Paranormal tax preparation. (rant)

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In the first several weeks or months that my mother died, my stepfather was inconsolable at times. He'd cry out, "This wasn't supposed to happen! This wasn't supposed to happen!" He still bursts into tears sometimes at the thought of having lost my mother. But he's slowly processing his grief.

I recently went with my stepfather to do my mother's taxes. The tax preparer, an elderly woman with flamboyant hair, nails, and avant-garde jewelry, asked us what date my mother died on. I didn't remember off of the top of my head. I asked my stepfather if he remembered. He gave the date and burst into tears. Then the tax preparer said, "It wasn't supposed to happen." 

I said, "That's exactly what he used to say when my mom first died. The exact same phrase!" 

She didn't look surprised or say anything more. She just turned and went back to doing our taxes on the computer for a minute before grabbing two boxes of tissues for my stepfather.

I don't know what to make of this. I don't think anything about the way my stepfather was crying would suggest that exact phrase. And she said it right after he burst into tears. I don't think he was mouthing it. I didn't hear or see him mouth or whisper it, and I don't think that's a common thing to say when someone dies. No one said that when my father or grandmother died. No one said that when my pets died. I've never heard anyone use that phrase in the context of someone dying or even use the phrase in general except for my stepfather and this elderly woman in the context of my mother's death. 

I think that's because it's a very bold assumption to make. It's not taking into consideration all of the people who say, "Oh, it's all in God's timing," or the people who think that whatever happens is just the natural course of things. 

I lean towards believing in the simplest, most practical explanations for things, because I know they're typically the true explanation. But I really don't know what the simplest explanation is here. 

Is this some kind of paranormal activity? There are so many possibilities. Is the lady a little bit psychic? Was she picking up on what my stepfather was thinking when my mother died? Or maybe what I saw when my stepfather was bursting into tears? Was there something suspicious about the way my mother died and this is some kind of message to us? It was in the hospital, and she wasn't in great physical condition, but... I dunno! Are we a simulation, and my mother's death wasn't quite typical or expected? Is there some kind of natural or other kind of law that my mother's death broke? I just don't know what this phrase could mean, taking it on face value. 

But this event was very, very odd.

Worried about dying in my sleep. (rant)

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Lately, I have been worried about dying in my sleep. That's probably my preferred choice for how to die, but I am still a little nervous when it's bedtime now. 

I have really severe sleep apnea. But because I can't sleep with a BiPAP machine most of the time, I'm only being treated for it in minimally-invasive, minimally-effective ways. My health insurance won't cover the recommended operations to help me breathe while I sleep, so this is the best I can do. 

For the last couple of nights, I'll have dreams in which I stop breathing. 

In one, there was a pretty elaborate set up in the dream for why I stopped breathing. The set up seemed to take a while to unfold, which makes me wonder how time works as far as how long it takes for the brain to create a dream versus how one experiences the dream. My brain probably only had seconds to create a logical reason in the dream narrative to stop breathing. But it felt quite a bit longer in the dream than the couple of seconds in which I stopped breathing. 

But then, in a subsequent dream, I was shopping and then someone in the dream was just like, "There you go!" And that was the signal in the dream that I had stopped breathing. There was no logical lead up to it. 

It started to feel as though I was drowning. I think I'm really lucky that I don't get sleep paralysis demons on top of it. My mother used to get them, and it sounded terrifying. But my dreams about why I stopped breathing weren't scary. Only the sudden thought that I might suffocate to death was scary. 

The roadtrip to Markiplier's house. (dream)

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DREAM

I'm about to start to go on a winter road trip with my parents. We're just about to kick off the trip and drive to our first site when my dad stops at a local Safeway and orders a platter of cheese, which he eats very, very slowly. Just when I think he's done and we can move on, he orders a different platter of cheese. This delaying of the exciting stuff that makes life worth living feels so typical of him, and I'm pissed off. 

Then we get on the road and we stop when we reach a frozen lake. We walk onto the lake. I'm very concerned about the thickness of the ice. I can see where it's not frozen. There are water bubbles that form under the ice when I walk on it. However, I don't see any fish or other animals, and it really surprises me. I wonder if the lake is sick if there's no wildlife. I think to myself that if this was California, there would surely be visible fish in the water. Then I see a large fish speed by. And I see another large fish. I love that they're here.

I look back at my parents and realize I've only worried about myself this whole time. I haven't been worried if they'd fall in. I've only been wondering about what I would do if the ice cracked under me and I fell in.

Then we start driving towards a relative's house, and my father just... veers into the left lane of traffic and off the road entirely into another lake that isn't frozen over. Everything is in slow motion as the car's trajectory gets farther and farther off of the correct path. I get a sense that this is something very fated and inevitable as he drives us to our watery doom. It's like I knew he was going to do this eventually, and it's a relief to stop worrying about it and having so many anxious fantasies about it and just know with concrete experience what it's like to actually have it happen. 

The car turns upside down in the lake, but we all manage to escape. We arrive at my relative, Markiplier's, yellowish house--drenched. 

INTERPRETATION

I went on a couple horrible road trips with my parents as an older child. It angered me that my father would refuse to plan these trips. He would say that there's no point in planning anything because we could never know what would happen in life--a wild exaggeration of the lack of control we have over where we go and what we do on a vacation, or life in general, in my opinion. But perhaps his mental illness influenced that attitude about trip planning. 

