thalassic haunts

i dreamed about swimming with sharks last night.

unlike swimming in a cage off oahu, this was kinda scary.

i have no idea what it means, but the feeling in the dream was that an attack was imminent.

i woke up before it happened.

in the cage, you could see treble fishhooks trailing from various shark appendages. this was an interesting detail to notice, given that rows of shark teeth were within easy reach. in the dream, the details weren't as obvious, but the sense of danger was far more heightened.

go figure.

no, really. what does it mean? or do dreams mean anything? are they just artifacts of a late dinner and a little extra fatigue? or is something more going on?

i have no idea. all i know is, i woke up a little shaken, and it took awhile to fall back to sleep.

meanwhile, i'm having a hard time influencing events swirling around me. i'm not used to this, even though i realize, deep down, that "control" is an illusion.

wait...now i get it.

nevermind.

bear with us

Search for bear in Magnolia moves to Ballard

poor thing. he's probably hungry. and cranky.

if only he'd come by the spaceneedl residence. he'd have found not one but two little dogs, just the right size for late-night snacking.

coincidently, one of them is named 'bere'.

bon appétit, bear. bon voyage, bere.

rubbed wrong

i got a massage yesterday.

that's the good news.

the downside was the discovery that my body is sore from the base of my skull to the top of my feet. everywhere i was poked and prodded, it was another revelation.

ankles, check. calves, ow. quadriceps? yee-ouch. neck, and the thrumming wires running up from the middle of my back? can i get some morphine and a towel to chew on?

the weird thing is, i wasn't even aware of all this lurking aggravation until it was pointedly brought to my attention. how does that work? i realize i'm getting old, but that can't be the only explanation.

i'm diligently trying to formulate some kind of diagnosis, sitting here at my computer, in between meetings and e-mails and phone calls and not moving around for hours at a time. yes, as a matter of fact, i can say 'deep vein thrombosis'.

according to the national institute of health...

Muscle pain is most frequently related to tension, overuse, or muscle injury from exercise or physically demanding work. In these situations, the pain tends to involve specific muscles and starts during or just after the activity. It is usually obvious which activity is causing the pain.

nowhere in the article does it day anything about pain you aren't even aware of. maybe i need a different online resource for that? something like 'the journal of modern psychosis' perhaps?

but back to that nih muscle pain thing...

The most common causes are:
• Injury or trauma including sprains and strains
• Overuse: using a muscle too much, too soon, too often
• Tension or stress

tension or stress? i got both of those, in buckets. i mean, it's not fighting-for-your-life-in-baghdad tension or stress, but it ain't your garden variety, "which mercedes should i drive to work today?" angst, either.

what's the nih say about clinical inertia alternating with paralytic dread? what causes that comorbidity? on that they're less helpful. i bet ibuprophen isn't part of that protocol.

Prevention

• Warm up before exercising and cool down afterward.
• Stretch before and after exercising.
• Drink lots of fluids before, during, and after exercise.
• If you work in the same position most of the day (like sitting at a computer), stretch at least every hour.

that's helpful. thanks, fellas.

acupuncture? rolfing? watching the mariners blow another game?

no more massage. sometimes the affliction is preferable to the cure.

weird is the new normal

what do you do when your biomechanics are out of alignment?

when your aura's the wrong color and your chakras are inverted and your polarity is reversed and your antennae are jammed and your digital reverts to analog. what do you do?

this is not an idle question. someone here needs to know, rapidamente, and i think that someone is me.

look, i'm all about solving my own problems. i don't want to burden anyone, so i've been making a good-faith effort for years. but it's occured to me recently that maybe i'm not very good at it. let's take a look at some of the many and various endeavors...

good beer and wine: you betcha. as the years have gone by and the household income has improved, so has the quality and the quantity of the beer and wine. these days, however, the beer just fills me up. and the wine makes me sleepy (the upside, of course, is that the good wine pairs very well with food. and it's heart-healthy. which means you can eat more good food.)

in an attempt to realign, however, i've stopped drinking during the week. i try to make up for it on the weekends.

food: yes. and by that i mean, 'yes, please.' here, too, i try to do 'the right thing.' seafood, poultry, no red meat (no other-white-meat, either). lots of fresh produce. and breakfast.

then i found out about mercury in seafood. and the depletion of the world's fisheries. and "farm-raised" fish. and industrial poultry production. not to mention a very disturbing video featuring a very disturbed politician.

then there's the botulism and salmonella and pestilence and plague in our produce and everything containing peanut butter.

i may stop eating altogether.

exercise: i've spent thousands of dollars on gym memberships, and countless hours in various states of cardiovascular acceleration. basketball, weights, running, and a bunch of other active activities. which collectively resulted in many chiropractor visits costing even more money.

if anything, i'm more misaligned than when i started. which reminds me of a priceless bit of rhetoric: at the end of your life, your heart will have beaten a finite, quantifiable number of times. do you really want to use up those heartbeats exercising? especially when you could be having...

sex in unusual venues: what? why are you looking at me like that? stop it.

the takeaway here is that it's possible none of these responses will have the transformative effect your metaphysical biomechanics require. and that sometimes, despite your best efforts and intentions, things still go sideways. and you're left standing there with your brow furrowed and your mouth agape, the perfect spokes-dupe for discombobulation.

what then?

near as i can tell, at that point, you have choices. you can stand there wallowing in karmic confusion and let the rain fall into your open mouth. you can slink away muttering about the uncaring unfairness of the universe and the utter cluelessness of miss california.

or you can give yourself over to the timeless, unchanging fundamental that weird is the new normal...and then sigh deeply, smile an ironic smile and get on with your life.

have you been there? are you there now? what did you do about it? and how'd that work out for you? any reasonable suggestions, and oh-what-the-hell, any unreasonable ones, are welcome.