Curmudgeousness’s Weblog

On the downside of roller-coaster hill again another omen. A young coyote dashes across the road. His leap starts somewhere just past barbed wire on one side of the road and ends – over the pavement – just before the wire - on the other side. He limbos under the fence in a flash and sprints across the pasture. The young ones, besides being smaller, are more jittery. Coyotes are lurkers and don’t like to be caught out in the open but there’s not much ‘open’ left. The older ones – more gray in their coat - don’t jump quite as easy. They’ll take a just a fraction of a moment to consider your noisy hunk of metal hurling down the road towards them; to contemplate your proliferating bricks, shingles, driveways, cul-de-sacs; your plastic playscapes, sprinklers, and mulched flower beds. Then bolt back in the shadows.

I’m on the other side of bend on county road 217 or roller coaster hill as locals call it. My house is at one end of roller coaster hill and I’m driving to work now. Not as groggy as usual because I did some “work” at home and left a little later. The public radio station is playing some alt-country-blue-grass something or other. The road is 1 ¾” lanes, no shoulder, no median. It’s been patched so many times that its like a lumpy quilt of shades of black and gray. I’m sipping my coffee and I notice a ripple in the road, like a piece of ribbon or cassette tape unspooled reflecting the light. But the ripple is also crossing the road. It’s a tiny garter snake and he’s booking it to avoid me. I do a swerve but a ‘responsible’ swerve. I’m not sure if he avoided my wheels or not. I back up. No sign of him. I move on and the snake is beyond my interest in seconds. The county road flattens out and takes a few near-ninety degree turns and after the last one, there’s a big ripple. No mistaking this one – a big gray whip snake. He’s booking it too, but not because of me. He’s being hounded by a big blue jay – a female that’s more gray than blue. She is making sure this snake does not loiter around making trouble. “Hell hath no fury” and all that and doubly so if a woman is a mamma. I’m not sure which of them I can empathize with. I think to myself - I wonder if I was Native American if this would be some kind of omen - the little snake, then the big snake and the bird – on the road.

Morning. I feel like there is an ache inside spine, all my joints and it is radiating out and in at the same time. My gut is somewhere between cramping and nausea.

I got up and around by sheer will/fear of the complete loser precipice always near my steps. Showered, dressed, groomed, yada yada with wife about this day that day/week/month/life details that I couldn’t possibly recall even on a multiple choice test. Fed the dog. Watered the plants. Washed some dishes that should have been washed the night before.

Every task is performed like a prisoner of war, impassively plodding along a choreographed routine I didn’t believe in and at times praying to escape. I walked/rolled the trash can the 60 or so yards down the dusty gravel drive way for pick-up today. Jeez will it ever rain again? Head bowed, hands behind me shackled by the trash can. Turning back down the driveway I’m surprised by a breeze - a coastal breeze according to weather droning - in my face, on my arms. I closed my eyes while I walk and know this breeze might be the best part of the entire day. Weather-heads said the same breeze will be the result of choking humidity once the sun does its thing on the day.

Ritual kiss goodbye. I’m pretty sure it was wife. Throw the ball for the dog a couple times. Start car down 20 mile/30 minute path. News is on. Oblivious. Starbucks coffee and cookie. Nursing the coffee, writing the e-mails.

…up. Greetings and salmon mutations to you my loyal readers. And by readers I mean government censors. I have taken considerable flack from the voice in my head named Praxplurg for my neglect of this blog. He is really starting to irritate my arse, or perhaps that’s just the heat rash, one without ointment really never knows. I know this void has left many of you adrift in the sea of life wandering aimlessly amid the mid-bandwidth babble. Unfortunately I am as unmotivated as ever and so really have nothing to contribute. But that doesn’t stop popular music, film, and television producers so why should it stop me?

What has been going on in my life for the past couple weeks? Don’t even pretend you care. But if you did I would say that everything – virtually everything – I have done has been colored by the weather. More specifically, how friggin’ hot will it be today. May, and now June are on their way to being record high temps for my area and this time I mean geographically not pharmaspiritually. I work in an IT capacity but in a manufacturing plant where some of the offices and buildings the A/C is often just not capable of competing with the 100 plus degrees around it – if its even on. So basically, by 3 or 4 in the afternoon I am sapped.

