Lucid Thoughts

I absolutely HATE it when people try to tell me about their dreams. “Dude, do you wanna hear about this dream I had” has become the question, above all others, which I detest, nay… fear the most. To me it comes across as someone’s last-ditch effort to sound interesting by sharing what little soap opera their subconscious plays for them at night. I mean honestly, someone could completely make up a pointless series of unrelated events, preface it with “I had this dream” and chat someone’s neck off without having to worry about that someone questioning the credibility of said dream. Who the fuck cares? I’m about as interested in your dreams as I am interested in your poetry. Get it?

Having said that I’d like to share with you a dream that I had.

Well, it can’t really be qualified as a dream as I don’t think I was sleeping. Then again if laying face down in my own urine after trying to drink sixteen gallons of sweet tea with lemon to prove my point that oxygenated blood flowing into the human liver from the hepatic artery flows more easily when spiked with lemon and sugar as sleep, then sure. As it stood, I was pretty much immobile from the chest down. Gallon 9 had turned out to be a bigger bitch than all of my ex-girlfriends swirled into one giant SUPER bitch and the only thing I could do was cry, not unlike a snotty 9 year-old who just broke his Transformer. I cursed the world we live in and laid praise for all that is depriving and empty. The hour was approaching midnight and all around me was dark. A cool breeze whispered around my feet and I soon found myself standing before a loud and forceful light. A voice came out of it saying unto me “John, you have lost sight of the path upon which you travel. Tonight, three spirits will visit you. Heed their words in hope that you might save yourself.” A refreshing cloud climbed around me and I found myself back on my kitchen floor, face down in my tea pee.

I gathered myself as much as I could, tossed my clothes into a hamper and staggered to the shower. The stereo was still on and as I bathed I began humming along with that new song by Seal that just won’t for the love of god fucking stop. Suddenly there was another voice singing along with me in the bathroom. My first thought was that one of the dogs had somehow gained a masterful control of its lips and decided to chime in but as the voice grew louder and more human, I knew I was in trouble. I yanked the shower curtain back with a fright to find Paul, dressed in a toga sitting on my commode with his pants around his ankles. He was reading my comics but more importantly he was bending them (!). I shrieked like a woman from a sitcom finale and fell back into the tub.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I squealed with an accusing finger outstretched.

“Relax, “ He said. “Paul is still away on company business. I’m the Ghost of Sickness Past I’ve just chosen his form. Hey, I’ve got something to show you.” He helped me out of the tub and in a blink I was dressed just like him in a toga. The bathroom filled with a mist once more and suddenly we were back in the old office watching Paul and I working late. The Ghost stood behind me in silence as I looked on. These were the good ole days. Cigarette after cigarette was smoked, beer after beer was tossed back. We sat six feet apart but only communicated via Instant Messenger. I even chuckled a bit watching myself later roll a joint at my desk once I made sure that Paul was asleep and farting at his. This was a warm feeling. This was all before our near deaths upstream, long before Rick and I shot up Nevada (a story left for another time) and seemingly eons before I eventually got another ride. This was my dysfunction at its infancy. I was wide-eyed and bushy-balls. Something had changed since then though. Had I indeed lost sight of the path I was on?

I turned to face the Ghost only to find him hunched over with his arm up his ass to his elbow. He was hopping around like a madman but tried to compose himself when he noticed me watching. He apologized profusely and explained that (being a ghost) he’d forgotten what it was like to have an asshole that actually led somewhere. He slowly started shrinking and he waved goodbye. In a wink he was no smaller than a crumb and blew away in the wind.

“You’re actually a better actor than you are a writer, you know.” A familiar voice said from somewhere behind me. I grasped the upper right portion of my chest with a jump and spun around, yelling, with eyes as wide as saucers. It was Marc. Or at least it looked like Marc.

“Lemme guess, Ghost of Sickness Present, right?” I asked with my John-brand sass. “You’re here to show me something about my life right now that is a direct reflection of how I’ve changed since I’ve been working as a wage-slave? Well go ahead, have at me!"

“No, man.” He said. “It’s really me, Marc. I need you to come up with something better to write about than stupid twists on Bill Murray movies you saw on Comedy Central when you went home for lunch. It's going to end up being longer than you'd orginally planned. And by the way, if all that content you promised to have tagged isn’t done by the time we all get back…you’re dead!”

You see? It doesn’t have to make sense at all because I prefaced it with “…I’d like to share with you a dream I had”. Don’t you feel like I’ve just wasted your time? Don’t you feel that I woven a tangled web of plot and character only to tie you up in that web and kick you in the Daddy-yams? Good.