[Here I submit a sort of book review I emitted last week. Full names have been withheld to protect the fragrant. Perhaps you, too, will find merit in this recommendation. If intrigued, listen to author T.R. Pearson reading from this very book.]

To: Patrick
Subject: RE: Thinking of you…

Patrick: I must admit that the email below contains a falsehood. You were, in fact, the first person to come to mind as I began this T.R. Pearson novel, but there are two reasons why I have fictionalized that detail for my friend Mr. Stephenson:

1. I was under the impression that Mr. Stephenson was not his usual cheery self these days and, in my way, thought that perhaps associating him with dog farts might somehow bring him round.
2. The opening of this book contains an extended account of one Clayton, “phlegmy, unshaven, and fragrant in his ordinary fashion,” which, while not an image I compare to your own, might nevertheless be taken as an indelicate assumption, were I to mention that you had come to mind in the early pages of this book.

So, suffice it to say that the book recommendation below, though I am only one chapter deep, is one I can enthusiastically extend to you. And, more to the point, the suggestion that we continue, in person over beers, such unflattering comparisons of each other to various forms of flatulence, is more an insistence in your case than a suggestion.

Yours Truly,
GH
________________________________________

To: Mr. Stephenson
Subject: Thinking of you…

Mr. Stephenson: a book recommendation for you, assuming, as our mutual friend Mr. Edwards was once queried in the vicinity of your upbringing, you’re one of those types who finds reason to read. You were the first to come to mind as I began reading one of the more recent of that T.R. Pearson’s novels, a book called Polar. And the shade of yourself that came to mind in a fond sort of way for me was not the well-dressed type who arrives on a fine imported motorcycle and drinks imported beers.

No, the gentleman of whose company I was reminded was that variety of Stephenson who emerges conversationally upon the occasion of deep-fried food, served by a pock-faced waitress who nonetheless boasts a figure that inspires indelicate thoughts in the mind of the average male patron. He is the same sort of Stephenson who trades his usual inky English ale without complaint for a lager of the NASCAR persuasion.

And if it goes any further in recommending this book to you, I offer this passage on canine flatulence which brought to my eyes a surprised and, frankly, envious rush of tears as fit for that Pearson’s prose as for the “vaporish toxins” of which he writes:

Then, of course, there was his dog as well, an ancient mongrel named Monroe. She was sullen and unfriendly, greasy, matted and vaporish in a grand and foully intrusive sort of way. She broke treacherous wind, that is to say, with a kind of ceremony. She would still herself and hunker and tauten, and there would come upon her features an expression of devout concentration as if she were running the figures to reconcile the national debt in her head.

The way the chief’s wife told it, she and her beefy unbetrothed niece couldn’t help but watch that mongrel squatting by the hearth where the planking yielded to masonite beneath Ray’s fuel-oil heater. They couldn’t decide if she was about to drop dead or recite a holy psalm, but clearly something of moment was afoot. So they watched her, and they waited. They even went together prattleless for a time which caught Ray’s notice, and he joined the two of them in study of Monroe until she’d broken the wind that she’d been ushering through her tracts and ducts and went back to shoving her paw in her ear and groaning.

The smell arrived shortly and fairly much seized them with its ghastliness. “We stopped out on the parkway,” Ray informed them. “I think she ate a squirrel.”

If, by chance, your day is lacking in personal gratification, perhaps it’s some small recompense that such a passage might bring you to mind. See you soon over either an inky pint or else a “beer that tastes like ambitious water.” Cheers,

Photo by Vagabond Shutterbug

In five minute increments I’m experiencing a cavalcade of newsbite dreams that would employ doctor Freud for a month. They say you need 26+ minutes sleep at a time to achieve effective rest, but what if there were a way to go beyond power napping into the speed-reading equivalent of dreaming?

Harlan Ellison wrote a story sometime after I was born called “The Function of Dream Sleep.” Spoiler alert: a premise of the story is that our dreams are not artful expressions of inner meaning, but rather our mind’s nightly trip to the crapper to excrete useless thoughts.

As I lay there tumbling into a surprisingly deep and disorienting dreamland for each four and a half minute session, it’s possible my mind was having a frantically productive spring cleaning session. No long involved mystical dreamland tales that beg interpretation and analysis, but rather mental exhalations that were as swift and satisfying as a series of sneezes.

I think of the fear-breathing exercise at Kristen Ulmer’s Ski to Live clinic. From my journal:

Last exercise for the night: breathe in your fears. All of them. Let each breath in carry with it one of our fears. We would have plenty, she assured us.

And with each breath out— it’s not succinct to explain— expel the belief that you will ever let go of that fear. In other words, accept that you may always have that fear … but the double-negative is actually closer to the effect Kristen was trying to cultivate: you’re not gathering up yet another “thing,” an acceptance of something unsavory, another worry for your analytical mind to obsess on, but rather you are expelling, exhaling a myth, a deceit, a lie.  It’s important (and not readily accessible to me, anyway) that this not be confused: it’s not about debunking fears, it’s about breaking down the ways we hide and ignore our fears. Lots of negative language and dark concepts there— all mingling together.  It’s tempting to work a mathematical magic and turn double-negatives into positives, but this is not a problem solved by unicorns and daisies.  Trust me: I’ve tried several times in this paragraph alone.

I stood there breathing deep.  On each successive inhale I never ran out of fears— or “worries” as I preferred to call them. These were very real worries that plague me daily.  Here’s where the structure of the exercise struck me as revelatory: without the exhale, I would burst.

The cycle— the rhythmic give-and-take of our own respiratory system— limits each side’s contribution to the dialogue: One side says “What about money? What if I can’t pay the bills?” The exhale replies: “You may never know if you’re going to be able to pay the bills.”  It’s only implied: “So now what?” because it’s time for another fear to be inhaled.

Perhaps like a village tribunal, little cases come before a judge, swift decisions are rendered, and the next case comes up without fanfare. Villagers trudge away wondering if it was worth it to gripe in the first place; judges go home at night doubting they made a difference in their community; and only a bigger mind sees that the process is the inhale and exhale of Justice.

You know Kristen and I are both Virgos? I’m a Year of the Rat guy, as well, making me exceptionally precise, organized, analytical, and someone who hoards things in wall cavities. I think her breathing exercise worked for me because it negated analysis and perfectionism: there is not enough time in the space of a breath to get it absolutely perfect. So you simply move on to the next breath. Or turn blue.

So what if snoozebutton dreaming could do the same for my subconscious, hopping from square to square to stomp out these nebulous half-formed thoughts? I’ll sleep on it and get back to you in 4.5 minutes.

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Photo by Yours Truly