The Writer's Life 6/3 - Square One

What if a passionate, unrequited love interest was very different than how you perceived her? That was the theme of the vivid dream I had last night. The setting was the living room of an apartment I've never visited, the set of a reality TV show. A former gold trader was in the foreground. In walked a guy in a bathrobe. Both worked on the commodity trading floor for years back in the day. They began flipping a gold coin back and forth. Were they choosing who would sleep on the bed and who on the couch? Or were they deciding who would have sex with the woman in question? Was she behind the camera? Would it be a threesome? The guy in the robe was her boss, who was happily married and, unlike many of his peers, never cheated on his wife. At one time I'd suspected the woman was involved with the other man, one of a series of traders she dated while husband-hunting. She was/is 17 years younger than me. Later in the dream the guy confessed that his relationships all failed due to womanizing. That was my mind's fabrication. I had no knowledge of his sex life. Freud believed dreams are wish fulfillment. Was this one telling me to not regret that unrequited love? If so, what an odd way to go about it. There was a downside in terms of my literary ambition. If I was so wrong about her, it seems to invalidate all the psychological insight I like to believe characterizes my work. The mystery of life never gets any clearer. In that respect we live and die at square one. A sensible person would be dream of something like this:

There was a fun moment on TV last night. The Svengoolie program, channel 33 on Cablevision in NYC, ran The Werewolf of London (1935), starring Henry Hull. At the midpoint of each broadcast, the host usually does a song parody about the film it's running. I expected a send up of Warren Zevon's novelty classic - "ah ooh!" Since Sven had used it in the past on another flick, he went with Herman Hermit's 1963 hit, I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am, an English music hall song written in 1910 by Fred Murray and R. P. Weston. At the ditty's first break, he set up the next part with this wonderful self parody: "Second verse, worse than the first." Kudos, sir.

I took the floating book shop to Park Slope for the first time in five weeks, hoping there wouldn't be any rain, as predicted. Although the skies were threatening, there was no precipitation. The dreary weather that has dominated NYC since early April will, according to the forecast, last at least two more days. My thanks to the kind folks who made purchases. The session was highlighted by a visit from a fellow writer, Nick Piombino. 75, he is a psychotherapist who has been practicing for 40 years from an office in Manhattan. He's also managed to get volumes of poetry and essays into print. He dubbed his work "abstract." It must be good - he's been interviewed by Poets & Writers magazine, a renowned publication, and someone went to the trouble of posting a profile of him at Wiki. Here are the last two lines from a recent blog of his: "... Is it saying that the written or blogged or printed word way too often does not enlighten, but, like a match in an underground cave, momentarily dazzles and then leaves the darkness darker? Is it saying that words are not like notes in a classical symphony, but more like sardonic echoes in an institutional lunchroom?" Sounds like he too feels he's at square one. Well done, Goombah.

My Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Vic-Fortezza/e/B002M4NLJE

FB: https://www.facebook.com/Vic-Fortezza-Author-118397641564801/?fref=ts

Read Vic's Stories, free: http://fictionaut.com/users/vic-fortezza