But Lee Hazlewood died last month. He was 78.

I found that out the day after it happened. How?

That's a good question. It's not like I would have seen it on TV news, and while I have a computer I diligently ignore the headlines of the day that pop up next to my Inbox.

Well, I belong to a fan group dedicated to singer/songwriter Nick Cave. It's the sort of thing where people exchange pleasantries such as "Hey - anyone seen that unauthorized biography of _____?" with the response, "You're all a buch of Nazi's!" and a fair amount of "Check out my sexy pics at www..." I don't participate in the discussion but I was introduced to Grinderman, Cave's latest project, courtesy of the group. It was there that I found out Hazlewood died.

The connection is that Cave is a Hazlewood fan, Lydia Lunch covered "Some Velvet Morning" with Bad Seed member Rowland S. Howard, and Hazlewood is considered the bees knees in general by freaky people you wouldn't want to introduce to your Mom for whatever quirky reason.

So, I added "Some Velvet Morning" in its original Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood form, so you can hear his voice. It's creepy, yes - a little. Well, The Cramps are on the same widget, and that's a band that loves everything Hazlewood. He started his musical career in 50's rockabilly. The Cramps do "psychobilly." Hey - any excuse to wear red pumps. Apparently, Hazlewood's interesting funereal voice inspired a fair share of singers.

I really would have preferred to find the Vanilla Fudge version of the song as well. That's my favorite.

Oh gee, it was so queer seeing my friend The Lady singing along with that song. It is a bit obscure, after all, unless your girlfriend is a freak - like me - but I dated this gal who made tapes of her favorite music for me, (and that's where I first heard it), and I transferred those songs of hers I liked onto tapes of my own, and The Lady borrowed my car, (a 1988 Ford LTD Crown Victoria with half vinyl top, yessir), very frequently - pretty near every day for about a year - and apparently, listened to the tapes I made while she was driving it. Did I warn you about trying to keep up?

Come to think of it, the same person who turned me on to Hazlewood also brought me back to an appreciation of The Cramps. I had actually seen them back in the day and then - whoosh! - they were no longer in my mind. That happens. Sun spots.

But anyhooooo, we're driving along, she and I, and the song comes on my tape player. She starts singing along. Now, this is someone whose musical tastes since Rainbow have been whatever's on the radio. She owned a Snoop Dog album. Real mainstream, anyway.

But Lee Hazlewood died last month. Up until about two years ago he was still going strong. Well, he's the fellow who wrote "These Boots Are Made For Walkin,'" and that probably is his best remembered song.

So, some piece of him is buried in my song widget a few posts down. And Tom Jones (who, by the way, is still alive) is doing a James Bond song in there too. Bela Lugosi's dead though - of that much I am certain.

My son borrowed all my Nick Cave CD's and then he went away for the weekend. Oh Lord - it just occurred to me he has them with him and he is armed with a personal CD player. His mother will never forgive me if he turns all his little cousins into Nick Cave fans. Can you picture that? A whole camping crew of pre-teens will be singing, "The woods eats the woman/ and dumps her honey body/ in the mud. Her dress/ floats to the surface/ and it assumes the shape of a body of/ a little girl..." I'm going to be in the dog house sure as anything.

Well, the kid figured out he likes The Birthday Party. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that nobody else in the Ninth Grade - or within a hundred miles, for that matter - has the slightest idea who The Birthday Party was. Well, it was a band. Of course, when I was his age I was doing the same darn thing. I decided I liked something because - well, I liked it. But it helped that no one else had ever heard it. Set me apart from the crowd, (like I needed any help there.) It was a bonus if the music was an acquired taste. That's a nice way of saying I enjoyed annoying the hell out of everyone by playing music that I knew must have sounded to their ears like rubbing styrofoam blocks together.

Ah yes, I am going to write a book. Does anybody want to publish it?

