remember that part in ‘slaughterhouse-five’ where billy pilgrim is watching TV late at night and that war movie is on and it plays in reverse in his head

the explosions happen in reverse, the airplanes fly backwards, the bullets come out of the planes and soldiers, the bombs are taken out of the planes and dismantled, and so on

i have had this recurring dream where i reach a certain point in my life and then things start to go backwards

i turn 30, or something, and then the tape is rewound, and i get younger and younger, and my dad moves back into his old house, and i go back to high school, and my grandmother is ok and i can visit her at her house again, and i can be with my friends, and sit by the wood stove on old church road while it snows outside, and all my cats are alive again, and i play in the backyard and climb trees, and so on

imagine, if you will, how horrifying it is to wake up from this!! i dream this all the time. and then i am thrust back into the nightmare of a life played in the right direction, growing older, people going away, people dying, the world getting worse, and on and on. . . .

well hell i guess that’s just Being Alive, but nobody said i couldn’t feel like Being Alive is a crock of shit.