Unusual To Find

It was I that thought of you today. I often do. Others may as well but I only know of me.

You were in a dream first and my sister was luring you with her charms – you succumbed and I was fraught with pain and anguish at the thought of abandonment. I had been clamoring after you in my usual attempt to find the love you have for me – it isn’t often clear.

I found you in a bed together.

You tried to convince me that it wasn’t that you didn’t love me.

She wouldn’t have purposely done a thing like that when she was alive. Just as you told me in the dream, “I couldn’t help myself.”

No one could resist her. She attracted everyone. I repelled. She couldn’t help herself either – it was just the way things were.

If not for you and a scarce few others, including my sister, I might not have had any chance to try to be known. That is what we all want – a chance to be known. We want someone to want to know us. Someone to ask questions. Someone to say, “Is that really how you feel? How did you come to feel as such? That’s very interesting. Tell me more.”

You don’t always do that but you do it enough to make me believe. My sister was the same – sometimes but not always – interested to know what thoughts I had. It wasn’t unlike her to call me a cynic and point out all my flaws though – too.

We want someone to want to see pictures of us in our younger days where we might be able to see our better side. We want someone to want to recall those days when we might have been together in them. We want someone to want to be with us – even if we must remain silent. We might even prefer the silence – just want the company and we want someone to want to accommodate us.

These things are quite unusual to find.

Sometimes, mostly in dreams, I find that unusual thing in you. Other times, I find you in bed with someone else.

Isn’t it a pity.

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Shadows And Sheen

“Writing was a dream I had when I was a kid, but then I grew up.” Tim Allen’s character in Joe Somebody said that.
I don’t remember wanting to be a writer when I was a ‘kid’. I dreamed of being an artist. That was all I wanted out of life — to be an artist. All.
My parents both had talent and dabbled. My mother drew us the most wonderful paper dolls and images to embroider. My father sat with me one time to show me how to draw in perspective.
My mother recognized the passion I had and purchased a used Jon Gnagy drawing kit from a thrift store one year as a Christmas present. She couldn’t have gotten me anything that would delight me more.
Jon Gnagy was a television personality — an artist who taught — when I was a young girl and all we had was black and white TV. He was mostly just teaching how to do perspective and make shadows and sheen — so black and white was enough.
Years later, when I was in the beginning of 20s, I had a date with a handsome young man who took me up into the mountains and we stopped at the very venue where Jon Gnagy was practicing a new color concept in front of an audience there and we sat in. He was hoping to eventually broadcast it on color TV, which was prominent by that time.
I was excited to death that I was meeting one of my heroes. He was trying to overcome having become a has-been but I didn’t register it then.
Throughout his whole presentation, I was jumpy and couldn’t concentrate because I had, just before we arrived there, found a tick on my chest and kept thinking there were more — so I was fidgety in my seat.
The handsome young man and I had just been out trekking in the shrubs and my long hair had caught one, me unawares, and I had also slid down a steep hill on my butt and had rocks and sand in my pants. After finding the one tick and being aghast, I couldn’t help but think, from then on, that every little bump was a tick.
Most of what I remember about that presentations was ticks — and shaking Jon Gnagy’s hand. I was very fascinated with the concept he was trying to accomplish though and had a feeling of great admiration as I sat there worrying about ticks.
I was still wanting to be an artist. I was probably just back from a summer art school scholarship and still thinking I could be.
Being young and wanting to be an artist, I wasn’t quite aware yet that art takes all kinds of forms — but I did know that I was dying to find a way to get something that was balled up inside of me outside of me and at that time it was through drawing and painting — though I gravitated to all things creative.
When I got too balled up, sometimes I wrote — or drove in a car — once I was old enough to drive. Before I could drive, I rode my bicycle to do what I called clear the cobwebs from my mind.
Writing was a go-to for the ultimate pressure release to try to escape overwhelming emotions — so, if bike riding or driving didn’t do the trick, I wrote. I never thought anything of it, I just simply had to do it. Things came pouring out.
I would read things over again from time to time through the years and as I got old enough, most of it went in the bin because it was pitiful. I could see though that it was definitely a way to congeal thoughts and, at the least, get them out of my head.
I would eventually take a creative writing class and begin to take it more seriously. There was still a nagging need. That was in the 80s.
The only reason we may have to give it up when we grow up is because earning a living gets in the way. I was lucky to find a way to make a living and practice art, (though many wouldn’t agree), by working in the field of interior design. It was basically selling stuff, but it still used my passion and artistic muscle throughout the practicing that was required to formulate the things I needed to sell.
As it turns out, everything is about selling — so that was good practice too.
Nothing in life is a waste.
It might be a hologram though or a computer interface. We may never know.
But in the meantime, the best we can do is to use this interface to try to make the most of what we are given.
A science fiction writer will use that interface curiosity to write a sci-fi novel. It’s way out of my league — though I am immensely curious. Curiosity is another one of the necessary ingredients to finding a way to make whatever this interface is make sense to enough of a degree to get by while we’re in it.
Jon Gnagy may never know how important he was to me when art was a dream I had when I was a kid. I tried to let him know a little the time that I met him. What an odd event that that chance encounter happened.
Not so odd if this is a game we’re in after all and we are at the controls. Now to learn better how to write the story line and draw my avatars.

