His eyes are open but unseeing, his jaw hangs limply, mouth agape while a fog of nothingness fills the cavity where his brain should reside. Is this a man in a coma? A Buddhist trance perhaps? Or is this Macho Comacho waiting for his mother to pull the plug? (A sick reference that last one but an apt one nevertheless.) No, I tell you, this is none of the above, but rather a still sleepy Zendoc barely astir on a Saturday morn in search of an idea. Wait! That last is too grand. In search of a mere thought more accurately describes the quest. A thought, a thought, my kingdom for a thought.
Hmmm. It comes to me that "thought" is both a noun and a verb's past tense, and if THAT is a thought why of all the thought joints in all the world would this one walk into mine, Schweetheart? I don't know but I guess we will always have Paris. If not Paris, then Bayonne.
I'm sorry, I wasn't listening. Did I say something?
You see, I've found Facebook both stimulating and depressing of late. I have two new "friends" who post minimally a half dozen times a day which invites my comments, asides really, that I generally have at hand. Not to worry. It's up there at the top of the page where it says, "What's on your mind?" that baffles and saddens me. I wonder around looking for my mind to see what's on it and even on those days when I find it, the contents rarely seem Facebook worthy. I mean, there is football and golf there, and something Fareid said and what are my breakfast choices and why is my dog looking at me like that, but things pithy and pertinent or even personal? Nary to be found in my gray matter storage units. Hence I tell you, hence, the condition you find me in at the top of this blog. I fear, alas, I fear, that I am a FACEBOOK FAILURE.
I have not, however, given up all hope. I have pad and pen at the ready. Pad and pen once used to note and outline story ideas and critical things I needed to remember are now poised solely to capture a Facebook worthy thought; a thought that will garner "likes" and maybe a comment or two, an important thought, a deep thought. Oh wherefore art thou thought? Facebook is calling.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Saturday, November 17, 2012
CLOSING IN ON 700 FOR NO GOOD REASON
This is my 698th post. Yeah, I know, I'm not impressed either. About half of them are just bluffs, lame attempts to make the ordinary entertaining. But I mean, c'mon, ordinary is what I have to work with and once in awhile - if I don't mind saying so myself, and I don't - a modicum of entertainment is achieved. (A modicum of entertainment being herein defined as a chuckle or when lacking that, a smile. You can call the smile a mini modicum, because mini modicum is fun to say.))
You see, I'm not really a philosopher but...scratch that, I am a philosopher. My philosophy, however, of "Don't worry, Be happy" has been realized only by stoned Jamaicans, the Dali Lama and a Tibetan Buddhist named Carl who lives in a cave somewhere in the Him/Heralaya Mountains and tries to stay warm while chanting "I AM happy, I AM happy, really I AM" but - my philosophy I'm still talking about - is essentially ignored by the rest of the world's populace who are often quoted as saying, "Get a life Doc."
Well, I have a life. It's just, you know, ordinary. And, as I've been trying to tell you, ordinary is fun to live, but hard to write about. My cast of character, me, is not all that interesting but I do get to jump from one brain cell to another in search of an untapped idea that I might be harboring, hidden amongst the debris that clutters up the monkeymind and, when discovered, spit it out here in Cyberspace. For me, this is a fun thing to do. For you, probably, not so much.
I could write about others and I do, once in awhile. I find, though, that it is easy to be self deprecating in an attempt to be funny, but it is hard to be other deprecating in the same attempt, because, well, most people have egos and are thus sensitive to being poked fun of or at, whatever. I tend, for the most part, to just let them be.
I could also write about politics, sports, current events. movies, fashion, etc. and I do occasionally, but you know, I look around and there are reams of writing everywhere about those things. Reams, I tell ya, reams! What could I possibly add? My own skewed perspective? Sure, but as I said, only once in a while.
So, what am I left with? My ordinary self and my ordinary life. On the blog, anyway. Off the blog I get to go totally fictive. (Is that a word, fictive?) I hope you millions of readers, okay thousands, okay four, aren't too bored, because, well, I don't know why... but...I am unlikely to stop.
So, Don't worry, Be happy, if, you know, you feel like it.
