The only thing worse...

NOTE: This series has been rearranged to read consecutively.
******
The only thing worse than being too well understood, is recognizing unequivocally you are undesired.

One might become known for being undesirable, but there is another thing, possibly even worse, to be known for.

It is the ownership of a Litany of Complaint.

Being undesired (therefore, obviously undesirable, in our own eyes...this is called the double whammy) is often a fleeting stage of life, altered eventually by the motion of the stars, or sometimes a new deodorant.

The Litany of Complaint has staying power, and resists nearly everything designed to render it gone.

I have a grand Litany of Complaint.

Many people avoid me because I am capable of reciting from it at the drop of a hat, or at the drop of one of those repulsive baseball caps nearly everyone has adopted.

The only legitimate wearers of those ugly things are baseball players, and farmers. To all others, including the military, and the various departments of intimidation: Invent your own gear. You all look ugly in those caps.

Major chunks of population wander around dressed horrifically, joyfully adopting those absurd lids. They are absolutely lacking in dignity, and an insult to the wearer, since no one looks even reasonably attractive in them, whether they know it or not. Though judging from the styles of the times, it is safe to say that since reasonable taste and even moderate flair have flown the coop, they don’t know diddily.

The military has never been known for making a decent fashion statement, though you’d be hard-pressed to realize it since military costume is so relentlessly affected by so many these days.

There! You see? It’s like an anaconda of words. It will surround you and choke your life away. It has the ability to hold you in its grip merely because it’s hard to imagine that you were so stupid as to get caught by a madwoman with a Litany of Complaint in the first place.

You keep checking, through means of sidelong glances at a shop window reflection to see if indeed it did happen, but you don’t struggle against the grip, because your reflected image is indistinct (as such images are intended to be according to divine edict) and therefore untrustworthy.
So you’re never certain, you see.

That may be what happened to Sindbad.

*********

In the course of dream dancing, I saw my neighbors who had both developed beaks where their mouths had been before. They each had their most precious possession in their beak. Their possessions were of a shoddy quality, and had nothing to commend them. This speaks loudly of the state of affairs all around.

*********

A good dream is one you recall for all of your life.

*

My mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table in a house I knew to be ours, though I didn’t recognize it. I was telling her very urgently, that a man was coming to kill us. We tried to get away, but as we were rising from the table, I saw the man get out of a car. He walked casually up the path to the house. I watched him through the picture window. He saw me watching him. Our eyes met.

He was wearing a taupe gabardine overcoat. He had red hair. He was a large man, with a competent air about him. Casual but alert. Business-like.

I ran into the bathroom, and tried to lock the door. I heard gunshots from the kitchen, and knew my mother was dead. I stood there in the bathroom. My mind was racing. The door was still unlocked. Then there was no time to lock it. He opened the door, pointed the gun at me, and fired.

*

This dream is more than forty years old.

For a dream to be a good dream, it does not have to be pleasant.
I was told we never dream of being dead.

Who are the experts?

*********