew cut. A very slight hint of an extra chromosome there in him. 

My sins? I took a boring route. Fighting with my brother, yelling back at my mother and using the cat's tail as a handle to lift it up once. I barely understood the mumble coming through the screen but I did hear the penance, three Hail Mary's. That was easy! I knew the Hail Mary by heart! By now I did. 

The Big Day came. I was dressed in gray wool pants, a white shirt and a red blazer. Red? I looked like a lounge lizard act. Perhaps it was in style in '73? My Dad slicked my hair with this green goop that you dipped a comb into, so much you could feel it running down your neck. I was pronounced exhibitable to the public and off we went. 

The church was packed. Everyone was dressed, even the Priests wore cassocks I had never seen before. As I was looking around, I saw the other 8 year old girls dressed in their whites when I spied one girl and she sort of shocked me, Ann Darracks. 

Ann was an accomplished 8 year old teacher's pet. She was also very accomplished at getting us boys into trouble by first inciting us, then looking innocent while she ratted us out to the teacher. She was talented. For some reason I had an especial hatred for her. Hey, I wasn't alone...the other girls hated her for her easy ability to form and destroy eight year old girl cliques. 

I saw her sitting there in the pew across the aisle in her white dress, holding a bouquet of white flowers in one hand and a white kid's sized Bible in the other. She looked completely different. Add to that, the sweet smile she shot at me when our eyes locked took me for a loop. She looked so clean, innocent and angelic. She looked like she never stepped on a worm in her life. 

I'm not joking, I can remember the feeling I had inside when I saw her. I almost wanted to jump up, point at her and yell out, “Don't believe it! She's a bitch! She's a LIAR! She's got you all FOOLED! Don't trust her! She's worse than the Bitch of Buchenwald!” 

I could see Ann's parents, relatives beam at her as she stood up to walk down the aisle for her communion wafer. Did they really believe it too? Or were they all just as bad as she, putting on a nice public show. Though true to form, when she found the right moment and again, she was good at it, she shot me a sneer as she went back to her seat. Again I wanted to alert everyone there. Vile girl...

I did OK when it was the boy's turn to go up. I got the wafer, made it back to my seat and didn't pray at all in silence, though I was supposed too. I thought the taste of the wafer reminded me of wall paper paste. I knew this because Dad was papering the upstairs a few weeks earlier. 

Afterwards when we got home, I was in the living room stripping off those damn itchy clothes when my Mom stops me. “What are you doing? We need those for PICTURES!” Jesus...I have to keep wearing these? I thought. 

Pics of me standing in front of the yew bush. Pics of me standing in front of the forsythia bush. Pics of me with Grandmom...endless. Finally...when it was all over, I could doff that itchy wool and get into decent clothing, jeans and a tee. Though there was a reward for putting up with it all after, the largest Easter bunny basket was waiting for me. If there were chocolate figurines of Ann Darracks in the Easter hay there, I would've just bitten ONLY the heads off of them...and NO confession would be necessary later.

Not Even Trying and Nailing It

I finished watching the biopic on the National Lampoon and I liked it, considering I felt the Nat Lamp was my Bible when I was ten years old and on up. What I was reminded of again, was of “heyday,” when you reach your greatest point and have a ton of fun while doing it.

I watched the movie as they chronicled the rise and peak of the Nat Lamp magazine and I swear I was rooting for them as the flick unfolded. I understand why older guys glorify and cheer on younger men in sports, it's great to watch someone or something reach their peak. This can be applied to anything. On this blog I spoke of how I felt about Paul Simon when he struck his prime time and again.

One of the things I do is have an “audio” nightlight. I can keep the stereo on all night long, soft enough to allow sleep but to further enjoy the songs. You know those moments where you're not quite asleep but drifting in that nether world? It probably feels like what Oxycontin is all about. Anyway, listen to music at that point and it's literally “better.” If you play with this, you can set the stage for some dreams that'll be just as good when you finally do slip into unconsciousness.

