Metamorphosism

This morning, at breakfast

First Person: What's new?
Second Person: [Reading newspaper] A guy killed a guy and ate his brain.
First Person: Yeah, I just read about that online.
First Person: Crazy.
Second Person: Mmm hmm.
First Person: Seriously crazy.
First Person: Good way to catch Creutzfeldt-Jakob.
First Person: Mad cow disease or something.
First Person: I mean, that was in a homeless shelter, right?
First Person: [Ponders] Although, gee, whose brain IS it safe to eat?
First Person: Nowadays.
Second Person: Mmm hmm.

[Later]

Third Person: Dad! Someone killed someone and ate their brain!
First Person: Yeah.
First Person: Good morning.
Third Person: They say there was a hole this big and the brain was coming out.
First Person: You had breakfast yet?
First Person: What you having, scrambled eggs? Mwahahaha.
First Person: Are you even old enough to be reading this stuff?
First Person: Don't you have to be sixteen to read that sort of stuff?
Third Person: This is the NEWSPAPER. That's okay. It's true.
First Person: Oh, okay.
First Person: In that case.

Something, something mountain, chop it down with the edge of my hand

To get to the convenience store so my father can buy a pack of Winstons one particular overcast afternoon, I must stop, wait for a hole in oncoming traffic and drive a green Ford Courier pickup truck across a couple lanes into the parking lot, which involves me killing the engine a good half-dozen times.

In on the gas, out on the clutch, he says. He is patient, the oncoming drivers waiting for me are patient, I'm the only one getting upset.

It's okay, he says. It's okay. In on the gas, out on the clutch.

Immediately after that, last night in other words: a vast local parking lot. Or, the vastest I could find, anyway. Rain gathers on the horizon, moving closer. We have returned a couple DVDs to the rental place and how here we sit in my blue Mazda, under a light, to our left a discount furniture store, to our right a big hardware store.

Here, get in the driver's seat, I say.

Clutch blah blah motor blah and most important blah the breaks, I say.

Where have I been all her life? I think.

Here, move the seat closer.

The clutch works like this, I say. I gesture in the dark.

Here put it in neutral and start her up, I say.

What happens if I give it too much gas? she asks.

We drive into the electronics store, I say.

In on the gas, I say.

Out on the clutch.

Monday morning prayer

On the weekend I stood in the library with a cup of coffee and watched you swimming in the pool in a red one-piece, back and forth, unaware of me, a soft smile on your face. The pool was a drag to build but this makes it worth it and today, stuck in traffic, I think, god, or mathematics or whoever, let me be a ghost afterwards. Let me haunt you like this and see you happy, unobserved, that is all I ask.

Lucid

I have been discussing the subject of lucid dreaming with a number of friends recently, independently of one another; the subject just comes up somehow. The more I think about lucid dreaming, the less I see the point; my theory of dreaming is that it is the subconscious, or the body, or whatever, communicating to the conscious, or simply the subconscious thinking, or whatever, and it might not be good to tinker with that; I would rather spend the effort on understanding it better. It being dreaming, not lucid dreaming.

Another problem of lucid dreaming that any lucid dreamer would face is how to know when one is dreaming. It seems easy afterwards, to realize you had been dreaming, but in the thick of it it is not always so obvious.

Partly this is because dreams can be so prosaic, and life can be so surreal. So there are various tests, such as jumping (if you are dreaming, you might fly, if you are not dreaming, probably not); or spinning around - if you look away in a dream, and then back, things change. If you do it in real life, they generally don't.

Only recently, I found myself chatting (I thought) with a friend pretending to be a Nigerian hacker who had hacked her account, but it turned out to be a real Nigerian hacker who had hacked her account for real. Later that day, late at night in fact, I went to the airport to pick someone up only they missed their flight (on my watch!) and I had to arrange a new one for them and managed to do so despite the fact that the ticket counter was closed and such things are not my specialty. This was surreal enough for me; when I returned to my car I waited for an elevator in the garage, and two models were also waiting, speaking Russian, in short hot pants and red fezzes.

All totally normal things, but odder than most of my dreams, at least the ones I recall.

At the park

My brother, his ten-year-old son and I visited Beta at work, and then took a stroll around a nearby park. My brother had his camera, a fat digital SLR, and I had a new digital camera he brought over for me. We walked around and took pictures of stuff.

