The Incredible Shrinking Planet

This is Chapter Eleven of my book, Gideon McGee's Dream, published in 1995. I'm post it here as it relates to our penchant for conspicuous consumption, which drives the economic system of Capitalism.

Chapter Eleven


I've decided to introduce you to the Incredible Shrinking World,” Zack said. “The ISW, as we in the guide business refer to it, may be our most important visit. I saved it until I felt certain about your decision to return to your body, for without your return this lesson would have been wasted. It also comes last on our journey, for unless you absorbed the wisdom imparted by your other experiences, then the ISW would be meaningless to you.”

Gideon felt a sense of pride, not the pride that inflates the ego, but a pride that acknowledges a job well done.

“We will have a guide on this tour,” Zack said. “Her name is Sarah, and she has endeavored for many years to halt the shrinkage of her planet.”

“What's the name of the planet?” Gideon asked.

“The name of this planet is Earth, and on this particular earth the consequences of cause-and-effect are readily apparent to an observer, but not to the inhabitants. Cause and effect, as you are beginning to learn, is a belief and not a truth, although it is your truth.”

“Where is the planet?”

“There's one in every Universe.”

“The Gold Universe has two Earths?” Gideon asked.

“Why not?” Zack replied. “Each Universe has over eighteen billion galaxies. Each galaxy has over one hundred billion stars, and each star has an average of five planets. Do the math. Your universe is no puny thing, just as you are no puny thing.
“How do we get there?”

“Need you ask?” Zack said, arching both white eyebrows.

“Just think ISW, right?”

This trip was instantaneous. There were no light shows, no super novas, and no doors to go through. Gideon was becoming an experienced pilot, but still didn’t realize that he could get to a place he didn’t think he knew because he really did know.
Zack and Gideon found themselves on Madison Avenue in New York City standing on the sidewalk in front of the Gleason Building, home of the world's largest advertising firm. Both wore navy-blue pin-stripped three piece suits, button down collars on white linen shirts, gold cuff-links at their wrists, and diamond studs in their red power ties.

“Everyone looks overweight,” Gideon observed. “And very rich.”
He noticed a beautiful woman dressed in a burgundy suit striding purposefully toward Zack and himself. She was decidedly thinner than the other women on the street. Her hair was the color of spun midnight and her teak-colored eyes gazed directly into his.

“Hello, Gideon,” she said, offering her outstretched hand in greeting. The blackness of her hand stood in stark contrast to Gideon's white. “Zack tells me you're a fast learner. It's too bad I can't say the same for the majority of people on this side of the planet. I'm Sarah.”

“What do you mean by this side of the planet?” Gideon asked, forgetting to return Sarah's greeting.

“The west. You know. The developed side, just as on your Earth.”
Gideon didn't understand her meaning, but figured it would eventually become clear.

“How have you been Zack?” Sarah asked, turning toward the guide and embracing him in a big bear hug. “It's been several lifetimes.”

“Yes it has,” Zack replied, returning Sarah's embrace. He noticed Gideon's puzzled look.

“Do you remember the dream you had about the four desert wanderers?”Zack asked.

“The one where they found the city of gold?”

“That's the one. Sarah is like the fourth wanderer to climb the outer wall of the city.”

“I woke up,” Gideon cut in, “before the fourth wanderer decided whether to follow the others over, or climb back down to show the way to those lost in the desert.”

“Sarah is one of those that climbed back down,” Zack said. "She's known in my parlance as a Seeker, one who is devoted to teaching with the least distortion of truth. When consciousness is about to shift in purpose, people like Sarah come to make others aware that their beliefs create, but are not truths. She comes to teach acceptance and non-judgment.”

“Is she one of those old souls? You know, one that has had many Earth focuses.”

“Enough about me, already,” Sarah said, cutting off Zack’s answer. “Let's get on with what you came here to get on with.”

“Why is everyone so heavy on this planet?” Gideon asked.

“Watch what you say there, young man.” Sarah put her hands on her hips and did a pirouette. “Not everyone here is heavy. The heaviest people are right here in New York City, and Madison Avenue in particular.”

“I don't get it,” Gideon said. “And why is this called the Incredible Shrinking Planet? I don't see anything shrinking. Everyone's big.”

“All these big people don't get it either,” Sarah replied. “You see, Gideon, New York is the economic center of the world, and Madison Avenue is where the people work who find ways to make people like you and I want things we don't need. They make us feel that our happiness is all wrapped up in the acquisition of things, and they get very rich doing it.”

“And fat too, it looks like,” Gideon said.

“As the west consumes more than its share of the Earth's bounty, those in the east wither away. Here,” Sarah said. “Let me show you.”

Sarah placed both hands on Gideon's head. From the right hand he saw a family in the west sitting down to dinner. The table was laden with enough food for ten people eating sensibly, but this was a family of four. There were platters of steaks, mashed potatoes, corn, salads and pies. The four ate to their fill, then threw the leftovers into the garbage.

From Sarah's left hand Gideon saw another family of four sitting on the dirt floor of a thatched hut. On the floor was enough food for one person eating sparingly. It was divided into four equal shares.

Sarah removed her hands. “What did you see?” She asked.

“Two families eating dinner. One had too much, the other too little.”

“Describe the people.”

“One family was rich and overweight, the other poor and malnourished.”
“I'm going to touch you again,” Sarah said. “This time over your heart. I'm going to speed things up dramatically.”

The families were similar in age. The parents were in their thirties, and the children appeared to be around the ages of fourteen and five. The family with the abundant life style lived in a suburban community only a few miles from a sprawling shopping mall, whose contents equaled the gross national product of the small impoverished country of the poor family. The needy family lived on a barren plain with only a few scrub bushes in sight.

Gideon saw the family on the right eating and buying, and eating and buying; using and throwing away, using and throwing away. Years passed in a matter of seconds. While the right-hand family was consuming, the left-hand family was searching, searching for firewood, searching for water, searching for food. While the family on the right was growing fatter, the family on the left grew more and more emaciated. Soon after the scene began, the youngest of the poor family disappeared.
The more the right-hand family consumed, the more the left-hand family suffered. Gideon could not miss the implication.

“Are you showing me that the family on the left doesn't need to starve?” Gideon asked.

“That's exactly what I'm showing you, and the other family doesn’t need to grow fat.” Sarah answered.

“But what can one family do?” Gideon asked. “It would take the whole world to change to make a difference.”

“You’re assuming that there are victims here, Gideon. There are no victims, for all that happens, happens within the intent for which each individual entered their particular life. There is a famous seer named Seth, and this is what he said about victims, You make your own reality – or you do not. And if you do not, then everywhere you are a victim, and the universe must be an accidental mechanism appearing with no reason. So that the miraculous picture you have seen of your body came accidentally into creation, and out of some cosmic accident attained its miraculous complexity. And that body was formed so beautifully for no reason except to be a victim. That is the only other alternative to forming your own reality. You cannot have a universe in between. You have a universe formed with a reason, or a universe formed without a reason. And in a universe of reason, there are no victims. Everything has a reason or nothing has a reason. So – choose your side!

“Change is slow,” Sarah said. “But it starts with the individual. Change takes place one person at a time and the change that takes place for that individual is reality.”

“Come,” Sarah said. “We're going to watch a little TV. But this TV only plays commercials. It's in the Gleason building, just behind us.”

They passed through the gilded glass doors of the fifty story building, and entered an elevator that would take them to the thirteenth floor. They exited into a large waiting room filled with overstuffed chairs and a wall-sized TV screen. In twenty-second segments, ad after ad bombarded the room. Gideon noticed that children, in particular, were targeted by the ads, and he questioned Sarah about it.

“Children are the most impressionable,” Sarah began. “The admen realize that if they can hook one of us early enough they can trick us into believing that what matters most is what we possess. The inner life goes begging. The admen grow consumers. They're gardeners in a sense, but what they grow are the weeds. The weeds choke the flowers. The children grow up believing that happiness is found in things outside of themselves and the belief creates the reality. The ads tell you to be an individual, but theyre making you over in an image of their choosing.”

Gideon watched the TV screen, and in twenty-second sound and vision bites he began to understand what he did not understand on his home planet. Sarah touched his head as he watched, and the TV screen split into halves. On the right was the ad and on the left the effect the ad had on the planet as people bought what it was trying to sell. As he watched, Gideon under­stood why this was the Incredible Shrinking Planet.
This was a throw-away planet. What they took out of the planet to manufacture their products and create their money was never replaced because they believed that the earth could not replenish quickly enough what they took out. They saw money as their capital. Natural resources that made everything possible were expendable. As the ads whisked by in rapid succession on the right, representing the use of rain forest lumber, fossil fuels, ore of all sorts, water, and topsoil, the planet on the left shrunk perceptibly.

The entire screen changed as Sarah placed her other hand on Gideon's head. He saw beef cattle grazing on the right, and for each one an acre of grain disappeared on the left. As a boy his age wiped his hands on a throwaway paper towel, an old-growth tree from the temperate forests disappeared. As a young boy tried on a new pair of high-tech basketball shoes on the right, landfills rose to the height of mountains on the left. These scenes were repeated over and over until Gideon could stand no more. He brushed Sarah's hands away and the screen returned to its normal mode.

As he was about to speak, in walked the largest man he had ever seen. He was dressed like Gideon and Zack, but with ten times the material. Gideon figured it took five acres of cotton to clothe this one ponderous man. He could feel the floor tremble as the man lumbered over to them.

“Well, Sarah,” the big man said. “I see you're up to no good again. How did you get into my building?” Henry Gleason asked.

“The security guard must have been on a coffee break,” Sarah replied, eyeing the five hundred pounds of Henry Gleason. “I see business is good. You must have gained fifty pounds since I saw you last week.”

“Fifty-five,” Henry Gleason replied in short breaths, but obviously proud of his weight gain. “If business keeps improving I should reach seven hundred by spring. Only the CEO of Goldendeal will weigh more. Who are your two skinny friends?”
“They're just visiting,” Sarah replied.

Henry Gleason looked at Gideon. He knew his age made him a better prospect than Zack. “Can I interest you in anything?” He asked. “A new TV perhaps? You can never have too many TV's.”

Gleason knew the way to ones soul was through TV. It did more to mold beliefs than any other medium.

“I already have one, thanks,” Gideon answered.

“Well, then, how about a bigger one. Bigger is better. Maybe a new bike. One for the roads, one for the mountains, one for racing, one for loafing, one for downhill, one for uphill, one for going right, one for going left. Or, perhaps a car. You can drive here at twelve. We changed the law to increase sales. You can buy one for going short distances, one for long distances, one for on-road, one for off-road, one for snow, one for rain, one for heat, one for cold. We have front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, and all wheel drive.”

“I can't drive until I'm sixteen,” Gideon said. “And I think I'll just borrow my parent's car.”

Henry Gleason gasped. “Borrow, not Buy? Sinful. Just sinful. How about some new shoes? My company has done wonders for the shoe business. Why, I remember the days when people actually had to get by with one pair of shoes, and, can you believe it, they lasted for years. We changed that belief. Bad for business, that. Now we have shoes for walking, sitting, jumping, and skipping; shoes for grass, sand, rocks, roads, dirt, and ice; shoes for rain, snow, sleet, and shoes for cold and shoes for heat. What will it be? Perhaps one of each? That would be best.”

