éist

A dream. Intense and fun. I was at a theatrical production...a new musical that no one had yet seen. The theatre was somewhat like Portland Center Stage at The Armory - but as dreams will be dreams...not exactly.

The show was audience participatory. Typically, I hate that. I mean...I REALLY hate that. But in this dream, the audience and performers became one unit...a blend of energies contributing to a ritual of levity. And I surrendered.

I was seated in the second row...and this worried me, because I always choose an aisle seat. I can't stand feeling trapped. And I wondered how the box office had made such a mistake in putting me in such an uncomfortable spot. But I surrendered.

And then suddenly, it was my turn to participate in the show. An actor came up to me with a large microphone and cued me and a few others to start singing the four notes in a descending minor scale...a classic bass jazz line. We were to sing it as two half notes, then a dotted quarter, with the last note as an eighth note - with two quarter rests completing the second measure...a classic jazz rhythm.

The words to our song were letters. We were to sing: E....I....S...T. Over and over.

I sang loud and everyone around me got into it. The man to my left put his arm around me in camaraderie, and I added an ascending harmony. This made the actor holding the mic giggle. He liked our improvised duet.

The performers were all in bright costumes from various time periods, stretching centuries. And it became obvious that anything could happen at any time and that the show could end immediately or go on infinitely and none of that mattered, for all we wanted to do was keep singing: E....I....S...T.

And then the alarm went off. 5:30am. Time to rise.

As I went about my morning ritual today, I have yet to erase the musical pattern from my head. E....I....S...T has been on a loop. I decided to contemplate the letters. Why those? I mean, it made sense from a singing perspective: two vowels as the long notes and a sharp T as the stinging eighth note. Often a pragmatist, I figured my subconscious simply applied a logical singing pattern. But it bugged me, and I started looking up the letters.

Nope, nope, scroll, scroll, google, google...

And then I came upon something most curious. A Gaelic word: éist. It means: to listen. On its own it can also be used as a command. In spelling it over and over, we were basically singing in Gaelic: Listen, Listen, Listen...over and over.

I also considered an anagram - and I immediately went to the word: ties. There has been much family turmoil over the past year, and I wondered if it might be in reference to the need to "rebuild" or perhaps "cut".

And now, I think maybe my jazzy bass line chant could mean both. In essence: Listen and consider your ties.

And now I have to decide what to do with that.

OR...it could just be...you know...a dream.

Oh, Luna...

I know this may create many an eye roll. But something about the NASA bombing of the moon on Friday makes me sad... And I realized it's because I feel like we are injuring an actual being.

I know that the moon is the big, dead rock. And perhaps studying a giant cloud of dust for ice particles is somehow relevant to our scientific progress. But on some primal level, I sense that we're slapping our heavenly beauty in the face...stabbing her...scarring her further. And as silly as it is...as irrational and dare I say even "sappy" as it is - it is genuinely bothering me. It fills me with a dense melancholy, but not a personal one. It's the type of grayness that infects my state when a global tragedy occurs...when the connective tissue of humanity is violated.

On Friday, I will light a candle for Luna, and I will apologize to her...

Mindstorm

There is a storm in my head this fall - more than usual. I have not blogged in weeks, because I cannot seem to find my focus (that, and I have been recovering from piggy flu) - there is so much on my mind.

This morning, I awoke once again to my body tensed up with virtually all my muscles contracted and my jaw clenched. Every move I made for the first two hours of being awake was filled with pain, and the headache will likely linger for the remainder of the day.

Why? I cannot seem to apply the filters I once could. When I was younger, I was able to use a sort of tunnel vision to operate through my days...I had clear goals and I raced straight ahead -rarely wavering - to reach them. Of course, in this process, I was often failing as a friend, lover, family member - and I was certainly not bettering myself intellectually or spiritually. But I tell ya - life felt better than it does now. As I get older and my awareness expands with regard to the world around me - and the world within me - I wonder: will I go bat-shit mad one day from this?

In just the past half hour I have found myself preoccupied with the following:

my family isn't talking and that breaks my heart, Obama needs to pull us out of Afghanistan but he won't, I want to write musicals again but how will I ever find the time, I have insurance now but how will I find a doctor I can trust and who will accept my holistic beliefs on health, should we force people out of the homosexual closet, why am I addicted to carbs, why am I tired all the time, is my partner going to burn out from working so hard, why did my crippling stage fright take hold just as my singing voice is reaching its peak, I really want to adapt this novel into a play but will the author give me the time of day, taxes are too high for self employed people and I see no way out of this hole, gay couples should all stand up and not pay any taxes until they have equal marriage rights, I love the movie There Will Be Blood, why do I love wearing cologne, my hair gets grayer all the time, Ozzy Osbourne had an HIV+ result blamed not on HIV but on his drug use which defies all current testing paradigms and validates dissident theories, I want a kitten so badly but we aren't allowed to have them and even if we were we'd not have the money to properly care for it, sometimes I really do want to be a dad, this bathroom will never get clean until the landlord replaces the fixtures, why did no one tell me we were out of buttery spread, my car is falling apart and without it I can't work, why has my best friend stopped reaching out to me, Portland is #9 on the smartest cities list and Austin is #12, my birth father never contacts me unless I contact him first, high school memories never haunted me until now, is there a ghost in this house, I'd give anything to hug my grandma again and hear her laugh at The Golden Girls, hands and feet are so unique and I get fixated on their stories...

And now I write this...if only to fulfill the obligation of attempting to keep this blog on life support, and it is making my jaw tense again and I want to go outside and run until I fall somewhere in a pile of autumn leaves and can sleep, sleep, sleep...real sleep...and stop my mind...stop it...stop...