Grateful
Normally, I don't read into my dreams. But lately they've felt extra relevant.
Weekly Three
HEAR: Hang out in a small apartment with these DJs and their friends as they mix a funky, house vinyl set. This one gives off some major Friday vibes.
READ: “Colored Angel Levine” is beautiful flash fiction story by John Edgar Wideman that does a lot with less than a thousand words. I couldn’t find it online, so I snapped a picture of it from Harper’s.
VIEW: Grace and I have really enjoyed Love on the Spectrum on Netflix, which tells the stories of people on the autism spectrum as they embark on an earnest search for a love everlasting. Here’s the trailer for season two.
No. 45: Grateful
This week I’ve been having dreams of people taking from me. Last night it was plucky teen and his band of lost boys who stripped my new bike of all its components while I was enjoying an espresso in a cafe. A gracious patron spotted the perpetrators and told me where they went. I chased, but when I caught up to the teen he revealed a heavy golf club which he was ready to swing at my head like a big league slugger. I ran the other way.
Usually I neglect my dreams or they simply shatter into fragments that float slowly away the moment I awake. But this week’s dreams, these taking dreams, have stuck. My guess? It’s my subconscious pulling a contrarian stunt since, lately, I’ve been feeling grateful for all that I have. My family and friends. My health. An entire world to explore.
In one dream, I’m standing on the sidewalk waiting for the crosswalk. There’s a scrawny white guy near me, skin and bones draped in an all-white sweatsuit. His hair is buzzed. His face is a emaciated. He must be in his forties. There are dark circles under his eyes. His hands are trembling and his head twitches uncontrollably, making a kind of quick sideways nod. Maybe he’s a junkie gone too long without a fix or small-framed man plagued with a disability. Maybe he’s both. Then he gives me a hollow stare and pulls a chrome pistol from his pocket. He keeps it at his hip and aims at my gut. I look into the black hole of the barrel, and I’m afraid.
He wants me to walk with him to a nearby convenience store to get as much money as I can from an ATM machine. I agree. We go. But as we walk I can’t shake the thought that all it would take is one slight pull of his boney finger and I’m dead. One twitch. It’s not even extreme to think he might do it. He could shoot before the money for the hell of it, or after when he has no further use for me. And no amount of coolness, of compliance, of friendliness, of understanding, of empathy will necessarily save me. I’m at the mercy of this man, of all men and women. A desperate man with a loaded pistol, and it’s game over for old Matty Boy. That’s all it would take.
I’m pushing the buttons on the ATM. Select a bank account. Checking. Select an amount. $500. The man looks around to make sure no one’s watching us. Then I surprise myself by making a fast movement for his pistol hand. He drops the gun and I get him in a choke hold. He’s struggling to get free, writhing like a worm against my body, but I’ve got my arms locked around his neck. All his power lies on the ground in the shape of a gun. Now he is nothing. Inadequate. A wiggling runt. To be pitied.
I tell the store clerk to call the police, but while we wait for the cops to arrive, I keep him in my hold. It’s not that I want to hurt him. It’s about control. I won’t risk losing it again. So long as he’s kicking and swinging his arms, so long as he’s gasping for air, so long as this man who threatened to end my life — my entire life — can’t threaten it again, I’m safe and in control. I admit, I’m also pretty pissed.
When the cops finally arrive, I release my hold and the man falls to the tiled floor of the convenience store. I didn’t realized how long I had been holding him or how tightly. The fluorescent light is harsh and flashing but it feels appropriate to this scene of a poor, failed criminal lying meekly on the stained tiles. The weirdest thing about it, though, is that my long hold around his neck has somehow caused him to shrink and shrivel. His characteristics are the same, only now he is the size of a toddler — though his head seems to have shrunk at a slower pace and is oddly oversized for his now tiny body. His skin grey. His eyes bulge and a stream of spit leaks from his mouth. His fingers are curled into claw-like hooks. He is malformed, broken, and curled into the shape of a comma, and I can’t help but feel I’m looking at a lab experiment gone catastrophically wrong.
The cops lean over him and shake their heads.
He is dead.
Do dreams indicate anything about conscious life? My answer is generally no, but this one seemed a response to my happiness with my current lot, the gunman a not-so-subtle reminder that, at any moment, all of it can all be taken away.
And what did I do? I killed the son of a bitch. ♦
Mailbox
Regarding last week's newsletter, Biking, it's so great to see that you’ve rekindled the love for biking again.Group riding is incredibly fun, as you know, and a perfect way to challenge yourself with some friendly competition. I used to ride with a group that met at Peet’s Coffee in Danville.
Wednesday was the “Bakery,” a nice ride down San Ramon Valley boulevard into Sunol, then back around to Las Positas college, then (my favorite portion) a mad-dash up Collier Canyon where the group would hammer their brains out then wait for their dropped fellows at the top.
Saturday was HoP (House of Pain), which was basically an all out road race. There was also HoP medium, which left five minutes after normal HoP. I settled for the medium, as I was just getting into road riding and had heard horror stories of people dying during this madness called HoP.
I’m still not back to biking much, so I can only fantasize about the true grinding you’re getting to do, but I’m genuinely pumped you have a passion for it. Keep it going and one day I’ll be sucking your wheel, waiting to challenge you in a sprint ;)
- Chris
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