I saw various people I knew and pointed them out to my brother. I saw a violinist from my orchestra. I would have said hi, but she was playing beach volleyball and I didn't want to bother her, so I just watched for a while.

Then my nephew saw a playground and disappeared into the climbing equipment.

My brother and I wandered around among the playing children, two middle-aged men with cameras.

"This doesn't look good," my brother said.

We casually strolled away and took a seat at a table outside a cafe. At some point we ate dinner, and gave Beta a ride home.

Circus camp III

Gamma: Hi, dad.
Mig: Hi. Everything okay? Having fun?
Gamma: Yep. We went swimming at the pool.
Mig: No emergencies?
Gamma: Nope. Well, except for almost bleeding to death.
Mig: Ah.
Gamma: I fell down at the pool and cut my knee and skinned my shin and blood was running down my leg! And then it mixed with the water and was all over the place!
Mig: But you're okay now?
Gamma: Yep. Gotta go. Bye!
Mig: Tata.

That was in the evening. She traces an arc during the day. Last night she called, crying again, because there was a thunderstorm and she was scared and homesick. This morning she called my wife and was her old perky self.

Circus camp II

Gamma: Hello?
Mig: Hi there. You called me earlier?
Gamma: You on your lunch break?
Mig: I was. I was in the basement so I missed your call. What's up? Everything okay?
Gamma: Fine. We're going swimming. Lunch was good. Hang on a minute. Two seconds. Don't hang up. [whispering] Can I tell him? Okay? Oh, dad?
Mig: Yes, honey?
Gamma: A boy who slept in my circus wagon in the group before us had lice so they're checking us. I might have lice.
Mig: ...
Mig: Okay, honey.
Gamma: You can comb them out, right? So no big deal?
Mig: No big deal. They comb right out. Have fun swimming.
Gamma: There's a public pool right next to the camp.
Mig: I saw it when we dropped you off. It looked very inviting. Have fun! Gotta go!
Gamma: Me too. Bye!

Circus camp

On the weekend Gamma went to camp. It is located in a picturesque area of the country about an hour and a half north of here between the prison and the high-security mental hospital for the criminally insane.

Actually, I was just kidding about the location. It is in a nice area, but there are castles etc., and no hospitals or prisons. There might be, but I didn't see any.

You never know.

She will sleep in a circus wagon with other girls. There are two dozen kids in all, and they have circus tents as well and will learn to juggle and ride unicycles.

The day after she was dropped off, she called us in the afternoon (we gave her a mobile phone to call us in emergencies or when she got homesick) to tell us they couldn't go swimming in the nearby river because everything was burning down, and also their wagon had been burglarized and although she lost nothing a mobile phone was stolen from someone else.

But the fire department was on its way as were the police.

Later, she called to say they had gone swimming after all after the fire was extinguished and had eaten sausages.

Alpha spoke to the folks who run the camp and they said it was not arson, someone had a bonfire nearby and sparks had set bushes on fire and they put it out before the fire truck got there.

Later in the evening she called us to say everything was okay and she was homesick, a little.

At night Gamma called us again, begging, screaming and crying at us to come immediately and bring her home because they had seen a strange man sneaking around their circus wagon. This was at about 11 at night. Also they had eaten risotto for dinner. And she had learned a little unicycle riding. But would probably juggle scarves in the show on Friday.

I called her back a few minutes later and the teachers were inspecting the circus camp and she was with them. She was much calmer. She gave the phone to the teacher and he tried very hard to calm me down. The kids have had an exciting day, he said, calmly. There was a fire and beep-beep-beep the phone went dead.

The phone went dead, I told my wife. I didn't bother calling back. I imagined the kids all fine, snuggled in their beds, and the teacher simply walking with Gamma's phone into a spot out of transmission range, and not, say, a crazy man with a bloody prosthetic hook.

This morning Gamma called to say she had slept well, and would work on unicycle again today.

Physical therapy at the fun house

On my eighth visit, standing there in my shorts, I finally say to the physical therapist (suspecting her answer will be "no"), "could there possibly be something wrong with your mirror? Because I look about twenty pounds fatter in it than in my mirror at home."
Instead, she answers, "Yes, it hangs funny because it's so wide."
Yes! I shout, inside my head. High five! shouts my inner Borat.
She tells me my lower abdominal muscles are uncoordinated.
Why should they be any different than the rest of me, I say.
Or maybe I just think it.

