In between worlds

It starts with my alarm, set to go off at 6:30. Nearly every morning it jangles me awake, signaling the start of the tug of consciousnesses. Between sleep and wake, like a Kingfisher I dive under to dream and to wake, dream and wake. Over and over, half hour cycles. I will do this for up to three hours, watching the theatre of my mind, the possibilities and improbabilities made tangible. As a child I dreamt of money, big coins that I could still feel in my hand on waking, though inexplicably vanished from my sure grasp. I have heard it said that we should judge a man, not by his acts, rather by his dreams. Knowing my dreams, I am reluctant to be judged. Weird stuff goes on. So weird that at times I think I am a stranger to my own mind.
I dive back down, having set my countdown times for 30 minutes. There is a bubble of warmth under my blankets that I fit into just right. My comforter I pull over my shoulder, across the back of my head. I close the canopy and strap on the helmet. All systems are Go. I taxi down the runway.
What most fascinates me about my dream life, is how at times it comes to me during the day. Something might trigger the memory of a dream I had twenty years ago. Maybe a smell or an association, maybe nothing I can put my finger on. A dream will surface in it's entirety, like watching a whole movie in a second, all the scenes acted out at once. What the hey!
I wonder. Wonder.
My countdown timer goes off. It is time to reflect. I think about getting up, going to the cafe. At seven, it will be very quiet, I could write. Or drink coffee next to the channel. Naw, no urge yet. I reset the timer and go back under. When next it goes off, I have lived months in a foreign place, complete with stamped passports and cheap souvenirs. Seven thirty. It is bright light outside. Time to get up and leave the dream world behind. I reset my alarm. I get up and feel the floor under my feet. I've stepped into a boat, what am I doing? Here? in a boat? Am I fishing? Yes, there is a tiny dwarf fishing rod in my hand. Funny, I didn't even notice that rod nor that I fish. Well, I might as well sink a worm and see what bites. Wait-a-minute, I just had that rod in my hand, where did I put it? And what is that noise? Damn, that is annoying.
Its my alarm! What time is it, lets see, I was about to get up when I fell back to sleep. It was 7:30 then, so it must be eight now. I dreamt about fishing, yes, reset the alarm, just a few more minutes---

Fall is coming

You see the signs: leaves turning color, foggy mornings, a lesser heat at midday. Individual leaves spiral down from their places; a quick pirouette to the ground; a second life as the breeze ushers them about. These are the early birds, before the rush, when they will swarm off the trees. The rains have started. Snails are feeding on the fermented apples and pears left on lawns. Children drag themselves to school and bounce out in the afternoon.
My thoughts turn even more morose. I wonder how I will make it through another light-less winter. I am looking for the quick fix. Anything to assuage the coming dread of January and February.
When I wake in the morning, before my mind jells into the usual, I hear the little voice tell me the truth about myself. I am paralysed. I need some kind of psychological dynamite to blow the blockage. Fall is nice, then comes winter. Crap!

No mo newspaper

Dang! Just when I was learning to read in between lines, they stopped publishing the local paper. The conversation at the cafe turned to filling in the niche. To our credit, within four or five minutes we began to seriously discuss the legal dificulties associated with slander and defamation. Double dang! Can't even dream before the lawyers step in. Meanwhile, we are paperless in La Conner. Now rumors can fly unimpeded and advertizing will have to be by word of mouth. Back to being a small town.
And now for the thursday morning wednesday evening no mike open mike report. It was nice. I could have said absolutely fantastic, but we have come to use these words far too easily, to describe mediocre events. Wonderfull. Awesome.
The musicians outnumbered the audience and the two flamenco dancers outdid themselves. I told a crappy joke and Garry brought delectable chocolate cookies. The guy with the bass fiddle showed and thumped his way through the songs. Ed was in good spirits even though a bit sarcastic. Marcia came for the first time and she can sing! Bob played the hits and Garry sang his famous campfire songs.

another sweet spot

On the hill just east of the catholic church, guarded by an alcoved Virgin Mary, is a set of stairs that lead up to a secluded brick patio with a couple of benches and surrounded by native trees and brush. In the morning the birds sing and the sounds of the town seem far away. In the gaps of the brush you can see a portion of Maple street; the rock-side condos below. It is a good spot to sit quiet, getting a feel for the town, for life. The young man who built this place, then an eagle scout, is not in Iraq. It would have been a waste.