Gideon thought of the five pair of footwear in his closet at home, and felt a twinge of guilt. “I have enough, thanks,” he said and ducked as one of Henry Gleason's buttons popped off his vest and whistled past his ear like a bullet.

“I must be able to tempt you with something?” Henry Gleason said, his frustration increasing. “I know. How about some CDs. We have CDs for every kind of taste, and all sorts of machines to play them on. We have walk-man, jump-man, run-man, and jog-man. We have sit-man, stand-man, sleep-man and doze-man. You name it. We have it. And the best part is that you just throw the CDs away when your tastes change. We discourage trading.”

“Don't you have radio?” Gideon asked.

“We haven't had radio for fifty years,” Henry Gleason said proudly. “My father was responsible for that. He figured it cut down on all kinds of sales. The advertising wasn't so great on radio anyway. Dad discovered we could sell more for our clients if we got rid of radio altogether. My father gained two hundred and thirty-three pounds from that discovery. Now, instead of the music industry getting free advertising every time a radio station played their music, they pay us to advertise, and nobody gets their product for free. Great idea, huh, kid?”

“How do people who can't afford a CD player get to hear music?” Gideon asked.

“Not my problem, kiddo. Not my problem. My grandfather always said, 'money talks, B.S. walks'. Good man my Grandad. Died at four hundred and eighty-three and three quarter pounds. Started this company, he did.

“Look, it's obvious you're not here to buy or to enlist Gleason's help in selling a product. I don't want any potential customers seeing skinny people like you hanging around. Sarah,” Henry Gleason barked. “Get yourself and your light-weight friends out of my building before I call security.”

“My pleasure, Henry,” Sarah said. “We got what we came for. You better sit down. You're sweating all over your new suit.”

“Plenty more where this came from,” Henry Gleason replied. “Why, I have suits for hot, suits for cold, suits for driving, suits for flying, suits for high humidity, suits for low humidity...”

Sarah, Zack and Gideon didn't wait for Henry Gleason to finish. They had seen and heard enough. Gideon, was first out of the Gleason Building door and gulped-in the air. He had a sense of suffocating while inside.

“How can you stand it here, Sarah?” Gideon asked. He loosened his tie and threw the diamond tie-tack into the street. A smartly dressed gentleman dove into the gutter after it, and as he grabbed the diamond the button on his waistband popped off.

“Is it much different here than on your Earth?” Sarah asked. “It's all a matter of degree and it’s all based on your beliefs.”

“I don't think I'll ever buy another thing when I get back,” Gideon swore.

“You will,' Sarah replied. “But with more awareness of the impact your purchase has on the rest of the planet. Over consumption is not right or wrong, but the beliefs behind it carry consequences.”

“I don't think I need to go east,” Gideon said. “The point was well enough made right here in the west.”

“It's up to you, Gideon,” Sarah said. “You know, I think you're going to climb back down the outer wall of the city of Gold.”

“It's not going to be easy, my going back. Is it?”

“There's much yet to remember, Gideon,” Zack said, making a point not to use the word ‘learn.’. “And you'll remember it on your Earth. It won't be easy, for you have planned a big life for yourself. You staged the Round Pond episode to jump-start yourself.”

“What do you mean, 'I staged it'?” Gideon asked.

“That's another story for another time. Just remember, you are essence. You are powerful. You are no better. You are no worse. You simply are. Are you ready to go back?”

“More ready than ever before. Let's go.”

In the flash of a thought Gideon and Zacharaias were back in Norwich, Connecticut, hovering above the hole in the ice of Round Pond.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter One

It's been a while since my last post, as I've been busy creating my new book, The Frog Handled Mug. I'm in the maddening midst of trying to get an agent to take a look at it, but since I write to share what I write I'm going to post the entire book here. Each post will be a new chapter and I would appreciate any and all feedback, including referrals to any agent or publisher you may know. So, here we Go.

The Frog Handled Mug

Chapter One

He is me, but not me. Tall and blonde he sits at the kitchen table sipping coffee from a frog handled mug. The coffee is bitter without sugar. I can taste it. How I know I can’t tell you. He is thirty-six and married to a dark haired woman with brown eyes and killer legs. I’m a leg man myself, preferring a well turned calf over all those other features that usually turn a man’s head. Most of my male patients do not share my preference for the female leg. Sure, they like good legs, but their preferences lay further north.

A few pieces of snail mail are on the table, and unlike my mail there are no bills and no junk. Maybe they came yesterday or are coming tomorrow. His name and address are on the top letter, David Cawley, 121 Briarwood Rd, Norwich, CT 06360. There are no stamps or postal cancellation marks on any of his mail. That’s odd. It is summer there, as the large maple outside his kitchen window is ripe with dark green leaves. I can hear the birds greeting the morning sun. The ground was covered with snow when I went to bed at 11pm, 2009, ten stories up in a Manhattan high rise. David turns in his chair to check the date on the calendar. It is August 24th, 2075. He has one of those rip-off-the-page calendars where the only date showing is the current date. David is religious about ripping off the pages. Why, I don’t know. I just know that he is.

If David Cawley is thirty-six and the year is 2075, then he was born in 2039, a good 94 years after I was born. How can he be me? Hell, he won’t even be born for another thirty years, and by then I’ll be long gone… maybe. Ninety-four isn’t out of the realm of possibilities. Why do I feel so certain that David Cawley is me, and not just symbolically me? How could I possibly have a dream of me in a time that is sixty-six years in the future? Hell, the future doesn’t exist yet.

David gets up from the kitchen table, his cotton bathrobe untied at the waist, and shuffles his six foot frame into the bathroom. He peers into the mirror and rubs his morning stubble. Being him I know he is not going to shave. David never shaves on the weekends and the stubble is only a day old, practically nothing for someone with Scandinavian genes. My beard, on the other hand, is dark and thick and requires daily removal lest I look like a bum. I am a professional after all, and have an image to maintain. I never liked Freud’s stubbled face. There are too many Freud look-a-likes in my profession.

Julia, David’s wife, clad in men’s boxers and a T-shirt that had SHIFTED 2069 printed on each short sleeve, walks into the bathroom. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and says, “Did you make contact?”

“Yes,” he said, “he’s watching us as we speak. He thinks it’s a dream.”
Julia wraps her tanned arms around David’s waist. “Does he know you’re him and he’s you?”

“He gets it at a gut level, but he can’t wrap his mind around it yet. Augusto’s too much a product of his time, and he’s too stuck in his profession’s dogma. He’ll come around though.”

“He has no idea about the part he’s to play in all this, does he?”
David smiles into the mirror. “It’s a tough time for all of them. The three years starting in 2008 was not a pleasant time. Emotions were being tweaked like they had never been tweaked before. Every emotion was intensified. Augusto’s office phone is ringing off the hook and he’s feeling overwhelmed. His theories, that worked for so long, no longer work.”

“Brave man,” Julia said.

“I wasn’t feeling brave in 2009. I was confused, freaked out.” David turns and bends down to give Julia a kiss on her forehead. “I think Augusto, has had enough for one night’s dream.”

On the wall behind him is a picture of a deer, a five point buck that is reflected in the mirror along with David’s head. He turns back to the mirror and as though looking directly into my eyes said, “What do you believe, Augusto?” David Cawley takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and disappears from my dream.

Over the 30 years I have practiced psychotherapy my patients have regaled me with their dreams. I humored them when they told me that the person in their dream was them, but not them. After all, they were a bit off center, if you know what I mean, and I never experienced a dream like theirs. Sure, symbolically all aspects of a dream in one way or another represent the dreamer. But, David Cawley IS me, Dr. Augusto DeRosa, psychotherapist extrodinaire. I am as sure of it as a schizophrenic is of talking to little green men. My patients had described lucid dreaming - being consciously awake within the dream - and I had read much about it in the literature, but this was my first experience with it. I must say, the experience far surpasses the description, but then that always seems to be the case. My body awoke directly after the dream. It is 6am. I say my body awoke because my mind is fully engaged. This damn dream challenges everything I believe about consciousness. It unsettles me. I am not easily unsettled.

It is just a dream, though, isn’t it? Sure, as a psychotherapist I believe dreams hold meaning, but the meaning is symbolic. What do I believe? David Cawley wouldn’t have asked me that question if the question itself had no significance. I feel the significance. I sit up and turn on the light. The sun should be up in about twenty minutes. I smell the coffee wafting in from the kitchen. I love those auto-timers. There is a chill in the room, but I like it cool when I sleep. I don’t like it when I wake up. I put on my robe and walk into the kitchen where it is warmer. Maybe I’ll skip my run this morning and exercise my mind on line. Tynedale’s appointment isn’t until 10am. That leaves plenty of time to check out a few things and make it to my office for my first appointment.

Chuck Tynedale is a classic obsessive compulsive. Nice guy, but a pain in the ass. Always shows up twenty minutes early and insists on the first appointment of the day, which means I have to open up earlier than I would like. Why do I do that? What do I believe? I believe it is the right thing to do for this particular patient.

I pour a cup of coffee, lighten it up, and dump in a teaspoon of sugar. How could David Cawley take it black? Too bitter. I like his cup, though. Maybe I’ll get one like it. Frogs are symbolic of many things. I walk to my front door and get the Times… Damn, Obama’s sending more troops. What a quagmire this is going to be. Another Nam. Felt like the hottest place on earth when I was there. More rain than a fish could tolerate. It was bad timing for me, being there for the Tet offensive.

I take care of some early morning business and spend the next two hours online trying to figure out what happened last night. First on the list was a symbol search…frogs, cups, summer, legs, mirrors…and…that picture of a five point buck that hung on the wall in David’s bathroom. I barely noticed it. Not much connects except for the frog. Every culture seems to have its own symbolism. Metamorphosis seems to be a hit, though. I mean, I’m not feeling any great change in my life, but I get a little tweak when I read it. I pay attention to emotional tweaks. Change would be welcome at this point in my rut of a life. No wife, no kids, one sister a hundred miles away in Connecticut, a drug addicted nephew and a girldfriend I’m not in love with. All I really have is my practice and my professorship at Columbia. I look at my clock, a horrible art deco thing. It’s time to meet my OCD.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Two

It is 9:40am. Tynedale is ten seconds late according to my cell phone clock. He is a middle aged accountant, dumpy in his mid section and soft at the extremities, but he is highly sought after for his skill with numbers. Two marriages ended in divorce. No surprise there. Fortunately for the kids, he didn’t have any. The knock comes at 9:40 and twenty seconds.

“You’re early, but late,” I said, forcing a smile which I half felt.

“I know,” he said. “The cabbie was more interested in talking than in getting me here. He missed a green light. Stopped at the yellow just so he could ask me about his tax return. I didn’t tip the asshole. I figured my advice was worth ten times what I would have tipped him.”

I actually like Tynedale, or rather I like his manner of speech. “Since you’re here we might as well get started.” Nothing changes. We mosey into the inner sanctum where he takes his usual place on the leather sofa in front of my desk. He wipes it off with one of those hand sanitizers before sitting then places the cloth in a plastic baggie.