I did this today and all sorts of songs came on and propelled me to memories in my life when I was batting them out of the park with no effort at all. All in my early 20's. I remembered friends, parties, college, first jobs, small insignificant snapshots where my life was nearly perfect. After waking up I lay there some and enjoyed the pleasant feeling.

“There were many times I reached it.” I thought to myself. You never can rest on your laurels, you can only reach it for a while and then must move on. These periods of your life cannot live forever. The are born, mature and die, just like everything else. But, if you're lucky enough, you can have those times when you win and score big, for a while anyway.

Generally, I can't stand most of newer music that comes out. My theory (and I stand by it) is that we all consider the “best” music to be was what you listened to when you were from 13-25. After that, it's just noise. There may be a few gems along the way but the body of it bites.

However...

I set my stereo to WERS, which is out of Emerson College out of Boston and is nothing but newer music. I once opined here that one reason why I listen to it is because, listening to 60's and 70's mainstream all the time is like a diet of cheeseburgers for months. It does get boring. WERS generally plays some decently crafted new music, along with some dogs that make me go 'yeccch.” But you can't get it perfect all the time, can you?

But as I lay there in bed today, half awake and pleasantly tripping down nostalgia lane about music and scoring big, I realized a second reason why I listen to WERS. I listen to a group of people who are, at this time, are at their pinnacle. There is now, a group, around 18-24, who are riding high. Good for them! They don't know it yet, but probably suspect, that there is nothing they can do that will go wrong. All your faculties are tuned up, your body is lithe and responsive and all else is in congruence too. It's effortless and easy to sink a basket. The talent you always had, be it sports, education, career or just plain living life, is at it's best. Do you remember that feeling? Shit, I did this morning.

So, I have another reason to listen to music written and performed by “kids” of that age group.

Do I pine away to be that age again? Sure, but not for too long. I do know that at that age you are also quite inexperienced, you are always learning, making some massive mistakes and stumbling into this and that, because you don't know yet. The anxiety of your own future tugs at you too. Career? Marriage? Kids? What is it that I really want? All those things are in the realm of that age group. What's great about being that age is that you are made out of rubber, life can whack the hell out of you because of some damn fool thing you did, but you can bounce back.

What did I worry about then? Easy, what every other 20 something quietly wrestled with.

“Does she like me?”

“Should I tell her that I like her...alot!”

“I have two job offers...which one? If I take the wrong one...I might be set on a path that sucks?!”

“A masters? A CAGS degree...perhaps none at all?

“What if my goals aren't attained, because I was shoved out of the way by life?”

“I really don't understand a lot of what people do or say...why can't I find their motivation and source for all that shit?”

All these things were due to not having experience. Now, that I have it, life is easier. Gone is that apprehension about what may occur. There is confidence about life that I own now that I didn't then. Why? Easy, because it's all practice. You do a million things over and over again till you get it right.

That takes years.

Still, I do glorify those years the kids at Emerson are now enjoying, spending them like water, as they should. I did the same and I can relish in the old feeling of hitting the bullseye w/o even trying.

Watch this...don't get hung up on all the Zen talk. This is what it's like in your 20's when you are nailing it all the time, same as Caine nails the target.  Thank God I had a periods like this. 

Click and Watch

Now my age requires something different from me. Two things I've noticed, mentoring and learning how the past always becomes clearer.

Don't get it? You have to be my age to get it. You'll arrive there and 'get it,' it's inevitable.

Sparkle City

It's a nice day to do yard work, until one yellow jacket ruined that by spiking the back of my neck. Ok, fine. I'll do the front yard instead. I have a eunomious that's turning into a wonderful arbor climber but it needs a support instead of the downspout I've let it use. So, I need 1x2's to create an arbor. Being the free market cheap bastard that I am, I went to Builder's Surplus in Central Falls to see if they had any at a cheaper price vs. Home Depot. 

Nope. They only have what they have, which means little choice. Ah well, I have to get raped by Home Depot instead. 

I haven't been to Central Falls in a long while, at least in a way that allowed me to really look around. This is probably due that I don't roam like I used to and that I had little reason to go there to begin with. 

