That Voodoo that yoodoo

Connor decided to make a voodoo doll this weekend. Yeah, I know, I am a bad daddy. but I only get him about 96 hours a month*, so my influence is limited. Besides, I think it isn't as bad as you make it out to be in my mind. I remember a year ago picking him up from school where a group of six or seven of the second graders were sitting on the grass in the playground next to the parking lot. Connor was among them, listening to a girl from his class tell a scary story. The tale was about a doll that was coming in at night and killing her family. I think maybe she got a glimpse of one of the Chucky movies. I realized then that it was not just my son who was a bit different in the head. I sat listening to the girl telling her story when another parent walked up to the fence. I briefly explained the situation to him, he got a grin on his face about it and listened in with me. Turns out, by the way, that it was his daughter telling the story.



With the history section out of the way now (I am still in "practice blog" mode, typing in order to fill the screen with words, so don't mind too much the interuptions and the flashbacks. My writing will slowly improve), let's talk about this weekend. Sunday afternoon he started talking about the materials he was going to need, but not what they were for. To understand Connor is to let him come around to his point. I let his mind wander and see where it lands, for the most part, with some gentle prodding as needed. So I am on the porch smoking a cigarette when he comes out to tell me he is going to need a couple of sticks. He has been using sticks for a few weeks now, in various capacities. And he was finally in more than his boxers, so he wandered the yard searching them out. I helped, but I brought a couple of small, curved sticks and they were not going to work. Then I discovered that he needed some Spanish moss, as well. I was watering the lawn and the vegetables by now so he put on his shoes and came around to the front, avoiding the watered mud that makes up much of my backyard. This was about the point where i asked him what he was making.



"I'm making a voodoo doll."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I need the sticks and the Spanish moss. And I need string and other things. We might need to go to the store for stuff."



I am grateful mostly that there is no fear in his voice as he approaches me with this stuff. I am happy he trusts me enough to not wonder what will happen when he tells me something unusual. I feel it may be my only defense during his teenage years. of course, I know about the teenage years and most of this trust will go out the window anyway, won't it? I do remember a few weeks ago gritting my teeth as I tried to explain to him how wrong it was to disect a catipillar (he did so earlier that week, he informed me) just to see the guts squeezing out. "There wasn't a lot of blood, Daddy". So my kid has decided to build a voodoo doll, I think to myself. Let's see where exactly this is going.



 Maybe an hour later we have the sticks tied together and the clothing wrapped around it (a piece of blue checkered cloth I have had for years with my art materials. I have no idea anymore where it came from but I knew I would need it some day), and he is looking for colored pins to stick into it. What I am wondering to myself at this point, and what I expressed to Kristi now, as he is wandering from me to the computer and back, is not where did he get the idea for this, because the internet has all this information at our fingertips. What I am really trying to recognize is how I came up for the idea of a voodoo doll when I was a child. I remember making one. Maybe I made two or fifteen even at some point. What I don't remember is where I came up with the idea back in those days before home computers. I still don't know and I figure it must have been through television, that other electronic box that was going to ruin society when I was growing up. In any case, he is ready to cast spells now and I am ready for a conversation with my child, being the good part-time daddy that I am.

“So you can do good spells with these too, right?”

“Oh yeah. They have more than just curses Daddy.” Phew. “You can bring money and success and love. Not just pain and death.”

“So where do voodoo dolls come from Connor?”

“Well, this one is a New Orleans style voodoo doll.”

'So how did it get to new Orleans?” With no reply and his internal gears turning a bit too hard I told him that they probably originated from Haiti. “Their religion sort of passed on into the new world when they came here”.


Connor does not like talk of religion. My son is a man of science... Jack from Lost and I am mostly okay with that. I figure rather than force a religion onto him I hope he finds God on his own terms. I remember bringing him to meetings when he was four, and he would hold hands with us at the end and say the serenity prayer. There was one night in particular when we went into the church sanctuary while they were meeting in the library, and just sitting there quietly in a pew feeling the presence of a higher power. But a year later that was almost all gone, Connor sitting quietly hoping I wouldn't notice him not joining us and the soon after simply refusing to pray and refusing to believe in a god. He has heated arguments with his mom that I hear about and in some ways he is as intolerant as he seems to believe religious people are. So I try to sneak in my lessons when I have the opportunity while maintaining a sense of nonchalance about it.