For a minute there I thought Tom Jones had died, but no - he's still with us, still sweating on the ladies. The suspicion resulted from noticing a music blog entitled "The Late Greats," and then googling him. The first offering showed his name along side the dates (1940-2002), so then I was quite sure he had died. I clicked on a bio page, however, and found no mention of his demise. Then I noticed someone was selling concert tickets. Dead people rarely perform anymore. It turns out that first web site was selling a collection of music. Ah - but that doesn't make any sense either, does it? He wasn't singing from the womb. Well, he is Welsh, come to think of it. I may also be. I sing quite a lot. My mother tells me I used to awaken every morning singing. I love to sing, but I sing badly. That is why I say I love to sing badly. There are certain times in the day that I am smarter than others. Early morning gives me a certain kind of smarts - but it is not the kind that should be allowed to drive a car. It is not the kind that knows the quick from the dead. The dead come to visit me in the morning, and I welcome them in as the old friends or family members they are. You might say that in the morning I am not "all there," and I have told you I awaken slowly. But I am all here. Things I can think, see, feel in the morning become obscured later in the day, so I am better able in the morning to think, feel, see those things. It isn't really a limitation as much as a difference in perspective. Later on I will be able to master the world of things again, but the dead will disappear; I will no longer be able to see them. Either way, Tom Jones will be relieved to know that he is still alive. Not that it matters really. People come and go. Buildings are more important. I love people, but they go. It is best not to love them too much. Or - if you are going to love them, love the memory of them, but don't insist that they stay with you. They will not stay with you. They will abandon you. They will leave you sure as anything and every time.

I had intended to post my dream first thing this morning, but comment replies went a little long. Well, I "slept in" - until 5 or thereabouts, and then I forgot about what I had intended when I awoke because the conversation was just so interesting. I forget many things. With all that I can remember, (and anybody who has played Trivial Pursuit with me will tell you that is quite a lot), I forget an infinitely greater number of things than I remember.

Where was I?

My dream - yes. I dreamed that I was standing on a porch of some sort which at first had a view of a lovely field but towards the end would yield to a great canyon drawn with a pencil. My younger son had been assigned to draw a canyon, you see, and he had really wanted to draw a volcano. But someone else had drawn the coveted task of drawing the volcano, and he was very disappointed by that. He kept insisting that he could not draw a canyon. My frustration mounted until I told him to draw a volcano and then turn it upside-down: instant canyon - it can be taught. Well, and I suppose this event influenced my dream.

From the porch, which was at times extremely wide, there hung a number of purple ropes. There were other people there, people like me. We were speaking of holding the world together with faith, and how were it not for our faith the world would fall apart. It all had something to do with the purple ropes. I remember clearly trying to be unclear, trying to pretend I had no faith in order that God might be forced to demonstrate His hand in the matter. This part is very vague.

But behold, there appeared before me the canyon drawn in pencil, and there was no ground anymore beneath my feet, and I was alone. Gone were the purple ropes, and instead there appeared on the other side of the canyon the figure of a gigantic lion-like creature wearing a golden crown. A voice then told me to walk in the air towards the beast, and that if I were to take my eyes off him I would surely fall. In my dream I thought I had done this before. As a matter of fact, I had done it countless times before, though I could not remember doing it specifically.

It occurred to me then that I would also forget this event upon awakening, (for when I dream I am always aware that I am dreaming), but as it happens I remembered it. And though I forgot this morning to forget, I remembered now to write it down before I do. And I will, in a little while. Forget it, that is.

Have you ever returned from a dream holding something from it in your hand? I have. I've met a few others who also have. In my case it was a roundish stone which appeared polished by much handling. In my dream - I was 10 - I had been walking along the beach near my house in a light that resembled twilight. The tide began to pull out until it seemed the Bay would soon be completely drained of water. All the things that live beneath the water were exposed by the sudden recess, many of them flopping pathetically, some of them quite unusual like creatures that have not yet been named. Naked torsos of people began to approach out of a mist that resulted from some quirk of whatever phenomenon was occurring. By torsos I mean that they were without heads or arms. In the center of the bay, on the bottom of it now revealed, was what appeared to be a graveyard angel, her own arms lifted Heavenward, as was her face, the whole covered in kelp and seaweed.

I was terrified, needless to say, and casting about desperately discovered a stone which I intended to hurl at the approaching figures. As I drew my hand back to do so I awoke. The stone was still in my hand.

I have it to this day. I call it my Memory Stone. My own children don't know about its existence - though, as they read this, they soon will. I don't know why I'm telling you, but it has never been a secret. I don't believe that anybody would wish to take my stone from me, and if some people think I'm crazy the chances are they think that anyway, and that's none of my business.

What happens when a person dies, leaving his things behind? Well, someone comes along to go through his things, naturally, to sort them out and dispose of them properly. When that day comes for me I hope that it will be someone who understands about things and what they mean, and also understands what they don't mean. But imagine for a moment being that person and finding the stone. What to make of it? Well, now you know what to make of it.

