6: Dreams

The only good dreams I ever had were about flying.  On second thought, that probably just means those are the only good dreams I can remember. Scary dreams stick with you better, I think.  There's more of an evolutionary advantage to keep those things which are dangerous and that frighten you close to the surface of your mind. We'll get to nightmares later.

They, the flying dreams, almost always began on a familiar playground at the top of a familiar slide.  I knew what would happen when I went down the slide, and even though I never thought twice about doing it, I still felt fear.  I'd be scared, and then I'd slide.  The slides in my dream all, apparently, had invisible boosting ramps that turned you sharply upwards at the very end of your ride.  I'd shoot up into the air and immediately assume I would fall even though I seemed to be propelled upwards and forwards in a controlled parabolic arch.

Maybe then my flying was more like a well done ramp stunt. Once I decided on a safe place to land I could suddenly sense the arch taking shape. If I took off from the blue slide at school and thought about the pool in the back yard of my Aunt Katy's house, it would just so happen to be exactly where I was headed.  I'd begin my descent through the sky and, even though I was in reality lying in bed, I'd feel the G-forces press my insides up against my Adams apple. Down I'd fall through the sky, beginning to recognize streets and intersections near Aunt Katy's house until I saw her brown tiled roof with the olive tree in the front yard and the light blue pool in the back.

I never got to land in my dreams. Never the satisfaction of a splash to complete my journey, just sudden darkness and the strange softness of a warm comforter when I was expecting the bracing chill of chlorinated water.  Aunt Katy moved out of that house shortly after she married my moms brother.  Their new house doesn't have a pool or an olive tree. It does have a small rock climbing wall on the side of the detached garage. Rock climbing walls don't make very good landing spots. I don't have dreams about flying anymore anyway, so I don't mind. Now I wonder if I no longer dream of flying because I'm too big for slides, or because if I did go up, I'm not sure where I would be able to come down.  I'd probably spend the whole time ascending through the atmosphere trying to think of a place to land until I put myself into orbit with indecision.  Maybe I just can't remember the last flying dream I had where I end up a satellite drifting around in the exosphere. Maybe I'm still there.

Briefly, on nightmares: The one nightmare I can best recall ended with our Disney Jungle Cruise boat running aground near a grass hut in which waited a malevolent swamp monster with his red 1974 Chevy Nova, hungering for our babies. No need for further analysis; it’s pretty self explanatory.

The hyper timely fifth post of this; the untitled web log of one James Hussey.

  

    The one positive thing about ALS (which I knew only as Lou Gehrigs disease until recently) is that although it's not a club anyone wants to be in (or one that anyone wants anyone to be in for that matter) once you are a member you are in good company. The aforementioned Lou Gehrig, David Niven, Stephen Hawking, Shostakovich, Catfish Hunter, Lead Belly and of course, Jon Stone, all known more for their accomplishments as human beings in their lives and professional fields than sufferers of some cruel disease. "Who's Jon Stone?", you stay. "While the parts are rather common and sound familiar the name as a whole is unknown to me".  It was for me as well until rather recently. He was a writer, producer and director with The Children's Television Workshop and, among a myriad of other accomplishments, is credited as a major part in the creation of Cookie Monster.  That's right, Internet, without him you would most likely have to use adjectives to describe your desire for food. Most significantly to me, and I imagine to most people my age and older who enjoyed Sesame street from the '70s through the '90s, he was the author of "The Monster At The End Of This Book". A true masterpiece of childrens literature.  I have much respect for the man and much love for his work.  Oddly enough, though, not the most important person in my life who both lives/lived with ALS and learned me important life lessons using primarily the medium of puppetry. (Is puppetry a medium? I smell a sixth pooo-oost).

       I'm having a hard time knowing how to continue. It may get a little bullet point facty from this point. It's just I know what points I want to make and I don't want to get too personal feely about it.

      Mrs. V is an excellent mentor. Puppetry is 1% talent, 1% creativity and 98% endurance. Endurance needs to be learned. It's a mind over matter thing. "Pain don't hurt", if you will. Whenever I'm too exhausted to go on, physically or mentally, I remember holding my hand above my head for half an hour at a time working my lower thumb like a hinge on display at IKEA. It hurt. I perspired. I hate perspiring. But none of it is stronger than my Will, thanks in large part to Mrs. V.  I don't see her as often as I used to. It's hard seeing a strong person lose any bit of control. Something should be done about it.

     What's that?  You aren't qualified or learn-ed enough to cure diseases?  Well I have good news. Other people are, and luckily for the rest of humanity, we have the opportunity to support those few able to put in the work.  They just need some help.

    I wrote this now because I noticed the ice bucket thing is losing steam.  It did its job. It brought awareness. Good for it. We don't have to pull off You-Tubeable stunts everytime we wanna do something nice for other people. We just have to do it. And while you're doing something nice for someone else, why not do a little something for yourself.

     I don't expect it to go anywhere but I, James Ernest Hussey, do on this day officially christen...

    The ELO Ice Coffee Challenge.

