Producer's Log 8: Memory of a Dream or Dream of a Memory - Either Way, Who Can Know What Really Happened?

There's an idea I feel like I've been tiptoeing around a little bit.

I've mentioned how my life has played out in cycles, and that I've started to recognize them. One of the things I've noticed in that regard is how often questions I asked idly as a child have come to present answers in my life as an adult. So, a silly but relevant example, then maybe a sillier one still, if I have time or feel like putting it in today's post.

I don't know how old I was, but when I was a kid I learned about alopecia. I thought it was interesting, idly wondered what it was like to live with the disorder, then didn't think about it again until I watched Arrested Development. The rival development tycoon has alopecia so severe he has no hair on his head (and maybe body?) at all. Again, I wondered idly what it would be like to live with the disorder, but really just left the thought at that.

And now I'm pretty sure I have alopecia. Whatever I “have”, I've never been able to grow more than a patchy beard on my cheeks. But my chin has always been fairly full. Uncomfortable, and the hairs grow in wildly different directions, but alas – not so, anymore. I now have three bald patches on my chin, roughly the size of quarters. It was embarrassing at first. But now...

You get used to it.

Turns out that's what it's like living with Alopecia – assuming, of course, that the trio of circular bald spots in my scalp aren't male pattern balding— You just get used to it.

But this isn't the only example in this class of phenomena in my life. This is a recurring event: Something I'm interested in as a child reappears in my life as a young adult, and then again, now, at whatever stage it is I'm going through. Thank the gods quicksand isn't one of them.

Thank you for that joke, John Mulaney. (You've gotten a lot of love in these Plogs, btw – if you're reading this.)

I often wonder whether Rob isn't another of them. Or, if not Rob himself, beings of the same class – those beings he might call The Powers That Be.

My maternal grandmother was convinced when I was an adolescent that I was visited by angels as a child. My maternal grandmother is also what you might call a religious nutjob/whackadoo. So at least I get all this insanity honestly. But she didn't think that for no reason.

There are three stories from my childhood that kind of make me wonder. I've probably said it before, but I don't remember much of my childhood. Less, even, than the typical person. Childhood trauma will do that. And gods know I experienced a lot of that. I was going to say suffered, but I'm not sure I know what the word means well enough to try it.

The first four years of my school career, I walked to and from school. A typical 90's latchkey kid. There were two incidents. The first, I was in Kindergarten. I remember the day, but I do not remember the incident, if that makes sense. Or maybe I don't remember the day. Let me try to explain.

What I remember of my childhood until about seventh grade feels like the memory of a dream. The memories feel like they belong to someone else. Which is probably a story or a novel or a movie or whatever in itself – trying to explore the potential why of that feeling. But I feel like I remember the day leading up to the incident. But nothing after it. Not even the resolution.

So, anyway, the way my dad tells the story, when he got home from work, I wasn't home. I'd never not been home before, never not made the walk safely. So, naturally, he freaks out. When he finds me, I'm the next cul-de-sac of apartments down, wandering around like nothing was out of the ordinary. I wasn't lost, apparently. He says that when he asked me wtf I was doing, I said that I'd come here “talking with the man” and that that's as much as I could say.

I don't remember that.

I do remember the next one, though. Sort of.

I was in either first or second grade. We'd moved. I was walking to school, like I always did. I intensely remember that I had this watch. Some kind of cartoon. My mind wants it to be Robert Langdon's Mickey Mouse watch, but I really don't remember. I do remember that I had the watch, because I was a very particular child. I took it very seriously to be more than punctual – early. I would time my walk, running intermittently if needed, to make sure that I was exactly five minutes early to school every morning.

I don't remember my morning rituals, but I remember that.

The morning in question, I remember I was looking down at my watch and saw that my shoe had come untied. There was a house I passed every morning that had one of those, like, wooden support-walls holding up the hill where the road and sidewalk had been cut into it. I sat down on one of the beams to tie my shoe, got up, and went to school. Nothing was unusual to me. My watch even said I was going to be early of my five minutes early.

