Nearly midday, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Up since six, as I do nowadays, because in this period I am sleeping immediately and well. Night before last I fell asleep to a Youtube lecture by Gary Snyder at a Berkeley féte in his honor. Last night I slept to one by Robert Hass on Czeslaw Milosz. He preceded it with some tangential remarks about Tomas Tranströmer, who had won the Nobel Prize that day (“His poetry is drenched in Swedish weathers,” Hass said).

Ah! Husband is awake. The water runs in the upstairs sink, and now the TV comes on: horseraces are in progress. An announcer shouts with adrenalined urgency as the horses approach the wire. Next, the post-race commentary and analysis, a lower pitch and more considered velocity. Then a repeat of the race or maybe another race from a different track, narrated in excited chantrhythm as the animals pound the turf and vie for position around the turns.

He’ll want coffee. I’ll put the water on. But then I must turn here to last night’s dream. These dreams anymore seem like increasingly severe writing assignments, the challenges greater and greater - now see whether you can put this one into words, or make any sense of it ...

***

Okay, so here it is. Sort of cleaned up.

It was like several dreams stitched together badly, with figures common to each segment. I lived with a character played by turns by John Malkovich, by my most recent ex, and by a local poet of comically humorless and perfectionist personality who was briefly an acquaintance of mine when I had my bookstore. Mostly by Malkovich, though, channeling his sadistic dilettante persona from Portrait of a Lady.

After a single sexual encounter with him I become pregnant with a son. He became very excited about it and insisted I stay with him in his mansion. There was a dicey moment when it occurred to him that the child might not be his - why should he take my word for it? I was desperate to convince him I’d had no one else in many years. Because it was true.

The Malkovich man had an older friend, played by someone like ArminMueller-Stahl combined maybe with OssieDavis, kind, mature, concerned. This friend was always nearby to correct or repair or soothe anyone or anything that might have been harmed by the impatient Malkovich character’s outbursts of violent temper.

I was intimidated, almost cowering, terrified lest I trigger Malkovich's rage or even his disapproval. (In this respect it actually was quite like living with my ex ...)

There was at this point quite a bit of bleed-through from a simultaneous dream about Cleopatra. She was pregnant by Caesar and was confined to a slab-bed where she lay gestating a child while keepers watched. She was kept drugged lest she escape. It occurred to me that the historical Cleopatra had given Caesar a son against her will.

In the dream I was trying to resume my freelance writing career - was working on several articles and finishing them in good time. I was happy that my mind, no longer buffered and baffled and wrecked by kidney ailments, worked well and thought clearly. A woman phoned to give me further instructions about an article I couldn’t remember having been assigned. There were adjustments to make in my approach to the “dissection article," she called it, and how was it coming along? I thought I dimly remembered starting such a piece, but I’d forgotten all about it. I lied my cheerful response and then hung up. Panicked, I began a search through the premises for unfinished pages that might provide some clue. The work was due the next day.

An older woman servant or friend who stayed near and assisted me made a good-natured joke. The Malkovich guy turned on her and demanded to know what she meant by it. I cowered quietly, sensing the unfairness and grateful I wasn’t the victim this time. I almost spoke to defend her, but his angry glance silenced me. Then, to shift the energy, I abruptly handed him a pen. He became angry with me for interrupting him. I tried to defend myself, but he wouldn’t hear it.

He kept two monitor lizards as pets, one of each species - Komodo dragon and Nile. They were permitted to run freely in the house, and I was always trying to keep my bare feet away from them. At one point we rode around town in Malkovich’s fancy car, all of us, plus a housecat and the two dragons. M parked the car and left me alone in it with the animals. I tried to keep the reptiles from eating the cat. I tried to keep my bare feet out of their sight. The Nile monitor was very black and leathery and primitive looking, like a small fierce hungry T-rex wearing alligator skin (nothing like a real-life Nile monitor).