“I went to the movies last night,” he begins. “I wouldn’t have gone to the shit hole, but I wanted to see this movie on the big screen.”

“What was it?” I asked, curious about the movie that lured him into what he considered a festering cesspool of contagion.

“2012, the Armageddon movie. Something’s going on. I can feel it. The world is falling apart. I’m falling apart.”

“The title of the movie refers to the Mayan calendar, Chuck.”

“Screw the Mayans,” he said. “I know what I feel and I don’t know anything about the Mayan calendar. We’re heading for Armageddon.”

“It seems like it, doesn’t it? December 21st, 2012 is when the Mayan's Long Count calendar marks the end of a 5,126-year era. The Maya were hoping to celebrate the end of a whole cycle, but never made it. It’s all about the stars, Chuck. On the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years. From what I’ve read the energy that typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will be partially disrupted on that date. What that means for us I don’t know, but our astronomers don’t seemed worried.”

Chuck Tynedale straightens his black tie which didn’t need straightening and uncrosses his legs, placing his right foot exactly parallel to his left. He looks to make sure.

“How do you know all this? You’re a shrink,” he said.

“I’m a religious reader of the Times….front to back. So, how did you like the movie?”

“It sucked. All I got from it was a runny nose. I probably picked up that god damned pig flu. Doesn’t anyone cover their mouths when they sneeze? I’m thinking of moving to Japan.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“They all wear those white face masks. I admire them for their cleanliness. I first found out about it from Clavell’s Shogun. I think I was Japanese once or twice.”
Chuck believes in reincarnation, and attributes his OCD to a life he had in London during the plague in 1665. He was one of the body removers who hauled the dead to the burying pits. He eventually succumbed to the disease. At least that’s what he thinks. I’ve been trying to connect him to the here and now for three years. Hey, he’s going to the movies and that’s a big improvement over how he was when he first came to me. Well, he didn’t really come to me. I had to go to him. The only way he’d let me in was on the condition that I wear one of those face masks he so admires the Japanese for. One of his clients, a friend of mine, begged me to see him. My buddy is claustrophobic and hated those face masks. He moved to San Diego a week before we were to begin therapy.

Chuck rambles on about the Japanese and germs, and finishes up by bashing the London culture of the 1600’s for his current blockages. Chuck is into blaming, a classic victim. But, going back in time to an imaginary life to find a cause for what is happening now seems counterproductive. Sure, someone runs a red light and sends you to the hospital then you’re a victim. No control there. As Nascar fans like to say, Shit Happens. Get over it and drop the blame. It keeps you stuck in the past. At least Chuck’s going to the movies and proving my value to him. He obviously thinks I’m worth the hundred fifty an hour or he would have stopped seeing me. Who knows?

Tynedale looks at his digital watch that he had perfectly synchronized with his cell phone clock and stops talking mid-sentence. It is 10:45 and his time is up. He walks out without a word, following a pattern that he either would not or could not break. Christ! How did he get two women to marry him? I guess there is some truth to the saying, “there is someone for everyone.” In his case there were two someones. I’d love to get into their heads. It is Saturday in David Cawley’s world, but it is Monday in mine. I lock the office and head to Columbia for my intro to psych class. Teaching freshmen is a trip in itself. It’s December and the last week before finals. By this time my students think they have the know-how to solve the puzzle of their friends’ minds. It makes me laugh. The course content is at least a decade old and mostly bullshit. Changing the minds of the curriculum committee is about as easy as sucking an egg through a pin hole in the shell. It’s not worth the effort.

Without the brain there is no consciousness. That is what they are taught and therefore that is what they believe. I believe it, too. Midway through the course one of the more creative student thinkers brought up a clever hypothetical. What if, he said, an alien landed in your living room while you were watching TV? To him it appears that the set is producing the image. To test his theory he cuts a wire and the set goes blank. He splices the wire back together and the set begins producing the image again. Now, we know, he continued, that the images are actually produced outside the set and that the set is merely a conduit of the images sent from elsewhere. If a component fails you encounter a problem with the image or the sound. Who’s to say that our brains aren’t like our TV, not the originator, but the conduit.

All I could say was that science has yet to discover a signal source outside the brain. Until that time we’re going with what we know. He raised his hand again and asked if we’re looking for that source. I knew that there was a fringe element of my profession that believed this kind of stuff, but science is as dogmatic as any religion. I told him his inquiry was outside the scope of psych 101 and to research it if he’s interested. An artful dodge, I thought. But after the previous night’s dream, or whatever it was, the kid’s question just popped into my mind. I don’t know his name, but I see him sitting in the third row center, his usual spot. I ask him to see me after class.

I cut the class fifteen minutes short so that the kid and I would have some time to chat. I look up his name. Alexander Hastings.

“Did you ever research that question you posed to me several weeks ago?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he said, his voice high pitched and cracking. I see he is trying to grow a mustache and goatee. It is nothing more than peach fuzz. Physically he is more like sixteen than eighteen.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Uhmm, Sixteen, Sir. I finished highschool in two and a half years. I have a pretty high IQ I’m told.”

“What prompted your question about the brain being a conduit of consciousness? It was cleverly put.”

“A couple of things, actually, Sir. Two nights before I asked the question I saw myself sleeping in my bed. It sort of freaked me out. I thought I was dead or something. I was just awake though, while my body was asleep. I was able to go wherever I wanted just by thinking of where I wanted to go. So I did an experiment. I found the nearest trash can and looked inside at its contents. I excluded all the things that could appear in any dorm trashcan like cans, candy wrappers, stuff like that. I saw on the top a paper on sociology that had a big red F on it. I read the cover sheet then went back to my room and just hopped into my body, and that was it. The next day I woke up early and found the trashcan and sure enough that same paper was there.”

“Maybe you were sleep walking,” I said.

“Nope. My roommate was up all night doing a paper. I asked him if I got up during the night. He said, no. So I figured that either the brain projected its consciousness out of itself or that the brain was merely a conduit of consciousness. Either way it seemed pretty revolutionary to me. I’ve read-up on this and it happens to many people, and yet I was not able to find any investigation in any of the refereed journals. There are many ideas like this outside mainstream thinking, but none within it other than opinion pieces debunking it all as merely anecdotal. I don’t know. It just seemed to me that if people have experienced it then it must be real.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “Have you read A Beautiful Mind? John Nash believed that all of his schizophrenic experiences were real. He literally saw people that didn’t exist.”

“They didn’t exist in our experience,” the kid said. He is smart and not the least bit cowed by my Ph.D. “My mother’s a psychic and her experiences are very different than what your profession has described as possible. Try telling her that what she sees and hears is not real.”

I find myself partially agreeing with this young heretic, but can’t bring myself to tell him that. Instead I said, “I wouldn’t dream of it, Alex. There is much we don’t know. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the one to discover it. Do you plan to major in psychology? You seem to have a knack for it.”

“No, sir. It’s just a fun thing for me. I’m majoring in quantum mechanics. I’m most interested in time and what it really is.”

I think I’m in over my head, here. I thank Alexander Hastings and wish him luck on his final. He doesn’t need it, but I think I need him.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Three

What do I believe? Damned if I know. The sun rises in the east. Is that a belief? It seems more like fact to me. The subway platform is sparsely populated at this time of day, what with most riders at work. Mostly students, hooked up to their mp3 players, stand motionless next to me. I never quite got how anyone could just stand mannequin-like as a great rock tune blasted their senses. I mean, why listen if it doesn’t move you. There’s a belief. It’s also a judgment. Rock and roll should move you physically and if it doesn’t there’s something wrong with you. Hmm, I didn’t know I had that one. A few other elders and I hear the train approaching just seconds before the ear budded students. For some reason I feel a certain pride in that.

I think about Alexander Hastings and his precociousness. I wonder if he will leave his mark on the world. So few of those kid geniuses do. I step into the car and facing me above the window is an ad for a documentary. It is three years old. Many others are older than that. It said, “What do you Believe.” It was a film appearing at the 2006 Staten Island Film Festival. I’m not kidding. It really said that. You can’t make up something like that. What the hell is going on? I’ve ridden this subway hundreds of times since 2006 and I swear that ad was not there before. Well, it might have been there…maybe I never noticed before. That’s my rational take on it, but I like coincidences. I never attached any meaning to them, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating them. Placing meaning would be anathema to a rational mind like my own. I ask the rider next to me if she had seen that ad before.

“No,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned it’s a waste of the advertiser’s money. I’ll look at them, but just the pictures.”

“Thanks,” I said and turn away from her. I’m not interested in a conversation about the merits of subway advertising. What do I believe? I believe this subway train will get me to my destination safely. How’s that for a belief, Mr. Cawley. I believe it, but do I know it? I don’t know it one hundred percent, but I never fret over whether it will get me to where I’m going each time I step aboard. I guess it’s a matter of trust. This is pointless bullshit. Why am I bothering with this? I think I’ll go for a run in Central Park when I get home. I live at the Eldorado, located at Central Park West, so it’s no big deal to skip across the street to the park. I’ve been a runner for over fifty years. For me it’s a meditation, and a meditation might be just the ticket right now.

When I get home I change quickly into my running gear. I have a dinner date with my girlfriend of two years. Debra is an inch taller than me, a legitimate catch for a short guy like me. She’s a genuine 9, a blue eyed brunette with killer legs. She is also twenty years younger than me. A twenty year difference I can deal with. Anything greater makes me uncomfortable. I look ten years younger than my age and act and feel twenty years younger. In my mind that makes Debra and I equal. She looks and acts her age. Does that make me shallow? Maybe, but that’s me. I think I just bumped up against another belief. Oh! Here’s another one. If Debra was more than two inches taller than me I wouldn’t have dated her. Why? Because we’d stand out, and not in the way I like to stand out. I always thought Mutt looked silly standing next to Jeff. That’s for those of you old enough to remember who Mutt and Jeff are.

Taking an elevator to go running strikes me as wimpy. I suppose it is a feeling I easily live with as I never take the stairs. I’m a decent runner. I have a shelf of age-group trophies. I don’t display any seconds or thirds, just firsts. What does that say about me? Shit! Maybe I’m shallower than I thought. I’m beginning to sound like Jimmy Lewis, a patient of mine. He’s as shallow as a tidal pool. What’s going on? Until last night I never entertained thoughts like these. Screw you David Cawley…even if you are me…which I really don’t believe.

It’s colder than I thought. Ever since a nasty experience with bad dick-freeze I do not challenge the cold unless properly bundled in the necessary place. There’s another belief. Proper bundling prevents frost bite of particularly sensitive body parts. Or, is that a fact? So far I haven’t learned a thing from my beliefs other than I believe them. This is uncomfortable….the cold, that is.

I cut my run from four to three miles and head back to the Eldorado. What a pretentious name. It works for a mythical city of gold, but not for a high rise apartment building, no matter how art deco it is. I give my street address to those who ask, even though most New Yorkers would more easily recognize the name, Eldorado. “Where do you live?” “Oh, I live at the Eldorado!” Come on!

