smiley face dream?

Left behind 

while everyone else went to New Orleans 

for a chemistry conference, 

we found 

someone had put together a scavenger hunt for us!

We followed clues until the ultimate one: 

find the names 

of the two people 

who starred in the 1973 movie "Who Is This?".

We had a hint: check the 1973 MSDS binder -

nope!

He used his phone and pulled up the movie on IMDB -

got it!

We inserted the name tags 

into the fronts of two side by side drawers in the file cabinet -

and it opened!

Lots of swag inside for us, 

including 2 carnations 

and big salad to eat with chopsticks!

What fun!

Then to check out 

the layered images on the scavenger folder 

for any other clues -

nope!

Just lots of 'bee people' from SNL -

hahahaha!

Now to find a copier to duplicate that cover for both of us!

 

* _ * _ * _ * _ *

 

Then I woke up!

And who was "he"?

Not Scott,

not the bfe,

not the ex, 

not the tour guide, 

certainly none of my brothers! 

He just may have been 

someone who reminded me

of the dog doc

in that episode of "The X-Files"

when the agents are "Rob and Laura Petrie".

 

Perhaps the name of the show

led to 'scavenger file' and 'folder'...

and that last name

placed me into a lab setting...

which makes me wonder:

was the smiley face 

still 

in the morning sky

for that dream?

since you've been gone, away

This morning, I was grateful when my ringing phone awakened me from a bad dream.
No, let's rephrase that.
It wasn't a bad dream - it was an incredibly sad dream.
I had been dragged back into the darkness, into the depths, into the deep, deep sadness of the world.
By my mind.
By my mind.
Heartbreaking, sobbing sadness, that I couldn't shake.
I wrote the dream down, needing to get the words out of my mind, set them free, release their hold.
Andy asked me if I knew where he could locate... some odd thing. I told him, "if it's anywhere, it's in Sam's locker." We then went to Sam Johnson's locker (full-length type, with a couple of shelves in it) and I opened it and we began pulling out items from the messy stacks on the middle shelf (the area where normally you would have hooks to hang stuff). At some point, I lost track of Andy - I was caught up by the smell of Sam still in the items. I pulled out a gymbag stuffed full and, holding it against my chest, placed my nose near it, inhaling deeply - and realized how much I still missed him. I wandered off, still clutching the gymbag to me, unaware of the locker or anything else. - Then I was home, still clutching the bag close so I could breathe in his scent. I knew it wasn't - good? healthy? sane? - so I called Hai, to ask him to come over. I knew he would understand. He knew Sam, too.
I cried as I wrote, as I reread the words. I just couldn't seem to stop...
Then, my first niece called.
Not texted.
Called.
And I answered, knowing she would hear the tears in my voice, trying to disguise them, failing. She knows me, knew I would tell her when I was able, knew to wait for it.
In the meantime, would I like to go to brunch with her and the baby? She was just coming from the church. Would I like to ride with them or meet them at the Atlanta Bread Company?
I want to ride with you, I said.
I didn't think I would leave the house on my own.
So she came by and I threw on clothes and escaped the dream.
We had a long visit together, talking and talking and talking. At one point, I tried to tell her about the dream and almost started bawling again. She understood and just let me be for a few minutes. Then the baby stirred and life slipped back on track.

Almost two and a half hours later, I was home again.
Home.

dream so real

I would have sworn that I was held this morning as I slept.
I had awakened earlier, then gone back to bed, but not to sleep. Tossing and turning, I tried my usual tricks to regain slumber. Start on my right side, until I'm drifting, then roll over to the left to the land of Nod.
Nope. I was still awake.
Try it again. Slow the breath, bring the sheet over my head for a little extra darkness, let the mind go blank.
No. No, no, no. This was not working. And I was to leave for Pennsylvania today and would need to be rested.
And, as I lay there, with the sheet partially covering my face, I thought I felt someone come and lie down against my back, then drape an arm under my own and pull me near.
I didn't dare open my eyes for fear that I would find I was dreaming.
I didn't want the sensation of being held to be proved false.
Yet, it had to be... right?
No.
I chose to believe it to be true and snuggled into the embrace, relaxing into the deep, and not stirring until my alarm clock signaled the time for me to rise.
No one was there with me. I woke alone.
I wanted to talk to the peace Guy about the sensation, but I couldn't. Instead, I found myself fighting back tears.
I want touch.
Not sex.
Touch.
Is it really so impossible to have one without the other?
Sex would be good, too, but that comes with so many expectations and baggage. Also, it would be breaking one of my laws, as brothers, whether by blood or by choice, are out of consideration.
But why would it be wrong for two friends to cuddle while watching tv at the end of a night? Why would it be wrong for those two friends to hold each other while they slept, to wake up next to a smiling face? Why must the solace of such comforting touch only be obtained through sex with strangers?
The situation makes no sense to me, makes me crazy.
The situation makes me very sad.
For now, I need to leave.
Maybe I can talk about it when I return home in a week.
Maybe.
Probably not.
And that makes me sad, too.

buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks

Yes, Virginia, The Field of Dreams DOES exist!