We returned to the house, where some children had left the back doors open, and I feared the lizards might run away. What I actually feared was Malkovich’s anger - at me. The older Armin-Ossie man quietly collected the reptiles, who hadn’t escaped after all, and closed them up in a small room. He carried the creatures lovingly in his arms, like babies.

Source:www.travelblog.org/Photos/245895.

It had been raining for days, the area flooded, chest-high in freezing gray water. The Armin character went out to explore a protected place near the standing foundation of a washed-away building, a sort of porch. He leaned to look underneath, and I called out to him to see whether my missing pages were there.

Two fat ruddy beerboisterous shirtless older men swam and hollered happily in the floodwater. One had forced his two small children or perhaps grandchildren to swim with them there. They were miserable and cold and frightened. The boy was hardly more than an infant, just able to walk. He was naked in the icy water, splashing and gasping in panic. I pleaded with the oblivious granddad to let me bring this one inside, and he finally agreed. (I stopped myself from feeling concern about the little girl, who was maybe 5 or 6.) I leaned from the back step and gathered up the naked baby and held him hard against me. He sobbed and shivered. His flesh was slick and cold in my arms. I found a puffy white blanket to wrap around him, and soon he was quiet, and I could feel him relax against me in relief.

Oh, the long slow descent is exaggerated, I think. It only seems long and slow. Don’t depressions always seem that way? Even the little ones. Anyway, yesterday I noticed that transiting Saturn, having finished up its second return to my own (these conjunctions with our natal Saturns happen only every 28-30 years or so, and are life-changers) - I noticed it had advanced to my Ascendant, is conjuncting - conjoining - currently, my Ascendant, and has been for a while, and will continue there for a while, and I realized it had brought on my heavy restless and despairing mood. Not so long, maybe. I felt better then because I knew it would end. It would be a period of soul-searching and hard work. And because I expect to see yet a third return, I don’t consider this period to be an end-of-life summing-up Saturn return, but another phase instead, a leveling-up of spirit.

I had some dreams. In one, Wednesday night, my elder son walked around with a big fat belly hanging over his belt. I called to him to please care about his body, that the imbalance would ruin his back, but he only rolled his eyes, as he is wont to do in my dreams.

And this morning I dreamed I was with Noam Chomsky and Malvina Reyholds and we were organizing a movement of some kind. People came to our venue, a social hall in one wing of a sprawling motel, to get literature, hear lectures, take part in discussions. One night the regional leader came to speak and the place was thronged with screaming fans as though he were a rock star. He was only a speaker, a middle-aged intellectual in a suit, but the crowd was wild. Part of the event included a sort of halftime entertainment. A flock of Monarch butterflies was released and they fluttered skyward in exquisite murmurations, beautiful rhythms of coalescence and dispersal, until, exhausted, they landed all together in a gorgeous pulsing swarm on a rafter and were gathered up again. Then the motel management descended and evicted us because they were hostile to our political views. They were angry. Soon low-flying Korean bomber planes filled the skies dropping bombs everywhere. I fled with two small children, helping them escape. Then I circled back to gather some belongings from my home. A large red fox bounded out of some woods and ran alongside me, fleeing also. At home I stuffed the front of my pants with books hoping to look pregnant and so smuggle them out. I was going to have to walk out with a child, a little dark-haired girl, and I was going to have to abandon my pets—my five cats and my little black dog. Mr. Chomsky told me to take books of information about our movement with me so its message wouldn’t die. I chose three from the shelf - volumes 1 and 2 of its basic precepts and a third about Native American rights. These were large heavy books I would have to carry everywhere in my arms. I understood I was going to be very tired carrying on this work. I decided to leave a big bag of dry cat food open in the garage for my housecats, and to crack a window open so they could get used to going in and out and become wild again without me. I was griefstricken to leave them. Mr. Chomsky said he would drive me out in his car. I begged him to let me take at least my little dog. He agreed reluctantly, fuming as he drove.

