Well....I was thrown out of a nightclub in Las Vegas, when I was 15, with my indulgent parents....of course, for watching (or rather, attempting to watch) The Folies Bergère, in which topless women in stiletto heels and feathered headdresses descended stairs to display their artillery.....The next day, I was shown gatling guns and grenade launchers at another entertainment venue in this decadent Nevada city.....with no interference....... so the message to me, then, was: Guns are good....buy some......but, please, no tittles, although It seemed as though these, too, were being seriously marketed.......I was also not allowed to attend a performance by Jayne Mansfield, who was playing a violin in a Mexican nightclub.......again...the 'breast' thing...so I bought a cool set of guns with a red and white leather double holster, complete with white leather tassels hanging from silver stars.....All those lovely titties were also covered by stars with tassels.......So what was the message to a 9th grader? You guessed it!

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WHAT TIME IS IT, ANYWAY? DOES ANYONE REALLY KNOW? IT DOESN'T MATTER....WITHIN A DREAM, SINCE THE DREAMWORLD LACKS THE RESTRAINTS OF TIME-KEEPING.......

 

Listening to a NPR re-broadcast of a rather boring program about 'the importance of regular SLEEP HABITS', yesterday, I decided to hit the sack, early....for me.....9 pm.... Awakening, full of ideas, I drug out a drawing tablet to doodle and scribble for an hour....then, returned to horizontal positioning for another hour, awakening again....alert and 'ready to go'.....However, since I WAS, after all, trying to sleep 'straight through' the night, I felt rather frustrated by my insomnia and turned on the TV to watch Frank Pavich's documentary, "Jodorowsky's Dune", with H.R. Giger and Michel Seydoux......which led me to search the internet for a hard-bound copy of Jodorowsky's PROPOSAL for filming his Version of DUNE......then, on my phosphoresent watch dial: 3AM!.... so, rather than pursue some alert activity, I listened to some boringly relaxing recording of Tibetan singing bowls and raindrops on the Lake of Melancholia, eventually....returning to slumberland and the usual Lucid Dreaming.......Voila!....now, in the world of dreams, like Little Nemo, I could both 'sleep', 'rest' and have intellectually challenging experiences within cerebral cortex's electrical interchange......The subsequential DREAM was both uplifting, optimistic and charged with creative energies...and will be discharged, later, in an Update, from last night's shorthand notes on my 'scibblepad'.....I awakened.....bladder shouting for emptying.....thinking, it must be midnight!......but, the see-in-the-dark hands of my watch 'said' 8:30......Hungry, I thought, then, that I should make some dinner........Then, leaving my unlit cave with no windows, emerging into another room, lit by light from a large window....I was confused, wondering why, at 8:30 PM, during Winter, the Sun Was Up!......I was still asleep....and all this was but a Dream......as I stumbled, sleepwalking in the dark, over a pile of DVD's that I'd been sorting, earlier, yesterday, falling into a big plastic storage box, positioned under the hole in my roof, through which rainwater accumulated as it dripped/ran through a ripped out plaster wall.......Was I, still, asleep? Was this, too, part of my labyrinthin Dream? Guess 'NOT', as i showered, donned some dry pajamas and slippers and descended the stairs to microwave a coffee cup cheese omelet and pump some expresso........Certainly, now, I am 'actually' awake, and almost ready to write and illustrate last night's Dream....the part not mentioned 'here'....for one of my Blogs...about Dreaming......Lest all be forgotten as Time separates the instantaneous from the mundane repetions of ordinariness and the interiorized conceits from the far less metaphoric lineup of sequential proceedings between the markers of The Clock..... It's almost 9 AM! Times-a-wasting and the black India ink in my 000-tip pen has clogged its point....maybe, a dip into the last drop of expresso will get it 'running' .........

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ON MY APPARENTLY "NEVER-ENDING" PURGATORIAL DENTAL ANXIETY.....

4th level of Purgatory.....teeth cleaning......having to listen to Drake, singing "God's Plan", on 'repeat play' for an hour, strapped into a confinement chair with clamps in my mouth and needles and gas masks on the approach........I'd rather return to my endodontist for the root canal operation that I've put off for almost 5 years! But, then...I'd have to listen to the Muzak tapes of elevator hypnotics........No, No....Dr. Dentist, I'd rather listen to Christina Aguilera gargling and spitting in a cup......"Oh," exclaims my dentist, "I have a another Drake album....I'll bet you'd prefer that....right?"..........So, on that, I left the dental chair, the 'bib' still hanging from my neck, and went to a thrift store, freeing the torture chair for its next yawning victim.........my tooth wasn't hurting THAT badly!.....

ALAS, FIVE YEARS SHORT OF THE NEW CENTURY......

 

Two friends from University days, reading my rambles and mention of my friend, Bert, who died, just past his 40th b'day of 'complications of Aids', the 'then' death warrant 'condition', asked me about what 'happened' to Bert........and why he and I had been such good friends during college days.......Bert and I met during the first day of 'orientation' at Vanderbilt, quickly discovered our love of contract bridge, baroque music and fine dining.......we had breakfast and dinner together almost every day for 3 years, afterwards.....over the years, Bert learned many languages, including Attic Greek, Latin, French , Italian, German and bits of others, and became a PhD classical linguist/scholar/professor in Toronto.......and, later, became embroiled in a 'sex scandal' with some students and some priests and nuns....he had a strange sexual fixation on 'the cloth'.....was fired from his professorship, for 'sexually inappropriateness', worked on his family farm raising chickens and pigs, then decided to work with plants and landscape gardening.....a hobby that we also shared....went into partnership with another friend who had completed medical school, but REALLY wanted to do gardening.........I just 'came across' this old magazine cover, featuring a very dapper Bert......Somewhere around here I have the 'alternate take' with Bert, stark naked, as he would have preferred, but for the censorship of the repressive bourgeoisie......At 18, Bert introduced me to good cognac, pot, the importance of scholarly research, French restaurants and leather 'posing' straps....and those really cool GE portable 'stereo' units with wood-veneered, 'swing out' speakers........and, importantly, 'interchangeable' photo cartridges...for different types of music.......I still have a miniature suitcase, fitted out for my photo cartridge collection.....Who else, but Bert, would have thought this a very importantly practical and pragmatic consideration.......Now, alas, A.N. Bottorff III has been dead since Elizabeth Taylor donned her first sequined, padded shoulder pads for Dynasty......I still have the collection of records that I would haul to Bert's room to play on his 'swing out', as the 'boys' on our dorm floor banged on the door for us to 'stop that noise' so they could hear Paul Revere and the Raiders and The Swinging Medallions on their new FM radios........My point? (and there generally, even specifically...is at least one.....even if hidden in a haystack of verbiage and images).........One of the greatest treasures of Life is that of Sympatico.......a rare thing for the most eccentric of us.......Life is not a target that we must 'hit' or 'miss'......1955 was, fortunately, a long time ago......'If you get what I'm sayin', that is'........