At the Trumpet Call when We're all Unsaved

I am one of those people who other people love to tell their problems/secrets/gossip to. I am not 100% sure why. I guess, to some degree, folks value my advice and opinion. To a greater degree, I think it is because people generally think I am weirder than them and, therefore, won’t pass judgment.

After all, my cubicle is nicely decorated with a Polish-Catholic Renaissance art calendar, a dancing Ganesh, a few dreidels, a planet hours chart, and, to represent the undead (just in case the afterlife, re-incarnation, etc. don’t work out) a fake IV bag filled with candy blood.

Come one, come all to my cubicle -- the no judgment zone. The door is always open.

Exhibit A: a "Black Friday" missive between a vendor and myself (apparently the only two people working today)...

__________
From: XXX
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2009 3:40 PM
To: Natalie
Subject: RE: You have to see this

My life is a continual mesh of bizarre events that all seem to merge at the same time.

One either looks to find meaning in it all or just blows if all off.

__________
From: Natalie
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2009 3:54 PM
To: XXX
Subject: RE: You have to see this

An offshoot of the blowing it off choice -- just become ever-increasingly eccentric and simply “become one with the bizarreness.”

__________
From: XXX
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2009 4:30 PM
To: Natalie
Subject: RE: You have to see this

Great advice.

I was once eccentric…(I’ll have to tell you)…!!!

In Dreams You Can Never Run

For reasons I'm bound to get into sooner or later, I am prone to nightmares. For the most part, they revolve around standard fare scenarios of falling, dying, etc. But lately, there have been some very interesting twists and apparent symbolism in these dreams. So much so that I almost welcome the unpleasantness and restless sleep because I am convinced that my subconscious mind is trying to tell me something that I just need to know.

When I think about this feeling -- this almost addiction to dreaming -- I can narrow it down to two possibilities: 1. It's based on the lazy hope that whatever answers I am seeking in my life are somehow already in my brain and just need to be set free, or 2. I am on such a quest for insight that I am manufacturing these dreams as a sort of puzzle to wrongly convince myself I might be on to something--a puzzle that mimics progress but is, ultimately, for entertainment purposes only.

Wow, that sounds crazy when put in black and white. Especially #2.

But maybe not. I remember an episode of Frasier where he (Frasier) was tormented by a recurring dream -- and his conclusion was something similar to the thought I am trying to express. Basically, it was the challenge of interpreting the dream that was causing the recurrence, not an unrealized subconscious message. I hate the term "mental masturbation," but that's pretty much it in a nutshell. Perhaps many a truth is revealed in sit-com...

Hmm.

Could it be the chase? Or is it more? Could it be that I am just making things more complicated (another thing I'm prone to)?

Joining the Darkside

For years, I SWORE I'd never have a blog or join the "darkside" of social networking. They are mostly tools for, well, tools and usually result in nothing but trouble. I took pride in the fact that when people asked me if I was on MySpace, I'd reply "No, I have a real website." The implication being that I could poke my way through basic HTML rather than simply post bizarre pictures of kittens in birthday hats or pornographically altered images of Gary Coleman and the like. Now that I think about it, I guess that is just the kind of self-important thinking that makes people do this sort of thing (blog)...

But what really pushed me over? Last week, I was on a flight from Newark to Los Angeles when the in-flight film was switched from some Harry Potter bullshit to an even bigger pile of crap, "Julie & Julia." For those of you living under a rock, some dipshit cooked every damn recipe in Julia Child's first cookbook (500+) during the course of a year and...get this...blogged about it. Oh, what a whimsical and creative idea! Throughout the process, she found some kind of meaning in her life, grew to know some form of Julia Child she made up in her head, and GOT A FAT BOOK & FILM DEAL.

So, I got to thinking. Seriously. What am I doing wrong? I cook practically every night and get nothing from it but occasional heartburn. And I write every day (as part of my job) with equal results. Why not start a blog? Perhaps I too can get a start on a "real" writing career. Or, at the very least, have a relationship with an imaginary Rachael Ray.

Oh, the places I'll go.