Yet it was college I was going to in the dream. The college years were my worst time of angst, however. Too late for the earlier class? I have recently received word form Uncle Donald and cousin Sharmon that Gramma doesn't have much longer to live. They were planning her funeral. I'd been warned earlier that Gramma was senile and didn't remember people. Would she remember me if I called? Would she die before I found time to call? Or was I "too late for the class?"

In the dream I was too late. The psych class is metaphor for the funeral. It is good for our psychological health to get together with the survivors and mourn the dead. But I found "an acting class". My family are fundamentalist christians. These christians deny the terror of death. They act like everything is rosy and the person has gone on to this beautiful place. Acting, for surely they must know deep within, the terrors of the final unfathomable void. They must know as I do that, that every day that passes brings us closer to the abyss. They must know somewhere deep within that when Gramma goes, anything of hers that is immortal lives on in her words and her actions, and in the long genetic line of progeny she has produced.

But that's not what they will do at that funeral!!!!

So in the dream I went to the library. There may be no special significance of that, except that in junior college I often spent time at the library, between classes and after. It was the junior college that was the school in this dream. I went to junior college during my most terrifying discovery about myself. I learned much at the library, for instance that I wasn't alone, for there were others like me.

But the library wasn't there! Maybe this is my subconscious saying there wouldn't be that much gained by going to the funeral.

For I found only something alien and frightening, a house of vampires! Vampires are immortal. Christians believe their soul is immortal. They call out to me "Be immortal as we. Your flesh will die and go to hell. We are immortal, don't you want to be immortal too?" But I knew that to be a lie. The price of the illusion is dreadful. The light of truth will burn it up, along with their hopes of immortality.

So I fled.

I will not in my skepticism say without a doubt there is no soul that lives on after we are dead. I just don't want to hang my hopes on what could be illusion. If the soul lives on, it doesn't require any faith. It will simply continue existing to be reborn again into a new housing. Spirit will greet us at the end of the long journey and tell us then. For security, I will cling to what I know remains. Each of us that have known about Gramma, that I have come from her lineage, and carry a part of her in my hearts. It is this part I lovingly cradle and hold close to me.

Gramma, caught laughing (sometime in the 1980's)

March 26, 1998

"WERE YOU BORN THAT WAY? Personality, temperament, even life choices. New studies show it's mostly in your genes."

"The moment the scales began to tip can be traced to a 1979meeting between a steelworker named Jim Lewis and a clerical worker named Jim Springer. Identical twins separated five weeks after birth, they were raised by families 80 miles apart in Ohio. Reunited 39 years later, they would have strained the credulity of the editors of Ripley's Believe It or Not. Not only did they had dark hair, stand six feet tall and weigh 180 pounds, but they spoke with the same inflections, moved with the same gait and made the same gestures. Both loved stock car racing andhated baseball. Both married women named Linda, divorced them and married women named Betty. Both drove Chevrolets, drank Miller Lite, chain-smoked Salems and vacationed on the same half-mile stretch of Florida beach. Both had elevated blood pressure, severe migraines and had undergone vasectomies. Both bit their nails. Their heart rates, brain waves and IQs were nearly identical. Their scores on personality tests were as close as if one person had taken the same test twice."

"...an impressive list of attributes that appear to owe at least as much to heredity as to environment. It includes alienation, extroversion, traditionalism, leadership, career choice, risk aversion, attention deficit disorder, religious conviction and vulnerability to stress. One study even concluded that happiness is 80 percent heritable..."

When later I saw Thoreau's quote about following one's own drummer, "...Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away...', it was only natural that this concept should resonate within me a deep harmonious chord.

"Such knowledge will surely lead to an ethical morass. `Where does it stop?' asks a character inThe Twilight of the Golds, a recent play in which a couple decide to abort a fetus whose genes suggest it will be gay. 'What it you found out the kid was going to be ugly, or smell bad, or have an annoying laugh, or need really thick glasses?' (Not such a far-fetched question, given that three quarters ofy oung couples in a recent survey said they would choose abortion if told their fetus had a 50 percent chanceof growing up to be obese.) The morass will become still stickier when we have the technology to tinker withthe genes themselves..."

These are times when it hurts to think. Will such people get control? I cannot imagine any longer what the future will hold.

When I was nineteen and so newly aware of my attraction to feminine forms, raw even with the portent of it, I will never forget one thing Renée said at a family gathering. She and her husband had made a decision to no longer eat at any McDonald's restaurant. Not because the food is terribly greasy and not very tasty, but because she discovered the actor which played their Ronald McDonald clown mascot was gay! Because of this, she would no longer eat at any restaurant from this giant chain.

What will she do when she finds my writings? First off, my spiritual poems are to "the Entity behind all the Names" and not Jesus. Secondly, I am perhaps beyond merely queer, by being in a triad with two transsexuals. She'll likely take the modem out of her computer and burn it! She does know about Laura, About three years into our relationship, I let them all know Laura is my spouse and to use my legal name, rather than my maiden name. I'm sure they all think Laura is the devil incarnate and has me in thrall. They wonder "to what depths I've fallen". They will soon find out!

It is so sad, for I, through out the years, would have liked to share with them, in spontaneous joy, all the facets of my life. But sadly that has not been possible. They take my life choices as a rejection of them. For indeed, that is what they believe their Holy Book tells them. I'm not sure how I can combat that. Too much hatred has been spewed from too many preachers, ranting behind their pulpits. All of their words are so much louder in their ears than mine could ever be. I don't know what to do about it. I have read of people whose hearts were turned around. They now work with the MCC churches in helping to heal some of this hurt. I'd like to think Renée would read my words, and question those things she's been taught. Is that possible?

I take a seat next to a cousin and feel slightly awkward. There is such a vast panorama of flowers of many types and hues. In the center is my very old, thinner than I remember Grandmother. Her face has been powdered and colored to look natural, but there's an unmistakable look. She won't be waking up and asking "What's for dinner?"

All of the men, women and children are in their best suits and dresses. There are so many of them. I recognize only a few. All the elegant little chairs are filled with family members. With two surviving children, their spouses, seven grandchildren, a few of their spouses, and eleven great grandchildren, and a couple of their spouses, that is a small army in and of itself. And the people visiting. They come and go constantly. A lot of people knew Gramma.. At least a third of the 400 members of Gramma's church will stop in. Occasionally Gramma went to the churches of Aunt June and Uncle Donald. So people from those also sizable churches met her. They'll want to pay their respects, too. By the end of the evening, possibly 500 people have stopped in, taken the hands of the family members they knew, and chatted a bit..."Doesn't she look good!" A few even remember me, and I answer their polite questions with a dry mouth. I make sure to tell them of the beauties of Arizona, an innocuous and true enough subject. By evening's end I will feel a cold, hard ache across my shoulders and down my spine, while I float about in a surreal dizziness...

In this metaphysical and transgeographic exchange, reality reflects a blending. The cold winds of Joliet's weather have spirited themselves here. A disc jockey on a Phoenix radio station has reported it is only 47 degrees.