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Mid-January, Rain - January 13, 2012
Almost Midwinter - December 14, 2011
Saturday, Noonish, Sunny - November 05, 2011
October, White - October 31, 2011
October, 2011 - October 04, 2011


December 10, 2003

10:14 a.m.

So. It's a white day in the northeast. I must leave in just over an hour for rehearsal (pry my ass off this chair with a crowbar), but meanwhile there's a big pot of fresh ginger tea boiling on the stove (peel about as much as the size of your two open hands, cut in very small pieces, boil in a gallon of water for an hour, and drink about half and half with soymilk and some honey -- this is an incredible drink if you can stand the bite) and my rent includes the heat, so I'm toasty on the third day of my third seasonal virus (regular cold variety).

A few entries ago I reported a couple of dreams which, in retrospect, both had to do with my dead and puzzling father. Had another one last night, which included the recurring bug theme, thanks very much. Dad had died and a paper had written an article about him, a eulogy, or maybe a review (we've been dealing with a lot of CD reviews lately). I wondered why he'd only gotten one nationally, then realized this was a local paper to where he had lived, so naturally they'd be the ones to report it. Dad was actually present in this group of people, though he had died so he wasn't actually conversing with anyone. For some reason it wasn't strange that he was still standing among us. But dad had driven us out to this field, just a kind of overgrown meadow with tan weedy grasses up to our knees. I was looking at the newspaper -- big, thick, like the Sunday issue -- in someone's hand, and the front was printed like an Indian bedspread, in reds and golds, and I nostalgically thought, "Oh, those are my living room colors, they're so pretty" (oh, clue here, living room) and I missed them. People started to disperse, and dad said, not to anyone in particular but just out to the air so everyone could hear, that he was going to go do two or three errands (he named them, I've forgotten) and then come back to get me. He left and I was all alone in the field with his white car, with the door hanging open, and I found if I relaxed and stood in one place that I could almost stand on the top of the tall wheaty grass, and the view was a little better. Then I noticed that the air was just thick with millions of gnats, and I had to keep moving. I had to continually fan my arms around my head to keep them from inundating me. I wondered, How long can I wait out here for him?

Well, you know I love puns in dreams, and this whole issue of dad's limited willingness to communicate in certain ways while he lived (and then being too demented to talk towards the end anyway), along with this controversial issue of him changing his will and leaving the kids virtually nothing at all, is really BUGGING me, hence all the bug appearances. (Plus, I encountered a crossword clue yesterday, "no-see-ums," which we all know in New England means blackflies, but the obviously confederate-born individual who created that crossword thought the proper answer was "gnats" -- not the same at all, though my magnificent dream mind peppered last night's trailer with gnats, and a big fat noseeum, my father himself.)

So, okay, I see I have to stand quietly in one place and "rise above" it all, and the door to the car is open whenever I want to get back in and ride with dad. As soon as he gets back from errands.

All I can say is, I hope mom is up there straightening him out.


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