The Search

 

NF is a rapper that has things to say.  His nom-de-rap is simply his initials which speaks to a lack of pretense.  Hello Nathan Feuerstein, aka Nate, aka NF.

Elias and I first heard his music while playing basketball at the outside courts of our local middle school in the summer of 2019.  It was “The Search” blasting out of court side speakers.  There were no cuss words and the lyrics were raw and real like they were coming from someone who was searching for some deeper meaning to life.  It was like the antithesis of so-called Gangsta Rap.

Then later that summer as Elias became more and more enamored with him I found out NF was going to be in Columbus at an outdoor venue (pre-pandemic by about 6 months).  It was perfect timing and I bought tickets for us which included having his latest CD mailed to me included in the cost.  Anytime Elias was in the car we would pop it in to the player… "Hey, Nate, how's life?  I don't know, it's alright.  I've been dealin' with some things like every human being and really didn't sleep much last night.”   

We went at least a few hours early to the concert and stood in a line that ended up snaking around a couple of city blocks behind us.  It gave us some time to talk as well as observe humanity in all of its sincerity and silliness around us.  We were standing near a twenty-something red-headed guy with a red beard who was obviously full of himself and going on to others about how people thought he looked like the MMA fighter Connor McGregor.  And then a young struggling artist-type came by walking up and down the line handing out little business cards with a web link to his music trying to get his own rap career kickstarted.  I even had time to snap a photo of the ghostly outline of leaves on the sidewalk that I later submitted for a publication whose theme that issue was about our abuse of the environment (rejected).  

Another interesting phenomenon I watched unfold was the arrival of a man in a yellow reflective vest who had developed a scam of sorts.  He was standing at the entrance of a public parking lot that was nearest the venue and stopping cars that pulled up looking for parking.  He had a wad of cash and was telling people it was five dollars to park there.  Most gladly paid b/c it was so close to the concert, but a few were wise to him and simply drove past him and into the lot.  He made a good amount of money the two hours we stood there and when the concert doors opened he simply walked away with his tidy sum of mendacious earnings.  Not that I begrudged him any of it.

The opening act was “Kyd the Band” which was a young guy sitting at keyboards singing earnest songs that had vaguely Christian themes trying hard to be emotionally edgy.  They weren’t bad, but the crowd was uninterested.  Black balloons (an NF trademark of sorts) suddenly began appearing from somewhere to be bounced around and provide distraction from what was happening on stage.  I took notice when a few songs in the singer picked up a bass guitar and I braced myself for either some wicked slap bass action or melodic jazz stylings a la Jaco.  I was disappointed when neither happened.  He simply used it for repetitive plucking to go along with some pre-recorded tracks he sang over top of.  Thank goodness for the balloons.

When Kyd’s equipment was mercifully taken off the stage by the roadies the crowd began to quiver with excitement.  White translucent sheeting was draped down covering the front of the stage and lights began pulsing from the inside.  The musical intro from “The Search” started things off and the crowd roared in a quick crescendo of sound to acknowledge their love for NF who was soon to appear in disembodied voice.  When the beat drop hit a few minutes in the sheeting fell to the ground revealing NF on stage and emotional pandemonium ensued as everyone began jumping in sync and rapping along with him.

Elias and I were about 30 feet from where NF stood on stage and in the thick of the crowd.  As far as I could tell I was the oldest person in that lower section of the venue nearest the stage by a long shot.  Elias glanced over at me with a beaming smile like “Can you believe this Dad?!” and I felt my own heart light up with joy.

I am thankful for what NF has meant to my son.  He shows that acknowledging your own struggles and the suffering that comes from that is OK and is the starting point for healing.  Just last night we watched a Youtube reaction video from a man who was listening to “Nate” off of that album.  It is a song about NF talking to his six year old self and at some point he tells his younger self “Even good people are great at making bad decisions.”  His raps are full of these little nuggets of insight.  NF has let it be known in his lyrics and interviews that he struggles with depression and anxiety for which he sees a therapist.  What the Youtube reactor so astutely pointed out was that it is like NF has taken the therapist’s notes from their sessions and turned them into raps.  It immediately struck me that this is an excellent way of understanding NF’s songs and what he explores in them.