Forgive Me Shelly

Shelly and I were walking and she said this:
“We had had a wonderful love-making session. We both agreed. That visual wasn’t in the dream but the afterglow was. We were walking down a busy bridge touching and separating, and touching and separating and he said, ‘You know I still want to do things on my own,’ and I tried to reach out for him but he kept moving out from reaching distance and then suddenly disappeared into a space for disappearing and didn’t return. I kept walking on the bridge, sadly and feeling very missing. He was just too quick and didn’t give me any choice.
The essence he appeared as in the dream was everything I wish he was in person, except for the disappearing which he does quite well in person — and it’s the thing he does in person that I dislike the most. He doesn’t really mean to but I’m just too much — so he has to disappear to get some of what he is and I’m not back, before he forgets who he is without me trying to manifest him as something he’s not.
I don’t blame him. I blame Coca-Cola. They’re good for blaming everything that’s wrong on. My bad personality especially.
He’ll never be in person, the essence of what he is in the dreams, so when I wake up disappointed that I’ve only been dreaming, I have to remind myself that it’s just great to have whatever it is for all it’s worth — something to dream about if nothing else — a big round teddy bear that loves me as much as I do him. We’re really good friends in the dreams and not too much less for real.”
It was a whole little story for recounting here, so I’ve stolen everything that Shelly said.
Forgive me Shelly, for not giving you credit but you have disappeared to the same place that he did and I don’t really know who you are.
 

Back To Sleep

“You haven’t written anything yet!” the alarm for saving said. The page had been open for hours and hours and hours.
Gardening got in the way. And the mind stayed focused on that task, no stories seemed to be streaming in the brain while digging like so many other times — for instance, sleeping.
That was a good thing — a case of meditation.
Waking in the middle of the night, words fall out of the bed too — more awake than the person walking and sometimes the words are written down to turn into something come the morning. Sometimes they aren’t — written down, and it’s almost always cause for sorrow. The bed is too soft to grab the pen and the covers warm and the kitties waiting and eyes won’t open wide enough.
The words are clear, the body is simply just too tired — or is it lazy?
The crawl back in is heaven.
The kitties settle in again. Everyone goes back to sleep and there is hope to dream of something for the morning.
A tall, handsome man with curly light brown hair nuzzled in to kiss behind her ear and he whispered sweet things to her and laughed and twirled her around and grabbed her in as she tried to get away and then started cooking something for her.
That woke her up.
Why so often dreams of men?
Is she missing one?
It might just be.
It would be nice but only if he was as wonderful as the brown curly-haired tall man in the dream. Maybe someone not so tall or young like he was — after all, she’s old too.
He’d have to like gardening or at least like watching her garden. He’d have to like cats and dogs and pigs and cows and lizards and caterpillars as well as all the other living critters. He couldn’t drink milk or eat meat. He couldn’t hunt or fish. He’d have to do the housework, at least whatever he wanted done that she didn’t seem to get to. She might iron some of his clothes if he wanted, because sometime she likes to iron, but it couldn’t be on demand or every day — she likes too much to be free to play.
There she goes dreaming again not while sleeping.
That kind of man is as random as the chance that one was made at all.
But that miracle has happened. Why not one specifically for her?
Back to sleep to dream it may come true.

