So There Are Dreams, And...

 ...there are messages. I think some dreams are messages.  From where?  Couldn't tell ya.  I just know I remember them for a long time, which I don't with ordinary dreams.  Even the sex dreams with the men/women/fantasy creatures are only significant because of that annoying part of my brain that's always in touch with reality.  Just as things are getting interesting, that part of my brain will pop up and say, "You can't be doing this.  You're married." And I'll be like, "Right, sorry, this has been fun but I have to get home to my wife." I make a terrible dream date.  

When I was a kid, I had a dream about Ygdrasil, the Tree of Life.  I didn't know it was Ygdrasil at the time, but then I didn't learn anything about Norse mythology until I was ten or twelve.  Norse mythology, in case you did not know this, is pretty gory and involves lots of sex and the end of the world, so probably not really kid material.  Even though, back in the Viking days, kids learned this stuff around the fire. Anyway, it looked like a corkscrew willow but it was taller than a redwood.  I couldn't even see where it reached the sky.  And hanging from all its little branches, as well as leaves, were thin crystal spires that seem to have grown there.  When the wind blew, all the little crystal spires touched each other and made sweet music.  It was pretty amazing but the tree was in terrible danger and somebody had to protect it from the bad guys, whoever they were, and I was the only one there. so I was gonna do it.  And then I woke up. 

I shouldn't tell you guys about my dreams.  Other people's dreams are boring. But: I had this crazy dream last night and I think you guys will like this one.  Some lady calls me and says, "I work for this dermatologist and he botched a couple of procedures.   One of the clients is threatening to sue or report him to the state, and he's just in a tailspin, and I'm scared of what he might do.  Will you come down and talk to him?"  "Of course," I say, and then, "Just out of curiosity, why did you call me?" "Because you're a Buddhist." Oh, okay, that makes perfect sense.  "I'm on my way."

And I'm driving over there wondering if the guy is going to attempt suicide.  I don't think I'm qualified to talk him out of it.  But maybe there's no time to find somebody qualified.  When I get there, though, it's obvious that's not his plan.  His office is full of body armor and guns and camo gear.  He looks like he's planning a commando raid, or a mass shooting.  

Now, I'm very scared.  This guy doesn't know me and if he is going to kill lots of innocent people, he can certainly harm me.  But, Thich Nhat Hanh talked about giving people the gift of non-fear, or not being afraid so that other people will not be afraid.  So I decide to non-fear my way through this thing.  He's facing the other way.  I ask him if he'll listen to me.  He says he will.  I say I understand some patients are maybe going to sue him, and that must have really hurt his feelings.  I say if it were me I would be worried about my reputation and my standing in the community.  I don't want to be thought of as a bad doctor.  I would have to do something to protect my reputation.  

"And what would you do?" he asks.  I say, "Well, I'd find the guy, and approach him in public so he wouldn't be scared, and I'd say something like, 'I know that the procedure didn't go the way we both hoped.  I'm really sorry about that. I never want anyone to have a bad outcome.  Let me refund your money and refer you to someone who can fix this, and if there's anything else I can do to make this right, please tell me what it is so that I can do it.'" He turns around, looking very surprised. I can see that he's been crying.  "You'd actually do that?"  "Well, I wouldn't like it very much," I say.  "I hate saying I'm sorry and I hate being wrong.  But if I wanted to protect my reputation, yes, that's what I'd do.  I don't want him to be mad at me.  I want to make him whole. And if I can do that, he won't be mad at me and he won't tell people I'm a bad doctor.  He'll tell people I'm a good doctor because I admitted I was wrong and tried to do the right thing."

The guy starts to cry and falls onto my shoulder.  He spills out this whole story, which I don't remember now, of what's going on in his life.  Everything is all messed up.  He's having mental issues, one of his kids is having mental issues, there are problems with his practice and he's just overwhelmed.  I don't say anything, just let him go until he winds down. Then he says, "I know where the guy is but I'm not supposed to drive because of my meds."  I say, "No problem.  I'll drive.  Where are we going?"  He gives me directions and we head out to a golf course in Plano.  I know not why.  Anyway, as we pull into the parking lot, I wake up.

And when I woke up, I was thinking, there are all kinds of problems in this world and this country and even this neighborhood.  I can't solve a lot of them because I don't have that kind of money or power.  But there are small things I can do, and I'm going to do those things because they're important.  I don't have a crystal ball, but I think we're heading toward a very dark time these next several years, and people who are not white or not Christian or not citizens or not from countries that people in government like are going to have a really hard time.  And anything I can do to make their lives easier is absolutely worth doing.  

Okay, maybe it's the new med talking. 

But still.  

When The Smoke Cleared And The Dust Settled...

So we had an election.

We all know how that went.

I guess I am very disappointed in us more than anything.  I mean, sure, let's sell out all women of reproductive age and black and Hispanic people and gay and trans people to make more money.  I thought we were better than that.  Well, I think I thought we were better than that.  Because actually, I'm not surprised.  Disappointed.  But not surprised.

