Dream Sequence #14 Peeing A Yellow Comet Into A Bathtub

This is a three-part dream I had the other night that stayed with me.


Act One:
I was floating down a river somewhere in South America with a group of girls I had crushes on at one point or another in high school. 
I don't remember a whole lot from this part of the dream.
We were without canoes or boats and just floating in the pull of the river.
We reached a sand bar that hooked around to the left and some locals were out in the river with their children.
I was underneath the water at the time and facing the opposite way of the river's flow (so I could watch the sand pass beneath me backwards), when one of the men from the tribe began to yell. 
He did not want us running into his child who also was playing in the river. 
I remember the child wearing a diaper, which I thought was weird for such an indigenous looking man to have Pampers on hand.
It was at this point a paddle -one single paddle- appeared in my right hand. 
I did not use it to steer, as we still had no boats, but had to bring it close to my side as we passed as to not whack the child with it.

Act Two:

I was with my brother in a town that I am not familiar with. 

He had just purchased a vehicle at a small dealership and we were driving away in it, just the two of us, when he noticed something about it he did not like. 

The dealership took it back and let him search the inventory for another one of his liking. 

He finds the exact car he drives now in real life and we head out again. 

Now we are looking for a building that he needs to clean.

I should say that as a small part-time job to pay off debt, my brother has a cleaning job in real life.

Okay so we are driving and come to a very large body of water.

The road slopes down and out onto that water in a way that I don't know how to describe, other than to go all R.R.Martin on you, so I won't.

What you need to know is that there isn't a barricade to stop us from driving off. 

So my brother drives off. 

It was a graceful impact.

We are sinking and I tell him we have to wait for the water to rise above the windows before trying to open the doors. 

So we wait.

The music is still playing.

I remember how little panic there was between the both of us.

So the car is completely under the water now and I get out before he does and am swimming up to the surface.

He is still close to the car for some reason, that at this point is sinking incredibly fast into the dark water below. 

I remember swimming back down until I saw him, and the two of us swam to the surface.

I did not think I had enough air in my lungs to make it, but for a reason I do not understand, I would release oxygen and become entranced in the rising shape of it all. 

I reach the surface and that first draw of air in my lungs feels orgasmic.

(It's no wonder I wake up so often with the blankets on the floor next to my bed, when I have dreams like this every night).

I look over at my brother who has just surfaced and tell him that it looks like he will have to pick out a third car. 

He laughs.

Act Three:

Next thing I know I am in the bathroom somewhere. 

I have no idea how to describe the location so I will just focus on the man in the bathroom pulling on the dicks of men urinating. 

Now I have no clue why he is doing this, but it appeared to be a game. 

He would stealth up to someone peeing and try to grab their junk.

He did it to me and I pulled back and kicked him into the little divider between urinals.

He looked at me with a confused face. 

I told him to knock it off, and he turned and began to stalk someone else. 

What was noteworthy about the bathroom scene, other than the odd man, was just how much I had to pee. 

I pee'd so much that the urinal turned into a bathtub in which I was peeing over the side into the basin.

I remember looking down at my pee as it changed from white, to yellow, to a pearlescent orange, and back to yellow. 

One more thing about the pee scene and I will drop it. 

When I was peeing into the tub, the colors of my stream produced an abstract comet of color and I remember thinking to myself that I needed to remember how it looked so that I could paint it later on.

Next thing I am outside the bathroom and it feels like I am inside a mall, but also inside a high school. 

People are walking by and I pay them no attention until I see a real life friend who lives near Seattle.

I tell her, "Hey Christina, I have a story to tell you. Don't let me forget."

She looks at me and says, "mhmm" but in such a way that she is clearly blowing me off. 

A random girl who happened to catch all of this calls Christina on her blowing me off, and the two disappear behind a door.

My mom is there now and is stressed out. 

She is spitting entire paragraphs out at once. 

No need for sentences, or even separate words. 

She hands me a pair of sunglasses and tells me I need to try them on to replace the pair I just lost in the car with my brother. 

She tells me that it will take weeks for a new pair to come in, so I tell her that I am the one who was in the sinking car, not her.

