Hello, my friend.

I'm just getting back home from another Saturday afternoon walk here in Buenos Aires. It's fall, so it's a little bit chilly outside. So I bundled up today and I went outside and went walking down the street like you normally do when you leave a building, walk down that street.

And I just needed to go out for a walk today. My mind is full of information, these puzzles I have to figure out of life. And so, as usual, I'm walking down the street and my mind is going and, "Did you turn off the pilot on the stove? Did you fold your laundry? Don't forget that you have to solve this issue. Did you delete your browser history? Are you going to tell me what you want to do with life?"

And it's just on and on and on, you know. I'm sure people experience that, not just me.

And in that little speech, that little ongoing recording there, I normally take this path, walk down these blocks, and then take a left, and today I actually took a right instead of taking a left.

And as soon as I did, something shifted in me. Don't know what. But that dialogue that was playing in my mind just turned into, "So did you bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla" and it just tuned out, which was kind of interesting and cool.

And I was walking and I ended up walking down this path, which led into this little plaza, into a little park, and then the park expanded into this bigger park with a lake, huge lake, and all of these little paddled boats that people can rent, and it was just family day. It was people day, human day, and all of these humans walking around, the families, the couples, individual people who decide to venture out with themselves.

I've never been here before, and it was really fun, actually, and this park is full of geese, and that's something I haven't seen in quite a long time. And these geese are very friendly, so they're walking in between the people. They're just going up to people, and the people are feeding them. Some kids are chasing them, some of the geese are chasing their children, and they're just having fun, trying to pluck the food out of their hands.

And I found this one little place next to the lake, and it was later in the afternoon, and the sun was doing its setting time, and actually it was pretty nice.

The sun today was, well, I think it was a little bit lazy because it just gave me some golden colors. It wasn't doing the whole rainbow of violets and pinks and oranges, it just, here's some gold for today, so I'm like, okay, but that was good enough.

And there were some really nice clouds in the sky to give it some more dimension, and I had my little earbuds on listening to music, and at that moment it was on my playlist, and Joni Mitchell came up, the song On Both Sides Now. And I was even listening to that one little phrase that says, "I really don't know clouds at all."

I'm like, whoa, she's here with me. How did that happen?

And I'm just smiling, enjoying the moment, watching life around me, and I was kind of surprised because usually when I go out, my head tilts and sees life in a different way. And today, just like the clouds, I wasn't seeing the people in the same way, and doing all those things like what you're supposed to do on the weekend.

I looked at them as just people who, well, they ended up on this planet, and the parents gave them the toys. This is what you have, and they're making the best of it.

I saw happy faces, I saw sad faces, I saw all types of faces. I saw little geese faces looking at me going, "Hey, you, give me something to eat."

And I flashed back to my childhood neighborhood over in San Francisco, the Haight-Ashbury, when I would walk down the street and they would say, "Hey, give me some change. Hey, you want to buy some of that polycarbon?" or whatever trendy drug they were selling back then.

And I was there, and this mom and her kid sat on this little blanket she brought, and the kid was excited because he was feeding these little geese bread. He got a little loaf of bread out of the backpack, and he put it behind him.

"I'm going to hide it here, just little by little."

And the geese, one of those gooses, geese's, goose goose, ran up behind him and took the bread.

The kid turns around, he's laughing, and the mom's laughing, they're surprised, they look at me, and they've got this innocent face of just laughter. I can't believe it, and I start laughing with them because the other option was to go chase that goose and tackle him and get that bread back.

But I was thinking, "Ah, that's somebody else's battle."

And I watched the sun disappear and say, "See you later, until tomorrow, maybe."

And I walked back home, and interesting, when I got back on the usual path I take, the sound of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, started getting louder and turning into, "Don't forget, you have to go home, and you've got to cook, and before you cook, you've got to wash dishes, and before you wash dishes, you have to go do this."

And so here I am, not paying attention to my mind, but just sharing the story with you, because sometimes when I sit here and I say, "Why do I record these?"

Because the shadow on the wall goes, "I know your story, Johnny."

And I say, "Yeah," so I share it so that somebody else like you can accompany me on this journey. Go out and see what toys our parents left us and make the best of it, right?

I'm making the best of this moment, and I'm going to go do some food stuff before the volume gets turned up in my mind.

Until the next moment.

It’s way after midnight right now, and I’m hesitant on going to bed, so I’m sitting here on my sofa in the silence of my apartment.

But it’s interesting because as I sit here in this silence, I start to hear the fan from my laptop and take notice of the noise outside. The city life going on after midnight.

