Helen, Dan, Stephen, Gordon, Mia, and Glia

Someone once asked if I took hallucinogens before bedtime. I said no, but I’m beginning to think there’s something in the water. Last night I slept well, but I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. And since this blog is all about the Dreamtime, here are some notes that came through last night from that wonderfully bizarre realm.

Act I was a new episode in a continuing series. In this recurring dream I am apparently the host of a British television call-in show, though I am always off-screen. Regular callers send in their photos, which stay on screen during their phone calls, with the legend: “Now speaking: [name], a [occupation] from [location].”

Today’s is a frequent caller, a woman named W.H. Logan who is a prison doctor from Aber-something, a long and vaguely Welsh-sounding name with an overabundance of consonants. (I looked up UK prisons and none begin with “Aber-.” There is a market town in Wales called Abergavenny, lauded in a 1968 song by Marty Wilde, but Ms. Logan has a thick Scottish accent, not Welsh, so don’t really know where she lives or works.) The H. in her name stands for Helen, which is what she prefers to be called. The screen shows a backdrop of the prison at which she works, with an inset of her face. Helen looks vaguely like Edie Falco as Nurse Jackie.

The only thing I remember about what Helen was calling in to talk about today was the image of a black snake (looking like our Black Racers) slithering through tall yellow grasses, a field of grain. A “snake-in-the-grass”? A reference to the evils of wheat gluten? (If so, why a harmless, even friendly snake?).

In Act II, I am friends with Daniel Radcliffe, though in this dream, he’s not an actor and I’m about his age. He’s wearing black sneakers (I’m not sure why that’s important, but I keep seeing them over and over), and he’s very agile. We’re on a farm, I think. I watch him climb down from a barn’s hay loft; the ladder is obstructed somehow, but he balances on the outer edge of the ladder instead of the rungs and carefully makes his way down. Then there’s an eight-foot-tall fence made out of old plywood that is beginning to peel a little. He jumps up and grabs the top edge and hangs from it, then moves along it using only the tips of his fingers to hold on. A strength-building exercise, he tells me. I admire him greatly. In private, I work long and hard to be able to do the same tricks, and when I do, he’s the one who admires me. A sweet little dream.

Act III takes place at my home, though it’s no house I’ve ever lived in or seen before: rather sprawling, with lots of people, some working, some relaxing. There’s even one room with a bar and a full-time bartender, and something of a party atmosphere, though it doesn’t seem to spread through the rest of the house. In between my household duties (am I a host? an employer? I don’t quite understand my function there), I am being counseled by two people who, in this dream, are older than I am, though they are both younger than I in real life. They are, I believe, counseling me about my health, though they’re taking an indirect approach.

The first is Stephen Fry, though his voice is a little off, and he looks nothing at all like the real Stephen Fry. I mean, nothing like him. But I still know it’s him. (And I know that’s properly “I know it’s he,” but that just sounds too pedantic.) Stephen is trying to coax me outside to plant a vegetable garden. I make excuses, most of which amount to I’m too fat to garden. He looks disappointed. (It should be noted that in real life, Fry has lost about 45 pounds recently, and is looking young and healthy.)

Gordon Ramsay is the other counselor, but he’s so much nicer and calmer than his television persona, and I assume he’s going to tell me about healthy gourmet cooking, but he’s mainly interested in getting a Scotch—specifically, a J&B “54 Barrel.” He finds it in my barroom and he happily toasts me. Problem is, J&B doesn’t make anything called “54 Barrel.” The only reference I was able to find was to a barrel-shaped pill labeled Aizo 54, which turns out to be Concerta, a drug that’s used to treat Attention Deficit Disorder.

In Act IV, Scene 1, it’s some girl’s Quinces—that is, her Quinceañera, a coming-of-age party held on a girl’s fifteenth birthday. In Latino culture, it’s sort of a cross between a Sweet 16 party, a bat mitzvah, and a Debutante Ball. I have no idea who the girl was or why I was there. Scene 2 was even shorter: someone was announcing, “It’s Mia and Glia’s coming of age!” and there were even newspaper headlines shouting the same news. And of course I don’t know any Mia or Glia, but when I woke up, I was certain it was somehow about glial cells. Glia are cells that provide support, oxygen, and nutrition to nerve cells, maintain homeostasis, form myelin (could that be Mia?), and participate in signal transmission in the nervous system. But why are they “coming of age”? What connection do they have, if any, to Quinces girl?