What.a.dump. There are plenty of Dollar Stores, Fast Cash Advances, pawn shops and “get your passport here” storefronts. Couple that with plenty of food trucks, bodegas promising Columbian brand named goods and buses that make a stop every 150 feet. I guess we need a place to put our low paid, cheap labor.

Central to it all is Dexter Street, which is full of potholes, shitty patch jobs and worn from years of neglect. I liked how it made the front end of my car buck to and fro. I heard noises coming from there I haven't heard before. My car is a few hundred years old and Dexter made every bone creak in it. 

I remember Central Falls, in the 80's, being a higher class of “dump” than I found it today. Back then, we'd tool around there at times to Stanley's Grease Burger joint, (a true grease burger joint, where their french fries made paper plates translucent from the grease) a few parties and perhaps a couple of gigs at Chapter XI where my brother's band would play. CF could be fun at times. We once accidently walked into a pure Columbian bar where all the patrons turned their heads to see us ofay whities come in. No matter, they went back to their drinks and ignored us. The early 80's was when the Columbians were just starting to come in, hired as cheap labor by the Corning plant on Broad St where they made the old light bulbs. The previous immigrant group, the Portuguese, had made some bucks and moved on. 

One time after work, a little after midnight, I had a hankering for some grease and I hopped off 95 to shoot down Roosevelt to hit up Stanley's. I parked nearby and as I was walking to the restaurant, a groups of young Columbians, hanging out in a parking lot, started chanting: “Federali! Hellooo! We see you Federali!” Coming back out with my bag of burgers I was chanted at again, “Yoo hoo! Federali!” 

There I was, a white, Irish catholic 20 something in jeans and a Beach Boys striped shirt. I guess I looked out of place at midnight. But all I really wanted was a grease burger. I come to find out that the label was meant to accuse me as a narc working for the DEA. The closest I came to the DEA was when I happened to drive by the Federal court building in downtown Providence. Ah well. 

In my 20's, I wasn't skeeved out by the dumpiness of it all. Today, I was...and it was daytime too. But I'm a 50+ year old man and not some kid who thinks he can handle anything anymore. Gak..It's true! I'm wary of a lot nowadays...call it experience I guess.

This House has Many Hearts

“I may not know much about art, but I know what I like!”

"High Art"

Art. My introduction to “art,” like most kids, was in kindergarten. Finger painting with that goo was fun and I loved the smell of it. None of those spaghetti doodlings were worth a second comment. Why would they be? I was five.

We had various art teachers come into our classes to teach us a few things and what I remember of it were not the projects created but the fact the entire class sat there, pretty clam while they snipped or glued. It was calming for the whole class...and for the teacher who wasn't yelling at us to shut up or to stay seated.

The only higher powered class I took in art was at RIC, a 101 course probably labeled, “Art 101, For Boobs and Vulgarians.” I remarked while sitting there one time, as I cut construction paper, that, “I hadn't done this since I was 10 years old.”

As for even higher art, I shoved my damn foot in my mouth one night trying to keep up with a few people at an East Side party once. The house was very nice, though you wouldn't know it from the outside. All homes on the East Side look like they were owned by sea captains or slavers from times past. Wait..they were! Anyways, the inside of this one must've had a team of competent decorators appoint it tastefully. My idea of décor is vacuuming once in a while and cleaning the toothpaste splatter off the bathroom mirror.

It was Christmas Eve, my brother and I were invited to this party over by Brown U. and it was attended by the most liberal types you can imagine: commies, gays, lesbians, actors from Trinity Rep, some guy from who worked for Ira Magaziner and a damn cute, spaced-out freshman college girl from RISD who hailed from Skokie, IL. Skokie produces art students?

I didn't know any of them so I had to make the best of a Christmas Eve by schmoozing it up lest I sit in the corner, brooding and sipping rum till I was numb.

I ambled into the kitchen and find some people passionately talking of the aesthetic experience. You've experienced that at one time or another. You see, hear, taste or do something that makes you go “Ahhhhhhh...nailed it!” That's it. You're now an accomplished artist!

