There is still sand from her zen garden scattered everywhere and particularly in the various cracks and crazing on the surface of my weathered desk where I used to sit and stare out the window, as though at the prow of some imaginary ship, drifting in words and ideas, laptops, coffee cups and toxic inspirations tucked and teetering, in all available corners. But for the past year, this desk has been blissfully empty, save for the aforementioned zen garden with its quaint miniature rake and its omniscient goddess, clad in a bathrobe with her green tea and her oatmeal peel, singing the praises of simplicity and good riddance to the clutter and mess which preceded it. My clutter and mess, my work, my misgivings and missed opportunities.

”Why are you wasting so much time,” she would say, “writing nonsense that no one will ever see?”

“It’s my time to waste I suppose,” I replied.

”No, honey, it’s OUR time. It would be different if you actually did something instead of just drinking and smoking and dreaming and sitting there all day staring out the window and thinking of god knows what.”

She wasn’t wrong. And she was a monster in bed - in bed, in the kitchen , on the couch, in the bathroom - I looked around the apartment and saw the many splendid ghosts of our lust, and for a moment I was sad again and horny again and angry and hungry, but as I swept still more sand from my desk, poured myself a midday whisky and dragged my battered chair from the closet where it had remained for a year, stacked high with all my many vices, I was suddenly inexplicably happy.

“Now what would happen,” I wondered out loud, “if a vegan became a werewolf?”

She sits across from me as she always did with grace, poise and indignation, the epitome of proper. The daughter of an Irish indentured servant married into German shipping money in the great expansion westward to California, my Grandmother had survived the Great Depression and two world wars and was the gatekeeper of the family fortune.

She regards me now, in this imaginary moment, with a fierce curiosity.

I am a child again, uncomfortable, wincing and evasive.

“Why,” I ask her, “were you always so stern with me? So disappointed, so unsatisfied?”

“My dear Alexander,” her reply is tempered and immediate, “You know just as well as I the answer to that question.  But let me be clear.  I love you, I have always loved you and it is because I love you that I want you to succeed, to understand the obligations and challenges of true success.”

She pauses for a moment, watching my face to see if I have in fact, finally understood the obligations and challenges of true success;  

when it is clear that I have not, she continues.

“Life is hard, the world is a cruel place and only the strongest and smartest can really ever hope to accomplish anything of significance.  Your grandfather and I, and my father before me, have worked so very, very hard so that you could have opportunities that we never had, just as your father works now, but you cannot squander what we have given you, you cannot waste it on folly and indulgence or you will never amount to anything, and all of our work will have been for nothing.”

“But aren’t there things more important than money,” I begin.

“Don’t be such a baby. You are so spoiled, you have no idea how fortunate you are, how hard we have all worked to bring you to this point.  Sometimes I think you would be better off if we just took it all away.”

“Go ahead,” I bluff, foolishly, “money doesn’t matter to me.”

“You see Alexander, that’s your problem; you have always given up too easily.  This is because you are weak with false pride.”

“Thanks Grandma.”

She swirls the ice in her highball savoring the condensation on the Indonesian glass.

“You should thank me.  you would thank me if you were more grateful and less of a dreamer.” 

“Dreamers can be capable of great things,” I protest.  

“Only if they actually DO something” she retorts,“only if they actually do something.”

“Maybe I’ll become a writer,” I mumble provocatively.  

“Oh dear God Alex have you not heard a word I’ve said?”

In this dream, it is a bright, warm sunlit day. I am out to sea, standing on the deck of a large sailing ship. The wooden deck boards, hot in the midday sun, smell fresh and dry and fill my head with thoughts of adventure. All around us the sparkling sea rolls brilliant and calm in dazzling hues of azure blue.

I am not myself in this dream but someone much older. I look down at my hands but they are not my hands and these are not the cuffs of any clothing I have ever seen before.  Several of us have gathered on deck to take the air, and while i do not recognize any of my fellow travelers, we all seem to be content as the ship, despite there being no wind, glides quickly across the glassy green waves.

Staring up through the towering rigging upon which no sails are flown, I become aware suddenly that the ship has slowed and drifts gentle in the warm sun.   We gather at the starboard rail to watch the placid waves gently rocking, all the way to the distant horizon, nothing but sea and sky in all directions.

But as we consider that tranquil sea, there begins to be a disturbance in the smooth surface starting with just the slightest ripple and chop but eventually exploding into a massive turbulent fissure, a churning canyon of heaving water almost as big as the ship itself. 

And from this frothing trench emerges a megalith of serpentine sinew, a shining writhing creature of iridescent scales and fins like rainbow pennants flying from its massive sweeping tail.

Once the sea monster has fully emerged, swimming beside us like a sister ship, all is calm again and the sun shines and the sea sparkles and the monster stares down at us with bright, shining turquoise  eyes as it’s beautiful terrible body glitters in the sun. Suddenly as if by some secret appointed signal, she swings her massive tail and cleaves our sorry ship in two, sending all aboard down into the great ocean.

But I do not panic as the warm dry bright blue sky disappears before my eyes, sinking into the cool dark maw of the swallowing sea even as the scent of the sun drenched deck lingers in my nostrils as a last defense against the rushing water. I begin to sink, face to the sky, back to the dark deep, arms outstretched drifting like the dead into the fathomless black. 

As I slide down into the depths, serenity slips away as massive walls of blue green water surround me and I realize that I must breathe. My eyes search in desperation through the vast expanse until I  notice distant luminescent points drifting up towards me swaying and weaving through the currents, growing larger, coming closer, until I am surrounded by glowing orbs trailing phosphorescent spirals back behind them.

To be continued.