I had a very intense dream of being about 35 and married, to Allison. We were still in love. There was … a dinner, at a casually formal place far beyond my means; Italian maybe, or neo-something fusion. <\/p>\n
I was still very much at home in her circles of art and intellect. <\/p>\n
I was still deeply uncomfortable in the same circles, from the standpoint of easy wealth and the assumptions it brings. <\/p>\n
An old friend of hers, someone my brain invented just for the dream, had got me very high on the best weed, and then entrusted my wife and I with the two most precious things in his life, his Cadillac and his heir, and expected us, me really, since I was driving, in the rain at night, to deliver both these treasures safely to … Winnetka. <\/p>\n
The car was brand new, of course. The child, preternaturally serene and respectful, was about ten. <\/p>\n
I was having a silent and almost invisible panic attack, or bout of paranoia (and that part is no fiction at all), brought on by the combination of top-shelf marijuana, and the Responsibilities, the … expectations of my competence for the job. <\/p>\n
I had pulled the Caddy into a gas station, somewhere in the well-tended suburbs west of the city. I was stripping myself of the big camel-hair car-coat I was improbably wearing. I wasn’t there for gas, but ostensibly for coffee, and really and truly for a moment of marginal stability to clear my swimming head, and produce … results.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Partly, this is my brain digging deeper into older traumas, now that the more recent ones have been … palliated and perhaps nearly cured. <\/p>\n
Partly, it was trying to prepare me for the current non-dreaming mission, where the ten-year old is a cat, and the destination is a trailer park in Denver. <\/p>\n
I still have to pack, and crate her, and get us safely north six hundred miles by, I don’t know, 24 hours from now I suppose. A quarter after two with the same dark heaven above, today and yesterday and tomorrow, inside the dream and outside it too. <\/p>\n
That sky and the Narrative Self are what don’t change, and there’s a chilly comfort in those truths. <\/p>\n
And you\u2019re right to notice that the same pattern repeats elsewhere:<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had a very intense dream of being about 35 and married, to Allison. We were still in love. There was … a dinner, at a casually formal place far beyond my means; Italian maybe, or neo-something fusion. I was still very much at home in her circles of art and intellect. I was still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10547,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545\/revisions\/10547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}