Drifting

It has been two years since I've last visited California.
While California is always in my dreams being gone so long has made it feel so distant.
The California dream had been taken away from me and for the past two years life has gravitated more toward New York.
I knew I'd have to go back to the familiar monotony of New York.
But at the time two years ago, I didn't know why or how I would have to.
Now knowing I'm disappointed in an outcome I had no say or control over.
If it were up to me, which it wasn't I would have stayed in California.
The rug was pulled from underneath and instead of trying to put the rug back, they just took the rug away completely.
It was good to just be in a free environment where all the stresses of New York are far away, even though it was just a week.
This year has been hard but not in the conventional sense, the bills, and all the financial stuff is taken care of, I've been on top of that but time is so precious right now and I'm so careful not to waste it.
While I'm walking the proverbial tight rope so carefully so as not to fall too soon though the inevitable fall will happen.
I've had too much to do, not enough time to do it, and not the freedom that I want. I have just enough freedom to do the things I need to do, but not the things I want to do.
Maybe its that I don't need it right now and its something to be earned rather then a given.
This year has been spent trying to catch up with writing, beach days, yoga on the beach, cleaning, building another guitar, running around between home and an apartment.
There is a constant sense of fear because I know where the edge is, I know exactly where my edge is and I don't want to fall off of it.
Moralistically I've done all the right things with the occasional self indulgence, massages, acupuncture, the occasional bottle of red wine, pens and paper.
This blog for the past two years has been asleep, somewhere between slumber and hibernation.
Too much has happened to write about it all at once and while I dream, the dreams are vague, sometimes hard to retrieve.
A few dreams from the year come to me vividly,

I am in a cave and in front of me a red striped tiger is jumping up the steps of a boulder, someone is being chased up the stairs and has a large knife stabbing at the tiger as it continues to pursue what looks like a woman.
The dream ends there.

A dream about a science teacher I knew, in his classroom. "Have you seen yourself around?"
I offer him a bottle of Soyombo, Mongolian Vodka, he says to me, "At the airport."
The Dream ends there but I understand this dream and what it means.

My mom outside in the backyard standing on the wooden deck at night, the light on the deck is on, her hair is cropped and cut short. "Come out into the garden."
The dream ends, and there was nothing else to this dream other then the image of my mother being there.

I am in a garage somewhere, two cops say to me, "You're pretty close to the reservoir."
In the same dream outside the garage are many parked cars on a grass field, "Is that a 57' corvette?"
I hear someone behind me say, "I can almost fit my shoe in it."
Lastly my thoughts are, "And you robbed me again."
I felt the sensation of loss and being stolen from at the dreams end.

A dream about my grandparents sitting at a dinner table in a restaurant.
"If I am uncomfortable he must be really uncomfortable."
A waiter comes by with a card scanner, I hand him cash, I hear myself say, "I just want to make sure you guys didn't double charge me."
In the background I can hear a chorus of ewws and awws as if the staff at the restaurant are disappointed about what I said.
The dream ended.

I see my dad laying on the wood floor in the house and I am trying to give him CPR.
I hear him say, "Don't lose another day." or "Another day is lost."
I woke up soon after.

There were many more over the year but these were those that stuck out most.

As for reality, I have buried myself in books, I read quite a few books this year.
I read through a book about Korean-Japanese Politics, a book called Sand Castle Empire which was a breeze to read through, The Landmark Series: Julius Caesar which wasn't as painful to read as I thought it would be. I started reading, Anathem by Neal Stephenson and I couldn't handle it. It was more of a chore to read then enjoyable so I left it unfinished. Disarming Iraq, just to get an idea of what happened back there when they were trying to assess whether Iraq had WMDS and the US need for a Casus Belli. Silence, a fiction book about Christians in Japan during the Tokugawa era.
A psychology book, I realized I knew half of what was in it, the other half I didn't know.

I have been binge watching, The Expanse, Westworld and Gotham.


So while the year has been slow, I have at the least maintained the status quo to the best of my ability. Though this has been hard it has kept me in a routine of sorts. I don't allow myself too much time to relax. Cleaning and keeping the fridge full takes priority. There has been little room to drift from this routine but I managed a few beach days over the summer, and a few family events that took place.

I am concerned for my brother who claims he doesn't dream. He has been unhappy for the past two months and anything I say has been shot down, ridiculed and defensively dismissed.
I know my dad's passing has hit a raw chord for him and he is feeling the same resentment and regret that I am but I don't let it hold me down. My father would've wanted both of us to persevere and continue to try to make something of ourselves in this life. It would have been easier if he were still around all the extra responsibilities that are now my responsibilities would still be his instead of mine and my brother's. And the support of having him around would've kept the balance here and we would still rely on him to keep everything together.

I am still practicing yoga, at the rate of an hour a week. I am weight training from home, all weights my dad left behind.