Someone stole my stuffed animals. Incidents like this have happened before, where a bag goes missing or someone steals my mind. At those times it felt like someone had yanked my heart out of my chest. It was a horrible, deathly feeling of loss which fills my dream state like a tidal wave but I find impossible to describe in the reality of things.

Last night my reaction was a little different. I was angry and irritated, but I did not feel abandoned or sinking as in other times of loss.

What happened was I had left the big Wookie furball on the front steps to a friend’s house. It was meant as a gesture of friendship. I left Wookie unsecured, in the back of my mind thinking that was reckless. Anybody could walk by and steal it.

I walked a few blocks away, in search of something that would secure the Wookie to the steps. On the way I passed someone else’s house where I noticed that whoever lived there had stolen all my stuffed animals and placed them in their yard, along with a bunch of other stuffed animals that I assume were stolen from someone else.

I stole back as many of mine as I could hold in my hands. They were all dirty from sitting outside. I walked back toward the house where I had left the Wookie, but for some reason I passed it by. I ended up on Riverside Boulevard over on the far west side of Manhattan. (That’s a kind of new street by the way, not to be confused with Riverside Drive.) I turned back and made my way back toward the Wookie, but as I got closer to the house where I had left him I noticed that I had dropped all but one of the stuffed animals I had stolen back from that other house. I was most concerned about the Wild Thing, and what kind of trouble he could get into in the out-of-doors.

I was irritated to find that I was going to have to retrace all my steps to find where I had dropped the stuffed animals. I don’t remember which one I had not dropped. I think that the one stuffed animal that I had not dropped was not even one of mine.

I started retracing my steps but quickly realized the futility. I had walked several hundred miles in those few minutes, but it would take years to walk them again.

I entered a bookstore thinking there might be someone there I could talk to. In fact there was a woman who appeared in a dream I had months or even years ago. I never got her name. But in our conversation we reminisced about the time I showed her how to register a domain name. She had registered christopherjditson.com. I cannot believe I actually remembered that. It’s weird when oddly specific information shows up in a dream.

She registered that domain name because that was the name of her ex-boyfriend. She wanted to set up a vengeance website under his name, making him look like a sadistic rapist and child molester. From the way she laughed it off I assumed she ever actually did anything with the domain name.

I am talking about this like it really happened.

The woman and I talked for a good long time, but beyond guarded and defensive conversation she was unapproachable. Like a lot women I encounter these days she seemed to consider men to be enemies.

I exited the bookstore. Outside there was a Shetland pony and a young girl dressed up like some kind of clown. A very pretty clown, mind you. Other people standing around were in awe of the cuteness. I could not tell if the Shetland pony was real or a stuffed animal.

It echoes a real-life experience I had a couple of months ago. A friend of mine went to Hawaii, and brought back a visor for me. It is made entirely of bamboo. One night I was buying a sandwich at the place on Steinway Street. I paid with a $20 bill. The cashier, in a somewhat clumsy and weird manner, said that she did not have enough change in her drawer. So she went off somewhere to get more bills from the manager. Whatever she said, however she said it, it was enough of a distraction that I did not realize I had put the visor down on the counter. By unexplainable chance I happened to look inside my bag several minutes later, at which time I noticed the visor was gone. I don’t really lose things much so this was pretty unsettling (gotta quit using that word). The store where I had just purchased the sandwich was the likeliest place I could have left it, so I went back there. They recognized me and promptly handed me the visor. As this encounter ended I realized that I was chasing after this lost visor like it was some kind of major crisis. It would have been a bummer to lose such a thoughtful gift but jeez, the way I was panicked about it you’d think I’d lost my soul to a passing thief.

…

Strange to hear a comedy show where you can’t hear the jokes, only the laughs. In the shower yesterday I had NPR on the radio (sorry to say it, please don’t think less of me). Through the noise of the water coming down I caught a word here or there from the comics. But most of what rose above the steady, somewhat torrential sound of shower water pouring down was the harsh, starchy laughter from the audience. I might hear the words “RICHARD NIXON” followed by seemingly incongruous claps of laughter from the audience.

I knew someone once who thought comedy shows were strange. She found the very idea to be weird and even creepy, that people would convene at a place and at a time for the purpose of laughing.

I never quizzed her on this observation, which I found to be odd at first. I think maybe she equates laughter with happiness, which I do not. People do not laugh at or with the things that make them happy. The things that make us nervous, uneasy, or even angry are what make us laugh.

Smiles are different. Simple smiles signal happiness, or contentedness. But the guttural chortling and guffaws, those signal something else. I think laughter’s association with happiness stems from the fact that we smile while doing it. But when I think about what really makes people laugh I start to think it as a twisted, even sadistic appropriation of a traditional symbol of happiness.

…

Again, listening to anything through the white noise of shower water can be puzzling. Earlier today I heard a news announcer on 1010 WINS say “New York can’t afford its own poet.” I doubt that is what was really said.

…

Hmm… I am at the library, but thinking I should go home. I need to work on web things that I cannot really do from here, via this tablet. A fully-loaded laptop might make such work possible but I doubt it. I’m too reliant on having 2 screens. Plus I gotta see if someone stole the stuffed animals!