Speech Therapy

This article has been inspired by a rerun of Boston Legal where Alan Shore started having these bouts where his usually well conceived and colorful manner of speech came out of his mouth as pure gibberish instead. Being a lawyer renowned for his eloquent oratory, he was understandably concerned. While discussing the problem with his partner Denny Crane, he revealed that, other than Denny himself, his words were his only real friends. This struck me like the proverbial lightning bolt.

As anyone who has read my ramblings before would know, I have a certain fondness for using lots of words, in what I hope has been a well conceived manner, to precisely get across the ideas I want to express. My readers will also not be surprised to read that I have a rather large ego. The fact is that my large ego – the very essence of me – revolves around my love for using precise language to express my thoughts. So I hope you can understand why Alan’s problem struck home with me.

I had already been fascinated by the slow progression of Denny’s Alzheimer’s disease – what he calls his “mad cow.” As someone with a big ego and a history of mental illness, the idea of losing ones faculties is frightening enough. But to add in the prospect that I could be speaking with what I thought was my usual brilliance only to have everyone within earshot look at me as if I’d gone stark raving mad… Well that’s a truly terrifying prospect indeed.

The truth is that I’m no where near as good live as I think I am on paper (screen?), but I think you get what I mean. Since no one knows what the future will bring, I guess the thing to do is to speak (or write) about the subjects that are important to me while I can. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.

I want ice water.

Speaking Of Dreams...

Readers of this blog should be well aware that I’m not much for things religious, supernatural, paranormal, or superstitious. I’ve written much on these subjects in general, and about the influence that people who did believe in such things had on my youth. But until my recent Oh I Dreamed Last Night… article, I had written very little about my own actual experiences with such matters. In this article, I want to explore this just a little bit more.

The fact is that I’ve had many, many experiences that can be fit into these categories, with the vast majority being similar to what I described in the Oh I Dreamed Last Night… article. But unlike most, I prefer to maintain an open mind about these things rather than get into a lot of senseless speculation about what these experiences mean. After all, there are many rational explanations that can quickly reduce these experiences to nothing more than hallucinations and fanciful dreams. But they are interesting nonetheless.

One such experience started a few years ago when I had to be hospitalized due to a severe case of pancreatitis. Since I had already been diagnosed with the disease, and had been previously hospitalized (in intensive care) because of it, I was smart enough to recognize that I needed help when the symptoms came again. But from the point where they were wheeling me in to get a bed assignment to the point where I awoke from a medically induced coma (in a different hospital) some three weeks later, my memories are only of a series of very bizarre “dreams.”

I won’t attempt to recall the specifics of these dreams – after all, I could give only fractured reconstructions, other than to say that they involved extremely realistic experiences of living other lives in other worlds. So realistic were these experiences – so beautiful, so painful, and so awe inspiring, that I felt the most extreme sensation of loss that I have ever felt in my life when the doctors decided to bring me out of the coma. So shocking was my return to the “real” world, that even those in the room when I awoke could feel it. I know, because they told me so.

Obviously, what I experienced can easily be dismissed with a variety of “natural” explanations. The fact that I continue to experience such dreams can be just as easily dismissed for the same reasons. But I do continue to have them. And that’s also a fact.

I think that Heart’s These Dreams does a pretty good job of expressing some of the emotion I feel about this subject:

Spare a little candle
Save some light for me
Figures up ahead
Moving in the trees
White skin in linen
Perfume on my wrist
And the full moon that hangs over
These dreams in the mist

Darkness on the edge
Shadows where I stand
I search for the time
On a watch with no hands
I want to see you clearly
Come closer than this
But all I remember
Are the dreams in the mist

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it’s cold outside
Every moment I’m awake the further I’m away

Is it cloak ‘n dagger?
Could it be spring or fall?
I walk without a cut
Through a stained glass wall
Weaker in my eyesight
The candle in my grip
And words that have no form
Are falling from my lips

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it’s cold outside
Every moment I’m awake the further I’m away

There’s something out there
I can’t resist
I need to hide away from the pain
There’s something out there
I can’t resist

The sweetest song is silence
That I’ve ever heard
Funny how your feet
In dreams never touch the earth
In a wood full of princes
Freedom is a kiss
But the prince hides his face
From dreams in the mist

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it’s cold outside
Every moment I’m awake the further I’m away

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it’s cold outside
Every moment I’m awake the further I’m away

But perhaps When You Wake Up by Justin Hayward & John Lodge is a little more specific:

Now as we speed a little faster through the stars
To this new world of ours
With the seed that the garden requires

And as we drift a little further from the shore
Like the sea evermore
I’m the ivy that clings round your door

When you wake up
You will find
That you’re not where you left yourself

Ahhhh…
Ahhhh…

Now as we drift a little further down the stream
Was it all what it seemed
Was it true, was it real?
Or just a dream?