A field of dreams?

No, THE Field of Dreams, as in the baseball diamond created from the rough earth of two farmlands for the movie.

Um, i think you're mistaken there. The movie just had ONE farm involved.

Well, that's the magic of film! In reality, two farming families in Iowa allowed the film crews to create the huge baseball field on adjacent portions of their land, then they had corn planted all around. Pretty nice work!

Really cool! And so it's existed all these years?

Well, not quite. After the filming wrapped, one of the families plowed under the portion of the baseball field on their land and replanted crops. But a strange thing happened. That first summer after the movie came out, people came to visit the Field of Dreams portrayed in the film. Not just baseball fans, but FAMILIES came, to play a game of catch on the diamond immortalized in the movie.
The family that had plowed under the portion of the diamond on their land rebuit the baseball field and corrected their mistake.
And more families came to play catch and dream of parents gone and children grown. To dream of baseball greats in the past and present. To dream.
There in the midst of midwestern corn, in the heart of America.

Okay, so what does this mean to me? What's the deal?

I want to go there.

To Iowa??? Seriously??? You don't know ANYONE there.

I know. That doesn't matter. When Mudville was talking about it last night, i very nearly cried. It has been such a reprehensibly hard week for me and i had, quite literally, thrown myself out of my house and forced myself to go be with people who knew me.

Good. Get yourself out of your head for a while.

That was my aim. So, off to downtown i went for the every other Thursday evening meeting of Drinking Liberally. And i deliberately sat next to Brenda, a woman whose thoughts i value, a woman who i knew would be supportive of me and the part of my hard week i shared with her. And another educator sat on my other side and, between the two of them, i started feeling much better and nearly whole again.

(Nods head.) Good, good, very good to be around positive folk in difficult times.

The important thing is this: they listened. That's the long and the short of it. They listened and allowed me to get the hurt and anger and sorrow out of my head and my heart and my lungs. Sometimes, that, coupled with warm hugs, is what is needed to start forging a path out of the sadness of the world.
So there i was, talking to these two fine ladies. The rest of the group had begun bidding adieu, taking their leave, dwindling our ranks.
Mudville comes over to regale me with the news of his upcoming holiday. He knows i share his love of baseball and he wants to tell me of his upcoming exploits. He's going off for nearly two weeks, to visit his sisters, to see games in Cincinati and Chicago, to visit The Field of Dreams.

The what?
 

Oh, yes, indeed, in Iowa, near Dubuque. The Field of Dreams.
And i got all choked up and made him tell me all about it. How it's the silver anniversary of the release of the movie. How celebrity athletes and movie stars used to go there and play games to raise money for charity. How it is still open for all who care to make the drive to this diamond of baseball heaven.

Oh... baseball heaven. So, there may be an intersection there of interest to you? Is that the logic here?

I don't think so. I don't know. Maybe. I just need to go and i need to go THIS year. I just want to walk the bases and gaze into the corn and sit on the bleachers. Who knows? Maybe i'll even pitch a few balls, see if i can even make it to the plate these days. I need to go there. This year.

Well, then you better start planning how you're going to go there. It's a long drive and your summer will soon be drawing to a close.
Oh, and enjoy the trip. I hope you find what you're looking for there.

