I had a strangled, uncomfortable dream last night. Nightmare might describe it more succinctly. A sort of bizarre, flimsy, tortured semi-rancid feeling in my gut sat there when I awoke.
Most of the nightmare is kind of blurry, as dreams so often are. But a few details I recall fairly vividly. One is a house with a short driveway. I drove a big white truck into that driveway. I didn’t recognize the small house. The driveway was cracked in the center a little. Anyway I parked the truck and then got out and the next thing I recall is standing around somewhere nearby (or far away?) in thick, gloopy mud. I wore my Keen REI-bought hiking boots, the ones I trekked 450 miles across northern Spain a la El Camino de Santiago in, back in 2016.
Then two strange things occurred. First: I saw in my [dream] mind’s eye the truck, still parked in the driveway, somehow lift off the ground from the rear wheels, to a 90-degree angle, so that the front of the truck was facing the pavement, and the rear of the truck butted up against the top of the garage. In my [dream] mind I saw the underside of the truck, axle and wheels, etc. The rear right wheel still spun somehow. It was as if the truck were pulled by some gargantuan, uncontrollable magnetic force from deep inside the Earth.
The next thing struck much closer to home, of course. I got a call. Somehow, though I still stood alone in this strange muddy field or back yard, away from anything but distant, twisting roads and green hills, I held an old-school landline phone in my palm. The phone was beige and thick. It rang and rang in my hand. I picked the phone up off the cradle (was I holding it? Was it levitating in mid-air?) and put the receiver to my ear. It was my father, breathing heavily into the phone. (This could be in my subconscious because my girlfriend and I recently watched The Zodiac, the film about the infamous SF 1970s serial killer, from 2012, wherein the Zodiac killer calls people and solely breathes heavily into the phone without speaking.)
But then my father spoke. This part is a little blurry and gloopy, like soft, thick mental mud. Cognitive crap filters the precision I wish I could recall. But basically it was something like this: My dad told me—in his characteristic Boomer Stoic tone—that his terminal cancer was worse; it had grown and was now essentially invading every part of his body. He was dying. Soon he’d be gone. I wanted to come to him but I didn’t know where he was. (This seems symbolic of my father’s kind, thoughtful, loving but emotionally detached nature.)
I woke up. It was around 6:45am. I felt confused, sad, deranged a little. I got up and made my usual Irish Breakfast tea. I checked my emails. There was a message from an old sober friend (a Bay Area person) who sent an email about my other Substack, “Sincere American Writing.” She wrote an odd little note, very vague, basically seeming to more or less say that she was somehow disappointed in me, in what I’d been writing, and that rather than her just leaving without saying anything, she wanted to explain to me why she felt this way. I emailed back and said, “Go ahead. What’s on your mind?” She has not responded yet.
As I further woke up this morning I felt mixed about both the nightmare and the email. Certainly my father is dying. Stage four metastatic Melanoma. New tumors in brain and lung. Too high-risk for surgery. Concerned about immunotherapy due to previous [nasty] Myasthenia Gravis. Possible oral chemo and clinical trials. The man is 77. He’s undergone an incredible amount physically, psychologically and emotionally the past year and a half. He did 12 blood-transfusions, for Christ Sakes. Perhaps this nightmare is simply preparing me for what’s inevitably to come, likely sooner rather than later. Perhaps there’s some deeper meaning.
The email is another concern. Well, not a concern, exactly. To write openly and honestly is to be vulnerable and to put yourself Out There. Some people, of course, will not like your writing, or your ideas, or your values, or your views. Necessarily, some amount of people will just simply misunderstand you. (Isn’t the act of simply existing on Earth to be misunderstood? Isn’t being alive synonymous with being misunderstood?) Over the years I have thickened my skin around criticism. This is a good thing for everyone to do. Some people are not going to like you; that’s just the nature of reality. There are plenty of people, writing, ideas which I do not like. That’s perfectly fine and normal. And yet I also feel ashamed somehow, insecure, self-conscious, even before reading this person’s response.
I suppose that’s the challenge of being a writer, an artist. You get real and raw and yank your heart out of your chest and show it to the world. Some people say Thank You. Others say nothing. Still others smirk and kick the organ right out of your hands. Of course it’s not this binary or black and white. Perhaps this person simply disagrees with my political views. That’s fine. That’s lovely, even. I am not tribal. I am a free-thinker in all senses of the word. I try to write “the truth,” to the extent that there is objective truth, personal truth, data-driven truth, etc. It’s tricky and slippery, as we all know.
But criticism and disagreement, more right now than ever, are crucial for a functioning society. So this is all to the good. I just have to remember: Whatever this old friend may write to me: I am still a good person. Wanting to be both liked and loved while simultaneously having strong views and pushing people’s cognitive boundaries is not an easy place to live. But it is where I do live. It’s where any serious, honest writer lives, in my opinion.
Anyway. That is my morning. Off to the dentist. I’ll report back next time on the old friend and what she said.
Happy Monday, everyone!
Michael Mohr
No profession is safe from criticism. As an entrepreneur that came in the form of investors saying no. Do I take that as personally as someone who doesn't like my writing? It's hard to say. I guess you need money to run a business but you don't to write, and yet we want to be liked/valued for our art, bc everything else we can make excuses for.