This is my brain. This is not my brain on drugs. Be afraid, be very afraid.

The Mailbox

Today’s thunderstorm came a bit earlier than usual, around lunchtime, and it was particularly violent for a while. I looked out the front door—just to enjoy the spectacle, really—and saw (to my great dismay) my mailbox, which stands on the side of the road by the driveway entrance, on the ground, in the swail that holds the runoff from the rain.

Someone had vandalized it. While it’s possible someone took a bat to it, it’s more likely that someone hit it with their car.

This is the second time that’s happened. Directly across the street from the mailbox is a neighbor’s driveway. A year or so after I moved back from Vermont, the friendly neighbors who had lived there sold the house to some faceless investor. The first set of tenants were two young women who, shall we say, Liked To Party. The parties weren’t especially loud, but there were many young men in and out, and anytime I saw people emerge from the house, they were happy and usually drunk. One day my mailbox was smashed, and the tire marks in the grass pointed directly toward their driveway. Some inebriated fool backed out too far or too fast.

So I installed a nice new mailbox. Well, the mailbox itself wasn’t quite as nice as the old one, but it came with a nice sturdy metal post, which I had a handyman set in concrete.

This mailbox saw the young women go, and the house lie dormant for a good six months. Then came an older couple—he was a church deacon and a house painter, very nice fellow—and they stayed for a year and a half. When they moved, they left rather quickly, and I never knew why, or where they were going. There was another period of dormancy, and at last the current tenants moved in.

I don’t know if they have a very large family, or a very large group of friends, but there are frequently four cars in the driveway and one parked just off the street, with lots of people coming and going. Cordial when you say hello, but clearly not folks who are inviting friendship.

Last week there were a series of arguments. One woman in particular did a great deal of shouting, mainly from her driveway toward someone inside the house. She wasn’t locked out, and whoever she was arguing with never made an appearance, and after fifteen minutes or so she’d go back in, still shouting, and then all would be calm. This happened at least once a day for several days.

Then sometime between yesterday evening and today at noon, someone smashes the mailbox and breaks it off the metal post—and it lands directly in line with (you guessed it) the neighbor’s driveway. I’m guessing someone took off in a huff. I grumble and cast an evil eye in the direction of my neighbor’s house.

So this evening I head down to Wal-Mart to buy Yet Another Mailbox. After about fifteen minutes of shopping, I start feeling this tremendous sadness, and suddenly grief is washing over me. I start crying for no reason, right next to the frozen peas. Why here? Why now?

And then I remember: I haven’t been here since Mom died. I used to go there once or twice a week to get prescriptions for Mom and food for us both. After she died, there were no prescriptions to fill, so no need to travel all that way for groceries. The memory—the body memory, really—of being there, equipping myself there to take care of her, thinking about her there, calling her midway through the trip just to touch base . . . it just overwhelmed me.

I texted a friend about it. He replied, “Part of the reordering of life. It makes sense. Patterns change and the brain expects the old patterns.” I agree, but I think there’s something else afoot. A sudden flurry of blog posts after months of virtual solitude. (Re)connecting with grief after a long period of thinking I was getting along all right. Realizing I probably haven’t been all right. Maybe it’s a hopeful sign that stuff is beginning to move.

So tonight I have this to say:

Dear neighbor, Thank you for knocking down my mailbox. . . .

Sightings

This morning, four white ibises, digging with great vigor into a sward of grass next to the road, taking their breakfast al fresco. A little further on, perched on a mound of grasses in the middle of a canal, an anhinga, wings outstretched, gazing off into the distance, the picture of peace. This afternoon, another complex, exquisite mockingbird concert outside my window.

And now, a sudden late-evening downpour. The birds are all settled in for the night. I think of them, imperfectly sheltered from the rain, with no helpful sunshine following the shower to help dry their feathers.