Anyways, these people are going on about artists I've never heard about so I better keep up, ya know, or else I'll be branded a dipshit peasant that needs a good scrubbing and comb.

I mouth off this, “Look, if swinging a cat by it's tail give you an aesthetic experience, it's valid.”

Things got quiet then for a few seconds.

But, this smaller, older gentlemen, who I never met before, comes up to me to pull me over to a corner to interrogate me further on my learned opinions. I just repeat what I said, that anything can give you that feeling, not matter how high minded or depraved it seems.

“Really...” he says.

At that moment, my brother comes by and this older guy says, “Ken!” They chat for a few seconds when my brother tells him I am his brother. I had no idea this guy and my brother were friends.

The gentleman looks at me and says, “YOU'RE his brother?”

I then ask who he is.

“I”m Mike Fink, I teach Literature, Film...anything at RISD. I've been doing it for 50 years now. He said he was celebrating tonight's holiday along with the release of his movie, a documentary on Jewish art that was suppose to make the art movie house rounds. 

A circuit breaker in my head flipped. THIS guy spent his life in the arts and I'm trying to argue with him? It was like I had been at CalTech, arguing with astrophysicists about the red shift in the Eta Carinae star system. I was dead meat from the get-go. I immediately stopped myself from expressing any more opinions on art.

The rest of the night went better once I shut the hell up.

But to tell the truth, Mike wasn't a up-snooted dick. He was generally interested in me, my life and whatnot. I came to know him better as he would visit our house. We'd sit around the kitchen table just talking of movies, life...what not. He was great for telling the more gossipy stories of major artists, Hollywood stars he came by in his life. If you wanted to know someone who was fair and very open, he was it. I enjoyed the time when he came by.

He did something odd once. On his first visit to our home, he asked if he could walk around. I had asked why. He said he wanted to get a “feel” for it, our family history, to find a theme to the lives lived there. “I like looking for psychological ghosts in people's homes, the history. The stories lying about.” I was a bit put off because I sensed this guy was good at absorbing the truth around him from just looking. Christ, it felt like having Sigmund Freud look at your family album, your checkbook, going through your garbage...and then pronouncing you certifiably “crazy as bat shit” and even willing to stamp that on your forehead too. Our homes and personal lives aren't meant to be dissected like this. My home can be a deep, personal shelter where I can let it all hang out w/o the world knowing just who.I.really.am.

I followed Mike from room to room. He glanced, picked up things and muttered, “Hmmm” to himself at times. He pulled drawers open and fiddled around in them, picked up books and flipped through them. I felt as if there were a search warrant being executed in a most polite manner.

“I have to see the bedrooms.” he demands.

“Why them? What' so important about them?”

“That's the core” he says..to himself mostly.

When he was done, I had to ask, “Well...?”

“You want the truth?” he says.

Yes. I had to know...

“This home is disjointed, askew, fractured and corroborate. Yet...there are islands of creativity...astuteness...precociousness. There's an enormous amount of free thinking here and there too. Independence...I can tell by the books, music..by the piles of various 'hobbies' lying about”

I thought this: “Jesus H. Christ. He just distilled down the very essence of this family and it's history from one walk through.” I didn't admit to him that his accuracy was pretty close. God forbid! I was just rather surprised he could glean as much as he could from just looking. Most people would see just clutter.

Well, that's what you get from someone whose job it is to discern anything that hits his eye, and teaches it at RISD and makes movies about it. 
It felt sort of like this. Tangia in Poltergeist. Click pic and watch!

Interviews

Jostle those brain cells awake, that's what the young do to me now. I have dusty memories tucked away in dank filing cabinets in the basement of my cranium. Yuck! The place needs to be aired out. Open up the windows!

I was listening to a young man describe his first “real” interview for a position that's not a McJob. He thinks it's a longshot but he “had to try.” It's the right attitude, you bet on a pony that might, just might pay off. Hearing him talk about how he approached the interviewer, how to act and meter just what he said reminded me of the zillion interviews I went on as a young man myself.

