( From my 2009 Archives. )

"Hope"

In these days like so many I've felt sad confused threatened weary. I sleep much. Late this morning I took Dramamine, and slept through the afternoon.

I had two Dreams.

The first was of my "Wandering Time" as I call it. Some of you here know the story. For a year from Spring to Spring I wandered the streets of our great Emerald City.

I had lost my home.

The sun, and moon chased each other through the seasons. Below, and within this I walked in heat, and cold rain, and snow. I dreamed this time like soldiers dream of their wars.

Like my father, and brother dreamed.

I remember from my childhood the cry's of my dad as he slept. His calling out, and moaning. Later my brother after his war did the same. They dreamed of their wars, and now I dream of mine.

This dream this harsh realm morphed as dreams do to other places, and other times.

My second Dream.

A wonder a fantasy a reality. A theatre I was in a theatre a palace a wonder. I seemed to be...what?  A spirit a wizard? All around people children sang danced great sagas told hymns sung.

There was joy in my heart.

With a sword of crystal I was knighting girls boys, and as I did they grew halos. Even in the dream I thought...you're kidding.

Everything morphed slightly.

I was walking about this dreamland almost aware that it was a 'just' dream. There were beautiful frescos on the walls. Also creeping vines curling merrily about them.

My day realities were at the edges these visions fighting to come through, and awaken me. However kept at bay with magic. That magic of which I said earlier I didn't believe in yet clung to as a comfort.

I passed behind a screen which was Japanese,...but not. When I came from behind it. Darkness. All the colors faded.  coldness all about.

This world morphed again.

I was in my wandering time once more. In the cold, and wet just as my dreaming began. Yet I heard faint singing as from the former palace-theatre. Beautiful  so far in the distance, but I heard it I listened.

Then I awoke into our present troubles.

Beauty, and hope distant, but not lost not gone.

This was the lesson.

This was hope.

Stay Tuned.

"Tis' But a Dream"

A Dream. Yet another meaningful dream. A desert. I'm in a desert there's a war. We there's a "we". We're an armored column. We're either racing towards battle or away from defeat, but we are racing as fast as wheels, and threads can take us.

Our engines are hot over heating. Emotions are high. I'm alone yet not alone in an armored tracked runner. We're kicking dust high into the air. The landscape is rocky sandy hazy hot.

We're passing the wreckage of earlier column's. Ruins of desert towns. The sky is red. Dust storms rise, and fall yet so fast we go.

I bank into a gravel pit nearly loosing treads yet continue on. Over rocky plains like that on Mars...is this Mars? Is this a desert war in the far future on a terraformed Mars?

I'm inside my armored car there 's the static of the coms. Voices indistinct from other units. Also the feeling there's someone with me always. Though now separated from the rest of the column yet still I drive as if chased by demons.

I come upon a village a settlement carved out of the side of a mountain. I pull up onto an escarpment. Dismount, and walk.

I enter this amazing place, and follow a path that leads to open air galleries. There are people here living in peace outside of whatever war I'm caught up in.

There are women ahead of me herding what look to be sheep-like animals. I follow them. They come to a running stream, and pass with their charges through. It's deep the sheep swim, and they up to their shoulders wade.

I should say they're wearing plain white hijab-like costumes with tall blue slender conical sort of head dress fluted at the top.

I follow wading as well.

However I stop halfway through. I look back, and see the top of one of those head pieces behind me. I go back, and see it's a child a little girl. I lift her up, and carry her to the far side.

Unlike the women she's dressed in sky blue. Bright brass seemed imbedded in her arms her face. No not imbedded. These strange lovely designs look as if she was born with them.

She looks at me with a questioning stare.

I hear the roar of the tanks not far away. That, and the tink of cooling metal from my vehicle. These sounds carried by the desert winds behind us.

It begin to rain,...then snow.

This complex detailed dream seems to melt away it morphs into other things other places people.

I awaken.

( The above is the raw dream. Nothing added or subtracted. A complicated story without reason or punchline...just another dream in an ocean of them. I have to think on this one.)


Stay Tuned.


"Time, and Again"

Warm today. It went to 83f degrees. More of the same for the rest of the week. This is suppose to be good news they say. What the hell.  
Btw see above the colors have started.

Just read in the "Times" that loneliness among those over 60 is epidemic.

...ya think.

I go for days sometimes weeks without speaking to anyone. My circle of comrades are long gone. The ones still breathing are far away. That, and I've become a part time shut-in.

All this evolved so slowly over time that I didn't really notice...well I knew, but didn't. Ya know how that can be.

They say the fire inspectors now look for signs of elder isolation as well as fire hazards during inspections. Well we have inspections here, but it's not door to door...yet.

They just check the building's electrical, and gas systems then split.

