Jeremiah's School of Levitation

When was the last time you ever stopped to realize just how much color there is around you? Sunlight helps immensely to pull the color out of things, to invite the flowers to come and dance and throw off the color veil and just let it all hang out. But, I happen to live in a place where it is cloudy roughly 266 days a year, so I don't usually get the benefit of the sun being this sort of visual pied piper, leading color on a parade. Strangely enough, though, this doesn't hinder my experience of color, for I've found that low, lifeless-gray skies actually are a way to give carte blanche to color to express itself without the added garnish of sun gems.

So, the best time for me to experience the color is the time when the sky has none. I notice then that the searing red of the rhododendrons, the pale purple of the lilacs, and the deep yellow of the popcorn-bodied snapdragon flowers acquire a bit more personality when they have no sun to refine them, to tickle them, to tell them to stand up and make a speech. It's like snatching a glimpse of a lady twirling an apple in her hand in the produce section. You know? She's not posing, there are no bright lights on her, she's got no pressure to perform, no clear indication that anyone is looking. She's just there, living in a private moment, looking at an apple, not realizing anything about herself except that she needs five really good apples, and she's going to stare them down until they show themselves to her. Unburdened by anyone's expectations, she stands there just as herself, and she's gorgeous.

That's what flowers, grass, evergreens, and, heck, even paint does under the clouds. They just are themselves, offering up the color that they brought to the day, without adornment, without gleam, without self-consciousness. There is nothing more soothing than a flowery window basket flaring with color, hanging out in the muted gray of the day. We have a great deal of Northwest gardeners, even in the winter, who realize this and who know that offering their flowers as dapples on the ashen canvas makes you smile, even when you don’t realize it, which then, in turn, dapples your own face with captured color.

Makes a cloudy day worth it, I say.

Here it is Sunday and I'm just now getting to the Friday word, which was "pitch."

Well, actually, I'm always just a few brain-cell bursts short of that word, at least when it means "to shovel an idea into someones head and then get out before they smack you." In my scribbling meanderings, I often jot down ideas for bad Hollywood movies starring Carrot Top or Pauly Shore, in the hope that someday, when I'm really bored, or bedridden, I'll down two martinis and then I'll develop one of the ideas into a treatment and then go to LA, drink a few more martinis, and then go pitch it to stone-faced studio people. Of course, I'm sure that after the first two martinis, I'd realize I'm too old for this and that, really, if I was going to be famous then I already would be famous and I wouldn't need a blog because you could read about me in People. So, in light of that, I'd just pitch the whole idea and order another round (how 'bout that? I used the phrase "pitch an idea" and made it mean two different things? As Mona said, this word is amazingly versatile).

So, this week, as a service (or disservice, you may think later), I'll dump a few of my ideas for anyone young enough, or bored enough, to take one of these and run to LA with it and pitch with wild abandon. Just don't forget to mention me on Oprah, or at least get the next round.

A straight-laced female cop against a crafty criminal who falls in love with her.
Epic battle of dog vs. cat carried out by alien races of dogs and cats reborn on Earth.
Murdered man reincarnated as a bird goes after the guy who killed him.
A fierce liberal and hardcore conservative meet in a survival situation.
A scholar ends up tutoring a hillbilly singer.
A dictator on the run ends up with small-town evangelical priest.
A master illusionist gets a job as a dance instructor for little girls.
A time traveler has to deal with a caveman stowaway as they both travel through time.
A rap star becomes a celebrated lounge singer.
A construction worker wants to become a fashion designer.
A diet fanatic wants to become a world champion professional eater.
A dog catcher, who wants dogs off the street, wants to create a city of dogs.
A typical, straight-laced CEO wants to be a punk singer.

Okay, I suppose it's time to hit the thrift store and find me a nice Member's Only jacket because it seems that I've hit the Time Skids and am now reverting back to the 80's, so I need to dress for it.

Over the last week, probably because, thanks to my doctor, my mortality has now brought its luggage over to my house and has moved in, I've found my mind and words drifting back to those glory days of yester-life when I could eat a pile of eggs and bacon and drink half a gallon of WHOLE milk for breakfast, then go to work, then come home, drink a couple of beers, go play some hoops, then take a nap and a shower, not necessarily in that order, then have to actually refuse gettin' it on with my girlfriend because, and I quote me, "we've got to try to LIMIT it to ONCE a day", then go eat an ultimate cheeseburger, then go out, have a few more drinks, then, at 3am, eat another pile of bacon and red meat and, the next day, not only feel just fine, but have lost 2 pounds of fat, and gained an extra ripple of muscle in my six-pack belly. Ah, the 80's.

Cases in point:

• Three times this week, I've called my iPod a "Walkman."



• I noticed that, at the gym, the only songs that really get me going are the songs in my "Best of the 80's" playlist whereupon I sing flawlessly to such bands as Thompson Twins, Duran Duran, and Blancmange.



• I want someone to ask me what was the first video that MTV ever played so I can say "Why, that would be 'Video Killed the Radio Star.' Like, gag me with a spoon! Like who doesn't know THAT?" And, I'll smile like I just solved the mystery of consciousness. I've fantasized, actually, that I was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and that my million dollar question concerned who the band was that did that first MTV video. Of the four choices, one would, of course, be The Buggles, and I'd laugh like a professional laugher as I blurted out the answer before I even got the "is that your final answer" balderdash.



• I dreamed about "leg warmers."



