The Stuff of Dreams

hello, stranger

it's the small hours of the night again, and i just had to run down to the office to get more journal paper. of course it had to be another sleepless full moon tonight, right?  but i’m actually glad, because i wanted to write one last time before i took off for the summer.

not that popping into the office during the wee hours of the morn is anything unusual these days.  i don't have insomnia, i joked to a friend the other day.  i'm just working from the da Vinci sleep model – constant work, interrupted only by a series of naps...

that's how it was going for a couple weeks, anyways.  the load had stacked up enough, both professionally and personally, that there didn't seem to be much of a choice.  and something deep down told me to just bulldoze forward, and ignore whatever stress or moments of fatigue or self-doubt that tried to get in the way. just throttle down, and run yourself through the ringer, the voice said. so i did.

and then just when every gauge seemed to be maxing out in the red, somthing popped. i had the opportunity to let myself out of my self-imposed nightmare of hellish marathon work, and i took it. and the second i did there was a distinct sensation, a lot like when your ear drums pop when you descend in a plane, and suddenly this dull ache and hazy background noise that i had grown so used to had disappeared, and everything seemed clear. for a second or two i thought maybe i'd blown a fuse or something, but it didn't take long to realize that it was actually the opposite.

i remember the first year here, when i first found myself out in the desert, and how everything fell into place so easily.  they weren't easy times, by any stretch, and i was still licking my wounds in private behind the scenes of course – but on the surface everything seemed good, and somehow everything was working out. success came easily and felt like it was just around the corner at every step of the way.

and then one day it wasn’t.  just when it looked like everything was going to pan out perfectly, and it was time to cut scene and roll credits, someone came along and kicked out the walking stick right out from under me. and like the idiot i was, i let myself fall over with it.

that wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last. but sitting on the patio of a bar the next day, while sharing a pitcher of beer with a friend and telling her all that had just happened, i looked up at the sunny sky and remember telling her that it was like i could almost see it up there.  "see what?," she asked.  "there’s a cloud," i told her, "a darkness that had sat on me like a curse back east, and turned everything to shit."  i thought maybe with this fresh start it was gone for good, but now suddenly there it was, reappeared and hanging above like a shadow in the sky, unseen by everyone but me, and promising to seep down right into the path of everything i tried to touch.

and boy did i have that nailed. and then some. from that point forward it seemed to me like no matter what i was trying to do, whatever piece of bad luck or shitty misfortune there was to hit out there was bound to find me.  the darkenss was real, i thought, and i could not separate myself from it, nor it from me.

so i settled in with it for a while, contenting myself to dream of a brighter future, while accepting the dull grey present of my day-to-day. it was like some puzzle that needed a peice of me to solve that just wasn't there. i’d wrestle with it and try to break free time and again, but was never able to outrun it for long.

and then one day i finally realized that the key was to really lean into it - hard - and work through every shadow of the past i could find, until it was gone. i'd come far enough around to figure out at least that if i didn't gain a clear eyed view of the past then i'd never really shake it's hold on me.

it would take time, of course, and what seemed like endless pages of journaling and sifting through memories, both big and small. and then one day, as i lay in bed and drifted in and out of sleep, my mind wandered back home, back east, back to a summer day a long time ago when a friend and i were hunting for crabs down under the bridge where the marsh flows out to the bay, and a time before i really knew what worry was.

i'd caught two big blue crabs, one bigger than my friend Jerry said he’d ever caught - and that was something coming from him, as his family seemed to live on the seafood he brought home. so i rode to my house with them in my bucket, sloshing around as it hung from the handlebars of my bike as i made the long journey back to the house. when i got there i climbed up the back steps and put the bucket on the porch for everyone to see.  the two creatures were a marvel for sure, and an unusual sight in our household, so they gained some polite attention for a few minutes.  then everyone went back to whatever they were doing before, and my stepfather came over to me and said in that hushed tone of his, “now what are you going to do with them?”

i had no clue of course, so i hung the bucket from my handlebars again and began the long journey back towards the beach.  by the time i got there the afternoon had begun to set, and as i scrambled back down along the banks of the marsh to the water i noticed that the big one wasn’t moving much.  i shook the bucket and tried to will some motion into it’s body, but as i released them into the water and watched the current carry them off i could see its body was beginning to float.  i followed behind for a few steps and poked at it as it went, but it didn't make any difference. all i could do was stop and stand there and watch as it was swept away, drained of life and floating out towards the bay, until it got lost from sight in the golden glitter of the waves in the afternoon sun.

i never told anyone about it, and that night i remember laying in bed with the windows open, listening to the crickets and the frogs singing their song outside in the darkness.  a deep sense of sorrow that i couldn’t fully grasp had settled quietly over me, and i lay there in the quiet solitude of the night, tossing and turning and feeling pangs of remorse and grief that i wasn't really sure how to understand or put words to, but that would keep me awake for what seemed like a lifetime.

that memory - from so long ago now that it reads more like a dram in my mind - got added to a thousand like it, and pulled up into one collective net of unspoken hopes and unrealized expectations. it created a fabric of the past where a bigger picture finally began to emerge, one that i had never quite been able to see clearly before. it'd been obscured for a lifetime - it seemed to me, anyways - behind a cloud of dreaminess that i can't remember viewing the world without. maybe this isn't so uncommon, and we all have a bit of that in our lives, to one degree or another. maybe some of us are born with it, and maybe some of us are taught it from early on by being raised on the sidelines of life and finding safety in the shadows. i don't know for sure. the only thing i was beginning to be certain of is that all the dreams i ever had were just fantasies built on the memories i'd wished i'd had.

but dreaming of the future is no substitute for living in the present, and that little grain of sad memory had collected with enough like it to eventually form the weight of a boat anchor, the kind that would take some serious time and effort to cut loose and set the course right again. maybe that's what i felt pop that day - the sensation of those tethers of the past finally starting to be cut loose, and the sudden surge of energy from being freed from some of the weight of them for good.

i like to think it was, anyways.

so it was a rough couple weeks, for sure. but when you've drifted into a storm the hardest and scariest moments are when you're in the middle of trying to turn it around.  that's when the wind and the waves are hitting you broadside and you feel like you got a hold on for dear life and just hope you can make it. but there's that critical moment when you've swung around hard enough that suddenly the wind is at your back, and you realize that you will.  and that's a hell of a good feeling.

and i know there are rough waters ahead as well, but it’s all part of the journey and i’m grateful for whatever’s yet to come, good or bad.  and i sure as hell am thankful to have had you to help shine a light through the fog during this past year, and help me steer a course out of some very rocky waters.

and there’s plenty more ground to cover out here in the future, and i’m even looking forward to the travels ahead.  but right now it's time for a rest from the West. i’m packing up my bags, and got some extra cat food for the neighbors to put out while i'm gone.  i’m in need of a vacation for a bit, and i’ve got a plane to catch.  it’ll be good to be home again for a while.

be good, and i’ll see you soon my friend.