For example, in the title song he raps “Last year I had a breakdown, thoughts tellin' me I'm lost gettin' too loud, had to see a therapist then I found out, somethin' funny's goin' on up in my house” as he gestures at his head with wiggling fingers.  He has a kind of dark humor that he creatively intersperses through his songs that forces you to smile even when he’s talking about something really heavy.  He lacks the rapping skill of Eminem (who he has been compared to) but what he has to say is much more impactful when it comes to learning what it means to be a human being.  And for that I am grateful.

Dr. Gray has Passed Away

 

A colleague from Washington DC informed me last night that my friend and mentor Dr. Sheila Hafter Gray passed away on Tuesday.

She was my mentor/preceptor/supervisor during the four years I spent as a psychiatry resident at Walter Reed in DC from 2002 to 2006.  We considered her our own personal Yoda due to her age, diminutive size, and piercing intellect.  She was a Harvard grad years before I was even born and an OG analyst who also embraced the biomedical side of psychiatry and had her hand in developing the field through research and teaching.

She was a faithful attendee of our Grand Rounds and regularly participated in the question and answer portion by slowly raising her hand with index finger pointed skyward.  Her voice was quiet and a bit shaky which made it difficult to hear her so a microphone would be quickly placed in her hands despite her mild protestations that she did not need it.  WE needed it.  We wanted to hear what she was going to say because it was sometimes funny, oftentimes profound, and always on point, drawn from her vast experience and study.

Dr. Gray was who I sought out to be my supervisor when doing longterm therapy with patients and when I needed a faculty sponsor for my research project that I would ostensibly use for my senior Grand Rounds presentation.  All of the information and data needed for that presentation did not come together in time for that purpose but she helped guide it to publication when it was eventually finished.  In the meantime she provided feedback for a back up presentation I entitled “Combat Stress Control: Past, Present, and Future” that I pulled together as a precursor to my own deployment to a Combat Stress Control unit in Iraq that faced me upon graduation in just a few short months.

And it was during that deployment to Iraq post-graduation where her mentorship as well as friendship was most appreciated.  I found myself in a situation where my commander was forcing me to be involved in a situation that I found morally suspect.  I felt powerless and complicit with seemingly no support which brought out strange feelings of rage and despair in me.  When it was all said and done I thought of Dr. Gray and I sent her an email laying out the situation.  She immediately responded with her wisdom and insight to help me navigate those feelings in order to find some healthy way forward.

A few years later she was putting together a panel for the American Psychiatric Association’s annual conference being held in Washington, DC that year and invited me to join it as a co-presenter.  It included her and the Army’s top research psychiatrist proposing the possibility of adding a military-specific diagnosis to the DSM.  I was tasked to provide the perspective of the boots-on-the-ground soldier-psychiatrist as it were.  We had lunch as a group after the presentation which led to a kind of tradition of finding each other at subsequent annual conferences to have lunch and catch up.

Several years later I finally found a way to process that experience in Iraq by writing a poem about it, "Hiding from the War".  I’d tried to just write it out as a story a time or two over the years, but what I wanted to convey was getting lost and it was put aside.  When the poem was finished Dr. Gray was the first person I shared it with and I subsequently submitted it to be published in the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library literary journal “So It Goes”.

After that I would hear about Dr. Gray from time to time through Doximity notifications that she had been cited in someone’s research paper.  I did not go to the APA conference in early 2020 due to the pandemic but I thought there would be other opportunities to see her there and meet up for lunch.  She seemed quite elderly even back in 2002 and over the years I fell under the delusion that she was going to live forever.  May her memory be eternal.

***

Red Light Green Light

 

It’s on some of the on-ramps here in Columbus, Ohio.  They are stop and go lights on the top of a pole that alternate red and green to control the flow of traffic onto the highway.

My mind is prone to metaphors and switches to the flow of humans into this world coming in at a steady but staggered pace: red light, green light, red light, green light.

I’d been on the highway for quite some time before my son got his green light and then several years later my daughter got hers.  They are lights in their own right, impossibly shiny.     

And now I’m thinking more about off-ramps, especially with the radio informing me this morning we are having over a thousand deaths a day from this pandemic.

I personally know several who have been forced off the highway at this particular off-ramp and I am sure I will learn of several more before it is all said and done.  

Drive safely and care for your neighbor.