You see, I'm not really a philosopher but...scratch that, I am a philosopher. My philosophy, however, of "Don't worry, Be happy" has been realized only by stoned Jamaicans, the Dali Lama and a Tibetan Buddhist named Carl who lives in a cave somewhere in the Him/Heralaya Mountains and tries to stay warm while chanting "I AM happy, I AM happy, really I AM" but - my philosophy I'm still talking about - is essentially ignored by the rest of the world's populace who are often quoted as saying, "Get a life Doc."
Well, I have a life. It's just, you know, ordinary. And, as I've been trying to tell you, ordinary is fun to live, but hard to write about. My cast of character, me, is not all that interesting but I do get to jump from one brain cell to another in search of an untapped idea that I might be harboring, hidden amongst the debris that clutters up the monkeymind and, when discovered, spit it out here in Cyberspace. For me, this is a fun thing to do. For you, probably, not so much.
I could write about others and I do, once in awhile. I find, though, that it is easy to be self deprecating in an attempt to be funny, but it is hard to be other deprecating in the same attempt, because, well, most people have egos and are thus sensitive to being poked fun of or at, whatever. I tend, for the most part, to just let them be.
I could also write about politics, sports, current events. movies, fashion, etc. and I do occasionally, but you know, I look around and there are reams of writing everywhere about those things. Reams, I tell ya, reams! What could I possibly add? My own skewed perspective? Sure, but as I said, only once in a while.
So, what am I left with? My ordinary self and my ordinary life. On the blog, anyway. Off the blog I get to go totally fictive. (Is that a word, fictive?) I hope you millions of readers, okay thousands, okay four, aren't too bored, because, well, I don't know why... but...I am unlikely to stop.
So, Don't worry, Be happy, if, you know, you feel like it.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
DIET AND EXERCISE, DAMN!
Diet and exercise, they say, are the key to maintaining a slender, healthy body. The problem is they aren't around to clamp a hand over your mouth when the pizza comes your way or there to jerk you out of the chair when your butt has achieved reclined nirvana. They are noticeably absent when the choice is a "Lord of the Rings" marathon or a long walk or when someone says, "Let's do Mexican" and your mind flashes CHIMICHANGA in neon caps. They, the bastards, leave the choices up to us.
"A body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest" they repeat ad infinitum, which is a Latin phrase that means "annoyingly," and to which I say, what's your point? You want to see a man in MOTION just put a lasagna in front of me and behold the blur of activity! I won't REST until it's gone!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, discipline, self discipline, the only kind of discipline that's worth a damn or, at least, that's what I've always said, must be part of the equation. Discipline/diet/exercise = slender/healthy being the equation I just alluded to and, uh, actually, just made up...sort of. But now, alas, - I love the word alas. It signals something of great finality is about to follow - I must a confession make: I've never really adhered to that equation. I've always, in the past, eaten whatever I've felt like and if the pounds began to gather about my gluttonous self, I merely exercised MORE. Hey, no problem! Another set of push-ups, another jog around the park. They can say what they want, it worked for me.
But alas, (I told you I loved it) my plan no longer has merit; hasn't, in fact, for several years. Oh, I still exercise, most of the time, but not enough to compensate for my atrocious diet which includes the two main food groups, (1) foods that taste good and (2) foods that don't, but are within arm's reach, and I am left with the hard choice of changing my habits of a lifetime if I want to remain looking only slightly pregnant and not five or six months gone. I need to lose ten pounds right away and maybe another five for good measure; a good measure being defined as I can latch the top button of my 32 inch waist jeans, a thing that hasn't happened in cough cough years.
And, Oh Damn!, wouldn't you know it? Here come the holidays!
Wish me luck. Really, lots of luck. And discipline. Wish me that too.
"A body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest" they repeat ad infinitum, which is a Latin phrase that means "annoyingly," and to which I say, what's your point? You want to see a man in MOTION just put a lasagna in front of me and behold the blur of activity! I won't REST until it's gone!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, discipline, self discipline, the only kind of discipline that's worth a damn or, at least, that's what I've always said, must be part of the equation. Discipline/diet/exercise = slender/healthy being the equation I just alluded to and, uh, actually, just made up...sort of. But now, alas, - I love the word alas. It signals something of great finality is about to follow - I must a confession make: I've never really adhered to that equation. I've always, in the past, eaten whatever I've felt like and if the pounds began to gather about my gluttonous self, I merely exercised MORE. Hey, no problem! Another set of push-ups, another jog around the park. They can say what they want, it worked for me.