When you wake up
You will find
That you’re not where you left yourself

Ahhhh…
Ahhhh…

Now as we speed a little faster through the stars

Ahhhh…
Ahhhh…
Ahhhh………

I want ice water.

Me No Know KeyMoSobbi - Part 6

Again with the endless questions. Please note that this time there will be a test.

1. The ’progressive’ U.S. tax system requires the wealthy to pay more taxes than the poor. In fact, those at the top end of the income scale are sometimes expected to pay thousands of times more than those at the low end of the income scale. Why then, are people surprised that the principles separating freedom fighters from pirates have become corrupted?

2. How is it that American citizens can express more outrage at the treatment of people who openly desire the destruction of our country than they do at the treatment of Americans imprisoned simply because of how they chose to treat their own bodies? Or should the question be why are they surprised that those prisoners are being treated that way considering how we treat our own people? Please note that just as ’high minded’ butting in has inspired the terrorists, it has also inspired a flagrant disregard for the law by many of our own people.

3. The news is filled with talk about the racist history of the Washington, DC area. I suppose they think that shocking us with such ’terrible revelations’ will inspire us to watch their wall-to-wall coverage of the upcoming Obama inauguration. But considering that we know all to well that this country was built on the backs of slaves, just who is it that they think will be shocked? I just want all the hoopla to be over so the man can get on with the monstrous task ahead of him. What would shock me would be for all those talking heads to shut up for a change and let the poor guy do his job!

4. Being the eternal optimist who always looks for the silver lining, do you think that maybe my distant cousins will finally get Manhattan Island back after all is said and done? Okay, enough with the laughing about the ’eternal optimist’ bit!

5. Who in hell designed the standard keyboard layout? After all this time using it, I still hit Delete when I want End and write nad when I mean and. It’s not my fault I tell ya!

6. I don’t normally watch the show Ghost Whisperer because it’s so depressingly reminiscent of all that supernatural crap from my childhood. But the lack of cable has caused me to watch a lot of shows lately that I wouldn’t normally watch. Having it on my TV right now has inspired me to wonder about some of my own dead friends and family. Here are just a few of my thoughts:

a. Was my brother sad that he wouldn’t be able to spend the Easter of 1970 with me while he was dying from two gunshots to the chest? The police said that the shooter was my brother’s best friend, in a drug-induced craze, using my brother’s own gun. Others said that the police had framed my brother’s friend for a hit actually done by them to prevent my brother from testifying in a police-involved stolen property case.

b. What was it like for my father to die all alone in the V. A. hospital during that same year? I don’t know the actual date because I was considered ’too fragile’ to be told right away and I was to pissed to ask when I was.

c. Did the fact that our friendship ended, over a dispute about Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, have anything to do with my former best friend’s suicide in 1980?

d. Was the son we lost ever conscious after labor had to be induced when my wife’s water broke too soon? I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t actually remember the date this happened, but I’ll bet that my ex-wife does.

e. I never said so before he died in 1995, but did my friend from work - the friend who taught me so much - ever know just how much I liked him? "You’ve got to be smarter than what you’re working with," is still one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard.

f. What were my mother’s final thoughts while dying, unnoticed, on the floor of the L.A. rest home she had been left in by my niece, who apparently couldn’t be bothered with her any more? That was in 2004.

g. From tonight’s episode, how would I react to having someone tell me that the ’memories’ I seem to be having are actually true recollections from a previous life?

h. What was really going on when I was in that medically-induced coma, when I seemed to be flying over strange lands, out into space, and even into the future?

i. And does the fact that, in my dreams, I return over and over to people and places I have no conscious memory of mean that I actually exist in multiple worlds at the same time? While I find the possibility quite intriguing, the reality of it scares me half to death.

7. I read or heard somewhere that plants like wheat and rye are subject to disease that can cause people to become sick and/or delusional. I’ve even heard it said that, during the Salem witch trials, some testimony about things the accused had supposedly done where actually hallucinations caused by ingesting bread made from tainted grain. If this is true, then doesn’t it shine doubt on other visions of ’supernatural events’ referenced in our history books and religious tomes? Speaking as one who has had hallucinations from illness as well as from ’other’ causes, I know all too well just how real they can seem.

8. Regarding the last item, I suppose that there are those who now asking, "Is that why he’s so &#%@ed up?" The fact is that, however hallucinations are caused, the processes within the brain are the same. You should no more doubt my faculties than you would doubt the faculties of anyone who has previously had a high fever. While I may have shown poor judgement in the past, you should judge my current reasoning capacity by my current actions. And I submit that the contents of this Weblog stand as clear testimony that my rational faculties are in good working order. Bedeep, bedeep, that’s all folks!

9. I hear that Barak Obama is trying to quit smoking. Borrowing a bit from the movie Airplane! "Man did he pick a hard time to quit?"

10. Am I the only one who sees the ultimate irony in Visa calling their new credit card The Black Card?

Just kidding about the test. Did the thought of it make you thirsty?

I want ice water.