gently down the stream

The notion of life being a dream and death being an awakening gets no respect, gets taken for granted, somehow has slipped into mainstream consciousness without any real investigation into the matter.

No one takes it seriously; it is seen as a daft idea, mystic mumbo-jumbo.

The last two weeks for me have seemed dream-like, day changing to night, changing in an instant, never knowing where the reality begins and the sleep ends.

Because of this somnambulant state of affairs, I think I've been rather content with my life. This waking dream that I am dropping in and out of is an anesthetic of sorts, chloroform for the spirit.

Comfortably numb...

Maybe it was the rarified air of the Sequoia National Forest this weekend that did it to me. Maybe it was the alcohol, the marijuana... maybe it was the sleeplessness and the stunning view of Hume Lake that we had...

Maybe it was the fire, and its attendant smoke. Maybe it was the laughter, or the night cold, or the outstanding stars piercing the sky like pinholes in a shoebox...

No, I wasn't on LSD, or mushrooms, or E. And relatively speaking, I wasn't that high or drunk either.

When I returned home yesterday, I still couldn't shake the feeling. The drive home saw me in the back seat, lapsing in and out of consciousness, overhearing conversational fragments and piecing together new narratives in my mind.

Eve stopped by with a case of beer and pictures from her recent trip to New York. She didn't stay long, but her arrival was unexpected because I had fallen asleep and was awakened by the phone ringing. To add to the disorientation, she was calling me from her cel phone, as she stood outside my front door. Yet I hadn't heard the doorbell... or maybe I had heard it in a dream and confused it with an air raid siren.

She left as soon as she came, because she had to go to work early. I finished the beers and wondered if it all hadn't been a dream: the whole weekend, filled with travel and partying and relaxation, could've been a figment of my imagination.

But it wasn't. Dotty and her friends were real nice. They took me in as one of their own. They made me feel at home.

My brain is changing, and my interaction with people in the past three months has been remarkable for me. It's as if I am re-discovering the human race and writing a brand new pop mythology to go along with everything I see in front of me and also everything that my racing mind accelerates to catch up to, in a hurry to understand.

Right now I am definitely awake. But I am prone to slip back inside the dream at any moment. Hopefully, I won't be driving or working heavy machinery when it happens...

I will write more later-- I'm sure of it.