But alas, (I told you I loved it) my plan no longer has merit; hasn't, in fact, for several years. Oh, I still exercise, most of the time, but not enough to compensate for my atrocious diet which includes the two main food groups, (1) foods that taste good and (2) foods that don't, but are within arm's reach, and I am left with the hard choice of changing my habits of a lifetime if I want to remain looking only slightly pregnant and not five or six months gone. I need to lose ten pounds right away and maybe another five for good measure; a good measure being defined as I can latch the top button of my 32 inch waist jeans, a thing that hasn't happened in cough cough years.
And, Oh Damn!, wouldn't you know it? Here come the holidays!
Wish me luck. Really, lots of luck. And discipline. Wish me that too.
Thursday, November 01, 2012
IT'S ALL IN THE GENES
I've grown a beard. I call it my beard for Obama. I'm not sure why, but then the why's of a lot of things escape me. For instance, why am I a liberal. Oh sure, I have done the research, read U.S. history, didn't ditch my Civics classes and found liberal women more, well, liberal, but, I could now probably, no actually, make a case for an opposite point-of-view, except for... For what? That's what I'm trying to grasp. I can see the merits of both major political parties and, although I would like to say that it was after I had carefully considered same, that I chose my left-of-center, democratic mind-set, but that is just not the case. The truth seems to be that it was there all the time.
Scientists have recently noted differences between Republicans and Democrats in the amygdalia part of the human brain. The part that is fear based is enlarged in the Pub brains and the part that determines curiosity is enlarged in the Dem brains. Or so they say. I'm not curious enough to look up the correct spelling of amygdalia so I'm inclined to doubt the hypothesis. (Of course, there is also the possibility that laziness can sometimes trump curiosity.)
But, and here is the question that is down on its knees and begging an answer, are we genetically predisposed to one political position or another or are we truly creatures of free will and thought?
I'm giving odds it's genetics. I mean, isn't everything? Deep down in our DNA, which stands for Danged Natural Attitude, in our very chromosomes, atoms and sub-atomic particles, I'm betting there are little bitty elephants and donkeys mapping out our political beliefs. I know that as a little kid surrounded by Republicans otherwise known as my family, I did not buy the program. There was a tolerance for difference and change completely lacking in their demeanor. Add to that the, All Are Subservient To The Strict Father, household child rearing model common to Pub families at the time, and it was little wonder I was off-put on what had to be a cellular level.
If I'm right, a thing that occurs once in awhile almost as if by chance which is probably the best explanation, then why are we spending billions of dollars to convince a populace to Vote For Me when the votes are already determined by genetics? Maybe there are people who have exactly the same number of little elephants and donkeys in their genetic make-up and are thus perfectly neutral. Maybe we should isolate them, all five of them - there has to be an odd number like the Supreme court or it won't work - and let them determine the outcome of the elections. Think of all the money we would save! We could buy more tanks and Pell Grants!
I am completely facetiously serious about this, so come on scientists. Get those microscopes busy. Find those little red and blue animals and find them soon.
I am really tired of politics.
Scientists have recently noted differences between Republicans and Democrats in the amygdalia part of the human brain. The part that is fear based is enlarged in the Pub brains and the part that determines curiosity is enlarged in the Dem brains. Or so they say. I'm not curious enough to look up the correct spelling of amygdalia so I'm inclined to doubt the hypothesis. (Of course, there is also the possibility that laziness can sometimes trump curiosity.)
But, and here is the question that is down on its knees and begging an answer, are we genetically predisposed to one political position or another or are we truly creatures of free will and thought?
I'm giving odds it's genetics. I mean, isn't everything? Deep down in our DNA, which stands for Danged Natural Attitude, in our very chromosomes, atoms and sub-atomic particles, I'm betting there are little bitty elephants and donkeys mapping out our political beliefs. I know that as a little kid surrounded by Republicans otherwise known as my family, I did not buy the program. There was a tolerance for difference and change completely lacking in their demeanor. Add to that the, All Are Subservient To The Strict Father, household child rearing model common to Pub families at the time, and it was little wonder I was off-put on what had to be a cellular level.
