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Snapping Turtle DNA
Mar. 25th, 2025 08:56 amStrange, strange, strange, strange dreams....
In the middle of the night, I dreamed I'd been just horrible. Acting out in the most destructive, self-centered ways. Till finally the people around me grew tired of it and locked me in a room.
I managed to escape & went to find BB. Railing at the injustice of it all. BB received me cooly. Yes, I could stay in his apartment, if I promised not to misbehave. But no, I could not accompany him to dinner with his three lady companions. I was simply too much of a liability.
Woke up to pee. Staggered back to bed.
And dreamed some more.
I was playing video games on my computer. Three, maybe four video games simultaneously. When I went to check the time widget—I had to be some place—I couldn't find it; in its place were these strange, cryptic hieroglypics. And then I noticed the computer was very hot, so hot that it had, in fact, melted, turned into this great mass of grey rubber. Oddly enough, I wasn't that panicked: I had backed it up not so terribly long ago & of course, my entire diary is online. I would just have to eat the $1,500 or so a new computer would cost.
I ran off to find Ben in the apartment we shared—a variant of one of my first Oakland apartments, the one over the Indendent Driving School that occasionally turned into a dirty video store, only located on upper Flatbush Avenue where my dreams frequently misplace it.
Do you want to break up? I demanded.
No, he didn't want to break up—but he, too, was off to dinner with three ladies and distracted.
###
I think dreams are meaningful, so I'm glad to be remembering mine again.
###
The Larry McMurtry bio continues to be an utter delight. Every paragraph so rich, studded with brilliant language & reflections. McMurtry is what I would describe as a flat writer. Not uninflected! But short on the figurative. Daugherty plugs McMurtry into a mythic landscape I want to wander through.
###
In other news...
On Sunday, Belinda took me out to lunch at a Himalayan restaurant in Beacon as a thank-you for doing her taxes. We had momos:
Food was delicious & Belinda told me stories about her dysfunctional relations.
All relation are dysfunctional, right? And everybody is a relation! So how is it that the people who tell the stories are always the sane ones?
###
Then yesterday, I TaxBwana-ed. Three of my clients were recent emigres from Haiti, and only one spoke English, so I struggled by in my execrable French.
You don't have problems, I thought midway through the first return. These people have problems.
It was a grey & rainy day, which maybe was why I was filled with loathing for my fellow TaxBwanas. One of my rules for getting by is that in any situation I find myself in, I always look around for someone I can conscript into the role of Situational Best Friend—it just makes being in a group a whole lot easier. But there is no one in this group I can conscript: I don't like them, but more importantly, they don't like me. They don't dislike me; they just don't like me.
I suppose it's kinda like the deal with DNA: You share 95% of your DNA with snapping turtles, and yet when you look at snapping turtles, you think: We don't have very much in common!
The other TaxBwanas breathe oxygen. So do I! The other TaxBwanas have opposeable thumbs. Me too! The other TaxBwanas have larynxes they use to make sounds that are equivalent to the sounds I make & that I can interpret.
And yet, when I look at them, I think, We have nothing in common.
And that makes me feel lonely. And sullen.
In the middle of the night, I dreamed I'd been just horrible. Acting out in the most destructive, self-centered ways. Till finally the people around me grew tired of it and locked me in a room.
I managed to escape & went to find BB. Railing at the injustice of it all. BB received me cooly. Yes, I could stay in his apartment, if I promised not to misbehave. But no, I could not accompany him to dinner with his three lady companions. I was simply too much of a liability.
Woke up to pee. Staggered back to bed.
And dreamed some more.
I was playing video games on my computer. Three, maybe four video games simultaneously. When I went to check the time widget—I had to be some place—I couldn't find it; in its place were these strange, cryptic hieroglypics. And then I noticed the computer was very hot, so hot that it had, in fact, melted, turned into this great mass of grey rubber. Oddly enough, I wasn't that panicked: I had backed it up not so terribly long ago & of course, my entire diary is online. I would just have to eat the $1,500 or so a new computer would cost.
I ran off to find Ben in the apartment we shared—a variant of one of my first Oakland apartments, the one over the Indendent Driving School that occasionally turned into a dirty video store, only located on upper Flatbush Avenue where my dreams frequently misplace it.
Do you want to break up? I demanded.
No, he didn't want to break up—but he, too, was off to dinner with three ladies and distracted.
###
I think dreams are meaningful, so I'm glad to be remembering mine again.
###
The Larry McMurtry bio continues to be an utter delight. Every paragraph so rich, studded with brilliant language & reflections. McMurtry is what I would describe as a flat writer. Not uninflected! But short on the figurative. Daugherty plugs McMurtry into a mythic landscape I want to wander through.
###
In other news...
On Sunday, Belinda took me out to lunch at a Himalayan restaurant in Beacon as a thank-you for doing her taxes. We had momos:
Food was delicious & Belinda told me stories about her dysfunctional relations.
All relation are dysfunctional, right? And everybody is a relation! So how is it that the people who tell the stories are always the sane ones?
###
Then yesterday, I TaxBwana-ed. Three of my clients were recent emigres from Haiti, and only one spoke English, so I struggled by in my execrable French.
You don't have problems, I thought midway through the first return. These people have problems.
It was a grey & rainy day, which maybe was why I was filled with loathing for my fellow TaxBwanas. One of my rules for getting by is that in any situation I find myself in, I always look around for someone I can conscript into the role of Situational Best Friend—it just makes being in a group a whole lot easier. But there is no one in this group I can conscript: I don't like them, but more importantly, they don't like me. They don't dislike me; they just don't like me.
I suppose it's kinda like the deal with DNA: You share 95% of your DNA with snapping turtles, and yet when you look at snapping turtles, you think: We don't have very much in common!
The other TaxBwanas breathe oxygen. So do I! The other TaxBwanas have opposeable thumbs. Me too! The other TaxBwanas have larynxes they use to make sounds that are equivalent to the sounds I make & that I can interpret.
And yet, when I look at them, I think, We have nothing in common.
And that makes me feel lonely. And sullen.
