I dreamed Susie, Beth, and I were in San Francisco, no Los Angeles, free from children, running through the seaside markets, I was dancing and singing with everybody, we were buying yogurt for breakfast and kicking up the sand, Susie and Beth left to go downtown, but couldn't find their way, I found them hours later and they were tired and had not gone far, we were trying to find a place to live in LA, I was free and blissful, but disappointed that my sisters were less happy and disoriented, unable to enjoy the freedom.
later some falling, bouncing satellite like things on parachutes landed in the sand. i told everyone to run to them, they would be filled with prizes. there were people distributing trinkets, toys, plastic bagatelles, and opening drawers, i watched carefully, and opened the right drawer, one of the workers in the satellite put his hand over my mouth so I wouldn't spoil the surprise, i barely glimpsed the piece of paper that said $20,000.
they took us inside the craft, Lee was there, they pulled money out of the vault and gave it to us. then they said we'd also get tickets in the grey zone to see the rolling stones on their next tour and i was excited, repeatedly saying "that's the best part", Iggy pop was one of the people handing out the money. Lee and i walked home,
Dream within a dream interlude: Betty, our auditor, and i had prepared a skit for her church. i added a song for our troupe to sing and i wanted them to sing it in four-part harmony, i woke her up at home, where she was grumpy and her nephew was staying, she obviously didn't want to do it, the song was #2 in the book and was about Frank Rich, it was a real song in the hymnal. The skit would involve the chorus starting to sing, then realizing the song was in the "green" book instead, then singing the Frank Rich song. She still didn't want to do it. End of dream interlude.
Lee and I walked toward home. A fancy nightclub with multiple tiers and walls open enough in slits to watch the whole show was presenting elegantly dressed singers, but most were almost naked, a tall beautiful black woman with sequins and spray-on lines was singing. she was perfectly full figured. Others in bizarre hairpieces, a gay couple walking with orange hair-like plastic strips. Tuxedos. Lee and i watched a while, I was more interested than she.
"Should we get a taxi? I asked, thinking of all the bills in my pocket. The town was a combination of Fisher and Chicago's Lakeshore; Betty had lived in Fisher; we lived in Chicago. We took the cab, I think.
When I woke up, I thought about how insignificant the money was. I would have to give half of it to taxes, I already owe apparently nearly $6000 in back taxes and penalties to the IRS, which would leave me something like $4000, which might cover my existing credit card debt. So the prize of $20,000 really was nothing.
If I object to the IRS report of what we owe, nothing is stopping them from auditing more years and finding more technicalities and fining us more and more money. It is the implied threat. Waterboarding seems like a walk in the park. Either way, we will be broken down. They have already doubled the amount they said we owe, according to the accountant. The fault lies with the accountant, who did not tell us obscure filing dates for 1099s and the like. It is all technicalities. So we could sue Betty, but rather than continue this fight, I am going to pretend I won tickets to the Rolling Stones -- or remember that I did see them on their first American tour, with Brian Jones, back in 1964 -- and I am going to recall the freedom on the beaches, freedom from responsibilities, and how that felt, before children, before money was even a consideration.
Having more and more money doesn't buy back that feeling of freedom. Maybe it gives a superficial sense, a Disneyland version of freedom. Money mostly compounds responsibility and burden, while surrounding you with trinkets. Being homeless on the beach would not be the worst fate in the world.
I'm not going to work if they call me today. I almost never turn down work or take a day off, mostly because I like to work. But I'm taking today off, just to sit and read and drink tea and recover from the three days I spent in Rockford training medical students, my annual effort. I got food poisoning, the substitute driver I had hired to cover my route failed me and caused long-distance stress, it was not a vacation.
Before going to bed last night I read Sam Harris's new book about how destructive Christianity (and all religion) is, "Letter to a Christian Nation." None of it was surprising or disturbing to me, although I realize more and more how much of a toll this presidency has taken on my mind, how the equation of Christianity with Republican politics has come to destroy any small claim to morality or good that the church might have gained over the years. People like to say they respect Mennonites, because they know the historical attempt to live up to what they themselves feel is an impossible standard of selflessness and nonviolence. But my family and my home church congregation of Mennonites have relinquished that standard. They supported the Republican policies and allowed or even encouraged the war and fell into lockstep with the Republican agenda. So I am put in a place where I no longer have an unqualified defense for my religion.
Sam Harris made me ask myself, do I have faith? And I have to say, yes, I do. But it is a faith not based in fear or even belief in God. I realized God was dead years ago, probably in 1969. Harris's book perhaps gave me more reason to fear Muslims, but only because their dogmatism equals that of Christians, their willful ignorance is violent and even the truth cannot combat it. George W. Bush has taken "truth" out of the equation. Truth doesn't count any more and that attitude permeates society today. There is no value placed on it.
Whenever truth and reason are clear, there is no reason to maintain a "belief" in some religious historical notion. The literal Bible is insanity. Arguing over lines in the text -- an effort that uses up entire lives -- is absurd. Quoting scripture can only be comforting or useful if it is taken out of context. As a whole, the book is sheer absurdist poetry. Arguing against evolution or insisting the world is 6,000 years old is a way of shirking one's obligation to serve others, is how I see it.
Losing one's Christianity -- at least for me and at my age -- is a means of recovering my sense of awe, of mystery, of recognizing the humanity of Jesus, of how man became God and how God became human. The question of eternity, or the time-space continuum, becomes wonderful, mystical, conceivable, only after losing the dead scales of religious dogma, the tired retread verses of debatable Bible text. I'll still read the Bible. But no one can tell me what it means.
I did spend more than a few years dosing myself with Prozac, but I haven't taken LSD now for some quarter of a century. I think I am capable of recognizing how both drugs worked in me, but that is no more schizophrenic than any other writer reporting on himself, is it? Could Aldous Huxley describe his out-of-mind experience in "The Doors of Perception"? Well, only after the fact obviously, and any reportage is woefully inadequate. Ask any interviewee. That said, my visions and perceptions of reality, of time, of meaning, of eternity, of love, are indebted -- not to drugs, but to my willingness to pursue any means whatsoever in search of the truth.
And money is not it.
--
God is best known in not knowing Him. -- St. Augustine
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