November 21, 2004
massive
I have a super-huge, massive bruise on my thigh. Really big and ugly.
Is this a remarkable thing to talk about? No, not so much. Except that it is.
I constantly get bruises and I don't know where they came from. Generally it's the kind that can be assumed to be a graceful crash into a chair or table. But this one, it's like I backed into a pointy something-or-other and it still hurts. It's been there since Sunday. What the hell did I do? A wee Mack truck? An abusive spouse I never notice? An abusive dog? Mouse? Towel? Ketchup?
I just don't know. Perhaps I should take vitamins. Or wear a big fat-suit of squishiness. Squishy protection from pointy bits. Or a space suit. That would be good.
security (protection from bruises?)
I suggested to BrilliantEditor that we should hire the FTA to stand at the foot of our driveway. That way we wouldn't have to stand in line as long at the airport.
He said, "They're going to search you again when you get there."
I said, "Not if they put tamper-evident tape on the car so that if you opened a door or window your seals would be broken. And security would meet us at the door to the airport. But we'd still have to stand in line to get our tickets and stuff. And we'd have to go through the personal checkpoint, in case someone handed us stuff in the parking lot."
It started to sound like a dumb idea, but I just thought, "Valet parking! That's the answer! And some kind of tube to walk through so no one could tamper with you. That's the answer!"
Then that started to sound like a dumb idea until I remembered, "I don't live in the same world as everybody else. I live in Dottyland, the place where dreams are totally weird and wonderful and kooky and there are few limits."
(That's me learning to weave in Scotland. Obviously, there's a lot on my mind.)
Sometimes I wish Dottyland was more than my own paradigm, that people could come in and sip from the stream of laughter and explore the caverns of thick, interconnected thoughts that reduce themselves to darkness and curiosity and mystery.
Maybe I'd scare people, though. Alternatively, maybe they'd want to stay and there wouldn't be enough room for all of us and I'd have to build suburbs and all the originality that struggled to become real would be stretched into soccer fields and raided to build houses made entirely from my own dreams. I'd be too tired to think for myself and I'd be like one of the miserable drones who never think at all and eventually all my suburbs would deflate, all of Dottyland would crumble. The people living there would be unceremoniously tossed from their floating beds and into a world that obeys gravity and doesn't feel like being idealistic and is mean and tightfisted. Their fury at being rejected would turn them into Republicans; they'd all turn against me, claiming that I was an idealistic dreamer who could never be anything but a suck on the system. They'd call me a pinko.
Then I'd return to Dottyland and begin the long process of rebuilding what had been crushed into nearly unrecognizable chunks of broken silliness and fun and what was supposed to be surprising fun. The ideas from the cave would be stretched into worry, rumination, and over-examination. There would be dangerous viruses that inhabit soft furnishings causing Dottyland to become a sterile and hard place, missing every thread of upholstery, every puff of stuffing. The rebuilding would take years longer than expected, making me appear, to others, as a less interesting and infinitely more erratic and peculiar and wrinkly.
Huh.
Maybe I don't wish that Dottyland were real. Or maybe I wish that it was the kind of place you need a visa to visit. There wouldn't be any kind of immigration authority as I would have food only for ten hours a day. And there would not be universal health care.
Oh, yeah, we don't have that anyway.
I am glad that I don't have suburbs. That would be uncomfortable on top of everything else.
At any rate, it's not open yet. Go to Dollywood instead. (She has much larger breasts than I do, too. Often a bonus. Especially when floating.)