My wife was away on Father’s day weekend so my 21 year old son came to hang out with me. I’m not sure that he didn’t get some kind of community service credit like volunteering at the ‘old folks’ home – or as I call it the ’slightly older folks’ home. He has no problem with the heat which is a good thing since he generally doesn’t get out of bed till noon. I on the other hand have basically trying to get whatever I can done between the hours of 6am and noon. After noon I try to be as motionless as possible. But while he visited we played golf every evening. Do I play golf you ask? Well, no I do not. I have a set of clubs I purchased for $30. But all I really use is the 9 iron. Which I use in the pasture to hit golf balls over trees. That’s my entire game. We actually have set up three make shift flags in the pasture so we also played a few rounds of closest to the pin as well. We did make it to the local state park golf course for nine holes on one evening. Though, I dunno if you can call it an evening when the temperatures are still 95 degrees. We also gave Earl, an Australian Shepherd Blue Merle his summer haircut (about ¼” of hair all over). This offends many dog snobs but he always gets an little more giddy-up when he gets this cut. I cut his nails also which was sorely overdue.

I also spent some time with my son playing guitars.  He is a aspiring guitarist (just taking up the instrument a year ago he’s doing okay) so we worked on a few songs, chords and misc technique as well.

On the hi-fi mostly has been couple CD’s I picked up of ‘hits’ by “Booker T and the MG’s” (Memphis studio legends backing many artists of the R&B 60/70’s)and “The Meters” (New Orleans based funk). There’s nothing sophisticated about these bands.  Just pure soul/funk or sometimes a combination of both - ‘foul sunk’.

I have read three books so far. Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” (see previous post), a mystery novel set in Yellowstone park (not very good), a pop culture novel set in L.A. (eh), and now another mystery novel (so far also not very good). I would like to make this observation about drugstore mystery novels. Every single one of them has won two or more of some kind of award for mystery novels I’ve never heard of. “Winner of the Constance Puing award, The Cletus, The H.W. Hockeysticks” etc. And they all have glowing reviews from newspapers in towns in the Midwest. “A gripping read says The Ames Gazette”.. “A real page turner says the Des Moines Herald”. I usually buy these books when I’m killing time – such as shopping with my wife – which keeps me from killing myself. I also always buy them from the bargain rack. So one might say I get what I pay for. And here’s a confession – I rarely can bring myself to buy one of these crappy novels if they’re written by a woman. I know its wrong. But really who can say what is right in this category of ‘literature’? For the record, I’m pretty sure James Patterson is a woman, so I also won’t read his stuff – fool me once shame on me. My fave authors of this genre would be Elmore Leanord and James Elroy.

The DVD player has rendered “Round Midnight” (hardy thumbs up), “Once” (also good), and “The Prestige” (surprisingly suspenseful). The last was during the Father’s day weekend. My son and I like to play the “guess the next plot twist” game which I have discovered is not really appreciated at the theater. “The Prestige” is a real challenge in that category.

In the unfinished projects category it should be noted that I broke the dryer and it is in pieces, and I have pulled up carpet to be replaced weeks ago but not replaced it with any new flooring. That’s the way I roll.

This will suffice for now as a post. I’ll come back and punch it up with some links and possibly lies later. Ta-ta.

It’s been a while between posts. Its not that I haven’t had a lot on my mind. It’s just that at least some of what’s on my mind is the kind of raw and ugly junk that’s not that easy to write about. None the less, I’m going to make an attempt to “go there” now. I had an ugly emotional day recently that stayed under the surface. Nobody got to see it. But I knew it was there – that I was close to some kind of snap - and it was pretty scary.