When Joe Biden stepped down, I thought it was a mistake.  People liked him.  Lots of people, me included, had already voted for him in the primaries.  I don't know if there are any statistics on this, but some of those people might have taken major exception to swapping him out for another candidate. And, Americans are racist sexist bastards.  Particularly sexist.  Argue with me if you want, but it's true.  I predict we'll have another black President, and probably a Hispanic President, before we ever have a woman, much less a black/Asian woman.  Hillary never had a chance.

If you don't believe me about the sexism part, how much do women make an hour compared to men?  What procedures that affect men's bodies are restricted by state law?  How often are men told they're selfish for wanting both a career and kids?  How are men's names changed at marriage to show how they're connected to a woman?  When was the last time a man complained to you that some woman was checking him out on the street or yelling something offensive about his body?

So again, disappointed.  But not surprised.

But:

This has all happened before.  No, not just in 2016, but then, too.

We have elected some bad Presidents over the years.  Take Warren G. Harding, for example.  Please.  Primarily elected because he was better-looking than James Cox, he won in a landslide. He fired everybody in charge at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, only to realize a year later that he'd made a big mistake and that he had to quietly rehire everybody or, uh, the US would run out of printed money.  At his direction, the Department of the Interior leased the Teapot Dome oil reserves to Harry Sinclair, thus permanently poisoning a potential national park (and getting him all kinds of rich in the process).  He also kept us out of the League of Nations, which led almost directly to World War II by way of--well, a number of things. He was a notorious philanderer and may, in fact, have been poisoned by his wife. If so, thank you, Florence.  You did your country a great service.

Then we have James Buchanan, who lobbied the Supreme Court to issue the Dred Scott ruling.  He got Kansas admitted as a slave state, did plenty to increase the tension between halves of a sharply divided country (kind of like now), and failed to act in the face of economic chaos, more or less causing the Panic of 1857.  That the worst depression until, well, the Depression.  Like that Depression, the Panic only ended because of a war, the Civil War, when rampant government spending for armaments and paying soldiers cranked things up again.  (Which is how we usually get out of economic downturns.  But I digress.)

And let's not forget Herbert Hoover.  He  also won in a landslide, but had the bad luck to take office right as the Great Depression was really getting underway.  Once he was in charge, though, he signed a tariff act that caused a trade war and made the Depression even worse.  He sent the Army--yes, that Army--in to deal with World War I veterans who were protesting for their pensions, and many were injured and killed.  He was a terrible speaker and while he didn't quite rise to Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake" (if she really said that), he managed to say a lot of other stupid things that made him sound like he gave a shit about nobody but himself, which should sound familiar to some of you.  Shantytowns made up of unemployed people were called "Hoovervilles" in his honor.

I'm not gonna mention Reagan.  Oops, I mentioned Reagan.  It takes a special kind of talent to totally destroy an entire nation's economic foundation, kill 300,000 people, lie to Congress while framing some colonel and run the country through astrology.

Also, the United States has had plenty of dark days.  On August 24, 1814, the British Army burned our fledgling capital at Washington, DC more or less to the ground.  After keeping the country from tearing itself apart by civil war, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865.  On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Army attacked Pearl Harbor.  On October 22, 1961, there was reasonable fear that we were all about to be nuked into oblivion (and probably several times since then, though understandably, a lot of those are classified).

I wasn't around for any of those, that I know of.  I was, however, around when Ronald Reagan was elected and everybody cheered. I was here when AIDS was rampantly killing people and there was no cure or treatment, and people who had it were written off as unimportant because they were probably gay (or worse, Hatian).  I was here for the Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area (in fact, my father was physically there) that killed 65 people and injured thousands and did major economic damage. I was here when we attacked Afghanistan, stayed there for more than 20 years, and then left, letting the same people and the same problems that were running things before waltz right back in and take over again.  I was here when an organization we'd never heard up blew up the World Trade Centers, and I was also here when we promptly went to war with an innocent third party and "bombed them into the Stone Age." And of course I was here on January 6, 2021.

Don't get me wrong, November 6, 2024 was one of the worst days ever.

But:

All that happened, and I am still here.  And so are you.

The way I see it, there's really only three things we can do.  We can pack up and leave the country (really only an option for able-bodied people with money who can handle logistics and speak another language and don't have cats).  We can lie down and die, or maybe commit suicide.  Or, we can do what we need to do to get through the day and just keep on keeping on.

I am a big advocate of that last thing.  Because as long as we're doing that, we can also do what we can to help the lots and lots of people, like trans kids and women who need abortions, who are going to need help.  And we can do whatever we can, in whatever ways we have available, to fuck everything up for the people that would legislate us into the 1400s.

I'm not saying it's gonna be easy.  But what percentage of things that are worth doing are ever easy?  Giving my cat his ear medicine every day isn't easy either, but I do it.  I've got scars to prove it.  I also have a happy cat.  So it is worth doing.

Anyway, I hope you guys are okay and people you love are okay.  If you haven't checked on them, you should do that, because some people are not okay.  Which is why they need us to stick around and help.  Donate to abortion funds, if you can.  The NAACP, United We Dream, Planned Parenthood, this little organization that's close to my heart,  and the ACLU could all use your help, too.  

That last one more than ever.