Flying like a Cement Kite

Susie Doodlevecter woke up to the repeated sensation of leathery sandpaper scraping back and forth across her cheek.

"Meow," said the Cat, redoubling its licking in an earnest attempt to wake up the slumbering American who spent the night sleeping on streets of Clermont-Ferrand.

"Stop, that you silly cat," said Susie, struggling to get upright.  "Where the hell am I?"

"Mmmmm....but you taste good, besides I'm not sure how long this dream is going to last."

"Huh?  Who the hell is talking to me?"

"That must have been one hell of a wine tasting excursion you were on last night to not remember me," said the cat, "but in any event, chop chop, wake up, we may not have much time before I wake up from this lucid dream."

"Like hell I am," said Susie pushing the cat away. "I'm the one who must be dreaming to have some mangy cat talking to me."

"I am not mangy.  And I always turn into a cat when I dream.  Therefore, you must be in my dream.  But now that you're awake you can help me.  Please open the red door up the steps there.  In my dreams I can usually do what I want, fly, go through walls and such but I seem to be grounded in this one. Funny, don't remember tasting anything before in my dreams either--but you taste good." "

"Are you crazy?  No, I must be crazy talking to a cat.  Where the hell am I?  Is that some kind of Church?"

Susie looked up and saw that she had evidently spent the night on a street in front of what looked like a cathedral .

"Its more like a monastery. A very special type of monastery.  You can tell by the red door.  More than praying goes on in there, if you know what I mean.  Hurry, go check the door tall American woman."

Suzie reluctantly stumbled up the steps and tried the door.   Locked.

"Its locked."

"Figures," said the cat.  "In that event, come and take my paw, we have places to go and people to see.  Different ways to see it through, all the same in the end--at least in my dreams."

"I am not in your dream you silly cat."

"Grab my paw, you shall see," said the cat extending it paw.

As soon as Susie touched the paw, the world went black and Susie was spun around on a carousel of oscillating colors.  She landed with a thump in front of another street.  Looking up, Susie saw another archway, still in red.

"I think we'll have better luck with that door," said the cat, nuzzling its cheek and whiskers up against her knee.

"How did you do that?"

"Do what?"  "Transport us here?  Ain't no big thing jellybean.   Like I said, this is my dream and I can do whatever the hell I damn well want.  We'll almost anything.   For some reason though I seem to be having problems opening doors.  Would you mind trying to open that door beyond the archway?"

"Why do you keep saying this is your dream?  This is not your dream.  This is my life.   I'm here in France to.....well, I can't seem to remember why I was here.  But I must have had a reason.   Maybe I was on vacation?  Maybe I worked here?  Maybe I was hit my head last night and have amnesia."

"Nope, Sherlock, sorry to disappoint but...well come to think of it, I don't remember ever having this detailed a discussion in my dreams before.   Or tasting anyone before.  So maybe you have a point.  Maybe this is a shared dream or something like that.  Anything is possible, at least I think so."

"Well," said Susie, "Since you have all the answers, why is it so important that you keep trying to open all these red doors?  What's the point?"

"Its a dream silly.  There is no point to anything we do in dreams.  Dreams follow their own laws of cause and effect --their own internal logic.  I want you to open the door because that's what happens in this dream.  I don't know why I know that.  There is no why.   This is just the dream where I ask you do open the door, the door opens, and we go see all the monks and nuns that have been fornicating and drinking premium french wine with each other for thousands of years.

"And why should I believe you?"

"It really doesn't matter whether you do or don't. Look, you've already opened it."

And the cat was right.  Without remembering that she did so, Susie looked and saw that she was already in the entryway beyond the red door.

"Welcome to our humble sanctuary,"  said a gruff voice.  "we don't get too many visitors in here.   But in in your case, we have made an exception."

"Don't forget about me!" said the cat, scurrying in next to her.  But by then, the scene had changed and Susie and the cat were someplace else entirely.  This was a dream, after all.

TO BE CONTINUED (because I know you want to find out about the fornicating monks and nuns--or was it the wine?).

