stevesunusual…music and more

Well, the year didn’t start as I’d hoped, but started it did, and I got some of what I’d hoped to done, some left undone thanks to ill health and what became of my Epiphany plans. Closer to the first of the year, I chatted with a long lost acquaintance, and with an old friend, but when it came to my little projects or reading my books, less than planned. Volunteer commitments for the group I’m leading always crop up, so some of those needed tending, leaving longer-term ones undone. My shedding of a title from another organization has not been forthcoming, so that threw off my mindset. Some decluttering decisions, a study of sparrows with a buddy of mine, revamping a profile, set aside for now.

There was just not the appropriate air of renewal over the year’s start, however much our calendars and minds try to tell us to make it so. I managed a quiet celebration on the morning of January 7, but that was more a sense of relief from what had happened the day previous. But on the morning of the 9th, still asleep, some magic came to me.

My mind had been in a quiet stir, writing emails to the bird club board in my head, contemplating a friend’s question about “eco-fascism,” which led me to think about environmental justice and corporate fascism, subconscious angst about the DC stuff still being unresolved, the death of Tommy Lasorda, one of the comforting, colorful baseball figures of my youth. Then my ex-gf showed up in a dream for the first time in years. I scribbled this down soon after I woke up:

In a waiting room at a big mall with lots of loud hijinks going on outside this waiting room. Kept forgetting to pull my mask up, wear my mask, but did so some of the time at least. There were a couple of other people I either knew or was at least chatting with a little amid the ridiculousness of seemingly endless waiting. It was all quite a chaotic scene, rich with the more raucous side of mall life. At one point I went to the bathroom and that was a strange scene too. Time and much else didn’t seem to matter.

Anyway, she was there suddenly and we both laughed heartily over an exchange of comments we made, and a bit later she was kind of chatting with a couple of guys in somewhat jocular fashion. I put my right hand to her forearm and said, “I can’t take this anymore. I miss you and wish we were back together” or “think we should be back together.” And I walked away, she following calling after me, “What do you mean? What did you mean by that?” (It gets a little weird to detail after that, but a transmogrification worthy of minor Greek mythology occurred and the discussion continued, hurt but still loving.)

After that it is unclear, I know we exchanged a few more words, me reiterating that we should be together, she not rejecting the idea at least. (More positive than I’d imagined and that it would ever be in real life, unless this world holds more surprises than even I can imagine, but my imagination’s not as exercised as it once was.)

I keep a record of these occurrences, and maybe one happens every other year on average. They have featured this ex, a serious crush, an actor, a singer, a generic someone in a place I’d visited. And “knowing” is the word I describe them with—a warm feeling of love and affection shown in a clever exchange or tender gesture, but not explicitly spoken, like you might see in a wonderful old movie. Although these are not old movies, me viewing a couple of movies I’d missed the first time around that now hold a nostalgia—Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion, Legally Blonde, and the best of the lot, Clueless—maybe these put me in the mood as well for this dream.

A little sad to think how these moments don’t come to me in my waking life; it’s been years since I’ve had these kinds of interactions, that rising of the blood, beating of the heart. Thank goodness for the glimmer though.

Because, otherwise I meet this year with some disappointment at my situation and what continues or transmogrifies into worse in this world. It brings to mind something that came to me in a May dream in 2018. Something with the melody and lyrics of a Smiths song: “I never thought the world could be so sickening, who ever thought the world could be so sickening.”

We’ll see what shakes out as time presses on!