***

No Words

 

Sometimes there are just no words.

You hear the keys clicking.

Letters appear on the screen.

But they are empty promises to understanding.  

They don’t mean what you think they mean.  

The things most necessary to say are swallowed.

Yet the words keep coming to wrestle 

meaning from what seems meaningless.  

***

Get Back

I have to say I’ve been a bit taken aback by the new Beatles documentary “Get Back”. It’s such an intimate look that conveys the feeling of being in the room with the boys joking around and making music together. It covers a few week’s period that they are tasked to come up with enough music to stage a concert and make a live album.

The first few days are painful as the task seems so daunting and their anxieties bubble up in various ways to include George Harrison actually leaving town for a few days with no guarantees he’ll be back. They get a bit short with each other under the pressure, yet music starts to trickle out.

There’s Paul strumming out a rhythm on his bass that sounds like he’s playing a guitar and with some slight of hand the ear suddenly picks up in his mumbles the beginnings of the song “Get Back”. It’s like when you’re a kid at a carnival and the guy walks up to you and pulls a gold coin from behind your ear and you are like “where did that come from?!” At first George and Ringo seem uninterested in Paul’s noodling but as they begin to pick up on what he’s doing with it and the refrain pops into existence they are bobbing their heads and singing along, “get back, get back…”

And Yoko, God bless her misunderstood soul, is quiet and unobtrusive throughout until the moment she is allowed to have some fun with the boys in a manic impromptu jam, smiles all around. She exchanges pleasantries with Linda McCartney and stays out of the way. Where is her meddling? Where is her command of John? It’s all missing in what has become standard Beatles lore; that she broke them up; that she was insufferable.

And speaking of John, he is so much more passive than I thought he’d be. Sure he loosens up as the sessions move on to more productive days and he is a constant jokester, but he is not as overbearing and potentially caustic as I supposed he would be, especially when it comes to forging the new songs with Paul. He is almost demure.   I subsequently learned he was using opiates at the time which could explain this phenomenon in part.

And Anya is watching much of it with me. She once mistook John for me in the video for "Watching the Wheels" when she was about 3 years old. Now that she is 10 she points out that I really did look like John when I was in my 20’s, but adds that his being goofy and jigging around in the documentary shows that I ACT like him as well. It was a surreal moment for us both because it was undeniable. I just wish I had his musical genius as well.

I have not seen the 3rd installment, but another magical moment comes in the 2nd part when their old friend Billy Preston shows up and they rope him into sticking around to play the electric piano so John can be free to go back to guitar and sing. They start grooving with “Don’t Let Me Down” and when Billy slides in with some soulful piano licks Paul’s face pops up from his bass to give Billy a look of surprise and wonder. He realizes in that moment that Billy’s playing just made the song ten times better! Later in conversation with Paul, John is so impressed he wants to make Billy the fifth Beatle and not just a paid session musician.

Another surprising moment is when John is singing a song fragment he has come up with that is listed as “Road to Marrakesh/Child of Nature” in the subtitles, but it is the exact tune of his later song “Jealous Guy” that shows up on a solo album after he has left the Beatles. I loved watching them hash and rehash music in this way as a creative outpouring that later finds a final form that we recognize.

The whole process played out in this documentary reminds me of the process I go through when writing stories or poems where at the git-go the ideas are poorly formed and the page is too white and too empty of words. There is the temptation to give up or become irritable with the process, but if you just continue to plow through and accumulate some things a flow starts to develop and drudgery turns into delight as inspiration strikes in surprising ways. It is a testament to the creativity of the human spirit.



***

Flying Saucer over 315

An honest-to-goodness flying saucer appeared in the sky on my morning commute today, I kid you not.  It was a glorious glowing disk of mysterious intent that both fascinated and terrified at the same time.  A circle of lights were rotating underneath it making a pulsing noise that could be felt if not heard.  It reminded me of a baby’s heart beat when using a doppler, but at about 20 beats per minute instead of 120.

And it chose an amazing morning to show up!  The rising sun was yet to be seen but the clouds were heralding its arrival in grand fashion with yellows, oranges, and pinks at the horizon transitioning into blues and deep purples further up in the sky.  I felt like it knew it looked fabulous in this context and just hovered in a kind of solipsistic splendor.  Look at me!  I do what I please!  Gawk in awe, simple earthlings!

