Analog by Night

I just woke up. It’s 4am. I just woke up from one of the most beautiful and tender dreams I’ve had in some time. I was the temporary caretaker of a very little girl. She must have been about five.

I was in Las Vegas with co-workers, and friends I suppose. I was ill, sniffling and coughing , but the others were having a great time. We had all gone to a strange part of town away from our work there, to a very large and labyrinthine casino. Nearly all of them are this way, so this specific place was nothing special. I was soon separated from them, as a usually am. I went to one bar and purchased some DayQuil for my symptoms. A young lady at the bar next to me ordered any even larger bottle. We took our harsh shots together, and I left that bar. I think I was concerned about carrying it, so I stored it with my some spare clothes in a bag that I locked up somewhere near the entrance. I wonder if that was my luggage?

The place had high ceilings, was dark, carpeted for miles, soft fabrics, wood and glass surfaces, dim and dulling LCD displays and tons of old, musty, decrepit, smoky people wandering like coins rolled across the floor.

I too wandered from place to place worried about losing my way, losing my coworkers, and missing what was an approaching departure time at some airport away from here.

I entered another chamber and approached another bar. I saw members of my party through the crowd, goofing and chatting with each other. Seems like the group actually had time for more drinks. So I ordered a Presbyterian. I love the drink although bartenders tend to not know how to make. So this young blond bartender, surely the archetype of Angela from the Hideout, or Oliver’s Twist (two local Seattle lounges), made me an “Amaretto Godsloe”  I remember watching her make it. It was like an ice cold Pepsi in a brandy snifter, with a straw. Here’s the thing though, if the glass was upright and still you  could sip it like a Pepsi, but the moment you shook or tilted the glass it would sort of congeal into a gelatinous solid. It became slow. You could rotate the glass counterclockwise in a loop and it would not spill if completely upside down because of the volume of drink and the narrowed lip of the brandy snifter.

Snifter

So I’m walking away with my drink, which If I remember correctly was $17 dollars, and I think I really began to worry more about missing my flight. So I started searching for my group again. That ultimately led me outside where it was raining a little bit. I decided to just meditate on what was going on and soon people are FLOODING out of the building and yelling.

Screaming and flooding out. Ushers are yelling at people to get out and run. and get down and such. some people are just running, many are hitting the deck and covering their heads. Droves and droves of people are coming out. I’m half expecting the building to explode, or to hear gunfire, but I never do.  The sky is sort of dusky, sort of post rain.  We’re exiting this massive wooden swoopy building into the surrounding grassy hillsides. At this time the building is beginning to look like a complex of seventies era churches with great smoothly curved spires, arches, walk ways. It was like a modernly architected Big Top tent.

Let me tell you, a revival was about to be under way.

For the first time, in this panic I was where I was supposed to be. I was outside, with the others, and in this emergency I was relieved of my worry about missing my flight.

The hillsides were filling up with people and it was beginning to look like a concert. with rows of fetal, or ducked, or flat out, sitting, standing or cowering people all braced for the explosion.

Then there was a bit of quiet as the last of the people seemed to exit. This is where the dream becomes very strange.

The ushers, the people who worked there, the ones that got us out of the building began donning white robes. Yes, like Evangelists. and it turns out that certain parts of the hills had these chest-of-drawers sized altars that came up out of the ground. The were speaking to people somewhat, and lighting these large white sparklers that seemed built in to the altars.

Oh shit, our casino staff is actually a crazy suicidal religious cult, and they may kill all of us. They lit these sparklers and in turn lit themselves on fire by allowing the sparklers to touch the robes. Soon they were falling into the crowds of people on fire and screaming. Of course that’s when the crowd went ape-shit and scattered.

As that chaos shortly faded, people began looking for each other, for their lost parties, friends, etc. I immediately meet this little girl.

I walked up to her and reached down to say to her, “we’re going to find your mommy.” We exchanged names, shook hands and I picked her up to my waist to carry her.

Now I am a man freed of my worry about myself, because I have purpose. I have the purpose of protecting another person. Of helping another person find her way again.

We talked as I carried her. I was looking for my iPhone, she was looking for someone too and crying a little. I remember that a little bit of chaos erupted again, but I can’t remember why, but I remember us getting down on the ground, and partially shielding her little frame against me. We were face down in the grass.

I remember that she didn’t know where her mom was, but her dad was at work, and she had a phone number she knew. So we eventually went back INSIDE the church/mall/casino complex.

I guess it went on with business as usual because there were still staff? Maybe they just purged the weirdos? I don’t know. It was a dream so who cares.  I remember taking her to a little mall shop and buying a new iPhone. It was something like $350 dollars? But hey I was back in contact with the world.