I avoid the stairs. Actually it is less an avoidance than it is never even a consideration. How do you avoid something that doesn’t enter your consciousness as a choice. Debra believes that to keep her waiting is tantamount to treason, a great betrayal of trust. When it comes to bowing to this particular belief of Debra’s I have no problem stepping into Chuck Tynedale’s obsessive compulsive shoes. And besides, it’s no big deal for me being on time. What is a big deal is being late. I hate being late. Why is that? Maybe it’s because I believe that being late when being late is avoidable is rude. There’s another belief. Are beliefs truths? Mine seem like they are.

It’s strange, now that I think about it. My belief is only about me. That is to say there are millions of people who are always late. You know who they are. There are also entire cultures, Tynedale’s Japan for one, that to be on-time for a social event is a sign of rudeness. Hmmm. Maybe I don’t have to get so wigged out when I’m about to be late. Being on time isn’t a cosmic law. It’s just my law, and not even a law. Sure seems like one, though. I guess I turn my beliefs into laws…Augusto’s Law. I like the sound of that.

I meet Debra on time at Mama Leone’s, a tourist must-see, but their great spaghetti makes up for it. I look a lot like that guy who played Gandhi in the movie. What’s his name? Oh Yea, Ben Kingsley. So I get a lot of stares from the tourists. I’m occasionally asked for an autograph. Sometimes I sign Ben Kinsley, sometimes Augusto DeRosa. When I sign my own name the yahoos invariably ask if I’m famous. A simple yes is enough for them. I wonder if they Google me when they get back to their hotels. They would find me since I’ve written a couple psych books, but they would be disappointed at the miniscule scope of my fame. The good thing about being a writer is that even the famous ones go unrecognized. If I didn’t look like Kingsley I’d be invisible.

Anyway, I don’t invite Debra home with me because to be honest, I was more interested in sleeping with David Cawley. She doesn’t seem that interested anyway. Maybe she has a headache. I am excited about going to bed, which is different than looking forward to going to bed. It feels a little like how I feel the moment before the Rolling Stones walk onto the stage. I haven’t missed a single US Stones concert in thirty years. At the San Francisco concert in the 70’s I bought a Forty Licks baseball cap that I still wear around Columbia. Even young people know who the Stones are. The same can’t be said for the Four Tops.

Sleep doesn’t come easily. You can’t force sleep any more than you can force a bulldog to learn anything. But, it does come and so does David Cawley. This time he sports a mustache and walks arm in arm with a tall blonde woman along a shopping mall promenade. They amble into a ceramic store, no different than one you’d see today. They walk to the mug section where he selects the same dark green frog handled mug that I saw him sipping from in my last dream. Maybe he broke the one I saw in my last dream. The odd thing is that he just walked out with it. In fact, there are others there that leave the store with the old five finger discount. No one pays for anything. I feel no anxiety in David Cawley’s body. I can come up with no rational explanation for the behavior, a mall full of thieves.

In the next moment the scene changes. David and the blond are back home. It is their home and I recognize the location from my many visits to my sister’s place in Storrs, Connecticut. It is the same David Cawley, but not the same. Some things are difficult to explain and this is one of them. The woman is definitely his wife as I could see their wedding picture in the living room. What happened to Julia? I leave and cruise around the house. I stop short at a picture that sits on a credenza with several other framed 5x7’s. In one of the photos is David arm and arm with Julia on his left and what’s-her-name on his right. He obviously knows them both, but where …what happened to Julia. As in last night’s dream I know that David is thirty-six in this scene. I also know he’s not a Mormon. Didn’t they give up polygamy in the late 1800’s?

Unlike the David Cawley in Norwich this David seems unaware of me, and yet, again, I know he is me. David washes his new mug and pours a cup of coffee. I decide to try and find a mug like it. The scene grows hazy and then fades completely, only to be replaced by David Cawley in his Norwich home. This David is aware of me observing. In fact, I sense he invited me to observe. I cruise around his home. In the bedroom on one of the dressers is the exact same picture I saw in the Storrs home. And when I say exact that’s what I mean. The three of them look to be in their early twenties. How could he marry both women? I move back to the living room where David sits reading. I look at the book. Breaking Addictions by Augusto DeRosa Ph.D. It was my first book, published in 1995. It made me a lot of money because there were a lot of addicts, and for every addict there was at least a mother and a father and sometimes a wife and sometimes a husband. Drug addiction, especially among young people was rampant in 1995 and even worse in 2009. I guess my book didn’t help much.

Julia walks into the living room that is lined with ceiling to floor windows. There is a large scotch pine out front that has several inactive bird feeders dangling from its lower branches. A red humming bird feeder is filled with a water and sugar mix. The Cawleys live in the woods and so there is no need to fill the other feeders during the warmer months. Two Siamese cats lay at the base of the tree hoping for a speedy return of the cold. They look bored, but maybe it is just me anthropomorphizing them. I do that a lot with animals. Julia looks at the cats and walks to the bedroom.

David Cawley closes my book and tosses it into a wastebasket sitting next to his recliner. On the maple side-table is another book. Addiction as Choice by… me. Impossible. David Cawley picks up the book and turns to the copyright page…2011.
“Julia,” he calls. “Could you come here for a minute?”

“I’m busy,” she said. “Since you’re the one with something on your mind, why don’t you come to me? I’m in the bedroom.”

The woman knows her mind, I thought.

David Cawley hoists his trim body out of the recliner and walks to the bedroom. “Is Christine bringing Bill to the dinner this evening?”

“No,” Julia replies “They couldn’t find a sitter so Bill’s got the duty. Why do you ask?”

“I wanted run some of my project notes by him. I guess it can wait.”

“Is that the project on your Augusto focus?”

Why is David Cawley referring to me as a project? And what is a focus? Their conversation turns to small talk, a form of banter that I avoid more than thumb screws. I fast-forward several hours to their dinner party. To my amazement and the further destruction of my rational mind I discover that Christine was the same woman that was married to the Storrs David Cawley. It is clear that Julia and Christine are best of friends and that their friendship goes back to their childhoods. So, why is one David married to Julia and a second David married to Christine? This in itself is a conundrum, but a bigger one is where was David and Christine while I was observing David and Julia? There are two of each of them… so far.

I feel like Alice must have felt when she dropped through the rabbit hole. It all challenges my understanding of reality. Each present moment is all there is. I believe that. And I believe that the future can only be impacted by the present moment, but it is a future that I can never arrive at because I am always residing in present moments. And yet… and yet here I am observing the future in my dream. It’s more than a dream. It’s more a visitation, no different than visiting Spain or Egypt except my body is missing.

A few hours pass. An old man, early eighties maybe, enters the house to the delight of those assembled to honor him. He looks vaguely familiar, but I cannot place the face. He wears a hearing aid in each ear and the guests are careful to speak directly to him. At the dinner table David Cawley stands and hoists his wine glass in a toast.

“To Alexander Hastings, the University of Connecticut’s first Nobel Prize winner. Happy 82nd birthday, Professor.”

“Thank you Professor Cawley…David. It’s been a tumultuous journey, but worth the bumps…always worth the bumps as you all know. I owe much to David’s past focus, Augusto, and to you Professor Cawley. You have been instrumental in all of this. Am I to understand that Augusto is watching as I speak?”

“That’s correct, Dr. Hastings,” David Cawley replied.

“Then I shall proceed and address Augusto directly.”

Alexander Hastings’s voice is unlike what one might expect from an old man of eighty-two. His voice and body carriage suggests he could squeeze out at least another twenty years. You never know, though, when your ticket will be punched.

Professor Hastings holds his left hand up to his ear as one does when suggesting someone call them. “There is much to be done,” he said into his pinkie. “I suggest you call me tomorrow.”

That’s all he says! I am so deflated that I immediately awaken from my dream, or whatever it is. I make a note to call Alexander Hastings lest I forget my dream when I wake up in the morning. I couldn’t possibly make this shit up. I fall back into a stage four delta wave sleep. That’s the deepest level of sleep for you non-psychologist types.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Four

Hundreds of hand crafted mugs line the shelves. This could take some time. I hate doing it, but I ask for help. It’s a guy thing. The clerk walks me to the location where two styles of frog mugs lay hidden behind horse mugs and hippo mugs. I’m not kidding…hippo mugs. There are two different frog mugs and…surprise, surprise…one of them is an exact replica of the mug in my dream. I’m beginning to expect the unexpected and the unexplainable. Fifteen bucks seems excessive when David Cawley number two didn’t drop a dime for his. Mug in tow I head for Columbia and my meeting with Alexander Hastings. The kid actually sounded excited that I wanted to meet with him. What was that about?

Alexander doesn’t share my belief about punctuality. He is fifteen minutes late and doesn’t apologize, doesn’t even seem to recognize that he is late. His back pack is full and looks heavier than he can handle. I wonder if my dream was accurate about him winning the Nobel Prize. He said he was interested in time. The boy genius doesn’t wait for my invitation and plops himself onto the Queen Ann beside the sofa.

“Does anyone in your family have hearing loss?” I asked. He shoots me a puzzled look.

“Yes,” he said. “How did you know?”

“I had a dream about you last night. You were wearing hearing aids. Looks like you’re going to catch a dose of whats and huhs, but not for a while.”

“That sucks,” he said. “I put a lot of stock in dreams, my mom being a psychic and all.”

“You still interested in time?”

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be? It’s only been two days since I saw you last. Why do you ask?”

He’s a cute kid, and subtracting the shrinkage that occurs in an eighty-two year old I figure he has another four inches of growth he’d be adding to his five feet, eight inches. “Why are you interested in time?” I asked.

“Because of my mom. She’s able to see the future and is right about 80% of the time. That intrigued me, although it doesn’t seem to intrigue the scientific community.”

“What about it intrigues you?”

He takes his twenty-pound back pack off his lap and drops it on the floor. It hits with a thump. He looks like a five year old waiting for a candy bar that is about to be placed in his hand. Young Mr. Hastings leans forward and clasps his hands on top of my desk.

“This is the thing,” he says. “The future doesn’t exist, or so we’re taught. If that’s the case then how can my mother see it? The odds of her guessing correctly eighty percent of the time is ridiculously high. Do the math.”

“No thanks,” I said, as though I just didn’t want to rather than I had no idea how to.

“OK. My thinking is this. It makes more sense that my mother is seeing something that exists than it does that she is an exceptional guesser. That suggests to me that our concept of time and probably of reality itself is a bit cockeyed. I want to find out what it is about time that allows some folks to see the future and others to experience the past. It’s as simple as that. I’m surprised no one thought of it before.”

Simple! You’ve got to be kidding me, kid.

“Are you talking about flashbacks?” I ask. “Because if you are, that can easily be explained by psychology.”

“No. I’m referring to past life regressions. Have you read any of the studies on it? No matter. It makes no sense to me that they are merely genetic memories. They’re way too detailed. It makes more sense to me that they are time bleed-throughs.”

Christ! The kid’s sixteen. But, then, maybe that’s why he is so able to think outside the box. He hasn’t received as heavy a dose of dogma as I obviously have. Time bleed-throughs! I’ll bet the little egghead eventually proves it. Didn’t Cawley say he won the Nobel for his studies in time, or did he say his theories about time? There’s a difference.

“Why does it make more sense that they are time bleed-throughs?” I asked.