To him, it was a remote chance he had to take. I then remember that my attitude about interviews were about an exchange of information. I find out about you, you find out about me and if both have a spark, we're in love. If not, well...good luck to the both of us.

Most of the interviews I have been on were in the social services field, not corporate, so I didn't have to suffer through too many cheezy corporate made videos educating me about who they were. Social service interviews tend to be almost like therapy sessions, one on one and each party must vow to tell the truth about each other. They're actually not that bad since the theme in most of those kind of jobs is about personality “fit” vs. the ability to do the job. That'll come later.

Now that I think of it, I haven't been on an interview since 1998. After you've been around a while, you develop that network no 20 something kid has. Also, if you have stayed at a job for over 100 years, like I have done, you develop a known skill set, a known personality (with all the good aspects and annoying ones, but the key word is KNOWN) and you don't interview much anymore. If they're stable and I'm stable, we tend to stay married to each other for a long time.

I don't rest on any laurels as I have been through that layoff merry go round and I suppose my interview skills have molded some. No problem. It's like riding a bike. It comes back to you.

I told the young man a few stories about interviewing. A psych professor at RIC I knew, told us she was on a week long interview for a position at Brown University for a lecturer's position. The final interview was with Brown's provost and she had already, quietly decided “no” to the job but went through the motions as a matter of career etiquette.

The provost shot off a hackneyed query which is a bit of a trick question that could be looking for God Knows What. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

She tells us she sat there, looking like she was thinking powerfully hard. Finally, she looks at the provost and others around the table and says:

“Honestly, in five years I hope to find myself...to achieve my dream of becoming a real, live circus pony.”

She gathered her things and left the room. She got hired at RIC instead and was happier for it.

The only interesting story I have about interviewing was where I said word “Fucking” during one.

I forget the name of the place. It had one of those positive, happy horseshit sounding names that most alcoholic/narco rehab places have. “New Beginnings, Sunrise, Pathways...you get it. I honestly think it was called “Tidewaters,” but don't quote me, it's been a long time. This place was a last stop for teens whose next stop was jail or the grave. It counseled throwaway kids who were in and out of the Rhode Island court system for a myriad of reasons. I hate to tell you, but there are fourteen year old kids out there who are ruined for life. The interview at Tidewaters was a round table one, with about four others from the place and me, doing what I said you do in social service interviews, you commune with one another.

Of course, you get the questions about your last job and my last had been with a psychiatric hospital which shall go nameless (hint: Attleboro). One of the questioners, was a too young man in a managerial position who began digging deeper into an answer I gave. The question was about human rights and do I believe in them. I had said “To a point....” The young kid seemed a bit too gung-ho about rights as they cannot be applied globally, all the time. There are moment to moment situations that need particular decisions.

Like I said, the young kid latched onto my “to a point” comment and began to delve deeper about why I believed that. I was pretty circumspect in my answers because I couldn't violate any HIPPA regulations but this kid's inquisition began to piss me off so I gave it to him w/o using any real names.

Me: “Look, I had to deal with some pretty dangerous kids, schizophrenic ones who had a history of violence. Twelve year olds that liked knives.”

Kid: “They don't deserve human rights?

Me: “They do, but you have to realize, it's not always a black and white situation.”

Kid: “But they're universally guaranteed...why would someone who has mental illness NOT be accorded them? How can you determine that when the law has determined it already?”

This kid was getting in my nerves. He was spouting the wonderful “theory” of this w/o having the benefit of any past experience to back that up. Yeah, you can adhere to a theory, until that theory becomes useless in a situation where things get too weird, too quick.

I finally say, rather animatedly: “Look, when one client is kicking the shit out of another, that's where the aggressor's human rights come to a screeching, fuckin' halt! I suppose the rights of the other mean crap??”

You coulda heard a pin drop it became so quiet.

A few minutes earlier in that interview, I had figured out I wasn't getting the job as we both weren't falling in love with one another, the word “fuckin' probably solidified that.