Me, too. And... thanks.

awake

Sometimes, I feel disconnected, like I'm living in a dream, waiting to wake up. Lately, that feeling was been all over me. I find myself still up at 2am, forcing myself to go to bed. Heaven knows I would stay up all night otherwise. I've even been turning on my heated bed pad, to help lure me in.
This week, in particular, I've had death on my mind. The 15th was the third anniversary of Mother Pat, my ex's mom, who died scant months before our marriage passed away. Monday will be the 19th, the anniversary of Sam's death. The 26th will mark a year since my father's death.
Perhaps my reluctance to go to sleep is this: if I persist in staying awake, perhaps I will truly wake up and find so much has been a dream. After all, going to sleep is caving in to reality, accepting the new status quo. No one actually dreams of going to sleep, do they? No, of course not. People dream of doing things, of alternate paths trod, of new endings to current stories. So, if I can keep busy enough that I don't dwell on past losses, isn't that a form of denial? And isn't denial a part of being in a dream state?
So, if I don't sleep, then I must yet be dreaming...

random quote

"Is it better to live as a monster or to die as a good man?" So says Teddy Daniels in "Shutter Island," a movie that had me in tears well before its end. I seriously doubt that was the intention of the writer, but perhaps 'twas so, and I am one those so affected by this work.
It's truly a wonder I even saw the film. The previews I had seen left the distinct impression that this might be one of those films for me to avoid, a horror film designed to leave nightmares in its wake. Accordingly, I avoid such films as I prefer my dreams to be of a more peaceful nature. And yet, on a rainy Friday afternoon, I found myself buying a ticket for that very film, as well as one to distract me from its aftermath should it be nightmare-inspiring material.
So, just in case any readers might have stumbled upon these writings, one who has not seen the movie and might yet, perhaps such reader should now retreat to prevent knowing too much. N'est-ce pas?
As I was saying, the film had quite an emotional impact on me. "Shutter Island" is a thriller, of the psychological variety, and dealt with a man who had lost sight of the thin line which sometimes exists between truth and fiction. Sometimes the truth is exceptionally hard to accept, overwhelming all of the senses at once. Under such circumstances, the mind might bend and break, creating a more preferable explanation of the current circumstances. Especially if those circumstances involve the sudden death of someone loved, the sudden violent death at one's own hand of someone loved.
A person forced to confront such a hard truth might find their mind twisted such that the truth becomes part of a conundrum, a puzzle to be solved, with oneself as the hero of the day, setting out to right a wrong done by... someone else. An intelligent mind may well recognize the doer of the misdeed, but fashion a code to disguise the identity of the criminal from itself, to create a hero from the heart of the killer. Eventually, the hero would discover the truth, the oh-so-hard truth and be forced to accept it or to retreat into the fabrication once more.
As hard as that truth may be on the criminal, the fabrication affects all around them, especially those who recognize that person as having a good heart. They are forced to watch him re-enact his myth, hoping that this time he will accept the truth at the end of this play, that he will stay in one character, his true self. They have seen him go through this pain before and they try with all their might to help him work through the story one more time, hoping this will be the last time.
The incredibly sad part of this film lies in the recognition by the good man of the monster he has become, the monster he cannot escape and cannot accept. Does he continue to live the lie his mind has proffered, growing increasingly aware that the two personae are one and the same, or does he seek to end the lives of both the good man and the monster?

dreams

Twice I've had dreams where I woke up absolutely ticked off. Last night was the second time. I dreamt that, for reasons unknown, I had lent out my bedroom, bed included, to my erstwhile husband and some woman. Mind, I would N E V E R do any such thing, but there you have it. Also, neither he nor she, whoever she might have represented, appear in the dream at all, at least, not that I recall.
The attention-getter was what was left behind. The bed had been made up, like nothing had happened. The floor didn't have any clothes strewn around, not even a stray sock. But the walls??? The once-lovely walls had scribblings all over them, at all angles. I consciously read a couple of them, then realized with horror what they were, as my eyes leapt around the room. SHE, whoever she was, had scrawled text-message styled paeans of praise for his sexual prowess. "2 gud 2 believe!" Indeed. As if my sanctuary, my bedroom, with its beautiful aged mint barriers to the world, were a public space for tawdry graffiti etchings.
I was so angry! I woke up ready to go after someone, anyone, but especially him and her. But it was just a dream. That's all. Neither of them had done anything like that, not in the past and not now. And yet, it took a while for me to calm down about the situation. A situation, you understand, which was a figment of my imagination. An invisible tree.
Well, I have a choice, as I've said before. When an invisible tree rises in my path and threatens my sanity, I have a CHOICE to acknowledge it as a real presence ... or to look straight through it to the side of reason. WHY had this tree thrown its limbs in my face? What bugaboo was at its core? What changes might I need to make to uproot it, leaving not even a stump to mark its place?
Good questions. I feel better all ready, just talking about it, telling my ever-rolling waves, allowing them to stanch the mental bleeding and drag the ragged remnants out to drown in the deep blue of its depths.