Back Story

This is going to require a little back story dear readers and I am going to do all I can to keep it concise. Not just concise, but maybe a little fuzzy in the details to protect the innocent. I’ve been married twice. The first falls under one of those young and stupid categories and is a story for another day. I’ve been married to my wife of today for near 25 years now. When I met her I was literally reconstructing my life (another story for yet another day). I was attracted to her in all the usual ways, but the most overwhelmingly new attraction was her brave and confident way of handling herself. She was a single mom at the time, and she was also starting over at a new career. I learned she also survived a heart defect as a child that nearly no one had survived before. The heart defect led to, among other things, a bout with scoliosis in her teens when treatment was a tough haul. In spite of this, she was an extremely active and popular person growing up. She was also somebody I would have NEVER have even met as a young person. A cheerleader, a rodeo cowgirl, a daddy’s little princess – all the complete opposite of the near delinquent circles I ran in. She went to nursing school and became a registered nurse. She married one of those extremely macho bull riders who didn’t treat her or their baby girl so well. She divorced him and set about making a new life. When I met her, she was attempting to gain experience in sales in order to take her earning potential beyond what she thought she could as a nurse.

I’m going to have to greatly fast-forward though some things here in order to get the back story wrapped up. We met. I recognized she was the complete opposite of anyone I had ever been involved with before. She was a combination of no-nonsense, get done what has to get done determination, and grab all the joy each day has to offer. It was infectious. I was thirty and lost as a goose – borderline manic depressed. But she inspired in me a confidence I didn’t have. After a whirlwind courtship we were married. I knew going in she wanted another baby but she even gave me the confidence to believe I could be a father. The sales job she had wasn’t working out so she jumped back into nursing without grumbling. Just a little more than a year after we were married, we had a son. We embarked on a beautiful life as a little family.

We had been married fifteen years when the first blip in my wife’s health occurred. She was hospitalized with dangerous heart arrhythmias. Not long after we were to learn that a heart valve was failing and she would require open-heart surgery to repair it. All of the insecurities I had in myself before we were married were rushing to my head now and leaving me in a dizzy panic. I had to realize that it was easy for me to play the part of husband and father because she made it easy. Now I was having grave doubts about if I was the kind of husband who could see a wife through such a thing, or worse lose her and be raising these kids by myself. Somehow, we made it though. Not only through that surgery, but another open heart surgery when that valve failed again just a couple years later. It was a very tough time. Besides the challenges to my wife’s health, we were now nearly broke. But we got through it all, and got through it with really a lot of love and joy. Each time I was amazed by what I could really endure. We saw our daughter/stepdaughter graduate college and marry and our son graduate high school with honors and enroll in a prestigious program at University of Texas. We had turned our finances around in no small part because my wife and finally turned that sales experience into that career in medical sales she had wanted.

Then my wife gets diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer. I have to say that there was an overwhelming but somewhat unspoken feeling of “What the hell? Can we catch a break here?” But we resolved to get through this as well. If I thought the years during the heart surgeries were tough, they were nothing compared to this battle. I guess we had to be grateful we were in a better financial situation and we had jobs that gave us the freedom to fight this. Our kids were for the most part, grown and on their way in life. But in this battle I saw my wife go to as close to dead as I can imagine and battle her way back in a year’s time. She got down to near skeleton weight, and once coded in the hospital and had to be revived. I lived day to day, mustering the courage to do what I had to do for her, and keeping my fears and frustrations buried deep inside so she wouldn’t see it. Yet again, we somehow got through it. We’re now almost two years cancer free now. But we are both changed. And that is where my story for today begins.

Scope of Things

My wife had a scheduled colonoscopy this past week. Not because of anything symptomatic but rather her age and cancer history. They also scoped her esophagus, because she has battled some heartburn but mostly due to her age and history. The prep for the procedure is no fun. I had to do it a few years back and it made me about as sick as I’ve ever been. The procedure itself was early on Monday morning. We got up early and she wasn’t feeling too badly. She was nervous. Not about the procedure but about the possibility of them finding something. This is one of the changes in her. She is fearful now and understandably so. But it is so different from the girl that inspired me to start a family some decades ago. I am the one who has to be positive and confident now, and that is not my nature. She was very emotional and repeating how much she loved me. I reciprocated those feelings as best I could. But having to appear confident for her sake, when in reality I also was quite scared was actually making me angry. That’s when I realized what has been bubbling inside me for all these years now. I have been getting pissed off. I pushed that feeling way way down for her sake. Soon they took her back for the procedure and I went to the waiting room.