A local treasure

There are piles of fruit all around town, fallen from the giving arms of trees planted long ago. Seventy years ago, America and the world plunged into a depression that urged the planting of gardens, trees and liquor stills. People had to do without or with less (poor people, that is). Fruit trees were prized, carefully tended and harvested. These trees are living reminders that even though we are at the whims of international bankers and criminals, for twenty bucks and some patient tending, several bucket loads of apples, pears, plums and cherrys can be savored, traded or preserved. They are a treasure laying idle.
Soon the trees will let go of their leaves and a nip will be in the air. I am fluffing-up my blankets and wondering if Costco has merino wool blend socks in stock yet. I have taken to buying about six pair every fall and they disappear into the vast hole where socks and keys and money go.

the black cat and the fog

Up early, again. It is foggy in La Conner. First fog with substance this year, that I know of. Some fogs have too much substance. Spooky. This one is just right. I like to lean back in the chair out front and look at the streetlight. The roof line shades the direct light so I can see the billions of foggies swirling around in the slight breeeze, scooting in the air, chasing each other but keeping a discreet distance. Last night I watched some children play hide and seek. It makes me smile to remember. The foggies play like that, by agreement; like touch football without the touching. If they didn't, they would become rain.
It got me to thinking about dew collectors. My bicycle seat is a dew collector. All these squirreled-away tidbits of trivia poured into my consciousness. Giant hanging sheets, like functioning Cristo installations, somewhere on an arid coast, corral the fog and fresh water flows. The night I spent miserable, trying to sleep on a parkbench in San Franciscos' Golden Gate park. Overhead the trees collected fog and drove me off the bench with the cold, water-fat drops. Using rocks at the base of grapevines to collect a few precious drops each day. A cowboy movie I saw, where the hero used hot rocks to collect dew and then sopped it up with his manly neckrag. An article on the building of a pond-sized dew collector and some historical eyewitness accounts of how well these collectors function.
Endless associations and the trivia elevator working overtime shuttling up facts from the memory hole. But when I need to remember someone's name, -------------------------------------------- blank.
Oh, yeah, I remember I saw a black cat come out of the fog.

Where is Mr. Denis

I got up at four in the dark moring on Saturday. Quite unlike me, but when these kinds of miracles occur, I am glad. It is relatively quiet, especially the psychic space, as the damn televisions are turned off. Sitting outside the cafe at five, cup of fresh coffee in hand, a smoke in the other is, well, meditative. All you hear is the faint buzzing of civilization; the hum of electricity idling in the wires; the sound of the street lamps pouring orange tinted light on the resting asphalt. But that is not what I wanted to tell you about.
As I pedaled my faithfull bicycle onto Caledonia Street (named after a region on Mars, where that Face is) I noticed that someone had drawn and written on the street. I stopped to read. There was a crude chalk drawing of what appeared to be a pumpkin with the words "Where is Mr. Denis". I noticed that some toilet paper lay about, in the tradition of sneakily decorating selected people's houses. I thought that maybe it was a message for someone in the house nearby. Awww, how sweet, somebody misses somebody. I kept pedaling. The crime scene kept unfolding. Next, within a block a cleverly done ejaculating penis. Then, by the kid's playground, another. Fifty feet later another and one in front of the cafe and another on the sidewalk in front of the cafe. Some budding artist had a field day of practice on the largest canvas in the world. Wow. With my not so considerable powers of deductive reasoning, I Then the police arrived. Trying to acertain the identity of the drawer and mumbling about having to erase the trail of graffiti. I mentioned that probably the chalk came from the cafe and better chalk than spray paint. Then it occured to me that I had misread "Where is Mr. Denis".
That is the crime report for the week.

