These Dreams

Instant Lethargy (Just Add Water)

It was 6 pm. and I could see the leaves on the trees outside my window illuminated by the sun. I wanted to start over again, in some way -to sweep up and remove all the trash from the night before, and the day before that.

After getting up and walking around a bit, I had the urge to just lay back down. I felt lethargic and as if my body was heavier than normal. I then remembered having eaten a large amount of "instant" potatoes before going to sleep.

I did a few rounds of Wim Hof's deep breathing exercises, then went outside to sit in the sun for about 20 minutes. While sitting in the sun it was easy to space out and let go of all my thoughts. It felt like the time and place could have been any of the other times in my life when I had been doing the same thing.

I came inside, gave Harold some food, mixed some kratom with "electrolyte" water, then went back out, this time to the front of the building where the sun doesn't get blocked as soon, and absorbed some more.

I decided to confront one of the snakes in my mind by calling Lilly. I had been burdened with guilt over not having gone to play in front of her house Sunday afternoon, after she had called and just about invited me to do so, telling me that the weather was perfect, there were a lot of people in the street out front, and that "You should come down here now and play..."

That seemed like one of those forks in the road, where one way is the true and good and meaningful path, and the other leads to destruction.

After telling Lilly that I probably would go down there and play, I instead rode to the store to get some brandy and never made it out there, but woke up who knows when after that, feeling as though I had stood Lilly up in a sense. I had the feeling that she wanted me to be there for some reason. Perhaps it was as simple as her having a guest in her house, maybe a relative visiting from out of town, whom she wanted to impress by showing that she had her own resident musician. She had said that she finally had her pool serviced so that the filter motor would come on and automatically clean the water every morning, and that it had been cleaned and was ready for the coming season. 

It might seem frivolous of her to want every detail to be just so -her and her guests sitting around a clean pool in the late afternoon sun, sipping on drinks specially concocted by her using agave as a sweetener; and then, the finishing touch of having the strains of live music echoing down the alley from the street out front- to someone who has his own life, with its own details, to consider. But, Lilly has been such a good friend and benefactor that I should have dropped whatever I was doing and gone down there. She might have wanted me to come out back and play a few songs by the pool. I can't estimate how much that might have meant to her versus whatever trouble I would have to go through to make it there.

I called her and apologized for not having showed up, to which she paused a few seconds and said "I don't remember..."

My list of about a half dozen "important things to do: was itself paused since then. I now go to tackle the item of my phone -I need to Google the make and model to see if I can open it up to get at the SIM card, so I can switch it to the phone that I found in the Quarter and tried to return to its owner. Whomever that owner is, he seemed too embarrassed to reclaim it, probably because of the dozen or so nude photos of himself, or perhaps because of the other ones of a black lady who may have wound up on some missing person's list. He apparently never went to the "G Mobile" place to turn the service off on it after he lost it, because it is still active, and doesn't even have its screen locked through a PIN number.

It is a mysterious thing, that phone. And I found it a day or so after I had called about replacing mine and was told that, for around 32 bucks they would send me a new one. I was enjoying a string of incidents of finding whatever I was in need of "just sitting there." This has coincided with the "The Law of Attraction" guided meditation recordings that I've been trying to use for the 30 days straight that is prescribed by its creator.
After being guided through a series of visualizations designed to instill positive energy in me, I drift off to scientifically designed New Age sounding music, underneath which subliminal messages are repeated. Things like: "Whatever your needs are, you will now find that the universe will meet them. You will just find whatever you desire 'just laying there, somewhere,' attracted to you by the thoughts you create," type of stuff.

I can't express how happy and grateful I am now. Especially after having touched base with Lilly and found that I hadn't sullied her Sunday afternoon by chasing after my own ego driven wants.

I've been having some dreams of when I've been in jail in the past, that have had so much verisimilitude to them as to elicit a great sigh of relief from me when I wake up in apartment A 110, and not cell #62. The gratitude over being free lasts the whole day. I suppose if I stop going to sleep after eating a lot of starch, those dreams might become tempered a bit.

I'm re-reading "The Sun Also Rises," by Ernest Hemingway. I read it in 1986 when I was taking a college course on "Nobel Prize Winning Literature." But, like the rest of the subject matter, I hadn't gained enough life experience to really appreciate it. I remember amassing a William Faulkner library and reading almost every one of his works, with a lot of it going over my head. Now that I have lived in the "deep" south, those are like whole new books.

Coincidentally, a couple years ago, when I was reading Michener's "Iberia," I got as far as the chapter on Pamplona, Spain, where I placed a bookmark. 

Today, I pulled that book off the shelf to see if any of the stuff in Hemingway's novel is referenced there. "The Sun Also Rises," is set in Spain, and in Pamplona specifically. And there was the chapter on Pamplona, already marked and ready to go -a great coincidence, and a great companion to Hemingway! Now I can fact-check the guy...