May 22, 2008

10:39 a.m.

Dreams and Life

In my dream there were weekly, outdoor mini-concerts at my college. These were stupid affairs, and I had signed up to play some. No one much listened -- it was on a playground, and I seemed to be set up in a big sandbox. Toward the end of the set I actually fell asleep, I was so bored with it all. Suddenly I came awake, realized the set was over and started trying to pack up. Everyone was splitting -- but snow had covered everything, everything, and I couldn't see any of my equipment or cables any more. And then it wasn't a sandbox any more but my bed, with sand-colored sheets, and I was trying to remove pillowcases because they needed washing, but I could never quite get everything in one place. Every time I turned back around, more was missing. Then someone had moved my guitars to parts unknown, and I realized I hadn't been paid. Whom do I ask about the check? Surely I'd done this before; how much did I get paid? Snow everywhere, and now I was barefoot, hoping I wouldn't sink into a drift, and what were people thinking of this musician who went barefooted in the snow? I noticed that my feet weren't very cold at all.

Then I realized I was playing these stupid concerts for free, and it felt even more ridiculous and futile. I determined to not play any more of them. But I couldn't seem to find all my stuff and leave, though the sound equipment was packed somehow and most everyone had gone -- leaving only drifts of snow.

I saw my guitars through a glassed wall inside the building -- man in black suit, teacher maybe. Went around a corner & circuitous hallway to get into the room, but a red-haired kid got to it before me and started walking away with my guitar case. I followed fast, pissed, saying, "STOP!" with great authority. Finally I caught up with him as he was stowing it somewhere. I told him off -- "You can't just take people's shit! This cost thousands of dollars! What did you think you were going to do with it?" etc. He looked all abashed, speechless. I woke up.

********

I spent most of yesterday rereading all these entries through 2004. What a revelation. I want to write a book called, "Love Letters to an Older Woman," and just have it be the diary. I long held this fantasy of meeting my younger self on a woods path, and giving her advice and comfort for the years to come. Or I would be the younger self who meets the older, and receives wisdom from the future. Now, it seems, I am the elder... and my younger self is teaching me something, about writing, about putting it together, about how life is still wondrous and strange and sad, but still fascinating in the way everything weaves together.

Of course I went all through the Will era -- I couldn't stop reading until I'd turned all the pages on that whole saga again, so it kept me up until almost 2am -- and I'd forgotten a lot of the details. And the sweetness. I went through this incredible thing in my life, triggered by him showing up in it, and it set me on a path to who I am now and in spite of the pain I can only be grateful, I can only embrace and laugh. I'm me! I've had a life, and here is what happened! Wait'll you hear! And then life went on!

I spoke with Sig yesterday, as the band is trying to get the master to one of my old albums so we can snitch some tracks from a song. I hadn't talked to him in several months, and we had a nice chat. I spoke about practicing gratitude, and talked about how when the ex-boyfriend who went mad and killed himself in 1997 stole the masters to what would have been my second album, I never got them back, and I ended up just remaking it a couple of years later -- and I said I can only be thankful that he took them, the way it all turned out. How could I have seen, at the time, that it was all for this? And Will -- rereading it all I remembered just how lame he was, what a shapeshifter, and I remembered how it made me feel -- but I come to the same conclusion again, that he was being himself and I was being myself, and there is no help for that. And look where it got me. I've been more productive, musically and poetically, these last several years than ever before; I set out on a path of healing, myself and then others, and it's totally shaped what I do and how I plan my future. And Will got a new heart four years ago and is doing very well, and you know he's practicing gratitude every day. Is there anything else? Is there anything else that amounts to anything, really?

It was a poignant journey, looking at it all again. I think of my grandneice and the trials she'll go through as she traverses adolescence and early adulthood, and I imagine myself the elder who meets her on the woods path and tells her it really will be all right. Who knew that, all these years, that would be in the realm of possibility? I can help teach her to play in the sandbox, to walk barefoot in the snow. I'll say, "You can't just take people's shit!" And if she doesn't want to play a gig, she doesn't have to.