Signs of isolation are shabbiness unwashed dishes, and the like. I guess general untidiness. A depressive lack of caring. My digs have always been neat however they are not as nice as they were.

It needs a paint job some plaster work that sort of thing. I mean it's okay, but not as nice as I used to keep it. There just didn't any longer seem to be a point.

Which btw are exactly the signs they look for.

When I was very ill over these last years I knew the only way anyone would know I'd kicked the bucket would be the smell...especially in summer.

I actually left my door a-jar when I thought my time was up so they wouldn't have to kick the door in. I later found that this is somewhat common for the isolated elderly very ill to do...and I thought I had invented it.

Aw well.

Look I'm fine. Just complaining is all. That, and I'm really tired of fighting the damned system just to keep the scraps of "Senior" stuff I'm supposed to have...I just want to be left alone for heavens sakes.

On the other hand it's a way to get me out of the house, and speaking with folks so...

Stay Tuned.

"Carnival of Souls"

                                    I sleep in a sea of the dead.

                               My dreams are a Carnival of Souls.

                Departed family friends, and enemies drift about me.

                                    'and won't shut the fuck up.

                      

                                 They call me "The Iron Nigger."

                    This because I 'should' be a Spook like them.

                                             But Won't Die!

                                        Ain't that some Shit.


                                              Stay Tuned.



"Day in the Life"

Well as daze go this was productive. I mean as compared to most others when I mostly cower under my kitchen sink. That or bricking up my windows against Nazi's breaking in, and taking my hidden Chocolate stash. 'Or I'm busy scribbling in crayon the details of that new religion I'm starting.

No today I did what I had to do.

I paid my rent mailed in my lease renewal so I'll have a place to live. Took care of my utility bills went to the supermarket, and gave a guy a few bucks so he could get something to eat. Which he did as I saw him go into the Chinese take out as opposed to the drug dealer across the street.

All the necessaries plus a good deed.

Now what? See this is the problem with life. Ya do your responsibilities then you have 95% of the rest of the day to fill up. At least if your retired anyway. One thing later is to measure myself for my new uniform. So I bought a tape measure. Got into this weird theological thing with the proprietor of the shop.

He laid all this Jehovah's Witness paperwork on me...always smile, and nod when this happens. I decided not to tell him about my new religion based on dope sex, and comic books.

Well he was a nice guy, and meant well...I also didn't tell'em I was Queer. Them "Witness" guys support death for fags, and such. Btw as I mentioned somewhere I'm always nice to the assorted religious nuts I bump into. I see them as all having the "Shine".

'Been touched by the Higher Realms, and all.

Sure they're going on about this Gawd or that maybe their dog told them shit who knows, but still they go touched, and went bleeping nuts. The more educated that get touched become theologians or deranged artists. Guys like Pollack Dali Ginsberg, and Walt Whitman.

I know I was "Touched".

Been seeing bleep in time, and space hearing stuff wild dreams alien abductions the whole deal. I remember I was maybe 8, and I was captured by the Sky. I was sitting on the ground in the school yard, and staring at the wonder of the late October sky...didn't notice all the kids had gone in.

Sister Jane had to come out, and get me. The principle thought I was disturbed, and told my Mom I might need help. Mom told her to bleep off, and quit beating me, and all the other kids so much.

So began my life as an "Urban Shaman"...sort of.

Those that used to listen to my radio programs know what I mean. Which is why I'm thinking of setting up a new, and mostly harmless religion. That or just doing a performance of my idea for a store-front temple.

"Uncle Sydney's First Church of Amazing Bewilderment"

The more I think about it the more I may do this thing. Oh yeah about being cool with all the religious nutters on the street.

There's a bunch of "Witness" folks stationed near the subway I use. I always smile, and nod...take their stuff when offered too. I'm sincere. Sure they'd burn me at the stake...so what. It's nice to be nice. I even asked them to pray for me when I was going nuts...more than usual a while back.

They did.

Wow how neat is that. Anyway later...did I mention this. Anyway with that tape measure I got from the "Witness" guy at his shop. I'm going to measure myself for me new uniform. Now I just wear the one I've used for the last 50 years or so...jeans t-shirt sneakers cap hoodie.

Basic working class/ student/ artist/ undercover-cop/ lay-about male 20th/21st century garb. Thanks to my sister making a Christmas present of it. Soon I'll be walking around as a mid-19th century U.S. Civil War grunt.

It's what I always wanted.

Anyway such is just another day in the life.

Stay tuned.

"Speaking of Dreams"

You ever wonder about the people in your dreams. No not your dog or people you know I mean the 'Others'. You dream, and there are people in it, People that you know, but only in your dreams.

Who are they?

You have complex relationships with a whole cast of characters. Whom on awaking vanish. You forget them or at best have only a vague notion of them.

