Hazel Dream Vaccine

Hazel woke me up 4 times last night, and it’s either that, the after effects of my first dose of the Pfiz­er coro­n­avirus vac­cine (yes, that shit con­tin­ues apace), or a com­bo plat­ter (per Abra­ham) to explain why I’m so tired. I bare­ly split wood for 20 min­utes before call­ing it.

I had to dri­ve to Mans­field to get the shot. Appar­ent­ly every­one get­ting the shot in Mans­field was either from Cleve­land or Colum­bus. The world sham­bles along in spite of ever more cut-throat idio­cy from sci­ence deniers, con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry cultists and oth­er nation­al­ist and pop­ulist ilk. Kin­da proud of it.

Been lis­ten­ing to a lot of pre-Bea­t­les rock and roll, and the weird­est jazz my mind can fol­low while half asleep.

I drove 6000 miles in 10 days with my son last August. We vis­it­ed many deserts and saw large trees while scam­per­ing past the emer­gent wild­fire men­ace. We saw sequoias, were in Death Val­ley two days after it record­ed the hottest day on record on the plan­et, and hiked a few miles in mid-day heat to find an oasis. Arch­es, Mon­u­ment Val­ley, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Val­ley, Sequoia, Mal­ibu, Joshua Tree, White Sands.

Turned 40 in Novem­ber, I think.

I remem­bered the fol­low­ing dream after the 4th time Hazel woke me up. I’ve found that walk­ing back­wards into the dream is the best way to remem­ber as much of it as you can. Start­ed out with me dri­ving with a milk crate of records in the back seat of my car. I had to meet Zena, so I parked in a weedy lot and moved the records under the hatch so they’d be safe. Zena and a crew were all head­ing down a hill to the build­ing where we had to go. There was a large set of ter­raced gar­den box­es we need­ed to climb over, some­thing we’d done innu­mer­able times. This time we dis­cov­ered they’d been plant­ed with all man­ner of spiky plants, clear­ly meant to dis­cour­age our path. One of the peo­ple (a child­hood class­mate) made a disin­gen­u­ous com­ment about how maybe they were always there, when they were clear­ly fresh­ly plant­ed. I said some­thing along the lines of a sar­cas­tic “Real­ly? Aren’t you sup­posed to be a farmer?” before con­tin­u­ing down the hill. Zena was appre­hend­ed by some author­i­ties we did not rec­og­nize, and I dropped a sock I had been car­ry­ing. I entered the worst designed build­ing in the world — with stair­cas­es in all 4 cor­ners and stair­cas­es on all 4 walls — and you had to walk all 8 in the cor­rect order to find your class­room. I apol­o­gized to the pro­fes­sor for being late, and she kind of des­per­ate­ly said she was just glad I’d final­ly made it back to class. Oth­er class­mates moved their old wood­en desk chairs out of the way so I could fit in with them — all of them creep­i­ly relieved that I was back in the class­room. I was lucid dream­ing just enough to won­der if they only exist or are ani­mat­ed when I dream about them. Nice, if old, philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion that prob­a­bly arose from me watch­ing Wan­daVi­sion.

This is Hazel. Don’t be fooled. She eats her own shit every chance she gets.