The urge to take the blue pill

There's this thin blonde with long legs and an incredibly short mini skirt, five inch black Manolo's, and a Channel bag. The kind of woman that when ever she enters the room every eye turns on her, both male and female. The females all hate her because her clothes and her makeup and hair are impeccable. The men all want - well duh! (This is a G rated blog!)

The tall, dark, handsome, man comes up to her and offers her a drink. She takes it in her perfectly manicured hands. They lock eyes and make small talk. "I'm Elmer T. Fudd, Millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht." 

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. 

It's seven am, my alarm clock interrupts my reverie. It's just as well, my beautiful dream was unfolding- what the heck? Elmer Fudd? 

Only in my dreams do I feel pretty and look the way I want to be. Thin and tall. With long legs, like a Rockette's. Men notice me, something that doesn't happen often. Since adolescence I've been cursed with always being the "cute, quirky best friend" of the female protagonist in all the chick lit books and movies. It's fine when you are in your twenties, but when you get older- you want something a bit more. To be top banana. Just once. 

I'm going more and more into dream world. It's safe there. I can be anything I want to be. The world is perfect. There aren't 7 million people crammed together on one planet, it's just me, my Prince Charming, a library in the castle, and of course, some cats and dogs. Everything is beautiful, and nobody gets hurt. 

I don't want to wake. 

I really hate my life right now. Hmm. Hate is a harsh word, let's restate. I dislike my life right now. I miss working, I miss being around people. I'm tired of being tired from the kidney meds and other meds I am on. I'm sleeping 16 hours a day. My brain feels like split pea soup. 

I  can't see a way out of my morass, despite the things I am trying to do to stay out of it. I am getting dressed every day. I do the little hygiene things, brush teeth, brush hair. Remember to shower every day, and wash hair every second. Under normal circumstances, these things make me feel better. Now they don't. I even go to an old standby- a long bath, and a scented candle. Nothing. 

Even a self manicure doesn't ameliorate, despite a beautiful new shade of polish. 

I don't have the energy to go to the gym, but I try to walk. My feet are like lead- I can barely move them. There is nothing physically wrong with them, it takes more energy to move them than I have. Something flickers in my mind- High School chemistry, energy required to move an inanimate object. 

I'm not comfortable being around people anymore. It takes too much effort to do something like smile. The art of desultory conversation is lost. I just want to be invisible. I long for my childhood dreams of being invisible and flying. I hate New Jersey. I can fly anywhere to get out of this hell, despite the fact I have an incredible fear of heights. Somehow in my flying dreams, this is not an issue. 

I know it's depression oriented. I know as I am getting older, my depressive episodes are getting worse and worse, each one a bit more lethal while I am under it. Mania hardly ever comes anymore, my last bit of mania was in February. I despair thinking that each episode will get worse. No silver lining. At least I have my dreams. 

I walk back from the supermarket across the street. Kitty food, and a Subway for dinner. It should be good, I have not eaten in over 24 hours. I feed the cat, change her box, give her some love, and some play. Put the sandwich in the fridge, I'm not that hungry, really. It will keep. I put my pj's back on, tie my hair up in a scrunchie, brush my teeth, wash my face. Back to bed. The sheets feel glorious. The electric blanket gets turned on. I turn out the light, and lie on my back, looking at the sun reflecting on the falling leaves from the bedroom window. The cat comes in and burrows next to me, her breath smelling like Fancy Feast fish. It's a little bit of heaven. I'm still blue, but I'm near dream land. And in my dreams I can be anything or anyone I want to be. It's not the right decision, but for now, it's the only one I want to make. 

I've fallen and am struggling to get up

I’ve fallen and I can’t get up

I’m so blue.

Blue Blue Blue. I can hardly live with myself, thank heaven for sleep. Sleeping 18 hours a day up until last week. Now it’s five if I am lucky. Extremes. It’s all about extremes.

My body is slightly healing.  My kidneys are back to normal, but it’s all about the bladder. Bladder isn’t working. It’s difficult.  I have an urinary tract infection from this. And peeing, it hurts like nothing else I have ever experienced in my life.

It’s hard to stay optimistic. I know there are people who have it worse than me, and I am grateful I don’t have to have dialysis anymore. That’s wonderful.