'You know that is sort of a prayer, don't you?” No reply. “I mean, you are looking to some other being to inflict these spells on somebody else. These are idols, aren't they?”

I am not sure he actually answered me, but we continued to talk about gods (the Greek gods he is so impressed with) and his belief in magic and how maybe he should not get so angry at the idea of “one god” and realize that all of our cultures have some idea of a god, for whatever reason. This is along the lines of reasoning, by the way, that helped me start to believe in a god of my own understanding.



Then we got into the colored pins for the spells. I have a bunch of clear push pins, and it turns out I had colored paper clips that fit with the colors he was looking for. I only got slightly nervous, a little later, when he tried sneaking up on me and started trying to pull out some of my hair. I grabbed the scissors and cut some strands out for him. Just in case some of this is real, I would rather he experiment on me rather than some other unsuspecting soul! So we made a voodoo doll and had a small discussion about god and he spent another hour researching and testing out teleportation spells (“If I disappear Daddy, you will find me in California.”) and I texted his mom to warn her he was coming home with this thing (“Your son is quite special” was her reply) and all in all it was a great finish to the weekend of adventure. Until he broke the arms off this doll and I walked around with my hands hidden inside my shirt trying to freak him out.

I made a video asking him about the doll. A good five minutes before the battery died on me.

And now I have to go boil the witch hazel for my counter spells, just in case he is at home poking this doll with the red pins trying to inflict pain on me.



*there is an older post about this now available in my book

Wings on my back

It started I guess sometime last week. Mrs. N- lost her keys. Her apartment has a card key, like you find in hotels, so that was fine, but she could not get her mail or into her car. Pop-A-Lock or some other company was here on Friday, spending all day taking apart her car door and trying to make a new key. I am still unsure as to why a car dealership can not make a replacement for her. I do not remember what kind of car it is but it is a few years old now. Mrs N-, by the way, in in her eighties now. To give you a bit of a back story, let me tell you about this St. Patrick's Day just passed.

I wore a green plaid suit to work that day to celebrate the holiday. It was fun, even though or maybe due to the fact that a third of my residents had no idea why I was dressed in a suit. (It was green, and it was St. Patrick's Day)! I saw Mrs. N- in the hallway sometime during the morning. She was in a light green blazer with clover earrings and green beads around her neck.

“Oh don't you look lovely” she commented to me, “Dressed up for the holiday?”
“Yes I am” I smiled,
“I hate St. Patrick's day, let me tell you. You know when I first came here to Savannah, it was St. Patrick's Day. We stayed at some hotel down on River Street and you could see the police officer just hanging out with the people drinking. Not doing anything! It was a disgrace. And the girls were all lifting their tops. I thought I moved to Hell!”

I was speechless by this point, her voice moving from sweet old lady to possessed by the spirit within a few short sentences. I have a cart full of tools and supplies I push down the corridors, and these elderly residents do not move quickly, so it is hard to just run by them without being rude. And I still do not understand how one hates the holiday with such a passion and still dresses up for the occasion anyway. Except perhaps that the dining room was offering a free glass of wine for happy hour that night for anybody in green. So there were very few residents not wearing green that day.

In any case, this is the lady who had difficulties with her car keys last Friday. Today, having just finished eating my lunch and heading through the lobby back to the time clock to punch back in, there is a man from Critz BMW in the lobby. He asked if I worked here and if I could help out this lady with her bags. He was looking for a dolly or a cart, and I showed him our bellman's cart.

“I don't think she will be able to handle that herself either” he said.
“It's okay. I will come right back and help out.” I had looked out the doors and watched Mrs. N- heading in from the car. So I clocked in and returned to the lobby and pushed the cart with her grocery bags back up to her apartment with her. She was very thankful to the man from BMW and asked when her car might be ready, and we headed down the hall to the elevator and up to her floor. She had explained to me during this trip how she lost her keys and how the post office charged her 79.00 for a new key and how can they do that and when we got out of the elevator I got a few steps in front of her, thinking to myself how slow some of these residents are. She continued talking.