I have been trying to finish a book that my wife wanted me to read written by a guy with terminal pancreatic cancer. Since we almost never agree on books (or movies or music) she never asks me to read anything. Her asking me to read it meant it was a big deal to her so I agreed. But as literature goes, this story is far from extraordinary. Not that I wasn’t often moved to tears by the guys situation. But he was coming off as if his diagnosis had given him some great revelations to pass on to the rest of us and those revelations seemed to me to just be pretty much home-spun, cliché ridden, maxims on living life one day at a time. And now… now that I was trying to read it in this waiting room… and trying to keep down the feeling of being pissed off at my wife … and the shame for feeling pissed off… now I was REAAALLLY getting pissed off at the nerve of this guy who only had six months to live and felt like that had appointed him life coach for the rest of us…

Now, 45 minutes have past and they have come to get me to bring me to the little room my wife is recovering in. She’s just a little loopy from the drugs. There’s a nurse who pops in and out of the room checking on her. My wife tells me the nurse is too chirpy and this must mean something is wrong. I am forced to muster calm strength on the outside when inside I’d almost like to choke her. I held her hand and told her to not let her thoughts and emotions get away from her. Then, on one of the little nurse visits, she mentioned that the doc did some biopsies during the procedure. Uh oh. Biopsies to us meant the doc saw something that looked suspicious. I saw my wife on the verge of completely losing it and quickly began to assure her that it didn’t mean anything yet. I reminded her she had already had lots of stuff biopsied that turned out to be nothing and there’s no reason to think this was any different. That’s what I was telling her. Its important to note here, that neither one of us would dare say “if it is cancer, we’ll get through it”. The last battle was so frightening that I don’t think either of us could say that with any honesty. Rather, I tried to bring to a conscious position of only dwelling on the known, not the unknown. I was calm, steady, loving and quite ready to start punching doctors in the face. In a while the doc came in and said he saw nothing on either end that looked concerning. He took microscopic cells to biopsy just because of her history. He’ll never know how close he came to getting punched. We calmed down.

We stopped for a lovely breakfast at one of our favorite restaurants back in our courtship days. Discussed what we were going to do for the day, the week, and for the summer. Cancer never came up. We moved on. We actually haven’t received the results of that biopsy yet. I assume it will be all normal. I assume because thinking otherwise is not healthy. But I am aware now that I am stifling a very selfish anger at my wife. I am just as concerned about my reaction to potential bad news as the news itself. To be continued? What else is there?

Note: I snatched this illustration from a blog post boingboing.net I would post a link to that post but I’m getting some kind error that crashes both Firefox and IE7.  I cant even remember what the original text in the balloon was but it seems to beg a caption contest.

Preface

The personal profile on this blog is intentionally abstract. It is my thought that it would be better for readers to gradually form a picture in their heads of who I am by reading the posts. In the long run, I think this would be more honest than anything I would attempt to compose in the form of a biography. Of course this assumes a great deal. One assumption being that anybody reads this tripe and beyond that assumption that I post frequently and honestly enough to provide that kind of picture of who I am. I couldn’t say whether any of those questions are resolved but, really, who gives a !@#$ who I am anyway?

One thing that has most definitely defined who I am is that I have migraine headaches. I have had them since I was a pre-teen. There have been periods where they have waxed or waned in frequency and intensity but they have always been with me and when they are at their worst they are completely debilitating. If they are at maximum intensity I will not be able to function at all beyond moans and writhing. I have several times in my life gone to the emergency room for the shot of Demerol for relief. Prior to the emergence of sumatriptan class of drugs my only other hope was to get in a quiet and darkened place and ride it out. Riding it out often involves peaking with nausea and vomiting. Just as a side note, I have had MRI’s, numerous blood tests, and tried lots of prophylactic medications. All of those meds had intolerable side effects and, at least as long as I was able to tolerate them, no effect on the frequency of the headaches.