But when I walk into school, the lady at the desk is very upset with me. She's telling me I'm like two hours late to school or something. And I'm all ??? because how is that possible? I can read the watch on my wrist, and I'm not late. But she says that a parent saw me sitting on the sidewalk, at the spot where I sat down to tie my shoe, and I was talking with some man!

The funny thing is, that's where the memory stops. I have some vague notion of her threatening to tell my parents or something? But that's as far as whatever that was went. I never talked to my parents about it, and as far as I remember, it was the last time I was ever late. Frankly, I didn't remember it with the clarity I now have until I was in my early twenties. When I was talking with my father about how I used to just kind of vanish as a kid.

And about how I talked with the man.

So maybe I did dream it. Or I invented the memory, or my brain pieced it together from fragments of memories and dreams and to parallel the story my father was telling me. Our brains do all of those things with memories. But it didn't feel like that.

Or maybe I want to be a Spooky Kid. Maybe I want my childhood trauma to have some kind of meaning, you know? Like, I want there to have been some kind of Guardian Angel - or maybe even a Tempting Devil. Maybe I just want to be Chosen. It's entirely possible. It would give me a way of - a path toward - viewing my life as though I were the hero in a story that someone actually wanted to read, right?

Motivated Reasoning is still a thing we do after we learn to identify it.

As I'm looking back on my young adulthood – like you do, in your thirties, when everything you've tried to build is falling in around your ears, because that's what happens in your thirties – I notice a decided lack of talking with the man in my life. Because that man may have been imaginary. Or something close enough to imaginary that only children or those capable of that particular kind of seeing may be aware of them— But if that's true, how did one of the mothers see me sitting and talking to him?

And is this a dream? See— It could be a memory of a dream. Or the dream of a memory.

If this creative process I under go is how I talk with the man as an adult – and I should really try to walk you through how often synchronicity leads me through my research, but I'm running out of time for today – then maybe....

There was one other time. And I am certain that other time was the entity whose name is not and has never been Robert Longshore.

My ex-wife used to work at a Gentleman's Club. I worked at a machining plant. I've never driven legally – as in, with both a license and insurance. Never wanted to drive at all. So I would taxi to a Waffle House near her Club, and I would write. I was working on another project, but yeah. I've been doing this a long time, now.

Well, one night, this guy walks into the Waffle House. No big deal. He sits two tables away from me, but facing me. Again, no big deal/whatever. This is what headphones are for.

But then he starts talking to me. So I take off my headphones, and I'm listening – because I'm polite, and I'm going to be sitting here for hours, what does it really matter to me if this guy wants to chat? I really don't remember what we talked about. It's the strangest thing. I was fascinated with him in the moment, but as soon as my wife pulled up and I packed my bag to leave, I had completely forgotten everything we'd talked about. I think about this moment in my life a lot. At least, I have the last few years. When I tried to explain to her what we'd talked about, all I could remember was that he kept saying Fulminated Gold – and now I am recalling how he was telling me that it makes you immortal, that it's how all the world's elite stay alive and young-looking? Actually, I remember something about secrets and illuminati-style elites, but not why they were obsessed with Fulminated Gold.

I didn't even know what Fulminated Gold is. In fact, I'm still not sure I do.

I think it has something to do with Alchemical Gold. And with ETs and Ancient Astronauts.

I promised to tell you how my UFO experience was in this class of event in my life. But I've run out of space and out of steam. If I'm going to devote that much energy to writing, I need to give it either to the NFL or to Rob. So maybe next time. Or some other time.

Hey – it seems like you never talk. And that's okay. But would you prefer I posted Rob on a schedule, or does it matter because this probably feels like a second draft to you?

Alright, shared my thoughts and my insecurity. Thanks for being here – and for coming back just about every day, now. It means more to me than you may understand.

Talk to you tomorrow.