Something new on the block

For a while I was sweating the load, status-wise. When I first moved on my block, I was not on the bottom of the economic ladder. There was a woman living back behind Dean's house that sat on the bottom rung. Then she moved. Damn. It was hard to say "Good Morning" to my neighbors. Mostly I said "Good Day" as I was getting up too late. Now, we have some homeless folk, once again living with Dean (bless his egalitarian heart). I am no longer the poorest person on my block!
They have Southern accents and talk real loud. Hard to blend in when you talk funny and don't mind if the world knows it. I guess they are from Georgia. I once drove from Georgia to La Conner. Takes two days just to get into and out of Texas. I digress. What I want to point out is that as long as they are there, I am looking like a first-class productive citi-zen. Without doing a damn thing different or anything extra. There is a lesson to be learned in that. I will have to carefully chew on this one so as to get all the flavor out.
It is hard to be homeless. It is also hard to be a Homeowner; taxes, bills, inflation, etc. I have never owned a home, except for my own body and it needs painting, a new roof and some sorely needed foundation work. I've been homeless a couple of times. One time I called it "camping", that was nearly one and a half years and it was more of a hermit thing. The other time I lived in my van, on the streets of Tacoma. Homelessness in a city is truly no joke. It takes a strong personality to keep all the ducks in-a-line. Any weakness and you drop quickly.
Now, most people don't have the internal resources to be unaffected by homelessness. In a smaller town, where people don't suffer from the "not my business" syndrome, you get some relief; you can breathe. Homeless = Hopeless. Hopelessness is self-reenforcing. Once a-drift you are pretty much at the whims of the currents and winds.

Last night was no-mike open mike night. The cafe was packed and we had a real good time. Ed and Bob played their Guitars and some guy brought a bass fiddle and was thumping out the rhythms. Everybody sang along and Nora did her near-famous Flamenco dance routine, complete with wack-tack shoes and a swishy skirt. Annabells' British friend, Becky,( from Paris) sang, and how! I made coffee. Gary did his funny folk songs, one dedicated to my crepitation skills. He also brought a delicious summer sausage.

get the sweaters out!

It is Fall. I like it. We are having an Indian Summer and it feels good. There is dew on my bycicle seat in the morning and fog in the air. The moon rises bigger in the evening. It gets light at just the right time, just before six. I know , as for the past two days I have been spontaneously waking very early and watching the dawn sneak up on me through my windows. Yesterday I woke at four, dark outside, dark and sky starfull, clouds edging into the scene. I drank tea and smoked. I thought about writing but was too lazy to look for a tablet. I ate breakfast and when it got light, went back to bed. What a delightfull morning.
I don't like it when the weather is too hot. We had a couple of hot weeks this summer and I got cranky. I need to learn that when it gets that hot, drink more water and walk in the forest. Now the apple trees are dropping fruit on the lawns and harvest time is here. There is a glut of zuccini; soon the potatos will be harvested and I will go gleaning. I want to stash away a hundred pounds for the winter. I feel like a squirrel. I have a freezer and I will clean it out and restock what I can.
Misty mornings and hot, hot coffee. Coversations slow and easy. The world is spinning dizzy, fits and sparks, spitting and harrumping, dashing the dishes on the floor, fingernailing the wallpaper. I move at a snails' racing pace, trying to keep up. I am smiling. Go, Go, Go! Time is money! Get, Get, Get! Silly Fools.
The fog teaches me lesson. It has nearly no substance but a big effect. It is patient, slow and present. It snakes around every tree and leaf and hunkers down. Burned off by the sun, it waits for the morning to come. It's name rymes with dog.

My "ICAN" art show went well. When I figure out how to do photos on this blog, I will show u some. I've been resting-up from the show; amazing how stressfull it was. I am out of touch with my own self.