You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine

I’m going to try and spend only thirty minutes writing this one down. I had another dream last night that managed to make it into my conscious world.  It’s not as detailed as the last one but it’s enough to share.

My dream begins in my bedroom. I wake up and it’s still dark. Barely visible light is coming from outside my balcony. It must be near 6:30am or maybe almost 7:00am. I roll my legs over the side and sit myself up in bed. I look across the room towards the balcony and from what I can see out the window behind the drapes there’s barely any light shinning thru. I look at the clock on my desk and I’m taken aback by the time. It’s a quarter to eleven in the morning. This can’t be right.

“It must be going to rain any second” I say out loud to myself. I stand up and stretch squinting only enough to wipe the sleep out of my eyes. I walk over to sit down at my desk and as I do I look out the window and to my curiosity I can make out blue sky. It’s not cloudy at all. There’s something very odd about this scene.

I stand up to reach for the cord to my drape and pull the shade open. There’s not a cloud in the sky. This is very odd indeed. I open my balcony door and step outside. It’s cold but then its early fall, it’s supposed to be cold. The odd thing is the color of the sky. It’s nearly dusk and as I look up for the sun I find it almost directly above me; right where it should be. Only thing is it’s not the same sun I remember from yesterday around this time. The sun isn’t a white hot star like I’m used to seeing. This morning there’s a dimmer representation. A perfect ball surrounded by the most intense blue corona. It wasn’t an eclipse because on the other side of the sky I can barely make out the outline of it’s lunar cousin.

Something was wrong with this scene.

I rush back in and turn on the TV. All the stations were interrupted by network news casters. They’re all telling the same story.

“The sun was suddenly burning out.”

I turned up the volume so as to have something in the background while I searched online for some solid news about the celestial event that was happening. I turned to my reliable CNN.com for the latest.

“Scientists are confirming that what is happening to the sun has never been recorded at any other time in history. A sun spot so large as to lessen the sun’s intensity by more than 60% giving the appearance of twilight world wide has spread across its surface. Scientists are calling the event a “Solar infection” and can’t predict what will happen next because it’s never been experienced before."

Meteorologists are predicting weather changes around the globe as the sun continues to dim and the air begins to cool. Already I notice outside my window that there’s simply no breeze along my tidal creek’s bordering trees. The temperature changes that are being predicted are so dramatic that temperatures as far south as Florida might drop to below freezing and remain there indefinitely.

The sun was sick and the earth was dying because of the “infection”.

I could hear cars honking and revving past my house. I get up and rush to the front door and open my door peering out at the chaos behind the confines of my storm door. People were all out in the streets carrying what will fit in their arms. Some already had on winter coats where yesterday they were barely in their hoodies. School busses were bringing children home early and the sky looked almost a steel blue as the sun struggled to light the sky beyond that.

My phone was ringing. It was my children. They wanted me to come to their house. They didn’t care that mom and dad were divorced they were frightened and they wanted to feel safe. I stepped out from the safety of my storm door and immediately felt the arctic blast already coming in from the northwest. It was going to be colder than it had ever been in Charleston tonight. I stepped back inside and headed upstairs to my bedroom to dress more appropriately for the new weather.

The news was blaring out instructions on how to combat the cold and the coming disaster. Already reports were coming in from the other side of earth of mass chaos, riots and panic. Snow was falling in Australia despite the temperature being in the nineties a day before. The planet was freezing over and the sun was shining as hard as it could.

The news would occasionally show up close photos of what was going on the sun’s surface. Black splotches mixed in with a deep, dark blue were smeared across its surface. It was a complete mystery as to why this was happening. All that could be said was that it apparently was happening around the entire circumference of the sun and that it was unknown if the sun would return to its normal brightness or not.

Meanwhile all planes were being grounded as it was still unknown exactly what was in store for the Nothern hemisphere in the next 48 hours. No one was able to predict the weather other than to say that temperatures will drop to levels never heard of here in the south and that every precaution should be made to keep safe and warm.

By 3pm that afternoon order seemed to be breaking down and all traffic laws were being ignored. Cars ran red lights, sped around others by jetting out into the grassy medians and gunfire could be heard off in the distance. A sign of anarchy and panic had taken over.