What this illness has brought out of me, other than a sense of depression, is a sense of confusion, a sense I have lost my way. I had livid dreams in the hospital, probably from the morphine, but now- I don’t dream. I’m up all night in pain, listening to the radio, nine out of ten nights to Coast to Coast which is probably not a good thing, it makes me think, and that keeps me up all night. Pondering. It’s like I am waiting for my cat’s stomach to explode like when the alien came out of John Hurt’s belly in “Alien” only instead of an alien, it would be the X files or Rod Sterling. (Am I dating myself with the old Twilight Zone? They have marathons every New Years on Channel 11 in NYC!)

I don’t have dreams for the future, and it’s not because Coast to Coast is telling me the world will end in December 2012. I don’t believe that. If I turn on the news I do see the world is exploding, governments being over turned in the Middle East. I haven’t been this glued to CNN since Reagan told Gorbachev to “Tear down the wall”. I cannot control the world, I wouldn’t want to. I only have control of my destiny. And right now, I feel like I have no destiny, no desire for the future, no dreams. Just pain and sleep.

I would like a goal, something to strive for. I cannot even write anymore because I’m sleeping so much and at so many weird hours, (all day and up from 12 to 4 every night, and then from 7-9 and back to sleep til 5 or 6 pm, eat supper and back to bed. My eyes hurt so I don’t read much, I am listening to books on tape or the radio. Or lie on the couch and listen to the news channel(s) with the sound on and my eyes closed.

Since the ex left I haven’t had wifi, so the only computer outlet is on the floor. What no one knows is that since November 2006 all my blogging and what not has been done on the floor, laptop in my lap, while I sit “Indian” style on the hardwood floor. Now I cannot sit on the floor, because I cannot get up.  So no computer unless I use the phone. It’s difficult.

This will change next week when I move.  I will be getting free wifi from my cable carrier, which will be amazing. The move is scaring me. I don’t have a lot of things to move, a closet full of clothes, four pair of shoes and a pair of boots. Three computers, one that is over 20 years old and still works but does not do internet. Some furniture, but not a whole lot. What I have that is a royal pain are about 800 books. I had close to 1000 but over the last year I have been getting rid of a lot of them. It breaks my heart because I always thought I would have a house with a library. But it’s going to be difficult moving all those books. I have a friend coming out this weekend to help me move, and we will be packing up another 200 or so and giving them away to the local library. I am grateful this friend is in my life, and has been in my life since 2008. He is the most amazing and kind man I have ever met with the exception of my dad. But he cannot help me to figure out where I am going on my life, he has his own troubles on his plate, I cannot add mine to his. It’s something I have to figure out myself. I just feel lost, rudderless, a feeling I haven’t felt since I was a teenager. I didn’t like it then, it’s worse now that I am in my forties. I should have a rudder. I should be steering towards the North Star. Instead, I lie in bed, and try to heal, looking at the window at night to the stars and moon and wishing on the stars for my health back and my ability to write can come back as well. 

Absalom, Absalom

I dreamed I was pregnant, woke up and I'm numb. Wish I could write but too depressed to even do that, everything I touch dies. May is my waste land. I kill all I touch.

I'm sorry, I just cannot stop thinking about my son. I don't know why, I haven't thought about him this much in years, the poor thing never had a chance and lately he's been in my dreams. Maybe he's been reincarnated this time successfully as a person. Maybe he made it.  All I know is right now I miss him so much I cannot write, all I can do is cry the blue out of my eyes and the pain is excruciating. I've always been told that a parent would die for their children. I believe it. I would have died for you, and I never met you. 

How I Am Staying Alive While My Brain Is Trying To Kill Me- Part Two

So I am still in the same place as I was when I wrote the earlier piece, but I decided, let me sit down and write a "Bucket List", something to keep me going, things I still want see or do, when my brain clears. I didn't think I could think of anything, but surprisingly, there are a few things I still want to do, and I would like to share them with you...

In no particular order.

1. I would like to believe life can be beautiful again.

2. I would like to know that love exists- and real great sex can exist too. And that I can find a guy who really, really knows how to kiss......

3. I would like to spend New Year's Eve in Times Square.

4. I would like to spend Bloomsday in Dublin.

5. I would like to see London again. I would also like to see York again.

6. I would like to really get my writing groove back so I can get my novel polished and published. By a real publisher, not by a vanity press.

7. I would like to have a house so I can have a dog.

8. I would like to have friends again, and to be a good friend.... that is the important thing.

9. I would like to find Serenity again, and just peace with knowing my brain is different, whether I was born different, or made different with a lifetime of medication- my brain is shattered and damaged, and I just have to be gentle with it an accept it. My problem is I don't accept it, I want to be the girl I was eight years ago before the damage started and I miss that girl and I long to be that girl, the girl who had a job, the girl who had friends....I have to stop mourning, cause if I don't I will be like Queen Victoria who wore black and mourned and spent her whole life in mourning after Albert died. And that isn't living, and I am not in a position where I can have PM's no matter how capable, live my life for me.

