The Broken Soldier

I have weird dreams.  Especially weird when I’m sleep deprived and or angry.  I don’t put much stock in the idea that dreams necessarily mean or reveal something, my deepest apologies to those who favor and regale guests with Freud quotes at fancy dinner parties.  I had some awesomely crazy dreams this weekend.  Crazy by my own standards.  Last night I was at some sort of medical facility, a facility unlike anything I’ve seen.  Patients and doctors milling around in the same great room.  Everyone talking to one and other.  Procedures of all kinds, from exams to surgeries, performed out in the open.  Looky-loos rubber-necking, at times their heads pushed under the arms of those performing surgeries.

I was having another MRI in prep for surgery.  Sure, why not?  I’ve had several already.  What’s one more?  But this MRI machine was different.  In many ways it resembled an fMRI, though different in form and radically different in function.  A portion, like a robotic arm, of the machine moved over each part of the body and alerted, by some process unknown to me, the doctors of abnormalities.  These were shown on a 3D screen in front of me.  As well, when abnormalities were found, part of the image disappeared, and likely affected areas blinked giving the doctors a heads up about where to begin their search.  As no “Jimison dream” is complete without comic relief, the robotic arm part of the machine kept smacking me in the crotch as it passed over me, to the delight of staff and patient alike.

When the test and crotch-smacking wrapped up, I got off the bed, sure to use the “push yourself with you arm method” my physical therapist taught me, and began shooting the shit with one of the docs.  I think he was a neurologist.  We got onto philosophies of mind.  We were basically in agreement that traditional mind/body is something of a false dichotomy.  Though playing Devil’s advocate, I was sure to provide synopses of the strongest challenges.  I was impressed with his ability to answer these challenges.  Without a philosophy background, he had a good intuitive grasp of the subject.  Listen to me, impressed with a figment of my imagination.  Those around us who’d been listening in thought we were both fairly odd folks, looking at us sideways as we went our separate ways.

Later I got into an argument with some military folks.  Why they were there I’m not sure, though I’m also not sure a dream need be cogent.  It began when one of them asked me why I was there.  I answered, but apparently, given that I’m on a cane and unable to stand without struggle, didn’t bow low enough or didn’t hold the curtsey long enough to satisfy him.  He went on about customs and courtesies and their importance.  I kept Fred Astaire motioning to my cane.  This was lost on him.  I got pissed, which isn’t hard to do in my present state, and called him an asshole.  I tried to go on with a conversation I was having with a person sitting closer to me, but couldn’t over the affronted fella’s heckling.  I got up, hobbled over to him, and got in his face.  I said some-it like, “Don’t let the cane fool ya, my arms work fine, and if you don’t shut up you’re gonna find yourself in a paint brush or a choke of some sort.”  He and his buddies stood up.  He looked like the Shogun of Harlem from the Last Dragon.  You remember?  El De Barge?  Bruce Leroy?  Sum dum goy?  Chinese guys rapping, break dancing, and talkin’ 80s jive?  I think it won an Oscar.  Black exploitation at its finest.  My Creek Freedman great great grand dad is rolling in his grave.  But unlike the Shogun, this guy was like 15 feet tall, and dressed in half-drag.  Lee Press On nails.  A Dress Barn power suit.  Pumps.

What the fuck?  I need to be on anti-psychotics.  The good ones that turn you into a zombie and make you gain 100 pounds.  Then I could work as an stuntman airbag.  I woke up and watched Gladiator On Demand.  By strange coincidence, I got a call from Russel Crowe this morning.  No accent, I didn’t hear him throwing his phone at anyone, I assume it wasn’t him.  He wanted to talk to my wife about her application for a scooter - gotta do something about that $400/month going to gas.  My wife and I prefer eating to funding the military-industrial complex.

Well, that was pointless.  Lots of words saying a lot of nothing.  Finally I’m able to put my philosophical training to use.  If only I could be paid by the word.  I’m going to spin this as a departure from the bitching.  In reality, nothing has changed with my status, and I’m running out of different ways to complain about the same problem.