“Because of my mother’s ability to see the future. That can’t be a genetic memory. How can you have a memory of something that supposedly hasn’t happened yet? I think my mother’s psychic ability and her past life regression experiences are exactly the same. In some way all time exists at once. Past lives exist now, just as the future exists now. They aren’t memories or great guesses and I’m going to prove it.”

“How would you explain that your mother is wrong 20% of the time? Many psychics are wrong far more often than your mother.”

The kid smiles at me like a father smiles at his son when he first gets simple addition. One plus one equals two. That’s great, Augusto. What a good boy. All the while he knows it is a moon shot away from trigonometry.

“That cell phone on your desk is the direct result of what science has learned about quantum mechanics. I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m sure you already knew that.”

He ignored my meek nod and continued.

“It’s simple, really. Everything exists as a probability. Nothing has a certainty of one. So my mom is seeing the future of one of her clients, but in one particular future moment she makes a different choice than the one she made when my mother read her future. That one different choice lays out a different set of probabilities and the future is altered. Nothing is set. See?”

I do see, but I want to change the direction of his conversation.

“What do you think of two futures existing side by side?” I asked.

“Oh, that,” he said as if he was telling a child that his discovery that the sun always rises in the east is old news. “Hugh Everett first posed his multiple universe theory in the 1950s as an answer to Schrödinger’s cat in the box thought experiment. You know about that, right?”

“Sure,” I said, while making a mental note to look up Schrödinger and Everett.

“Anyway, they’ve gone way beyond Everett. I think membrane theory is the most recent.”

“Right,” I said. “The reason I asked is because of some recent dreams I’ve had. I’m in the future, 2075 to be exact, and I switch back and forth between two identical mes that apparently live two different lives. The weird thing is that at one point I think they were one and the same. Both of them had the same picture in their home of a much earlier time in their lives. Any ideas.”

“It sounds like taking both the high road and the low road,” he said. “My mother used to sing that song to me when I was little. You know, ‘Oh ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.’ Maybe in your dream when you came to the fork in the road you took both the high and low roads. That way you get to experience both.”

“Is there anything you don’t know or have an idea about,” I asked. I want to tell him how impressed I am with him, but instead I got sarcastic. I don’t like it when I do that, and I do it too often.

“So you’re saying that maybe at some point I had to decide between one woman and another and I split off and got both, one in one world and one in another.”

The kid shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe, I don’t know, but it’s an intriguing idea, don’t you think? It would be cool if I also attended Harvard in another universe. It was a tough choice between Columbia and Harvard.”

“Why did you choose Columbia?”

Alexander Hastings laughs. He has a fun and hearty laugh, not one of those fake ‘ha ha’s’ I hear from students trying to humor me. I hate being humored. Why is that?

“Wouldn’t it be funny if I was also at Harvard and someone asked me the same question? And how would I know that this me that is talking to you is the split-off-me. To me I’m just as real as the me that is going to Harvard probably feels. Neither one of us knows the other exists. And geeze.”

GEEZE?

“How often do you create a split? It wouldn’t make much sense to create a split-off just trying to decide between chocolate or vanilla ice cream.”

As he is talking to me a mind blowing thought flies into my mind. Ever wonder how that happens? Do you think that simple brain chemistry can create that? Anyway, I said to him, “What about all the other people that populate each world… I mean the mechanics of it boggles the mind, my mind. If I split and split and split then so does everyone else. The rules have to apply to everyone. Don’t you think? That makes for an awful lot of worlds, all with their own stars and galaxies.”

“The membrane theory postulates infinite universes,” he said.

I really can’t take any more. No kidding, I can’t. My head is beginning to feel like one big aneurism ready to pop.

“Are you going home for the semester break?” I asked.

“Yep. I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Norwich, Connecticut. It’s in the southeastern part of the state at the head of the Thames River. It’s close to the casinos.”

Right, of course, what else. “Do you think I could visit? My sister lives in Storrs and I’ll be going up for Christmas for a few days. I’d like to talk to your mother as well. What do you think?” I do not tell him that a future me also lives in Norwich.

“It’s fine with me. I’m sure it will be OK with mom, but I’ll give her a call and let you know before I leave for the break. This was cool.”

“Yeah, right, cool.” He thinks it is cool and my head is exploding. What next?

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Five

The economy is in such dire straits that I’ve had a few calls bartering for my services. This one woman offered to present a complete design plan for my apartment in exchange for six months of therapy at my rate of $150 an hour, once a week. I told her I didn’t need my space redesigned, that I liked it the way it was. Her offer was intriguing though. I asked what her problem was and she said it was over aggressiveness. I had to laugh since her offer seemed so spot-on at addressing a difficult situation. I wished her luck and told her I’d call if I grew weary of my surroundings. I doubted I would, as I don’t pay much attention to my surroundings. I wondered why I don’t and whether it’s OK not to care. Maybe I should reconsider. Nah!

Another caller said he’d exchange plumbing for a month’s worth of anger management therapy. I told him no thanks and he told me to go fuck myself and hung up before I could laugh. The numerous patients I see all seem to be in crisis. Minor emotional blow-ups are now the equivalent of Krakatua blowing its top in 1883. How did David Cawley know that my phone was ringing off the hook and that I’m feeling overwhelmed? That’s easy. He’s watching me just as I’m watching him. But, why now? What’s different now that after sixty-five years I’m experiencing this…craziness?


I love what I do and I think that designer does too. I’ll bet she’ll find some therapist to barter with. Now there’s an old idea that needs to be reinvented. It requires that everyone enjoy what they do. It would have to start early….Nah, who would ever love cleaning toilets. My mind lately has been all over the place. It’s like my mind has a mind of its own. Where is it all coming from? It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to believe that matter – I’m talking about my brain – could produce these ideas. Alexander Hastings’ TV analogy makes sense to me, but I sure wouldn’t share it with my esteemed colleagues. Dogma, you know. Step outside its rigid walls and you might as well be a leper.

I just finished with my last patient, a depressed woman of excessive weight, whose self esteem is in the crapper. She was seeing a psychiatrist whose primary method of treatment was anti-depressants. They at least allowed her to function, but did little for her psyche. It is that old thinking that the brain is the seat of consciousness and that everything is a chemical reaction. But what if, as Alexander suggested, the brain is a conduit and the chemical changes in the brain that we believe cause depression are secondary expressions. What if the brain, as a conduit, responds to a depressive state of mind by releasing the chemicals we see when we go looking for them. If that is the case then anti depressants by themselves can never fully cure someone of depression. I’m not a depressive person, but I lived with one in college and so have some second hand experiential knowledge.

My phone interrupted my musings, as often happens these days. I don’t recognize the number, but have an impulse to pick up. Oh, that’s another thing. Impulses. They are becoming more frequent and less easy to ignore, like this phone call.

“Hello, this is Dr. DeRosa,” I said.

“Thank you for picking up, Doctor. This is Eleanor Cawley. I’m praying you’ll be able to take on my ten year old son. I’m at a loss about what to do and he is so troubled.”

He’s troubled! If you only knew, lady. “What’s his name?” I asked.

“David Cawley,” she said. “He is so angry all the time and he has taken to hurting himself.”

I hear her stifling her tears. I do some quick math. He’d be forty years old when the David Cawley that is me would be born. Christ, what an opportunity to help shape the psyche of my own father, but then I think how there are some great fathers who have some pretty screwed up kids. There are also great kids that have screwed up fathers. Go figure.

“When can you bring him in?” I asked.

“I can be there by one o’clock,” she said.

“That’s perfect. I have an opening then and it will give me some time to catch a bite to eat. I assume you have my address.”

She said she does and we concluded the call. I reside in wacko world. It in no way resembles the world that had formed my heretofore rational mind. My assumptions…no…change that…my beliefs about consciousness and reality are being assaulted from all sides. You know that song, solid as a rock, rock, rock, rock, rock. Well, the rocks I thought were made of granite are turning out to be nothing more than sandstone. I need a beer.

I leave my office and cross the street to O’Toole’s Bar and Grill. The bartender is an Irishman, as you’d expect, and has been in the US for ten years. He has six kids. What’s with the size of Irish families? Maybe it’s the rhythm method that gets them go big. They’re mostly Catholic.

“Hey, my Italian friend,’ He yells from across the bar as he sees me walk in. “Can I pour you a good Irish beer?”

“Guinness, Timothy, and have the kitchen grill me up a cheeseburger and fries.”

I sit at the bar and wait for my Guinness. I wish they didn’t take so long to pour. “How’s the family, Timothy?” I asked. I always ask it of Timothy as he is so fond of regaling me with his family stories. Why are the Irish such good story tellers? Could there be a gene for that, too?

“Let me tell you, now,” he begins in his lovely Irish Brogue. “Little Mary came home with the best story the other day. Would you like to hear it?”

Mary is eighteen.

“The bartender at McGrath’s down the road a piece notices a new patron at his bar. The man’s an Irishman, of course, by the name of Thomas McClanahan. He orders three Guinness. Drinks them in order and leaves the bar. This goes on for months and months and the bartender and Thomas become close. The bartender, feeling it was none of his business eventually had his curiosity overcome him.

“Thomas,” he asked. “You’ve been coming in for months and months and always order three Guinness.”

“You’re wondering why, now, aren’t you, Patrick. Well, you see, I have two brothers and they’re back in Ireland and so I order a Guinness each for them and one for me self. We’re very close, don’t you know.”

“The winter passes and spring approaches. One day Thomas comes in and orders two Guinness instead of the usual three. Well, you can imagine that Patrick thinks the worst. As he set down the two Guinness he tells Thomas how sorry he is over the passing of one of his brothers.”

“Thomas realizes how Patrick might have come to that conclusion. No. No, Patrick. My brother’s are in the pink of health. It’s just that it’s Lent and I’ve given up drinking.”

Timothy and I both crack up. I think I needed the story more than I needed the Guinness, but drink it happily nevertheless. The Irish consider Guinness to be food and so by their standard I have two meals for lunch. It’s a good thing I run. I pay the bill and give Timothy my usual large tip. He is worth it. I’ve plagiarized his stories many times. I cross back to my office and await Eleanor Cawley and her son. I can hear my heart in my ears. It is faster than usual. The knock comes and I let them in.

Eleanor is a striking woman and obviously the one who passed on David Cawley’s Scandinavian genes. Her blonde hair is pulled back tight and tied off in a pony tail. She has on blue jeans and a T-shirt that do not come from Walmart. Odd that she’d wear a T-shirt in winter, but then her genes were probably better equipped to deal with the cold than mine. Little David Cawley hangs close to her. I could tell he doesn’t want to be here. He must look more like his father because he doesn’t look like her. Little David is short, stocky and has brown eyes.

“Do you know why you’re here, David?” I asked.

“My mom says I’m angry and need help.”

“Do you feel angry now?” I ask the question, but know the answer. He says nothing. I address Eleanor. “Would you mind if David and I had a chat alone?”

“Whatever you think is best Dr. DeRosa.”

I escort David into the inner sanctum and offer him a choice I have never offered anyone else before. “Would you like to sit behind my desk or on the sofa?”