She needed to calm down.

There is more to the dream but I am done writing now. Like my dear friend Forest, "I just want to go home now."

Jules, A.K.A Jacques Cousteau

One summer, when I was in middle school, I took a trip to an island off the coast of San Diego called San Clemente. The San Diego natives, or anyone who has read any travel brochure for the area, should be familiar with its neighboring island, Catalina. Catalina is to San Clemente what the Hilton is to, let's say, Motel 6—both serve the same function, just with different amenities.

What makes me think back on this trip are some photos I recently unearthed. I had long since parted with the memory of the cool water and sharp barnacles, but stumbling upon these relics brings me back to a time where I felt like a modern day adventurer.  

Directly behind me you can see where the Pacific meets the island. Large boulders that crashed into the ocean bordered this side of the island and it is between these enormous obstacles that we would launch into the cool water. With a snorkel and fins outfitted, I would wait for a small swell to lift me and pull me out. In a dash I would navigate my way around the sharp rocks as the receding water propelled my small body at incredible speeds out and into the crackling bliss of snorkeling nirvana. It should be noted that not every launch went smoothly. More times than not, I would bang against the sharp barnacles clumped to the side of the boulders, or get dragged along the top of one by the sucking water, leaving my stomach or back streaked with stinging cuts. It was worth it though. The waters were a new world to me. I would swim until the shivering got to be too much, return to a warm rock, like in the photo below, and wait until I was warm enough to go again.

One man, whom I had never met before this trip, would take me out where none of the other young Scouts were allowed to go—beyond the kelp barrier that circled the island. His name was Jules.
Side note: The towel in this photo is one that I still own. I stored it in the depths of my closet for years, and use it from time to time when I give my dog a bath. He cannot understand the poetry of it, but using it to dry him off makes me smile.

Jules was a kind man. He had a New Zealand accent and was put in charge as Life Guard for the younger boys. He witnessed the endless parade of my attempts, and deserves credit for capturing these moments. I believe Jules saw how the water transformed me. As I would warm up on a rock and go through all that I had just seen in my head, reliving the sounds of the ocean, he would smile and tell me a new bit of information on the local flora and fauna. The orange fish were called Garibaldis he would say. Every chance he could catch me warming up on a rock he would teach me something new.

It was a few days into the trip that he assigned one of the elder Scouts with Lifeguard duty and took me out to the edge. I had never experienced anything quite like it, and still to this day have not had the same opportunity to literally crawl, on my hands and knees almost, over such thick kelp. There were brief moments of panic when my hand would push through as I made my way. The world turned a little dark as the slimy kelp swallowed me, but Jules was always right there to fight back the tentacles. Once we pushed through and swam freely on the other side, he would point to something under the water. We would both surface take off our snorkels and Jules would explain what it was. We would tread water, talk about it, and then move on. It was like having Jacques Cousteau there as a teacher in an oceanic classroom, with just me as his student.

While we were on the island we got to eat dinner every night at a mess hall. The hall was used by the Military. What the Military does best is make chocolate pudding! To fuel my tiny body, I would load up on this pudding. Two, three, sometimes four servings of the chocolate goodness. Oh my goodness was it delicious. I cannot remember why the Military owned the island, or how the Scout Troop I was in got permission to stay in one of the barracks, but at the time I did not care. So long as I could eat pudding I was happy.

The trip wasn't all about snorkeling though. On one afternoon we took a trip to the other side of the island in a white passenger van. The roads on the island were paved for the most part. The landscape was a beautiful tawny flow of shrubbery that moved with the wind, and as we drove along, the van would bob over the uneven surface. We rounded a corner and that magnificent azure water went on for infinity. The shoreline was very different on this side of the island. It was gradually slopped down to the water's edge, and even the ocean was gentle. It blanketed the cove like a comfortable shirt.

I cannot recall the lesson we were taught that afternoon about the Abalone but I do remember the beautiful colors. I was enamored with how a creature could decorate the inside of its home with such amazing pearlescent colors. This, as a child, was mind blowing. It rang inside my head like church bells. My mind would drift away from the colors, and like clockwork, the bells would chime inside my head, and how it looked when I held it in my hand would come back to me.