If I'm right, a thing that occurs once in awhile almost as if by chance which is probably the best explanation, then why are we spending billions of dollars to convince a populace to Vote For Me when the votes are already determined by genetics? Maybe there are people who have exactly the same number of little elephants and donkeys in their genetic make-up and are thus perfectly neutral. Maybe we should isolate them, all five of them - there has to be an odd number like the Supreme court or it won't work - and let them determine the outcome of the elections. Think of all the money we would save! We could buy more tanks and Pell Grants!
I am completely facetiously serious about this, so come on scientists. Get those microscopes busy. Find those little red and blue animals and find them soon.
I am really tired of politics.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
FEAR OF FALLING
What follows will be of no particular interest to anyone apart from the archeologists of cyber space, who when un-ethering this text some time in the 24th Century, will note that at least one ordinary 21st Century dude sure liked to run on a bit. That warning given, should you recklessly read this anyway and find yourself fallen into a boredom induced coma...don't blame me.
I dreamed last night that I was roofing. This is not an unusual occurrence as it happens to me two or three times a year. These dreams often end with me falling from the roof and being startled into wakefulness, so they are not among my favorites. Last night I was in and out of the awareness that I was dreaming, so I was able to exert some conscious control over the dream, but not completely; just enough, though, that I could make falling unlikely. This, however, did not fully mitigate the disturbing elements of the dream. I was on one side of a very high, very steep roof. Steep enough that it was barely walkable. I had finished shingling about two thirds of my side when my father, Walt Walton, who had completed roughly the same amount on the other side, climbed over the ridge to challenge me to a who can finish first bet.
I am going to interrupt my narrative here, because I am reminded of perhaps the greatest off-the-cuff pun I have ever heard. On another roofing occasion, not a dream, my father stood on a roof just below the ridge, but above me and my step brother, Ray Hoffman, who were working there. He read us the riot act for one thing or another - I can no longer remember what - and then left. As he descended the ladder to the ground, Ray turned to me and said, "That was a ridge over troubled Walter." I laughed until tears.
In my dream I was reluctant to take the bet. I could see my father's side of the roof from where I was - dreams are like that - and most of his unfinished part was from the middle up, the safest part of the roof. Mine, conversely, was near the bottom where I could see over the edge the long, long way to the ground.
I was instantly adrenalized: racing heart, electric spine, sweaty palms, the whole litany of the fight or flight glands. How this can happen while you sleep and not cause you to awaken seems impossible, but it is in fact, what occurs. Ask anyone who has had nightmares and you will note that it is not until the threat has gone from immanent to actual, which is to say when the monster that has been chasing, reaches for you, or, in my case, when I fall, that reality arrives with a start! Adrenaline has been present for the many moments leading up to the dramatic finish.
Why falling is the substance of my nightmares has its basis in reality. As a kid and then a young adult, I had grown up working for my father's roofing company with its unusual name, Roof Coating Company of New Jersey. I say unusual because most small companies of its kind had names like Bob's Roofing and Gutters or Big Ed's Roofing and Siding. Although our company had been created by my grandfather as a service that applied an asphalt based paint as a preservative to wood shingles, it had grown under my father into a company that did all types of roofing. The name remained the same because "coating" roofs was still a large part of what we did.
After high school, I had gone into the Army for a six month stint before being released to the N.J. National Guard for an additional four and half years. After the Army, I took employment with a Food Fair supermarket as a shelf stocker and began attending Upsala College in East Orange, N.J. at night. The $1.40 an hour I was earning at Food Fair was insufficient for my needs, so I returned to roofing where I could make $3.00 an hour and afford school, dates and the 25 cents a gallon gas for my '51 Mercury. Bad mistake.
The reason, forgotten at that moment, I had not gone immediately back to roofing after the Army was that the work was hard, heavy and dirty. I really didn't like it at all. I also didn't like working for my father who was a tyrant on the best of days and worse so as an employer. Add in, and this I only realize in retrospect, that I am a monkeymind, which is to say often lacking in focus, awareness and attention, and the idea of continuing to work at heights was clearly not a good one.
(Something here about the idiocy of the young in general would would make me feel better about my own stupidity, but the truth is, I was at the time, apparently, dumber than most.)