What happens I wonder. To all those people I mean. Do they go on living their lives in the dream you've awakened from. Not knowing where the world they live I came from.

...or do the cease.

Dreams we now know are brief. Mere seconds or at most a few minutes long. However within this small interval our dream companions have a whole existence.  Do they know that their world or worlds are born, and perish by our sleeping, and waking.

In their last subjective thoughts do the realize the truth.

We are the sum of so many forgotten realms. I wonder if our Dream Children as their reality starts to de-pixelate as their world fades. I wonder if their last thought before oblivion is...

"Oh!...I was a Dream.


Then gone.

Till next time.


"Dreams"

I had another of those dreams. I was walking..so far..I was walking so very very far. My feet hurt I looked down they were bleeding. I left foot prints of blood on grey concrete.

This place was bleak.

All seemed made of the same course grey stone. The road, and the low rise building on either side. Grey cold. I seemed to have companions, but could never quite see them. I was I think homeless wandering. I lived this once before though now it was in a dream-scape.

It was always noon.

No morning no night no evening.

I was near a sea. There were submarines diving just off the coast. so many. It seemed as if squadrons of them were slowly going down one after another.

...and there was singing.

The "Sailor's  Hymn"...I could faintly hear it in the sea's distance.

"Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep,

It's own appointed limits keep;

Oh hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in peril on the Sea!"

And so they dived. All manner of submersibles. WW2 Gato Class subs to today's California, and Montana Class nuclear Boomers. 

The sea washed the blood from my feet.

The dream morphed as they do, and I was sweeping the floor of an abandoned building.  I was nearly naked. I wore just scraps of rags. I heard a baby crying down the hall. I went opened the door, and saw the child's shadow...just the shadow. The room held a shadow which cried, and cried.

I closed the door, and returned to sweeping.

Another morph, and I was rummaging in a bin for cloths. They were all like the thin rags I was wearing. A person came, and handed me a pair of new jeans. 

...and a silver dollar.

She said I could sleep on the roof. She said the birds would "protect" me,..."they protected everybody" here.

And I did sleep on the roof. I slept in the eternal noon of that world. I lay there as swarms of birds danced above.


Stay Tuned.

"A Dream"

( From my 2009 Archives. )

This is what I dreamed last night. I wrote it down as soon as I awoke. Okay I tweaked it a tad so it would scan, but this is basically it.

I was on a journey with my sisters Sylvia, and Kim. The girls were children again. About 12, and eight. I was a young man perhaps 20. We were riding in a fine horse drawn carriage. A lovely affair of the sort that the gentry of the Federalist era used.

We were riding through Brooklyn, our Borough of Churches. However this was a city not built by blind capital, but one wrought by idealists from the Sun King's realm.

So beautiful, such color. A thoughtful, practical lovely city.

In the dream I remember leaning out slightly from the carriage window to see as much of this dream Brooklyn as I could. Everything I saw combined function, and art. Much as the Ancient Chinese did.

My sisters, as I took in the sights, did as I always remembered them doing on long trips.

They giggled, and played mysterious hand games.

Given what grandma was teaching them I assumed they were casting spells. Knowing them they probably were.

Dreams.












My dear sisters, and I were on our way to see a play. A fevered collage of the "Red Shoes", "A Mid-Summer Nights Dream", and something I can't identify. I could make something up, but it wouldn't be true to the dream.

The Tickets.

A whole anxious subplot to this mayhem was my trying to find the tickets. As my sisters sat in their white with hints of silver Jane Austin gowns I quietly poked about my pockets for the damned tickets.

Btw, I'm not a dress designer. So how did I come up with such gorgeous gowns for my sisters. Also, no architect I, so how did I cook up the Sun Kings Brooklyn?

That, and all the endless cute details of this dream,...which if I could I'd post here as a video.

Anyway where the hell does all this come from, and don't start with that collective unconscious stuff. I think something grander than even that may be involved.

Anyway the footman, yeah that guy was there too. The footman opened the door, and my beautiful little sisters climbed down. So off we went ticketless to the dream theatre.














'But oh what a theatre!

It was as wonderful as the Pentagon is grim. Imagine a palace for the arts as designed by Turner, and Walt Whitman. Yeah I could live with that.

We passed under a free floating rotunda whose ceiling was spangled with stars, and misty nebulae,...Turner.

Wait gets better.

My Brother John. My deceased big brother John. John the war hero. John the politician. John the husband, father, and brother. My brother Johnny was standing the entrance of this dream pavilion.

As I said I'm writing this down as soon as I woke up. I need to remember this more than I need to share it with you.

He said nothing. The dead never do in my dreams. But he handed me an envelope. It was my "lost" tickets.

I'll end it here.

The copy goes on as the dream did. The play, my sisters the strange sky. More'n more dream stuff.

Better to end it here.

Stay Tuned.