Most of my dreaming is done when I am awake. I have had some memorable dreams in my nocturns, but they were not in any way mystical or guiding. Just strange amalgamations of the things going on at the time in my life, usually. I have daydreamed a good deal, not unlike Ralphie in A Christmas Story. But like Ralphie, that was in my youth. As an adult, I have spent my time daydreaming the things that I had planned for the farm, which is how I made them manifest. Everything I have built here has been through that uniquely human power. Nowadays, it seems that the unique powers of humanity I possess are turned more towards the ability I have to write a memoir. I suppose that is a form of daydreaming too, in the form of reliving memories. But that form is hampered by years, and the need to accurately recall things that have gone long into the past. I worry about that slipping away as it is a lot of what defines me. I wonder if there is anything else in the universe that is so defined by the events of its life, and aware of them? Or are we unique in the whole of it as entities aware of their existence for so much of their lives? It could be that there are billions of other planets or other bodies where creatures of some sort or another have evolved, and none with any latency to their memories that gives them as great of a perspective on their own lives. Or everything on our own planet could remember its own lives better than I do, and I am not even aware of that. I could be the worst of them! Only with language! Making me the only one of the species that can say ‘I forgot!’ What an idiot I am!
Some daydreaming is speculating, and it amounts to nothing useful at all. And now through another of our unique talents as a species, I have shared my stupidity with you! And through the power of the Internet, once this is written and published, it will never be forgotten
So, it’s 3:30AM, and I am awake. How nice. How lucky I am to have myself here with my thoughts, and no melatonin to help me knock off back to sleep. I’ll try to be there again by 5AM. I have to remember to get the rubbish out of the house and the bins out to the curb. I need to go down for early voting, too, before I start my workday.
I have another memory, and memory type. It’s one I cannot forget, though I was told as a young lad that it did not exist. I was told I could not remember pain. I was told that by the woman who bore me, so I thought for sure she would know what she was talking about in issues of pain. It has been my experience that I do remember it, whether it is physical or emotional. But that void of where it was cannot be refilled and experienced as it was at the time it originated. My shoulders are a little sore right now, and it honestly scares me a bit. It is triggering a memory of the pain that always was in me. I am reminded of how just sitting up hurt, or holding my arms in a position like this to type was done at the expense of great effort, overcoming the want to just let things drop because the pain all the way down to my bones was so exhausting. But what I am experiencing now is only a slight drag, a little distress, and not to the core. Not like it was. Not like I remember. Perhaps that is what makes it so hard to just roll off back to sleep right now? I feel so much better, and I worry that the feeling is going to go away, so I want to be awake and enjoying it!
Memory is what tells me that things are changing. This world is changing. I remember a weird little thing just now, which is a cinderblock wall that ran parallel to my great-grandparent’s garage. It held up an awning type covering over their carport. It is gone now, but it defined a space that was under it, and a space that was outside of it. Under it was significant because they kept their trailer there. Along that was enough room to walk, and we would come through the gate there where the trailer was put in from the side road that went past their corner lot. It meant that once we entered and closed the gate behind us, we were in their space, and that space was shaded from the California sun. It was welcoming, and always filled with anticipation, because I loved those people. I would have to walk along past that cinderblock wall, which only went up three feet, and then I could get to the steps up to the back porch, which was wooden, and topped with one and a half 4×8 foot pieces of plywood, making it 6×8 feet in size. That’s where great grandpa would come out to smoke. But that little pink wall was also what separated the driveway under the carport from the side yard of the house. The rest of the boundary that kept strangers out was a white picket fence and rose bushes of all different colors. There was a narrow strip of grass, and the side of the house extending forward to the front. That little yard was as close as it would come to an outdoor space where a kid could play. It was small. It was narrow and long. But it was enough for my little six-year-old self. The little pink cinderblock wall was a backdrop for photos of family that came to visit, with its trellis covered in vine, and little plywood figure cut out, painted to look like an 18-inch-tall woman bent over to pick the weeds from what ultimately was a bed of pyroclastic rocks that my great grandparents used to collect when they went out travelling to places where rockhounding is forbidden now. A quick look at the old house on Google Maps Street View reveals that that wall is gone now, and once a person walks through that side gate, they are free to just kind of fall into the yard. The pyroclastic rocks, like great grandma’s collection of late 1800’s Vegas Silver Dollars, are gone now. Some are lost in our own backyard here in Idaho. I have no idea where the others went.
Memory. I remember that atop the trellis there was a thermometer, where a person could accurately read the temperature. In that California sun so close to the coast, it never strained itself in either direction. About a block west of the house was a mountain that shaded it from the very early sun, only allowing it to peak into the breakfast nook window around 9AM, and only if the fog was not overcasting the area. That mountain had a pumice mine. It was also a source of fear for my great grandmother. I could tell because of how she would speak of it in the years it caught fire. But there is so much more to remember there. There is so much detail, and there are so many things I know I have missed because I was too young, and just unaware.
Right. I am going to try to get back to sleep. This little journey through my memories has been brought to you by insomnia. Ask your doctor if insomnia is right for you. May cause drowsiness, and everything else bad you can imagine. But it sure is entertaining!