• I keep telling my sons about my college hijinks, not so much because I want to make them laugh at the fact that this old boring guy used to be a handful of fun, but because those stories are more like me reliving those days, like I'm actually telling MYSELF those stories and, the fact that I'm saying them out loud is okay because I'm saying it to my kids. But, the story of Riz surfing on an air conditioning grate he'd put up on top of a concrete cylinder, and the story of when my girlfriend had trusted me and my friend Evon to bake the cookies she'd plopped on a pan and handed to us and, as soon as she left the room, we ate all the dough all make me warm like I grew a coat.

So, I think I'm sliding backwards, getting like they say old men get. The only thing I need to figure out, and therapy may help, is either if I'm actually getting older or if by some miracle, I'm becoming like the old Jeremiah from 25 years ago. Either way, I suppose, I'm headed for insanity.

Which then, all I can do is follow Prince's advice from Purple Rain: "Let's Go Crazy!"

It's unduly obscene that I'm not coming to the blog meetings lately. Do you need some insight into how my life is going right now? Consider this classic paradox:

"This sentence is not true."

If this sentence was true, then it is not true. However, if this sentence is not true, then, actually, it IS true.

That's how my life, mind, and general being is being assaulted at this moment--with amazingly confusing paradoxes! Where are my pills!?

Okay, now I'm REALLY back. And, proud to say that this post will officially break my "shorter posts" resolution (I've got to make up for missed days!).

See, I spent last week in some pain and in the doctor's office, wondering out loud what the gastric hell is wrong with my guts. Many diagnoses were put forth (he said in the passive voice) but were finally narrowed down to three: gallstones, ulcer, or something colon-ial.

We checked for gallstones last week. To do this, I had to go have an ultrasound, which I realized I hadn't seen for about ten years when my wife and I were looking at the embryonic darlingness that was to become my youngest son, who has grown up to be a healthy, happy, hurricane-force wind.

So, in the ultrasound chamber, I was eager to see my guts, which I'd never seen due to the fact I've consistently avoided alleyway knife fights (so far). I lay down and the young lady doing the procedure greased me up and directed me to look at the monitor hanging over my head. I asked her if this monitor was actually broadcasting the video of my guts on some cable channel and, if so, I was going to call some friends and tell them "Hey! My pancreas is on channel 143 now! Check it out!" However, that wasn't the case. "We're off the air," said the technician.

So, she got to sliding the ultrasound thing around on my belly and I tried to make out what I was seeing on the screen. In my highly medically trained opinion, judging by what I saw on the screen, my guts are generally just an indefinable bowl of snot, which I always suspected. "There's my problem," I told the tech. "My guts are really just snot. That causes bad stomachaches, I'm sure." She ignored me.

She did get one on me, though. As she scanned, she stopped and said "Look! You're going to have twins!" Ha, ha...

Finally, we crossed my liver region and, remarkably, I knew it instantly because my liver looks exactly like liver. It's got that same consistency and shade of the liver in the grocery store. And, I bet it tastes better (jeez, why did I write that?). I asked the tech if that was my liver and she confirmed that it was. I got a little choked up. From there, we journeyed to my gall bladder, which was the whole reason I was in here. Again, it was pretty nondescript. I tried to see if there were any stones in it, as if I could tell. I suppose the only way I'd be sure if there were really any stones in there would be if I should happen to see a silhouette of Mick Jagger or, even more ominously (but encouraging), Keith Richards. I contemplated telling the tech that joke, but she'd had enough of me and, in annoyance, she'd probably ultrasound my head and I'd end up like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Also, another thing--she kept having me hold my breath while she ultrasounded. I finally asked her why I had to hold my breath, and she said: "Well, I thought that would make your organs slide a little further down, but it's not working because you have such a solid stomach."

"Oh," I said on the outside. Inside, I pumped my fist and said "YES!!" Confirmation that the situps are working! I felt myself blushing...

In the end, all went well. My doc later told me that nothing was unusual in the ultrasound. My gall bladder didn't have stones, or beatles, or pixies in them. So, we can rule out needing to remove it medically.

This means we still have the stomach and colon to consider as sources of my pain. Which means I'll need invasive exams into each of those two organs this week. Which means I'll definitely have to tell you what it was like. Which means you might want to skip my colon post....

How old have I gotten? Well, I missed the whole new year festivities because I was curled up like a cinnamon roll in my bed, at about 10 pm. I told myself, as I drifted into slumber, fireworks sporatically popping around the neighborhood, that I would try to get up around 11:55 or so and bust open some champagne and bring in 2007 properly. I also was seeing, somewhere in my periphery, a giant red castle with little dorm rooms in them and a big meeting room where I had to go to head up a meeting, but first, I had to pick up some food at the local, brick-lined deli. And who was there but this girl I knew from high school, who was very pretty, and who told me that I had a "vodka belly."

So, needless to say, I went on to my dreamy adventures in the castle, and didn't actually wake up until around 5:11 am, when the new year's party was long over, and people were busy sleeping off some serious regret.

However, I was already prepared with my resolutions, so I at least did my holiday duty. I only made five this year. Oh, sure, you can hear what they are!

1. Live each day as if this is as good as it gets.
2. Get rich.
3. Gain weight (this is my trick play to the cosmos, for whenever I profess to LOSE weight, I actually don't lose it, but just hide it from myself somewhere in the belly region and, with only a brief search, promptly find it)
4. Be more truthful. This doesn't mean to quit telling lies, which I don't do, but to delve more deeply into my Jeremiahness, with the risk of alienating maybe a few or more people. After all, I yam what I yam. Maybe you need to know who I yam...
5. Write shorter posts. Even shorter than this one.