"Come on Baby, Light My Fire"

CAPTION: So let me see if I can shed some light on this for you....

Sooner or later you'll figure this out on your own. I've been married more than once. These women in their own forms are often the key to the telling of many stories. I bring this up for a couple of reasons.

First they are very distinct and admirable people deserving to be acknowledged in their own right, and in this case their own light. Secondly, for those of you who know one of them, I don't want you to be saying, "she wouldn't say that!"

But let's get on with this or we'll be here all month.

   LET THERE BE LIGHT, OR NOT

                                         Part Two

 

         On the way home from the play, there is a comfortable silence, both of us seemingly in our own private places. The silence continues as we walk in the front door. Without discussion, she carries out her normal routine of turning on her comfort lights. I do my Norwegian thing of brewing a short pot of coffee before bed. We manage some small talk about World events and our work weeks. We are just unwinding, and in this case not just from the week. We are also chasing away the theatrical fears we’ve just absorbed.

                 Caffeine inspired, we rise from our perches and using the wallsas supports and guideposts, we make our way to bed. On Friday nights? We tend to copy the behavior of the boys. There will soon just be two disoriented lumps of clothing on the floor, and two limp bodies wrapped in twisted sheets and blankets.

                 Friday nights, for me? They are dream nights. All the week’s events just slosh around in my brain creating a string of incongruous tales. I seldom remember any of them. Without bringing in Freud for verification, I think they represent short term mental and emotional purging. I have to assume my partner is processing her week in a similar fashion. Why else would she just blurt out, “read the small print Governor! That is the dumbest move by a chief executive I’ve even seen.”

                 Not being a chief executive or dumb, I pretty well eliminate myself as the object of her venting.

 

                 Okay, let’s get to the REAL story. This night we both will remember our dreams for life. I’ll just focus on mine.

                 It is a crazy collage that begins with me lying on a beach with my Nordic fair skin slowly turning a golden brown from the rays of the sun. But? When I rise up from my blanket on the sand, I find I can hardly move. People are staring at me, but not in awe of my bronze tint. They are looking at me as if I am some primordial ooze rising from the oceans kelp. Their stares are infused with the looks of empathic pain. They seem both drawn and repulsed by my form and façade.

                 I glance at my legs in a new light to see my golden brown is actually a fiery scarlet. I collapse in shock. The next lights I see are red and white and flashing atop an ambulance. I feel myself being packed in ice. Then a new even brighter light approaches me from above revealing faces gathered to examine the TAN that got away. They aren’t saying it, but I read “POOR FOOL” in their eyes.

                 Then, for no explainable reason, it happens! All the lights go out!. I hear rustling sounds I can’t identify. I get up and start moving around in the dark bumping into walls and chairs and closet doors. I am desperately begging for light.

                 I search my pockets and find a match, but it’s wet from the ocean.  I look through imagined cupboards for the flashlight I’d put away a decade ago. I find it, but the batteries are dead. I feel my way to the garage and find a camping lantern, but the mantles are lying in the bottom of the globe in ash form. In final desperation I begin randomly searching the walls around me for light switches that will bring me out of the abyss. Then it happens. I throw a switch, and a sea of light comes on overhead. My eyes are open and the nightmare is over. Or is it?

 

Well I for one am curious. You too? Well maybe tomorrow we’llfinally find out what this is all about.

 

Oh, I was excused from Jury Duty numerically, so I'll be around if you need me. (This is a classic example of the bureaucratic jibe, "oh your just a number to them." Now I really know how that feels, and its not good.)