There is one last thing I remember about the island worth mentioning. A large part of my childhood was spent outdoors, and a favorite thing of mine to do while outdoors was fish. The island had a pier that went far out into the ocean, about 15 minutes away from the snorkeling spot. I would walk there with my fishing pole and cast bare hooks into the water. Sometimes I would get nothing, and other times get lucky and snag one of the thousands of bait fish that used the dock as a safe haven from larger fish. Jules was also a fisherman and I found him at the pier that day casting out a line. He told me about the "flying fish" and asked if I had ever seen one. I laughed and said he was a funny person. In his Kiwi accent he replied with a serious answer that he was not pulling my leg. Flying fish were real!

To hear him explain that these fish used flight as a way to avoid ending up as food for a larger fish was impressive to me. He explained to me that they were not good eating, but were fun to observe. No way! I kept repeating. He nodded his head and said "Mhmm!" We laughed and that's how I learned some fish can fly.

Those days spent on that island, free and able to swim as much as I wanted, hold a special place in my memory box. If I could find Jules and tell him that I remember the trip and all that he said to me, I would tell him thank you.

Take Me Home Country Roads

I've wanted to write about my upbringing for years but the words have never felt right. I feel like the best way for me to mountaineer the expansive snow-packed mountain range of growing up in a military family, is to begin by separating experiences into categories. Make sure I am only bringing along the essentials, and keeping the goods for a different trip back at base camp.

My father served in the US Navy for something like 22 years. I can't remember the exact amount of years he was in the service, not because I never cared to remember it, but because many of those years I had no idea what he was doing. He was gone quite a lot during my childhood, off cruising the world on a Destroyer, and collecting different types of wood from ports in countries I will never see even as an adult.

Side note: From time to time I can remember him telling us how other sailors would visit the strip clubs and hookers while in port, and he would head out and buy pieces of wood not common back in the States. My father...the wood collector. HA

Growing up in a military family meant that we moved around the United States more times than I can remember. No really, I cannot remember just how many times we moved. My fifth grade year alone our family moved three times. From Virginia to Rancho Bernardo, California, and then to San Diego. I am not holding this against my father. I am actually saying thank you.

One of the best parts about being in a family that moved to a new house, on average once every two years, is that I have memories spread all over the country of homes that I may never see again. Here is what I want though. I want to see these homes I lived in as they stand now. To see how time has treated them.

The words are easier to type out than it is for me to set aside the time and money to visit each of the homes though. One of them, the duplex in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, I will never see again in my adult life. Unless I fly from Canada or get a fake passport.

As for the rest, I wanted to write out what I remember.

The apartment in San Diego. AKA the first time we lived in SD: The training grounds for German Shepard K9 units. The hillside of Iceplant leading down to highway 15. 

Colchester Illinois: The abandoned house along the walk to school my father claimed was haunted. The train tracks where we placed coins to be flattened. The small patch of skinny trees behind the home that I never got to explore in the snow.

Cuba: The bunkers in the hills behind the house that the Navy Seals would come practice in. The beach where we had a birthday party and my sister wanted to pet the large iguanas. (This home serves as a staging ground for any home in a story I read that holds the same feelings in words, as I felt as a child).

Virginia: The church I attended school at. The house behind ours where an old man lived that paid me to fetch his golf balls he accidentally would hit over our fence. The garage where my brother fell out the window.

Rancho Bernardo: The pool where we swam when we wanted. The road out in front of the apartment complex where my father told us why you should never trust something that looks like trash in the road while driving in a car (like how a brown paper bag is really a small muddy boulder that will mess up the exhaust when you run it over). The auditorium in the school across the street where I attended Webelos.

San Diego: The canyons across the street from both of our homes. The baseball complex down the street. Countless other small memories too numerous to list.

I see now that writing it all out has shown me the list is not terribly long, and very doable. An English professor in one of my classes at WWU once told me that writing a paper means surprising yourself by the end at what you have discovered along the way. What I am saying is that I am surprised at how this journey I want to take one day is not all that far-fetched. 

