The Best Way To Write A Blog, Bob

A Great Sense Of Loss
I dreamed that a pet king snake, which I had, back in 1996, was fatally injured (cut off at the tail) by two homeless guys that lied down upon my sleeping bag, unaware that Tara (the snake's name) was inside the bag, tied into a sock.
One of the homeless guys in the dream was an actual guy, of about 20 years old and sporting a Mohawk hairdo, who approached me a couple of weeks ago, offered to buy me beer, but then reneged when we were in the store and after it had been rung up.
I accompanied him to a spot, nonetheless, where we drank the beer which we each had bought for ourselves, and he began to say very weird things, and at one point dared me to stare into his eyes for more than 5 seconds, claiming that nobody could do it.
He showed up at my playing spot later that day, threw a dollar in my case, and then sat next to me ripping up an empty match book, and piling the pieces, as if ritualistically, in front of my case. He eventually withdrew his dollar back out of my case and left. I guess I wasn't paying him enough attention. I really didn't want him hanging around for more than 5 seconds.

He left his bandanna next to me when he went, as if implying that I was responsible for it, and would be thus tied to the spot (like a bandanna) until his returning. I left the spot (and the bandanna) soon thereafter, and passed him on the sidewalk. He criticized me for not being nice to him, and acting like I didn't want to be around him.
John The Preacher and I were on Government Street a couple days after, when the same guy showed up wearing a hospital bracelet and bandages on various parts of him. He lifted his shirt to reveal a long scar on his stomach which had been stapled shut, and then another one on the back of his neck. "Someone tried to kill me," he said.
His story about the incident was sketchy and contained about as many holes as his body. From what John and I could read between the lines, he had gotten drunk with a young man (a law student, according to Mohawk man) and had probably made a homosexual overture towards the equally drunk man, perhaps daring him to stare into his eyes, and provoked the attack. One clue in support of that conclusion was Mohawk guy's stating "I was so drunk, I might have been hugging him and he was stabbing me but I couldn't feel it."
John tried to "witness" to the man, and got no further than telling him that he was a street preacher, to which the bandaged man replied "So am I," and left in a hurry. We both agreed that the man was acting funny, though not funny enough to have us in stitches...
Mohawk man was one of the guys in the dream, the other, I recognized only vaguely and I suspect it might have been the same guy, at the time of my second encounter with him, before he was attacked.
Tara the snake was severed at the tail and bleeding in the dream. I hoped that she could survive, and maybe grow a new tail, as some lizards have been known to do. At one point, I yelled to the two guys, who had taken it upon themselves to lay on my bag, that it was their fault that my pet snake was injured, and I began to punch one of them repeatedly in the head, before pausing to ask myself what it was that I was trying to accomplish.
I held Tara and petted her on the head, which had morphed into more of a dog's head, and tried to pinch her severed tail shut, to stem the flow of blood, but it became futile, as I noticed that her spine and some entrails were exposed. I laid her on the grass, and told her that the pain would soon be over, and wondered if that was any consolation at all to something that is about to die.
I named the original Tara after an exotic dancer in Jacksonville, and after noticing that the name spelled "a rat," backwards, which seemed apt because Tara (the snake) removed a lot of rats from the planet, before she died (maybe the dancer did, too).
I blame myself for her death, which was probably due to heat exhaustion and lack of water.
I was in the process of moving out of an air conditioned trailer, and had her tied into a laundry bag. She spent several hours in a hot car, and I was too ignorant of a snake's requirements for water, viewing her as more like a cactus than an animal.
I found her dead in the laundry bag, on the bed of a little girl that I used to babysit, in the trailer where she lived with her parents, which wasn't air conditioned. The girl was away visiting relatives, and I had been sleeping in her bed, along with Tara in the bag beside me. When Jennifer (as that was the little girl's name) came back from her stay and asked me where Tara was, I had to tell her "Tara died," and choked on the words. I was ashamed to tell her that something in my care had come to that end. After all, the girl had been entrusted to me throughout the couple of years that I roomed with her family. She was 11 at that time, and probably saw the parallel, at some level.
That was one of the most terrible feelings that I've ever had, and it is the feeling that I woke up with this morning. The dream had been as vivid as the one of breaking a string.

How Clearer Could I Be?

The meaning of it is complex, but one of Bob Dylan's comments in the songwriter's book comes to mind. He said that the evolution of a song is like a snake with its tail in its mouth. (I guess he means that the ideas are good, then turn to crap, and you have to re-do them. On second thought; who knows what he means)
This makes two vivid dreams in successive nights passed in the back of the U-Haul van. Maybe the shape of the thing is causing my brain waves to resonate and become amplified.
Bob also said that one must be able to remove himself from the turmoil of a situation, and be able to write about it from a different perspective, where the "feelings" can't get to you. And he said the best way to write a song is "Talking to someone that aint there." No, that's the best way to write a blog, Bob. BAHAHAA!
Do I really want to take advice from a guy who writes stuff like "I stand here looking at your yellow railroad/in the ruins of your balcony," though?
I wonder if he can sit in a club and hear a song of his choice in his head instead of what the band is playing, completely blocking it out, like I can...that's MY yellow railroad.