hey man… did you say you’ve got ding dongs?

 
There are Ding-Dongs in the break room vending machine.  Every time I look at them I can hear, as clearly as if it was spoken over my shoulder, the Voice of Bruce Campbell doing Elvis and saying, “hey man… did you say you’ve got ding dongs?”
And I don’t know if that’s the sign of a sick mind, or a sick vending machine.
When I was younger, in about 5th grade, maybe it was 4th grade, I heard about lucid dreaming for the first time.  I checked out library books, learned a few tricks.  I learned about triggers, timing, conditioning, and phases of sleep.  I became the subject of my own experiment.  I don’t know if it worked, I don’t know if anything was accomplished.  I think that I can me to a point where I could easily recall and control my dreams.  I could bind the fabric of them so that they were a real and inter-active landscape that could be consciously tread upon and lived through.  But before long dream memories mingled with waking memories and formed a tight tangled knot that refused to unravel. 
Which isn’t that odd when you think about it.  Memories are, as un-poetic as it may be, are just chemical pathways.  Just neurons, little bits of flesh and electricity, lining up in a given pattern. Dreams are the same thing.  Flashes of chemical and lightning along pink pits of organic material.  There aren’t separate file folders for each.  You can’t keep one on the red disk and one on the green disk. 
Maybe that’s why dreams fade so quickly, maybe it’s an evolved trait, like stitches that dissolve, dreams steam away with the morning light so that they don’t mingle themselves in with our waking memories.
But part of this experiment, part of being able to walk trough your dreams was being able to recall them afterwards.  And in building up that tenuous self dissolving string into a chain of recall, that self defense mechanism was destroyed.  There is a patch of my life, a period of about 6 to 9 months from which I cannot trust my memories.  Into which all sorts of things that I know must be dreams, are mingled with true memories. Some of them are easy.  I know that I did not receive that sweet soft kiss from my biggest fourth grade crush.  But some of them are not so well defined.
I have a very very clear memory of a patchy cornfield in late summer. Of exploring it and coming upon and dried spot of flooding, a bald spot in that tall green maze.  And startling something that stood and fled so quickly it was hard to get a good look at.  A white flash taller than a deer, its legs bent backwards like an ostrich, and completely white.  Something albino whatever it was.  I have no idea if that was real or imagined.  It seems so real.  And there are so many others.
Sometimes, as butterfly like as it is, I wonder if this isn’t still one of those lucid dreams.  I just feel so out of place sometimes.  Like today, here at work.  I feel like I’m the item on the right hand side of the children’s bulletin. 
See the 2 pictures of Jesus?  What’s different in the picture on the right? What doesn’t belong?  There’s the wrist watch on Judas.  I think Thomas is holding an umbrella, and does Mary have a wedding bouquet?  Oh, and what’s that off in the corner?  It’s me! I don’t belong in this picture either… bugger all.
There’s this little mantra, I’m sure it should be attributed to someone, but I don’t know who, that says “you are exactly where you need to be at this very moment.”  I’ve clung to it, and calmed myself with it time and time again.  I’m not prepared to disregard it entirely, but on days like today, it serves no salve.
It’s probably self centered and egotistical to say that I feel like I should be doing something bigger.  And I’m probably too lazy to be doing something bigger.  But there ist is anyway.  I feel like this is all a pointless waste.  At least I’m getting something bloggable out of it though.
So many things in my life seem like wasted space.  Wasted energy going into wasted places. I try to take stock.  There are some things that are right and good.  I love my wife, I love my daughter, and I can’t imagine any existence without them.  They are right.  But like me, they are in the wrong scene as well.  And to make it worse, I have no idea what the right scene is. 
Sometimes I get some vague inkling of it.  Some apple pie scent upon summer wafting breeze.  But it’s gone. And I’m frustrated.  It’s not to be rich.  Not only is that something I can never have, but luckily it is something to which I do not aspire.  It might be to be famous, but only on a smaller level.  I will confess that the prospect of having my name recognized, at least in some circles, is appealing. It is to own less and do more.  It is to live a little life and leave a larger wake.