Flowing Thoughts While the Sandman is Away

"...quoting reminds me there are other people in the world besides only me. And other thoughts besides mine, and other ways of thinking."
— Gregory Maguire (What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy)

"I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself." — Marlene Dietrich

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Lets look in on one such house.

Enter the scene of 22 Coconut Ave. The bright Blue One Story House with the Red Dodge Caravan in the front yard.  In through the door, into the living room and down the short hallway to the master bedroom of Bridget and sleeping her husband. 

As Bridget lay naked in bed, awaiting her husband, who lay asleep at the foot of the bed on a mattress that looked like road kill, she continued her quizzical look into the random stream of thoughts flowing down the falls of her brain, because the sand man was out distributing  sand to more deserving customers.   “I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening,” she thought, ‘listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives.”  Would he wake up and come to her bed and fire up her hormones with his limp sex drive?  She continued to ponder this mystery with a little disappointment. Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries. Ever since getting married, his desire for sex was akin to his desire for going to dentist.  He enjoyed making love, as it is a holy extension of the sacrament of marriage, but often got discouraged because he had trouble sticking his love handle into the key hole of her womb. He had been asleep for a few hours, so tonight would a night without any orgasms for her.

Would one of her clients decide to call her at 2 AM to randomly chat about whether her husband happened to like Raisin Bran, because it was on sale at Market Basket?  "She was the best of Clients, She was the worst of clients."  Similar conversations had happened at this time of night. Bridget was a life couch. Life coaches helped people achieve their life goals while trying to achieve their own goal of helping others achieve their life goals. So far she had a few clients who both were unable to give her any substantial amount of cash, even though one of her clients, Barbie Michaels had published a book about her life.  The book told of her troubled childhood that had spilled over into her adult life. Enter Bridget to help her achieve the goals buried deep within her wounded heart.  You should always Reflect upon your present blessings - of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all people   have some."

Would her husband ware matching clothes to work tomorrow?  Her thoughts always seem to somehow involve her husband.  She missed him not sleeping next to her in bed, but this was to be as if he slept next to her, she would talk to him.  The marriage bed brought memories of her all night gab sessions of her childhood with her twin sister into the present moment. Memory is the best and purest link between this world and a better. She needed sleep and this wouldn’t happen if he slept next to her. Thus his retreat to the mattress below.  The road kill mattress as she called it.  Her husband. Her lover. Her companion on the journey. Her best friend. "There is nothing better than a best friend, unless it is a best friend with chocolate."   But back to the issue of his wardrobe. 

Her husband had absolutely no clue as how to dress so people wouldn’t stare at him with a raised eyebrow. This rather concerned her because he was most likely to wear a plain colored shirt with a striped tie and paints that were of a different class of color then the upper half of his wardrobe.  And don’t get her started about his socks.  Seriously! She had concluded that when he was a child he had failed dressing 101.  She felt it her duty to coach him on matching fashion. You cannot control the -mincing fashion- less sense and giddiness of empty-headed husbands; you must not expect to do it, or you will always be disappointed. What concerned her more than embarrassing himself or herself if she had the misfortune of being near him on a bad fashion day, was his bosses reaction to his manner of dress.  Somehow she seemed to be constantly annoyed at him. It didn’t seem to matter what he did, he found some way to get under her skin.  He had been working at his job for over a year and everyday it seemed might possibly be his last.  She didn’t want him to push himself closer to the edge with his yucky taste in wardrobe selection.  Despite that he really wasn’t useless. "No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. " And her husband did lift the burden’s of the many thoughts of her wearied heart. She looked at him in love and whispered to him, “You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here to 22 Coconut Ave and every moment since I first met you.”

With this last consoling thought, Bridget decided she should go to bed and stop worrying about sex, phone calls, and clothes, or the problems associated with her beloved far below the front of the bed.  To go to bed is a far, far better thing that I should do, than I have ever done so far tonite; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” For some reason Charles Dickens words of prose continued to tumble off the back burner or her mind as answers to her many ponderings.  They had been with her thoughts all night, answering her ponderings.

Will my husband come to bed?  

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

What do I think of the price of Raisin Bran, what do I think of Barbie’s great book about her life? 

Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.

Would her husband ware mismatching clothes to work tomorrow?

Surprises, like misfortunes, seldom come alone.

Dickens really was the master storyteller wordsmith. Funny Bridget couldn’t’ remember reading any of his works.  Yet the words were dripping down her brain like sweat off a long distance runner.  Would Mark actually pick up his writing talent and compose something of great literary worth as Charles did so many years ago?  It got her to thinking that  There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts. All her husband had written lately was a narrative of his daft wife and her daftly thinking. Who would read that pure boredom? At last, however, she began to think -- as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too . . ."  She began to think of her own book as she flipped through the pages of the un-yet written book as she started to skip down Sleepy lane as a man from years past began to sing to her in words written before her great grandparents were a thought in their parents wombs.

"A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it."