Dreaming

    When I sleep in a little more than usual, my meds sorta peter out and I start dream-tripping. It's usually horrible and stressful, involving tiny animal babies that grown out of some generalized ooze and eat each other, or the smaller ones get eaten by the larger ones. Because there's billions of them, most no more than a fleck, many starving or half-eaten.
    Or I'm flying and I can't get down. I'm going so terribly high, my stomach is flip-flopping like on a roller coaster. I don't know if y'all's tummies hurt as much as mine on roller coasters, but it ensures my inability to enjoy amusement parks.
     I think that when my meds run out on me, I really do start tripping in the way that people who've taken too much LSD see tracers when they wave their hands before their eyes. Tracers are a type of visual echo. Of course sounds do that too. It's like a vibration, like everything's vibrating, even your mind, the images it's coming up with are speeding up, multiplying (like the baby animals). My inner ear starts vibrating I think. The part that gives you balance. That's why I feel like I'm flying out of control and it hurts my stomach so much.

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Sometimes I'm on a series of bridges or some kind of construction and an earthquakes shakes the world like a person shaking crumbs off a table cloth. People slam against ceilings and back onto concrete floors, the ocean rises to overtake the city. Lots of apocalyptic dreams. Tons.
    

 Last night I dreamt I lived in a shack in some rural place. I was in bed when a lightning bolt came through the house and into me, almost killing me. It zipped through me and made it's way to a little creek nearby, also hitting a worm that lived in the creek sludge. For a second, through the huge electrical charge, my consciousness entered that of the worm. And I saw that little creek as the most gorgeous paradise, full of exotic, towering growths and beautiful landscapes. It was so breathtaking, that even though the lightning had left me close to dead, I started dragging myself to the creek so that I could see it again.
(kind of a combo of these 2 images)

My family members yelled at me to stop, that I'd surely die making such an effort after coming so close to death. I replied that if I was going to die, I'd rather die at the creek, andsee it once more before going. 'But worms don't even see color!' they argued. And I thought back to the brief glimpse I got, how all the colors were inverted, all the dimensions so strange. I kept dragging myself, and then my dog Bingo busted into my room crying, and woke me up. He gave my hand some laps of the tongue and trotted back to his room, to his window, to whatever it was that made him panic in the first place. Usually a neighbor he likes pulling out of the parking lot. And that's how my day started.

      I walked to the 5th Street beach with my parents and Bingo. I'm so in my own world I never take advantage of being walking distance from Lake Michigan, right where Grant Park meets the Aquarium, Planetarium, Science and Industry Museum and Museum of Natural History. There's also beautiful plantings, some are like cactus gardens along the many pathways, and tons of tiny rabbits live within. We saw about 7 walking there and back. The best was watching Bingo, how excited he gets by the walk. When my folks go super early, they take him in the water though its illegal. Thats cuz there are millions of dogs here and their pee turns the beach noxious with a particularly stinky kind of algae.
        There were packs of people on Segways with helmets on, zooming by dorkily. I guess they rent them and are led by a tour guide. Dad said they had to be led because it could be dangerous. I think he meant they could get lost buy I started on about how one Segway pack would have a rumble with another Segway pack. They'd be zooming and zipping by each other, maybe slamming their ridiculous helmets against each other. Just like in the 'Beat It' video. Except all white couples.
        The water was just like sticking your feet in ice. Before I knew it, Mom had stripped down to her bathing suit and submerged herself in that polar lake.  'You just have to not think about it,' she explained. 'Go in without thinking. Like everything I've done in life.' 'Thinking? My feet are screaming in pain. What does thinking have to do with it?'  There was a concert going on in the stage they've put in Northerly Island.  It was Pat Benetar, you could hear all the songs.  I kept trying to remember her name. 'Patty LaBelle? No... Patti Smith? No..."          

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From all around there, you can see the Chicago skyline, and all the new hi-rises that've come up to the south of the main cluster since we moved in. It was 7:00 and still bright and humid out and as it got darker the water was like a million slabs of gemstones in a deep greyish navy mixed with lighter metallics. The clouds were low and lovely, reflecting the lighter colors of the water with touches of pink. Lots of chubby Mexican families at the little beach there, right next to the ancient domed Planetarium. Looking like their relative, a giant mayan head, carved out of a rock the size of a large camping tent, stood near the entrance of another museum. By the Aquarium, a giant man hugging a gianter fish statue. And more. Lots of under and overpasses, a bridge over train tracks where Bingo kept poking his head out of the arabesque stone side rail and wagging furiously. Dad said when he was little, Bingo was so scared of the bridge, so scared to look out over the edge.
A very picturesque day.