And so I fell. I climbed up our 36 ft. ladder fully extended one summer day, grabbed the rope that was affixed to the ridge and began hauling myself to the top. When a roof was too steep to walk, we would use ropes wrapped around one leg at crotch level to keep us from falling. The ropes were heavy and extended over the bottom edge of the roof almost to the ground. The weight of the rope beyond you keeps the wrap tight on your leg. The technique is essentially one of reverse repelling. As I made my way to the rooftop, my thoughts were far far away. I had climbed like this a thousand times and I was doing the task similar to a person driving a car on autopilot, their thoughts elsewhere. As I neared the roof's summit I reached with my right hand to grab the chimney there and pull myself fully up to the ridge where it was possible with one foot on either side to walk along without aid. When I did so, I lifted the rope off its tether with my left. As I have said, the roof was very, very steep. I slid down it on my belly too fast, really, to grasp what was happening. Besides, I was 19 years old. I was immortal. This couldn't be happening to me. I did manage to smack the ladder top as I went over the edge and this served to flip me so that I was face up as I fell to the ground. Because I was looking at the sky in the second that it took me to land, the sensation was not of falling, but rather of the ground coming up and smacking me from below. Years later while sky diving I experienced a similar reality. When first exiting the plane I was so high up the ground's approach was almost not discernible. The sensation then was more of flying than of falling. Later, at a lower altitude, when the ground's approach was rapid, falling was the preeminent feeling. Open chute!
Somehow, perhaps by instinct, I got an arm behind my head before I landed and this may have saved my life. Keeping that up-until- then useless appendage from strikning the flagstone below me was a good thing. The other good thing was shock. After the initial wham of the landing, I had no pain. I couldn't move from my torso down, but I had no pain. When the ambulance arrived, I was prone but smoking a cigarette. I thought by doing so, this made me seem cool, calm and collected. Let me say again, I was nineteen.
The EMT's, I don't think they were called that then, thought it was encouraging that I could move my arms, including the big, fat, swollen one my head had landed on, and that I could wiggle my toes. They shuffled me off to the hospital in a shiny, new Cadillac ambulance, the first Cadillac I had ever been in. Now that WAS cool.
I lay about the emergency room for what seemed an eternity before eventually being sent to X-ray. Those spooky skeletal pictures showed no damage. Or so I was told. Yeeha! I was coming out of the shock by then and starting to hurt on a scale of ten at about a twelve and moving rapidly to other double digit numbers. I was sedated and given a room where I would remain for ten days. It wasn't until a couple of decades later when, at my first chiropractor visit, the doc, looking at new X-rays, asked how I had broken my back. I said I hadn't. He said I had. "See right here. No way could your spine be at that angle unless it had been broken and healed back that way." Alrighty then, live and learn.
The woman who was later to have the misfortune of being my first wife was a student nurse at the hospital where I was enjoying my recovery. Because it was known that she and I had been dating prior to my accident, she was not allowed to attend to me. Part of my rehab was to receive three or four light massages each day, hence the enjoying part, the idea being that since my injuries were mostly muscular, massages would aid blood flow to the affected area and stimulate healing. These massages were given by student nurses, all friends or acquaintances of my girlfriend. A few of these very hot young ladies in their sexy, pseudo nurse's uniforms were not above rubbing my black and blue ass until I achieved an erection that put me in a damn near one point stance and one student, who shall remain nameless, although it is a name I'll never forget, even reached under me and gave me what is now referred to as a "Happy Ending." Should I mention that I proposed to her on the spot? As fate would have it, though, and fate was definitely giving me "ups and downs," so speak, at the time, this girl was never assigned to me again. Bummer.
Had that part of this run on blithering been the impetus for my dream last night, I'm sure it would have taken a different turn and I wouldn't be writing about it this grey, rainy, morning. I'd still be abed smiling. But alas no, it was the fall that inspired my nightmare. And, I suppose. I think that maybe, possibly, by putting the tale to paper, I might also put my nightmares to rest.
Hmmm. Let me think about that.
After deep thought, well, medium deep, and further consideration, but not much further, I think that falling as the crux of my nightmares is not so bad. I am, after all, used to it. If I lose falling my 'mares might take a turn to something worse like, for instance, that nasty thing that chases YOU through the swamp at night. No, forget that. I'll stick with falling.