“Every morning I ask god to surround me with angels to help me out and here you are. You better watch those things on your back because they are wings.”

And I just about melted. Awwww. I mean, I have these moments of hurry up and these moments where I glaze over while they are talking and I have these moments where I am reminded that all I did right today was to ask for God to show me his will, to be who he wants me to be (which occurred on the Truman Parkway heading in here, running just about late to work, this morning) and I made Mrs. N-'s day today just by being in the right place at the right time.

Awesome. And to top it off the government owes me eighty-five cents on taxes this year!

Dreams interpretation

So here is the setup. It was Tuesday night, I spoke at the Garden variety group, then went home for dinner, a spicy chicken concoction thanks to Kristi, which was yummy by the way. I went to bed about twelve thirty, which is normal, and fell right asleep. I have been taking two aspirin before bed the past few months, and that is the extend of any mood or mind altering substances in my system.

I guess I am detailing all this because I haven't had any dreams in a few months, and I am curious, firstly, why I haven't had any, and secondly, how do I get myself to have more? I think it all ties into my lack, once again, to writing. So thirdly, it seems, I am detailing all of this simply to practice typing again on the keyboard.

So back to the setup. I am not sure where the dream starts, I never do. It's similar to when you are switching channels on the tv and you can press the button down thirty times and have no clue as to what is on the screen in front of you; sort of a zen moment with the remote, until you find something that catches your eye and all of a sudden you are there, snapped back to reality and watching a program already in progress.

In the dream, when I snap to attention, I am on a tricycle. You have to get past the idea of a kid's little bike and hopefully you have seen the adult version of the three-wheeled bikes at some time in your life, with the basket on the back. We have a few of them at work to get around in. Yes it is about as funky as you are imagining right now but it is also somewhat convenient and not as bad as you may first think when you get used to them. Although I still prefer the golf carts. So I am on the trike with my son standing up in the basket, his hands on my shoulders as we pedal down the street. In front of us my sister is on her own tricycle. I have no idea where we are heading. I am also right now trying to sense the urgency or lack thereof of where we were headed in this dream, but I don't remember. What I do remember is that she was pulling ahead of us, gaining distance, and I was having trouble trying to keep up.

I look down at the front tire and it is flat. Not only flat but rubber basically peeling off the metal frame kind of flat. As I am looking down I really begin to feel the pressure of trying to steer this bike and the fight I am having by trying to move forward. It isn't working, in other words. So we pedal across the street to this little gas station. Connor jumps out and runs in ahead of me. I walk in, I assume, to ask about air for my tire, but I don't actually remember getting the question out. Connor wants a juice, of course. My sister had already gained a strong lead on us and I figure she never looked back for us. While I am inside the store, a very small cramped gas station, both inside and out, I look out the window at a guy getting onto my tricycle and my thought of course is that he is stealing it. So I go outside and grab hold of the basket on the back part of the bike, so he cannot move forward. He gets off the seat and turns back to me ready to fight. I forget the words we exchanged between us but beside my tricycle is another, a red one that was sort of tricked out, although I don't remember specifically in what way. There is a homeless guy on the seat and we have a quick conversation about his bike, all the while I am holding onto the basket and the guy who was stealing mine is looking at me in a defensive stance.

I don't remember waking up. I did not get out of bed in any case, but the dream ended there. It was one of my few dreams where it is in the first person perspective. The whole dream was from my eyes, and they were my eyes, not a character's. I fell back asleep and had a second unrelated dream. This one was not in first-person so much, and it was in what I refer to as “movie mode”. Most of my dreams occur this way, where I am more passive and indirectly involved. There are cut scenes and black screens and a flow about them that translate well into a movie script, sometimes even with an accompanying sound track.

The scene opens up on a long angle shot of a Walmart. It is the front entrance I am sure, but instead of the glass doors and the walled area where they store the carts (I actually have been in Savannah long enough to call them buggies first now, by the way), there is a big warehouse roll-up door; double wide and maybe fifteen feet tall. The shot is seen from stage left above a group of trees that are just beside the building and taller than the roof, or maybe just as tall. In front of the double doors are a group of people and as the camera tightens onto them and pans closer we go past and into the store, where I am hanging around with the police and other witnesses to an apparent crime scene.