Forced Wine Adventure a.k.a. Le Vin et la Femme Forcee a Boire a.k.a.50 Shades of Grenache/Shiraz/Mouvedre

Informed consent for Suzie Doodlevecter

You are being asked to take part in a Research Study. Research studies include only people who choose to take part. This document is called an informed consent form. Please read this information carefully and take your time making your decision. Ask the researcher or study staff to discuss this consent form with you, please ask him/her to explain any words or information you do not clearly understand. We encourage you to talk with your family and friends before you decide to take part in this research study.  The nature of the study, risks, inconveniences, discomforts, and other important information about the study are listed below.

Purpose:  The purpose of this study is to study the short term effect of the involuntary consumption of Premium French wine in a luxurious environment.

Benefits:  The wine is free.   If you have to ask further, we suggest you focus your attention on other pursuits.

Risks and Discomfort:  There are considerable psychological, social, legal and other associated risks. However, 100% of the previous study participants have volunteered enthusiastically to participate again in this cohort.  The effects and sensations you will experience in the study are immediate and intensify with each sip.  Subjects report being completely unprepared and overwhelmed for the tidal wave of emotion that will permeate every fiber of your being .  You will want it to stop.  In fact, you will yell for it to stop.  But in the next breath you will want it to continue again and again and again. Beyond thought, beyond reason, your body will become enmeshed in the flood of sensations until a point is reached that you will not think it possible for the experience to continue.  But the experience will continue, over and over in increasing intensity until all you can do is cry out with unrequited joy and ecstasy.

Benefits:  Dubious.

Alternative Procedures:  We understand though our affiliates in Rioja and Mendoza that similar protocols are offered internationally.

Required Signatures--Each research subject or surrogate decision maker must sign and informed consent form prior to entering the research protocol.


Subject:________________(All signatures must be notarized)


Witness:________________(3 Witnesses are required for each study participant)


Investigator/Initiator/Sommelier:   ______________________________(Sri Pseudopumpkin, Ph. D)

Disclaimer: this is about wine, it was written for people who are drinking wine by someone who is drinking wine when he or she wrote it. Those who are not drinking wine while reading this, be forewarned.  In fact, you may be forlorn without wine even while reading this.

Stars Shining When Your Bones Illuminate

Object:  "Sir"
Subject:  Yes?
Object:  "You'll have to observe the sign"

Subject:  What do you think I've been doing?
Object:  "No Sir, I'm not talking about that sign.  I'm talking about this one:"

Object:  "That last glass you drank was dosed with a special drug our researchers have labeled Anti-Ockham's razor.  You should be feeling the effects shortly.  Subjects initially report disorientation, but it goes much deeper.   You life is about to become more complex in ways you can't imagine.   There is no simple.   Eventually, you will be one with an amorphous mosaic structure.  We all are.   You should be encountering the first shard right about now: "

An Author:  "You receive everything you see on the inhalation of the breath.  Don't pretend not to see it.  In our contemporary lives we pretend a lot in order to protect ourselves.  There's TV, newspapers with bad news, city noises and so many other things that seem to be assaulting us.  But no matter what it is, you can take in in, and because you do receive it, on the exhalation you can let it out.  This is the shikan taza breath....Our practice is to have the courage to actually feel and accept these aspects of being human."  No Beginning, No End,  Jakuso Kwong

Object:  "The second shard is much darker in color.  Subjects report fear.   Sometimes overwhelming fear.  Don't worry, we will reimburse your beneficiaries for any necessary medical expenses you may encounter during this procedure"

Another Author:  “The vast and terrible depth."
“Of course,” he said.
“The inexhaustibility.”
“I understand.”
“The whole huge nameless thing.”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“The massive darkness.”
“Certainly, certainly.”
“The whole terrible endless hugeness.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise

Subject:  What is this tension?  This fear off falling evermore into nothingness?
 I have to do something.  I have to move.  I must get away.

Object:  Relax.   The third shard will reduce your anxiety:

Yet Another Author:  “Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called "mind-only," or "essence of mind," or "big mind," After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life.”
― Shunryu Suzuki

Subject:  Easy for you to say.

Object:  "It is actually.  I disintegrated long ago.  Under the Bodhi tree, I was tempted many times by the Demon Mara.  Stay with it my friend."

Random Author:   "In many ways, dear subject, you suffer from self identification.  Like the world revolves around your self.   Like we used to think the sun revolves around the earth.  If you extrapolate this self identification to humanity writ large, it becomes nationalism, religious violence, violence against the environment, disharmony, disunity, and finally dysentery.   It is the seat of much evil and even worse puns.    It creates lyrics, thus and so, that reek with excessive bass when you take your offspring to concerts in St. Louis:

(*Insert lyrics from Bleachers "I want to get better" here)

Response:  I would get better if you all turned down the bass.