Powers That Be

“Where did the socks go?” she wondered aloud as she was putting on articles of clothing that would seal the chill from stealing her heat. She had been doing a thorough going through of all her things to limit what she keeps and must have put them in a different drawer. Now to remember what logic she was using at the time.
With the sun not beating down on the house the hours it does in summer, it starts to chill and stays that way — no amount of sun seems to inch the interior temperature up one iota by this time. She might just have to have the heat pump looked at and the broken thermostat changed out so that it can be turned on for a spell to cut the chill, at least in the mornings — give the house a boost for warming up from the inside out. What she’d rather do is hire someone clever enough to build a rocket mass heater in the space where the little wood burning, useless metal box is.
Ah well. Better things to think of for this day, she thinks to herself. She’d get the space heater.
The sun is a space heater too — it heats space. “Crazy mind”, she says out loud.
Everyday there is some kind of issue to attend. Two days passed with little done other than to soothe a migraine brought on by eating food not from her own fridge — a local joint she and her friend frequent when they want a chat. She’ll have to stop doing that — not the friend, but the food. Once the body clears out toxins, it doesn’t want them back. She keeps thinking that once a week won’t hurt until directly after when the headache starts. What does it take to fully learn a thing?
It certainly doesn’t pay to get sick and the sickening process of trying to ferret out which policy to get from the gauntlet of vultures selling one of their better plans is more toxic than a veggie burrito without cheese.
“Don’t get old” she’s heard with resentment all her life — as if there is a choice. When you’re young, you don’t think much about medical plans but keep that to yourself, old people, she would think. Don’t make young people fear the future. And it doesn’t help a thing to be a pessimist. Happy thinking makes well people.
Now her thoughts go directly to wondering if the powers that be are purposely putting fear and trepidation into everyone’s lives in hopes they’ll die sooner than later and then profiting from the policies they can sell all the way the old folks go down the sick hole. That’s not happy thinking, she thinks and reminds herself that she has decided to quit thinking about what evil people do. She’ll live in her own little bubble — it’s better for her health and might afford her a better policy.
She’s feeling really happy that she has found a wonderful lady to help her navigate the gauntlet. It’s a miracle to have good people in your life and it makes all the difference in the resentment one might feel at the corruption of it all that, at least, there is someone on your side to help you find the best out of the bunch of awful things. None of them had any value that was worth their price, but better one than none it seems since the basic plan is full of donut holes.
Her goal is to find a way to avoid needing it altogether but there is always the chance and that is what insurance is, a bet against chance. After all, she did go flying lately from an accidental trip that could have broken bones.
“So, I was reading about this Medigap thing and wondering if it might be better than having Advantage?” she asked her wonderful new broker.
They got to talking about things and she was explaining to Renata that she’d like to start a brick and mortar business but what it seems is that this shit called Medicare is designed to keep people down because the minute they get one dollar out of one box, they have to start all over and try to find a different box to fit in.
“It seems that the system wants to keep people poor and fearful of starting a business.”
Renata agreed but said, “Let me tell you something. Years ago, I divorced and had two young children to raise and I didn’t have a pot to, you know what, in. I started a business and I haven’t looked back. Don’t let the system steal your dream. I don’t know what kind of business you want to start, but maybe I can help you.”
Trying to remedy her own health issues, she’s been reading lately about being your own placebo and Norman Cousins was mentioned in the book. She looked him up and it turns out that Norman cured himself of a debilitating arthritic disease of his spine by watching Marks Brothers movies and doing a lot of guttural laughing. He had been told nothing could be done, that he’d have to decide which misery he wanted to live out the short rest of his life in, lying or sitting, because his spine would fix and he decided not to buy that idea at all and thought that if his disease had been brought on by stressful thinking, it could just as likely be turned around with happiness. And it worked.
Reading along about Norman, it was also stated of the benefits of a doctor that really cares and who lets the patient have some measure of control in his own treatment and a nursing staff that is truly helpful for people to get well. Something sorely missing in our current, for-profit driven system that hardly gives a doctor time to look into his patients eyes, if he is able.
She was so grateful to know that people like Renata are still out there. People that hold your hand, metaphorically, and truly help.
“Thank you Renata. I’m so happy I found you in this big wide world of poo.”
She had to think also that happy thinking might have brought Renalda to her, that she had had the expectation that things turn out right in the end somehow.
Now to find those socks and bring the boxes of fabrics in to replace the VHS movies she just took down from the shelves in the room that she is converting into a studio in the house so she can get farther along making plans for that business in her head. The timing’s right. People are starting to leave internet shopping looking for real venues. Maybe it’s my time, that’s a happy thought she thinks, maybe that will heal whatever ails me.