Fears

Psychedelic Tangerine Dreams

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

I’ve awoke with a start.  Another one of those dreams that I usually reserve for nights after too many Margaritas and seafood tacos.  I can’t tell you the last time I had a Margarita…or a seafood taco.  It wasn’t last night. 

This dream was too vivid, and it wasn’t the first one. Good news, it wasn’t a nightmare…maybe.

There was once an old man who walked the two-lane road in front of my house.  My dream included him.  His name was Bap.  My guess…Bap was a nickname.  Being young I referred to him as Mr. Wolfe.  After rubbing the sleep from my eyes I remembered what the old folks said about Bap, “He ain’t right in the head.” Maybe I’m not either.

Dressed in bib overalls and a dusty, sweat-stained fedora, he would walk until approached by a car.  As the car drew near, he would recoil, clearly fearing the car might suddenly lose control and run him down.  His eyes were dark and brooding, boring into the driver as if Bap could somehow create a visual barrier that might protect him from being squashed flat like an unlucky possum.  His head followed the movement of the car until it was well past. Thankfully there were few cars during those days but I don’t think Bap had much to do anyway.

There were stories told around campfires by preteen boys that claimed Bap had been kidnapped by nefarious teenagers up to no good, taken on a wild ride in someone’s jalopy and let out far from home.  Somehow this had translated into a fear of cars instead of a fear of nefarious teenagers.

When I asked my father about him my dad simply replied, “Ole Bab is just a quare bird.  Don’t worry, he’s harmless.”  I guess he was, I remember him only as a reluctant and fearful walker and no threat to society. 

I dreamt about him last night.  Bap, not my father.  I’ve had a series of dreams that, while none are exactly the same, my series follows the same theme.  I’m lost and as the dream progresses, I get more lost and quite anxious about it.

Last night was the sixth in the series since the beginning of this month, a variation on a theme once or twice a week. Having reoccurring dreams is not new to me but I feel something is amiss, I’m a bubble off plumb. More so than usual I should say.

Why am I dreaming in psychedelic tangerine and blue paisley?  Why am I having a dream that includes a man long dead, a man I haven’t thought about in decades? Why am I having dreams that include unicorns and oiled up body builders hitting a bell with sledge hammers.

In the dream I can see my destination clearly in the distance even though I don’t really know what my destination is.  I just know it is there. I’m on a high hill under a haze filled sky with a brightly lit city spread out below.  I see my destination but  somehow, I get lost.  I see it again and again from different vantage points. 

I see it over and over and over and over again its location changes and I’m further away.  Short cuts avail themselves, but they turn into lengthy long cuts as I find myself in mazes that include textile mills, construction sites, athletic complexes, even a cruise ship. 

I find myself in dimly lit corridors or brightly lit shopping malls.  In one I open a door to a disco lounge complete with shiny disco ball, swirling women in dresses made of ethereal fabrics, and John Travolta in his white suit.  At least the Bee Gees aren’t singing in the background, “Staying alive, staying alive, oh, oh, oh….” Instead I hear Jimmy Buffett singing, “My whole life lies waiting behind door number three.” Great, Monty Hall may be in my next dream.

I open doors and am led further from my destination or to rooms with no exits.  In one, Bap stands against the wall staring at me with the look he reserved for cars, no white suit just bib overalls, a dark stare above a mouth formed into an “O”. 

All along the way there are people, in many places there is a crush of bodies.  People from my far past like Bap or people from my near past.  Friends long dead, others quite alive.  Family members galore. Folks I haven’t spoken to in decades and others I talked to yesterday including the little blond runner with the bouncing ponytail.  No rhyme or reason in psychedelic colors.

If I were an electrical media device, I’d attempt a hard reset.  For some reason an engine seems more appropriate. I think my timing gear is off and I might be missing on a couple of cylinders. I’m in need of a tune up, BIGGLY!

Despite so much color in the dream I have awakened feeling like a threadbare cotton tee shirt, its logo faded from view.