By now my little girl and I were becoming close friends. I had to get her to someone though, someone who could care for her permanently, her parents. So we left together. I took her to my car through a very warm downpour, and out into the streets of the city. We drove to her father’s place, but since he was at work, we just went inside.

We were watching cartoons, and she was becoming herself again after than trauma, when the dream ended.

I awoke to Jenny Lewis singing,

“ready to go
ready to go
i’m ready to go

these are times that can’t be weathered and
we have never been back there since then”

It is dark outside, and so this moment is captured privately for me. It is a chapter in my life that I wish I remembered more of. But it is something that happened to me, in the same way that you are. Perhaps more.

Even if the illusion of love was from a dream, I still feel loved. I had a purpose; I was her protector. I was her man for a while, and I was not lost.

Today I went to the gym again. This is a good sign. It’s like the first bird poop of spring. On one hand I was up at 5am getting ready to kick my own ass against some mostly stationary metal objects, to be reminded by everything in the room how weak and flabby I am.  However I was there, and I did 100% of my weight training workout and about 60% of by aerobic workout. That’s ok, I’ll pick that up as the week goes on.

It took me at least three major tries to quit smoking over 13years, hopefully it takes less than a year to making exercise and saving a regular part of my life. I’ve never done either of any measure between the ages of 10 and 31.  I’m not extraordinary in that regard. Perhaps the only thing extraordinary is that after 21 years of moderate success doing neither, I would actually increase my diligence in an attempt to get more out of my life.

I don’t think the gym is going to be it though, I think I need to do something interesting with it. At one point fighting on the mat was the right thing. Now I think my bones my be a bit old for that. Yes at 31 I do think that. Maybe I’m a big pussy, but I guess I need to find that out for myself. I’m not going to be pushed into anything that doesn’t interest me.  I’m also thinking about rock climbing. Skiing, snowboarding, running and cycling no thanks.

more later.

I’m sorry if your generation doesn’t have anybody like Carlton Banks. Before mine there was Maynard Krebs, whom I get a little bit, and Carol Burnett, whom I get, and before that Jack Benny, whom I LOVE (of late.)

But my generation had Carlton Banks, among others. Except that I was just a tad too old for him, and wasn’t really into it then, but looking back it’s kinda funny. I mean, other kids were watching a lot of Fresh Prince, but I wasn’t. The problem was Will Smith. I had been into RUN DMC LONG before Will Smith and so his attempt to cash in on his goofy-ass rap style, with a cappuccino sitcom was embarrassing.

I was watching Different Strokes, and Jeopardy, Cheers, Mash, Three’s Company. See media in KY is almost always about 5-10 years behind. I watched Three’s Company a lot. Perhaps my relationships with women can be summarized nicely by Three’s Company. Take that where you want.

Here’s the thing. I saw this clip of Carlton Banks today (the one linked to above) and thought, “Oh yeah I remember that; vaguely, and it’s funny.” Does that make it part of me? Can I claim that? I don’t think so. I mean I’d love to, I’d love to be able to say how hilarious it was then and how I tried to do the dance, but I didn’t.  

The closest I ever came to ridiculous dances is the surely one of the greater humiliations in my history. I will take it out of the box for you.

I guess my sister saw me laughing at Martin Short’s character Ed Grimley one day and loved it, or laughed at it.  Of course I must have been about 10, and was probably working kinda hard, or harder than usual, to win some local approval, so I did the dance.

Sorry about that last link, it was the first one I found that actually had the dance in it.  

I guess it became pretty popular with locals, so somehow my family and I agreed that I should be Ed Grimley for my first middle school dance. It was a halloween themed dance and I needed a costume.

So I got there and realized that, because I was dressed up like an ironically goofy character, fucking nobody got it.

“Spencer you look like a nerd. Are you a nerd?”

“No. It’s Ed Grimley! You know, ‘don’t be mental’?”

“Who? What?”

“Ed Grim- ugh. Yes, I’m a nerd…”

At least I wasn’t The Raisin. My friend RP dressed up like a California Raisin and crapped himself. Like thirty minutes into the whole thing, guy gets the trots or something, and can’t get the costume off. Of course nobody is able to help him out of it and, well, he crapped himself.  I just remember him coming up to me, preceded by that smell, and him telling me what happened.

Here I was with my pants hiked up to my tits, suspenders over a green and black checked flannel shirt, with my heavily jelled hair, pulled up into a HIGH point at the front of my hairline. White socks and penny loafers. But fuck, that poor guy was trapped in a bad of shit painted like a character from a commercial for the California Raisin Advisory Board for most of the night. His pain easily dwarfed mine.

 If I can find the picture of me as Ed Grimley I will post it. Yes, I still know the dance. No, I will not do it for you. I also do not know what happened to RP. All I can say is that I hope he is getting laid 5 days a week.