Out of Body Experiences

In the dream Chris didn't look like Chris but he was Chris, and he was in love with me. Madly, passionately, obsessively – your over-the-top adverb applies here. He wanted to leave his gorgeous wife and their two-year-old son.

I was not in love with Chris but what doddering middle-aged lady would not be flattered by the attentions of an ardent young poet practical enough to get an engineering degree? Certainly not moi.

We were walking in a park. I think that same arboretum where my mother told me she had cancer. And I was trying to explain to Chris the impossibility of the situation. "You can't step outside of time," I told him.

"Why not?" he asked.

"It's impossible," I said. "You can't."

"Look," he said. And even while I looked at him, he began to grow old.

"Stop it!" I said. "Why would you want to do that to yourself?"

He was my age now. Round little hard apple of a belly, saggy chin, receding hairline. He was old.

But I still didn't love him.

Woke up thinking of Chris's beautiful wife and two year old son, feeling as though I'd done them a horrible, horrible wrong even though I knew this was real life and he didn't love me.
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Cannery Row has been morgue-like for the past few days. Fortunately the Little Store has been doing loads of Internet sales – my redesign really seems to have worked in terms of getting the site picked up by the various search engines' crawling spiders. Yesterday we had one for $300 from Japan! Day before, $250 from the Sultanate of Oman! (I had to look that one up on the map.) But even the weekends have been slow in terms of sales done in the store, and after August, it's the weekends that pull retail businesses in tourist areas through.

I worry about Elizabeth who hasn't blogged in many weeks. I fear she's had a relapse of her cancer. I worry about another friend I haven't heard from in a while whose wife has cancer. I fear the worst there too. I don't worry about myself, and that itself is worrisome. I have this great global fatalism – what will be will be – sort of as though I'm looking at myself from somewhere very high, an out-of-body experience.

"This is a great store," the UPS guy told me yesterday. "My favorite down here."

"Well, thanks," I said. "I think so too. Monterey is probably the wrong place for it. Too stuffy."

"I was gonna say… But I'm glad you said first."

We both laughed.

I have a second interview Friday for a job that would position me to move back to the Bay Area at some point. More and more I'm thinking that's the long-term plan. Next summer would be a good time to sell this business.

I can always start another business elsewhere.

Or not.