Oh, and I hear the neighbor’s TV is on as well. And the refrigerator in the kitchen… well, it’s there humming along loudly as it keeps my food cold. A little honk of a horn outside.

It’s so interesting. I thought I was sitting here in silence, which I really needed before going to sleep, but everything is just so loud right now.

Hello, my friend.

Well here I am with my cup of coffee wanting to wake up. Kind of.

I’d had one of those mornings of very active REM state type of dreams. I’ve always been a person who dreams very vividly and today was just no exception.

And today I just happened to fly into Vegas.

So there I am in my dream coming out of the airport and I go, oh my gosh, where’s my suitcase? And I forgot my suitcase at home.

And so there I am in Vegas without clothes, without my contact lenses, without a passport, without anything except just my wallet in my pocket and I’m going, oh my gosh, what am I going to do?

So I say, well first I need a change of clothes.

And I look around and I see those traditional little souvenir shops and I walk in and then I come out after buying one of those, I guess, generic t-shirts with a little saying that says I Am a Virgin and a pair of shorts too.

And I’m walking down the street and I see a café.

I’m like, oh, that’s right. I’m supposed to meet a really good friend of mine in there.

And I walk in and I see my really good friend, who I’ve never even met in life, and he’s sitting there at the table and I sit there next to him and he says, “Johnny, I want you to meet my friend Rick.”

And I’m like, “Rick? Oh my gosh. I’m such a huge fan of yours. I’ve been listening to you for years now and I even do my painting and do other creative work listening to your music.”

And he just nodded and he says, “Thank you. That’s nice. That’s very nice.”

And he continued talking to my friend and I kind of felt a little bit awkward, a little bit nervous there.

I’m like, did I say something? Was I overly too much of a fan there?

And so I just got up and I walked out to the patio and there was a live concert there. There was a band that was playing and they started playing a song that seemed kind of familiar.

So I’m kind of moving to it and then they say, “Hey, come up to the stage and sing this.”

Not to me, but to my friend Rick. Or my friend’s friend.

And Rick’s like, “No, no, no, no. I’m just enjoying the music. You guys keep on playing it.”

And everybody’s encouraging and clapping and finally he says, “Okay.”

And he gets up on stage and he starts singing his Never Gonna Give You Up song and we’re all dancing and grooving to it.

And he finishes and he walks off stage and he comes over to me and says, “So did you like it?”

I’m like, loved it. Danced and everything.

And he says, “Good. Good.”

He says, “Did I come across that I didn’t want to go up there?”

I’m like, “Yeah. It looked like you just wanted to enjoy.”

And he says, “Oh, that was just an act. I really did want to get up there and sing, but you know, I had to play along like, no, no, no, I’m not going to steal somebody else’s spotlight.”

“And yet there I was.”

And so he says, “I’m glad I played it off.”

And I said, “You did a great job.”

And he says, “Good. Good.”

He says, “I’m hungry. What about you?”

And I said, “Sure. Yeah, I can eat.”

And so we turn around and somehow, as dreams do, I’m at some type of seaside restaurant in Marseille, France.

And I’m looking around this restaurant. It’s beautiful. It’s big windows. It’s nighttime. Odd, but still nighttime.

And I can see all the reflection of the cityscape on the water and the windows and I’m like, wow, this is gorgeous.

And I walk over to the table and it’s a huge table and right in the middle of the table there is a dolphin head on a plate.

I’m like, what is that? Oh my gosh.

And Rick looks at me, he smiles, he picks up the dolphin head and he starts chasing me with it.

And I’m screaming like a kid, terrified.

And I run around the corner of the restaurant until he backs me up against a corner and I’m like, “Stop Rick, please. I have a phobia about fish. I can’t see them. Or even if it’s tiny or large, I can’t see them. I can’t touch them. I can’t get near them. Please stop doing that.”

And he says, “Oh, sorry bloke.”

And he tossed the dolphin head on the floor and it bounced a couple of times and I realized it was a plastic dolphin head.

And so… ah yeah.

But still got my heart beating there.

And then I said, “Well let me go cool down and get this out of my system.”

And I leave the restaurant and I start walking down the street, which turns into an alleyway in the middle of the day.

I’m like, hey, this is cool.

And the alleyway leads to this plaza. This huge plaza with these beautiful buildings with all these tiles, colorful tiles, mosaics, and it looked like Turkey and Morocco or one of those places that I’ve never visited in the human awake moments.

And I sit there on a bench.

And Rick starts talking to me and I’m like, okay.

And we started having this wonderful conversation.

And it seemed like we were talking forever, laughing and… just this moment.

