I like to take all the nice things I see and collect them---it's a weird deal----I've got this funny collection full of all these peculiar items in the world that make me feel good; Memorabilia, souvenirs and all that, but mostly it's just stuff I can look at when I'm pissed off or stressed out and it puts me somewhere else and makes me feel a lot better about everything.
When I was eleven my Mom gave me a scrapbook. One of those scrapbooks you stick photos in, like a family album or something. She gave me this scrapbook and told me I could put anything in it that was important to me.
I think she wanted to get me off on the right start, so she kicked off the first couple of pages for me. They are easily my least favorite parts of the book; it's all snapshots of me when I was little and birthday cards and stuff from when I was like a year or two old, boring shit like that. Well, okay, maybe it's not totally boring, I bet anthropologists in a few centuries could have a blast with it, but to me it's just sort of depressing and I don't like to look at that stuff.
So anyway, when she gave it to me, I started to throw stuff in there like there was no tomorrow. It got funny as hell, because I was eleven, and I was throwing anything in there that meant anything to me. I was just whipping out the scotch tape and throwing things onto the pages like a plastic army guy who had his head missing, stupid magazine ads, some pictures from a Batman comic, an Iris I picked, long-since wilted, a hot wheels car, an old shoelace....stuff like that. Pictures of meat in the newspaper supplement. Eleven-year-old kid nonsense.
I got bored with it, because when you're a young kid you get bored with everything real quick, and then you move on to whatever. But I never throw things away if I can help it. This past Summer I unearthed the old scrapbook again and looked at it. It was great. I was all bummed out over something or other at that time and the contents of the scrapbook really busted my shit up. Being that it was such a dandy remedy for what ailed me, I decided to start collecting shit again.
I'm older, now, and a little more mature, though I stress “a little”. I still have this scrapbook that's a heel of a lot stranger than most.
I don't have too many personal things in it; no pictures of me or my parents or relatives, past the first couple pages my Mom threw in there---just different stuff. Big, splashy pictures of sunsets and mountains and islands and oceans and whatnot...places I'd like to go someday. I have this one page that's a cutout yearbook picture of Cheryl Kingsley from every year since eighth grade. It's the only reason I get the yearbook every year. It's the only use I have for it. All Cheryl's pictures are neatly arranged, all churchlike, on that one page. That's the shrine page, the holy page, the page page I have to prepare myself for up in my head before I look at it.
Actually, though I largely don't like to stick personal pictures in it, there are always exceptions to the rule and I have my eighth grade school picture in the scrapbook. I hate pictures of me like a cossack, but that one was pretty mean. My Mom hates it. I think it's cool. I was wearing this denim jacket, and I looked all bedraggled and scruffy and dazed and my hair was all unruly and longish (Dad would have probably called it “long”. He thinks everything is “long”.). I looked like a real hoodlum or something. It was like I was in some old movie, getting my mugshot taken for prison.
So there's that book, which nobody sees, but then there's this other one, like this little notebook, which I write in, and no one ever sees that, either. But it's a little red book, old-fashioned diary book I found in a flea market, with a little lock on it. I write in that book all the time. Yeah, I know, who writes in books anymore? I do. Poetry, ideas for stories, mostly dreams. The ones I remember, anyway. I hate the idea of “diaries”, or “journaling” but okay, so think of it as my dream book.
Sometimes I think dreams are important----a lot of the time they're probably just your brain throwing up----sometimes I need to write them down, though, because I think about them and I think maybe they might mean something, and I'm wondering if they're trying to tell me stuff about the future, or everyone around me, or maybe just inner stuff about myself. I don't know, maybe it's all just brain vomit, but I always think about this stuff and wonder about it.
The dream I had last night I remember in crystal-clear detail, which is real different....it is for me, anyway. Usually my dreams are all hazy and mixed up. This one wasn't, though.
In the dream, I was home, sitting at the kitchen table, eating Cheerios. My parents were in the other room, watching TV. After I got done eating the cereal I decided to join them and see what they were watching.
The Good Guy was on the screen, as was usually the case, going through the day-in-day-out, accepted ritual of emptying a gun into the Bad Guy. This time out, it was western times and they were dressed like cowboys. Sometimes it's modern times and The Good Guy is a cop and the Bad Guy is a crook. It's really always the same story.
I looked over at my parents and they were frozen. They were just bolted in their chairs like a pair of zombies, staring straight ahead.
I was crying, then, crying real hard. The Good Guy, on TV, kicked the fallen Bad Guy in the ribs and spat on him. The Good Guy always does those things. My parents just stared straight ahead.
