I.

I am avoidant of conflict, and also of commitment.

In fact, I mostly avoid relationships of any kind at all, at any beyond the waitress-kidding level.

But in certain cases relationship becomes inevitable.

This is the phenomenon known as family.

Family consists of that subset of humanity that you don’t get to decide about having, or not having, a relationship with.

Though you still do get to decide what kind.

At some point a brother may decide to be Done with a father.

Likewise with sisters and mothers.

They are still inevitably in relationship, but it may be described as strained or fraught, without inaccuracy.

II.

The first night here on the Atlantic shore I slept badly and woke up unwell.

The second night, this night, at 3 AM local, I am so much better. Again I went to bed early. But this time I slept deep and well, though not long, at least not for the first half.

Instead, in my deep happy sleep, I dreamed a long dream.

The premise was simple.

III.

I lived in a world-class college town. At once point it was said to be Princeton but I doubt it, and, it doesn’t matter.

The important part was that the Wise Man lived there too.

In the dream the part of the Wise Man was played by Noam Chomsky, but that is suspect and also a possible red herring just like Princeton.

The way it all worked was this.

The first few times you visited the Wise Man, you did so with a sponsoring friend, and you just listened. Maybe the friend asked questions, and of course the Wise Man talked–went on and on as he pleased once pointed in a direction.

You were thus vetted as a capable listener first, before you really had a chance to even open your mouth.

Eventually you were allowed to give answers, to the Wise Man’s brief pointed queries.

Here you were being vetted for some basic level of true raw intellect and for being sufficiently interesting.

If you did okay, you were allowed back as a sidekick type. If you did really well, you eventually got to have a visit of your own, and to ask the questions you were burning up with.

I think the first one I asked had to do with whether the universe had an end. And if it did of course, what existed on the other side of that end.

I have no memory of the answer, beyond a long vague fascinating drone that thoroughly covered the topic.

I asked what he thought about capitalism, and I got not an answer, but a performance.

The Wise Man pretended to be mildly insulted about the assertion that he might not deserve his modest wealth and his book-lined study. He had worked very hard all his life for it, he said, and his many books and publications spoke for themselves.

Of course there was no such assertion, and everyone present knew that. Everybody was way too smart to fall for this particular bit of distraction and diversion.

It was diverting, though, in both the light and dark senses of the term.

IV.

Then I woke up and I knew I had to somehow find this laptop and get it operational and write this.

It was no picnic in the park, without being able to turn on the light in this little motel room, I can tell you.

But I succeeded, and this post itself is my fresh hot evidence.

My publications speak for themselves.

V.

In closing.

Part of the reason I just had this experience was that in the hours before sleeping I met an old Wise Man.

I knew he was old because he even made me seem and feel young, moving slowly through his wizard castle and giving us all a tour.

I knew he was at least provisionally wise, because he gave the perfect answer to a personally interrogative question that has vexed me at times:

Are you retired?

He said in response, ‘Retirement is a word we use as a measure of being able to financially support ourselves without a job. And by that standard, I am not retired. I am only unemployed.’

It was a performance in response to a question.

VI.

So I’ll be using some variation of that, in the future, when vexed by the troublesome question.

The most existentially amusing part of this whole thing was the reason I was touring his amazing castle at all.

I was there because this particular Wise Man wanted a chance to hit on my Mom, and he finally had crafted that chance.

They are both in their eighties. She’s married to someone else, and this husband man was sitting in the same room.

They flirted most definitely and mostly discreetly, anyway. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever witnessed.

VII.

And all that together gave me the dream, and the dream, plus a measure of commitment to writing, gave us this post.

For whatever that’s worth and to me it’s quite a lot.