“Neither,” he said. I didn’t expect that. “I want to stand and move around.”

I decide to sit on the sofa. “Do you know why you’re angry?”

“Yes.”

Talking to young kids is like removing a bullet with chop sticks. It’s difficult finding the bullet. Your hands aren’t used to holding the sticks, and when you do grab hold of the bullet the sticks slip.

“Would you like to share?” Shit…that sounds so, so…bullshitty.

“Promise not to tell my mom?” At this point David is at my window staring down at the street. I nod my agreement. He doesn’t see my nod as he is looking at the street. Maybe I thought he had eyes in the back of his head.

“She wants me to do stuff I don’t want to do.”

“We all have to do things we don’t want to do sometimes,” I said.

“Who said so? Is it in a book?”

This is going to be tougher than I thought. My psycho babble isn’t going to work and I sense that David is much smarter than he lets on. I feel like he is laying a trap for me.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve seen it written in books. As a matter of fact I’ve written it in my books.”

David moves away from the window and stands behind my desk. He reminds me of a lawyer stalking a courtroom. I better watch what I say lest he raises an objection. Stick to the facts Dr. DeRosa, just the facts.

“Where did you get it from?” David asked. “Is it in a law book somewhere that we have to do things we don’t want to do?”

“Can you give me an example of what your mother wants you to do that you don’t want to do?” I asked, thinking better of my line of cross-examination that became his line of cross-examination.

“She’s always on me about doing my homework. I hate doing homework.”

“But if you don’t do your homework you won’t do well in school. Isn’t doing well in school important?”

“Maybe, if they taught something that I was interested in.”

“There are many things you’re not interested in that you need to do well in our society. You need to be able to write and read and at least do simple math.”

“You sound like my mother. I feel like I’m being ganged up on. She could have asked one of her friends to do that instead of paying you to do it.”

The kid certainly isn’t intimidated by authority and his language skills are good enough to hold his own. “OK,” I said. “Let’s start over. What interests you?”

“Doing what I want to do?”

“And what do you want to do?”

“I don’t always know, do you?” he said.

“When you do know, what is it?”

“I like having fun, and I don’t like not having fun.”

“So fun is interesting. That’s a good start. And I agree with you, David. I have a much better time when I’m doing fun things.” I don’t dare get into the dreaded responsibility issue.

We go back and forth for most of the hour. I discover he likes to read, but only books that interest him. He doesn’t like the books the school makes him read. He likes riddles and figuring things out. He’s not competitive. He’s content with doing his best in things that he likes, but seemingly has no need to be the best. His best is best for him. The kid seems to know his mind. Maybe he can hold up against the tides of his parents desires for him and his culture’s imprint of its own expectations. I’m surprised he’s held out this long. By his age I was as imprinted as a gosling. You lead, I’ll follow.

Would I be seeing this kid if I didn’t have my dream? I usually refer kids to colleagues more proficient with the rug rats. I always thought of them as miniature vampires. The truth be known, they intimidate me as you probably just noticed. No, I would not have seen David. What does that mean? It means that my dream changed my behavior. But, that happens all the time, doesn’t it? A female patient of mine dreamt that the plane she was scheduled to fly out on the next evening crashed into Long Island Sound. It was so real to her that she didn’t take the flight. It turned out to be TWA flight 800 that went down in Long Island Sound in July of 1996. Her dream changed her future and that of her kids. So, I’m comfortable in doing what I’m doing. As I said before, dreams have meaning. Sometimes they’re symbolic. Sometimes they’re literal. Good thing for my patient she chose the latter.

I’m going to let this take me where ever it takes me. There’s something behind it and I’m not going to fight it. I suggest to Eleanor Cawley that she acquiesce to David’s proclivities as long as she is comfortable doing so. After all, she has her own guidelines regarding parental responsibilities. I don’t expect her to allow him to chug-a-lug a can of Drano, but maybe an occasional missed piece of homework would be palatable to her. We scheduled our next visit after the holidays. Christmas and Connecticut beckoned.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Six

I rented a Ford Escape thereby contributing to the greening of America and the expansion of American employment opportunities. The simple things work. Have you ever driven the I95 corridor between New York City and Eastern Connecticut? If you haven’t, here’s my advice. Only do it if it’s a matter of life and death. It’s about a hundred miles of asphalt laden hostility. It’s as if it was designed by a group of psychologists bent on providing a release valve for pent up hostility. People who are typically as meek as a canary feel free to rage against the machine. It’s nothing for a mother driving a minivan filled with screaming rug rats to flip me the bird and scream obscenities that would make a Russian sailor blush. Russians are notorious for their creative use of expletives. I often drive the whole way at 65mph in the left lane. I feel it’s my duty as a psychologist to provide as many safe avenues for the masses to vent their everyday frustrations.

The Chinese have a saying, “May you live in interesting times.” I heard it in the movie Disclosure. Demi Moore is a cougar. Funny what labels attach to age. Anyway, there is more to that saying than at first meets the ear. I am living in interesting times. They suck, but they’re interesting. Interesting doesn’t have to mean good. This avalanche of emotional distress, mine included, interests me. It probably doesn’t interest a parking attendant, but it interests me. Why now? Why me? I think of these things as I knock off mile after mile. Thank God they got rid of those God awful toll booths.

I turn north onto I395. Route 32 is a mere twenty miles ahead, and from there it’s a straight shot to Storrs. My sister is four years younger than me and until adulthood was a great thorn in my ass. A thorn in my side is far too mild. I think she’s really looking forward to my arrival this time because her twenty year old son has been dabbling in narcotics use, to use her words. It’s been my experience that parents underestimate by half their child’s drug use. My nephew is a great kid, but then most young drug users are great kids….until their drug of choice sinks its fangs into them. Heroin deaths are through the roof and physicians have become partners with the drug dealers in perpetuating the problem. I wrote a book, remember. A simple back ache can result in a severe oxycontin addiction. Whatever happened to good old fashioned heating pads?

An old lady passes me on the right and flips me off. I wonder if she appreciates what I just did for her. Maybe it releases just enough anger so that she won’t go home and poison her husband. She can barely see above the steering wheel, by the way. Not that that has anything to do with anything. It reminds me of an event from my college days. I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota and my compadres and I decided to try some mescaline. We spent the day at the Minneapolis zoo laughing hard. I had a VW minibus at the time. Anyway, on the drive back to the dorm I took a wrong turn and wound up on the highway. I looked out my side view and saw a car on my left approaching at 85 mph or so it seemed. The car was packed with eighty year old women. I mentioned it to my buddies. They laughed and told me to look at my speedometer. I was going 35mph. We still laugh about it today. It’s funny how drugs alter perception. The reason I bring it up is because it points out how perception varies so much from person to person. Individual perception is everything. More and more I’m convinced that there is no ultimately correct perception. I ramble, but then there is no one to talk to. Ever talk to yourself?

My sister, Rose, lives on the top of Spring Hill, a side road that will take you to UConn, basketball capital of the world. She has a dormered cape that sits on three wooded acres. I pull into her driveway and beep my horn. I’m not sure why I beep my horn, but I do it each time I drive up here. Come to think of it I don’t know why I do many of the things I do. They seem so automatic. Rose and Charlie come out their front door waving. Charlie is her husband. Rose is shorter than me and blond, taking after our father in body coloration. Charlie is a lumberer and I don’t mean in the Paul Bunyan sense. Following gender roles and etiquette Charlie grabs my bags and follows Rose and me into the house.

I smell cigarettes. James must be smoking because I know Rose and Charlie would rather breathe in dog shit fumes than cigarette smoke. Funny how these beliefs work. When I was a kid I remember athletes and doctors doing cigarette commercials on TV. Some ice skater would glide over to the rail and light up. “After a hard workout nothing settles me down like a Lucky Strike.” I don’t smoke, but I’m not rabid about having smokers around me. Pretty soon we’ll be shipping them all off to Dr. No’s Island. I notice that Rose noticed that I noticed the smoke smell. Lot of noticing going on. Maybe we should all be doing more of it. You know, less auto-pilot and more self navigation.

“James Smokes,” Rose said. “I saw you sniffing the air so I thought I’d clear the air on the matter. He’s upstairs sleeping.”

I look at my watch. 1pm. “Late night?” I asked.

“They’re all late,” she said. “But then his night doesn’t begin until at least 10:30. We’re in bed before he even goes out. The times, they are a changing.”

Rose sings that last line. She was a flower child back in the day. Now she’s a born again Christian. How she got from there to here I can’t tell you. She was a Catholic before she was a flower child. I was a Catholic before I got to be me. But me is a changing thing. I’ll bet it is for you too. We catch up on our lives and I remind her I’d be heading down to Norwich the next day to visit with the egg head and his psychic mother. That’s not quite how I said it. Sounds hard, doesn’t it.

Rose has my book, Breaking Addiction, lying on the coffee table right in front of me. I know what is coming.

“I’m worried about James,” she said. “He’s a different boy than when you last saw him. He loves you and would never sleep in past your arrival. Things have been hell around here. I’ve read your book three times. Implemented your suggestions, but it doesn’t work. Maybe James doesn’t fit the mold.”

Talk about getting to the point. “I’m rethinking the issues,” I said. “Maybe I’ll write a new book….call it Addiction as Choice.”

“I know it’s a choice,” she said. “It’s not as though he’s unconscious when he does it. I want to know how to get him to make different choices.”

“I don’t know how to do that yet,” I said. “The idea just came to me a few days ago.” I don’t tell her the idea came to me in a lucid dream. “Maybe it’s not about his choices. Maybe it’s about ours.”

“That’s a lot of maybes, Augusto. I’ve prayed to Jesus, but in his divine will I guess it’s not James’s time to quit.”

“Maybe it’s not,” I said. “Maybe there’s purpose to it that neither us nor his conscious mind is aware of. Maybe he isn’t listening to himself. Maybe he’s not paying attention to what he does.”

“How can anyone do something they’re not paying attention to?” Charlie said. He may be a physical lumberer, but his mind isn’t.

“I don’t know,” I said. “This is coming to me as I speak. Maybe it’s not paying attention to the beliefs that drive the doing.” That comes out of left field. I’m not even sure I know what it means.

“I don’t have to have a belief to brush my teeth,” Charlie said.

I think about that before answering. “Sure you do, Charlie. You believe your teeth will rot if you don’t brush your teeth every day.”

“That’s a fact, not a belief,” Rose said.

“I wonder. Things we once thought were facts aren’t facts anymore. Do you remember that Woody Allen movie, Sleeper? He wakes up in this sanitarium some time in the future. He walks out on the porch and finds the doctors smoking and eating cake. Woody is aghast. The doctors tell him they discovered that smoking and eating sugar is good for you. Hell, no more than a hundred years ago we believed that bleeding cured disease. Like I said, I’m just beginning to process this.”

“Should I wake him?” Rose asked.

“No. Let him sleep. I’ll unpack and have a cup of coffee. I bought a new mug. Brought it with me.”

