This has been a Hog Williams presentation

As a child, I was convinced the universe was a joke and I was in on the punch line. Adults, it seemed to me, were crazy. Adults were sad-eyed and wrinkly. Adults suffered for no reason whatsoever in self-deluded, self-imposed misery. Their eyes were filled with pain over stuff that didn’t exist. I was in touch with some kind of joy. An ocean of joy. Always there. Always accessible. It seemed so obvious.

At some point, I grew up and my lozenge of enlightenment dissolved. The universe took it away. I failed some cosmic test. Whatever. The obvious answer vanished from my mind. The ocean of joy was behind a clear, plastic wall now. Inaccessible. I had had the answer, now I didn’t. What was it? Remember, remember. What was it? Think!

It’s tortured me ever since. A splinter in my mind. A constant sense of presque vu. An answer on the tip of my tongue. My brain has been screaming, remember, remember, remember. But I can’t.

The dream is gone, the child is grown. I have become comfortably numb.

Yatta, yatta, yatta.

As a child I had amazingly vivid dreams. Technicolor dreams. Some actually came true – with cinematic accuracy, frame by frame – in real life. I have no scientific explanation, but it happened. Aside from these totally random episodes of prophecy, I had dream experiences as real as life. Or more so.

For example …

My grandparents owned a hotel in Pompano Beach, Florida. In one dream, I was running through the hotel with my sister and cousins. The hotel was a maze, a path of destiny, a series of hallways leading to one thing after another. (This seems to me an obvious metaphor for Life, but the Dream Director never spelled it out.) We ran through the halls. We laughed; we cried; shit happened. At times scary shit happened. But it was all OK.

At the end of the dream, everything was fine. We laughed our heads off. After all the scary shit, there was nothing to worry about. The dream was one big goof.

Then credits started to roll up. Credits. The dream ended with credits!

At the end of the credits, there was a piggy-wig logo. A voice from the sky announced …

“THIS HAS BEEN A HOG WILLIAMS PRESENTATION.”

If I die and see credits rolling up, I’ll know that everything’s OK.