Excuse me a moment while I run a quick equipment check.

Ears? Partially functional.

Throat? Raw.

Head? Throbbing.

Chest? Shattered.

Phlegm? Overflowing.

Diagnosis? Business as usual.

The moonshine of medicine.

Day thirteen of my super lame illness marks no real improvement and, in fact, a decidedly worse headache (rendered even more horrific every time I cough.) However, this level of sickliness combined with the not-so-subtle aid of an overdose of Nyquil Cold & Flu has lent itself to extended time asleep. I’ve been logging ten and eleven hours a night, embarrassingly enough. On the upside, I had a particularly colorful (and funny, in hindsight) dream last night I thought I’d share in the hopes of making up for my shameful lack of blogging the last couple weeks:

It was one of those ‘end of the world apocalypse’ events and everyone was moving out on foot with what they could carry. We were all in sort of an old wild west town: the buildings were made of wood and the roads were just dirt. I was traveling with a good friend of mine and had packed rather thoughtfully for a variety of problems down the road. I felt good about our chances of making it, and really didn’t have a sense that I’d forgotten anything important.

As we were heading out of town, I recognized the little lean-to shop owned by the devil (yes, THE devil) and we decided to stop. I honestly can’t remember why. I don’t know if my friend (let’s call her J) wanted to or if I suggested it. In hindsight, my vague sense was that the devil was like a bad man you can’t quite shake: you know you shouldn’t return his calls or let him keep coming around, but you just can’t seem to help yourself. It’s kind of fun in a twisted way.

Properly post-apocalyptic.

Thus, we were in the devil’s shack and he had a little kitchen in the back. He offered to make us some food for the road and my friend, J, wandered off while we waited. I chatted with the devil for a while and he was both teasing and flirtatious. At one point, he mentioned that J would soon meet a man and marry him.

“Will she be happy?” I asked.

“It won’t matter,” the devil told me, “She’ll be too in love with love to notice…at least for the first couple years.”

It sounded about right, and I could see things going down that way. I told him that I’d like to know what would happen to me, but I was kind of afraid to ask. He just laughed and walked away.

Later it was time to leave, and I opened my bag. I realized immediately that several things were missing, including two pairs of scissors and an exacto knife: critical items for the journey ahead. I confronted the devil about this and he smiled and told me that J had given him the items.

My main memory from the dream was my desperation to get this stuff back.

“Why? Why would she do that to us?”

“Because I asked her to and she couldn’t resist me. You would have done the same thing to her had I asked.”

Somehow I realized he was right, so I wasn’t mad at my friend, but DESPERATE to get at least one pair of scissors and the knife back. I began searching frantically through his shop, but couldn’t find them anywhere. I even started snooping through drawers and in piles of clothes looking for them, and nothing. I was so angry at him for toying with me. I knew he didn’t need both the scissors AND the knife, but that he took them just to upset me and hinder us on our journey.

I also knew we needed to leave – it would be dark soon – but I was terrified to go on without any way to cut anything. Plus, being incredibly stubborn, I hated to walk away from this game the loser. I went back to the devil and pleaded with him to return just one of the items he’d taken.

“If I give it to you, will you go away?”

Don't be fooled: these scissors couldn't cut through a marshmallow.

“Yes, but I need a pair of scissors or a knife. Just one. If you give me back just one, we’ll leave.”

He laughed and pulled out a tiny sewing kit: the kind you buy for $2.99 at Target that comes with those awful, miniature flimsy scissors that can barely cut through the sewing thread. I hadn’t realized he’d taken this, but since it contained a pair of (virtually worthless) scissors, I knew he had me and there was no argument to be made. I could see it on his face that he was delighted to be both fulfilling my request and yet screwing me over so significantly.

I took the sewing kit and we left. All the while I tried to console myself that at least I had a way to sew if it became necessary.

Down the road I came to a river, and saw that people were jumping it. The water was moving fast and there were Class IV rapids and children were leaping in and being swept along. Horrified, I asked what was going on and was informed that – if you survived it – the water would take you all the way to Astoria, Oregon in just a few hours.

