Comfortably Numb?
Last night, after consuming far too many cups of jasmine green tea following a day of bad stomach upset and then finally, after a fitful hour or two of tossing and turning to get comfortable lying in bed with a throbbing colon and still stiff back, I fell asleep. When I woke up this morning, very groggy, head pounding, I realized that I had just experienced a four and a half hour dream that may not have been a dream, but a flashback – although it was NOT particularly clear whether the events in the dream (?) had actually happened in my past or not. Roughly, and I can only remember it roughly at this juncture – I was visiting some location where at one time I had participated in/organized/attended some kind of festival that had some kind of political agenda although it was primarily a Music/entertainment festival (I know, not all that clear …). I have attended a number of festivals, performed at roughly five, and even was involved in organizing and planning a couple behind the scenes, so it COULD have been the scene of one of those – it looked kind of like downtown Boston, where I did attend an Earth Day festival (and actually did participate in organizing an Earth Day/Arts Festival). In any event, it was an urban environment but one with a number of open spaces. It seemed foreign, though, in a “Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii” sort of way. It was a place that I know I have never actually been before. But of course, I knew the way ’round the locale. On the way to the main event area, walking to visit the scene of a festival past, I and whoever I was with (a bunch of unknown people) we encountered a bunch of other people who were on their way to attend the festival (the same festival that we had attended in the past) in the present time. And they knew who I was, because for some reason I had become famous for my involvement in this festival in the past. See how Spot gets unstuck in time here?
It felt like I was dreaming about having an acid flashback related to a dream … and in the back of my mind, there echoed the words:
We mourn your passing, California…
And I woke up crying.
01.13.03
Mistakes
Of all the big mistakes my parents made
in their own lives, and then subsequently
tried to steer me clear of, most pale and fade
next to the whopper that evidently
(at least now in my own experience)
is impossible to caution wild youth
against: not that one must have tolerance
and look for the many strange faces of truth,
but that childhood goes by so very fast.
There are many options from which to choose,
and each step in one direction negates
other possibilities. How the grass
that seems so green can soon become old news
once you deny a myriad of fates!
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