I don’t remember what we talked about, but I know that it was good.

And there came a moment when I started seeing these colorful mosaics on the building start to fade and they started turning black and white.

And I thought, oh no. I’m going to wake up any moment.

I was conscious of that.

Yeah, this is a dream.

So I didn’t want to alert Rick that I was dreaming.

So I said, “Hey Rick, I got to go.”

And he says, “Oh great. Let’s hang out some other time. I travel the world all the time so maybe we can meet up in Akron, Ohio.”

And I’m like, Akron, Ohio?

Sure. Sure, Rick. We’ll hang out there.

I said, “I’m going to go now.”

And I said bye.

And then I start to wake up and just feel… you know that feeling when you’re waking up?

And I’m like, was that… oh, this is… oh, it’s a different world.

I mean, it felt so real to me to be there. It felt so cool as well.

And so just contemplating on that in bed and going, interesting, with my mind, I thought that perhaps the dream would end with Rick saying something cheesy like, “All right. Never gonna say goodbye. See you later.”

Or something.

But no.

It fell flat.

And so now I sit here drinking my coffee feeling pleasure from this experience and a lot of PTSD from the fish dolphin head thing.

Because just between us, in real life I do have a fish phobia. I don’t know what it’s called, but I do.

But that’s a topic for another moment.

Right now I just wanted to share this one.

And now there’s no dream analysis here.

I don’t… it just happened.

And this is happening.

And so until the next moment.

Hmm… these watery eyes. What am I gonna do with you guys?

I just came back from taking my evening walk and here I am wiping away this liquid coming out of my eyes.

I was down a couple of blocks away from here at the stoplight waiting for it to change and, as I’m waiting there, I see this leaf float in front of me and fall.

And I see it’s a dried-out leaf and I felt the water in my eyes start to fill up a little bit.

I go, what’s going on?

And then I look up at the trees and they’re a little bit emptier. The branches are not carrying as many leaves as before.

And I go, oh my gosh. I know what’s happening.

It’s March here in Buenos Aires and we’re moving toward fall.

And that just… I guess it did something to me because first of all, while I love the colors of the leaves in fall, it starts to get colder and then winter comes and that’s pretty difficult for me too.

I am allergic to the cold.

It makes me break out in shivers and that’s not comfortable at all.

I don’t function well in cold weather and when winter comes, you know, I assume that’s when I wish I had some wings so I could just fly north because north is gonna be summertime.

And that’s another confusing thing for me.

When I moved here about a year ago the seasons flipped from what I was used to in the Northern Hemisphere.

Winter being in December and summer being in June and July.

And here it’s the opposite.

So when winter came along here last year and it started in June, my body was like, yes, go put on your speedo and get to the beach.

And then I go outside and my body’s like, put on ten layers of clothing right now. This is an emergency. You can’t wait any longer.

So I’m not a fan of winters.

And when I saw that leaf fall in front of me I realized that right around the corner is winter.

And this is gonna be my second winter here in Buenos Aires.

Which is good, I guess.

But at the same time I stood there at the light looking at the trees and remembering last year and how it was.

It’s almost like I have this reel playing in my head of the progress of all the trees happening within thirty seconds.

The leaves start falling off.

The trees are standing there bare.

It’s cold.

They have no leaves.

And they’re all naked.

And for me it’s such a cruel joke from Mother Nature.

“I’m going to take off all of your leaves in the winter so you can freeze your trunks off. And then in the summer I’m gonna fill you with so many leaves that you’re gonna suffocate and get all humid and start dripping sap from every little branch of your fun little tree bodies there.”

And then I go back to this reel that’s playing in my head of how all the trees look.

Yeah… they’re naked.

They have no leaves.

And they’re all kind of standing there.

And wow.

It’s one of those images where I go, this is not the type of orgy I want to be part of, thank you.

And then at the same time I’m looking at their branches and some have the pose of a fancy dancer and others look arthritic.

Their branches and twigs all twisted in some type of contorted frozen pose.

And there I am missing three stoplights because I’m standing there contemplating all of this.

Then I see another leaf fall and join the other one on the floor.

And I go, oh no… more water in my eyes.

So I hurry back home.

And then I suddenly remember that the reason I had gone out was to go to the store.

And I’m like, oh my gosh. The store’s closed and I was supposed to buy food and now I’m gonna be hungry.

Okay.

Well now what do I do?

There’s little leaves outside. I can always go pick some up and make myself a salad.

But oh well.

This will teach me to drift off into naked tree orgy land and forget what I was actually supposed to be doing.

Anyways, I’m gonna stop this recording now.

I needed to record.

