October 21, 2008

9:31 a.m.

The Wayback Machine

I was in the back of a white van, lying on top of a lot of luggage and at least one guitar. There were a couple of other women back there; it wasn't my tour or my van, but that of the Dr. Who-like guy who was driving. Pretty definitely a time lord. I remember being mildly surprised that he had a guitar. It was nighttime.

There was something I don't remember well, about the young woman who was leaving, and I was told at the last minute that I was her mother. But she had to go, to the next life or the next plane or something, and then she (and the other woman there who was explaining this to me) was gone. It was quite a revelation and there was some emotion attached.

But then, there I was in this crowded van, thinking I was alone back there, but I heard muttering or talking and looked around and saw some guy sitting at the side. He was kind of like a homeless person, talking to himself, unintelligibly. I said in alarm to the driver, "There's someone else back here!" but nothing was done about it and it didn't seem to be such a big deal.

But then a little time passed and I was behind the driver's seat, looking out front and talking to Dr. Who (it was the Tom Baker version), and then I looked back again and there was nothing in the van at all, no instruments, no luggage, just a clean white van. Because everyone is very clever in Dr. Who and they never just state the obvious, I turned back to the Doc and said mildly, "You remember what Thomas Aquinas said about simplicity being the... blah blah {don't remember this part}? Well, if things get any simpler back here, I won't be riding with you any more!"

This, after begging the Universe yesterday for a simpler, more straightforward life.

********

So this morning I look up Thomas Aquinas to see who the heck he was and what he had to say about simplicity. What I find is his treatise on Divine Simplicity. To me it's a lot of wordy religiosity about the definition of God and how humans can talk about same. It's hard to follow. Finally one book makes it a little clearer: He endeavored to prove, by the observation of our physical senses, that there was something beyond the physical that had different properties, i.e., God. We have only our physical senses to try to define and understand stuff here (putting aside for the moment intuition and other senses that yes, we do have, but are less provable -- my note, not his), but Aquinas revised some of our familiar words to include definitions of metaphysical beings. "This extension of meaning of familiar language provides an Ariadne's thread that enables us to return from the metaphysical stratosphere to the palpable objects of our sense experience."

What's cool about it is that last night I was reading Seth Speaks, and this very topic was being discussed, this topic of what "God" is as opposed to what we typically think it is. Not a guy, not a gal. Not a person, per se. (Much more interesting than the way I'm putting it here.) Thinking about the nature of reality is something I haven't done much of in recent years. The book also touches on the reality of dream states, and I have long thought that dreams were real on some level, real places where we have more freedoms here but where we're still accountable. (This has later caused some concern with me, regarding not very nice dream behaviors on my part.) I think all this metaphysical stuff is both opening up the terrible emotional centers (clogged; emotions standing in line; gently jostling one another, sighing from being so long cramped and silenced) and helping facilitate something ultimately healing. I'm really depressed this week. It makes sense; I held on for so many weeks in England and in Georgia, doing what I had to do, and now I have time to react to everything.

What it has to do with Dr. Who, I couldn't say. Nevertheless that was the most interesting and memorable dream I've had in many weeks.

********

It's another beautiful Fall day. The enormous maples outside my back windows are yellowing up; the one that now blocks my view of the Squatleys next door looks very nice indeed. I know the price is my winter privacy. I have to put the shades down in winter. But the color is worth it. It might behoove me to park on the street for a few weeks; my car gets covered with leaves.

Speaking of the folks next door, I now feel kind of bad calling them the Squatleys... more evidence of my judgmental nature; I see it all the time... I came home the other night and saw a sign on their front fence. The house is in foreclosure and it'll be up for auction on November 1st. My landlady said a while ago that the couple had split up; the daughter had gone with mom, and the son had stayed there with dad. I thought, there was probably a lot of unrest in that house, and that's why the yard looks the way it does. Depressed people don't clean up. (I look around my place -- oops.) I'm sure my landlady wouldn't be so charitable, but in spite of all the grief they caused their immediate neighbors, and what an eyesore the place is, they've obviously been through a lot of trouble in these years. Everybody has trouble. We're supposed to learn to be compassionate. Sometimes I feel I'm very compassionate and then in other situations I have blinders on. Blindness, anger, bitterness; that gives you stuff like IBS. That fucks up your skin. I gotta find a way back through some stuff.

Some of you may be too young to remember the Wayback, or WABAC, Machine from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Mr. Peabody was a brilliant, professorial beagle type dog, and he had an assistant, a pet boy named Sherman. They'd go back in time to significant historical moments -- probably to sneak in a history lesson among the cartoons. Of course they'd invariably get into some kind of trouble and have to come back in the nick of time before getting annihilated. I need a Wayback machine that can pinpoint specific moments where I went awry, so I can noodge myself back on course. A pet boy wouldn't hurt, either. I think I'll bring Billy Boyd.