You see, when I was in school a friend of mine died. He was 24, and he had only been expected to live to see age 14 because he had a very serious infirmity. He was an artist, and although he had incrementally lost the use of his hands he learned to draw using his mouth. And I, along with several others who included his brother, were set to the task of sorting through his things. Among them were a few mysterious objects, as one may find, which were only of significance to him. (George was his name, his real name, why not?) One of these mysterious objects was known to me, however, from my experience. To the others I said, "Oh, that's his Memory Stone." They looked at me for a moment without blinking, but there was much yet to do that night and I think they preferred to have an answer which made little sense to them than to have no answer at all.

I was just dreaming about Grandma's kitchen on 207th Street, the dumbwaiter, the big iron radiator, the tall, narrow window overlooking the rooftops with their wooden water towers. Paint covered the surfaces like caramel on an apple with the occasional bead of long dried drip demonstrating gravity. In the sunset the men would race their pigeons in fragile, cloud-like formations or clusters against the twilight sky.

Aunt Kitty's apple sauce cake.

Well and Mom got me ready for my first day of Kindergarten school, and I was very excited. She took my picture on the front steps. It went well. It went very well. I had a very positive school experience and I think I was then ready for anything. She was happy to hear that, and she said, So you'll be all ready to go back again tomorrow?

The look I gave her then accounted for her first grey hair. What do you mean, tomorrow?

I know the idea took a little getting used to, but I have fond memories of nap time when the girls would take off their shoes. The music was Danny Kaye singing Inchworm Inchworm, measuring the marigolds

You and your arithmetic, How beautiful you are.

I met my friend Fatty B. One day he sat in his cubby and he wouldn't come out. The teacher sort of yelled at him and then he puked. Yes, and she was a lovely Miss who became a Mrs. that year and changed her name. Funny, she didn't look any different, but something had changed.

Well, it was a few years later they showed us a movie. A young couple - to us, an old couple - were celebrating a New Year's Eve dinner together in a crowded restaurant. There was something about food being in short supply which I don't recall, but I do remember very well - and it made the deepest of impressions - that as they were leaving the restaurant they helped one another don their gas masks in order to step outside into the street in safety.

The lady said, Well, that's 1982 over. I wonder what the new year will bring?

It terrified me. I believed for precisely one day that the world would be entirely overrun with people in a mere 12 or 13 years, choked to death by all manner of industrial pollutants, and the straight-face predicted new Ice Age upon us. Grandma heard all this and she dismissed it with a single word that was like a slap on the face - Rubbish. I never again had any respect for my teachers in school.

Dad was a teacher in the public schools, but of course he was also Dad. I don't think he showed his classes that movie, or the others like it. I learned that people who don't believe in God believe in anything - anything at all - and then, a few years down the road, when whatever they believed is proved to be the rubbish it is, they simply latch on to the next thing without so much as an introspective what?

We are no longer at war with Eastasia. We are now at war with Eurasia. We were always at war with Eurasia. We were never at war with Eastasia.

I have absolutely no memory at all of the movie they segregated us into our separate sexes to view. I have seen too many parodies featuring the cartoon Sammy Sperm which have effectively driven out, or replaced, whatever the actual movie was.

After a while they stopped giving us nap time, and I think that's where it all began to go wrong.

Grandma and Grandpa moved to Florida, and I had seen her whacking at cockroaches with a broom in that 207th Street kitchen, and years later see her again whacking at a brightly-colored outlandish lizard. I fell asleep under a banana tree in the back yard while Mom and Dad went flying, and I was awakened with a start by just such a reptile running right over my legs. Little brother got a terrible case of sunstroke, and I believe his shirt fused to his flesh just as my gas mask fused to mine, for I never again would see him shirtless.

That's all for this morning. It's time for coffee with the morning birds under the pine trees.

The Cramps ask the musical question "What's inside a girl?" while I easily master every brand of solitaire my computer gives me, thinking of other things, like 'to post or not to post?' And if so, what to post? I had better write something, I suppose. I write something every day. It doesn't always get posted. It's like breathing. I also breathe every day. I've tried going without. Something's missing when I try to go without. Writing, that is. The breathing tends to happen despite my best efforts.

Now, I do know that everything I take into my body by way of food and drink and bubble gum, and what not, affects my mind. Substances can affect my thinking. Coffee, for instance. Last week, or last year, or some recently past time I was sitting at my computer as I am now, waiting to get the phone call that tells me food is ready to be delivered, (my evening job), whilst playing solitaire, listening to music, and thinking strange beta thoughts of whatever came into my head.

