Just a few Dreams to Sell

Song lyrics, magical thinking, ghosts, Ball jars, flashbacks, meter, shells, blue rocks, alliteration and other coping devices

Photo by Navarag Vaidya on Unsplash

“And have you any dreams you'd like to sell?” Fleetwood Mac asked me when I was a kid.

Yeah, I peddle dreams. I put them on paper and sell them. There’s a package set, good and bad. Tangled in Water is the name of the next novel. It has ghosts and a mermaid.

Every writer has their quirks. I have more than my fair share. My books are full of ghosts, weirdos and kooks, people that can be labeled eccentric if you want to be nice. If you prefer honesty, just say they are nuts.

Some one I know recently pondered if she might benefit from some “be happy” meds. I reminded her that she comes from a long line of batshit crazy women, just like me. Chances of her missing the gene were slim. She didn’t seem ready to embrace the inevitable insight: We’re as un-normal as the people who raised us. That’s one monumentally cringeworthy statement. Heavy.

I’ve walked around with that 6-ton monolith on my shoulders for a while. Have you seen the History Channel musings about ancient civilizations moving massive, quarried stones around using rollers, pulleys and lost alien technology? I could use some cosmic-fancy levitation juice. These grievances are massive. Heavy stuff.

“Oh, thunder only happens when it's rainin'
Players only love you when they're playin’ ”

The two most perfect lines in a song are on the Rumours Album. I knew in 1977 I wanted to be a writer. Those lines spoke to me. I wanted to write with such clarity and mystery at once. I didn’t know then I would make that dream happen. My third novel is now in production.

I work. I write.

I have clients I have fooled into thinking I am brilliant. Then it rains. Thunder happens. Players play you. Betrayers betray you.

I’ve grown accustomed to the ups and down and uncertainty of living with ghosts who like to appear when least convenient.

I even manage to walk, live, breathe, and spell big words, on good days. But I rely on devices, much like the literary devices in my novels. I string my coping mechanisms together, reward my little accomplishments with Yorktown Peppermint Patties, sleep with the lights on (and my shoes), and hope for the best. Heavy.

I catalog metaphors, make lists of alliterative words that sound scintillating and scrumptious. Sweet. I go for days where I think mostly in pentameter and other kinda-meters I make up. I catch myself swaying and head-nodding to a rhythm I suspect no one else hears. If someone notices, I freeze mid head-pop pretending I’m nodding in agreement with the omniscient newscaster who provides running commentary on all things living. It’s a nice rhythm, easy to dance to. It’s like a mother’s instinctive rocking and pat-pat-patting a baby’s back. I need rocking every now and then. Heavy. Very.

I collects bits and pieces, rocks and sticks, seeds, shells, bug wings, bark crumbs. My pockets are always full. I save my treasures in Ball jars I have on the windowsill, just like the characters in my books. I have crystals and polished gems, but my favorite are plain blue pebbles, water-smoothed. They are calming to me. They are ancient and earth-born and moon-touched at once. Nature’s addictive. Pebbles provide a fix. Sand left in my shoes can help me get by. I know. That’s just weird.

I trap and save incongruities

I crop in on images I see until only the essential intersections are left. I take mental pictures of the space between and the almost there. I take real pictures of the branch where the bird stood before it flew away and call it a memory. I have many many many 4X6 portraits of what used to be something or might be someday. I imagine what it would be like to sit on that leaf, run on that branch. I crawl in the plant shadows. Not for real. Just pretend. Just a little bit wacky.

We have found a restaurant/bar with live music on the weekend, called Flashback. They play music from our era. I sit at the table, just a few feet from the musicians. They play the songs that were on the transistor radio I played quietquietquiet under the blanket so my mother wouldn’t hear. Every once in awhile they play a song that breaks through the facade and the crazies come out in tears. I sway in my chair, head bopping, off rhythm, crying over something I can’t quite name. I vow to go home and write about it. But I forget.

“Now here I go again/I see the crystal visions/I keep my visions to myself” sang Stevie Nicks, Good advice. Some visions you shouldn’t share.

My grandmother had oddities

Grandma was the rockstar of wacky. She had a very eclectic set of beliefs, from Bible citing to conjurring spirits and harnessing mystic powers, especially those that could be bought at Uncle John’s Flea Market for $1.99. She was a sucker for gimmicks. It started with Holy Water I suppose. She brought an empty pickle jar to church so she could steal a jar full after everyone else had trickled out. I was her accomplice and look out, forced to take a vow of silence.

