The monk on a yellow motorcycle.

Again, with the dreams. I’m having such dreams, lately.  A flood. Minus the ark.

I think they’re so vehement and vivid because I’m knuckles-down and knee-deep in rehearsals for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [abridged]. We open next week, and I’m stressed, to be sure. But so long as I can get that stress out in my dreams, and not on the stage, perhaps, perchance, it will be all right. After all, the Bard said,

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Heaven help me indeed, if this is part of my philosophy. Earth, I doubt as I always do, is really ever much help at all.

Part One: Shintoism

I am a Shintoist monk, of some unknown order, but still free of faculty and speech. I am a traveling monk, apparently, as I have a yellow motorcycle, and I take to the highway, eager to stay moving, a shark in asphalt waters. You should know that I’ve never in my life wanted a motorcyle, so why it should be buried in my subconscious is a mystery of great interest. I try very hard to find meaning in my dreams, even if all that means is that I saw a yellow motorcycle earlier in the day, and my brain is just processing it.  I still crave knowing.

Not a Shintoist monk, but isn't music universal?

I have on blue jeans, and an Oxford, royal blue, like the color I thought dolphins were, when I was a child. I make quite a statement in color, though, with the motorcyle. I’m flying down some Interstate. The weather is gorgeous. All I’ve been told, and I don’t know when or where I was told this, is that I’m undertaking a mission trip, but for what purpose: converts, fundraising, education? That part was kept from me.

I’ve been on this particular Interstate now for several hours; I feel that I’m in Kentucky, as if in my secular life – which, in the course of this dream I debate that compared to this new, spiritual one, is perhaps my less sinful life – I’d had reason to know this state. I pass by the National Corvette Museum. Yes, this is Kentucky.

I look to my right, and there are suddenly three childhood friends, all on motorcycles, people I’ve not seen in years or even thought about.  They are revving their delicate motors, they want to race me, and my first instinct is to oblige them, to rev back my own motor, but instead, I wave at them.

I murmur some blessing to them and keep to my course. Because…

I know, up ahead, is a shrine. It’s a popular tourist attraction; the front half of the shrine, but I know that behind the altar, is the place the true believers can go. We are told to approach the steward at the second door and say, Java Est. He will let us into the private room.

I can't believe I found this picture.

I’m headed there, to this shrine. I pull off the ramp, from the Interstate, Exit 27, and see a large, sheer banner hanging down the entire front of the shrine, emblazoned on this banner are two Japanese characters from their kana that I don’t recognize; they are printed in bold red. To the right of me is a gift shop plaza. Something tells me to go there first. I do. I park my yellow motorcycle, and go into this gift shop.

There’s a long, dark, stairwell and from my back pocket, I pull a pink scarf out and drape it over my head, for some reason. I take the steps, one at a time, slowly, and when I emerge at the top of the stairwell, I see that this is no gift shop. It is a library.  A very busy one. I’ve apparently entered on the second floor and approaching the rail, I look over and there are hundreds and hundreds of people milling about below.

A girl, a thin African-American girl is standing in the middle of this throng, choking.

But, no one responds.

I leap over the rail to assist her. I fall perfectly, feet first. A young man, a white man, sees this and records it on his cell phone. He will make a movie of this incident and show it at this library in a matter of weeks. I will return, so long is this dream, to the opening night. But, I will not remember having helped this girl, and I will leave the film, disturbed: Am I being followed? Who else sees me that I don’t see? Am I merely subject matter for other people to turn into art?

Returning to the stairwell, I see another old friend, gaunt and sickly. She informs me that the library is to be shut down by September. What could I do to help? I help by leaving.

But first, I give her the longest embrace.

I get back on my bike, but I see that the weather is turning. I don’t relish the idea of driving in rain, not on a motorcycle. So, I head further into this town. I want to find a coffee shop because I have decided to buy a cup, to try it. One truth that persists from real life into this dream, is my very real dislike of drinking coffee. The smell, though, I adore.

In this coffee shop cum mall, I discover two people, who, at random moments, approach me with their problems: one young man, an African-American man, has a bruise on both of his cheeks. The other, a Hispanic woman, has lacerations on both her wrists. They ask me to heal them.

I suggest he use make-up to cover the bruise. I instruct her to buy gloves, but not white ones, as they would stain.  I order a fried chicken sandwich with two slices of cheese, and then, without waiting for it, I drift into the bookstore attached to the coffee shop.