But then it must have gotten bored with so much suspended gravitas and no plans to use the death ray or tractor beam to suck up some unlucky motorist.  I say this because the lights began spinning faster and it suddenly shot vertical out of sight.  By this time I’d slowed to a stop because of the car pile up on the highway that the spectacle had triggered.  Maybe they felt guilty and gave up on their fun.

***

Not-Quite-Human

 

What they 

were building 

was a 

better future 

for those 

who were 

not-quite-human.

***

Palliative Care in the Space Age

 

The simple hydrogen engine was thrumming underneath him pulling him down into the stasis couch like a full-bodied hug.  Or was it pushing him?  A domed screen above him perfectly projected what lay in front of the rocket so that it appeared he was at its tip piercing the sky.  The clouds that hung lazily in the distance had started as white patches but were quickly becoming massive banks of floating white fluff.  With barely a blink and a sigh the rocket punched into it and everything became a soft white glow.  

Much too quickly he came through the other side and the pale blue sky began purpling as stars began to speckle his view.  The music surrounding him had been chosen to match the majesty and finality of his experience.  After some pre-launch deliberation he had picked Sigur Ros as well as the smell of crushed dandelions.  It was a multi-sensory experience and the idea for dandelions had come from his boyhood when all seemed right with the world and he’d plucked them, rubbed them tightly between his thumb and forefinger, and breathed them in deeply leaving a yellow stain on his nose.

These were his final minutes at the cusp of multi-organ failure and the slow infusion of a sleep-inducing formula that was almost imperceptible in its conscious-dampening diffusion.  He felt at peace with himself and with the expanding universe.  It was like a head start to heaven.

***

Franklin Finds a Way

“Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, both now and ever and unto the ages of ages” boomed in his head and woke him from sleep.  A choir of voices immediately followed with “Amen”.  

He sat up in the dark cave-like space and looked to where light was coming in from what appeared to be its entrance.  He found he was wearing a white garment which extended to his ankles and contrasted sharply with his black skin.  He could not remember putting it on.  In fact, he could not remember anything prior to the point of waking up to the chanting and singing that now wafted in with the light.

The floor was bumpy with bits of rocks that poked into his hands and the ceiling above him met at a point like the top of a tent.  He reached out to feel its surface and found it to be semi-smooth and rock-like with a reddish hue. 

The alternating of chanting and singing continued unabated so that he felt he must be dreaming.  It was telling a story that he tried to follow but his mind kept falling back into some in between place.  He laid back down, closed his eyes, and let it wash over him.

***

His eyes were  closed but there was light everywhere.  A pulsing of presence and movement pulled him along like a leaf floating on a sparkling river.  Shapes danced and whirled through the warm glow of his eyelids reminding him of tree branches shadowed and swaying in the wind as the sun winked through them.

With the sound of bells jingling it transformed into the fluttering of an impossibly large eyelash above a swirling circle of blue that suddenly dilated and then burst into numberless smaller eyes.  They surrounded him like coruscating sparks intent on obliterating any shadows and he was afraid.

***

He forced his eyes open and noticed the singing had stopped.  Now it was just the sounds of murmuring which drew him to what looked to be the lip of his small cave to investigate.

What he saw as he crawled towards the opening on hands and knees was a blur of colors expanding in all directions which disoriented him and made him feel slightly nauseous.  He closed his eyes once again to compose himself and breathed in and out slowly three times before attempting to look out again.

This time things came into focus, but oh that they hadn’t!  What he saw were giants moving about below him such that he was seeing them slightly from above which meant he was very high up off the ground in his small cave.  They appeared to be moving slowly and talking to one another in low booming voices he could not understand.

He pulled back slightly in order to not be seen but it quickly became obvious that he was too small for anyone to notice.  Curiosity brought him forward once again to gaze out on what lay before him.  It was a cavernous room with old brick walls dotted with paintings of people.  Hanging before each one was a small golden bowl suspended on chains that held a burning taper floating in oil.  The flickering flames created an effect that gave the images depth and movement like looking through windows, but into another world.