And here is the John Denver song that lead to the thought for this post:

Timon

This morning I woke from a dream.
Wait, I should provide back story first.
Yesterday my mother made the decision to finally put our 19 year old cat to rest.
It was not just her decision, but being that she is the only one in the house with this cat, it rested upon her shoulders to end her suffering.

The permanent kind that saves her from the pain of constantly throwing up her food, undoubtedly from a stomach that stopped working.
Her bones.
Oh man, her bones!
When you would go to pet her, you had to be gentle as she had no fat on her body whatsoever.
The bones were what you would feel under a loose pelt that slid along the curves of her back.
It reminded me of moving a small area rug over antique wood flooring.

Anyways, so this morning I wake from a dream and in the dream this cat has meowed.
She meowed a very loud meow and I remember telling her, "Momma! What a meow that was! I haven't heard you meow like that in quite some time."
It was as if she was saying a goodbye.
I thought about this on the truck today while I was en route, and decided to write it down instead of keeping it to myself.
I guess a certain part of me wants to remember her, even though I am not that type of person to ever forget.
It's more like me acknowledging her in the dream and saying that I can't let myself forget.
A reminder I suppose that one day, some time down the road, I will have a moment where bringing her up in conversation will feel right.

The video attached is one my brother took Christmas day 2013.
We knew she wouldn't make it for much longer so he filmed her in stunning HD.

A snippet of an interview with a man who died and came back to life

"Folks. We have someone on the line who we think will change your day. He has a story to tell us," the first announcer says.

"He claims to have traveled to the other side," a second one interjects. "Tell us what you think after you hear him speak."

The first announcer puts the caller through. "Go ahead," he says. "Tell us what it was like on the other side of the curtain."

A voice comes over the airwaves. He is doing something in the background and does not hear the announcer address him.

"Hello, caller?" the second announcer says. "You still with us?" He snorts a laugh out of his nose.

"Yes. Hello? Yes I am here. Sorry, I was just opening up a can of food for my cat. Other radio stations and newspaper reporters have been contacting me all week wanting to hear my story. It doesn't happen very often, you know?"

The first announcer answers the man with a straight forward and serious answer.

"They tell me it was one of those Giant Pacific Octopuses," the man begins. "I don't remember how it came at me, but with arms wrapped tightly around my mask it managed to sever my regulator." He is acting all of this out on his end of the phone call, but only to better help him sound like it did the first time he told the story.

"Now I am an experienced diver and have learned from other small mistakes not to dive alone. I thank a higher power everyday since that day that Shannon was there."

"Now Shannon is who exactly?" the second announcer asks.

"My partner," the man replies.

"About the only thing I remember from that day, aside from seeing my body from a distance, is how crystal clear the water was. "

"And you were diving in the water off the West coast of Cuba, correct?"

"Correct. We had chartered a boat that day, the "Slice of Life" I think it was called. I made the observation on how beautiful the water was down below the equator while I was putting on my wetsuit. One of the few things from that day to survive through my death."

"What do you mean, 'survive through your death,'?" the first announcer asks. As an experienced interviewer he knows when to stop the conversation and interject questions like this to flush out the best story.

"It's just how I say it. To survive. I don't know how else to put it. Anyhow, the feeling came to me and it was liquid-like. How else can I describe it really? I was separate from my body and looking back at it. As a diver you are constantly aware of your depth, but in this instance the depth of the ocean was not something I was aware of. It couldn't have been more than 50 feet down as I can still visualize how stunning the rays of sunshine looked as they cut through the blue above. It was spectacular the way the white hot light from above twisted and danced through the cobalt blue. The euphoric feeling still comes to me at night in my sleep."

"And what was it like to see your own body. Was it being attacked by the octopus when you saw it?" The first one speaks up again.

"I felt at peace. I felt... I felt a lot of things to be honest. In a moment I had all the answers I had ever been searching for. You know? No the octopus was not part of this vision. People keep asking me that and I don't have an explanation for why it was not there."

"You a spiritual man?" The second one asks.

"Not before that day."

"But you are now it sounds like?"