She played bingo and had a whole bag of lucky charms she carried with her and rotated through during bingo night at the Serbian church. She had a three-inch pyramid on her kitchen counter, too, generating or trapping something. Not sure what. She wore copper bracelets, lots of them, in layers, sure the restorative power of copper would end her arthritis. Never did.

She had a stink eye, shitlist, doubledogdare she could dish out, and a curse she would put on you if you didn’t want to dry the dishes because you were so tired your bones hurt from studying all night for a Geometry test on Theorems. That was a six-monther. Most curses were shorter. She tended to forget what they were over.

My mother tried her hand at curses, too. Being less ept, she typically failed. I always thought it was because her aim was so poor. She hated noise, really sound of any kind, and would point at radios or TVs she found exceptionally egregious and do some finger dance and flick of some evil juice through the air. I don’t know what she thought was going to happen. But it never did.

There was the time…

I was married. My parents visited. She brought me a newspaper page from the National Enquirer, the grocery store rag. It had an 4-inch in diameter blue circle printed on it. Solid blue. It was the good luck circle. I was supposed to cut it out and carry it around. It was going to being me good luck. The newspaper had reported that people who carried a blue circle won the lottery. Magic. She actually believed that could work. I probably shouldn’t have erupted in LOUD laughter. But I did.

Everyone knows only blue rocks can be lucky.

“And have you any dreams you'd like to sell?/ Dreams of loneliness/Like a heartbeat drives you mad.”

The best example of the weird thinking in my family was the time the crazy matriarchs thought a dog would cure my allergies. Yeah. I was a sickly kid. I was allergic to something, anything, who knows what. But my mother couldn’t be bothered to keep a log to pinpoint triggers or systematically identify exposure to a food or plant or animal.

I missed a lot of kindergarten. I realize now that the peanut butter and graham crackers with milk could have killed me. Then, I was just a nuisance. My grandmother reported that some lady at bingo said a chihuahua was good for allergies. Yes. They interpreted that statement as having a chihuahua was supposed to cure my allergies. Magic. Of course, the real missive was that IF YOU ARE GOING TO GET A DOG, a chihuahua would be a good choice because they don’t shed.

They were certain a dog would cure me

My father made a futile attempt at arguing reason, but didn’t really put in much effort. His big sin was “going along” with whatever craziness my mother and grandmother brewed all night long.

I was confused. I was six years old and knew a dog as a cure was odd. I kept asking if this was a magic dog we were getting, which I found rather scary. But, if it meant I got a dog, I could go along for the ride. As I suspected, Skippy was not magic. I was blamed and resented for every puppy accident and puppy annoyance. I had, once again, caused inconvenience of the most epic proportions. I was yelled at repeatedly for That Damned Dog that I didn’t remember ever wanting.

So, winter came. My mother put the teacup size dog out one night in subzero temperature and six inches of snow and left it out there. She fell asleep on the couch. The dog froze to death. And it was my fault, of course. And the stupid dog.

“In the stillness of remembering what you had/And what you lost/And what you had”

I think of that stupid dog often

It still makes me so mad. I still want to shout! It wasn’t my fault.

I actually sorta-confronted my mother about the story before she died. We were sitting at my kitchen table visiting and reminiscing with a cousin I grew up with. The cousin brought up Skippy and how she was envious I had a dog. I told the story, in a joking “can you believe how silly” tone that was polite. Decorum. No claws. We laughed, in unison shouting IF YOU HAVE ALLERGIES AND YOU ARE GOING TO GET A DOG, THEN…” It was the sixties. We were stupid, was sort of the polite dismissal my cousin and I went with.

My mother, sitting there at that table, still defended that “someone” told them a dog would be good for me. It would be THE ANSWER. “The rumor” going around said a chihuahua was good for allergies. She had no choice but to believe it. It wasn’t her fault the dog died. She never said she was sorry.

I changed the subject. I poured more coffee. I offered cookies (with no nuts or peanut oil).

The incident is in my latest novel. The one about to come out. But I called it a cat. Mr. Whiskers. Lots of the craziness is in the novel. Maybe too much. But it just flowed out, like a well gushing wave after wave of warm water and cleansing alliterations.

We all have our devices.

“Say women, they will come and they will go

When the rain washes you clean, you'll know

You'll know

You will know

Oh, you'll know.”

Heavy, Stevie, Heavy.

Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, 1977

Songwriter: Stephanie Lynn “Stevie” Nicks

Dreams lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.