Tsunami Dreams

I’ve been planning a trip to Hawaii with my partner for the last few weeks and I dreamed about being there this morning. The other day I was thinking about what we’d do if there was a tsunami while there, whether or not a 2nd or ground floor condo would be wisest and if we could run to higher land in a snap. These are the things I think about. Call me a worrier. I just like to cover all my bases. This way, nothing ever surprises me.

In my dream I was swimming in Maui’s waters and, out of nowhere, a lifeguard starts to rope off an area about 100 feet out from the shore. The rope had these small red triangle flags on it. Apparently, there were strong riptides and he didn’t want people venturing out. I got out of the water and waited for conditions to change. About a minute later the waters were calm, so I jumped back in. Suddenly, there was an enormous ebbing of the tide and I was on the beach, no longer underwater. I knew what was happening. Then I saw this beautiful, smooth, horrifying wave that had gathered up strength and was preparing to crash. I ran down the beach looking for my partner and found some of my girlfriends who said that he was okay but that they couldn’t locate him. I woke up abruptly and felt as if I had been forced through some time barrier that had thrust me into the present: March 31st, 8:30am, San Francisco, California. The good thing is, I found my partner. He was getting ready for work and completely unscathed.

San Francisco gull, Feb. 2000

What Comes to the Surface

Being out of work and having lots and lots of time, desires/life-dreams seem to come up more frequently than they did when I was working FT (full-time). For instance, I’ve wanted to sing and pick up an instrument lately. I’ve had this desire many times before, but when I worked FT it bugged me about once a month. Now it’s once every 2 or 3 days. I guess it makes sense. I have more space and time to even consider doing things that I like to do. But I’m wondering how these desires initially got so far away from me in the first place. The answer is probably obvious, but I still think it’s important to consider.

Things are easier to see after you’ve sort of “broken-up” with your job. You realize why you left, you know why you’re better off now, you know what’s good and what’s bad. All this “sight” comes to the surface…all this visual acuity…inner-visual acuity. It’s what happens when you go on vacation…but I’m on a long one…with no warm beach or fresh fruit…and no nice hotel. Hey! This vacation sucks!

Unemployment II

This won’t make me very popular, but I love the movie, “Just Friends.” LOVE IT. And here’s why:

I threw out my back last year and was horizontal, on the couch for about a week. I was pretty under-stimulated, so I think it was a good combo of timing and humor that made me love this movie so much. I laughed so hard at one part that I threw out my back again. This youtube movie contains some of the movies very best highlights. (My sister does an awesome version of “Forgiveness.” I should encourage her to post on youtube along with the thousands of others. She’d make them all jealous…just like Samantha James is jealous of Jamie Palomino. Watch the movie.)

Why is this post called “Unemployment II?” Because this movie is on HBO all the time…it’s on my TV right now.  I know this because I’m unemployed.

Posting this movie on my website is quite a big step for me. Quite a risk. Quite an exercise in surrender. Enjoy.

Dreaming Every Night

Being unemployed, I’m sleeping a full night’s sleep. When I was working an 8-5 job, I would go to sleep around 11:30 or 12 and get up at 6:30 in the morning. That’s around 6 & 1/2 or 7 hours of sleep and it never felt like enough. Waves of sleepiness would hit me frequently throughout the day. I knew it was too little, but I never tried to change it.

Now, by body is getting (and telling me that it wants) almost exactly 8 hours each night. I don’t use an alarm anymore and my head pops up at the 8-hour mark every morning! It’s wild! So, if I ever have another 8-5 job again, I gotta remember this and give my body what it wants: eight long hours.

And along with all this sleep has come all this dreaming. I haven’t dreamed so consistently in years. It’s really amazing. Is it attributed to the fact that I’m getting 1-2 more hours of sleep each night? Is it that I’m more well rested…cumulatively? Is it that I am going through a lot of change and my mind is taking in a lot of new ideas and thinking many new thoughts? Is it that I spend much of my day alone and don’t get to release what’s going on in my head as often as I was able to before, when I interacted with humans? Well, that’s one of the reasons I decided to start Sweet Strain. Perhaps my dreams will start to become less vivid once I really get on a roll with this blog. I sure don’t want them to lessen, but I’ll try to stay aware of it. And then I’ll have to make a choice: dreaming every night or writing Sweet Strain?

