Oh what dreams may come.

It has been far too long since my last post, and it is only a matter of coincidence that I am writing now.
I am on Day three of the Master Cleanse. I am no longer hungry in a visceral, biological, survival-necessity way -- no, scratch that; that degree of hunger will come later. It is insensitive and self-indulgent of me to describe my pangs as anything close to those people actually starving. Anyway, I am past the superficial stage. I no miss food in a wistful way, as one misses a favorite luxury, a bubble bath or a fine cigar. I miss the comforting nature of food. Which, I suppose, is what sent me on this path to begin with: the need to separate food from a lazy desire to a healthy essential.
Wow, can I digress or can I digress? Before I started off on that tangent I wanted to express the reason I am now typing.
I've gone three days without food. Other than a cuppa joe I drank on my two-hour drive to see my ex in Boston [More on that later], I have had no caffeine since the first of the year.
Today, on a supremely empty stomach, I awoke feeling groggy and useless. I slumped into work, all half-lidded eyes and languorous limbs. I imbibed two strong mugs full of delicious coffee. Within moments I was buzzing about the kitchen like a hummingbird. I felt as though someone had injected rocket fuel into my veins.
So, with that sad admission, dear readers, I confess to breaking the last of my New Year's Resolutions.
[More on that later.]
Now, despite an eventful day cooking, acquiring motorcycles, running, swimming, and pumping iron, combined with a nigh non-existent caloric intake, I am still chugging along on all cylinders. My heart's thumping, my eyes're twitching, my brain's sparking.
I can curl up in bed, listlessly dry-humping the mattress only so long.
Eventually I was forced to leaped from the covers' soft embrace and power-up the laptop.
So here we are.

What to touch on first?
Well, in honor of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, I have a dream.
Rather, several dreams. All bat-shit loco, like most of mine, and no at all uplifting or poignant as Dr. King's was.

Three nights ago I dreamt that I was seated in a red plastic fun-yak (one of those chunky, open-hulled kayak-like craft), a hot blonde whose face I could not see positioned in my lap, as though we were spooning. The fun-yak was riding low, water sloshing over our legs. I was not really concerned with sinking, however. It was dark. I mean pitch black. No moon, no stars. The water was liquid obsidian.
I was paddling around, attempting to recover a spiral-bound notebook. The notebook floated, the pages did not get wet. It was opened to the first page, upon which was written a single word. I could not make the word out.
Every time I got within reach of the item, this burly dolphin would rush up and knock it across the water like a skimmed stone. The girl said it was her pet, and he would retrieve the notebook for us. I told her that he should just get the damn thing and quit playing mind games with me.
Weird, huh?

Okay, next up. I was tracking down these hillbillies who stole a number of items from me. Sometimes it was present day, sometimes the Old West. Along the way I'd run into people whom I'd question, sometimes harshly, even violently, regarding the whereabouts of my stolen property. Finally, late a night, in some rickety clapboard house near a low-rent diner aglow with neon, I found the thief. I cornered him and slugged him repeatedly, and he let me know that he had sold my stuff, and it was gone.

Last night I had a dream that my brother and I were visiting childhood friends. These are cats we ain't seen in fifteen years. We drove to their house. It was a bright, sunny day. Their mother was out mowing the lawn.
Suddenly, we're in their basement.
(Sidenote. Years back their basement used to be partially finished. The laundry room was cinder block walls and dirt floors. I recall the ceilings being high. Since I was probably three feet tall at the time, they seemed even higher than they actually were.)
Anyway, in the dream, the whole basement is unfinished. And it is cavernous. It stretched into the horizon in every direction and the ceiling faded into blackness far, far above our heads.
The whole place was full of junk. It was like a cross between a garbage dump and the worlds most disorganized flea market. Piles of old clothes, broken furniture, birdcages, shopping carts, and old newspaper. Piles of dusty stuffed animals. Stacks of old, crumbling books. In between these heaps were narrow alleys. The whole thing was like a labyrinth of trash.
Sam and I were driving a jeep around, being pursued by bandits. We kept driving in this circle, and the fiends were right behind us. One of the marauders leaped into the back of the jeep and tried to reach in the back window to grab some valuable item we were carrying. (I still don't know what it was.) I urged Sam to turn in his seat and shoot the bandit, but Sam refused, saying the angle was all wrong. The bandit grabbed the item and hurled himself from the moving vehicle. I thought we should turn around and give chase, but then reconsidered. It was probably a bandit trap. They were no doubt waiting for us to exit out vehicle, at which point they'd descend upon us. Better write off that as a lost cause.
Later, on foot, we found our friends. They were living in the maze, training a group of fighters to repel the bandits. They were fashioning homemade crossbows out of tennis rackets. The net was held against the shoulder, like a stock, and the bolt fitted along the handle. The arrows were snow brushes for cars. They had filed down the plastic scrapers on one end into arrow points and used the bristles of the brush as the feathers of the arrow.
We walked into a group of them, all pointing cocked crossbows around wildly.
"Do not point those at or around my face," I told them, brusquely.

