As Hurricane Ike lurks over the gulf coast of Texas tonight, my mind goes back to a beautiful place, a strange time spent writing and contemplating life at friend Stefan's beach house on Rollover Bay, a tiny spot on the map now likely smack in the cross-hairs of Ike. Six years later, I go back and visit Rollover Bay in the writings from that time and am thoroughly transfixed. Rolling back into old Jigglebox.com pages is for me, their creator, a dizzying little dose of carnival ride vertigo, fun and a little nauseating as I remember that yes, I wrote all that and I posted it, and yes, it is still there. With any luck, Stefan's lovely little home on Bolivar Peninsula just east of Galveston will still be there in the morning. There and in tact. I pray. Pray with me for everyone in Ike's path. Even if you're not religious. Pray anyway. It can't hurt.
Here then is the recollection of a somewhat magical, somewhat eerie dream from my website Jigglebox.com from "Narcoleptic November," the rants from my time on Rollover Bay. And yes, I said Rants! The blog had not been invented yet. Let's hope this was just a strange and silly fantasy and not a prescient dream.
For Stefan with love and well-wishes. - RSM
November 4, 2002
Rollover Bay, Bolivar Texas - Coffee. A hot shower to counter the deep, damp chill left by last night's crawfish boil storm. Oooh, what a storm it was! The bay boiling, the Cajun winds howling ghosts of hungry dead fishermen, red hot crawdads slappin' gainst the windows like nickel-sized raindrops, and bluesman Lightning Hopkins singing and strummin' on the porch while the gods cracked atoms overhead and the whole night lit up like a roman candle in a craggy coastal cave and Captain Hook was there and I was Peter Pan and I laughed as Hook dodged the sparks of a zillion Tinkerbells and I yelled to a white breasted bird who sat high on a stone shelf pretending disinterest and staring instead at the dark cave wall where the word "Tomorrow" was written in long-dried blood above a pile of a dead pirate's bones, and I shouted up to her, swearing, "I will never stop looking back and forward, too," for the future is the smile of a crocodile, and each new year a deceitful crocodile tear. ''Back to Never Never Land," I hoorah'd to my Tinks, and I accidentally winked and was back in my bed and the crawfish slid down the windows with a flump like the lifeless forms of philosophers at a Paul Pot-Pinochet combo target shoot & barbecue. Flump. And then I woke up. And somewhere in between what I'm about to tell you about house-cleaning and ferrets and such, my eyelids swelled up and fell open like the floppy sides of a kiddie swimmin' pool and I cried and cried and cried for what I do not know. (Read the entire story here)