Sumatriptan drugs came along in the 1990’s and have allowed me to pharmaceutically intercede before the ’sick’ stage most of the time. I can’t be thankful enough for the advent of these meds. Having the specter of the debilitating variety means every twinge of a headache elicits great fear. That fear has led me to become, in my opinion, hyperactive, pharmaceutically speaking. The sumatriptan drugs are kind of expensive and carefully meted out as far as insurance is concerned.  So, I will often attempt to avert the headache with pain medications first. This includes over the counter variety and some prescription variety as well. Also, on the occasion where the sumatriptan drug doesn’t seem to be doing the job, I will supplement with pain medication.

This cycle has been going on for a decade now. So it is, that in the past year I have been attempting again to root out the cause of the headaches at a deeper level. One potential root cause might have been fleshed out in a clinical sleep study I had done. It appears from the study that I never go into what sleep specialist call stage 3 deep sleep (or was it stage 4 – I can’t recall). The study also revealed what my wife has maintained for sometime and that is that I frequently stop breathing (clinically referred to as ‘apnea’) during sleep. The neurologist who oversaw the study said that the reports from my study look like classical narcoleptic but I do not exhibit any of the classic narcoleptic symptoms. That is to say, I don’t fall asleep while waiting at red lights, watching TV, reading a book, etc. I am tired a great deal of the time, and perhaps the sleep study has revealed why, at least in a clinical sense. So it is that I have been trying to accommodate sleeping with a CPAP machine for some months now. The neurologist also prescribed Ambien. With the ambient, I was able to go to sleep for a couple hours, sometimes three, with the CPAP machine mask on my face. But, invariably, I would wake up and have a kind of claustrophobic reaction to the mask, and take it off and go back to sleep. Sometimes I would go back to sleep easily, other times I would struggle with it. I was, of course, supposed to report these results to my neurologist frequently and additionally I was supposed to send him a credit card like thing from the CPAP machine after 30 days or so that records the ‘back pressure’ from my breathing through the mask. After 30 days (possibly more) of struggling with the mask, I kind of fell into a routine of just relying on the Ambien and not wearing the mask at all.  I am embarrassed to say I never followed up with the neurologist, nor did I ever send in the little card.  I was getting four, five hours of sleep for the first time in I don’t know how long for for a while I was kind of satisfied with that.

But, alas, there has been no great reduction in the frequency of headaches. So, with a little encouragement/reprimanding from the neurologist and my wife I’m making another, more resolved, attempt to sleep with the CPAP machine. This began with a frustratingly pointless appointment with my neurologists (all my fault) and then a visit to the medical supply establishment that ‘leases’ me and the insurance company the machine in the first place.

