Lots of family things going on—sisters’ and brother’s families coming for dinner to visit G&G G, not to mention time spent with G&G G themselves—all of which is good, but disruptive to any sort of self-rescuing program.

All of those folks are very into their religion, the religion I was raised in. This isn’t a chill Catholic kiind of religion where if you show up for Easter and Christmas, you’ve gone an extra day. This one’s a big deal. I’m out with Mom. She asked me why I don’t go. I said I didn’t buy it. I added that I’d like to believe, that it would make things easy, at least in terms of direction and focus, and those are the big things in my life, especially now. But that data isn’t shared with the extended family. I don’t know how much of it seeps through in vibes and other signs but it wasn’t an issue until this weekend when the church broadcast their semi-annual shindig: two sessions each Saturday and Sunday. I planned to bow out. I told Mom I wouldn’t mind showing up for one two-hour block, but four of them was quite a lot. But it was sticky and I didn’t feel like making an issue. At the last minute I sat down in front of the cable channel with the other three. And then I did again in the afternoon. And twice again Sunday. At one point, at least, I was only one out of four (counting the dog) watching the sermons. Ironic, indeed.

I feel like a relunctant good sport. But does it smack of avoidance to everybody else? I “wasted” eight hours to that Godly odyssey. One could make an effective argument that honesty and healing require that I be true to my own beliefs (or non-beliefs), own up to who I am and be up front about it. Yes, but I also think an argument can be made for making your mother, who is supporting you, happy by throwing an occasional bone her way, and for not causing your grandparents concern, and for not making waves and rumors ripple out into the family, and for taking what you can get out of a bunch of old Christians advocating charity and other quality of life issues. I even acquiesed to pray, which was difficult, but since we’re eating three meals a day together, each preceded by a blessing, it would be awkward for the turns to go only three ways and not four (when it’s just me and Mom, she always says it), so in my mind I made “God” a metaphor for good things and looked at it as a way to acknowledge general gratitude and focus on our lofty good-hearted desires. That’s a good thing, even if I went about it in a way that for me was euphemistic. Interesting issues in any case. And, incidentally (or spookily or inspiredly or…depending on one’s position on the subject), two of the Saturday discourses spoke very directly about the chains of addiction, and if I remember right, the big A got a nod the second day as well.

Okay, now that we have the meaty stuff of waking life out of the way, let’s get back to the dreamlog, shall we?

In one weekend episode, I’m traveling up to a sacred land up north (okay, it’s obvious now, isn’t it?) and I’m planning to do crack one (last?) time during the day off and into the night before I go back to work. It had been awhile, I’d almost forgotten how it tasted. This is how I feel in real life right now, surprise, surprise. And getting back to work, well, the job market is calling. Anyway, then suddenly I’m in New York. Maybe I traveled up there actually. I’m looking for Hec. I’m drinking, smoking, and literally holding on to a self-propelled (at a very high velocity) lawn mower, my feet flying out behind me. Well, that last detail was just a minor moment in the dream but I couldn’t leave it out. I lose Hector, if I ever find him (who can remember these things?), but some other vaguely familiar or newly familiar or not at all familiar partier finds me and invites me back to his place with 2-3 others. We climb up a ladder. Guy is rolling 420. Tall female cop shows up through the window. I run other way, crack pipe in pocket. I move it to my nearly knee-high mud boot (why?) en route. I foggy-feel like I, at some point, had some sense  of or awareness that I was dreaming of crack and/or coke in the first segment(s) and then doing it for real in final dream as I contemplated on that. How’s that for metadata?

All of that was in one night, Friday or Saturday, my records are incomplete. Last (Sunday) night I have what I only remember as a barrage of crack dreams in some ways similar to the above. I’ve not done it for a while but it’s almost as if I can’t hold out any longer. The draw is there, and the resistance not so much now that I’m feeling better and the good life isn’t seeming to lead me anywhere. So I end up buying against my better judgement (all of these dreams are about procuring and not so much about consuming). But this buying-against-my-better-judgement is not like the BAMBJ of old. This time I’ve more like given up. And for that it’s more disturbing, both in the logic of the dream and after I wake.