Daddy! I Had the Worst Dream I Ever Had!

This is what it is.
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“Daddy! I had the worst dream I ever had!”

I was out of bed. “Coming, Sweetie,” I shouted but in a whispering sort of way, so as not to wake my wife. Although I knew she had earplugs in. My mouth was dry as a bone, so I knew I’d been snoring through my open mouth.

“What happened Sweetie?” I was at my daughter’s bedside, standing on the stool next to her loft. She was rolled away from me all the way to the other side, fetal in her blanket.

“It doesn’t sound scary, but it was the scariest.”

“I know how that is. What happened?” I wanted her to tell me, to lance the boil of fear, to say it out loud.

“I was reading a book? And there was this picture of a seal in it who was half person? And they had webbed feet and they were shouting at me.”

It sounded terrifying to me. Half animal people. Pictures in books that talk back, not talk but yell. Horrifying.

“That sounds scary. Come in bed with Mommy and me.”

“Can I?”

I hoisted her up out of the bed and she wrapped her legs around my waist, put her head on my shoulder. She has become bigger lately, a seven year old in first grade, and never really all that cuddly a child, always wiggling to get away from laps and arms. I am embarrassed to tell you how happy it can make me when she gets scared in the night.

(Photo by Rachel)

Humans and Animals

I'm back from the dead. Had some existential despair--probably not as grand as all that. Just my existence, not Existence. I won't bore you with details. David Foster Wallace made me sad on top of everything else. I hope he felt, in his last conscious seconds that he was doing something real, if horrible, and not just acting out the character of a tortured artist.
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Humans and animals. They hold each other at a suspicious distance, flipping the power differential at any given moment.

Survival and ethics. No justice, no peace. Why do they claw at each other? I mean, I understand why the animals claw at the humans, but the humans at the animals? You can’t force ethical behavior onto a pig. It’s not right.

The animals always want to eat until they are sick to their stomach, and the humans starve themselves so that their middles will look like a sixpack. The manta ray says, “What’s a sixpack? Is it edible?”

Humans and animals. Humans do things contrary to what they want and call it “ethical.” Then they think about geology and do whatever they want, because they are nothing in the Grand Canyon. A fox is always quiet, except when it doesn’t want anything.

Humans and animals. It’s almost boring—so Greek philosophy, not post-modern, or whatever Age of Crit we are up to now. Para-Pataphysical Inebriative School. Animals scurry around on the surface of things, and humans walk around with their skulls a few feet higher. That’s it.

(photo by Kool)

A Victual Sometimes Gets Lost

“A victual sometimes gets lost in the bottom of the can—a dead mammal, half a loaf of bread, the bottom of a cake. You have to be careful of that.”

Eddy looked at his partner there in the truck. “Why you talk like that, uh, Victor?”

“In what way?” Victor didn’t look at Eddy, was watching the can in the rearview mirror go up on the grabber, focusing on the sound of strain the electric motor made.

“Talk like those words—victuals, mammal…Why you do that?”

“I became a garbage man because I cared nothing about what my fellow citizen thought of me. Because I wanted to be free of the constraints and costumes that society impinges upon our soul.” He worked the controls, giving the can a remote shake. “What you think…Damn!” he shouted suddenly, opening the cab door, “squirrel jumped into the container.”

Eddy yelled out the window at him. “What it matter? It get out at the dump. You gonna dig it out now here like a life-support guy?”

Victor turned back to partner. “Eddy, you don’t understand. I am not a vegetarian for my health. I feel an ethical responsibility to all living beings.”

(Photo by John Corigliano)

She Lay Spread Out on the Bed

I used the Oblique Strategies for a second day here as a prompt, and this morning I pulled, " Give way to your worst impulse." So I did. I wish the worst impulse I could come up with was more interesting, but I wrote 10 minutes of pornography, or what would eventually become pornography, tinged with drug use.

For the first time in the history of this blog, I am not throwing up what I wrote. Not that it's so much worse than anything before--it's not--but because I'm embarrassed.

Embarrassment as internal editor. Something to look into.