How could he ever know if psychosis or a horrible, black mood would strike him down? I'm sure it shaped many of his major life decisions. My own life story has an abruptly-changing quality to it that would have been much smoother had I not been mentally ill. 

Walking on the dangerous, frozen lake reminds me of how when I was younger, I had a habit of wanting to wander away from my parents on our outings. Something about it gave me a feeling of wanting to be close enough for the comfort of having parents, but not wanting to have anything to do with them. 

And then my dad steers us way off-course in the car. He often had really bad ideas based on a mix of conspiracy theories and fundamentalist Christianity. It felt really frightening and unstable. He didn't take care of either his physical or his mental health, so I always felt prepared to lose him. So when he died, there was a a little bit of surprise and gratitude that he had lasted as long as he had.  

The alien crab shack. (dream)

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DREAM

I'm in a worn, decaying house on the beach of what feels like another planet. I live by myself here. It's different from the old lives I used to live. This was my fresh start, although I've been here for a long time now. 

I go out on to the beach and check my traps. It's nearly sunset. I look in my net, and see that I've caught dozens and dozens of strange, colorful crabs. They have ropey biological cords coming out of them. They will taste really good. I've got plenty of recipes to experiment with. I take them back to my shack and put them in a large, wooden crate. 

INTERPRETATION

The house I'm living in is a little run down in places. Living here now feels entirely different from living here when my mom was alive--now it kind of feels like being in a shack on an alien planet. I'm also eating a lot of food that isn't mine (I have permission), so it's kind of like having an endless supply of food at my fingertips like the crabs in the sea.

Merry Christmas! Please pick up your free Satyr Plays 2 eBook!

 

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It's time for my Christmas present to you: free eBook downloads of Satyr Plays 2 on the 25th, 26th, and 27th, PST! 

https://www.amazon.com/Satyr-Plays-2-Naja-Tau-ebook/dp/B0DM3MKBG3

Also, the audiobook has been released!

https://www.audible.com/pd/Satyr-Plays-2-Audiobook/B0DQ219HDP

I took a poetry class once, but it didn't teach me how to write poetry. The class had a deadline for poems we had to write every week, and then we would discuss them. We also read from a poetry anthology. But the class didn't go into a method for writing poems. So I asked ChatGPT how to write a poem. I do not consider myself a poet, and I don't read poetry often, but this is what I came up with for Christmas:

Hide inside my hoodie

Outside 

Where the warm sun 

Competes with the frost of December

I go to deliver a last minute gift

My friend doesn't need it

But he needs reminders that he is

Thought of 

And cared for

From my computer I visit snow-filled cafes

decorated in the lights and ornaments I didn't put up

Jazz plays

And the lack of Christmas songs leave me wondering

How they don't understand 

How much those old songs 

Mean to me

Elon Musk slowly transforms into the Joker. (dream)

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DREAM

Elon Musk runs around on a plane doing the kinds of things he would normally do: making business decisions, inspecting technology, making visionary speeches, etc. But one day, he shows up on his flying, blimp-like headquarters dressed in a purple suit, hair grown out and dyed green, with clown face paint on. 

I feel a sense of anxiety slowly creeping up on me as I watch him interact with the people he's hired.

The days go by, and the tension builds. 

One day, he chases me throughout the air ship with a knife. I run in and out of control rooms until I jump out into the open blue sky to escape him. 

INTERPRETATION

Elon's reputation seems to get worse by the day. I remember when everyone used to dream of working for SpaceX--or they at least seemed to admire what Elon Musk was doing. But it's one of the eight worldly conditions in Buddhism that a person will be both praised and blamed. Another of the conditions is that a person will experience both fame and disgrace. People should be aware of this.  

I know this is a little controversial at a time like this, but I really don't think Elon Musk is so bad. He's demanding. And a perfectionist. He makes insensitive decisions pretty frequently. But he doesn't have the thousands of lives worth of innocent blood on his hands that a health insurance CEO would have. 

I'm hoping that something positive comes about with his new position in the government next year, even if there are negatives. I've always wondered what would happen if STEM people got involved in government. 

And I hope that even if he's severe about cutting jobs that he's smart enough not to be cruel or unfair in this revolutionary type of climate that's in the air right now. I would be sad to hear if something bad happened to him. 

Why would I be sad? Because I think he's secretly an open-minded, creative weirdo.  He went to college for physics and I think of him as having a secret creative streak, which makes him a bit sympathetic to me. I don't think he sleeps with starlets for the status. I think he's kind of interested in creative pursuits.

I cuddle with a new psychiatrist. (dream)

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DREAM

I go to a mental health center in a small Northwestern town. The sky is gray and there's greenery everywhere. The building is like a gray log cabin. 

I fill out my paperwork, then get into bed with an elderly woman. We talk about the  paperwork and different things I have to do in order to be seen by her. She is a psychiatrist. 

I get up and do more bureaucratic chores around town so that I can be seen at her clinic. I drive back to her office and she proceeds to spoon me. 

We talk about therapeutic stuff as I drift in and out of sleep. I decide that this is okay since it will never lead to sex or the manipulation that so often happens around sex. 

And then the therapy session is over and I get out of bed.  

INTERPRETATION

I guess this is kind of what therapy feels like? Certainly, therapy is a comfort to me right now--which is a little like cuddling. I'm getting more out of therapy than I usually do right now, because I'm at a lower point than usual.