December 08, 2003

9:39 a.m.

Argh. I kept waking up all night, sometimes every hour, for no apparent reason. At the scheduled 3:15 awakening, I realized I was getting sick again. ANOTHER cold?! It's not like I've been using my classmates' toothbrushes, or not washing my hands. Hello, Cosmos? I sing for a living, yes? Could you cut me a break, please?

Sigh.

Also had a dream that the band and I were staying in rooms somewhere -- I was in sort of a bungalow, across the street from them -- but hanging out in their rooms. I went across to do something and my room was really hot. I'd opened one of the windows a little and turned on the ceiling fan last time I was there, so I thought it would cool off all right, but when I went over to the bed (which was a futon or mattress just on the floor, with bedding), I saw that there was a huge infestation of bugs -- gnats, little tiny bugs, maybe coming off the large potted plants around the bed. The fan was blowing them into piles, like black dust. I called the office to ask about moving to another room. The woman had heard one of my CDs and, obviously having met with the committee about this, told me she thought I was bitter, and that I should work on a series of songs about my anger towards my dad. I was shocked. I told her I didn't need to do that, that I'd gotten through all that, and just because she hears an album or two of somebody's work doesn't mean she knows everything about that person, and there were plenty of songs on those albums that were happy and had no hint of anger, and what was she thinking? "There are hundreds of songs I haven't written yet, and some I have, that are different from those," I said. She seemed a little conciliatory.

Later I had a dream that, indeed, I'd gotten a horrible bronchitis, and I was having to go into "the boss's" office (with a mentor of some sort, don't know who that was) to get out of working (gigging) because I was coughing so much. Waiting for the boss, I saw a leather diary displayed in its original box that someone had given him. Out of curiosity I pulled it out, riffled lightly through it and saw it was sort of an all purpose organizer -- address book, maybe a place for notes. There was nothing to read in it. Suddenly I was trying to put it back before he came in, saying, "If he catches me again going through his stuff, he'll hit the roof." Placed also in the box had been a few cigar butts and hunks of bread, which for some reason I'd wrapped in cellophane, and now had to unwrap and put back. I thought I wouldn't have time, so I stuffed them in my jacket pocket and sat back down, hoping I could unwrap them surreptitiously.

Anyway I don't know whether the boss finally came in, though others were there at that point and I was coughing severely and everyone was horrified, and I was almost enjoying their reactions.

I can think of two elements that were definitely in my brain last night; we were researching PDAs for hours, so the little diary was a simplified version of that; and the bed on the floor with no bed frame was like the one in Kissing Jessica Stein, which I watched again last night. Oh, and the cold, of course; this was after 3:15 when I'd discovered that little viral buggers were still duelling with my immune system. Bastids.

But no, my dad wasn't in the habit of smoking cigars, and I wasn't in the habit of going through his stuff. Although the empty diary could be attributable to him, since no one ever really got inside him, and the not showing up in the office, since he's now dead, in a physical sense. But, crazily, I have to ask myself (and the crazy part is that I have to ask), "Are you in fact not angry that he left his children nothing, when he had so much? Couldn't he have left his ex wife who took care of him something, and also left you guys something? Especially since a) he was always slipping you $20 or $40 for gas to get home when you visited him, knowing that you were an artist and you never had any money and when you were little you were his favorite kid? and b) he must have known you were still an artist and struggling to make it work?

So maybe he really did feel justified in retracting material goods and money from us (don't even ask about my brother and the gun collection) based on our not being around much in his last years. It's just weird, that's all. I never saw him as a power-play kind of guy. Maybe I misjudged.

So a few entries back I was talking about my visit to the clairvoyant/healer, and how dad came through in the session and said that it was all water under the bridge. I'm wondering now if she was channeling the right dad. I was named as a beneficiary for a residual pension payment or something, which will come to me this month in the form of a check; I'm told it won't be a lot. My healer friend said, dad wants me to do something fun and spontaneous and frivolous with it. I'll probably put it in a savings account, just to spite him, since the money I have will dwindle soon enough. I'm standing on that bridge, looking out over a dry rio.