It is full of the oddest types of books. One section, the one right by the door, is devoted to textiles; there’s a book all about different types of laces, for instance. Each page is made of the lace it is discussing. I know this because I am drawn to it, and must finger it; it is painfully soft. The section next to it, is dedicated to wood samples: I thumb through a book about sisal; each page is twined sisal itself, and I love the feel of it, also. This book, unlike the lace book, has an accompanying story with it: a piece of folklore, entitled Taily-Po. (This is a story my Ya Ya used to tell me when I was little, instilling superstition was a family decree). 

This is a dream in and of itself. Nothing but books. How wonderful.

I thoroughly enjoy my time in the bookstore. I am a haptic monk. I like touching things; that is where healing is kept in the human world. These two books remind me of that.

Then, I feel a chill in the air, and I look down at myself. I’m almost entirely bare. I am not naked, but I am not clothed properly, even my feet are bare, a sin. I feel awkward. I turn, then, there’s a noise at the outer door, the door to the mall, not from the coffee shop. A string of elderly women are entering. They don’t approve of my being without shoes. But they say nothing; instead, they discuss the row of paintings for sale on the left wall, and one remarks, Why, this is only $290. And the rebuttal, if you will, is more a projection than anything else, You should buy it. Hattie, did you hear that? 

I also overhear that her birthday is coming up…

Yet, no one buys the painting.

Part Two: Aunt Lola

To be continued.

Endangered species: Men who snap their fingers.

I saw something rather unusual today.  Actually, it was no less than ten minutes ago.

I was walking, taking a short cut to my very dull office, via the library; it’s close to my office on campus.  And also, I have several several friends who work in the library, so I was anticipating speaking to one or two of them, namely Amanda, who is my best friend.

And so that’s what I did, and I spoke to her for a few minutes, begged her to bring me some lunch (on Mondays and Fridays I get no lunch hour), and after I’d said my piece, which I can’t even remember at the moment because I’d had no breakfast and thus wasn’t able to concentrate entirely on conversations, I took off for the downstairs door on the first floor, and coming straight at me, in a John Deere cap, a tad askew, and somewhat weathered camouflage coveralls, was a clean shaven young man, about 6’2″, bone thin, with a large bookbag (both shoulder straps on)…snapping.

He was snapping.

 

This is what he was doing.

Not to earphoned music, nor to a whistle of his own, just snapping, and not even a “hand jive” kinda snap, where both hands work together to create the “beat,” he was randomly snapping, each hand, each set of fingers, completely independent of the other…and he was smiling.

 

 I’m not so sure he didn’t have pep in his step.

And my first thought, of course, because I’m mean most of the time, was “What is this guy’s problemo?” (and, as you might expect, this would be accompanied by a look of derision, followed by a lagniappe of smirk)…but just as I was about to serve him some social scorn, I stopped.

Our eyes caught for a second, and then, before I could help myself, I smiled at him. I smiled at him and gave him a tiny, ever-so-slight nod of the head, that ever-so-slight nod that quite frankly is the same as saying, “Yes, young man, you’ve done well and deserve to snap and this nod is my way of saying I approve.  And you can’t stop snapping now because I’ve seen you and I know that you are snapping for all of us.” 

And then, I thought, “What am I doing?” but then, you know what… maybe that was the right thing to do because maybe he doesn’t have a problemo, not anymore…maybe he’s already found a solution, or an answer, or that most prized of all places for those weighed down by problemos: sweet, sweet apathy…

I mean, who really cares what you look like, or how you are, or what you do; that you look, or are, or do, at all, is the miracle…besides, who else has a more vested interest in you than You (& your Mama, sometimes, like on Easter Sunday mostly). Heck, if he’s found even one small place in this world where he’s given himself permission to just snap and smile and exist…then, who am I to complain or slander.  

The truth is he’s got some hold on happiness that the rest of us are too timid to take, I’d bet. (Or maybe he’s just “not all there” – if so, then god, would that I could be so lucky).

Thing is, he wasn’t seeking approval; he was being geuine…and though he didn’t need anything from me, by sharing that one genuine moment with me, with everyone he comes across today, with his snapping, he’s getting exactly what he’s putting out there…I mean, I smiled at him, for crying out loud…and it wasn’t really jealousy at his having the wherewithal to snap at will, it was appreciation for his humor, his laissez-faire, his “take on things”…

…and that, if I wanted to, I could be just like him; I’ve got two hands and a whole wide world of things to be grateful for. So why not snap my fingers instead of my attitude? I make too many wrong choices everyday, as it is…so on my way out the downstairs door of the library, I kept my smile front-and-center because I’d seen one of the good guys, you know…a bona fide, down-to-earth, honest-to-goodness good guy. 

And it made me happy.

I guess they haven’t died out, yet, this endangered species. But their numbers are dangerously low.

…though, they might add one more by the end of the day…I’m already grinning just thinking about it.