Okay.

Record stop.

Ah, I finally made it. Here I am.

I didn't actually think I would sit here today and record. Didn't think I would get here. It's been such a long journey just trying to get here today.

And the journey has been from bedroom to microphone. Amazing.

Because yesterday I decided:
Tomorrow, Sunday, beautiful summer day here in Buenos Aires, I'm going to sit there and I'm going to record another Midnight Mind Moment. So I'm going to go to bed early tonight, get some rest, and be able to record just fine.

Here I am.

And so, as sometimes my life likes to show me these very interesting Netflix shows in my real lifetime, I went to bed but had a lot of trouble falling asleep because I had a visitor in my room last night: a mosquito.

And for mosquito, the family mosquito, they see my body and they just see it as an all-you-can-eat buffet. And when they bite, they leave these welts, these itchy welts, and so the whole night there I am trying to hide under sheets, because even through a thin sheet they still find a way to sharpen the little beak, or whatever you call that thing they have, and they get you. At least me.

So I was on vigilant state last night there, waiting and hiding.

And finally this morning I woke up and I saw the mosquito on the wall. Nice and happy. Satisfied. Its little belly full of my lifeblood.

And so, I kindly gave it help into its next lifetime, and there it goes.

But then because I didn't sleep that well, I woke up with a raspy voice. Kind of like one of those dry, itchy throat voices. And I thought, I can't record this. I can't record it like this, because seriously, this morning I sounded like a Simpson character.

You know:
“Hey, here we are, another Midnight Mind Moment, I'm gonna talk to you.”

So I thought, nah, I'm gonna wait. Do something for my throat. Maybe I'll do a warm-up, some vocal warm-ups, try singing a Whitney Houston song.

And since I never could before, well, today it just reminded me that I couldn't.

What else could I do? Gargle with vodka? What do they recommend for the throat? Doing those kind of things.

So anyway, I just let the day pass and the voice was better.

And I just don't sometimes understand how this works. I tell my body, myself:
“Hey, tomorrow let's go do this.”

And the body says:
“Sure. Let me pretend I didn't understand what you just said and give you something completely different. Why don't we do this instead? Why don't you stay up all night getting bit by mosquitoes? Why don't you wake up as Mr. Raspy and go and try to record that episode with that really interesting topic you want to explore?”

And then later on, when you go to record, you plug in the headphones and the headphone battery is dead, so you gotta recharge that.

And then once it's recharged, you go and try to open up the balcony door and you get electrocuted because you're touching the headphone amplifier.

And so I'm quite shocked to be here.
Literally.

And it just amazes me.

It reminds me of when...
How does that phrase go? I'm not really good with sayings, but:
“Don't tell life what you want because then it'll throw a wrench in it,” or it'll screw it up or something like that.

Click it and don't drink and drive unless you drink before you drive.
I don't know.

It's those kind of phrases that don't really stick with me.

So, I mean, this happens quite often.

Whenever I say:
“I want to do this. I'm excited to do this.”

The body says:
“Ah no. I have different plans for you.”

Such as last night.

And the other night as well, trying to sleep.

I have this relationship with sleep which is:
sleep exists for other people.

But for me...
I'm redeveloping this relationship.

We've gone to therapy.
Couples therapy.

And I can understand sleep's point of view, but...
you know...
I still want to sleep.

So on the nights I say:
“Hey, okay, I really need a good night's sleep.”

Hey, five o'clock in the morning, wide awake. I can already hear the birds singing.

And then I start getting sleepy.

And I'm like:
“That doesn't really work.”

So it just makes me think of different ways to get around this body thing.

It's like, I can't try to trick it.

I can't say:
“Okay body, tonight I don't want to sleep.”

Because the body will say, like a genie:
“Your wish is my command, sir.”

And poof.
Six o'clock in the morning.
Still wide awake.

And so, it's this thing that I go through quite often, trying to figure out how to be able to dance the tango romantically with myself instead of being there as two people fencing, trying to kill each other.

But at the same time I can't really kill the other essence of me because we're here to fight to stay alive.

So such an irony there.

So it's a moment.

I'm sitting here now, happy to be here. Happy to be able to not sound so raspy here.

And now it's time to talk about what I was going to talk about...
which I don't remember too well.

What was I...

Okay, well, since I'm recording this live without any kind of edits, I don't remember.

We'll be that in the next one.

But right now, at least I showed up with a pretty normal-sounding voice, electrocuted, without sleep, welts on my body, a smile on my face, and some alcohol in my throat.

No actually, no.
I just gargled with coffee.

That was much better.

So until the next time, here we are.