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.