GRENDEL AND ME (June '08)

Bernie Moore

Mother’s Day Gift: “How about me instead?”

I was talking to Grendel the other day and although I lavish him copiously with praise he’s always amenable to more, especially when it’s accompanied with a scratch behind the ear or a good chin rub. On this occasion I was telling him how cute it is for a kitty to snore. “Cat,” he corrected, “And cute is for mutant dogs, smaller than me. I wish they’d roam free. I’d teach them to climb trees in a hurry.”
Nonetheless we began linking fancies about sleeping, and I was reminded of a dream I had recently. A dream in which I was dispatching bad guys with rather uncivil efficiency; I was surprised at my own ruthlessness. I assume that such imagery grows from my association with The Reel Men’s Film Club where we gorge on films “…full of prurient violence and having no socially redeeming qualities.”
But of course there comes a time in all dreams when you gun jambs and fear wells up like the rushing waters from a broken dam. My blaggard adversary was pointing a large caliber pistol at a very delicate personal target lovingly cherished all these years. Fear exploded into panic, and I used the only defense I could save the lame jamming of the assailant’s weapon: I woke myself up.
Safe at last, I was left with the residue of a dream went bad, the emotional state of anxiety and fright. You can tell yourself that it was only a dream, but the adrenalin is still in your system and sleep is improbable any time soon. The answer of course is to think pleasant thoughts, and if you’re going to have pleasant thoughts in this column they are going to be about diving.
So when sleep lurks beyond the shadows of your reading light think of diving or going to dive. There is the nearness of your last dive or of a planned future dive. No one should have a calendar with out a dive trip scheduled on it or else what’s the point of getting up?
At the end of the journey of crowded shuttle busses, harried ticket agents, homeland security people who repack your carry-ons like the cannoneers of square riggers, hung-over stewardesses, baggage handlers who think shot-putting is the only way to load a taxi, and the traffic of a small hot country gone mad all at once, you collapse in your rented room only to find the air conditioner doesn’t work or sounds like a space shuttle launching. Why do we put up with this? And you all know the answer:
To silently float like an albatross over warm coral societies that tolerate you as a curiosity even though you leak bubbles profusely and writhe through the water like a Spanish Dancer (Hexabranchus sanguineus.). This of course threatens few but the neurotic nervous Nellies who seem to twitch about anticipating calamity at any instant anyway.
That aside I recall staring at a coral and staring and suddenly realizing it’s staring back.

.
Or something beautiful with the decidedly unbeautiful name of a slug.

Legions of images present themselves and the wonderful recollections soon calm the fretting mind which itself drifts away into a dream of diving. And who has slept better than that?