I bring my bag upstairs and unpack. I notice Rose nailed a crucifix above the guest bed, a subtle form of proselytizing. A few years ago I would have draped my T-shirt over it. I wonder why she felt Jesus needs an army of recruiters. I mean, hell, if he wanted more devotees why not just create them. I would. Why leave it up to flawed humans? I check my cell for missed calls. I turn it off when driving so as not to be tempted to answer a call and get pulled over by the state cell phone police. Debra calls. I hit the send button, which I know I don’t have to do, but do anyway out of habit. Remember, I grew up with dial phones.

“Hi Augusto. I see you made it safely.”

“I have a crucifix over my bed,” I said.

“Sounds appropriate to me,” Debra replied. “So, have you cured James of his addiction? I know you just got there, but you are pretty good at what you do.”

I can feel her smiling at the other end of the…..It’s not a line anymore.

“You wouldn’t be mocking me, would you Debra? I’m dreading my stay here. Too bad I can’t stay with the Hastings.”

“But then Alex’s mother would know all your secrets. Woo woo.”

“You’re way too rational for your own good. A little woo woo might loosen you up a bit. We’ll go to a séance when I get back. What do you say?”

Debra laughs. “It might be fun,” she said. “Maybe the ghost of Christmas future will show up.”

“Maybe. I should go. Rose put on some coffee and I have a Jones rearing its needy head. I’ll call you later.”

James wakes up an hour later. His pupils are the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Not a good sign. The drugs have their teeth into him. They dull him down so that he can’t fight back. Addiction as choice…hmm. It doesn’t make sense that anyone would choose addiction, at least in the sense we generally understand choice. Maybe our thinking mind isn’t what makes the choice. Is there a part of our consciousness responsible for the ‘shit happens’ scenarios we all fall prey to? Are accidents not accidents? Where am I going with this? It’s so outside my realm of experience. It certainly seems as though we choose some things, but it is just as obvious we do not choose all things. Maybe my understanding of the psyche is too small, blinded by all I have learned and been taught, blinded by what I believe. “What do you believe, Augusto?”

The country side in Storrs is beautiful. No industry. Few businesses. Storrs is a rural college community, much as it had been when UConn began as an agricultural college way before my day. I excuse myself and go for a run. A big snow storm is due by 7pm. Plenty of time to get in a few miles. Running is my meditation, but instead of stilling the mind it opens it up. It seems to create a channel to the realm of ideas. Whether that realm was inside the brain or outside doesn’t matter to me, although I have recently become curious as to their origin.

There is little traffic on these rural roads. Perfect for a runner, biker or walker. I heard that at one time a squirrel could go from Maine to Virginia on a highway of treetops. I guess the idea excluded rivers. Maybe they canoed across, and anyway a river is not the ground. You can’t go anywhere in New England and not see a squirrel, and there are plenty of them in Storrs. They are very good at being squirrels. I doubt they compare themselves to other squirrels. I don’t think a small squirrel wishes he was a bigger squirrel like I used to wish I was a bigger boy when I was little. It seemed bigger boys had more advantages. I think that might have been the first thing I compared myself to, bigger boys. Comparing! Christ, what a curse. And it must be taught. I don’t think it’s hard wired into our deoxyribonucleic acid. That’s DNA.

A mile into my run I begin to sweat. I love to sweat. I met Joe Campbell once while on vacation in Hawaii. He had a home there. It was shortly after his Power of Myth came out and before he really got famous, thanks to Bill Moyers. He’s the ‘follow your bliss’ guy. At least that’s how the public remembers him. Great mythologist, though. He really ‘got’ it. Hmm…follow your bliss? Sounds like little David Cawley. I didn’t think of it that way until this moment. See what I mean about that channel opening up. It’s hard to follow your bliss or even know what your bliss is when you spend your life from the earliest days learning how you stack up against all the others. If mothers had their way we’d all be doctors and bottom feeders… that’s slang for lawyers. I know several lawyers and they’re good guys. I guess no one likes being sued or prosecuted.

If I chose not to see little David Cawley would it have altered the David Cawley in my dreams? From what I gathered, he gets to experience it all, the high road, the low road and the middle road, possibly everything in between as well. I try to imagine all of us doing that, but the numbers make me dizzy. So how would that work? Let’s say I have to choose between private school and public school. I like public school because all my friends are going to be there. Being an egghead of sorts I also know that I’d get a better education at the private school. The moment I decide on the public school there is a split. I create another me, who until that moment lead exactly the same life as me. Neither of us notices the split and each of us feels as real as the other. To him I’d be the split off and to me he’d be the split off. As our lives continue the branching would be…well…almost infinite. And that’s just me. I wonder if we influence each other. Do you see why I like to run? I never get this by trying to quiet my mind. That’s not to say that you don’t. I’m just talking about me, here.

There’s got to be a purpose to my exposure to this. I don’t believe that everything I do has a purpose. Like, what is the purpose of eating a brussel sprout? I can sort of feel into it when something has purpose. But, is it a purpose I’m talking about or rather is it trying to communicate something to myself? What’s my life’s purpose? Damned if I know. I never said my life’s purpose is to iron out the wrinkles of mankind’s psyche. I like what I do and that’s enough for me. I wonder if a life’s purpose is different than a life’s intent. I like intent better. It’s more general. What do you believe, Augusto? I don’t know, really. All I know is that what I believed a few days ago has come under attack. I’m coming under attack and it feels like the attacker is me.

I better head back to Rose’s. I lose track of time and distance when I go into this free thinking mode. It’s costing me an extra two miles and probably one less hour of awake time. It’s just as well. I’m a much better listener than a talker. That’s what I do. I listen. I just don’t feel like listening to Rose and Charlie tonight. I’m sure James won’t be home until after we all go to sleep. Sleep. Odd how that’s where the action has been lately. So, that’s the plan, dinner, an hour of chat and then dream time. Maybe I’ll see another frog handled mug.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Seven

James is still out in the night doing what young men have done for centuries. I set my frog handled mug on the nightstand and climb into my munchkin bed. It is a twin size and I had forgotten about it. Maybe that’s why I haven’t asked Debra to join me. Close is nice when you’re in the mood for close, but when it comes to sleep, move over. I decided to keep my mug by the bed stand each night and to use it as a dream trigger. What I had read about lucid dreaming said that there are commonalities in our dreams and that if we focus on the commonalities, like my frog mug, it can trigger lucidity within the dream. Hey, it’s worth a try. It just occurred to me. What if the commonality was an aircraft carrier? I digress.

I don’t know why, but Chuck Tynedale enters my mind just before I shut the lights. Sleep comes quickly as it usually does with me. Dreams were never a big deal for me, being so rational, and all. But, since all of this started I’ve done some research. It seems we all have about three periods of dream time during an eight hour period. These periods are called REM sleep, short for rapid eye movement. When woken up during a REM period the research subjects always report that they were in the middle of a dream. I just thought you might like to know that.

I knew something would happen, but I assumed it would happen in the future.

I see myself sipping from a frog handled mug, but it is filled with tea, not coffee. I hate tea. How do I know it is tea? Because, the gentleman sipping it is me. Again, he doesn’t look like me, but it is me. He wears a broad laced linen collar attached to a shirt with slashed sleeves. I can only describe his pants as britches. The colors are dark. There are fires burning along the street and I can see the Thames River a block away. The smell of it easily makes it through the closed windows, which are probably closed because of the stench. What a God awful place London is. I can see men carting bodies toward large open pits. Thick black smoke billows from the many fires. I see men dumping bodies into hastily dug pits in the ground. It is the time of the plague. I hear a knock at the door.

“Doctor, it is me, Arthur. Do you have further instructions?”

I set my mug down and moved to the door. I am exhausted. “Come in Arthur,” I said. “Take a seat. You must be quite fatigued.”

Arthur enters my office and sits on a stiff wooden bench. He sets his feet perfectly parallel to each other and then looks down at them. He is covered in black soot and wears a scarf or handkerchief over his face.

“I am a bit weary, sir. There are few enough jobs available and my family must eat.” Arthur moves his right foot and immediately moves it back to parallel with his left. I wonder if Chuck is influencing Arthur or if Arthur is influencing Chuck. If Arthur came first then….but what did Alexander Hastings say….all time is simultaneous.

“Have some tea, Arthur. Then you best get yourself over to Mrs. Flanders. Her dearest daughter, Millie, just succumbed to the plague. My God, when will it end?”

“I’m beginning to think it’s a scourge of God.” Arthur said. “It won’t end until we’re all gone, Dr. Smythe.”

“I came to my profession to help ameliorate the suffering and all I can do is try to ease their minds. I don’t think I can continue, Arthur. I have nothing left to give.”

His…my pain is unbearable. I want to shake him. Tell him it is the fleas; that he can be of help. I know I can’t do anything, but if I can’t do anything for my past self then why is my future self contacting me. Why can’t I do for Dr. Smythe what David Cawley is doing for me? What is different about the future or at least the year 2075 that allows this type of contact? What do you believe, Augusto?

I wake up and think about the question. What I believe has something to do with all of this. Is it one particular belief? Until my dream I believed that time was linear and moved at a certain rate. The past was dead and the future unmade. The past was dead. Was it? The past is what I remember about it on an individual level and what we write about it on a mass level. How many times have my memories shifted regarding my own past. Little nuances of change. Is it only my memories that change, or do the shifting memories in some way alter my past? And, what about history? Our understanding of history constantly changes as we unearth more and more information about it. Hell, we once thought the American Indians were blood thirsty savages. Were they savages until we changed our history books?

And if all time exists at once can the past alter the future. Certainly this dream and the others have altered me. Influences. Not change, but influences. All three influence each other. Now there’s a tangled web. I believe in free will and that nothing can influence me unless I allow it. Obviously Chuck Tynedale allows the parallel foot thing, or does Arthur allow the influence of Chuck? Or is it mutual? So many questions! Is it our understanding of our reality… wait…is it our beliefs about reality that shape our reality. Does reality conform to my beliefs about it, or do we all perceive a set reality differently? I thought I believed the latter, but that is being challenged.

It’s 2am. I have to shut down all this mind chatter or I’ll never get back to sleep. I concentrate on my breathing. Have you ever noticed how doing that gags the thinking mind? It shifts my attention away from my thinking. Hey, wait a minute. I thought my attention is my thinking. I recall on my drive up here that there was a stretch of road, about ten miles worth, that I didn’t remember driving. No, really. It was like I came to after being knocked out and I was ten miles further down the road. I was driving the car during those ten miles, but my attention, or what I generally consider to be my attention, was elsewhere. What do I believe? I believe my thinking and my attention are synonymous. Oops! My attention is back to my thinking. Breathe Augusto, breathe. That’s better.

I awaken in another dream. David Cawley is 20 years old. I know, you’re confused. It isn’t the kid, it is the kid’s son, the David I saw in my first dream. He is at the beach, Misquamicut in Rhode Island. Julia and Christine are with him. I can feel the heat of the sun and the bodies of the two girls next to him. I am drawn strongly to both and deeply conflicted about it. I want to be more than just friends, but know that I have to choose just one of them. The girls didn’t know that. To them we are a threesome of longtime friends. David asks Julia to take a walk with him. I know what is coming. He is going to ask her if she’d be willing to move their relationship to something more than good friends. The dream goes blank.