It's probably better to stay out of this water...even if it is the expedited route to Astoria.

I realized that was much better time than I could ever make on foot, but it looked very dubious that anyone would actually live through that. Thus, I signaled to my friend that we should start walking and take our chances on land. We headed out (and thankfully I’d forgotten about the scissors…at least for the time being), and I woke up.

Analysis welcome!

I was once on a flight from Tokyo to Seattle that left at 7am and got in at 6am THE SAME DAY (gotta love the International Dateline, that mayhem-causing minx) and spent the entire duration in pre-sunrise dawn. It seemed like everyone else on the  plane – some 300-odd people – was asleep. But not me.

There are a shocking number of people who have done original paintings based on "What Dreams May Come." Odd.

Oh freaking no.

I sat there with a drunken chain-drinking-six-Coors Lights stranger asleep on my right shoulder and my now-ex crashed out on my left, while I was engrossed in a series of heart-wrenching and emotionally overwhelming flicks appearing on the giant screen before me: What Dreams May Come, One True Thing, and Stepmom.

In short, I bawled my goddamned eyes out for ten hours while simultaneously flipping out over the surreal reality that I was in a small metallic vehicle with 300-odd people who were all asleep while suspended in the air and what kind of magic makes this tin can fly anyway????

I’m kind of like the non-native primitive cast member in The Gods Must Be Crazy. I’m easily mystified. And seriously though, the gods must be crazy.

Thanks, as always, to the supernatural powers of the internet for instantly providing images a lot like my dreams.

So anyway, I guess that was a feeble attempt at explaining the title – or more likely, just some free association about the title – but either way you’re going to have to hear about one of my dreams again: last night I dreamt that I was living in a simple wooden house with several other people. We shared a large bedroom, but my stuff – some clothes and my laptop – occupied one corner. One morning I was sitting downstairs in the kitchen and found myself musing about how nice the fire felt…until I realized the fire was under the house and had burned up through a giant hole now in the floor. Before we could really react, the fire had spread and melted the roof trusses, which caused the house to fold in on itself. It was distressing, but it seemed that we could still live there while repairs were done.

In the dream, the house was in Bermuda, but from all appearances it was actually in Scandinavia or the North Pole – all shades of blue and snow-capped peaks and shooting stars. I was walking one night and turned back and the landscape – and mountains in the distance – were all different shades of cobalt and midnight and sapphire and azure, and above us were hundreds of shooting stars, almost like rain, pouring down into the huge lake to my left. It was so spectacular that I was speechless, and tried to take photos to capture the incredible magic of the moment.

Minus the wolf this is pretty accurate. And the giant moon reminds me of a different dream but that's neither here nor there.

Back at the house, things had gone from bad to worse. It had split into three sections and the outer two were in the process of falling off. While in the upstairs bedroom, I could see that my laptop was running…and sitting on a desk in a portion of the cabin that was going to collapse soon. I knew I needed to rescue it and salvage any writing on it. I crept onto the fragile surface of the collapsing portion, and grabbed the computer just in time for the entire structure to cave in. Miraculously – probably because it was a dream – the computer and I were just fine.

Renovation plans were still in order for the house, and I was looking forward to things returning to normal. However, I was dismayed when a few minutes later I was watching a man tell police how much he had loved his wife and how saddened he had been at her death…by fire. And then I realized he was talking about me.

I suppose the awareness that you’re no longer part of the dream because you’re dead is enough to wake a person up, and so I did.

The end.

We all have bad days. Some worse than others. I had some creepy nightmares that my recently deceased dog came back to life, and I was so happy to see her. However, it turned out that her body was badly broken, so whenever she would try to run or play, she would end up as this mangled pile of bones and fur, whimpering in pain. It was unbearable to watch, and when I took her to the vet to beg them for pain medication to ease her suffering, they checked her out and explained to me that she would be dead again within weeks. Plus, her pain would increase exponentially until she finally died (for the second time). Look out, Stephen King. There’ s a new demented dreamer in town.

