Mornings were best for napping in the picture window on the lip of the sofa if you were a cat with nothing to do. Treated like royalty, we brought him his food, kept his water bowl full, his cat box clean. The den got warm and the soft morning sun made prisms out of the crystal sun catcher. I lay on the front lawn with my shirt off listening to the birds and the flag ruffle thinking about pecan pie, the fact that we were now out. Soon to be unemployed but with the prospect of more work, I could fantasize about it starting in September which would be perfect. That would be the same fantasy from the last three or four years though most times the work didn’t actually start until October or later. Fantasies have no business mingling with fact.

Loren explained what was needed to make your own kombucha; you had to get a mother fungus clipping. And it looked like an open sore the way it grew and changed over time, festering. He knew people who did that when he lived in San Francisco. It was deep hippy and I wanted to be a part of it.

There was hydrochloric acid in the scalp foam I used for whatever fungus grew on my head, the dermatitis since Germany last winter. Oddly Loren had the same problem and described the feeling on his scalp as “squishy.”

Loren and I had a habit of staying up late watching music performances on his laptop (he didn’t have a TV). And he would spin records, a lot of ambient musicians with moody vibes. Some artist called Alva Noto reminded me of the 80s rocker Aldo Nova and one of his songs “Life is Just a Fantasy,” a cheesy MTV video. We put it on: the guy’s mullet hair and one-piece leopard outfit, his V-neck guitar. The opening lick was the same as a Scorpion tune so we looked that one up and they came out the same year, ‘82. About the time Loren and I met in grade school.

The song stayed in my head all week like shit on my shoe. I woke around 4 thinking life is just a fantasy, can you live this fantasy, life? And Dawn lost her job through a set of layoffs which made us reconsider our plan for who gets the full-time work now vs. contract, and I had to reflect on how realistic I was being about my own work. It would go for months at a time but then just end with no guarantees to restart. I loved having the break; it was like Loren’s teaching job and having summers off. Blogging was like that too: I could fantasize about being a writer without the hard edges and letdowns, the reality.

At the state park in the early morning the tree frogs were under a grate in the road for what looked like a storm water runoff cell; the grate could be lifted with a tool to access the underground area. Standing right over it the sound was arresting: wrenching, pulsing croaks echoed off the inner cell and coalesced into an alien rhythm.

How could you live in this world and not be mesmerized by such a thing? How could you not stop to consider it with your phone or notepad? Life was so surreal in its unseen moments. I preferred the imaginary.

A big pot of leftover beans for breakfast with fried eggs and hot sauce and then playing with the flab on the cat’s tummy.

When I get back from my morning walk the frog sound is gone, and it’s like they weren’t even there at all. Life is just a fantasy can you live this fantasy, life?

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, pacific northwest