10. I am sure there are other things, other places to see, I just cannot think of them right now.

Ruby Tuesday

She walks into my bipolar support meeting, with a big smile and perfect white teeth. She’s all apologetic- she’s a few minutes late and the group had just finished the check in. The leader hands her the checklist, she smiles, and in a manic burst of energy, checks in and joins the group.

Since she is seated next to me, I cannot look at her. I had a brief look at her when she came in, young, maybe 22 but under 25. Long brown hair tied in an immaculate ponytail, jeans, and a brown suede jacket. Manic – to the point that she is dancing on tables. And smelling like she just took a bath in Jack Daniels and beer. The smell makes me want to gag, so I turn my head and stare at my friend sitting on my other side instead.

I don’t say anything the rest of the meeting, nothing of consequence. A few desultory words. I drive home in silence playin with the radio tuner, and when arriving home, play with my cat, change and crawl into bed with my ipod, which has been recharging all day long while I have been away.

I feel like I have been cut open with my viscera exposed. I want to cry but my tear ducts are dry.

I realize I feel the way I do because of the girl. Everything she said, every idea she had, her suicide attempt- it was me at that age.

It was like going back in a time machine and seeing my younger self.

I was so embarrassed. No wonder why I wanted to hide.

Now, there was really nothing sinister in this girl. She smelt like alcohol- there was a time I had the same smell on me, on my clothes. I had a sponsor in AA who told me she could always tell if ANYONE had a drink, the alcohol would come out in sweat via the pores and land on someone’s clothes.

If it were just this I wouldn’t have bothered. It was what she said.

I know a lot of people don’t like having this illness. I know people wish they didn’t have it. I think I am one of them. If I didn’t have the illness, so much more would have happened with my life. I could have been something. Really been something. My interactions with others would have been better and I would not have had the problems I had at school with my peers.

She railed against being bipolar, and cursed God for making her that., as well as cursing God for not allowing her to die with her suicide attempt. I related to her arguments, she knew her stuff and executed as professionally and swiftly as a Prosecutor on “Law and Order”.

And then she dropped her bombshell. At this point in her life, she had just gotten out of the hospital. The meds weren’t working because her drinking was offsetting any benefits they might provide. What did she have to look forward to? Constant meds, meds adjustments, appointments with a p-doc to monitor meds. Constant up and downs. Nothing in life is good, so I might as well drink, and besides that again, what do I have to look forward to? Fifty more years of this? Sheeze. Maybe I should check out of this life.

I’ve come to the conclusion that some of what we start off in life is given to us. Some isn’t. It is assumed we will come out of our mother’s womb with two arms, two legs, five fingers and five toes on each appendage. Some babies aren’t born that way. It is assumed we are born with hearts that work, lungs that work. That isn’t always the case. And it isn’t always the case that baby will be born with a perfectly good brain that will serve him/her for the rest of their life. Babies can be born with low IQ’s, Autistic, and babies can be born with the genes to make them bipolar, unipolar or schizophrenic.

Life isn’t always good, great. Can you imagine what your life would be like if everyday was a 10? It would be, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote about Tralfamadore “Everything is beautiful and nothing hurt”. What would you do when you had your first real bad day- say the day JFK died, or John Lennon. Oklahoma City, 9/11. Awful days. If every was beautiful how would you react?


I don’t know. Today I had a talk with my psychiatrist. I hadn’t seen him in a month, and since I saw him I had backslid terribly. For the first time in several yers, I am thinking thinking about how my parents and friends, and even my cat, would be happier if I wasn’t here.

He surprised me, and said, “You aren’t depressed. You just need a dream”.

I was taken aback. Driving home, the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was correct. I needed a dream. It was exactly as the Stones prophesied, “Loose your dreams and you will loose your mind”.

I don’t have a dream. I feel like they have all been torn out of me, ripped asunder. What few dreams I had= a college professor, a mother living in a white house and picket fence, those my illness has taken away from me.

I don’t have a dream. I don’t know how to find one.

I don’t want anything. Don’t get me wrong, If I am at the mall, and I see something lovely, a blouse, a jacket, I will want it. I see a luxury car like a Jag on the road and for five seconds I fantasize I am in it. I think this is normal.