And still the temperature felt like it was falling as the sun was crossing the twilight sky.

There wouldn’t be a sunset today. Today the sun would just go out.

And then I wake up to the sun shinning thru my drapes.

Don't answer the phone. Crazy's on the line.

When my brother’s wife passed away suddenly back in February I spent about a month with him up in Anderson. He needed some time to adjust and while I wasn’t doing anything at the time I volunteered to be his “body man” while there. His mother-in-law was staying there too so my sleeping accommodations were relegated to either the big couch or the hardwood floor with only an air mattress and a blanket. Again I stress that I was doing this out of the kindness of my heart.

As time went on he and I managed to make it up to the club house where the majority of his days on the golf course ended. As expected he found his golfing buddies bellied up at the bar and were all glad to see him as he stopped in for a short visit.

His friends all looked like him. Dressed almost exactly the same all, Dennis jumped into a mosh pit of  swapping stories and taking jabs at college teams and NASCAR, A-Typical man cave stuff. Dennis introduced me to his friends uneasily. I guess he thought I wouldn’t fit in or something. It came as a huge surprise to him that I was immediately accepted.

Now ten years are between my brother and I. It doesn’t seem like much but when between brothers it’s literally a lifetime. He and I went different directions to be certain. He went down the path of a factory worker, strong hand of industry. I went the other way. Dennis is very conservative, isn’t big on crowds and pretty much keeps a normal, steady low profile. There’s nothing wrong with that of course that is until there’s liquor involved. Then it’s like being in the “hot seat” of a dunking booth he goes from normal and dry to shocked and drenched.   

I think he thought I couldn’t hold my liquor. Maybe it’s because he still looks at me as his “little brother”. That’s perfectly fine. So I guess he was again shocked, as were his friends, that when ordering something from behind the bar I asked for “Wild Turkey-American Honey” basically rock and rye. The stuff my foster grandmother gave me whenever it looked like I was coming down with a cold.

We had a great night that night. We all drank a little more than we should’ve and Dennis finally let loose after all that he’d been thru in the past three weeks. He tear’d up a little, hugged his friends, and laughed like I’d not heard in years. It wasn’t the type of therapy we’re all used to getting but it was exactly what he needed from people that knew him best.

But none of that’s why I’m writing this...

Now I’ve always worried about going crazy. My mind slipping slowly into insanity and my not being able to rationalize what’s normal and what’s not has always been my biggest fear. Crazy runs in my mom’s side of the family so you’ll understand my concern.

The morning after our turn at the club house I can’t say I was hung-over but I was a lot slower getting off the couch than the days before. I wasn’t still intoxicated but I think maybe the combination of my prescribed medications for my hypertension coupled with all that Wild Turkey might have helped concoct what I saw the morning after.

With the blankets and pillows all folded and stacked in the corner of the couch I sat next to it all getting dressed and putting on my socks. The TV was on and I was trying to make out what kind of weather blurb was scrolling across the bottom of the screen when I looked down at my phone and saw the strangest thing. I picked up my phone and held it in my palm. I was mesmerized by what was strangely morphing within the numbers and buttons.

It was a face.

It wasn’t a friendly face either. It reminded me of a Tiki doll. The 1 and the 3 seemed to bend at an an angle to resemble eyebrows. Only they were mean eyebrows. The 4 and the 6 seemed to transform into eyes and the 7, 8 and 9 along with the *, 0, and # looked like upper and lower teeth. This was a strange illusion and I starring at it. I couldn’t figure out why I was seeing this. I couldn’t understand what was staring back at me.

I shut my eyes tight and opened them slowly and the face was gone…mostly.   

Obviously this was some sort of chemically induced hallucination. Was this the madness that I feared I was venerable to because of my bad genes? I didn’t say anything to Dennis for fear he’d think I was still drunk somehow or worse.  I didn’t share what I saw in my cell phone with anyone else. I’ve not mentioned any of this up until now. I figured since Halloween was right around the corner it felt like the perfect opportunity to do share.

What do you think it was that I saw? Was it something left over from the bourbon the night before? Or was it madness setting up housekeeping.