Out of the Past

Shortly after writing the post below I left for work. Several blocks before I arrive at the local I pass the home of a community organizer who was involved in the effort twelve years ago to establish a real civilian review board for the city's police department. She was a member of People's Coalition for Justice (PCJ).

She was outside on the sidewalk this morning looking worried. Her nephew had just left to walk to the elementary school down the hill; he had insisted she not walk with him or follow him to school this morning because the other boys walk alone. So she was craning her neck trying to keep track of him as he disappeared down the street.

I said hello and told her that I had been thinking this morning about all the organizing that had been done around the police shooting of Aaron Roberts. When I said this I pointed up the hill in the direction of 23rd and Jackson where the Starbucks is; the Starbucks where I run into her now and then; the Starbucks we boycotted back in 2001. She looked at me, as if to say, "Who is this guy?" and then nodded her head.

She walked with me to busy Yesler down which her nephew was moving out of sight. She said, "I don't want him to see me. There he is. In the red jacket."

And there he was. A tiny figure in red moving down the hill barely discernible to my weakening eyesight.

After wishing her a good day, I put my earbuds back in and crossed Yesler; Erykah Badu's "Agitation" shuffled on my iPod. I owe my appreciation of Erykah Badu to the insane girlfriend from last night's dream.

Broken Glass at the Bottom of My Refrigerator

A 90-minute meeting after work, something which in my thirties was a walk in the park, is a hill almost too steep to climb now. I explained to a coworker, who mercifully drove me home after our monthly political action committee meeting ended, that there was a time when I attended and participated in 17-straight days of post-work meetings and actions, weekends included. "That's when I had more testosterone," I told her. It was late spring 2001 and it corresponded with all the organizing around the shooting of Aaron Roberts and attempts to establish some viable form of police accountability in the city.

When I got back to the apartment, I ate an apple and some peanuts; watched a portion of an episode from Homeland (season 1) on my computer; and then promptly hit the hay.

In slumberland I struck upon a dreaded "nightly double": a vivid dream about my last girlfriend (the predator) followed by a lengthy, vivid work dream.

The dream about my old girlfriend conformed to the pattern common to dreams featuring old girlfriends and my ex-wife: I am once again in their company; and while I am sexually attracted to them still I know that a consummation of that desire will have dire consequences. So the dream is spent fretting, "Should I stay or should I go? If I go there will be trouble. If I stay it will be double." The only peculiarity to last night's iteration is the old girlfriend's level of insanity; in the dream she was downright homeless-schizophrenic crazy.

The work dream was elaborate, convoluted and no doubt had its origin in the waking reality of helping to get two separate contract ratification votes in the mail this week. In the dream there is some sort of grand barbecue underway for the union membership and in preparation for that a new type of carpeted floorboard has been laid down in the dining area. The main course of the barbecue is oxymoronically soup, big bowls of Vietnamese noodle soup. The climax of the dream is my realization that the pho has spilled and saturated the newfangled carpeting.

When I got up this morning I discovered that a glass water bottle had shattered in my refrigerator -- it's an ancient, pre-frostless Westinghouse probably older than I am -- and drained onto the kitchen floor in a riverine pattern.