It was quite recent, come to think of it. I had posted about driving that interracial couple up to the little town to my north. That makes it a Wednesday, considering where I was when I met them. There had been a little back-and-forth commenting with a few of my fellow streamers, (and a nicer group of people you'll never find elsewhere), but that was done. Perhaps an hour passed. In that hour I won game after game of solitaire without focusing on any one thing. My legs were up on the chair beside me, and an interesting chair it is, too. (I really must do a post about furniture). And then at last I received another comment which brought me back to the present moment world of particular things.

I got a shock that night. Our friend POH may remember I sent her a bewildered private message, as it was she who had sent the comment that 'brought me around,' so to say.

Isn't that odd? - 'So to say?' I've always thought it was 'so to speak,' but I'm not speaking - (well, I am, but you can't hear me) - I'm writing. I can't really write 'So to write' because that doesn't seem right, and so I guess it's a compromise to write 'So to say' since the word 'say' is more general than 'speak' as one may say something in writing but not speak something in writing. Yet the whole business just bothers me. Let's pretend I didn't just write 'So to say' but rather spoke 'So to write,' so to speak.

Anyhoooo, when I clicked on the word speaking 'last' in order to reference whatever it was in my blog that the pulchritudinous POH was commenting on, I saw what I never had seen. I saw writing on the page that was like what I had written - what I remember having written - but so much better than I know I am capable of writing.

In other words, I read my own post in awe and disbelief. It was very like what I had written, (and my memory is at least in part photographic; I remember phrases rather like I'm reading supertitles at the Opera), but it was far more articulate than I could possibly have written. I'm a natural writer. I'm not a scholar. I dropped out of school, for goodness sake. I have a piece of wood in my head where a brain should be.

I checked again. I logged out, logged back in. I re-read the post that someone else had written and the bizarre disassociative feeling continued unabated. It even grew more pronounced. Could it be that I am reading a post from many months ago? That's it! Someone has gotten access to the White Lodge and is screwing with me - some extremely talented writer.

No - I'm not fishing for compliments. This is a true story. Sherry's a much better writer than I am. This is really just the way it happened, and that much better writer if he were writing this account would be able to describe the - ah - weirdness I was feeling. I was sick to my stomach, a little. I mean, it yanked on my cord. It was like watching a Chinese acrobat cross a floor using only her stomach.

Oh, by the way - I do have another story. Today I accidentally witnessed the White Tornado cleaning a bathroom - something which I had surmised no man had seen - and lived. I survived, but it is - as I believed it would be - indescribable. I'm still in shock.

And by the by the way, she was in a terrible car accident on Friday in which she managed to roll her vehicle end over end a number of times, being ejected at one point through the sunroof, and lived to tell the tale. (She's my helper. I have a cleaning business. Try to keep up.) Well, her four year-old daughter was strapped in the back seat of the car in her car seat. The car seat ended up on the road and the child remained securely seat-belted in the car, and simply walked out and found help.

It's extraordinary. I saw the accident site today - all the patches where the ground was disturbed by the car bouncing - and I saw the car itself, what's left of it. Impossible, I thought, that anybody could have come out of that car without at least sustaining serious injury. Yet mother worked with me today, and daughter was playing in the yard. I do believe their deliverance was miraculous. So too did the police and the rescue squad, apparently. They're still scratching their heads.

Ah yes, that's far more interesting than my story, but I'm coming back to it now anyway. By the time I wrote my bewildered private message what I wrote was something like this: "Someone has stolen my words and replaced them with exact duplicates."

Now, the call came - and today it has just come too, so I must fly - that the food was ready. And I had been listening to Nina Simone in the car. I had to change it back to King Crimson because they put me in my happy place. By the time I delivered the food the extraordinary feeling had passed. I returned once more, re-read the blog again, and this time knew it for my own work. It really wasn't so well written after all I noticed.

I had eaten nothing all that day except a chili dog, and I suspect that may have been the culprit, long story short. (Well, not that short really. That's another stupid phrase, isn't it?) I don't know. It had been perhaps years since I had eaten a chili dog. I know it was unusual that I bought it. Not my first choice usually - just a whim.

I really do have to go now. Would someone please be so kind as to look up the correct spelling of 'dissasociative?' I know I got it wrong.