His wonder at what he was seeing suddenly turned into terror when he sensed someone standing between two of the images on the far wall was staring straight at him.  Her eyes fixed him in his spot and he felt he could not move.  Her face tilted left and then right in an inquisitive manner, but her eyes never left his spot.  His paralysis was broken by a queer smile that broke out on her face and a little wave she directed at him high up in his hole.  

He saw that she was different from the other giants.  Her hair was dark and matted in places and her dress ill-fitting, too tight around her ample midriff.  She stood there rocking forward and backward at the hips with her hands just behind them, like she was stretching out her lower back continuously.  No one else seemed to notice her or her peculiar stare and stance.  He got the peculiar feeling that she knew him.

The giants eventually filed out of what he now understood was a church and the woman followed them but not without a final glance and wink in his direction.  He found himself growing sleepy and laid down once again in the back of the cave.

***

His time cycled in this way with services followed by the darkness of sleep.  The first time he awakened again it was nighttime and church was dark except for the candles and oil lamps burning.  There were less people this time but the woman was there again standing in the same spot and staring up at his darkened hole.  No one seemed to think this was strange even as she rocked front and back and sometimes spoke to no one in particular.  

She wore a hat that was too small for her head and large wooden beads around her neck.  A group of people stood in the back singing together which the woman sometimes tried to follow but ended up coming in too soon or singing past the time the others had stopped.  He considered them people now and not giants after an epiphany that had struck him just as the lights had brightened in the church.  They were singing “O Gladsome Light of the holy glory of the Immortal Father in heaven…” when he realized he was the small one, tiny even, maybe the size of an embryo or a peanut.

When the service ended the people lined up to kiss one of the painted persons on a stand in the middle of the church.  The woman came and gave a little bow when it was her turn before kissing it.  She then turned toward the wall and gave him a bow as well.  A teenaged boy behind her snickered.

***

His waking and dreaming times became intertwined and almost indistinguishable as the days passed.  During the services he continued to see his friend swaying and talking to someone or something that others were not seemingly privy to.  He felt most lucid at the third and then the ninth day of his shortened memory due to the prayers that spoke most directly to his dreams.  But on the fortieth day something changed. 

She was dressed all in white and her hair looked like it had been tended to.  Something in her eyes was more intent, focused.  He realized that before her demeanor had been like someone who is pleasantly confused but today there was a clarity in her gaze.  He felt she was seeing him fully for the first time though others continued to ignore her.  The prayers being chanted by the priest mentioned a name that created a resonance in him that grew each time he repeated it, “For You are the Resurrection, the Life, and the Repose of Your servant Franklin, O Christ our God and to You do we send up Glory, as to Your Eternal Father and Your All-Holy, Good, and Life-creating Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages…”

He was startled to find himself suddenly becoming painfully bright as light poured from his crack in the wall and a translucent stairway suddenly shimmered into the air below him.  He stepped out onto it and as he descended he grew in size until he reached the woman across the room and greeted her face to face.

“Rosemary.”

“Franklin, my friend” she said as tears glistened in her eyes.  

They embraced as the priest finished the prayer with “Amen” and Rosemary found she was now hugging herself.  Franklin was no longer there.

***

I Live Here

 

I live here

in the pain and sadness

of triumphs then tragedies,

of broken dreams

and shattered expectations.

I live here

pushing through to the next

perceived bright spot

which may or may not be

what I expected it to be.

I live here

driving to Starbucks

on a rainy Saturday morning

in search of respite or rush 

to keep it together.

I live here 

wishing so much 

did not depend on me

and my feeble efforts

to be strong and true.

I live here, but I live.

***

Oranges & Blues

 

It is a strange and wondrous feeling 

to look out one’s window on a quiet

morning commute and be struck by 

such rich oranges and deep blues so 

unexpectedly while sitting at a stoplight.

***

The Hospital at Night

 

The golden glow 

of the hospital 

at night 

passed on my 

drive home 

to the car’s right.

I imagine seeing

suffering eyes 

without sight

where attempts 

to breathe 

are a losing fight.

***

When I Forget Myself

 

When

I forget myself

she reminds me

who I am,

always.

***

VIRULENCE

 

It denotes something that is particularly deadly

and has recently been tied to a new Covid variant,

but truly it can be tied to a darkening of our hearts

where we justify the unjustifiable and conceive of

the inconceivable: the destruction of our brother.

