Golden Oldies and Webbed Visions (a 30:30 report)

Once, I had a very clear dream of flying. I think it was only the once, maybe I’ve forgotten others though surely none had the resonance with the one I now barely visualize, but clearly know it was moving and energetic the morning I awoke to it. How old was I that day? Where was my bed, in what town or city, in what state? These facts have leaked away, dripped out of the old noggin’, which is likely okay so long as there are enough of echoes remaining that I have a clarity as to who I exactly am – was, are, can be – I like the idea of fluidity, as in I have a human only-me base — possibly DNA kissed but hardly enforced, like, you will be this when you grow up, and I’m not thinking nature and nurture here, though again it cannot be ruled out entirely,

I mean there were years, up to like 20, when I would have labeled myself a Republican, so yikes, I am so far past the political party scene now – call me Yippie – and have been oh so long, but I grew up with Republican parents and maybe this was an influence, we are what we eat you could say and if eating includes hearing and cringing and ambiance and milieu, and here it says it does, well, what could I have expected. When I was six I walked my street – High Street, number 191 our address – and knocked on doors of houses who were a few neighbors, technically all in the neighborhood, I mean I hardly personally new any, but knocking on doors and encouraging anyone answering to vote for the re-elect Eisenhower vamp, which why was I out there at six, that is weird, and on that day out in the street I saw my first and only – so far – flying saucer, clear as the bunnies I watched out in the yard this morning, big, fluffy gray/black things –

And the flying saucer, if I remember accurately but I come again to the place of memory which is short on detail but long on impact, like the flying dream, and I saw the flying saucer fly not so high above me coming from the east, like flying over Main Street from Mill Pond, and heading west past the Intermediate School, where Bonnie J and I had little flirtatious crushes in either fifth or sixth grade – You see the pattern here, details be gone but the thing, the very thing, the important experience, it lingers, it enhances the quality of the life line – anyway we never did anything, kissing or any of that, she was a beautiful young black girl who I sadly learned passed away a year ago today which is a bit of a heart-breaker, and I believe her dad was a cop, though that may be conjecture, and I wonder what he would have thought about his beautiful daughter mixing it up with the likes of sad sack me, though who’s to say, if we stay open there are surprises showing up all over, so just maybe he would have referred to me as “son”, but we’ll never know because I did not make a decision and take action and be all aggressive and brave and daring and “all-in” –

Now there is another trait which dawdles all the way along my lifeline though here now into my age 70’s I am managing to kick that worthless asshole — call it tiptoe-through-life — to the curb – but see as I was saying the flying saucer flew over me heading west so surely over the Intermediate School and the High School and out toward Swifts Beach, which I do have stories and more sadness’s of chances not chased after, and we can get to those, because long before the saucer and even before the Eisenhower volunteerisms was the fact that people can change, and I went from a Nixon-sign holder down on the Hyannis rotary in 1968, the fall, to a wilder-eyed getting crazy radical by the following spring and this was influenced by details of life and not being home with Republicans and in the company of long-haired freaks and politically and culturally and socially and theologically astute young men and women who were telling me I ought to go point that flag somewhere else and plug into the real deal and it was going to be alright, oh maybe the drugs had a role,

Which that’s an idea whose time surely must have come, the everything getting alright thing, so there is nurture and there is nature and there is milieu and put them in a hat and shake them all up and now this someone is sitting one morning in a basement across the country from flying saucers and Tricky Dick signage’s and dreams of flying so free, so beautifully, and there is a clock on a smart phone winding down as the seconds click off so as to establish a must for myself and you remember the crack about a life-long-ness of not being “all-in” enough, like what I mean not just jumping in, taking the leap, going for it – which talk about regret and I have regret and I also have fun ideas about time which I believe works less as my birth certificate chuckles — that it’s all a straight-shot deal, cause it ain’t, so who’s to say I cannot go back and maybe sneak Bonnie off to one of the stairwell’s heading down to the basement where the cafeteria was and where they must have had a room where they kept all the special needs kids who were like ghosts to the rest of us, and maybe me and Bonnie could have a couple of big, sweet, lingering smooches because I’m telling you – I am telling you – time ain’t straight, it folds over itself and slipping through years and decades and eras and periods of living one way and then another, well it can be done,

And I’d probably still do the Eisenhower thing because compared to where we have mostly gone since ’56 he wasn’t all that bad and otherwise I would have missed the saucer if  I didn’t, and it looks like some things do only come around once in life and I for sure was all the way in that afternoon in terms of being filled with wonder and grace and magic and a fine appreciation to have seen what I seen, but the Nixon rotary thing – nah –

And a Buddy of mine – also a recent graduate to the great beyond which does in fact suck even if my recent perusal through pages of the Tibetan Book of the Dead hints that maybe it’s on to bigger/other things and just maybe if enough good dues have been paid – Nirvana – anyway his name was Bill from Marblehead and he drove me in a November in 1972 all the way from Salem down to where I was registered to vote and here memory fades out and I do not remember was that my hometown (Wareham), which my mind leans that way, it’s whispering to me “It was!”, and if it was I bet we drove down High Street and where there ought to be a plaque for the day I saw the saucer – anyway it was like 80 miles each way and he drove me so I could vote for McGovern against Nixon, making me one of the deciding votes as Massachusetts it turns out became the only state to vote for McGovern, so you can see the blessing in that journey,

And here I come to cobwebs, I do have a vision periodically that my brain has become covered in cobwebs, not entirely, more kind of like some spider webs up in a corner of a room so you can still see the corner but you for sure can see (and even feel) the webs and I may have run out of gas with this writing exercise which began wondering about whether I can even today lay somewhere real quiet and go and see if I can astral project myself to the moon, a little while ago the song “Fly Me to the Moon” showed up in my head, talk about golden oldies and webbed-visions.