Midnight Dreams-AN ADVIL MOMENT

Sometimes I have difficulty sleeping. It is my knee. It aches badly. It is arthritis, a gimpy disease disturbed mostly by a cold front entering my life.

I get up at 2 a.m., make half of a mayonnaise sandwich, drink some buttermilk, then take an Advil PM. It causes me to dream strange things, like last night, I was in Washington D.C. attending an old downown church. It was a flimsy story of how things had changed. The once famous church was now attended by just a few people, the walls were bare and unpainted, the mutterings from the pulpit were mostly un-understandable, the parisoners were old old and mean. (One said to me, "don't have your Bible open when the preacher is speaking."). And of course the finance committee was looking for extra money to pay the preacher, or maybe hire a choir director.

Nightly, I listen to Milt Rosenberg on WGN Radio in Chicago. Two nights ago someone told him that the best book he had read all year was TRAIN DREAMS by Denis Johnson. Since I come from a long line of railroaders, I kindlelized the book and read it yesterday. It was a great book, but a reminder, like the midnight dream, that times change, and often slowly. The problem is that we do not often recognize it.

So the dream is in Washington D.C., a city once of great dreams, the capital. Now it is broken. Money disappearing. "Old type ladies" running the show in eccentric fashion. I need a remedy for my knee, instead I get a dream that tells me my story. Searching for the past in a rundown church. Going to a city where reality not only depresses, but causes us to be dumbfounded by the fact I really lost my flashlight and the batteries are dead and I can't find my way.

This is not suppose to make sense. Little makes sense today. We are hunting the illusive god particle, finding planets millions of miles away that should have life and we don't even have a spaceship big enough to cast a man into orbit. Our progress has become a nightmare. We aren't who we think we are. Our drones are uncontrollable, and Santa Claus does not have enough gas for his reindeer. Something to think about. Dream Time. AN ADVIL MOMENT.