rapture, and not the good kind

For reasons I cannot comprehend, the recent natural disaster trend is taking over my mind and most importantly, my sleeping schedule.

Let me start by saying that while the entire tri-state area is freaking out, I have mostly remained calm, and my family just might be the only family who couldn't care less that there is an evacuation warning scheduled for our area.  In fact, Stop&Shop ran out of food today, and we thought we'd laugh about it.

Yesterday at the office, my co-workers entertained me with questions like: Should I stock up on extra milk? What should I do with my air-conditioning unit?  To all this, I snickered quietly to myself, You have got to be kidding me.

We all know how devastating hurricane Katrina was,  and were once again reminded in the wee hours of today's morning, during my first class this semester, when my goof-ball professor was being really adamant about letting us off a bit early so we can begin evacuating and preparing for what he believes is the dawn of the apocalypse.  Once again, I snicker, for lack of laughing in everyone's face, and say to myself - Seriously, this cant be it.

Maybe it's just my coping mechanism, extravagant ideas aren't to be entertained, maybe it's my jaded thought process, maybe it's my naiveté.  Whatever it is, I am beginning to think that this scorching hot dinner we are about to get served, deserves at least a bit of examination. And I only say this because matters were made a lot worse when I actually dreamt about the end of the world.  Twice.

The first nightmare came to me in the middle of a sleepless night in Prague when I dreamt some sci-fi malarky about how the government was turning against humanity, and the sky had become this manipulatable mirror reflection of all the people on the earth.  The dream began with me and my friend Elina, realizing that looking up, we could see a reflection of ourselves, of the whole world in the sky.  All these people moving about, houses standing, cars driving.  However, our reflections were being controlled by some exterior force and we soon began to notice that this force was eliminating life off the planet.  So we ran, eventually taking cover inside, thinking if we had roofs over our heads, we'd be less discoverable.  We found ourselves in a bar, filled with people I felt I knew but all of whom had unidentifiable faces.  Then the entire place got blown up, and it was all over.  Except for me, left wandering alone in this empty space of a 'world'.  Hooray?  Anyway, that dream felt like utter terror.  I woke up sweating, convinced that I actually spent the night fighting for my life against a force unbeknownst to anyone.  This was 3 months ago.

Last night, it happened again- part 2 of the end of the world series, starring my friends and family, and without a doubt myself.  Except this time it was longer, and potentially more plausible, which is not a good thing.  It began with my friend Marina, who was sitting on the curb along with a bunch of other students, somewhere on a huge school campus.  Behind her was a huge door with the sign 'ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, CLOSED'.  At some precise moment, she turns to look at the door, and notices a man sneaking out, causing her to have some sort of epiphany.  Now, my dreams seem to operate by way of feelings which indicate the set of actions being made.  It's hard to describe what this epiphany of hers actually looked like, because you know how dreams are . . . they are fucking weird.  Anyway, she has this epiphany, and then the next thing I know is that I am running with Elina, and we are running away from this enormous cloud of white smoke that is enveloping everything in its way.  I tell Elina we need to seek shelter, because the smoke is radiation and we need to avoid it, that running will not work since it is spreading exponentially fast.  So we are running, and the smoke is closing in all around us and the last image I see is the ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT door, and then the smoke is everywhere.  At this point I wholeheartedly believe that I am dead.  And when I say this, I mean I literally thought I had died.  I still seem to exist as a body, but Elina is not with me anymore.  I find myself in a dark space with no sense of depth, and I pick up my cellphone to call Marina believing that if the phone call goes through, it means I am still alive.  The phone call does not go through.  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a row of people shuffling past me, and I dart to join them.  There are 5 of them, all of whom I do not have the sense of knowing.  The girl leading the line, is using a map, and the girl I am following, last on the line, has very crazy hair.  I feel as though I have met her before.  Where are you going I ask her, and she replies We think this path might lead to one of those abandoned subway stations where we can take shelter.  This exchange felt so real and I felt unsure of whether this plan would lead us to safety.  In fact, I thought this was organized to lead us to our deaths.  So we walk through unused subway tracks for what seems like a very short time, before we reach a sort of dead end wall.  We start to hear sounds, murmuring.  I look at the wall and notice that it is thin, breakable, transparent even.  And suddenly I see movement, shadows.  I lean in to touch the wall and it evaporates, exposing people and sunlight.  Next thing I know is that we are in a monstrously large field, and it feels like a high school reunion.  It is sunny, and there is grass.  People are wandering around, looking lost and confused, but everyone is discovering old acquaintances and trying to figure out what the fuck just happened to the world we knew.  I spot Marina.  She is extra tall and although she is wearing pyjamas, she is very fancy.  We begin to talk and join 3 other people, one of whom is a good friend of ours, Marcela.  All of us decide to explore.  The space we're is like a funeral version of Coachella without the music.  There are whole areas dedicated to survival kits, food storage, weaponry, etc.  I imagine this is what Burning Man must be like.  So we start walking down this path, and I feel very Cormac McCarthy.  Marcela and I are in front of the group and she is telling me how she needs to go back home so she can pay her rent, and I tell her this is our home now. Suddenly, a handmade cart on wheels, made out of wood, rolls past us, and on it is a sort of carnivalesque theatre.  There are two dwarf jokers, and Robin Williams (I know, WTF right?) sitting on a chair.  Someone from our group, a male, jumps on the cart and begins to cry, whispering philosophical nothings to Robin Williams, who is unaffected by this charade.  I can't recall anymore what he was saying, although mid-dream I was very aware of every word, and it made me feel shaken and changed.  It was mundane and incomprehensible but clearly powerful, life-changing,  some Waiting for Godot kind of stuff.  As soon as this is over, I am being harassed by a woman, who appears disheveled, and is carrying more books than she can handle.  She is yelling at me, waving papers, and throwing pencils in the air, begging me to document everything that happens in this place, to document our fight for survival.  I begin to panic, thinking back on all the time I have spent not putting pen to paper, and I say to her there is nothing else to do here but write and she smiles, promising me that there will be great use for the work I produce.  All of a sudden, the dream takes me back to my house, where I know my family is.  They seem to not have made it to this 'other' world.  They are still inside the house, and the house is in the perished world, and for some reason I am in the bathroom washing my face. Outside, there are ravenous souls hunting for life.  I think to close the only window in the bathroom but I hear footsteps, and I am sure they have already gotten into our house.  I hear my mother's screams, and the bathroom doorknob rattles.