(photo by Denis M)

A Receding Hairline on a Man

As a teenager, I was not quite a punk rocker, but more out in some frontier area, listening to The Residents, Schoenberg, Berlioz, Phillip Glass, Talking Heads and Brian Eno. An unhealthy amount of Brian Eno--I even gave myself a haircut like his.That was why when my friend, Jim, told me that Eno and David Byrne have come out with an album together again after many years--Everything that Happens Will Happen Today--I got excited and went looking for it. Well, obviously not that excited yet, since I have yet to download it, but will. But while checking it out I was reminded of something I heard of years ago but never saw, a pack of cards that Eno and Peter Schmidt had started making in 1975 with memes of creative strategies on each card. They were called "Oblique Strategies." Now, 2 things: first, they have continued to create new editions of these over the years, and are now up to Volume 5. Second, there is of course now an online random generator of these. Which I used today to write my TMaC. Today's strategy was a familiar one--"Once the search has begun, something will be found." I have bookmarked this and will use it again.
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A receding hairline on a man. A tweedy jacket, and a shirt collar open, collar up over the coat. Did I say he was white?

He was a white man, with all of its implications.

A visual identifier of the man on the pier might give you some idea about who he was, but you’d probably be wrong. You’d probably make false assumptions as well when you saw him met by the younger woman in the frothy summer dress and the broad brimmed hat, but you’d be wrong about her as well.

She is his sister.

I didn’t mention the box he carries between his arm and his body, with his hand tucked into his coat pocket, and that was wrong of me, sent you off in directions you might not have taken otherwise. The two of them—brother and sister— have met down here at the waterfront to scatter the ashes of their other sibling, a brother who died under mysterious circumstance three years ago, and they have only recently received his remains.

“Hello, David,” says the woman evenly. They have not seen each other for nearly ten years.

“Myra,” he rejoins, and reaches out a free hand to her, which she does not take.

When they open the box up, as so often happens at these moments, the wind rises to melodramatic levels, giving the impression that their dead brother has risen as well, is finally free of corporeal bonds to take his full size in the atmosphere. While David and Myra do not like each other especially, neither of them believes this to be true, although they both are aware of the false storyline that is created.

(Photo by Brian Mooney)

The Priest Sat at His Computer

One of the things I learn in doing this process--these semidaily writings--is to have faith in myself. I often have a limitee idea of what I'm going to do when I sit down. As I'm sure you all can see. And I often miss the hoop, more often than not.

But, to continue the metaphor, in taking the ball down the court, I usually get more...juice...out of the thing than I thought I would in the first place, and sometimes I'm thrilled.

Not today. But today there's an older priest with a wife half his age, with his face buried in her stomach while she holds his head. While I don't agree entirely with HER naive thoughts on faith, I'm glad for their presence, and they are a couple I'd like to return to.

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The priest sat at his computer, doing the numbers.

“I don’t understand how we can be expected to take care of this number new people when we’ve only been given enough for 35. The new one can’t sustain themselves in the collection plate.” He leaned back in the chair, rubbed his eyes.

Vivi came up behind him and rubbed his shoulders. She saw how smooth her hands were in contrast to hi s grizzled cheeks. “But isn’t this why you became a priest? Because you knew that we—people—couldn’t figure everything out ourselves? Don’t you think that God will take care of the congregation, these immigrants?”

The priest pulled gently from her hands and turned in his chair, looked up at his young bride. “You try to remind me of god’s job,” he said. He put his arms around her legs and buried his face in her stomach. “My faith is tempered with experience,” he said, his voice muffled.

She pushed him back. “But maybe, Father, it’s just arrogance on your part to think that you need to bring all of the faith to do the job. Maybe that’s what these immigrants put into the collection plate. Maybe I put some in too.” She pulled his face back against her stomach. “That’s what I think. But you are the professional.”

(Photo by Emily)

Looking for a Reason to Smile Each Day

Sometimes I just have to give in to pure, cynical sarcasm. So easy. So delicious.
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Looking for a reason to smile each day, that is what we have found makes life worth living.

At Valley Dental, we give you that reason, a full set of healthy teeth, enhanced with the most up-to-date cosmetic enhancements that money can buy.

Smiling can get you a lot of things—a good reputation, better job, friends, even love. Don’t all good things start with a smile?

That’s why at Valley Dental we take the whole patient into account, not just an individual tooth—What kind of work do you do? A salesperson smiles differently from a garbage man. Are you married? With kids? An active parent might need a little more frontal support to ward off projectiles. Are you of military age?

We take all these things into account. We can even help you look taller—ask us how (a little hint—remember the old trick about wearing vertical stripes?)!

Yes, at Valley Dental, we have the whole you at heart—physical, social, economic, emotional and spiritual. Because we know, sometimes it’s a thin line each day between finding a reason to smile each day and never smiling.

(photo by Lim KM)