I'm Back

Drinking wine, but less, and still not smoking weed

photo by author

How boring can I get? When I smoked weed, one hit and suddenly I had to write, because ideas began to swirl around in my head, and they delighted me, which led me to the unfortunate conclusion that I was, by association, delightful. But the tissue in my throat, like all my skin, was becoming fragile, and my voice was going away. I always liked my voice, and I liked smoking weed, but one of them had to go.

A few nights ago I had a dream in which I was with a few people I used to hang with, including my pot dealer, and he was pushing a plate of cannabis and other tidbits towards me and urging me to eat them, which I did. The sensation was of confusion occasioned by a cacophony of thoughts and ideas, and while they might have been beautiful, like Macaws are beautiful, the song became harsh and discordant. My mind was shattering, not in an orderly and beautiful way, as in a kaleidoscope, more like random fragments of a broken mirror.

The dream was set at my grandparents’ house, where I spent a good deal of time between being born and turning eight, when we left Tennessee for Arizona. That house was a safe haven from my parents. I loved them both, dearly, but dad was shattered from combat on Guadalcanal and mother was a masochist who goaded him until he exploded. She liked the excitement, having gotten a taste for it from her relationship with her father. He woke her up hitting her bare legs with a switch when she’d been out dancing. It was the secret cause of her masochism, as she was the secret cause of mine.

My grandparents’s house was an escape, and after I lost that safe harbor, literature became my escape. Mother couldn’t follow me there. Dad loved to read but mostly genre fiction. I went into the outer reaches of inner space. And so, in this dream, I was breathing deeply and moving back to this tranquility of childhood, as is appropriate for a man who has turned 78 today. Rather than being excited by the chaos, like mother, I was searching for stability and peace, like my father did after he was shattered. He died peacefully. I had my hand on his heart when it beat its last.

Remembering dreams again is one of the side effects of quitting smoking weed. For example, about the time the Epstein files came out, I dreamed that there was chaos coming from inside a big tent, and someone was warning about danger. A large man broke out from the tent and was terrorizing people. They were running from him. He ran over to where a little girl was with her father, but the father seemed to be allowing the danger because he was afraid. Everyone was concerned for the child but not doing anything about it. They were running away. I wasn’t running away. It was less bravery than the knowledge that I was too old to run very fast and why bother? He was seeing me and I was seeing him. I wasn’t afraid and this seemed to confuse him. As in reality, I saw him for what he is: one of the worst interior decorators in the history of the profession. Everything he touches turns to replica.

It took me a lot of years to see my mother’s masochism and how it dovetailed with my father’s need to control everything, because everything was out of control in his psyche. I have known both roles. I have been shattered and I have shattered other peoples’ dreams, the way old Fred shattered Don John’s dream of an esthetic life, casting him into the furnace of a society where he would never, could never, be more than a fake copy of a sophisticated and intelligent man. It doesn’t matter how rich he is or how much power he accumulates. He appeals only to those who cannot see him because he is hidden inside the big tent. Or he was. He is exposed even to those who look away from what their eyes would see if directed toward reality, instead of toward corporate media, which is like him. No matter how much money billionaires accumulate and how much prestige they try to buy, they will always be trapped in the insecurity of the merchant class.