Later I woke fully, around one o'clock, but was so overwhelmed by a feeling of melancholy that I didn't get out of bed. This was around one o'clock in the afternoon. It would have been a good time to get up, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I continued lying there, having sad and worrisome thoughts, and now and then drifting back into semi-sleep where I sometimes had semi-dreams. One of them took place in a place that combined elements of my childhood neighborhood and Paradise.
I was standing by the open passenger door of a white SUV which might have been mine, and I was looking down two streets with a mingling of houses from Garvey Hills and Paradise, and around dusk it started to rain. It was dusk. I got into the SUV to stay dry, suddenly there were other people around, and they were trying to get me out of the SUV but I was sure they meant me harm so I wouldn't budge. Even as this was going on I Knew I wasn't actually sleeping and having a real dream, but I still had a dream-like paralysis and couldn't move. Then I "woke up" and found myself just terribly depressed. It was five o'clock in the evening, and I finally got out of bed.
For the next few hours I did very little, though I kept planning on doing things, and around eleven I became very tired again and went into the bedroom to lie down, and then slept for about four hours. For the last three hours I've done very little again, though I lately made a peanut butter sandwich and some unsweetened chocolate milk with a shot of brandy in it. I don't know if it made me feel better or not. I'm thinking probably not. The feeling of melancholy has not left, and reality doesn't seem any more real than that non-dream I had. A while ago I was outside in the chilly night air and the mockingbird was awake too, but it sang only very sad songs.
The Internet tells me that my fellow San Gabriel Valleyite Eddie Van Halen has died. He was ten years younger than me. I have sometimes wondered if he and his brother were among the kids I saw about town when I was hanging around Pasadena a lot in the 1960s. Burger Continental, Bob's, Will Wright's, Free Press and Vroman's book stores, Bungalow News, the Academy, State, United Artists and Crown theaters, Canterbury and Discount and Wherehouse Records shops. The number of people who remember those places then is diminishing all the time. To me they no longer seem much more real than that non-dream either. R.I.P. Eddie.