The Real

He awakes. Stillness is king.

Big snow storm was striking the area. They weren’t due snow in his zone. Snow was expected above five thousand feet. That gave them an almost three thousand foot buffer but weather is fickle.

He checks the time and temperature on his weather station. Three fifty-five. Thirty-five degrees. Three five. The numbers made him smile. Those were his lucky numbers as a kid.

Two cats investigate him. Deciding all was safe, they expect rewards. He feeds them and goes to the kitchen for water. Drinking it, he surveys the remnants of two dreams. Odd, of course. One involved his mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her husband, their car, and a white bi-plane. The other was military oriented, of course – structure and identity. The dreams remind him of wreckage after a hurricane.

Peeing was required. The business didn’t require much attention. His mind wandered to blogs and knowing people through blogs but not otherwise knowing them. He pondered the difference between aspiring writer and struggling writer and the choices the words reflected.

He went to bed and thought of a road trip movie. A writer. A series of events. A wife passed away. A writer road trip to meet bloggers that he’d never met. It reminded him of a movie more than a decade ago, perhaps two decades. A man retiring. He bought a recreational vehicle. His wife dies of a heart-attack while vacuuming. He can’t recall more. Details trickle in. Man discovers his wife was having an affair.  De Niro? Murray? No.

Ah. Nicholson. ‘About Schmidt’. What year? That’s too much for dead AM.

A working title arrived for his movie: ‘The Real’. He smiles at that. He thinks of it as a dramedy.

He wonders how much of this he will remember in the morning. “Sleep,” he whispers to himself and lets his breathing seek its rhythm.

So much to write, he laments to himself, and sleeps.