Halloween Reflections

          

            “Why do we worry about altering the environment of the Earth?”  The voice on the radio asked, and explained, “what humanity seems to forget is that it is part of the very ecosystem that it worries about changing.  Does a bee worry about how it effect’s the environment by pollination or does a termite worry about the destruction that it causes by ingesting cellulose.  Of course not, yet the human race seems to think that by altering the ecosystem that it lives in, it is doing something detrimental.  Humanity is simply a larger scale of other life forms, who also act instinctively to reproduce and interact with their surroundings, causing growth and change to take place.  I believe that humanities purpose is to prepare the planet for the next stage in its evolution, which I have documented in my book, “Earth’s Destiny,” which for a limited time is available for the incredible low price of…”

            I turned the radio off as my passenger got in the cab, with her Walmart bag full of Halloween candy as she told me her destination.  As we drove she told me that she had cancer and just got her prescriptions filled for Percocet and dilaudid to kill the pain, but they didn’t really do anything.  She said that when she drinks beer along with the drugs that it worked better, but her tweaker friends criticize her for it.

            After I dropped her off at her place in felony flats I picked up a student at Tokyo International University of America, who was dressed like an Anime character named Goku from Dragonball Z, and drove him to Lancaster Mall.  On the drive there we started talking about dreaming, and then we began to talk about dream patterns and interpretation.  He said that he had been reading a book about the stages of dreaming and when I asked him to elaborate he did.

            “In stage 1 you simply dream, and may not remember anything about it,” he explained.  “Stage 2 is when you remember your dream after you wake up.  Stage 3 is when you realize that you are dreaming while it’s taking place.  Stage 4 is when you are able to control your dream.  Stage 5 is realizing that you are in someone else’s dream.”

            “That’s interesting,” I told him, “I’ve experienced the first 4, but not the 5^th stage, however I got most of my information from reading a book by Carl Jung, about dream interpretations, through repetitive symbolism.  Like when I kept dreaming about Mt. Jefferson becoming an active volcano, when I was in Jefferson Park while backpacking with my family.  I found out that the volcano represented God, because of the uncontrollable power that it held which could be released at any time and completely annihilate anything in its proximity.  In one dream I was leading my family between molten lava rivers to the erupting volcano, in another I was trying to convince them to leave our house on the side of Mt. Jefferson between eruptions.”

            After I dropped him off I picked up an elderly couple, in their 80’s,who I’ve been driving for the past 7 years.  The man’s name is George and his wife Mildred recently went blind from a botched cataract surgery.  George always brings up the coming depression, and talks about his memories of the Great depression in the 1930’s, that he remembered from his youth, when his father had to steal food, so they could have something to eat.

            “It was ‘dog eat dog,’” George said, “a man wouldn’t think twice about killing somebody if he had to, just so he could provide for his family.  This time it will be a lot worse, because there are a lot more people.  When people get hungry and desperate they turn into animals.  That’s when you really see a survival of the fittest.  I’m glad that we’ll be dying soon, because the world is going to hell in a hand basket.”

            When I dropped them off the mall, George gave me a $10.00 bill for the $7.30 fare and said to keep the change.  Then I got a call to pick up someone at one of the drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers who was going to the hospital for medication to help them with withdrawal.  The nurse who signed my trip voucher warned me that the guy was high on methamphetamines but that he should be okay. 

A few years back, one of the tweaked out passengers that a female driver picked up, attacked her while she was driving, causing an accident, that resulted in post traumatic stress syndrome for the cabbie.  She hasn’t left her house since then and the incident took place in 2002.  The tweaker had a jar filled with her own urine and feces that she smeared all over the driver, after she bit and scratched her and pulled out some of her hair.  The accident occurred when the tweaker in the back seat pulled the cabbie backwards by her hair.

            On the 10 mile trip there, my passenger told me that he just got out of jail 3 days earlier, after spending 45 days in lock up.  He said that he was clean and didn’t want to get high, but that his girlfriend talked him into doing it, he said in a voice that sounded like subdued hysteria, making me think of Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider.”

            “She’s gorgeous, and after 45 days in that shithole I was so horny that I could fuck a hole in the wall.  She wanted me to shoot up with her, and then she said that we could fuck until we came down.  I have to leave her and get out of here!”  He said with tearful emotion in his voice.  “She’s gorgeous and I love her, she has the most perfect body in the world, and when she’s nice to me it’s like heaven, but she wants me to do crank with her.  I’ve got to get away.  I’m going to Port Angeles, Washington to work on a fishing boat as soon as I get out of rehab.  I don’t care if you stay out a month or two and don’t get any sleep, I need to make some cash and I have to get away from here.”

            When I got him to the hospital he asked me if I could give him a dollar in change so he could buy a candy bar, because he needed something sweet.  I gave him 4 quarters and he asked me for a cigarette, but I told him that I don’t smoke, so he got out of the cab disappointed, but thanked me for the buck.  I wished him a happy Halloween as he got out, and he said that he spent July 4^th in rehab too, and was tired of drugs ruining all his holidays.  As I drove off I turned the radio on.

            “The real joke about the human race is the seriousness with which it gives to itself, as if anything that it produces will exist in the next eon,” the voice said.

            “What I think that you are forgetting, or rather omitting is the fact that all the energy created by human activity is spiritual in nature,” a second voice interjected.

            “That may or may not be true,” a third voice countered, “but the real issue here is whether or not…”