Sweet Strain?

There are multiple definitions for that sweet word, “strain,” but I’m going to tell you the ones that work for me:

1  a: lineage, ancestry

2  a: inherited or inherent character, quality, or disposition <a strain of madness in the family>  b: trace, streak <a strain of fanaticism>

3  a: tune, air   b: a passage of verbal or musical expression   c: a stream or outburst of forceful or impassioned speech

4  a: the tenor, pervading note, burden, or tone of an utterance or of a course of action or conduct   b: mood, temper

Sweet lineage, sweet disposition, sweet streak, sweet music, sweet note or sweet temper. That’s what I mean by “Sweet Strain.” How much more all-inclusive could one, beautiful word be?

Unemployment

I have been unemployed for about a month and a half now. I have to say it’s a mixed experience. I have so much space and time. So much quiet. I like that soooooo much. But then sometimes, I find myself becoming peculiar. An anonymous poster on a blog about unemployment insurance said the following that resonated with me:

“When someone leaves the work force for years they tend to become ‘peculiar’ and in some cases unemployable…”

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/02/huge-hole-in-unemployment-insurance.html

Scratch “years” and add “weeks” and he’s explained my inner workings. I guess what I mean is that I don’t get out of my pajamas. I create peculiar meals in my sparse kitchen so that I don’t have to leave the house. I’ve never put such daring ingredients on a frozen veggie burger!

I’ve had more time to improve my garden than ever. It’s not like those weekend days that used to go by so fast. I’d be gazing longingly at the garden as I was running out the door to cram in some socializing before Monday came.  I’d get one or two hours of weed picking in at best.  But then, it never felt like there was enough time to tackle that overgrown garden of mine.  And now I have the time.  A lot of it. Do I garden? Haven’t touched it. Well, I’ve touched it once when I was talking on the phone with a long distance friend. I picked one weed and it’s funny because when I did that I couldn’t help but think, “This doesn’t mean anything, garden. This doesn’t mean I’m going to come out here and spend quality time with you. I’m very busy. I’m unemployed. I have important things to do.”

What’s that feeling about? The feeling that you should be doing something important? Or that you are so important? Maybe that’s called self-esteem and I’ve stepped outside of myself to assess the functionality of it. What’s its use? Is it an illusion that I’m “important?” What are these “jobs” that we run to every day? What are our titles worth? See? Peculiar.

Ideas to find missing boxes

1. Contact all of Bekin’s clients, however many, with a letter expressing our PAIN and sadness of the loss.  Offer a reward?

2. Contact all clients who had storage crates adjacent to ours, tell them about our most missed and lost contents, see if they could check their storage facilities for mis-marked boxes

[Why in the world wouldn't somebody track the storage co. down if they found something like a box of video tapes that said, "Cristina's Dance Show" on it?? Wouldn't that make someone think that the contents are connected to a family of 5 that are wondering where that damn tape is??]

3. Look through all owners files for all auction dates. Any buyers that day should be contacted.

[What if the owner of the storage unit sold our stuff? Oh my goodness. That would be horrible.]

I loathe Bekins Storage Co.

I’m weighted down by sleepiness right now. One of the things on my mind is family. All of my childhood relics were recently taken from me. They all lived in a storage facility in Silt, Colorado. The storage facility lost them and is now out of business. Boxes of childhood and history — the stuff you can really touch and feel: yearbooks and yearbook entries, letters from crushes, gifts from best friends, art projects, videos of your little sister slowly starting to grow and mature, videos of our dogs prancing around in the backyard, books that look so familiar because they were fixtures on a bookshelf for so many years of your childhood, pieces of your life back then…things you could touch. I won’t be able to show them to my partner or, one day, my children. The loss hurts. I want it all back. It was hard enough to store it all away to begin with.

First Post

My internal dialog is filling up its internal home.  It needs a place to go.  Thanks to wordpress.