But I DIDN'T fall last night. My dream, although uncomfortable for awhile, morphed into something else that I can't quite remember; something to do with Woowoo Charly and football and politics and dogs and trying to remember to write this in the morning.
So here you have that very thing, more memoir irrelevancy to clutter up cyber space; the cluttering being possibly my principal talent. But hey! Somebody has to do it, don't they? Else where will the archeologists of the future get their material?
Okay, perhaps I hit my head harder than I thought.
I dreamed last night that I was roofing. This is not an unusual occurrence as it happens to me two or three times a year. These dreams often end with me falling from the roof and being startled into wakefulness, so they are not among my favorites. Last night I was in and out of the awareness that I was dreaming, so I was able to exert some conscious control over the dream, but not completely; just enough, though, that I could make falling unlikely. This, however, did not fully mitigate the disturbing elements of the dream. I was on one side of a very high, very steep roof. Steep enough that it was barely walkable. I had finished shingling about two thirds of my side when my father, Walt Walton, who had completed roughly the same amount on the other side, climbed over the ridge to challenge me to a who can finish first bet.
I am going to interrupt my narrative here, because I am reminded of perhaps the greatest off-the-cuff pun I have ever heard. On another roofing occasion, not a dream, my father stood on a roof just below the ridge, but above me and my step brother, Ray Hoffman, who were working there. He read us the riot act for one thing or another - I can no longer remember what - and then left. As he descended the ladder to the ground, Ray turned to me and said, "That was a ridge over troubled Walter." I laughed until tears.
In my dream I was reluctant to take the bet. I could see my father's side of the roof from where I was - dreams are like that - and most of his unfinished part was from the middle up, the safest part of the roof. Mine, conversely, was near the bottom where I could see over the edge the long, long way to the ground.
I was instantly adrenalized: racing heart, electric spine, sweaty palms, the whole litany of the fight or flight glands. How this can happen while you sleep and not cause you to awaken seems impossible, but it is in fact, what occurs. Ask anyone who has had nightmares and you will note that it is not until the threat has gone from immanent to actual, which is to say when the monster that has been chasing, reaches for you, or, in my case, when I fall, that reality arrives with a start! Adrenaline has been present for the many moments leading up to the dramatic finish.
Why falling is the substance of my nightmares has its basis in reality. As a kid and then a young adult, I had grown up working for my father's roofing company with its unusual name, Roof Coating Company of New Jersey. I say unusual because most small companies of its kind had names like Bob's Roofing and Gutters or Big Ed's Roofing and Siding. Although our company had been created by my grandfather as a service that applied an asphalt based paint as a preservative to wood shingles, it had grown under my father into a company that did all types of roofing. The name remained the same because "coating" roofs was still a large part of what we did.
After high school, I had gone into the Army for a six month stint before being released to the N.J. National Guard for an additional four and half years. After the Army, I took employment with a Food Fair supermarket as a shelf stocker and began attending Upsala College in East Orange, N.J. at night. The $1.40 an hour I was earning at Food Fair was insufficient for my needs, so I returned to roofing where I could make $3.00 an hour and afford school, dates and the 25 cents a gallon gas for my '51 Mercury. Bad mistake.
The reason, forgotten at that moment, I had not gone immediately back to roofing after the Army was that the work was hard, heavy and dirty. I really didn't like it at all. I also didn't like working for my father who was a tyrant on the best of days and worse so as an employer. Add in, and this I only realize in retrospect, that I am a monkeymind, which is to say often lacking in focus, awareness and attention, and the idea of continuing to work at heights was clearly not a good one.
(Something here about the idiocy of the young in general would would make me feel better about my own stupidity, but the truth is, I was at the time, apparently, dumber than most.)
