July 28, 2006

• Bear Hug and Birthday Breakdown

  Yesterday morning, on Doug’s birthday (He’s my son, my youngest child, now a quarter of a
  century old — fancy that!), I woke very early and then drifted back to
  sleep.  I then dreamed that I went to the door to put Koji out on
  his chain.  When I opened the door a bear cub rushed in, climbed
  into my arms and wrapped its arms and legs around me.

  Startled and shocked, I reached for the .44 magnum revolver right there
  by the door, but quickly realized that I didn’t want to shoot the
  little bear.  It wasn’t hurting anything and shooting it would
  make a mess I’d have to clean up.  Then, just as I began wondering
  where its mother was, I woke up.

  I understood immediately what the dream was about.  Many years
  ago, someone walked me through a guided “meditation” procedure
  involving a path, a wall, and an encounter with a bear.  I was
  asked to describe the surroundings as I walked the path, what I did
  when I encountered the wall, and my reactions to the bear.

  My path wound through a wild wooded scene, which I was told indicated
  that I preferred doing things my own way, but not necessarily
  alone.  That made sense to me then and still does.  When I
  came to the wall, I didn’t turn back or go to the left or the right to
  go around, nor did I immediately try to climb over it.  I went up
  it to get a higher perspective on its extent and to see what was on the
  other side.  I was told that the wall represented death.  My
  response to that symbol also made sense to me.

  The bear was supposed to represent fame.  In that little mind
  game, when I saw the bear in my path, a big, towering thing just
  standing there, I neither approached it nor ran from it.  I
  stopped and observed it to see what it was going to do, prepared to
  interact with it if it seemed friendly or to fight or flee if
  necessary.  That, too, seemed at the time to be typical of my
  particular style of relating to unknown situations.  The person
  interpreting my responses seemed intrigued, never having met anyone who
  didn’t have an immediate and definite reaction, either positive or
  negative, to the fame bear.

  I didn’t know at the time how I’d feel about fame, never having
  experienced it.  Now I have some small fame, about the size of
  that little bear cub embracing me in my dream.  A day or two
  before the dream, I had been going through my Xanga footprints,
  backtracking to see where my visitors were coming from.  I 
  had been startled to find that most of the hits that weren’t from
  signed-in Xangans, came from Google image searches. 

  The particular images that were most popular sorta creeped me out and I
  briefly considered removing them.  Then, I decided not to shoot
  the little bear.  It’s the softest of soft-core, after all. 
  I’m not ashamed of it.  That was my conscious reaction. 
  Apparently, though, as the dream pointed out, I’d been unconsciously
  uneasy about it, wondering where the big mama bear was.  Having
  had a day to reflect on the situation, I’ve decided to let the little
  bear move in to stay, and not to worry about its mama unless and until
  she shows up.

  ---

  For Doug’s birthday, I gave him an outing.  We both tend to get a
  little stir-crazy here.  He’s in a bureaucratic loop over his
  driver’s license, needing his official social security card to get
  one.  The original we got for him when he was born (to qualify him
  for the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend) has been lost.  He
  downloaded SS forms to apply for a “replacement original” but that
  requires a driver’s license or other official picture ID.  His own
  laziness, aversion to bureaucratic BS, and some ambivalence about
  driving born of childhood experiences, have kept him from trying
  very hard to break out of the loop.  I’m determined not to do it
  for him, just because it’s not my job and I, too, have an aversion to
  bureaucratic BS.

  The plan we went with for his outing was a mutually-acceptable compromise.  He
  would have preferred a day of museum exploration and mall-browsing in
  Anchorage, which would have been way expensive and too exhausting for
  me.  We ended up going half as far, to Wasilla, where he got to
  browse a pawnshop for a “new” used copy of Tony Hawk’s Underground 2,
  and Waldenbooks where he got the d20 Modern Core Rulebook and the d20
  Modern Apocalypse splatbook, both of which he had already downloaded
  but wanted the convenience of hard copies.

  We also saw a movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man’s Chest. 
  We had high expectations for it, and it exceeded them.  We laughed
  our asses off.  In one scene, Doug ever-so-appropriately started
  humming the Katamari Damacy theme and cracked me up.  Leaving the
  theatre, Doug was cracking himself up practicing his Jack Sparrow
  drunken sailor’s walk.  I carry in my mind the image of Captain
  Jack Sparrow, cutlass raised, entering the Kraken’s maw.  Ooops!  Was that a spoiler? 
    We sat through the entire closing credits, until there was
  only us and one other couple there, and were rewarded with another big
  laugh at the final scene, which resolves a dangling plot thread. 
  I won’t spoil that one.

  On the way out of town, before we got to Greyfox’s place, I pushed down
  the clutch to downshift for a red light.  Suddenly there was no
  resistance and the pedal was lying on the floor.  Broken linkage,
  I’m assuming it is.  I put on the hazard flashers, raised the
  hood, and in a few minutes a pleasant young man named Mario stopped and
  let me use his cell phone.  I called AAA and Greyfox, in that
  order.  The tow truck driver stopped at Greyfox’s place to let me
  drop off some cat food he’d asked me to purchase for him, and to pick
  up some things he had for me, then we rode home in the wrecker with
  Streak Subaru riding behind.

  As Doug and I were starting out yesterday, before we’d even gotten to
  the mailbox out by the highway, I had said to him that I need a
  vacation.  He wanted to know what I meant, and I explained that I
  had cabin fever, and that for months the only times I feel less than
  wretched are when I get myself psyched up and out on the road.  I
  said I needed to get away from here for long enough that I’d start
  feeling relieved to get back home.  Oddly enough, that little
  outing to Wasilla yesterday did just that.  Funny how those things
  work out, isn’t it?

  

  • 3:45 pm
  • 5 Comments