     Give if you can, and you can.  Everyone has at least one extra buck, and if everyone that has that buck gave that buck to a good cause then...good causes would...have more bucks, I guess.  That one kinda got away from me.  Anyway, why don't we all give of ourselves to those in need, or at least to those who can better help those in need, and why not enjoy a frosty caffeinated beverage and some symphonic prog-art rock from across the pond while we do.

     I suggest an iced mocha and 1977s Out of the Blue.  

     Im doing it for Mrs. V.

   PS.  We don't have to stop at ALS. Charity is something you can practice everyday. There are countless causes people can get behind. It doesn't have to be just about giving money either. Put an extra granola bar in your lunch every day for the homeless girl you try to avoid eye contact with on the off-ramp on your way to work.  It's a more significant act than it looks on the surface and will feed more than just her belly.

   

    Unfortunately, in this world everything costs, but I promise you this; when you use your means to help another human being in need, your wallet will never feel as light as your heart.  It's always worht it.

(pps. i apologize for my grammar and punctuation. i prefer to write how i talk and i have have no clue how to punctuate my speech patterns. also, yes i have completely stopped trying.  im sick of hitting the shift key. i figure if my point gets across, what does the rest matter)

I really do appologize for this; my fourth web log post.

I saw a frozen chicken in the freezer section of a grocery store once. The label on this chicken stated in bold yellow letters directly below the brand name that “giblets may be missing”. That’s fun; it’s like a game. “Yea! You got the giblets! You...win?”

Are people buying this and not caring about it’s contents? I figure before you buy some poultry with or sans giblets, you either have or do not have plans for said giblets. Are people grabbing it in the store and standing there for a second, saying a little prayer for giblets in their head before they commit to their purchase and place it in their cart?

And why doesn’t the company who process the chickens know what’s in them? “Well, we have this very interesting piece of equipment right here. This is our Randomized Chicken Gutting Machine. It will, at random intervals, reach down to our conveyor belt and yank the innards out of any poultry that happens to be passing by. We used to just have the chickens rolling down this conveyor belt at high speeds and our blindfolded workers would gut any chickens that they could grab. But no more! Now we have this glorious marvel of the machine age. I’nt technology grand."

They should also sell bags of giblets that say, “May be surrounded by a complete chicken”. Then you could buy one of each and try to reunite a chicken carcass with it’s guts. You could match the serial numbers or something.

That is all.

(The Relatively Short) Post The Third In Which I Feel I Commit Creative and Intellectual Seppuku Only to unleash a Flock of Butterflies

During my breaks at work the other day I decided to just bite the bullet and write something even though I had no inspiration. I couldn’t help but think about how difficult writing is and decided to write about that. I decided it wouldn't do me any good sitting in my notebook so I post it here now for all to see... Be gentle with it...


I can’t even get started. I’m sitting here, nervously twitching, trying to come up with a way to start this bit about how difficult and scary writing can be. The irony, I’m sure, would not be lost on anyone. I’m having a lot of trouble with this very sentence I find myself currently writing. My forearm is tense and sore as if I’ve been working out all morning. My fingers are gripping the pen so hard that my fingertips are growing numb and I can feel calluses begin to form. Worst of all there is a voice in my head telling me...no actually...screaming at me that this literary and creative labor is all in vain and that people will only care about it enough to harshly judge me and I have to strain and stretch my internal ears to try to hear the meek voice in the back of my brain telling my hand what to write. That last sentence took nearly 15 minutes to get down on paper.

It’s no longer plausible to think of this as something I want to do. I don’t want to be a writer anymore. I need to be a writer.

Just getting a clear thought or idea down on paper can sometimes feel like a Herculean feat. you have to fight off your inner demons with one hand while trying to mine parts the best of yourself and hope scraps of it will translate onto the page. I have to imagine that most writers have this self-doubt. Most probably feel better equipped for battling demons than I. Right now it feels like I’m trying to fend off legions of the unholy with a plastic spork. Perhaps with more experience comes more efficient and deadly weapons. Maybe we are all stuck with just the same weapon and I can only ever hope to become Sporkmaster (there can be only one). Perhaps some people don’t have that angry doubtful voice at all. It seems as if I have far to many questions. (At this point in my writing I have about 5 lines full of half started sentences and partial thoughts, all of which I scored through with my big black pen).
...and there’s that doubt again...

Does it ever get easier to spill your guts and expose yourself to an audience? It seems like it would be absolutely terrifying every time. Is the trick to become immune to judgment or accepting of it? Maybe a bit of both; I don’t know. It’s probably like everything else in life. You just have to do it. You have to grit your teeth and swallow your fear and put yourself out there.

I feel like I need to say more but I have no idea what to write. I had other plans for this entry but I couldn’t start so I wrote about how I couldn’t start. What a strange kind of therapy this has been.

Can I call myself a writer yet?

The Antipenultimate Stream of Conscienceness Edition of This Web-Log

May I point out that salt only affects open wounds. As horrible as 9-11 was, It's been almost 9 years. How long are we gonna root our finger around in this "wound" before we leave it be and allow it to scab over and BUILD SOMETHING THERE!

And isn't there a Mosque IN The Pentagon? Weren't there probably places for Islamic people to pray IN the hospitals that 9-11 victims were taken to? How sensitive are we suppose to be?