Anyway, during the course of this nightmare I must have twisted myself into a funny position, because now I kind of feel like I’ve had a stroke on the right side of my body. Seriously. I have pain from my neck to my calf, but only on the right side. How weird is that? I’ll tell you: weird. Then throw in the general strangeness of not working or being productive (or at least not in a way that pays), and the occasional negative thinking that I’m out of my mind and only a selfish, delusional lazybones would even attempt this career change, and the fact that I’m writing this in the complete dark (a total power outage)…and taken altogether it’s thrown a little bit of a dark cloud on my mood.

Luckily, I have my father to remind me of what isn’t wrong: I’m not completely batsh*t crazy. Actually, I talked to him yesterday when I was in a great mood (moody much? Why yes, I… Hey…why!? You want to make something of it!?!?), and he reminded me about this guy who lived in the apartment upstairs during my first year of college at UCSC.

To explain, UC Santa Cruz is broken into eight? ten? who knows how many at this point? smaller sub-colleges to minimize the ‘gigantic university’ effect. Each of the sub-divisions has its own flavor, and I chose the hippie experiment, Kresge. Kresge was built in the late 1960s by the people who went on to found some communes and invent some reality TV greats like The Real World and Big Brother. Well, I don’t know that for a fact, but it’s quite likely.

Unlike typical college dorms where you get a roommate and a meal plan, Kresge put seven strangers into one weird commune-style apartment. There were two toilets in stalls (like public restrooms), a shared kitchen and family room, and one shower with three heads. Very Playboy mansion. Pile in a motley mix of teens of varying emotional maturity and stability, and you’ve got one hell of a social experiment.

Thankfully, it more or less worked, and no one was severely traumatized…except maybe the guys that lived upstairs from us. You see, they got a roommate named Dill, and Dill had some rather extreme eccentricities.

For starters, he would only wear white. I suppose if you have enough Clorox around, that’s not totally outer limits. However, and (this just occurs to me now), perhaps in order to keep the white clothes sparkling, he would only eat white food. Plus, he was nocturnal. So his roommates would hear a ruckus at two or three in the morning and come out to find Dill cooking up a big pot of hominy or Cream of Wheat or maybe some kind of chowder or bisque. As my dad put it, “If he didn’t get some vitamins into that diet, he’s dead by now.”

Actually, I’m more inclined toward institutionalized. As I remember it, Dill’s Kresge student housing experience came to an abrupt end when a roommate made the following discovery: Concerned about the strange smell emanating from Dill’s room, the roommate entered while he was downstairs making his midnight mashed potatoes and rice pudding. As it was retold to me (by a different roommate), he found mason jars with dead birds and squirrels in them, and the jars were filled with water, so everything inside was rotting quite spectacularly. I believe there were varying dead things that hadn’t yet found a home in a jar, which was probably the source of the smell, and also (not surprisingly) the source of the eviction.

The moral of the story? On those days when life gets you down and you have sad dreams, bad dreams, busted dreams, or no dreams, just remind yourself: At least I’m not that guy.

And then go have yourself some colorful food.

p.s.

Did I mention I’m in the middle of some localized power outage? At the moment, I’m sitting in the dark outside an apartment building, having hijacked the wifi of someone fortunate enough to have power!

I won’t beleaguer the whole ‘how the f–k did I get so old!?” thing. You don’t want to hear about it, and neither do I.

Instead, indulge me on a little trip through my psyche and the random thoughts that occupy it on this, the occasion of my birth:

