I woke up having an old, old nightmare. I was lost and trying to find my way out of this industrial complex, and kept going to promising routes that went nowhere. I already know senility will be like, and I don't like it. I remember having this same type of dream since I was in my thirties. Sometimes I'm in a tropical paradise that reminds me of Key West, but the houses are much grander. In the dream I can't get out of the houses. They're all connected together in some way. I find myself out on the balcony of this huge, columned estate house, but it's too high to jump to the ground, but when I go back inside to go downstairs to go outside, I just end up in another house in the same situation. Sometime there are rivers involved that I can't get across. There's this one scenario in which the middle of the bridge is underwater. Not from a flood, but because it has sagged down into the river. That particular place has houses like in Williamsburg. Old, colonial style houses like in Maryland adjacent to DC.
This morning when I woke up I lay there for a long time thinking about how my siblings are getting old and will probably start dying soon. I thought about being left here alone without any help with getting old myself. I guess I should have thought of that when I isolated myself from them. My two brothers-in-law have both been in the hospital for extended periods for various ailments, and I only found out about it after they were out. I probably couldn't have afforded to go see them anyway. We've never been close. We just put up with each other for the sake of peace and harmony. The only time I've been in the hospital they didn't come to see me. None of my relatives except my sister-in-law visited me, and that was to bring me home. I'm just not a very friendly person.
Actually, I am fairly friendly. I just have strange beliefs that make them avoid me. I don't blame them. I try my best not to embarrass them in front of other people. Usually, they're the ones who cause whatever problems there might be because they apologize for me before the others can judge for themselves. The people who haven't been warned about my odd beliefs get along with me fine.
The real turning point happened nearly forty years ago when I committed myself to the State hospital (the one that just lost it's certification for neglecting it's patients). That was all it took for my siblings to shun me. No blame. It's just that I'm a very curious person who leaves no stone unturned in my search for the truth. I didn't understand that I was supposed to just get born, behave myself, and die. I figured I was going to die no matter what I did, so I might as well try to figure out what life was all about. Definitely taboo.
Since I went to Seattle to my daughter's wedding, I've been thinking about how my ex-wife told me she still had all my poetry. She took it before we were ever married and pretended it was lost. She had it secreted from me for the whole time we were married. It seems a little strange that I stopped writing poetry when I met her. She began writing poetry when I stopped. I kind of believe my poetry was all she wanted from me. I'm not claiming this is true, but it seems true to me. Well, at least maybe I helped her become something she never could have been without me.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