I would love to eat like I was 17 and not put on any weight.

But dreams? I just don’t think I have any, anymore. Maybe I hope I can find them again.

Sleeping In the Bathroom - (Rewritten)

I am dreaming. I dream I am dead. I see myself, in the coffin, in the ground. Something comes out of my mouth, and ears. I wake up screaming, as I always do, praying I will be cremated. I realize I am alive. My heart is racing, my breath is fast. My cat stirs looks at me with her big copper eyes and closes them. It is 2:15 am.

I hear a knock and a doorbell ring about 20 minutes later. I look outside the window, and see a police car, the lights flashing red in the darkness. I realize the police are at my door. I don a bathrobe, and close the door, leaving the cat to slumber on my bed uninterrupted, and climb the steps downstairs to my front door. I am tired. I open the door, leaving the chain on. The cops shine their lights on me. Can we come in miss?

I open it wider to make sure they are police officers. They are. I close the door, remove the chain and let them come upstairs to my apartment. One starts talking to me, the other one takes the flashlight and starts poking around, “Don’t let the cat out! “ I scream.

“What the blue blazes is going on”, I want to say. The constable seems to read my mind. We had a 911 call that there were loud screams coming from this apartment. Are you alone?

Just me and the cat.

No other people, you aren’t hiding anyone?

No.

He asks me to show him my neck. I do. I am fine.

Do you have a boyfriend?

Not at the moment

Did anyone hit you tonight? Hurt you?

No, I had a bad dream and woke up screaming.

The other cop tells his partner, no one else is here, and I checked, no alcohol. No drugs.

It was a bad dream. I dreamt I had died and there were worms. I am afraid of the worms.

They leave, assured that I am OK. And I am embarrassed. And wish the floor could swallow me. The love of my life was a constable, the one person who tore my heart asunder.The one I still sleep with parts of his uniform because they still smell of him. I respect policemen, but they make me nervous.

I am on a ledge. I am afraid I am going to fall.


I drove home from my parent’s house the other night, with a notion I wanted to take the car off the road and swerve it into a tree. The whole way home a police car was behind me, passing me about 500 yards from my apartment. I was mad.

Last night was the worst. Earlier this week I noticed my hair was coming out from the lithium, I am currently taking. Or a side effect from Leukocytosis I have developed from lithium. A visit to the hairdresser confirmed it; I have lost a great deal of hair. It was shorn - I lost over a foot. It had always been my pride and joy. Now it lay on the floor discarded. I spent the day after it was cut in bed, afraid to look in a mirror. It is hardly on my back now. I washed my hair today, more in the drain. It looks like I will be totally bald soon. At least my insurance pays for a wig.

I was too depressed to want to off myself. Today I felt good. And decided to try to hurt myself. I tried to get my boom box into the bathroom plug it in and drop it in the bath. To my dismay, it didn’t reach. I couldn’t get the blade out of the safety razor. So I did something I had promised a good friend I would never do. I went to an office supply store and got an exacto knife. And slit my wrists. Maybe with all the medication the blood didn’t come out. It didn’t. Or maybe I didn’t cut deep enough. It hurt like hell. I had a fantasy of perhaps saying “F**K You” in blood, I am mad.

I am PO'ed that I missed a promotion. That was given to a girl ten years younger than me who rumor has it slept into it. It makes me so mad, because she didn’t even swallow. I wanted it, worked as hard as her. It is not fair. Some people just have life fall into their laps and other people keep getting sh*t thrown at them. I am tired of shoveling sh*t. I am so tired. I want to sleep. I am so angry. Why do I have to have this?

A friend of mine, has told me I cannot get well until I accept I am a manic-depressive. Bipolar. I cannot accept it. I am fighting it, I have been fighting since I was born, being shoved in foster homes until I was adopted. I fought back when I was raped, and probably lived to tell the tale because of it. I fought the entire time I was living in my car, after being tossed out of my folks house when a roommate blew my entire life savings up her nose, going to a battered women’s shelter to shower and change. I could probably knock the s**t out of Mike Tyson.

Perhaps not.

I am getting more and more acutely suicidal. Do I want to hurt someone? No, but I want to scream. I have never tried to electrocute myself before. Would I have done it if the cord had reached? Yes. Would it hurt? Absolutely.

I have always fantasized about wrists and hanging. Obsessed. I finally gave into the fantasy, to that last taboo- and tried that. Obviously, it didn’t work, I am still here. Damn. Why?