***

A Lonely Bird (early pandemic poem)

I feel like a lonely bird

perched high on a wire

seeing the world from 

a unique perspective.

Wave at me as you pass by.

***

Galápagos

 

(or “A Spoonful of Sugar”)

Can you say “Galápagos”

with the proper accent?

It is quite rewarding.

You should try it.

It’s almost as much fun 

as saying the alliterative

“blue-footed booby” which 

is sillier though less exotic.

Calling Kurt Vonnegut silly 

would be silly or at 

the very least misguided.

He is definitely funny

but in most cases he is 

serious as a heart attack

and a stopped heart

is no laughing matter.

Unless you’re laughing 

yourself to death and

that death is your ego or

sense of self-importance.

***

See the Sea

To see the sea 

off-spectrum

is to understand

that there is 

so much that 

we do not 

sense or perceive

in this strange life.

***

 

Hearses and Churches

I had a cascade of dreams recently that included the typical themes of being lost, late, or lonely but the one that sticks out the most involved a church.

In the first part of the dream I was at my son’s basketball game but as night fell I ended up falling asleep in a stranger’s car in the parking lot that was shaped like a hearse.  There were others napping there and I was driven several miles away before I woke up and realized what was going on.  I convinced the driver with a good deal of begging to let me out at the next stop.  The back door with its stained-glass window swung outward and I exited onto a country road in my bare feet.

As I was walking down the road trying to get back to my son I noticed a church set back from the road a bit with a wide green lawn.  The two story building was a pale green color with white trim that resembled a doll house more than anything.  The second floor had a recessed balcony at the right corner that contained a large ornamented couch with three children sitting on it all dolled up in finery that matched the building.  I realized it was a kind of decorative flair to advertise the church as lovely and wholesome as opposed to using a sign.

I continued past it but then the thought struck me that it would make a very interesting photo and so I backtracked to center myself on the building.  As I was trying to frame the shot I couldn’t get my phone to cooperate and in the meantime people started to exit a building next door and walk over to the church disrupting the symmetry of the shot.  They were also dressed in old-timey finery and one disapproving woman approached me to discourage me from taking photos.  She let me know I was not welcome there and whatever fine and pleasant things they were sharing there as a community was not something I would ever be privy to.  

Then I wandered back into wakefulness.

***

A Dream House

Halfway through high school we moved into a large old house that utterly captured my imagination.  It had beautiful woodwork throughout, a grand staircase, some stained glass windows, and a massive attic that could have accommodated a number of rooms if so divided.  I say it “captured my imagination” because I’ve had recurring dreams about moving into a large old house and exploring it since that time.

In fact, I had just such a dream last night.  We were moving back to the town I grew up in and found a large old house near the town square.  Like the house mentioned above it had two stories with a large attic.  The porch was wide and long with pillars supporting its roof.  Inside the front door was a massive foyer that was almost three stories tall.  In most dreams like this over the years  it has been my parents buying the house, but in this one it was me and my children exploring it with my parents in tow.

As they explored the house I went around back and found a large yard with huge mature trees and beautiful landscaping that was contiguous with a town park on the one side and a parking lot on the other.  I remember thinking how very cool it was that there was no real separation between the park and my yard which gave the illusion of a magnificent green expanse that was all my own.  While I was taking this all in some movement above me caught my eye and I looked up to discover there was a glass-enclosed bridge connecting the attic to a large building at the back of the property on the alley.  My Dad was stepping into the tunnel-bridge to follow my kids and they were waving for me to come up to see it with them.

The building on the alley turned out to be an old movie theater that had been repurposed and still had evidence of a ticket booth incorporated into the back corner.  The large window had a small round hole at the bottom where the money and tickets would be exchanged and there was a covered walkway that led from the booth along the building to a side entrance.  There were some designs and stylized letters on the brick along the walkway but the paint was faded and pealing so they could no longer be deciphered.  In a point of detail from the dream I noticed that insulating foam had been sprayed into some of the bigger gaps between the bricks that had shifted with age.  

Inside the building were old style architectural elements and a massive main room that used to be the theater proper with towering side walls covered by bookshelves that reached to the full height of the room.  Persian rugs covered the wide floor boards and old-fashioned chairs and sofas with rounded backs and armrests were situated around the room, some facing the stage and others facing each other.