And so I fell. I climbed up our 36 ft. ladder fully extended one summer day, grabbed the rope that was affixed to the ridge and began hauling myself to the top. When a roof was too steep to walk, we would use ropes wrapped around one leg at crotch level to keep us from falling. The ropes were heavy and extended over the bottom edge of the roof almost to the ground. The weight of the rope beyond you keeps the wrap tight on your leg. The technique is essentially one of reverse repelling. As I made my way to the rooftop, my thoughts were far far away. I had climbed like this a thousand times and I was doing the task similar to a person driving a car on autopilot, their thoughts elsewhere. As I neared the roof's summit I reached with my right hand to grab the chimney there and pull myself fully up to the ridge where it was possible with one foot on either side to walk along without aid. When I did so, I lifted the rope off its tether with my left. As I have said, the roof was very, very steep. I slid down it on my belly too fast, really, to grasp what was happening. Besides, I was 19 years old. I was immortal. This couldn't be happening to me. I did manage to smack the ladder top as I went over the edge and this served to flip me so that I was face up as I fell to the ground. Because I was looking at the sky in the second that it took me to land, the sensation was not of falling, but rather of the ground coming up and smacking me from below. Years later while sky diving I experienced a similar reality. When first exiting the plane I was so high up the ground's approach was almost not discernible. The sensation then was more of flying than of falling. Later, at a lower altitude, when the ground's approach was rapid, falling was the preeminent feeling. Open chute!
Somehow, perhaps by instinct, I got an arm behind my head before I landed and this may have saved my life. Keeping that up-until- then useless appendage from strikning the flagstone below me was a good thing. The other good thing was shock. After the initial wham of the landing, I had no pain. I couldn't move from my torso down, but I had no pain. When the ambulance arrived, I was prone but smoking a cigarette. I thought by doing so, this made me seem cool, calm and collected. Let me say again, I was nineteen.
The EMT's, I don't think they were called that then, thought it was encouraging that I could move my arms, including the big, fat, swollen one my head had landed on, and that I could wiggle my toes. They shuffled me off to the hospital in a shiny, new Cadillac ambulance, the first Cadillac I had ever been in. Now that WAS cool.
I lay about the emergency room for what seemed an eternity before eventually being sent to X-ray. Those spooky skeletal pictures showed no damage. Or so I was told. Yeeha! I was coming out of the shock by then and starting to hurt on a scale of ten at about a twelve and moving rapidly to other double digit numbers. I was sedated and given a room where I would remain for ten days. It wasn't until a couple of decades later when, at my first chiropractor visit, the doc, looking at new X-rays, asked how I had broken my back. I said I hadn't. He said I had. "See right here. No way could your spine be at that angle unless it had been broken and healed back that way." Alrighty then, live and learn.
The woman who was later to have the misfortune of being my first wife was a student nurse at the hospital where I was enjoying my recovery. Because it was known that she and I had been dating prior to my accident, she was not allowed to attend to me. Part of my rehab was to receive three or four light massages each day, hence the enjoying part, the idea being that since my injuries were mostly muscular, massages would aid blood flow to the affected area and stimulate healing. These massages were given by student nurses, all friends or acquaintances of my girlfriend. A few of these very hot young ladies in their sexy, pseudo nurse's uniforms were not above rubbing my black and blue ass until I achieved an erection that put me in a damn near one point stance and one student, who shall remain nameless, although it is a name I'll never forget, even reached under me and gave me what is now referred to as a "Happy Ending." Should I mention that I proposed to her on the spot? As fate would have it, though, and fate was definitely giving me "ups and downs," so speak, at the time, this girl was never assigned to me again. Bummer.
Had that part of this run on blithering been the impetus for my dream last night, I'm sure it would have taken a different turn and I wouldn't be writing about it this grey, rainy, morning. I'd still be abed smiling. But alas no, it was the fall that inspired my nightmare. And, I suppose. I think that maybe, possibly, by putting the tale to paper, I might also put my nightmares to rest.
Hmmm. Let me think about that.
After deep thought, well, medium deep, and further consideration, but not much further, I think that falling as the crux of my nightmares is not so bad. I am, after all, used to it. If I lose falling my 'mares might take a turn to something worse like, for instance, that nasty thing that chases YOU through the swamp at night. No, forget that. I'll stick with falling.
But I DIDN'T fall last night. My dream, although uncomfortable for awhile, morphed into something else that I can't quite remember; something to do with Woowoo Charly and football and politics and dogs and trying to remember to write this in the morning.
So here you have that very thing, more memoir irrelevancy to clutter up cyber space; the cluttering being possibly my principal talent. But hey! Somebody has to do it, don't they? Else where will the archeologists of the future get their material?
Okay, perhaps I hit my head harder than I thought.
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