Medical Supply

I went back to this establishment today to be refitted with a new mask in the hopes that I will sleep through the night, reap the benefits of improved oxygen saturation, and be headache free (loaded with energy would just be bonus). The company was chosen by my insurance company. I will not recount here the amazingly brainless choices made by most insurance companies but lets just say this is no exception to that rule. It is nearly 30 miles away from where I live. It operates in a ‘business’ park of small garage style warehouses. It looks more like a place you’d get your car windows tinted than a medical supply. A youngish girl greeted me from behind a cheap and fairly messy metal desk with a computer on it. She looked on the computer and said it appears I was there to get a different mask. I said something to the effect of, appearances can be deceiving but in this case she was correct. She never paused a moment to acknowledge my philosophical and witty reply.  I should have known then, anything remotely conversational would be a waste of time. I sat at a chair across the desk. She explained that I could choose between two masks different from the one I was currently using. The current one straps around my head like a military issue gas mask, but only covers my nose. The choices were one that covers mouth AND  nose, and a “nasal canular” which fits under your nose and into your nostrils. Since claustrophobic reaction to the current mask is the reason I was there, I opted for the latter. If it had a breathing regulator for your mouth it would look like some of the early ‘aqua lung’ SCUBA apparatus. She launched into a spiel about its operation and fitting with as little eye contact as possible. While still giving the spiel she stood and moved beside the desk so I could see as she showed the adjustments of straps and hoses for the mask. The girl giving the spiel was twiggishly thin but she didn’t appear fragile. On the contrary, I got the sense that she might be kinda tough. She wore no makeup that I could tell. Her nails were slightly long but not manicured. She was standing in front of me and I was sitting so it was like she was doing a card trick or puppet show in front of me.  I could watch the show, or look her in the face, but not both at the same time.  I became distracted by watching her thin arms and long fingers manipulate the mask. I was reminded of my mother. She was also thin like this. In fact I have my mother’s thin forearms. Even at 165lb, I cannot wear a men’s watch to this day because my wrists are so narrow. I commented to her that her arms and wrists where small like my mothers. She didn’t acknowledge the remark an iota and barely paused from the script. I considered for a moment that this might be an interesting challenge. I wondered if I could gradually ratchet up the remarks in their absurdity or provocativeness till she would at last tell me to shut the !@#$ up. It occurred to me that other relationships I had with women in the past had been based on this experiment - just extended over a longer time period. After a time, I decided to just let her finish the spiel so we could both be on our way. But I now observed she had an odd tiny spasm to her movements. It was very very subtle. As she shifted her weight from one foot to the other it was like there was an extra and slight bend of the knee. Or as she moved the mask from one hand to the other, the hand releasing would just slightly wave or an elbow would bend unnecessarily. That’s when I started observing her face more and I grew to suspect that she was concentrating very hard to keep on the script without the extra tics affecting her face or speech.  Ocassionally, I saw the slightest twitch of the corner of her mouth.  I was glad I hadn’t elected to go with the experiment. But now, I was hopelessly distracted from the spiel. I can only pray I got the gist of the demonstration and don’t end up putting an eye out as my mother so often predicted would happen.  As I left the office it occurred to me she never told me her name, but that asking now would just be weird.

After the demonstration, she changed out the machine with new air filters and hoses, had me sign some papers, and I was on my way. I went to my car and, as has painfully become my habit, text messaged my wife and work that I was leaving the medical supply place and headed back to the office. Before I started the car to leave I noticed that the demo girl and the only other girl in the office and gone outside for a smoke break. It always pains me to see young and even marginally healthy people smoking. I’m by no means preachy about the subject. I just have witnessed what a toll that habit takes on the body and I don’t particularly mean lung cancer. I always wanna tell young people when they’re smoking, “you won’t be young forever but you might as well make it last as long as possible so put that !@#$ing cigarette out!”. I never do. She was standing and gazing off so stoically though. The other girl was prattling away and she was fixed on the horizon and sucking that cigarette smoke down. I wondered what heavy burdens this waifish girl must be carrying at such a young age to give her this edge. I wondered if the tics had anything to do with it. I wished I could go and tell her everybody should get to stay young as long as possible and I was sorry for the extra burdens she had to carry.  But I didn’t even know her name.

Wings of Desire and Into Great Silence

Both of these movies have something in common. That is that I watched them late at night and while I was very tired. Unlike REAL film critics though, I’m going to admit it as a caveat to my remarks. Both movies really should be watched when one is alert and attentive but for different reasons.

Into Great Silence is more than 2 and half hours long and has next to no dialog. It is a documentary look inside the monestery life at Grande Chartreuse I think in France or Switzerland. It is visually impressive. If you think you could look at a high quality photography exhibit for 2 and half hours then you will have no problem with this film for that experience alone. It is interesting that the cinematographer goes back and forth between sharp and grainy images. I suspect that a lot of the grainy images are too keep the filming as unobtrusive as possible but the result is good. There are even Rembrandt still-life like pauses at windows or doorways. Its lack of commentary is the most important commentary of all. It certainly gives on pause to consider what revelations might be beyond the din and activity of our everyday lives. I unfortunately was tired when I started and an hour and half in was actually paying little attention. Not proud of that, but its true. Mostly thumbs up, but I have to say - WORST ACTION/CHASE/SEX SCENES EVER!

