It's a Jungle Out There

"I have a dream..."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I had one, too. Last night. No, it wasn't as unifying or noble as the great Dr. King's, but it rousted my psychic antennae just the same. Whereas I believe MLK, Jr. was referring more to a daydream, since they are less prone to the rogue crackling synapses than an according-to-Hoyle REM dream, I am referring to the surreal McCoy. Sure, I've had the dreams with the floating gazebos, talking squirrels and gothic Eastern European castles that house an unseen evil. I've also had the pleasure of the universal reveries of:

- Being back in school. This one is always a crowd-pleaser. You are back in high school or college. You forgot your locker combination, you don't know if you have the right textbooks, you have a test in God-knows-what subject in five minutes...and, you're buck-ass naked. Let the good times roll.

- Being in your underwear or completely naked. I was going to type "nude," but there is a quasi-elegance to the word "nude" that "naked" just doesn't possess. You don't really notice you're naked until someone in your dream points it out. Then, you rapidly attach whatever palms and arms you can over the naughty bits and shrink down to reduce as much surface area as possible. You end up looking like Pete Rose crouched over home plate or Quasimodo with a hernia. But, beware, ladies, you have more areas to cover and you simply do not have enough hands, so you sacrifice your hineys (yep, that's how I'm spelling it) to the leers of the faceless men whose eyeballs have descended upon you. Having underwear on in those situations doesn't really help much and the embarrassment meter is pinned to "mortified." Nudists and exhibitionists tend to get a free pass here.

- The flying and falling rigmarole. Stop me if you've had one or both. That's what I thought. 'Nuff said.

My laptop sits conveniently about an arm's length away from my bed. I wanted to write an email to someone but I was feeling a bit testy, so I decided to cool off first by sneaking 40 winks. Since it was near the end of the prime time television schedule, 40 winks became a full-fledged Sleep-a-palooza, complete with requisite drooling, heavy machinery snoring, and sleep lines etched so deeply in my face they resembled wood-cut art. I woke up, sent my email and went back to sleep. That's it? Yep, that's it...except that it wasn't. I woke up to realize that I only dreamed I sent that email. I shook off the cobwebs, gave myself one of those "oh, you kid" laughs, and really sent the email. Well, I'd like to say it ended there, but it didn't. Turns out, yep, that THAT was a dream, too, and now I was REALLY awake. So, I sent the email, only to wake up and find... Well, I am sure you can see where this is heading. This happened about 7-8 times last night and each time I was DAMNED sure I sent that email.

By the time I actually woke up, looking like Mr. Heat Miser and feeling like a living, breathing practical joke, I decided to go on the back deck and drink in the cool night air to clear my senses. It was dark. Most things are at 5 AM. But, it was a dead dark, like I wasn't supposed to be there, like I had wandered into the Dexter Lake Club with Boone, Otter and Flounder. I looked up at the sky, and in between thick, cottony spears of nimbus clouds were the stars, regal and aloof. They weren't twinkling benignly as they seem late at night. No, these were morning stars, before the dawn. They were crisp and bold, with sharply-defined patterns and disciplines. Over there, Orion, stoic and confident - a prima donna. Right there are the Seven Sisters, gossiping and giggling at the audacity of my curious gaze. Way over there is Cassiopeia, matronly and dignified, sort of like the Maggie Smith of the skies. They were watching me as intently as I was them. It was a John Ford sky, a Sergio Leone sky. It was brusque, heartless and immediate...and it was magnificent.

It was the first day of September, well, technically the second day, and the heat waves had eased off the pedal a bit. However, the humidity was the smart-ass kid brother to the bully, so even 82 degrees felt miserable. This particular morning, however, I found both the heat and humidity asleep at the wheel. It was actually a tad nippy. I mean it wasn't burn-the-sofa cold, but in contrast to the recent weather, it was a jolt. I'm out there in my bare feet, mindful of carnivorous splinters and large spiders with many-angled legs. I saw this one spider earlier in the week crawl across the deck with all the subtlety of a belching cab driver at a Barbara Cartland book club meeting. Each leg seemed to have more angles than a schizophrenic grifter as it came barreling across the deck. It was huge. If enough people saw it, there would be legends spun about it at the local bait and tackle shop. a festival in its honor, complete with virgin sacrifices, and ultimately, a skip-rope rhyme fashioned around the beast:

"Big ol' spider was on the deck
Big ol' spider made me a wreck
It's big and hairy with big brown fangs
How many legs below it hangs...
One...two...three..."

Now, I'm no expert on spiders, and my double-dutch shoulder ain't what it used to be, but, I know mean and nasty when I see it. I'm standing there with an empty iced tea bottle in my hand, ready to strike, when the spider stops, looks at me and says, "We both know you're not going to do anything with that bottle. Just step back, chill out, and no one has to get hurt, cupcake." He had me. I was stuck. Bastard.

Well, getting back to last night, I didn't think to turn on the porch light, and whereas I could see the stars better, I couldn't see all the creepy little nasties scurrying past my feet. I was a sitting duck. Spiders have fangs, some insects have wings, rhinos have horns, heck even the platypus has a poison spur behind its heal. We have nothing. We're just soft pink creatures with no natural defense except the ability to offend others with a well-worn insult by Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker. Forget about what you read about Hiawatha or Davy Crockett killing a bear at an age that a human being's feet cannot even reach the floor when sitting on the toilet. Forget about Samson overpowering the lion or S.D. "Special Delivery" Jones wrestling Andre the Giant. They're animals. They have natural physical weapons for attacking and defending. We have nothing except our brains and the all-too-useful knowledge of remembering to zig-zag when being chased by a crocodile. I don't care if you have buns of steel, abs of iron or a crotch of diamond. It doesn't matter if you are a hardbody or a champion bodybuilder. You're nothing in the world of nature. WE are nothing. In the animal kingdom, we're the wobbly balsa end-table in the sitting room amongst the solid oak, marble and rich Corinthian leather. If another species suddenly developed the advanced ability to think, reason, and mix a decent martini, we're done. Finished. Count your tips and head for the door because we suddenly became obsolete.

After all that heavy-duty thinking, I began to teeter a bit and decided to try finishing off the rest of the sleep I thought I was getting. So, I said good night to the stars, stepped gingerly around imaginary giant spiders, and went back inside. I opened the bedroom door, saw my bed smiling at me like a long-lost lover and I nodded knowingly.

I laid down, reached over, sent the email, and went back to sleep.