Red canyon

I’m not alone.

We’re driving in the desert and I pass, on my right, a canyon that has been familiar to me since my youth. I used to hike there. Once, I made it as far as a cave where pilgrims gathered. I woke up before I learned what we were all waiting for.

In the dream — in this dream — I recognize the canyon but it doesn’t have the same irresistible pull. A meteorite has fallen to earth and we’re heading for the crater. We saw it arc across the sky, a frothy, steamy confection about as menacing as a giant bon bon. Now a white fog rises just beyond the next crest. We’re walking now, climbing, and when we get beyond the crest all we see is a black smoking crater. No big deal. I wake up wondering how much radiation I’ve absorbed.

But then, later, I remember the canyon, and how long it’s been since I’ve dreamed of it. Invariably it’s evening in the dream and the canyon is north by northwest. I have to hike down before the trail rises. A nagging curiosity draws me onward, that and a feeling of comfort. The hike is never exhausting.

I don’t get many chances to visit the canyon. This time, it took a comet crashing down to divert my attention. But it’s not like that at all, no feeling of division, of wishing part of me could hike the canyon while the other part checked out the cool crater. This time the canyon was something from my youth which I had set aside.

Only when I woke up did the curiosity return.

D.

In Dreams

Read on for the Question of the Day.

With apologies to Roy Orbison.

A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
Go to sleep. everything is all right.

. . . and then that bastard fills me with images you wouldn’t show a seasoned war vet. What have I ever done to the sandman to deserve this?

Admittedly, last night didn’t rise to the usual levels of repulsiveness. The sandman’s mood ranged from annoying to irksome, rather than sadistic. I had one of those running dreams: I’m on the lam from someone, trying my damnedest to make it across country without detection, and I manage to elude capture after capture.

Usually I like these dreams because I always find some clever trick to get away, or I out-maneuver the baddies through sheer physical prowess. Those are good dreams even if I do wake up feeling exhausted. But last night, my usual writer must have been on a Thunderbird binge, and his stand-in was a fugitive scribbler from Will and Grace*.

Imagine: I’m in a hotel room. The baddies are at the door. How do I get away? By sliding the deadbolt on them! Then I grab a sweater so that I can change my clothes while on the run — yes, that would be my disguise: a new sweater.

Scene change. I’ve been caught by a huge, naked, black man who has me pinned to the ground by kneeling on me with his powerful legs. Cheap Freudian symbolism aside, the annoying part was (once again) how I got away. I rolled to one side, pushed a desk between us, and hollered, “See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya!” before exiting stage right. Lame!

It went on and on like that. Those bozos never did catch me, but only because their collective IQs wouldn’t have warmed a room. I woke up feeling cheated.

But that’s not the worst of it. There was, for example, the time about a week or two ago when I spent close to an hour in a doctor’s waiting room, bored silly. It really, truly felt like an hour. My mother was seeing her dermatologist and I was along for the ride.

Eventually, I was the only person left in the waiting room, and I became suspicious. I checked the parking lot, and my parents’ car was gone!

I had my Blackberry and my wallet, but no cash, so I had to walk home. This, too, seemed to take the better part of an hour. Then my parents passed me in their car and waved at me. When I finally caught up with them, my hands shook so much with anger that I couldn’t tie my shoes.

One loooong dream and all I can manage to do is sit on my butt reading magazines in a dermatologist’s waiting room. I couldn’t manage to dream about, say, a nasty tryst with a beautiful and dangerous Russian gal. Oh, no.

When the sandman gives me amorous dreams, he becomes unspeakably cruel. Last week, I found myself in a threesome with one of the seediest couples in Del Norte County. On the upside, their hygeine wasn’t nearly as bad as it is in real life. On the downside, when I washed my mouth out afterwards (in the dream!) a bunch of cole slaw came out.

I told my employee, Catrina, all about it. She agreed with me: My subconscious hates me.

***

*Question of the Day

Was Will and Grace the worst sitcom of all time? Lots of people seem to think so, which is why I picked it for that line above. I was tempted to use Seinfeld (in my opinion, one of the most overrated sitcoms of all time, after MASH — or AfterMASH, for that matter), but I suspect I would have been misunderstood. Or perhaps all you rabid Seinfeld lovers would have dragged me through the eStreets of Blogland.

This is a tough one. I keep remembering the great sitcoms; apparently, the dogs have slipped through my memory cracks. But I think I’ll have to go with Three’s Company, because that idiotic show only had one plot, and each character was the object of only a single running joke.

Question: what do you think is the worst sitcom of all time, and why?

Or, feel free to tell me how your subconscious hates you, too.

D.