It was a balmy night in the Enchanted Forest. Naida and I sat in our respective recliners facing the TV. I was naked but for the swim trunks I had worn all day and Naida was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. We were attempting to find something to watch until it was time to sleep. In other words, to sleep with our eyes open before having to close them. We decided on something called Night Club Scandal a 1937 movie starring John Barrymore. Its opening scene showed Barrymore standing over the body of his wife whom he had just killed. Naida soon fell asleep in her chair and I went back to reading my latest novel leaving the movie flickering in the background and the 1930s patter rumbling in my ears. John Barrymore was caught in the end, I think.
That night, I suffered the second of the horrid dreams that kept me awake and moaning most of the night, the first of which I wrote about here a few weeks ago. Throughout my life, I always fought back, sometimes effectively and sometimes not, against the threats posed in the nightmares but not during these last two. Two weeks ago it was stark terror and fear that immobilized me. Last night it was absolute helplessness first at the destruction of my home and happiness and then from the exhaustion from the need to fight off the creeping hands searching my body as I began to try to restore my life.
In the morning, I tried to figure out what was causing these dreams. It seemed appropriate to set my mind to it, after all I had little enough to do otherwise. My first thought, as one might imagine, was that these dreams were harbingers of the inevitable arrival of death. In the past, when confronted with these night time stories, I could fight against them because tomorrow was another day and my fears could be confronted. But, at my age, Mister Death no longer seems satisfied to leave too many more tomorrows for me to wrestle with my fears. At first this bit of infantile self psychoanalysis seemed to fit the bill. Then, I remembered that I had taken a swig of NyQuil before going to bed on each of the evenings.
Dextromethorphan (DMX), one of NyQuil’s three active ingredients, has mind-altering effects. Lots of kids use it to get high and drugstores often prohibit people from purchasing too much of it at a time. So, perhaps, that may be the cause and not that silly existential pseudo-psychiatric stuff. But, I seem to recall taking NyQuil on other nights without similar effects. Then again, my previous nightmare occurred on the first day of the last Central Valley heatwave and yesterday the most recent one began. Could my overheated imagination merely have been a response to my overheated body? As I have written often whenever I have rambled off into some adolescent level philosophical speculation, who cares? Anyway, although the cause of the dreams may remain a mystery, trying to solve that mystery at least allowed me to spend my time writing this and avoid watching The Great Escape for the umpteenth time.
Speaking of heat waves, it was in the mid-90s at 10 AM this morning when I left the house to swim in the pool. The swim was enjoyable after which, I went for a long walk through the Enchanted Forest. In New York where I grew up, temperatures in the 90s were often accompanied by humidity in the 90s also. To anyone walking along the City’s sidewalk death appeared imminent before one could walk the distance from one telephone pole to the next. Here in the Great Valley the air is bone dry. Walking in the Enchanted Forest shaded by the giant trees, I felt like I was covered in a warm blanket on a cool evening. It was delightful. There was a slight breeze. I decided to sit for a while on one of the benches along the path in order to enjoy the comforting warmth of the air and the beauty of the forest.
(Naida wanted me to make sure I point out that my hair is not white. It is actually quite dark. Its blond hue is only an effect of the sunlight. As one can tell I wear my hair in a popular Age of Quarantine style called the Albert Einstein Do.)
That evening, we watched a Nina Foch festival on TCM — yes, Nina Foch. At about 10:30 the temperature outside had dropped to 95 degrees. Cool enough to take the dog for his evening walk.
The next day, it was over 100 degrees outside when I woke up at about 10:30 in the morning. I had missed my slotted pool time so I spent another hour or so lying in my bed playing with my iPhone until the dog came upstairs started barking at me to let me know that I should stop lazing around and begin my day — a day that promised even less interest than usual.
Apparently, the SF Bay area had an East-Coast type of lightning storm that drove its citizens out into the night with their smartphones to photograph, post on social media and record for all time the singular event of the lightning displays. We East-Coasters were somewhat blasé about night time spectacles of lightning and thunder having experienced them on almost a weekly basis every summer. I loved them — the crashes of thunder so loud it would shake the house and the tingling on your skin as the flash of lightning tears through the sky. All the sounds and lights of a war among the gods without the slaughter. The next morning in the silence, as you read the morning newspaper, there was the inevitable story about some guy trying to get a last round of golf in before the storm broke getting fried on the fairway by a bolt of lightning. Ah, those were the days.
(It looks to me a bit like a skeleton with a sword confronting a dragon)
The lightning storm passed over the Enchanted Forest last night, the dog crept under the bed and shook in fear, and Naida, unable to sleep with the noise and flashes of lightning laid in bed and stared at the ceiling. I slept through it all. Too bad, I would have liked to have experienced it. A welcome break to six months of social distancing — even the end of the world would be a welcome break.
The next day was even warmer with a lightly overcast sky. Naida accompanied me to swim. Then I left to visit with HRM in the Golden Hills. He cooked me a lunch of pasta and meat sauce. That night, we watched the opening night of the Democratic Convention and cheered Michelle Obama. Let us hope this pandemic inspired unconventional convention marks the beginning of a new way to hold political conventions.
Two days have gone by. The temperature remains in the 100s. Today, the air quality was worsened by the annual burning of California. We have watched two more days of the Democratic Convention. The fear that our democratic republic is at risk was palpable. After the convention ended and the commentators and pundits signed off, we turned to TCM which was featuring the movies of Dolores Del Rio. I skipped it and went to bed.
The next day air quality was worse (AQI 253. Hazardous). Now and then I would look up from my computer screen and stare out at the sickly yellow aspect of scene outside through the sliding glass doors of the studio. I skipped swimming again due to the effect on my throat and lungs of the air now polluted with the smoke and ash particles from the nearby fires.
A few well forgotten days later, the Air Quality Index appeared low enough for Naida and I to go outside and chance an early morning swim in the pool. It was delightful. After my session in the massage chair, shower, lounging around in bed and a brief nap, it was 3:30 before I returned downstairs for lunch. That, I consider, is an ideal way to spend a morning.
Well, that about does it for this post. Not too much excitement to mark these days of our quarantine. That’s most likely the reason why I spent most of my time these past few weeks writing. We, all of us I imagine, are destined to sit here in our homes watching with horror and disgust on electronic media the passing of perhaps the most consequential, challenging and dangerous time in the history of our species. And, for most of us, we feel helpless to do anything about it except to vote for people we do not really know in the hope that they somehow may be able to draw us back from the precipice.
Nevertheless, no matter how grim or not our future may appear remember always to enjoy your days. We have few other options.
Ciao
Papa Joe's Tales, Fables and Parables 