Category: Words

What’s new, pussycat?

The theme for my vacation is doing things I have never done before.

As we all know, I started out with a trip to the beach with friends. All new travel partners for me. You’ve read all about how that turned out. It was a wonderful trip.

The rest of my vacation will be at home. So I am going to do some new things, because…why not?

This morning I did a 90 minute float in an isolation tank. It’s something I have wondered about since seeing the movie ‘Altered States’ in high school. It’s basically a tank with a few feet of heavily Epsom salted water in a completely dark, quiet environment. Generally, some sort of a pod or enclosure. In this case, the tank was not quite as wide as my arm span. Probably about 7 feet long. I could stand up in it, but I didn’t really notice how tall it was.

There was a shower next to the tank, and a bench with towels and a robe.

You take a shower, turn off the room lights, and then get into the tank and shut the door. When you are ready, you shut off the light in the tank.

The salinity makes you float on top of the water with no effort at all. Because they balance the air and water temperature, the theory is that the boundary between the water, your body and the space around it begins to break down.

The water is almost syrupy from the salt. Viscous. It feels more like oil, slippery to the touch. For some reason, your skin doesn’t get all pruned up, even after 90 minutes.

It is very comfortable, and I relaxed into it very quickly. I would have loved for it to be just a tiny bit warmer, but it was not uncomfortably cool at all.

It didn’t feel like an enclosed space to me, but more like being in space.
The only things I could hear were my own breathing and heartbeat. At times I would see blobby, pulsing colors. Sort of like a lava lamp. All in my head, I suppose. Maybe your eyes really want to try to make something out of all the blackness.

It was very calming and peaceful. The time went quickly. At the end, they pipe in some musical tones at gradually increasing volume to let you know your time is up. Shower, shampoo, and out you go.

I felt a little spacey, but very peaceful at the end. When I got out to the lobby, there were a ton of people there. The place stays busy, running 6 tanks 24 hours a day.

It would be really interesting to be in the tank on any sort of psychedelics.

Sadly, I did not turn into a monkey man like William Hurt did in the movie.

It was interesting enough that I may do it again.

Next up? A flight in a hot air balloon.

At 0600. That is too too early.
Why can’t the wind be still in the evening???

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Dream mystery

In the dream, someone was trying to kill me, but at first I thought they were trying to kill other people. In big, dramatic ways. Explosions. Mass gunfire. Cars driving into crowds.

In trying to figure out who was creating the mayhem, because to me it seemed like calculated mayhem, I started to believe that a particular person was the target. Then that person died in one of the explosions, and the incidents kept happening. Fires. Building implosions. Helicopters with rocket launchers.

Someone recently said I have a flair for the dramatic. In my dreams I definitely do.

At a certain point, I figured out that they were trying to get me. In running through a burning building looking for a place to hide, I ended up in Stewart’s apartment. Never mind that he lives in a house. Never mind that there was no reason he would still be inside a burning building instead of running away like everyone else. Never mind that it would be more logical to get out of the burning building myself. Never mind that when I opened the door I had no idea he was inside. It was a dream.

Dream logic is a whole separate thing. Sort of like my own logic.

Stewart said I could hide at his place, even though I thought it might put him at risk. He also helped me figure out that the person I thought was helping me was the one who was after me.

It never occurred to me to wonder why it was so important for someone to hurt me that they were willing to kill dozens or hundreds of other people while they were trying.

It often occurs to me why anyone would want to hurt anyone on purpose.

I fell asleep on Stewart’s bed. I woke up during the night and he was awake, arms around me, watching the door, stroking my hair.

I felt safe. Calm.

In the morning, we talked about what to do, and in talking it over again, we realized that we’d been wrong the night before. There was a nurse I used to work with who was on a rampage. Then there was a knock on the wall, which was like a garage door. Someone forced it open a crack and threw in some sort of incendiary device. We crawled under the mattress, and were safe when it exploded.

Well, I think we were. The explosion woke me up.
I suppose it’s possible that I am actually dead. I am probably not going to continue the blog after I’m dead though.

It was comforting to know that someone was protecting me in my sleep…

It’s funny how small a gesture it takes comfort someone, and how often people choose to hurt them instead.

Random quotes

One of my quirks is that I write a lot of things down that people say if I find them interesting in some way. Funny or charming or sweet or thought provoking. Whatever. I keep finding random notes from things that people said during the beach weekend.

Usually, I will also jot down some sort of context to remind me why I wrote it down.

In this case, it was just:

Nobody will ever fuck with you
–Kyle

Normally, I would be a little annoyed with myself for not writing any more than that, but in this case?

I am oddly reassured to know that Kyle has my back. Even if I don’t remember why I wrote it down. I think all of the boys agreed on it. The subject came up more than once.

So don’t fuck with me.

My boys will get you.

Some of you should be worried.