I awake, panting, and sweating, and still fearing for my life.  It is dawn, the sun just rose, and the day is nice.  I skip breakfast and sit on my porch sipping coffee, trying to understand why my brain functions the way it does.  I think about how I would like to bring back Freud for a chat, spill my soul to him, and maybe get some answers.  But then I think about how I awoke from a nightmare only to find myself in another one.

Is this what the beginning of the end feels like? Or should I start drinking more?

I'm gonna go with the latter.

//Thank you dear friends for gracing my nightmares.  I am sure that my twisted mind does not mean to hurt anyone's feelings by killing them off.  And while I am not a licensed psychologist, I think it is safe to say that I don't want any of you dead, even on the days that I secretly wish you were dead.  Which is never, obviously.  Plus, this should make you feel better about your sanity.

come to think of it . . .

I never cared about doctors.  I never, ever wanted to go to one, and I definitely never wanted to be one.  As a kid, the thought of going to see some strange man(1) dressed in a crisp starch bleach white robe, with a fancy name tag on his left breast, looking so fascist with his manicured smile and miserable life, was one of the very few things that made me want to vomit. In fact, today, as an almost-adult, I hardly ever go to see a doctor.  I realize this might sound like an in-your-face ass shake about my swimmingly perfect health(2), but this is not true.  To those facetious pricks, I say - I have known ailments.  Not all health issues are unavoidable, as germs do exist, but for the most part, and in utter gratefulness, I have been existing with no real threat yet.  And for those like me, you lucky bastards should rejoice in every moment of your easily perishable lives that you have two honest feet to walk on, at the least.  Because the world is not fair to everyone. 

Anyway, I digress.

It's just that, going to the doctor could never be, you know, fun. Like how much fun could you possibly have?  I remember this one children's physician I had when I was about  9 or 10 years old, and his office smelled like the inside of a sealed plastic container that you haven't opened in a long time.  It smelled fake, like stale humans.  Like peroxide washed skin, left soaked to a prune and then dipped in wax.  It smelled too clean.  Like it was covering up something unforgivable, something lurking beneath the building’s bricks.  That high bed table, strewn in hospital paper, making noise as you tried to climb, then sitting under a phosphorescent neon light, and this man observing you like a specimen of some sort, a robot covered in pink flesh, shaking in discontent.  My body would fall limp but I’d remain tense. And he’d order me to raise my arm, to lower it, to look left and then look right, to open my mouth and say ahhh, to follow a pencil with my eyes, to breathe.  Very nice, he'd say.  Above, a carousel of hanging strings carried little origami sharks.  Look up at the little sharks, he’d say enthusiastically, and  this was the moment I'd start screaming like someone was cutting me alive, even though he hadn’t so far as touched my arm, and I'd watch the preying sharks, swimming in circles from the breeze of the fan and finally one would bite me, directly piercing my arm with sharp pain, and I'd raise my voice up a notch before a lollipop got shoved in my mouth.

Yeah, at one point I decided, that if given the choice, I would actually stand naked in front of all the bitchy judgmental popular kids at my middle school, than go to the doctor.  Not much has changed.

