“Back to the story, it’s not hard to find. Ninja’s not just of the body, but of the mind.”
Last time—which was a while ago—we discussed dreams.
I’m not crazy about the idea of turning the Hot Rod into a glorified dream journal, but sometimes it’s helpful to retrace our steps. Plus, I had a dream last night that directly addressed the single comment left on my last post.
Once again, my dream was not “a mercilessly visceral homage to the platonic ideal of male homoeroticism.” Rather, it featured a good number of prominent characters from my college years, both peers and instructors. They were staging an intervention that demanded I publicly address the issue of my sexuality. Fortunately, I had an evasive ace up my sleeve.
I’m not entirely certain what my pretext for being at my former instructor’s house was, but my purpose there was clear. I had a sheet of plastic stickers that were, in fact, cameras. I was to place them around the house so that myself and some unspecified authoritarian body could monitor this group of my educational assistants as they discussed matters of illegal whaling.
The whole wiretapping aesthetic is directly attributable to the influence of outside information. I’ve recently been watching Outlaw Bikers, The Wire and The Informant!
I’m pretty certain that cigar is (mostly) just a cigar. Although it probably tells me that I don’t have a highly-reliable corridor of trust with many people with whom I am allegedly close.
Illegal whaling! What?
I’m not literally the whales, but I’m clearly aligned with them. And I’m hoping to invoke the protection of some universally-powerful force to which the whales and I are entitled. God. The FBI. Who knows?
The whales and I are inconsequential leviathans. Benevolent giants who couldn’t be killed in an obsolete age. West Coast Redwoods falling for a big-box Staples. Collateral damage in a comfortable conspiracy. People need paper. It is a regrettable-but-noble pursuit.
You see, we can’t just let whales be whales. We must afford them special protections. International regulations and cull quotas. We must control what we can control and control what we can’t control. Know everything, and define our world accordingly.
In the end, I couldn’t do it.
I confronted the group about their activities, knowing that if I stuck that camera on that grandfather clock some douchebag in a robe would send my friends to jail. I didn’t care if they hated me or wanted me to be gay or, more than likely, were totally fucking indifferent to my existence in the same way they couldn’t give a shit about a shipping lane bisecting a whale migration.
They don’t deserve to rot in jail. So, whatever…
Two days before I got unreasonably drunk on Christmas and told my parents I wanted to kill myself, I had another dream.
I had a wife and a child. I remember my wife as an ethereal presence, as I have nothing to which I can compare her.
Almost certainly naively, I remember that child as though he were real. I remember the smile on his face as I held him. The warmth in the veneer of his shimmering brown eyes. The potential I always knew must exist, but could never realize. The despair shattering into less than that when she stole his life for reasons none of us would ever dare to comprehend.
I slid out of the covers. Went to HMV and bought DVDs for the family so I wouldn’t fail on Christmas Eve when we all opened our presents to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child.
Density is an earned quality.
When the universe was young, everything was soft. Over time, through heat and pressure, things got hard. Tough. Impenetrable. Unforgiving.
I sincerely doubt that’s readily reversible.
But, I wonder if, instead of suffocating the future, this weight can’t be used to build a wall against the past.
HR Lincoln 