When the dream returns, it returns to the same scene where it began, David lying between Julia and Christine. I feel the same conflict within David, but this time he asks Christine to take a walk with him. Jesus, the split must have happened at the moment of asking. One David asks Julia. The other asks Christine. At the point of the decision both realities play out. All this is from David’s perspective…mine. But what about Julia and Christine and all the decision points they must individually make. What if Julia or Christine or both didn’t want to take that walk or were conflicted about it. Do they split off as well? It is clear that one version of Christine married Bill. But, were there other Christines and other Julias? I suspect there are. I also suspect that Julia’s David is trying to show me more than…what shall I call them…probable selves. They are more than probable. Each one is real in their own right.

I wake up at 7am and walk down stairs. Rose is the one that turned me on to auto coffee makers. I am due at the Hasting’s at 9am. Plenty of time, as it is only a thirty minute drive from Storrs. I can hear Rose in the downstairs bathroom.

“I’ll be there in a minute, Augusto,” she yelled.

There goes my few minutes of peace, I thought a bit ungraciously. “No rush,” I yelled back.

Rose loves roses. Her name might have something to do with it. Her fleece bathrobe has them printed all over it.

“I trust you slept well,” she said, not expecting me to say otherwise even if I didn’t sleep well. “I had the weirdest dream last night.”

Welcome aboard. “What was weird about it?” I asked.

“I dreamt that I was a man, hundreds of years in the future. I was crippled in a bad fall, but somehow I knew I chose that for myself.”

“Why would you choose to be crippled?” I asked.

“My sense of it is that I simply wanted to experience what it felt like. Isn’t that strange?”

If you only knew. “I’ve heard of things far more strange than that. Remember, I work with folks who are…how should I put it…outside the box and looking in. What else did you see in the dream?”

“It wasn’t so much what I saw, as it was what I felt and knew,” Rose said. “Being crippled seemed the smallest of things because I knew I chose it and that whenever I was through with it I could choose not to be crippled. It seemed so real. What do you think it all means?”

There’s that word ‘choose’ again. What chooses? Who chooses? “Are you certain you chose to be crippled? Maybe this guy was nuts. I see a couple cutters in my practice. They choose to cut themselves, but there is a great deal of emotional pain behind it.”

“No, it wasn’t that. I could tell that this man was quite lucid and balanced. He had a beautiful feminine quality about him. Very peaceful. He wasn’t conflicted at all.”

“What was he doing?” I asked.

“Nothing, really. He just sat there looking at me. It must be highly symbolic.”

Or highly real! “I don’t know, Rose. These are difficult times we live in and I suspect our dreams will reflect that. Maybe it was suggestive of you getting to your own place of balance and that it is possible even under the most dire of circumstances. After all, the man was crippled.”

“Maybe,” she said, seemingly convinced. “How’s your coffee? I like your mug.”

“Excellent and thank you.” I take my last sip and excuse myself.


The Hastings live on the other side of a stone bridge that crosses the Yantic River. It should be called the Yantic Stream. The bridge is picturesque and old, but it is sturdy enough to hold my Ford Escape. They live at the end of a dead end dirt road on the top of a hill. It is a beautiful place. Psychics must do well in Eastern Connecticut. Sarah Hastings sees me drive up and directs me to their parking area, a dug-out square sufficient to nestle six cars. A stone walkway, mostly covered in snow, leads up to the house, fifty yards away. The place is isolated but close to the city proper.

Mrs. Hastings greets me at the door and invites me in. She has long curly blonde hair and blue eyes. A granny dress hangs loosely over her trim figure and I notice she isn’t wearing a wedding ring. She introduces herself as Sarah and invites me to sit on an oversized leather recliner. The thing was worth a few bucks and comfortable as hell. I wouldn’t think hell was comfortable.

“Can I get you some coffee Dr. DeRosa?” she said.

“No thank you, Sarah, and please call me Augusto.” She sits on another leather recliner to my left so that I have to twist my neck to speak with her. The room is arranged more for watching TV than for conversation.

“Alex tells me you knew we have hearing impairment running through our family. How did you know?” Sarah doesn’t waste any time getting to the point. I find that personality trait attractive, although it catches me off guard at times. Why do I need to be on guard at all?

“I had a dream where I saw an older Alex wearing hearing aids.”

“How did you know it was Alex?” She asked.

“Someone else in the dream said his name.” I didn’t feel it appropriate to mention the birthday toast.

“You’re aware that I’m a psychic,” she said, more a statement than a question. “Did you come for a session or just to chat? Either is fine with me.”

I decide to spill the beans. I spend the next hour elucidating my recent dream life. I leave nothing out except Alex Hastings’ winning the Nobel Prize. Sarah nods knowingly as I unwrap my story. Sarah isn’t nearly as odd as I thought she’d be. She is just over my two inch height differential that excludes all women over five feet eight inches from my dating life. What a stupid rule. Maybe I’ll change it. She doesn’t speak until I stopped talking. I like not being interrupted. Debra interrupted me all the time.

“That’s quite the story,” she said. “I assume you have some questions for me, a woman who has lived most of her life outside the confines of consensus reality.”

Sarah notices me squirm in my chair. “No, no, Augusto,” she said laughing. “I’m not offended in the least. I’ve never been much for comparing myself to others or to the norm. God knows I’m not normal by normal standards. I’m pretty comfortable in my own skin, however.”

I definitely have to get rid of my height standard. “How do you avoid comparing yourself to others?” I asked. “It’s part of human nature.”

“It’s not part of my human nature…as far as I can tell. If that were the case you or one of your colleagues would have been tending to me on a regular basis.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Many of my patients are…my patients…because they fall short in their own minds. You can only fall short if you are comparing yourself to an arbitrary standard.”

“An arbitrary standard of normal,” Sarah said. “I remember reading something of Jung’s. He had a problem with normal also. He was writing about statistics. He said that you can measure a thousand pebbles in a jar and come up with an average sized pebble, and yet there may not be a single pebble in the jar that exactly meets that measurement. We are trained from day one to meet that standard. It’s not rough on those who are born with traits that match it, even though they will repress those few aspects of themselves that don’t. But, consider those that fall one or even two standard deviations outside the norm. Those are the ones we medicate.”

Alexander sits across the room listening. When his mother finished he said, “Mom probably saved me. I mean, I have the intellectual skills to master our educational system. It’s very rational, you know. In that sense I was normal, but not normal at the same time. I took a lot of abuse from the other kids for being smarter than them. Mom taught me to embrace my differences while not judging other’s differences. My differences are what make me who I am.”

I acknowledge Alex and twist my head toward Sarah. “I do have a question,” I said. “Many questions, actually.”

“You look like Ben Kingsley,” she said. “He’s an attractive man.”

I blush. “I thank you on behalf of Ben Kingsley. Why do I feel that David Cawley and Dr. Smyth are me? It’s more than a feeling. I know it, and yet they are not Augusto DeRosa. They’re me and not me at the same time.”

“If this were late summer you’d see a lawn full of dandelions out that window,” she said. “They would no longer be yellow, but would be pregnant with downy seeds ready for the wind to caste them adrift. You probably picked them and blew on them when you were a child. I still do it. You are the dandelion, just as I am the dandelion. Augusto DeRosa is but one seed caste adrift in space and time.”

She has a beautiful way about her. I can barely concentrate on the words she speaks. They are more poetry than prose.

“You are but one focus of attention of a self that is vaster than your mind can imagine.”

“How do you know this?” I asked. “How can anyone know it?”

“Because I experience it every day. Think of it this way.” Sarah turns on the television and mutes the voice. “Think of yourself as the dandelion full of seed, and think of the television’s hundreds of channels as individual focuses of attention of the dandelion. A wind blows forth and the seeds become the channels. They are all different and yet all contained within the set. Who you are is the watcher, the set and the channels. Many refer to it as self with a capital S, or soul, or spirit. It matters not what you call it.”

“But why in this time are we….am I beginning to feel it. There’s something going on that is different than all other times. How does one test for this.”

“Ever the rationalist, eh, Augusto?” she said, more as fact than an accusation.

I don’t feel the least defensive by her words. It occurs to me that she is the perfect parent for a brilliant child who is to make a discovery that has the potential of changing everything. What luck!

“You can’t test for something like this, Augusto. You must experience it, and you are beginning to. Many are. But they are confused for they have no framework to attach their experience to. It’s not normal.” She laughed. “There’s that word again.”

I hear her stomach growl. It doesn’t embarrass her in the least, but I am embarrassed for her. What’s that about?

“My body is telling me that it is time to eat. Will you stay?”

Will I stay? Can Superman fly? Is the Pope Catholic? Come on, Sarah!

“I’d love to,” I said. Oh shit, I wonder if she can read my mind. I don’t have any experience with psychics.

Sarah serves homemade soup leftovers. Does my attraction to her make her soup seem like the best soup I ever had? No, I know what best tastes like. I’m Italian, remember. It snowed heavily the night before. She said she has an extra pair of snow shoes and would I like to go for a hike. There are trails behind the house that lead to the Yantic River at the bottom of the hill. Alex Hastings is not included in her invitation, a point that does not go unnoticed by me. I am thankful that I’m in good shape. The last thing I wanted was for Sarah to have to lug me back to the house. She could probably do it.

It is a fluffy snow, but deep. Without the snow shoes this hike would be impossible. I got right to my point. “I noticed you’re not wearing a wedding ring.”

“I took it off a year ago. Alex’s father, Thomas, died two years ago. A drunk driver hit him head on. Despite what I believe about death it was a difficult time. His energy hung around for about a year. When it was gone I took off the ring.”

“What is it you believe about death that is any different than what the rest of us believe?”

“I believe death is a choice, and certainly not an end. The choice is not by what we call our conscious mind, but is made at a deeper level of consciousness. What do you believe death is?”

“It’s an end. What comes after it, if anything, I rarely think about. There is something, though. I can feel it.”

“I look at death the same way I look at birth, a transition to something else.”

“A transition from what?” I asked. My heart rate is rising and I begin to sweat.

“Another state of consciousness?” Sarah says.

“You mean to or from another point of attention as a human?”

Sarah stops and looks at me. She is beginning to sweat. “These dreams of yours really have you questioning things, don’t they Augusto. Relax, you’re not going to figure these things out by forcing it or by traditional methods. Trust your experience. Let it guide you. Come on, I’ll race you to the top of the knoll.”

She gets a step on me, but I am a well oiled machine. Well used, but well oiled. The knoll is only fifty yards away, but uphill. We reach it together and fall into a heap on the pillow-like snow. We both laugh like school kids do and then we fall silent.

“I like you, Augusto. Alex likes you. He feels a connection to you and now that you’re here I understand why.”

Sarah stands up and offers her hand. I gladly take it and she pulls me up to her. Two deer, a doe and her fawn, dart by a few yards away. Here in the woods there is only us and a world that doesn’t care what we do. It doesn’t judge us for our silliness or our seriousness. It doesn’t compare us to its trees, or the deer, or the squirrels or anything that falls within its perception. I want to take Sarah in my arms and kiss her, but I don’t. Why? What am I afraid of? What belief do I have that says no, you’ve only just met her? And yet the feeling to do it is overpowering. Sarah does it instead. I wonder what that kind of freedom feels like.