Fortunately, as I got older, and stopped giving a shit, I've realized that unless you have some immediate health emergency, you don’t really have to go to the doctor.  I mean, who regularly does annually check-ups anyway?(3)  And if you do go, you can kind of slip by with the minimum, like: oh hey doc, whats up? yea, still smoking.  I know I know, im trying (total lie), yea I know but I'm gonna do it, really this time (another total lie) no, nothing hurts.  yeah, I take them all the time (lie #3 within five seconds of conversation) ok yea, great, it was good to see you too (lie #4) thanks a lot, doc! (lie 5) ok, yea, same time next year (unless I fucking fall and crack my skull open in which I case I won't be going to you anyway 'cause I'd be looking for the nearest fucking hospital, you pretentious dick! remind me, why do I fucking pay you?)

But in that case, in which you actually go for your check-ups, you officially win as a human and to your benefit, will never die(4). You win because, unlike me, you cared enough about yourself to have called the doctor's office to speak to the bitchy secretary who pretends she works for facebook, and has a bad left ear, so that you'll have to inconveniently take a day off work, or cancel something totally fun you had planned on the weekend, so you can go see some idiot playing dress-up for money because he uses a lot big words and knows the anatomy of the human body(5), after which, he'll take your money and tell you to fuck off since nothing is wrong with you anyway.  

Aren't you glad you're no longer a kid?  But wait, you docs are getting way too much credit here. I mean who keeps us smiling, really . . . only my most favorite professional in the world . . . the dentist.

. . . the dentist is great, 'cause at the dentist's you can just settle in for some degrading humiliation, as you're transformed into a victim of a slow silent torture, lying reclined under an enormous operational lamp with the voltage of a city power plant, and yet another strange middle-aged motherfucker sticks his fingers in your mouth while metal hooks pry it open, and all your saliva is being sucked out by miniature vacuums dangling from your lip, while this moron is asking you how your summer vacation has been.  I mean, do they seriously think we want to talk to them while they dig around in our face, 'cause it's actually physically impossible trying to utter words because if you try to move your mouth to speak, the air vacuum sucks your lips to the back of your throat and you feel like an asshole who lost control of his face and resort to the awkward nodding and shaking of your head,  hoping they stop delivering questions so you don’t feel obligated to answer.  

One time, I went to the denstist, who was a very good family friend, and as I lay there, strapped, she began interrogating me with all sorts of mundane questions about my life.  Side note: all dentists are just wanna-be therapists with sadistic personalities and a compassion for Stalin.  I decided I would ignore my therapist dentist.  I avoided her nose hairs, and tried not to inhale her unfamiliar breath.   I wasn’t going to nod in agreement, nor shake in disregard.  I would just lie there, letting her do work on my mouth.  And you know what? She didn't even notice. She asked, and talked, and made up her own responses to those prying questions, meanwhile nonchalantly rummaging around in the staircase of my face like a busy bee digging for pollen.  But for the first time, I walked out of the torture chamber with just a little bit of my dignity still in tact.

I realize I am a little biased with my slightly more passionate hate for dentistry because I had to wear braces for 5 years, only because this meant that I spend most of my teenage life at the orthodontist’s rather than at home.  And yes, these were indeed the best years of my life.

My apologies to all the current and aspiring do-people-good-ers out there.  Note that I am in no way mocking the amazing work you do, I for one, am clearly not smart enough to be a doctor or dentist (thank god), but that doesn't mean I can't point out how really fucking annoying it is to visit them sometimes.

1  sexual stereotyping at it's finest

2  watch, I'll get the flu tomorrow

3  seriously, live a little, will ya!

4  no, actually, you'll still die, just maybe not as fast, or perhaps faster, depends on which way you look at it

5  oh and they can add, but, whatever.

if you hadn't closed your eyes

It was something forgotten - like yesterday's bad weather, or the still, wet clothes in the washing machine, or the years that kept slowly, surely slipping away from me.  It was those poorly lit days that produced the richest nights, so far as one could say that a light breakfast led to an excessive lunch.  Our minds were stronger than our bodies.  The mind had the ability to not let the body rest.  But if you tired the body, the mind simply followed.  And if you were there for the moon's slow increase to full, for the loud garbage men, the sound of beans grinding, the morning dew, and for those courageous early voices that lived in trees and sometimes perched on my window; you would ask: why have you never planted flowers? and I would say: why had some people chosen to sleep with the lights on?

Sleep was for people who had time to waste, but I wanted to be awake forever.

The moon appeared and the city died every night for a couple of hours when you could really hear the silence, and sometimes you believed that this is what it was all made for.  During these lonely, barren hours that went deserted during the night, the city that cradled us, vanished, sinking into itself.  It was easy to forget that other lives existed, that it wasn't just you and that big, white crescent thing up there which served as a better indicator of time than any old clock I knew.

And then the dawn, which came like springtime, like lawn sprinklers, like cavities - a surprise crawling at your shivering feet.  Before you could catch the precise moment that darkness covered light,  the sun slowly rose to illuminate all the cracks that were still in the pavement and it appeared like a king without a crown.  People were waking.  It was time to rise, to live again.  But I hadn't slept, I hadn't died.