In truth, if this place had a person like that working for them, a water walker who can't deal with situational awareness, then I don't want to be associated with them. Add to that, I already began disliking this kid and I wasn't working with him yet.

**

I told the young man I was talking to, “Don't be afraid of interviews at all, the goal isn't to “get the job at any cost,” it's all about the relationship. Say “No,” if you're not interested.”

I certainly have.

Dreams Banging On My Door: "God Dammit! I Know You're In There! Open It!"

I dream of my past. It keeps happening. I wrote about in the last entry and the subject again is the same!   The dream today was a slight reworking of the facts, but the theme of the times remains the same. Today it was the summer of '96 and the dream's soundtrack was supplied by Cool 102.

I was and am still a huge radio station lover. I will channel surf till I find a song I like, even if it's ¾ over. But there is usually one station I will park at when I'm not sitting in front of the stereo. Back then it was 101.9FM, out of Falmouth. It's the station for the Cape and the Islands and with my ingenuity (read: I taught myself how to pull something that far in with an FM antenna) I managed to receive it. Cool 102 sounds like an easy summer afternoon on an Oaks Bluff porch. I suppose I could have that now in spades if I programmed Pandora to play it all day long and ditched over the air.

The dream started off with an actual event. My brother at times would get this itch to something very spontaneous. Since the idea sounded cool, I was game for it. We visited his old time friend, Jack N. who was vacationing in Eastham, Cape Cod. He and his wife and a new baby were up in Jack's old haunts from their home in Austin, TX. I figured, “Why not?”, as I hadn't been to the Cape in eons and there was a free place to stay. The adventure started off bad with my brother driving the wrong way on 44, heading west, when I finally up and spoke. “Where are you going?” I should've thought this was a premonition.

I wasn't planning on drinking but my brother had bought a bottle of cheap vodka. When we arrived in Eastham it seemed that they ad a broad neighborhood association rule: “All homes must be weathered clapboard with cranberry trim.” Upon meeting Jack, we met Jack's wife, who wasn't keen at all to have us there. After coldly eyeing us as we walked up the to the front door, she especially eyed the bottle of vodka. We had been planning to crash on Jack's living room floor but he and his wife had a quiet,  quick conversation where she made up Jack's mind for him. We weren't to stay overnight come Hell of High Water.  Later my brother giggled when he told me he overheard her shouting under her breath: "They brought liquor into this house?!"

Gee, thanks. I felt miffed at the DIS-invitation. The daylight was ours to talk to Jack, but we weren't to be seen in Dodge after sundown.

So we rapped about old times while I sat there wondering how we were going to get back to Rhode Island before sundown. It turns out we weren't. My brother's idea was to get a motel room (good luck!) somewhere. We left Jack's house and found none were to be had. I suggested a campground where we could at least squat w/o the cops getting interested in us but even all the sites were sold off. The manager said for $10 we could park there and crash till morning. Searching around ate up to much time to head home anyway.

We both tried just to sleep out under the stars w/o any camping gear. The ground proved too hard and the mosquitos too hellish. I got back into the car and tried to recline the seat enough to where I could fall asleep. I eventually did.

The dream reworked that event though to this. I was in the car, trying to get to sleep to no avail. So the dream tells me to think nice thoughts as it can lull you to sleep. In the dream I thought this: My Mom's dead and that horror story was out of the way and I had my life back. I had finished up a second degree and was starting up a new career. I had a girlfriend finally, after my career as a nurse to my Mom ended. I had a house drop into my lap due to inheritance law. I had a newer car vs. the piece 'o' crap I had de-fibrillated enough times to keep alive long past it's useful life. I had motivation, direction, optimism, hope and the ol' magic of touching things and making them turn into gold was coming back. I got my life back and was quickly turning it towards the direction I wanted.

It takes a dream to remind me of what was true back then. I kinda had forgotten all about that stuff. And all of this had the background of Cool 102 playing.

**

I was reminded of something else too, but this was from a conversation from a young 20 something man. He tells me he's sick to death of working the same job for nearly a decade and wants to change. He currently works in a job that has nothing to do with his degree so of course it irks him.