"I am without label. The colors and feelings I experienced make me want to believe. The euphoric feeling of being watched over also makes me want to. Truth is, that I can also speak in very scientific terms of what happened that day. Neither one feels better so I stand in the middle."

The first announcer interjects. "Wait, what do you mean in 'scientific terms'? Are you implying that your vision can be answered by science?"

"Yes. To be honest, I am a little tired of telling this story already. The essence of what I mean by having science explain it simply means that the brain is a functioning organ. It needs oxygen-rich blood to function. Without that oxygen, my brain started hallucinating. I can remember the sharp yellows and oranges mostly. A few spots of purple from some of the plants swaying in the current. The magnificent outstretched arms of the coral. Schools of bait fish over head that blocked out the light. It was all so beautiful."

"Interesting," the first announcer says. He recognizes that the word sounds like it discredits everything the caller just explained so he quickly jumps gears. "Would you mind if we answered a few phone calls?"

"Go for it."

"Okay we are going to take a quick commercial break and be right back with your story in just a minute. Stay tuned. This is KBJK 1832, home of the Classics."

Dream Sequence #13

It's been awhile since I've had a dream fluid enough to make it to the blog. Well today I have two!!

#1
In my dream,
I was poolside.
The atmosphere was negative as I think my wife in this dream (whom I have no idea actually is) and her friends were talking about the world ending or something along those depressing lines.
I had two little girls with this woman and one was around seven years old and the other was under two.
The seven year old is splashing and playing in the pool by herself.
The under two year old (I say it like this because I am terrible at guessing someone's age) wanted to swim.
I took her with me to the edge of the pool, without any arm floaties on and jumped in before her.
I wanted to see how she would do without the the arm floaties (in that way a parent tests their child to see if maybe she is the next Michael Phelps, so that way if she did end up being the next greatest swimmer, you could say in a ESPN interview that you knew at an early age she would do great things because of this exact moment.
Of course you would leave out the bit about being irresponsible with her young life.
Anyways, she jumped from the side and into my arms and the feeling was wonderful.
Here was my baby girl enjoying the water much like I did when I was her age.
In my head I was living through her and thinking back to my mother and father doing the same for me in real life.
So I let her slide down my legs and swim beneath the surface.
At first she startled me, with her movements, along with the sudden voice in my head saying she was drowning.
She didn't swim though.
Her arms stayed by her side and she sank to the floor of the pool and she stood motionless.
Now as a kid I would do this exact same thing in the pool at Miramar Air Base.
I can remember taking a deep breath and diving to the bottom where I would sit for as long as possible; most of the time I would tell myself a story or simply listen to the water; sometimes even scream or make "beat-boxing" noises to hear myself without anyone else being able to hear me.
So my daughter was motionless and her eyes open.
In my mind I knew nothing was wrong because I watched her look around the pool at the legs of people around her.
I thought to myself that she is exactly like me and just wants to observe others from a new perspective, one where they don't know you're watching them (or in better words...parts of them. Not in a perverted way either!)
The one thing I remember most from this dream is that ominous feeling combining with the negative feeling from the conversations taking place, and making the pool water at the deep end turn a very dark color that I can only explain as being the "deep ocean."
I was under water with my daughter watching this all and feeling so impressed by her, and so very proud at the same time.

#2
I was with my wife (a separate and still unknown figure) in the doorway of our house.
She was upset about something and I wrapped my arms around her and told her that I loved her very much.
We sat in the doorway and I expressed to her how much I loved her, and within the dream I felt a very deep kind of love.
Something I have never felt before.
I told her that her and the two boys we had together meant more to me than anything else ever.
The house we were in was ours I told her and that after the renovations were complete downstairs (there was an actual contractor down there working at the time too) that we could focus on putting money into the windows.
Eventually, I told her, we would see what other things the home needed to make it ours.
A legacy.
She agreed and we picked ourselves up off the floor and made our way to the front porch.
As we were walking to the door I told her that our eldest boy was turning eleven and our youngest was nearly six, so we should spend more time going on vacation and trips with them.
She agreed and thought it was a good idea to expose the boys to new adventures.
We opened the door and the dream switched gears (this will be a pun....just wait) and my real life girlfriend was standing beside me saying, "go ahead and make the noise. I know you're going to."
She was referring to the parade of classic cars driving along the street right out in front of the house.
I made the noise I make in real life when I see a car I like and my girlfriend was satisfied.
I was too as I watched old Beetles and other classic cars roll by.
Each with something odd about it.
Like the Super Beetle that had large fiberglass fenders up front and back which left enough room for me to see that it was lowered, of all things, by Gatorade bottles acting as air bags.
I could see the water being used instead of air and it made me chuckle.
She asked me what was funny and I told her that she wouldn't understand and that it would take too long to explain and that I would miss the other cars.
She said, "whatever."