A friend of mine, a wonderful man on the other coast told me if he had one wish in the world, he would wish that I could finish a novel, get it published, and live off the money from it, get famous, or slightly famous and live happily ever after. If he had one wish. He is a good friend. He could have easily wished that his children get full scholarships to his Ivy League Alma Mater. He could have wished for money, which I know he could use. He wished for me. He is one of the few people who have not left me during the last two months of hell during my leave of absence. Instead he calls me daily, letting me cry, as I rapid-cycle, up and down as often as 47 times in an hour.

And I repay him back by slitting my wrists. Nice one. I should care. But I don’t I am in so much pain. I just want it to end.
Make peace with this? I went into this world kicking and screaming, I am going to leave it the same way. Why does so much bad things have to happen to me.?

Why can’t I be like everyone else? Why can’t I have the little white house and the picket fence and 2 children, 2 cats and a dog? Why can’t I be a soccer mom? All the women I know my age are soccer moms.

I am a failure. I am the opposite of King Midas, instead of everything I touch turning to gold, everything I touch turns to s**t.
I want to curl up and die. I don’t care about work. I am sick from the medication. Is it worth it? Vomiting constantly, migraines, and hair loss? Rapid-cycling as often as 47 times in an hour? I lay down to sleep and I have nightmares? The sweats? I am keeping my apartment at sixty degrees and I still am sweating. Sleeping in the bathroom because I cannot stop vomiting. All to be normal?

But don’t we all want to be normal?

(Rewritten December 26, 2009. Original dates from either 2002 or 2003).

Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing

Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing (say, say, the light)
I'm very scared for this world
I'm very scared for me (say, say, the light)
Eviscerate your memory
R.E.M

Why bother? Watching the evening news, i just don't understand. Tensions in the Middle East mounting, most likely a war next year. Every day another story of a mother or father murdering their children. Or a boyfriend murdering their girlfriend. Children in parts of the world, all parts going to bed hungry. Commercials on TV asking you to sponsor a hungry child. Another commercial for Polar Bears. Our Boys and Girls coming back from war and nothing there to help them once they arrive back here. People abusing animals.Tiger isn't a hero anymore. It's all too much.

My mother and I were watching the news and what made me even sadder than I was, was how she was talking about how almost everyone writes a book nowadays, what is the fine line between fiction and non fiction?

This brought up the discussion of my novel- I told my mother it is a NOVEL. I will send it out as a novel, even though most of it is true. Mom had just read a book about prison and she was upset about strip searching. I just looked at her and said, they do that at every hospital I have ever been at.

She looked at me and almost cried. No....

"Oh yes, and it 's the most horrible thing, evasive as hell. They do a body cavity search". She didn't believe me. I continued, "yes, they put you in a room with a nurse and another woman, they tell you to strip down to your bra and panties, then they remove the bra, one woman is checking out the bra to make sure there is no contraband sewn in, and the other one is checking your boobs to make sure there is no contraband there. Then they hand the bra back to you, you put it on, and they tell you to remove your panties and it's like having a gynecological exam, they stick a finger inside, and they check your rear end too." She got upset and said why?

Easy, I said. The second time I was at that hospital a girl OD'ed because she snuck sleeping pills up in her privates. They were finding the drug addicts were putting drugs up there or their rear ends.... And yes, it's humiliating, it's really humiliating. I am sure it's worse though for a guy.

Last night I dreamed of J- I had not dreamed pf him since he left over 3 years ago. I woke up in a cold dead sweat. I dreamed of Absinthe, something i have never had, but i feel like the girl in painting.

I want to sing again. i want to pick up my clarinet and wail hitting that high "F" in Tchaikovsky's 5th- and play jazz. Pick up a guitar with my surname on it- and play til my fingers bleed.

I want to be able to write, write write until my fingers bleed and my nails have all broken. I just don't know how to anymore. I have more ideas floating around in my head than I have in years, I just... I just.... I want to be great. It's all I got, it's my only dream. And I feel like I am that guy who gets to the Olympics, breaks his leg and comes in last with his father. I may be down and out, but I will cross the finish line. As he was dying, baseball great Tug McGraw signed a baseball for my father. "You Gotta Believe". I believe this. I will get my groove back. I just need patience, and that is something I have never had.

Do dreamers really live forever?

"Loose your dreams and you will loose your mind
In life unkind".
Rolling Stones, "Ruby Tuesday".







