WHEN!

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My damn neighbor, just entering twelfth grade, who's my best friend, sent me a text the other day: “Have you ever died in your sleep just to escape reality” :: She never uses punctuation. It's her signature.

I texted her back stuff, just to change the subject, and let it settle. Two days ago a punk teenager punched me in the face on his way out of the BART, where I had been sitting near the door. I'd been reading a book and he'd sidled in beside me a stop earlier and asked in an offhand fake friendly way, “What kind of book are you reading?”

I looked up at him, and conveyed through my facial expression, something a little too honest, regarding the situation and his place in the general scheme of things, which might have been slightly close to an outhouse back in the woods. Had I to do it all over again, I would have replied in a mildly cordial way from one or two of the following choices. Replying in any way whatever would have changed things. However, I didn't say anything at all at the time, because I'm not easily pulled out of total absorption in a book. So in retaliation, I guess, for me gazing at him as if he were a total imbecile, he showed me how to punch a seventy-two-year-old man in the face on his way out the BART.

All of which led me to a mild funk for a few days, even though I knew his own father had punched him in the face for “being fresh” or some such thing. It's called family values.

Since then I've had a Zeitgeist point of view, embodying the low-burn hatred I'd picked up, until last night, up into this (Dream) I'm climbing Nob Hill on foot, and pass a perfectly braless girl coming down the hill to my left wearing a loose-fitting infinitely shimmering purple blouse. I continue to the top where I turn to the right, following some sort of rail, out of five or so distinct etchings, over towards a voice saying, “Come over here.” It's towards a movie set where they're paying me a pittance in the production of the movie, “No Future.” Half-awake by now, inwardly grumbling about a host of things, especially ... then I snapped out of it. I returned to the top of the hill from where I'd just come, dropped down to a light sparkly sensation in the center of my chest, noticed some sort of rainbow emanating from it, and went in. Knowing I was inside my body's nervous system now, even though I was still dreaming, I got this bright idea to unplug a white cord sitting there in front of me, then to circle some pillar that had suddenly made its presence felt from behind me, to circle back around it in a counterclockwise direction, and then shoot back to the front of me carrying the unplugged cable along with me, and now plug it back in! (Fin) Instantly I opened my eyes, here in my bed, and realized my future, such as it is, always involves my returning to this sensation within myself, come hell or high water. Some sort of mysterious creature had suddenly come alive, residing up in my throat or somewhere, and the two of us regarded each other.