I popped “Wings of Desire” in the DVD on another late night when I was already tired. I watch a lot of foreign films so I am used to sub-titles, but I found following this movies sub-title dialog a little tedious. Not because the dialog was bad but because it was complex like poetry. Also the film is in a noire-ish b&w a lot and the white sub-titles were occasionally plain hard to read. So I found myself constantly going back to double check the dialog. Also the scenes themselves were complex and sometimes changing rapidly. The premise - angels electing for mortality - is roughly used in a lot of stories but there is quite a different twist to this one. There is also some humor, albeit, of a not-that-funny German ilk. The screenplay reminds me of T.S. Elliot poetry. Not sure how much of that is the translation. Some of the movie is in English mostly from a most surprising role by Peter Falk quite effectively playing himself - sort of. Saying any more would be a spoiler.

I received this beautiful text message on my cell phone yesterday, “Hush, I’m on my way.”

If I remember then vividly enough, and I find them interesting enough I like to write down my dreams.

The Sandwich Shoppe and The Lord

My wife and I had apparently purchased a small sandwich shop in a strip mall. The strip mall was a “U” shaped structure with a courtyard. In the sandwich shop a row of the large ceiling tiles were sagging. Before I could even consider what to do about the tiles a customer walked in. We had not actually opened the shop for business and didn’t have any of thing out of the pantry or refrigerators. We didn’t even have the lights on yet. We somehow made sandwiches for the customers and one of them suggested I talk to the landlord about the sagging ceiling tiles. The customer said that the landlord had actually sold out to some developers but he was in the courtyard at this moment and this would be my last chance to get any repairs authorized by him.

I went into the courtyard and the landlord was walking around with a handful other attentive guys. It looked like one of those Bible illustrations of Jesus and his disciples. Except the disciples were dressed in business shirts and ties, some with clipboards or brief cases and the landlord was a naked balding dude. Well sort of a dude. He was a middle aged guy, with dark hair but very very thin on top. He had a goatee and a little hair on his chest and stomach. Now that I am recalling it, he kinda looked like the BTK killer in Wichita except he didn’t wear glasses. He also had a bald vagina for his genitals. This group was strolling through the courtyard with the landlord telling the attentive, note-taking disciples things that needed to be done about the strip mall and a crowd was beginning to grow around them. I could not get close enough to the landlord to tell him about my sagging ceiling tiles in the sandwich shop.

Ultimately the landlord, disciples and crowd had strolled out of the courtyard and into a large park with a stage at one end. The landlord and disciples took seats at the back of the stage. In front of them were a lot of old ‘rock venue’ amps and mics and monitors. There were old beige and black Marshall stacks, Fender guitar amps, a couple of mixing boards, and a slew of mics and mic stands etc. There was no rock band, but there was a couple roadies working. I remember thinking that it was kinda old and crappy equipment, but that maybe the band wanted it that way for their ’sound’. The crowd in the park was quite large and I saw no way I was going to get close enough to the stage to ask the landlord about the tiles, particularly if a band was about to crank it up.

I decided that my best option was to fly over the crowd and land on the stage. (Editors note: I have been able to fly in quite a few of my dreams over the past couple years but I don’t recall being able to fly before that). I also thought that the landlord, disciples and crowd might be kind of impressed that I could fly. I sprung myself into the air enough to catch an air current. This process is kind of like starting a kite where there are dips and lifts and, with luck, more of the latter until I am able to stay comfortably aloft. I was able to get aloft but was having trouble making my way toward the stage. It was like I was fighting a bit of a crosswind because I kept drifting and angling to one side. It was a slow and arduous effort fighting this crosswind and I couldn’t really pay attention to the crowd. By the time I got close to the stage the crowd was actually dispersing and it appeared the concert was over, and the landlord and his disciples were leaving. I was able to land on the stage just as the naked landlord was about to descend the steps from the stage. He stopped and it was only he and I on the stage. He seemed impressed that I could fly and asked what he could do for me. I told him about the tiles and he said he was sorry, but that the mall was out of his control now that the concert was over. He offered, by way of consolation, that I could have all of the old sound equipment left on the stage. I turned and looked at all the old Marshall and Fender amps and cabinets, etc. and thought that was kinda cool. I turned back and the landlord was gone. Perhaps there was some kind of angel attended ascension into a big high-rise office or something but I didn’t see any of that and there were no angels around to explain.

I woke up a little hungry.