Dreams of Gaza

                                                                               

Music will always sooth the weary soul

     Happy New Year! After suffering through a week of the flu, I thought I could piece something together for today’s space, but nothing came to me. No, that’s not true. The fact is that too many subjects came to me, but I didn’t have the mental firepower to stay with any one topic for an entire essay, except to say: the best thing about getting sick is the glorious moment one begins to feel better, knowing the worst has passed, and the dire thoughts of living a life in permanent pain slip away, or worse – the sick person slips away, without even knowing it.

     You just go to sleep and don’t wake up. That’s it, right? Death, the underworld, crossing the River Styx, or entering Mictlan, the Aztec world of death, but where in its nine levels would I end up? I’ve done my time on earth with the lotus eaters. Too much lotus, no bueno, but “I’ve changed,” I’d tell Michlantecuhtli, its god in residence, “honest I have.”

     He’d say, “Level six, down there with the Chichimecas, your people.”

     I’d argue, “But my people are from Jalisco, the Texcuexes.”

     I can hear him now, “Ni modo. It’s all the same, Texcuexes, Chichimecas, rebels all.”    

     That’s kind of how my dreams were going, during the worst of the flu, in an out of sleep, weird dreams, even thinking I was in Gaza and couldn’t get out. I ran down one street up another, bombs going off everywhere. I’d wake up, shake my head to clear out all the cobwebs, to escape Gaza, as the bombs fell everywhere. Just when I figured my head was clear, I’d go back to sleep, and, again, Gaza, following others, looking for a way out. No good.” I slept for two days, no food, little drink, my wife forcing crackers and electrolytes on me.
     Once I felt better, it was my cell phone warning me, the little red icon of a heart, which tracks my daily footstep count sent me a message and said something like, “We notice a change in your daily activity. Would you like us to share it with anybody, your doctor, a friend? Is there no privacy in this world? Then, I felt guilty.

     I try to walk five-to-six thousand steps a day, seven or eight if I’m on a roll. I wanted to answer the app and say, “Look, man. I’ve been sick, but I’m on the mend. Don’t worry.  No, don’t contact anybody. I’m fine. Then, I realized, there is no “man”. In fact, there is no human at the other end. It’s an app, operated with an algorithm, programmed to send me a message to notify me of the change, yet, the words came across as so sincere, like somebody out there really cared about my health, but there was nobody at the other end, just my cell phone screen blinking at me.

      So, as I wake and take my first real meal, I see, not only are the bombs still falling in Gaza and the Ukraine, but a terrorist has driven his pickup into a group of revelers in New Orleans. They moved the Sugar Bowl date, but the Rose Bowl is still on. Ted Turner's station of old movies in showing the Monterey International Pop Festival, a blast from the past, talking 'bout my generation. California Dreaming, written and sung by the Mommas and Papas, a New York group. 

     Rock 'n roll, the best chicken soup in the world. Somehow, I can’t help but think it’s all connected. For sure, I am back. 

     I guess I am getting better. Happy New Year!!!!