FINALLY FRIDAY

Dreamt of cars, the Empire State Building, and being buried alive. The cars one was strange. I was, for reasons unknown, staying at this low rent place kind of Air BNB, run by this strange pseudo-working class guy. It was in a small town near a race track. There was a main building that looked like it used to be a farmhouse, and lots of other little houses, a picnic area, a kitchen area with out door seating above a garage, and a race track not too far from there. The race track was for local stock car racing on dirt tracks. I was undercover for some reason. On the road and moving around the country like Sam and Dean in Supernatural, who use fake names and hunt down monsters and demons. Only I wasn't sure what I was hunting. The owner had a son, about ten, who seemed sad. The son was a latch-key kid, and said he never saw his dad that much. The kid was sent to school, and then the owner told me how there was a serial killer in the area, and he was pretty sure the killer had been outside the house watching him. The next day, I woke up at the same place, and there were hundreds of people outside, getting food, hanging out, all there to go to some monster truck kind of thing at the track. I went up to the restaurant, hungry and wanting breakfast. Some new guy in the dream who seemed to know me led me to the front of the line at the restaurant, where they were serving green chile, had them give me a big bowl of it, and then led me to a table. He was like the manager of the place, and told me not to mind the owner and his crazy talk about the killer. Then he told me he knew who I was, and that he too was a writer, and had a book he wrote about being having a father who left him when he was a little boy. I asked him if it was autobiographical, and he said no, which I found strange. Why write about what you don't know? Then I woke up, and as is usual these days, I thought to myself "got to remember this for the blog".

Then I fell back asleep, and dreamt I was on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, which is one of my favorite places in the world. Ever since I was about five and watched the original King Kong on Creature Features, I wanted to see the Empire State Building. On Halloween 1990, I took my first step in NYC, and there she was, tall and magnificent in her Art Deco splendor. My first apartment there was right down the street, on 33rd and Third, and I could go to the roof and gaze at her and contemplate life as a starving artist, which I did. Often. Anyway, I was on top of the building, and the deck was crowded, and everyone was talking about the Corona Virus. How nobody really knew what would happen next. And then, one by one, people started climbing over the protective guard rails and jumping off. And I woke up, and again thought "remember this for the blog". Padfoot, who had already gotten up in the middle of the night to perform his outdoor ablutions, was looking at me and making strange noises, so I let him out again, then went back to sleep.

And dreamt I was in a coffin, about to be buried alive. As I could feel the coffin being lowered, I woke up. And of course, thought "Remember for the blog!"

And I didn't even watch any news last night. We did, however, have along video chat with one of our friends, talking mostly about fun things, like Supernatural and favorite episodes and scary movies and whatever else came to mind. We talked about Jaws, and how she won't let her daughter watch it yet because she doesn't want her to become scared of the ocean. I told her how I had seen it when I was nine, and while it scared the crap out of me, it didn't make me more frightened of the ocean, because the ocean was already huge and mysterious and full of the unknown. I didn't need a movie to make it scary to me. I still loved it, and would swim in it every time we drove over the hill to Santa Cruz. But there is something about the ocean so huge and powerful and mostly hidden that, for me at any rate, is fearsome and not to be trifled with.

Speaking of trifling with large things, I have noticed of late more and more people who lean to the right politically trying to imply that the numbers of those who have died from Covid are somehow inflated, that the CDC guidelines are letting doctors falsely claim that people who die of things like car crashes or heart attacks are dying of Covid. Usually, this will then veer into the evils of the mass media, how there are empty hospitals in NYC, and so on. I suppose this must be a hard time for people who have supported the current administration. We are so screwed right now, and it feels like a lot of where we are at is due to mismanagement and a lack of preparation in January and February, coupled with a continuing lack of leadership. And we all know it. All of us. It just must be terrible to think you voted for a guy who is so clearly out of his league. So they try to rationalize, to lessen the blow by saying the numbers are inflated, which to me is both sad and awful. I mean, does it help them to think only 10,000 people have died in the USA as opposed to 15,000?

We can and will do better, and we are going to need to find a way to forgive each other for so many things, for ignoring the danger, for not social distancing earlier, for acting like jerks to our spouses and room mates or whomever we are quarantined with.

And that will be healthy. Forgiveness and acceptance are two things that have helped me my entire life. I fail at them often, but whenever I remember those two simple ideas, I am a better, happier, more productive human being. And I love being happy.

OK. Let's go out and forgive, accept, take no bullshit, speak our truths, dance our dances, howl when it feels right, wear masks in public, and figure out what we can do to make it better, for ourselves and each other, for a better world.

Here's a song. It's "Finally Friday" by George Jones.

https://youtu.be/yDiC7dGzT0g