Morning of March 16, 1984. Friday.
People simply did not know. People, as a rule, completely lacked credibility of any kind. Everything that was said by another turned out to reflect falsehood, often to a fearful extent - fearful in that “who else really exists”? A sincere question. How could this be so?
August 7, 1977: “Sunshine Superman” by Donovan was blaring from a cheap radio on Sunway Lane. This seemed a truly odd recording, fit only for a lunatic, even more so than David Essex’s “Lamplight”…especially on a rainy night where James could not even leave cats alone. It takes a particular type of insanity to not care at all about pet cats or young children. I cannot listen to “Sunshine Superman” without thinking of James M throwing a dirty sock at me or pushing his knee into my back while making a nasty remark.
(She was showing off her new clothes.) “I think it would be a good idea for you not to come around so much…I don’t want her getting too used to you…”. Sometimes people say things to you that seem to come from another world completely. They look upon you with suspicion instead of looking in their own home for the implied horror. The child did not become an adult thanks to James, who already lived there under the same roof. And this was because…people were always wrong. Always. Being of a different ethnicity means you are sometimes the scapegoat…until something actually happens. Then you mourn from a distance.
On a much lesser note, I once also rode miles and miles to Kenneth W’s house, trying to work out how he could do it on a day to day basis (apparently - perhaps his parents drove him on most other days - I was not really sure and did not ask) and pondered why he even went to my school at the time in the first place. I arrived just prior to sunset. The dog was barking and Kenneth’s older sister (while on the telephone) shouted “Get rid of him…now!” Here we go again. Kenneth merely waved me off as if my hours of bicycle riding meant nothing. My mother was upset when I got home. It was dark. I had no idea he lived that far out or I would not have attempted it. Still weary, I asked him a day later about his sister and he said she always tells him what to do, including what friends he can have (especially as a visitor). Apparently (though it was just gossip, perhaps) he had been suspended from the closer school (for whatever reason) which was why he was then going to mine.
There were two sections to this dream of this day (March 16, 1984. Friday). Both had familiar links to movies as well as the real past. I was in the apple cellar from “The Other”. However, even below this was another room, a storage area; rusty tin and cobwebs, where I tilt my head to acknowledge past sorrow that in the end had nothing directly to do with my life and my future at all. J had been killed and dragged to the storage shed that in reality was above ground. James, the actual killer, was not around in-dream. I decide to walk up the steps and find myself in a tavern, and I see Toby T. I also notice a grotesque-looking young male character (who loosely reminds me of the Gonk Troll doll design). He does not seem dangerous or even threatening in any way and stands near the bar counter with his arms folded at one point, casually smiling at others. In my dream, I do not even think to draw attention to his bizarre inhuman appearance at any point. I simply nod to Toby, cheerfully asking “Isn’t that MG?” (saying his first and last name).
I visit the trailer park where Scott H lives. It is bilocated with the mall I played table hockey with Rick S at in Wisconsin in the mid-80s. A mother walks past and she says to her daughter, when she grabs one of the table hockey controls, “let the kids play”. “Kids?” Rick and I were around twenty at the time. This really happened. The visit to Scott H’s place and playing table hockey (with Scott) also happened. What did not happen is J’s mother saying “Get rid of him…now!” though it might as well have been as such.
When I wake, it dawns on me - the “dark place” where I had not been all that often for a few years. I was somewhat surprised. I had accepted that neither J’s or M’s death was really in any way “my fault”. Without even needing that much imagination, it was also unusual how scenes from movies sometimes reflected reality, sometimes exactly, but likely more-so in a “personal mythology” that builds slowly over time.
James M aka Holland Perry aka MG (in a lesser sense) try to throw a cat down a well. It is the hole in my yard where a tree stump had been. It eventually rains. James M aka Holland Perry aka MG break the mirror with the slingshot. Slowly I begin to rest and there is purification.
But then the rooster weather vane spins in the rain (in the movie it was a peregrine falcon)…ready to stop and point to the one to blame at any moment now…during an opportunistic lightning flash…but it never does…and the sound of the rain is pure bliss.