There ya have it.

Now, New Year's Resolutions.
I've broken all of mine. I feel the problem is that I do not set attainable goals for myself. If one resolves simply to go to the gym every day, that is all well and good, but it has not terminus. It is an open-ended ambition. There never exists the vision, however far off, of reaching the goal. There is no pay off.
Thus, I have resolved to develop new resolutions.

First: I will purchase a motorcycle.
That seems selfish, but it is something I've been wanting for a long time now and I feel it is well within my grasp.
Second: I will finally finish A Distant Mirror, by Barbara W. Tuchman. It's a thrilling chronicle of Europe in the 14th Century, but I have never made it more than halfway through its 1,000+ page bulk.
Third: I will write a damn novel.
November is traditionally Novel Writing Month, and there exists a wacky foundation that will go so far as to publish a gratis copy of anything you write for you, if you manage to finish a coherent story in those 30 days. I once dated a girl who did that very thing, thought she never let me read it . . .
Anyway, if so many nuts are out there composing novels in a month's time, than surely a year is long enough for me to spew some nonsense onto paper.
Fourth: I will get back to Massage School.
I have taken so many hiatuses from the semesters due to work that I might as well start the whole process over again. If that is the case then so be it.

That's all I got for now. More to follow, perhaps.

Friday! Last week was Friday the 13th. Unlucky for some. I certainly did not get lucky that evening. It was also my ex-girlfriend's 26th birthday party. I put a lot of effort into looking good for the event. I hit the gym, ate carefully, picked out a stylish ensemble. I did a substantial amount of man-scaping. More like man-slash-and-burning. I shaved my whole body, even buzzed my chest. (One thing the ex was always adamant about was my retaining my chest hair. When we broke up one of the first things I did was to shave my chest. I cut it down so that, on the off chance I wound up banging her that night, she'd have no choice to but experience me in all my hairless glory, so she could see what she missed all those years. I went so far as to give myself a sporty little landing strip to enhance the apparent length of my member. Hooray for optical illusions. I got my eyebrows plucked.
I showed up after a frustrating drive (is there anything worse than driving through Boston?) about two hours into the event. She had reserved the top floor of this posh hipster joint in Cambridge called The Meadhall. Private rooms, private bar, balcony overlooking the lower level. A fine establishment, no doubt, with a respectable menu and an extensive beer selection. The ex was already a little tipsy.
(I do not wish to make her seem like a lush. She left her heavy drinking days behind her with the dorm rooms and pajama afternoons of college. But it was her birthday and she's allowed to indulge, for Pete's sake.)
I made small talk with her friends, most of whom I really liked, and looked all hip and suave, drinking bourbon and adjusting my glasses. I would up chatting excessively with this jacked, balding dude who worked for Google. I was not clear at first how he new the ex; I assumed he was a friend-of-a-friend.
In between chatting with her peeps (of whom there were many), I brought her water and bar food and helped to keep her steady.
Much later it was revealed to me by one of her friends that the Google dude and my ex were semi-dating.
I was aghast. I was outraged. I'd been chatting amiably with this dork and he's been exploring my ex-gf's search engine? Not cool!
I waited until most of the revelers had left, including some unsavory-looking exes of hers who were probably hoping for the same post-break-up nasty that I was, and then drove her home.
I declined an invitation to stay.
On the drive back I got to thinking. One, I had no reason to dislike this fella, Malcolm, who was dating my ex. In fact, I rather liked him. He sang Sususudio when he got drunk. How can you find fault with a man who does that? (Unless said man is Phil Collins.) And two, it is no business of mine what my ex does or whom she sees. I forfeited that right when I ended the relationship. All I know is that it was good to see her and I hope she's happy.

And on that note, I will re-attempt sleep.

Nighty-night all.