The Burning of the Zombie's Hut

Nephew (10): You call that a castle? That's not a castle. I don't know what that is. That's a mansion. That's a big house. Now Helm's Deep, that was a castle. The race of the Elves is the biggest in Middle Earth. You call those weapons? Those are crossbows! Where are the longbows? Longbows are much cooler than crossbows. Pwoing! Pwoing! Pwoing! Now, if you had a million elves in this castle with longbows, no one could take it. They could defend it forever. Except maybe against fifty cals. Fifty cals, man. Pfkfkfkfkfkfkfkf! Pfkfkfkfkfkfkfkfk! Whatcha doin?

Uncle: [Typing on laptop.] Working.

Newphew: Cool. What're those?

Uncle: Er, zombies.

Newphew: Cool. How do you shoot them?

Uncle: You move around with the arrow keys and shoot with the space bar.

Newphew: Look at all that blood.

Uncle: Yes, well. Lego blood.

Nephew: What're those?

Uncle: Devils. You must watch out for those, they shoot fireballs at you.

Aunt: Aha.

Uncle: The more zombies you kill, the better weapons you get. Exploding barrels are pretty good. You build a wall of those and kill a lot at once. The rail gun can kill a whole line at once, too. Personally, I like the cluster grenades the best. From a purely aesthetic point of view.

Nephew: Kewl!

Cousin (18): [Plays The Burning of the Piper's Hut on Irish harp] [To cousin] C'mere and I'll teach you how to play it.

Nephew: Okay. [Leaves zombies for harp]

Cousin: [Shows him where the fingers go] Like this.

Nephew: [listens with profound concentration] [plink-plink, plinky-plinky-plink-plink]

Cousin: Exactly

Nephew: [half hour later] [plays first three measures] [broad grin]

Aunt: Dude! I just heard a hedgehog in the back yard. Come look!

Nephew: [dashes outside]

Breakfast

A fly navigates the rim of my coffee cup mug. The mug is half-full and the rim is stained with some dried coffee and there is a fleck of granola the fly is after. I wave away the fly and wipe the rim and have a sip.

The rim is stained with coffee again and the fly comes back. Another fly hoovers the inside surface of my cereal bowl, which looks empty to me but not to the fly which is going after bits of various antique cereals AS BIG AS ITS HEAD.

Then the first fly disappears from the rim of the coffee mug and I wonder whether there was always only one fly, except I saw them flying together in oddball fly formation, just a minute ago.

Then I finish my coffee and run upstairs and get dressed because I have to drive my daughter to work.

Well, run. Walk. Tiptoe. Other people are sleeping.

Well, I was going to, but then she comes into the kitchen and says she is riding her bike. I pour more coffee.

10 year-old boy test

How ten year-old boy are you?

• Can you fly for 12 hours without sleeping?
  
• Can you go another half day, or longer, without sleeping (or even whining) after arrival?
  
• During this long day, can you also ride a borrowed bike for miles?
  
• And do backflips on a trampoline for ten minutes without stopping?
  
• And ride the bike some more, on a bmx course?
  
• And the next day go climbing for hours on cables and zip lines on a climbing course?
  
• When you visit a castle, are your only complaints that they have no elven longbows in the armory and that it is a renaissance castle and therefore doesn't resemble Helm's Deep enough?
  
• When your cousin gets carsick beside you in the van, are you nice to her about it, and ask, instead, only, WHAT SMELLS LIKE A DEAD RAT?
  
• When your relatives take you and your dad to see the ruins of a different, medieval castle are you all Now THAT'S More Like It as you climb the rocky, steep, slippery approach making longbow sounds, speaking of enemy hordes and Tolkein races as you explore the dungeon and examine the view of the valley below and the defenses and orcs and elves and arrow slits and demonstrating how metaphor can be used to gain traction on a flood of new information?
  
• Are you ready to go back to the bmx course again today as soon as you wake up, but maybe not the trampoline since your cousin terrified your aunt and uncle by spraining her back when she ill-advisedly tried an unsupervised backflip and got taken to the hospital late at night?

If you can answer Yes to all of these questions, then you are a ten year-old boy*

*Which leads me to conclude that I was never a ten year-old boy. Not yet, anyway. There's always hope, I guess.