The word this week was "cabbage"

To keep me writing, I have convinced some writing friends to complete a weekly writing activity. The word "cabbage" was chosen at random from a word generator and below is what I came up with.

Some Haikus:

It's funny to me
how the soft word "cabbage"
sharpens to "sauerkraut"

And that's when she told me,
"I use the term 'Cabbage Patch'.
It sounds better."

How Red Hot Chili Peppers would use "cabbage" in a song:

Like a serpent's tongue
heavy breathing
underneath a glowing hot sun
he loves she like she loves he
heavy breathing
the cards dance and the king laughs
he's got a new lung and looking for fun

They sprinkle and dance looking for a new romance
hot like cabbage and sharp like kraut
they do the dance and God kicks them out

They sprinkle and dance looking for a new romance
hot like cabbage and sharp like kraut
they dance in the Garden with their privates out

Riding in the Cadillac
underneath the glowing hot sun
the lovers burn and turn and turn
until they reach the tide
she slides
he slides
into some hot and heavy breathing.

Good morning March 7th, 2014

I woke up this morning with Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home" song in my head.

No idea how it got there. I once heard that the best way to rid a song from your head is to invite your closest friends to join in on the suffering. Okay so maybe the suffering isn't really "suffering" at all with this song, but join in friends!!

Anyone else wake up with a song in their head this morning?

There is a thought that I have and it comes to me while I drive

I have not given up on writing. The blog has fallen silent because I have become consumed by video games.

With that being said, this posting has been on my mind for maybe two weeks or so. An idea comes to me nearly every time I am in the van on the way to go pick up a donation for work (I pick up donated goods people want to give to Habitat for Humanity). I can feel part of my mind escape and come back to me while I drive. It's this part that has endless ideas for art or something that might make a good short story. Frankly, it drives me nuts! It never stops. For awhile I thought that entertaining it and writing everything down would relieve me of some of it, as I knew nothing would ever make it fully stop, and for some time it worked. Now though, it has come back to me as if it is a creature all in its own.

Sometimes the idea for a story seems intrusive in my mind and it was the other day while driving down the highway, zoned out and thinking about how I could twist the plot of a story I once wrote to incorporate a new idea I have, that it dawned on me: I know why some writers commit suicide at some point in their life.

A thought occurred to me within a thought, and an idea for a poem about a sailor who had to bury his love and return to the sea came to mind. It was going to be a metaphor for how I feel. The sailor out at sea was me and the love I buried was the creative side of my brain. I wanted to convey that although I am out at sea, I am also thinking about what is back on land. I began to weave detail and then decided to delete it. Now the idea for that poem and the thought about why some writers commit suicide happened all within a few moments of time.

From the small amount of effort I gave to entertaining the idea of the poem, I had some clarity as to what makes great writers go insane. There is simply too much!! Now I am not comparing me to any great writer. Not ever will I do that. All I am saying is that If I were to explore every idea I've ever had, I would have a perfect mold of my body pressed into the padding of my computer chair. simply put, I would become an entirely different person.

I simply cannot do that so I let things go for awhile. The guilt builds up and I try and write again, but quickly delete everything. So the cycle continues.

I am fine and strong so there is nothing to worry about, and I don't have any real reason for writing this down other than to write it down and store it somewhere else other than behind my lips, but I have gained a small understanding of what others have gone through.

I know that there are more genres of people that commit suicide than just writers, but speaking from this new found insight, I can relate and see why some writers do....especially the good ones.