I awake and remember the dreams vividly…and the colors I dream in.  The colors are psychedelic. Tangerine and pink acrylics in a swirling paisley and that’s just the unicorns walking around an azure blue lake in the middle of a football field.  Did someone sneak LSD into the corn salad I made for myself last night? The oiled up body builders beating the bell with sledge hammers? Turns out my alarm was going off. I don’t know why the resemble Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

I don’t know what the dreams mean…do they mean anything?  I’ve always believed dreams to be the discharge of random, unneeded data…a cleansing of unneeded (unwanted?) memories.  Freud and Jung would disagree, I guess.   

Most of my dreams fade over time. Not this one. The tangerine is still quite bright. 

I should be happy.  They are not nightmares…at least not yet.  My concern is probably much to do about nothing and I am actually looking forward to meeting up with people I haven’t seen in a while…even in a dream.  I should take the stance that you really can’t be lost if you don’t have any idea where you are going anyway. Maybe I should go ahead and have a spicy fish taco and a tequila drink…or three. Who knows how lost I might get or who I might meet up with.

Door Number Three sung by Jimmy Buffett on the album AIA.

Don Miller’s author’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR02mav138M8WD5XAa0evj0FzgjRW4oesksttngRRqYeqHwSRc-6AoUmN4Q

Questions With No Answers

/ cigarman501 / 10 Comments

 

Before social distancing became the in thing, I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in thirty years…jeez…more like forty.  I was excited to see her…considering our history excited is not the best descriptor.  Thrilled is a better word.  I was thrilled to see her.

We had a short-term tryst back in the day…just scratching certain itches.  Nothing heavy, a “friends with benefits” kind of thing before “friends with benefits” was a thing…it was the “free love” Seventies after all.  As I think back, I realize there was nothing free about love or even its unreasonable facsimile, lust.

She didn’t recognize me, even when I tried to explain who I was.  Despite the empty feeling in my stomach, I didn’t push it.  She seemed anxious in a bad way.  I think she’s had a stroke or is self-medicating…am I being narcissistic?  Maybe it was my beard, the balding head?  No, I believe there was something wrong.

She seemed frail and infirm.  A woman who once strode through the world confidently was reduced to little shuffles reminiscent of a Chinese woman who had had her feet bound.  The strong alto voice lacked volume and power.  The tall, long-legged, pleasing body seemed to be collapsing in on itself.  Always slender in a good way, she was much too thin.  Maybe it was me looking back on memories through my rose-colored reading glasses.

We remained friends after we both moved on to other places and people…at least I thought we had.  At some point, she seemed to disappear…but, not from memory.  I’ve thought of her often over the years wondering what happened to her.  Wondering if she was happy.  Remembering how foolish I had been.

I wondered if she had moved to a distant part of the world.  Whenever I asked friends, “Have you heard from….”, the answer was always in the negative.

In the mid-80s she decided she was gay and fell under the influence of a “stereotypical” lesbian woman.  You may substitute whatever “stereotype” you wish.  This woman is much more than a stereotype and stereotypes are such oversimplifications.

Still, the time was the Eighties and I was shocked and full of questions.  I’ve often wondered if she crossed over because she was truly lesbian or was it because she had been wounded so many times by people of my gender…or was it I was such a bad lover and friend I drove her to it.  Insecure much?  Ah…yes!

She stumbled and fell over several relationships during those late Seventies and early Eighties.  I wonder if I helped to trip her up as she attempted to recover.  An unwanted splinter under the fingernail of life.  You can tell she is an enigma, she always was.

Are my concerns more about me and my own guilt?  Is it about my own narcissism?  Is it my over-inflated self-importance?  Questions I can’t answer.  Maybe questions I fear to answer.  My greatest question, “Are you happy?”  I hope the answer is yes.

There are questions I can’t even ask.  My friend has dropped off the face of the earth even though she lives exactly where she has always lived.

I think about the crowd we ran with during those thrilling days of yesteryear.  Those days we were lucky to survive.  Those of us still alive have remained in touch.  More so as we have gotten older.  It is as if she has cut all ties with those days and the people who inhabited them with her.   Maybe she wanted to move forward while the rest of us are pulled toward the past.  I know I once did the same thing when my own mistakes became too much of a burden.  Memories too painful to remember…except you do.

Questions, more questions.  Answers, no answers.

***

Don Miller’s author’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0813oF-UzSxgl3eyxNYLytu5JhnD70NuizUBdFlbjT2LTyVAXjPEBJZZE