***

In this waking world we had a satisfying Thanksgiving day. Husband worked upstairs until 4 o’clock. I was alone in the kitchen all day and felt a little lonely there. I baked three pies and whipped both potatoes and yams, steamed asparagus and sauteed Brussels sprouts in caramelized butter. I’d cooked up the cranberries the night before. Roasted a small birdbeast and made the gravy. Thanksgiving is just a vehicle for gravy, in my opinion. I made one emergency trip to the store for a baster and some buttermilk and a new oven thermometer. We had some organic wine with the meal, a little on the young side but very nice. Then we took a walk in the twilight and blue chill. TheAlturas streets were empty and quiet. Hawks came home from the fields, soared low into the great trees around the football field, settling for the night. The three of us arrived back happy to be too warm in the oven-heated house, and then we had our pie together in front of the TV and watched The Last of the Mohicans.

Husband went upstairs after that to watch his TV alone, and brotherB was happy to go to bed and he fell asleep right away, full of Thanksgiving food, and I watched his beautiful face for a while as he breathed. It seemed every bit as angelic as it had the day he was born. He glows with a holy aura sometimes, especially now that he’s becoming healthier. I had an anxious thought about how he might die from his defective heart one day, just like that, and leave me. Caught my breath to keep from sobbing. The Saturn conjunction, remember. It’s a sad planet.

So I made up my bed with newlaundered ivory cotton linens and down comforter and crawled in after a hot scrub in the shower, sat up in bed so clean, in my T-shirt and flannel pants, trying to stay awake until my hair was dry.

Better today, as long as I don't think about writing projects.

Outdoors the weather is still grim. Still gray. And drizzly to boot.

But I'm paid today, and soon brotherB and I will shop for feastfood. In the afternoon pumpkin and pecan pies will be baked, cranberry sauce concocted, to prepare for tomorrow. Just us three at tomorrow's table, and the creatures, but I am so thankful for us. So very very grateful.

For heat in the stove, propane in the tank, gas in the car. House payment covered.

For online friends. For flesh-and-blood humans - they exist - who listen to my words and attribute no sinister subtext, but understand them for what they mean. Which is all I ever mean.

The world at large gets better and better, it seems obvious to me, even if my own puny world collapsed long ago. I love this world very much, and I love the vast vibing void we drift in.

blessings

I have resisted writing sort of stubbornly these past days and weeks. I think it may be impossible for me, for my mind, to focus, when in a relationship, on anything but the relatee. Even in Beloved Husband's considerate absence he is ever-present to me, as my attention fixes on encounters and confrontations past and to come.

I find myself, for three-and-a-half years now, in a slow, steady descent into a soft, shallow, nonclinical depression - a resignation. From time to time I fight it, I rise up and toss off a flurry of verbiage, but it all goes nowhere. As do I.

It's no one's fault. It's the byproduct, I suppose, of my ADD - which requires an unnatural and absolute isolation for any project to approach completion - and our poverty, which renders impossible most obvious solutions - separate residences, a retreat, help with housework and meals.

If before my 58th year I'd known about my neurology - my high placement on the autism spectrum and concomitant attention deficits - I'd have avoided most of my life's pain and suffering, avoided inflicting most of the pain and suffering others endure because of me. No marriages, no children, no partners. I might have known better than to risk them. For all the joy and wonder I have known because of these, I have given joy to no one - not intentionally, but because I only perplex. Strange person in an alien world, a creature everyone misunderstands. Especially myself.

I whine like a teenage girl today. Must be the weather. Grim, gray, with ferocious winds.

Dim memories of dreams from overnight. I do remember that the worlds were vast and acutely detailed, as they have been for several such vague nights in a row. I lived on a mountainside, in the midst of evergreens, under snow. Children ran about. Eight-year-old neighborDeaven was there. He stood at the side of a busy road and peed in the shoulder snow.

In real life, book sales have been booming. As an adjunct to this business, I volunteer at the local FriendsOfTheLibrary thrift outlet. Most of my stock comes from there. It's heavy work. My health seems to be holding up, though, although handling so many books aggravates the arthritis in my hands. For this, I find quercitin-and-bromelain supplements sovereign.