I never have had a problem not dreaming. I love dreaming. I keep a tape recorder and a note pad by bed when I wake so I can write down my dreams.

Lately, all my dreams have been like something out of a Jungian nightmare, old family trips, school, all surrounded  in symbols. But nothing about the future. No dreams, no hopes, no nothing.

The other day I got a piece of spam that said in the header 'Are you living or existing". Oh that was easy. Existing. Not living. Because I don't have any dreams to live for. Not anymore.

Or in other words, I do not know what dreams to dream to live for.  The ones I had as a child and a woman in my twenties are gone. I can re build them again, like the Six Million Dollar Man, stronger and better than they were.

"And if your hopes should pass away/
Simply pretend,
That you can build them again". 
Simon and Garfunkel,  "Hazy Shade of Winter".

I always was able to take shattered dreams and rebuild them. Not a problem. Easy.  But now, it's all the dreams have shattered my hands like holding on to broken glass. My writing, bits and pieces, lie in the trash can, like some type of abortion. Just a little mouse click, and they are gone, forever. Little whispy ghosts on the ethernet of the hard drive. I know my illness has turned me into a gifted and talented writer in my 20s, with so much promise and a book offer, to someone who can barely string two sentences together. I doubt now I can even write, let alone see that level again. What do I do if my brain turns on me and this last desire fails?


...Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build....
Anne Sexton, "Wanting to Die".

I'm not suicidal. I just don't know what to do with the remaining 40 years of my life.

How do you rebuild if you don't know what to rebuild in the first place?

the drowned and the saved

Blame Sleeping Beauty.  Fall asleep for 100 years, handsome prince wakes you up, and you live happily ever after.

Oh yes. The prince doesn't mind you have morning breath.


Damn you Walt Disney, for making these princesses- who show you need a man to be happy. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella....

Let's throw Bettleheim out the window on this- is there something wrong that the Mouse taught several generations of women that they NEED a man in their lives to be complete?

After all, like the Virginia Slims advert, we've come a long way baby. In my grandmother's generation, women didn't work. And if they did, they were teachers, librarians, or nurses, or typists. Phone operators from the 40s .Women weren't doctors. They married them. Women didn't start going to med schools til the 50s and 60s. Women didn't become lawyers til then either, lets face it, women didn't really go to college at all until the 50s or 60s. And if they did, many of them were female only. And even then college was treated as a joke, a place to get a MRS degree.

I had a Professor for the Pre-Raphalities, and something she said stuck with me all these years. She had gone to an Ivy college- i don't recall which one- and mentioned that her roomate told her once- as she was homebound with 3 children under 5 'At least I studied Shakespeare once. I think of King Lear when I am cleaning the floor'.

Does that mean her children will grow up to be Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia? Or was she thinking it was sharper than a serpent's tooth to have children? Or was her life not what she thought it would be as she was cleaning the floor. Was that all there is? Wet diapers, runny noses, bruised knees, nightmares, and the satisfaction of knowing that despite that- she created something no one else has, three human beings who could grow up to be anything and everything they want?

I will be damned if I know. I thought my raison d'etre was to have children since I have a womb and ovaries. I am learning now, maybe there is more to do besides passing on my DNA to the next generation.  Biologically, I have some years left before that door closes, but lets face it- it's closed now. Now is the time to figure out how to rebuild dreams, go on with writing, which as always been a dream and a reason to get out of bed, and just continue. Like Faulkner's brilliant last sentence in "Sound and Fury"  "Dilsey preserved". I have to preserver too.  (I just hope this entry isn't full of Sound and Fury, signifying nothing, and I am an idiot, though I wouldn't mind being a bit more like Benjy).

Nightmare- The Red Cat

I just woke up and want to get it down before I forget.

I was dreaming, vividly, like always. For some unexplained reason I did not have a cat, and my mother, looking like the mother of my youth, stopped by my apartment with a small wicker basket and a white chamois blanket. I opened the blanket, and there was a tiny kitten, collar with a heart shaped tag with my name and address, and the kitten's name. In the kitten's mouth was a binky. I forgot what it's name was. Only the kitten was red. Solid red. My mother picked him up and placed him in my arms. And I noticed, my arms started to bleed, - they were covered in blood and it was dripping in copious amounts down to the floor.

I don't now if the kitten was evil or not, I just know the kitten then was put back in the basket by my mom and nothing happened to her. But I was left bloody, like half of "Carrie" and alone. My mother and the red cat were gone. And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns , ...

I am so alone.