Upon hearing this I realized that this is just the natural ambition of a young man. We all have it at that age. He should aim his life, move it forward, to what he wants. Not only that, it's what can generate that lasting satisfaction of purposing your life towards a destination and seeing it trend toward that. You're making plans! You're getting there! Stagnation is what kills you at that age. If you stay put and watch all your friends make advances, it just is a double whammy on your self esteem and energy to watch it happen. My 20 something acquaintance is smart to realize this and want change, even if it involves unknown risks.

I would have to add it's stagnation that kills you at any age.

If my entire life has a soundtrack to it, or rather I can pinpoint periods of it by hearing certain songs, then this period I inhabit is no different. Currently I park the station on WERS, the Emerson College radio station on your 88.9FM preset. I love my 70's oldies but I also need newer music to feast upon. Eating cheeseburgers all the time is boring.

College radio seems to be the soundtrack to my a plan now that I've been formulating for over nine months, betting on the ponies on Wall St. I used to do this with some regular success many years ago but then drifted away from it, due to the massive collapse in '08 no doubt. Yes, it's dangerous and the future is never guaranteed. Hell, it's even more dangerous now with everything in a state of flux with the central banks being unable to prop up anything now. But nothing in life is fixed either. Volatility can be your friend if you play it right. The high you get from succeeding, putting those proceeds to what you want and the gross simplicity of making money by clicking a mouse, is amazing. To me it is.

I need this. I need some of that natural ambition instead of indifference. I will force another period in my life to arise. Time to write a new chapter and either it ends well or not. But it needs to be written.

I'm not alone in this thinking. If you breathe air you too must be thinking of a “What if...?”

The Past(s) Becomes Clearer

Again, afternoon dreams are matchless to me. The vividness, the retention and message are all clear cut. I had yet another one that reminded me of a time which I was very happy, due to some ugly circumstances.

The reason why I was pleased was because my Mom had kicked the bucket and took with her the stress, duress and subduing nature of chronic illness. This isn't new. I once had a funeral director tell me that (learned throughout his career) the end of a terminal illness was liberation, not only for the one afflicted, but for the family as well. This is true and I can attest.

I won't go into detail about the leaps and bounds I made after being “freed.” I detailed that here in a piece where I speak of the reason why “El Condor Pasa” by Paul Simon figured so much in my life in 1996. Simply put, I was like a dog that was off a leash finally.

But what's got me thinking is why now, in these past few years, do I have dreams similar to this one where aspects of my life are replayed again. Who knows. Perhaps this is what happens when you get older and the perspective of time allows you to recognize clearly just what went on all back then.

I don't immediately recognize the images in the dream. Sometimes, some very inconsistent juxtaposition of image, sounds and whatnot are in the script. After a while of chewing on it, I come to find they weren't disparate at all, they were integral to the narration of the dream.

See if you can discern just what the hell this picture is all about? It was in the sky all throughout the dream I had. In the dream, I was fixing up the house, bringing into completion of what I envisioned it should be and not just a reminder of the past. I was working on a screen door, when I looked over my shoulder and saw this in the sky.

100 points if you said, “International Space Station,” because that's what it is.

So what was that doing in a dream I had? I had to ponder that for a bit when an old memory hit me, I had seen this in the sky at one time. It was the late 90's while watching Gary Ley glibly chatter about the weather when he mentioned if you ran outside now, you could catch the ISS craft flying over head the north-western part of the sky. I did just that. I came back quick to get my brother to see this too. I consider the late 90's a time when I was rebuilding my life after having devoting much of it taking care of other people a short few years before. Everything was falling into place and what I touched, turned to gold. It's a great feeling to have.

I don't consider dreams to be predictive. If they were, I would've had dreams of flying monsters and witches appear in my real life. They never did appear.  I do think my dreams are “reminders,”  excepts of my life up to this point. Anyways, that's what they seem to be. Hell, it was nice to be reminded of a time when things were great.