The other day I heard someone compare it to putting a Neo-Nazi sign outside a Holocaust Memorial. I didn’t see who it was because I wasn’t looking at the TV because I DETEST the news, but what the (expletive deleted) is THAT supposed to mean? He is saying that that Nazis are to the Holocaust what terrorists are to 9-11, and while that IS true he also in that statement implies that ALL Muslims are terrorists. You know in the same way ALL Germans are Nazis... and ALL Catholic Priests are pedophiles and All Irish people are drunks and All black people are criminals and ALL mexicans are lazy. I’m wondering if the people hosting the show he was on laughed him out of the studio. Probably not because it was probably on some cable news network that panders to a certain kind of people (you know, like ALL cable news networks do because they are just a business selling a product to a demographic).

Let me set the scene for my tale of political intrigue. I was in a break-room at a Ralphs grocery store I have never been to before (part of my job involves going to different Ralphs stores in Southern California and listen to my iPod or something like that). The man on the TV was talking about the "Ground Zero Mosque" and a Ralphs employee at the back of the room said something to the effect of, "kind of ironic that the terrorists blow the buildings up and then they let them build their temple right by where they did that". In retrospect, I should have just corrected her miss-use of the word "irony" but instead I said, "But, not all Muslims are terrorists." To which she replied in an angry and befuddled way AND I QUOTE,"Guh! Pft! Yes they are!" I remained quiet thereafter, but she didn't. She went on to talk about how Obama is O.K. with it because he is a Muslim and a non-citizen to which another Ralphs employee said AND I QUOTE ONCE MORE, "Well, yeah. I know all that. But what about my completely asinine comment" or something to that effect. I then exited the break-room as the woman began the fire and brimstone portion of her speech.

I kept thinking throughout the day about how crazy that lady was and then on the way home I thought of something. I realized that she thought I was just as crazy as I believed her to be. Maybe even more so.

We can't both be crazy because we can't both be right. There is always the possibility that we are both wrong and the truth lies, as it so often does, on some middle ground, but not in this case I don't think. But what do I know? What does ANYBODY know? We are all just somebody's demographic after all and they tell us what they think we should know so we will buy their books and door hangers and such.

People need to remember that whatever you believe in, there is someone who believes the polar opposite just as firmly as you do and before you can have a real discussion about something important with them you HAVE to take their point of view as seriously as they do or the conversation will deteriorate into personal attacks. If you debate someone by upholding your viewpoint and simply poo-pooing your opponents, all you have accomplished is making one side look like a jerk and the other look like they are being picked on. In the end you have done nothing to convince anyone of anything. You have only preached to the choir, which I believe is a metaphor for redundant behavior.

WOW, this entry was disjointed! I guess this is how my brain works. Sorry.

Premier untitled post

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about the movie INCEPTION. He started off by saying he thought it was this years HANGOVER because he thought it was overrated. This comment reminded me that I hate critics and also that I hate the word OVERRATED, or at least when it is used as a criticism on a movie or any other form of media for that matter. My problem is that it is more of a criticism of the people who like the film and not a criticism of the film itself. Saying a movie is overrated is actually saying that the people who like the movie like it to much. Doesn’t make any sense to me.

Anywhatsit... on a COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE...

Does anyone remember what was going on in the news before the oil disaster? In a few months are we going to be saying, “ Does anyone remember what was going on in the news before the gay marriage ban overturned again thing?” I know people have there strong opinions on this matter but there really are more important and DIRE things in need of our attention. I was in New Orleans when I was a very young boy and not old enough to appreciate it. I am very much hoping to go back again without need of a bio-hazard mask and fly fishing waders.

My problem isn’t with pro or anti gay marriage people or with the Gulf being overshadowed by it, my problem is with hypocrisy. If you are really worried about the “sanctity of marriage” first you should outlaw divorce, you know, that thing that the majority of marriages end in! That thing that daily spits on the supposed sanctity of marriage! And what about Las Vegas? In Las Vegas getting married is tantamount to ordering a Whopper and Fries from the comfort of your automobile! THEN you can worry about stopping certain people from entering in to that statistically almost certainly doomed legal contract called marriage. I don’t see how gay people getting married affects me at all. I don’t see how much of anything affects my marriage except for the choices my wife and I make within that marriage.

To paraphrase Adam Carolla, think 20 or 30 years into the future and see if there is gay marriage or not. You know that there will be, so stop wasting your time now. We could have skipped over the black civil rights movement in the earlier part of the century if everyone did that about black equality. It’s like trying to beat back the tide with a Whiffle Bat; it doesn’t do much of anything and your gonna look pretty silly out there all by your lonesome getting your Dockers wet.

I guess all I’m trying to say is, people, stop screaming about same sex unions destroying the sanctity of marriage because it isn’t a legitimate claim. Let the homosexuals get married, and then when, or if, the gay divorce rate climbs higher than the straight divorce rate in this country, start complaining. There are more important things to spend your energy on right now.


But what I’m REALLY trying to say is, go see INCEPTION...I thought it was very good.