Aldred and the Arm

Somewhere in the middle of the night, Aldred awakes to the realization that there is a stranger in the bed with him. He's well past the age where this would be a pleasant surprise. Aldred is an inveterate side-sleeper, and the invader's arm is resting on the back of Aldred's head, behind the ear, pointing up as if he were standing close (far too close) behind Aldred and hailing a taxi.

Aldred knows that this is a moment for calm and clear action. Don't panic, act quickly, get to a place of safety. Carefully he works his hand out from under the pillow and lightly encircles the stranger's wrist. Then he slowly raises the whole arm a fraction of an inch, just enough to let him slide out from under this unwelcome embrace. The lifting goes off without a hitch as Aldred has a surprisingly delicate touch. When he tries to slide out from under the arm, however, he finds himself unable to move more than a token amount. The bedsheets must be restricting his movement. Not for the first time, he curses his love of snug linen.

So then, a more radical plan is needed. He's no great proponent of violence, but circumstances have left him with no other option. He tightens his grip on the offending wrist, and takes a moment to steel himself. Then he throws himself out of the bed with considerable force, still holding tight to the arm. He lands on his back, quickly leaps into a standing position, and delivers a savage knee to his enemy's solar plexus, which his grip on the arm should have conveniently placed nearby.

Except that his knee meets only air and Aldred staggers back, desperately fighting this sudden unexpected change in his center of gravity. He tries to reach out his left hand to steady himself as his right is still keeping a death grip on his opponent's wrist, but the only response from his left arm is an excruciating attack of pins and needles.

It's more or less at this point that Aldred realizes he is standing in the middle of his bedroom at 3 am, his right hand locked around his left wrist. There is no invader: his arm had simply fallen asleep to the point where it was so numb he no longer felt it as part of himself. Shortly he will find this hilarious, but his initial reaction is a sickening existential vertigo as his sleep- and adrenaline-addled brain tries to reintegrate the limb back into his sense of self. Aldred almost faints as he goes through the shock of a reverse amputation, the limb binding back to him in a surgical flash of self-awareness. He shakes this strange new limb that is suddenly under his control, as much out of sheer wonder as to get rid of the lingering pins and needles. As they recede so does the sense of newness, and the limb becomes familiar.

Aldred feels a tiny twinge of regret that at the end of it all he has performed no heroics, faced no great dangers, and received no exciting new limbs for his troubles. He gives the same old arm one last contemptuous shake and stumbles back to bed. By the time his head hits the pillow the regret has evaporated, and the chuckling has begun. This quickly gives way to snoring, a consequence of Aldred trying sleeping on his back for once.

I Haven't been in Pittsburgh For A Long Time

They've put up another statue of Willie Stargell since I was last here, and I have to say it's a bit much. It's three hundred feet tall and stands astride Point State Park like some modern colossus. That could be okay, albeit a bit grandiose, but apparently somebody got a deal on a job lot of pink flecked marble, which rather undercuts the solemn tribute they were going for. It doesn't help that it rotates either, and so fast that you can barely make out that it's a statue of Stargell, and not some menacing pink blur descending on the three rivers. And it screams. I don't know if this was intentional or if the ghost of Pops has come back to haunt this monstrosity or what, but I'm 30 miles outside the city right now and I can hear the damned thing still. I don't know how I'm going to sleep tonight.

The Power of Dreams

Our nightly dreams have an amazing power to move and terrify us. They can inspire, confuse, infatuate or disgust (even all at the same time). The chemical palette of the brain and nervous system is used expertly by that master artist the sub-conscious: Dali or Francis Bacon never came as close to his nightmare canvases, Parrish was never as airy and delightful.

And ever since I had that dream about going to high school with Madonna, I've been well disposed to her. She was nice to me and she didn't have that stupid accent yet. So leave Madge alone.


That's me on the left. Or is it?

Feeling a Little Peaked

For some reason it's taking me forever to finish Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. I'm a third of the way through the second volume, but it's taken the better part of two weeks to get there. Lately, every time I pick up a book I get sleepy. Either this lovely cool spring we're having is very conducive to snoozing, or I've got an undiagnosed medical condition that's killing me by inches. Whichever, I wish I could stop falling asleep while holding heavy books over my face (I like to read while lying on my back). I don't think my nose can take another involuntary smack.

Also falling asleep reading Peake means your dreams tend to be populated by creatures like Abiatha Swelter.



It's hardly restful.