Yeah, so that’s the cliche taggged to the last moments of life – you see a B Grade movie of your entire existence, sped up – of course! who could stand watching that shit in real time. And, you’re presumably dying relatively soon, so no time for commercials.

Well, I haven’t died yet – or so I think. Because after a certain age – can’t quite remember – but around the 50s, I started to have vivid dreams of exactly that nature: re-runs of my syndicated life moments, as an ongoing docu-drama series, or, set of series. I had a lot of great shows in my life. But they were definitely all “shows”. When I watch them again, I guess, like Clint Easdtwood, I hardly connect to that dumbshit playing the role of ME. I’m hoping that years and years of practicing yogic detachment (Buddhism inherited from yoga, sorry…), maybe that let me do this – this detached viewer.

Nah. Because I’m not detached – I’m trapped in the shit! It’s like Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”, where my sins are engraved into my skin, by some lurid gravure machine, until sufficient repetitions have caused sufficient depth, so that pieces of me start to fall off. I get stuck on that segment where people have rewound it so many times that it’s worn. But they are not sections that I would mark – in fact, the opposite: they are the small,but excruciating segments, which held the greatest shame. That moment when you remember your wife and family, but you’re on some sordid boondoggle with a bunch of youngsters, raging on chemicals, racing along some road – and, for me at least, this lasting dichometric pattern of good Kam v. bad Kam, has to skip, like a record, digging the groove deeper and deeper, until I can smell the burning vinyl. Fuck.

Let’s take an example that only I and maybe 50 people in the world will understand. I used to teach at a Catholic Seminary – ESL. I had a great love of Catholicism, and a great love of helping people from other countries, make it in the Land of Coppurtunity. So, my base philosophy was solid. On the other hand, I greatly resisted transforming these vital young men into conformists. Beside the point. I was assigned a beautiful second-floor office, with an office-mate, windows, sunlight…but I soon found a room in the basement, that had been a radio studio in some distant past! After some intensive, poinsonous mold cleaning, I moved in, and never left for 10 years. So, the dream is just me trying to find my way to the basement. Of course I’m late, because I was raised to hold the fear of lateness – I don’t believe I was ever really late, but always held the tension of being late. So, that vignette just replays endlessly: the entrance to the basement has changed over the years, as though the Seminary had come into a lot of money, and had remodeled everything, such that I can’t find the old door, or, if I do, it leads somewhere else. And then there are all the well-meaning “adults” – did I mention I have a permanent man-child thing? They are always trying to help, and, to be fair, they DID always try to help me get along, find my way – they loaned me money, tolerated my hippie shit.

In dreamland, the Seminary had evolved – a lot. Much more in control, much better financed, and well-rounded in its mission. But me – I was still stuck, wearing the wrong clothes, trying to burrow into nonentity, being on the verge of missing my first class.

While I wish this shit would end – just to sleep – I fear the way that will happen is my actual death. So I will shut up and bear it for now. Just wondering what the key is, to transfer into a new dream state, one of the present, of my successes. Probably fucking therapy. Or Ayahuasca.