With all These Hidden Innuendos; Just Waiting to Arrive

I come from a long line of cowards.  Indeed, though my family never had the modicum of nobility necessary to bestow upon my namesake a family crest, if one ever was appointed to my family, I imagine it not to look not like this:

But rather something like this:

Anxiety is a peculiar phenomena--with ancient roots.  Peter Watts, probably my favorite sci-fi author of recent vintage suggested the following vignette in his novel "Echopraxia:"  (and I'm paraphrasing)

Three cavemen (cave-people) each hear something rustling in the grass. One of them thinks its a tiger and runs like hell.  But it turns out to be the wind.  His friends all laugh at him for being such a chickenshit. One of the other cave-people thinks it's a tiger and runs like hell, and it turns out to be a tiger.  He gets away. The third one hears the rustling in the grass and he blows it off.   He becomes dinner for the tiger.  When this little scenario is recounted millions of times over millions of years, it follows that human survivors tend to be naturally inclined paranoia. Chicken shits have more off-springs than corpses.  Natural selection shapes us to be paranoid.

Lets go a few steps further.

What are the characteristics of paranoia besides fear?  Isn't paranoia in someways an increased sensitivity or recognition of patterns in the natural environment?  The patterns may be delusional, but they still are patterns.  The idiot who hears the rustling in the grass and ignores it in some ways is not sensitive to the pattern in the environment (the rustling) and what it signifies.  It might be said in some ways that the development of human consciousness is a paranoid reaction to the environment with either the recognition or construction of patterns in the environment.  Paranoia is hardwired in our consciousness to become our new reality.

This notion could also be seen as turning religion on its head.   We are the products of a natural selection that instills in us a belief that unseen things are watching us.   In this way, could it be said that a belief in God is nothing more than the sum or all of our fears?

Me?  I'm afraid of dying.  I'm afraid of dark alleys--especially alleys with cactus plants that make you see things that aren't there...lol

With a Ring on the Side of her Nose; Wearing other People's Clothes

I suppose after I get done beating around the bush, this is all going to be about sex.   Maybe "it" is all is about sex.    But alas, we are creatures of stories and words and concepts.  So lets begin gently at first.

You can talk about "it"  romantically.  In modern parlance, consider the concept of the "OTP:"  the one true pair.  Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris.   The somewhat dated concept of the "Brangenlina."  Or, if you want to use the vernacular utilized by my daughters:

Brangelina are literally ultimate relationship goals. OTP for life xxx #brangelina #otp http://instagram.com/p/zQSyfBrR4F/ 

Romance is all well and good, but you can never underestimate the power of a good euphemism, so lets talk about "it" euphemistically, tangentially, horizontally, and later vertically.  To wit:  "the beast with two backs."  After all, what's a good story without a beastly villain?

The "beast" has been around a long time.  Shakespeare tangled with "it" in Act 1 Scene 1, II of Othello:

"I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs."

We must not forget that "it" has a philosophical component to it as well.  Plato's take on the beast not only incorporated two backs into the act, but the entire body.  Check this out from Plato's "Symposium:"

"humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.” 

As such, Plato's vision is both more and less than the mere "beast."  In one sense, it includes the heart and mind to the "beast" with an even more visceral rendition of "it." But on the other hand, isolated fragments looking for the sweet consummation of integration are never whole without "it."  The two halves spend existence bound by magnetism.  They would be willing to give up everything to realign with their other half.   The beast still has a choice.

In the end, perhaps another metaphor is not a jealous god (Zeus) separating humans because he fears them.   Maybe we can envision humanity as all pieces of a fractured god who descended to this earth in an untold number of colorful shards. In this way, there is not a simple dichotomy of isolated humans searching for their other half, but an infinite number of god/universe/diety fragments drawn together   much like the affinity of electons and protons, forming infinitely complex networks.  What draws us together is more than procreation, but the echos of a unified cosmos.  We are the "The Beast with the Billion Backs" in homage to Futurama."  

So if you've come in off the street
And you're beginning to feel the heat
Well listen buster
You better start to move your feet
To the rockinest, rock-steady beat
Of madness
One step beyond!