“Mom, Dad,” I said, and I was crying so hard I could barely talk, “I'm wrong. I'm always wrong. I'm sorry I'm wrong.” They kept staring straight ahead at the Good Guy, like I wasn't there.
After trying a little longer to no avail, I left my parents frozen in their chairs. I walked halfway across the house so that I wouldn't have to see them anymore. Then I set about attempting to fly.
I always fly in my dreams and I do it the same way every time. There's a knock to getting airborne, or at least I dream that there is. I guess it's similar to getting on a bike. Some people can ditch the training wheels faster than others. I was one of those flyers who needs a good head start.
I got off the ground the way I always do in these flying dreams—basically the technique I use is to climb up the doorway in a spider walk and then just let go. If I get it right I can stay afloat in mid-air.
I made it after maybe two or three tries, which is usually what it takes. The first few seconds of one's hover are the most tenuous, and it always feels wicked white knuckles to me. You need to be bouyant in that time and not do anything stupid, like land back on your feet. That could ruin the whole thing.
I successfully got past those first few seconds of instability and settled gently into float-mode. It felt good, real, pure and alive, as it always does in these dreams. I felt myself rise from five feet off the ground to six as I swam through the air toward the front door.
I seized and turned the doorknob, gave the wooden barrier a shove and let myself out. Once I'd gotten out the door it was easy to fly up to eight or nine feet. The best thing about flying is that once you get going the easier it becomes.
I flew down the length of Dearden Street and turned left on Richdale Road, which I followed down half its length until it intersected with Cook Hill Road. When I fly in my dreams I find that I almost always stick to the roadways. I don't know why. Fear of getting lost?
Cook Hill Road is this steeper-than-the-steepest hill that causes people in our neighborhood a lot of trouble in the Winter. I looked and saw these two kids barreling downhill on their bikes. The local kids live Cook Hill, riding downhill and playing daredevil. It's one of those roads you can build lots of speed on with your bike. It's cool, like being on a rollercoaster.
The part which kids never consider is that the hill spills out onto Windham Street, which is the main road. The traffic there, and there's always a lot of it, careens by, both ways, at forty miles an hour. So it's always pretty dangerous. Kids never think about that shit.
The two kids hit Windham Street and swerve in opposite directions, one nearly falling off her bike. When they saw there wasn't any traffic headed their way, they both rode across the street to the 7-11.
Me, I can fly, though, so I bypassed the 7-11 and headed up Windham Street towards downtown Brookdale. I flew past the fresh vegetable stand that's only open part of the year, the garage that's owned by the old Korean guy, and the Delprete House, this old house that's been empty and rotting away for decades. The kids all say it's a murder house, but I don't know how true that is.
Further up I saw a dead squirrel in the road, another daily sacrifice we make to the cruel, grinning, chromefaced god of automotive convenience.
I tried to look away, but I looked away too late. The little grey body seemed like it had been stretched out on the rack or something. Its inner meat dominated the scene, plastered all over the pavement looking like some creep had decided to garnish the poor thing with salsa for a joke.
I shut my eye and my jaw loosened and tightened in involuntary spasms. I didn't see its face, but I'm certain that, had I chosen to look further, I would have seen the last expression it wore, and I know it would have been twisted in pain.
I opened my eyes in time to see an oncoming tree before feeling my forehead scrape the bark and then I was in the gully in Springfield in the back of Freddy Dugan's house. I was in first grade again. Freddy and Lucci were there, throwing rocks at me. One hit me square in the forehead, same exact spot that had collided with the tree, and I saw the blood and then there was a loud screech.
The screech turned out to be my alarm clock. It was Monday morning, time for school and once again my slumber and peace had been raped by the crazy house in my head.
Copyright 1989 C.F. Roberts/2021 Molotov Editions
DON'T COME KNOCKING DEPT. # 947: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know back as last year ended I was talking about doing a final bag-and-tag of the Trump years. It's been almost six months and to be honest I got less important things to do. There's enough stupidity and fuckery in all directions to go around and I divorced myself permanently from politics during the primary. The further away from it I get the better I feel, and if you ever need me to come help you get your boy, or girl, or whoever, elected, look elsewhere. I ain't your ally, buckaroo. I gave at the office.
Thank you, drive through----
THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
MAX ROACH & CLIFFORD BROWN-The California Concerts 1954
FUNKADELIC-Funkadelic
HAWKWIND-Astonishing Sounds
