Monday, August 29, 2011

Something bad on the way?

  I woke up not long ago from a collection of bad dreams, and now am feeling flat and wasted, a little hopeless.

  The dreams were not the scary-bad type; no monsters or intruders or doors slamming shut in my face or buildings shaking or collapsing.   They were the worst kind of bad dreams for me, the realistic kind, the losing-someone kind, the someone-is-leaving-me kind, but finding out by feelings, suspicions, clues and hints.

    In my dream I was going to pick her up, take her to the airport, I was thinking about going with her to see her parents, she knew I was coming to pick her up, yet when I got to her house and knocked on the door and she answered in her towel, fresh out of the shower, she looked surprised and was not nice to me.  Someone else was there.    It just gets worse, and even now typing this, I am getting upset and sad.   I feel like I could cry.   FUCK.  Speaking of crying,  I just remembered a moment in this very same dream in which I had to 'decommission' my father for some reason - he was broken? - and I had to unscrew this bolt that went through the base of his neck, holding his head on.   The bolt was rusty and I couldn't get it to turn, and he was laying there telling me it was okay, and he reached up and helped and got the nut to turn off the bolt, and they were getting bloody as I pulled the bolt out, but then you see, I had to jerk his head up and twist it to turn him off, and he is big and well built so it was not easy.   I think it was hurting him as I tried to pull his head, but I was trying to be gentle, finally he said 'You got it.  Now just twist' and I did, and he was gone and I sort of collapsed crying for a while and she was in this room too, collecting her shit for her flight,  and she felt bad for me, but was busy packing her bag and not paying much attention to it all.      It was not a good dream.

   Now I am awake and drinking coffee and feeling drained still although just woken up,  and it is grey outside which is fine - sort of exciting really,  it feels like Fall all of a sudden and I love Fall,   but the Summer is gone?   I have not done anything yet this summer  - Did we have a Summer yet?   One more year gone by, one more year in which I Was the youngest I would ever be, and it was wasted.   Tinkering with cars and getting by, but no real progress in any of the things that matter.  

   For some reason I have become obsessed with 9/11, I am surprised it has been ten years already, ten years and the world is a different place.    With that perspective of time, looking back on that day seems so much more tragic and sad and unbelievable than it did on the day it happened.    The news and magazines are full of stories now about it, the ten-year-anniversary a big deal, the opening of the memorial on Ground Zero,  enough time has passed that the stories can give all the tragic details of victim's lives and surviving families' loss and not feel opportunistic or predatory, enough time has passed and it is not uncouth for magazines to publish these stories now, and when I read them, I start crying.   I find myself crying because of all the people who died, and the fireman and policeman who went into the buildings as people were trying to come out, and I cry because this event brought people together, and it illustrates a beauty in humanity that all these people in New York (and elsewhere) needed to go stand outside with each other and be with each other, and maybe talk, maybe cry, maybe be pissed, but they needed to see each other and be near each other to get through this thing, and to me that is evidence of something good.   I also cry because I realize now, only much later,  how much was lost, and how much else is gone since the towers went down, and I am not just talking lives here,  I am talking a Way of Life,  which was suddenly changed.  Life didn't seem so innocent at the time, but looking back,  pre 9/11 was a different, more innocent time.     I think it is gone, forever.

   Or is this just my own personal nostalgia for younger years?  A time pre-cell phone/ pre-internet?