The Dead

I decided some weeks ago not to ask for a special seat at the cremation of HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana because my feelings are profoundly personal and private and because I thought I might have an emotional breakdown if I was there in person. Even several miles away from it all, as I am now, I am terrible affected by it and trying not to be seen by anyone.

I'm not there now, but I am still on the verge of a breakdown, because I'm thinking back on a wild, almost unthinkable seven years of my life. In those seven years I've experienced a Sophoclean tragedy ... from hubris to massive achievements to ignominious yet heroic self-destruction. I seem to have reached, rather messily, the end of (or the beginning of) a period ... or Period, I suppose, since the lives of us Artists are supposed to be divided into Periods. (The final Period of P.D.Q. Bach's life, according to Dr. Schickele, is "usually referred to as 'Contrition'."

For months now I have been seeing the Dead (mostly in dreams, and occasionally in the flesh). The night before Trisdee left to go to the cremation (unlike me, he did ask for, and received, a seat in the special VIP area ... and many of my other family members are there too, right now) ... I dreamed about them again.

I think I was at some huge hotel or reception (in the dream) I somehow I already knew that aliens had invaded the earth. In any case, travel had become difficult, and a young man asked me for a ride home. In my dream, I realized that this man was Andros Sturgeon, the son of someone I have always loved very deeply and still think about; he died more than twenty years ago, and after he died, I never felt "young" again; Ted Sturgeon's death really did change my world. Well, the thing is, in my dream, Andros was the same age he was then, so my dream was happening in a sort of between-place, half way between life and death. It was a sort of haunting by proxy. I am wondering where to put him because I am living in a small apartment with Jay.

Well, he asked me for a ride home, and I agreed, but I found myself hitchhiking on a huge motorway. The aliens were eliminating - or transforming - all life in the world. A huge motorcade of uniformed generals was riding past, on their way to the Big War against the Aliens.

And at that point Andros had disappeared somewhere and it was Jay I was hitchhiking with. (This makes sense I suppose with the temporal duality of this dream, because I always felt that Ted Sturgeon was like a father to me, and Jay is like a son to me....) As the generals rolled past, in tanks I think, I looked up at the sky. There were flocks of birds. Huge flocks.

We managed to climb into a car and headed for a city. We flew right through the flocks of birds and I realized what was so different about them. These were not birds at all, but skeletons of birds, flying without flesh.

We finally reach our apartment which is in this strange city, in a tawdry neighbourhood. As I open my door, the smell of cat piss assails me. There is a paper on the floor explaining that if you are human, you will be reanimated as half human half animal, but birds can have four different alternatives including half airplane. There's rubble everywhere. It really is a disaster movie.

My cat is in a plastic bag next to a filthy kitchenette. My pet bird, or rodent, is being kept under huge pile of debris. There is another side room with another dead animal. As I pull the dead cat out, perhaps to bury it, I notice that it is pissing, even in death. The urine is absolutely steaming and smells awful ... and the cat stirs a little in the plastic bag ... it's not entirely dead .... As I turn, I see that my dog, Leilani, is also dead by the door, but now she is also stirring and pissing.

All very very disturbing. I wonder what it all means....