• Last night I dreamed that I got married, and the ceremony was traditional to the (never identified) groom’s culture. It was also complex.
• I was wearing an ornate dress that took hours to put on, but the real focus of the ceremony was a little girl. She was made up to look like a doll (kind of like Raggedy Ann), and after the vows were complete, someone brought this wooden box (a little like a coffin) to the front. The box was presented to the onlookers and opened, and this little girl – about five or six years old – emerged in her doll costume. She was quite the ham, and the wedding guests were ENTHRALLED. I remember thinking that she had on way more makeup than I (the bride) did. I vaguely wondered if maybe I should have made myself up more.
• I can still picture the expression of utter joy on this one guest’s (who I thought was maybe the doll-girl’s mother) face. However, to be fair, the guests were all about this doll-girl, who I thought perhaps was meant to symbolize the future children of the marriage.
• Then the dream cut to the reception, and I didn’t really know anyone. It was strange because I was meant to be the focus of the celebration (at least in weddings as I know them), but I felt kind of auxiliary. I wasn’t upset about it. I somehow chalked it up to cultural differences. The last thing I remember was reading the box for the bustle and realizing I was wearing not just one, but two of them, necessary to make my huge dress as large as it needed to be.
• I’m totally crappy at interpreting dreams, but I’ve come up with something about a culture that worships youth and giving up one’s expectations of attention to those younger than you. Otherwise, I’m baffled.

So otherwise, the dream was probably the most exciting thing that happened today. As birthdays go, mine was super mellow.

Ran. Checked pulse – still going. Sat on beach (windy/freezing). Ate lunch – spanikopita from bakery. Sat by pool (less windy/boring). Read some of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” – Did you know it takes one pound of petroleum to make one pound of food!?!?!? Worried about future of the earth and wished I’d paid more attention during “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Skyped with friends

E-mailed with friends

Ate some crappy greasy calamari for dinner. MUST AVENGE THIS BIRTHDAY DINNER INJUSTICE.

Felt grateful for those of you that realized that it wasn’t ‘just another day’ (at least to me). We all want to be be consequential and matter to someone else…and you’re that for me. The favor will be returned. And until then…THANK YOU.

Today is going to be a busy one, and out of concern that I won’t have time to do my blogging later tonight, I’m on it first thing this morning. However, I’m not really at my best in the early morning, and I’m still getting over this super weird dream. So in the spirit of dreams helping to connect one to the greater myths and themes and issues of their life, I’ll share it with you. If anyone out there is a gifted dream interpreter (or even a willing hack or bored amateur), feel free to have at it.

Okay, as I remember it, I was at a cooking competition, and we were offered our choice of meats with which to prepare a meal. I decided to go with the Monarch Butterfly. I’d never heard of this, so I was possibly making the task uneccesarily challenging (not being familiar with the flavor or cooking times), but I suppose I was feeling ballsy. We were also given an assistant, and I recognized mine as Hung, the winner of the third season of Top Chef.

So, just to give you the scene, we were in a little outdoor kitchen, kind of like something you’d find at a fair or carnival. The butterfly meat was quite large and pale – like a razor clam or a split breast of chicken. I decided to cut the butterfly meat, bread it, and cook it in butter – like cutlets. I put Hung in charge of tending to the frying process, as I went to work on some other items. At some point, I look over and it’s very clear he’s pulled the meat while it’s still raw, as it’s clear and pinkish in the spots that don’t have breading on them. I felt frustrated as – c’mon already, he’s the winner of Top Chef! He can do better than this! – but I put it all back in the pan to finish cooking and didn’t comment.

It’s at this point it occurs to me that I’ve never seen a butterfly large enough to produce such a giant piece of meat. I start grilling Hung, “Where are these butterflies from? Are they endangered? Is it okay that we’re eating them?” However, before he could get back to me with a response, a man comes up and introduces himself. His last name is so complicated I have him repeat it four or five times and then finally say back to him, “Mocha Chocalata ya ya?” This suddenly sets off a bout of singing at all the competing outdoor kitchens, and some of these people are really damn good.

I’m watching this for a while, and then I walk back over to my outdoor kitchen where I find that Hung has burned up several pans and thrown them in the trash and all the spatulas and tongs and turners are completely ruined with the handles completely melted off or bent in two or the like. Needless to say, I was pretty ticked off at the guy, but there wasn’t time to get into it with him. Besides, what was done was done.

I now turned my attention to my (thankfully not ruined) butterfly cutlets. I was considering making a hollandaise sauce flavored with lavender and honey, although I still had no idea what the meat tasted like and if that would be any good. However, I liked the idea of it, as it seemed an appropriate garnish for a paleolithic butterfly.

Then I woke up.

THE END.