I heard Anya’s voice coming from somewhere in the back and found her in a large tiled bathroom with an old wooden door that opened to the back alleyway.  I swung it open to discover there was a wooden deck with a  large dumpster sitting at the end of it at the corner of the building filled with junk and rainwater.  Anya, Elias, and I walked to the end of the deck where it was even with the top of the dumpster.  I noticed something disturbing floating on the far side of the dumpster amongst the trash.  It appeared to be wrapped in clear plastic which I noticed extended to our side of the dumpster.  Out of curiosity I pushed down on the part closest to me with my foot which resulted in the opposite side coming up out of the water to reveal a pale face.  I realized it was a dead body that had been dumped in the dumpster.  I made a mental note to call the local police to report it while nonchalantly shewing my kids back into the building.  “Nothing to see here, kids.”

No one was harmed in the making of this dream and I wish all but the last part were true.

***

The Missing Nickel

It is strange.  I fell asleep in the library with my head on a book, but when I woke up I did not believe I was awake.  

Before the unplanned nap I had wandered through the library’s used book sale and found a book  that I wanted to buy but I was afraid that I did not have the cash to do so.  I searched my wallet and found some change in a special compartment for that purpose.  At a glance I had everything but pennies and as I pushed my finger through the coins I was happy to find three quarters, two dimes, and two nickels.

I don’t typically carry change or have bills in my wallet.  Everywhere I go these days they take credit card and I accumulate points to pay for our hotels on vacation.  So it was odd to have change, but then I remembered I’d recently found some coins in the kitchen that had sat there for several days with no one claiming them.  I claimed them for the sake of decluttering the countertop but had forgotten I had done so.

I was happy to find them because the sign for the book sale indicated the paperback book I wanted was one dollar.  I could manage that, if my math was correct, with a nickel to spare.  So I put the correct change on the top of the book and walked to a study carrel to sit and read a different book that I’d checked out earlier in the week (The Land Across by Gene Wolfe if you must know).  

I laid the used book with the change balanced on top of it on the carrel desktop and started reading my library book after taking a seat.  It is a strange book where the man travels to a land that is somehow off the grid and things are not as they seem, both literally and figuratively.  A chapter into it I became exceedingly somnolent and almost involuntarily laid my head on the book and fell asleep.

I did not dream per se, but I could hear voices coming from different parts of the large open building and I felt kind of floaty.  It was not unlike the experience of reading PIRANESI by Susanna Clarke.

When I awoke I was surprised to find I was in the library.  I stretched out my arms, rolled my neck in a circle, and curved my back to unkink myself and buy some time to reorient.  When I was in college I would oftentimes take a nap in the mid to late afternoon much like this but there was a price to pay.  If I slept more than a few minutes, say one hour or more, for the next few hours and sometimes for the rest of the day I would feel there was something fundamentally different about the world I had awakened to.  My frame of reference would have shifted just enough to feel like I was living and breathing in the 3^rd person (“he walked across the quad”) and not the typical 1^st person (“I walked across the quad”).  It’s like that long midday nap had somehow bumped me into a dissociative state and the dreaming world was reluctant to release me.

I looked at the change on top of the book and counted it.  There were the three quarters and two dimes but no nickel!  I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.  I looked all around the study carrel and on the floor.  I checked my lap, the chair, and even the opening of my bag in case it had somehow fallen in there while I slept.  Surely no one would have bothered to reach over my sleeping form to snag one solitary nickel.

I suddenly felt like I was in that dissociative state from my younger years.  I was pretty darn sure I was awake, but how to explain the uncanny disappearance of the coin?  Fortunately I had that extra nickel in my wallet and I was able to buy the book which was Gregory Maguire’s “WICKED”.  As I shuffled to the library exit in a state of dreamy wakefulness my thumb felt a slight bulge under the book cover.  As it turns out the center of the cover of the book has a large hole in it framing an image of the Wicked Witch of the West which lies on the page underneath the cover.  The nickel had simply slid under the lip of that hole.  

This confirmed to me that I was not in fact still dreaming and could go on with my life in the usual manner without fear of a dinosaur crushing my car or discovering I was only in my underwear in the middle of the parking lot.  Life’s little consolations, I suppose.