The next scene occurs inside somebody's house. I wish I remembered more of the details here, because we were hanging out and drinking and doing dope and the typical “Let's rob a Walmart” kind of atmosphere you would expect in the movies. I say this in hindsight, as if I were watching this movie and not a part of it. I type this now with the expectation of it being a flashback because that's what it was, although I do not remember noting it during the dream, if that makes any sense to y'all. I also cannot tell you I was drinking or smoking or shooting up or anything, because it wasn't really like that. I was the camera operator, in other words. I was in the shot, but it wasn't always me. Sometimes the camera would pan onto me, I would be in the conversation, and other times I was merely an observer, filming until I hear the director say “cut”. But it was one of those kind of scenes, anyway, seven or eight people getting high and thinking it would be a good idea to stir up stuff at the Walmart.

So the next scene occurs again outside of the Walmart, from that treeline as before. We are all there, on top of the trees somehow, we are armed and heading down there for hostages, the actual conversation lost to me now. One character, female lead number one, black hair and I think a bandana and cut off sleeves and an angry disposition about her, heads down first with a shotgun. Somebody behind her, in the parking lot now in front of the open warehouse door, has some weird modified tommy gun; the kind you might see, not in Call of Duty, but an old Duke Nukem BFG gun perhaps. There is discussion about not being able to use that here between the two of them and the scene changes again.

This whole time, I should point out, I feel I am down there with them, as well as up in the trees looking down at them. Now there are hostages being held in a slight circle just inside the door. It is night time, so all is dark except for the interior lights on this small crowd of nine or ten, hostage and gunmen included. There are dim lights in the parking lot, and I don't remember if there were any cars or not. While this discussion about that gun takes place a shotgun blast is heard and one of the hostages is down. After that most of my memory fails me. There is shooting and I think I am hiding in the trees, backing away, trying to not be a part of this.

Female lead number one, and at least one other, are looking for me now in the trees. I have a blanket over me, I remember, and I am crawling through the leaves (twenty, thirty feet in the air?) and then it is the police searching me out, not the shooters. So this must be later again, is what I am thinking while watching this dream. I look down and there are ambulances and bodies being carried out and cops asking questions. Much like the opening scene it seems. So I figure I must be down there as well, and I keep looking.

Next scene is from the viewpoint of the police officer. He is in the trees standing over the blanket, and he lifts it up to reveal the dead gunman. It is me, but it isn't. It is a bigger guy, bald and slightly fat. Thirty something maybe, a tough looking biker kind of guy, not an old pot-bellied guy. But at the same time, it is me, too. I mean, that was the viewpoint I had the whole movie, anyway; what he was seeing is what the camera was showing.

I woke up at this point. It was about five-thirty in the morning now. I smoked a cigarette outside and went back to sleep for another hour or so. I took that cigarette break to try and remember the dream, and that is what I am typing now, those memories and ideas. I don't tend to interpret them as much as I simply enjoy them, as I would a movie. I scared Kristi, though, talking about the party and the drugs and the drinking! And I suppose the violence as well. But I don't believe this is any interior suggestion of my psyche or anything. I think it's just a mini-movie and some place where the basis of my fiction writing comes from.

The first dream was more direct though, and I hope that came through to you as a reader as well. The character was myself, as well as my son and my sister. So maybe there are overtones there that mean something. If we do some first year analysis here, I would ask why am I trying to catch up with my sister? She has a faith and perhaps that is what I am searching. She also lives in Panama and I really want to travel by sailboat across the world, with my son and my girlfriend as well. So maybe it is that I am going after. Then the tire is holding me back, I would then ask myself. Is that work, I wonder? The tricycle came from work, so maybe. Or is it Connor, on the basket, that causes the flat tire and keeps me from going forward? Is there an overall idea of family here, or were the characters there simply because they were easy and quick to conjure.

My head begins to spin. And why the fight? Well, the almost fight and the homeless guy with the “pimp my trike” winner? Too much symbolism here to even worry about, if you know what I mean. Still, I asked you all over here to evaluate my dream for me, so it is open to interpretation. I figure though, while you are hanging out, give a look around at my blog. Read a note, leave a comment. I am hoping to get followers over here and actually push myself to write more often.

Caio.