Timequake + 3, Aprilcot 4, 41 A.B.
I'm still trying to recover from last weekend's timequake. With so many naturally
occurring jolts to our circadian clocks, you wouldn't think we'd really need two artificially
induced ones each and every year, but the Powers That Be obviously think otherwise.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that They actually all live on some isolated island
where the hours roam free and happy and are never required to spring forward or fall
back on cue while the rest of us are forced to get up at 2 a.m. on a Sunday and brace
ourselves in our doorways when we could be planning revolution instead....
They say some animals can tell when a timequake is about to occur because of their
greater sensitivity to pre-tocks, but Jester was caught completely unawares (judging from
his failure to adjust the legclock I got him for Christmas - not to mention his angry hisses).
I personally handled the timequake itself well enough, but the afterticks have been
getting on my nerves. Six more today, and of course they always come at the worst
possible moment (i.e., when I'm older than ever before). The next time one comes along
and disrupts my life, I don't care what anyone thinks - I'm screaming. Or, at the very least,
tearing up....
I'm not sure exactly how many afterticks there have been now. This surprises me a
bit. As several people have pointed out to me, I'm a counter. I count the steps I take while
mowing. I count the silverware as I wash and dry it. I count cars and clouds, telephone
poles and fellow grocery shoppers, lane lines and ceiling squares and weather girl blinks
and much else besides. How I managed to avoid counting afterticks, I don't know.
And I haven't even tried to count the possible reasons why I don't know.
How absolutely pathetic....
Think being a counter is a rare thing? Think again. Both my imaginary friends are
counters, too.
Sylvia often loudly shouts out the number of times her wheelchair's wheels have
gone around. I think she does this merely to win the sympathy of passers-by when she's
in Manipulative Bitch mode, but maybe I'm wrong - maybe it's genetic. Or the equivalent
of a nervous tic, like my own shouting out of the numbers of the floors we're failing to stop
at when I'm in a plummeting elevator.
Hans counts all those things no one else would ever think to count at all . The
heartbeats of passing birds, the molecules in a slice of bread, the w's in the words
spoken at a presidential news conference, the number of sighs sighed by all the people
who are making love today within a 17-mile radius of my garage. I really have to
wonder about the totals he comes up with sometimes, especially when he announces
them in German and refuses to translate....
The worst thing about these man-made, semi-annual timequakes, of course, is the
way they completely disrupt my sleeping schedule. Any disruption of my sleeping
schedule makes me itchy and cranky, but timequakes also disrupt my dreams.
Instead of the random chaos I'm accustomed to, the dreams I have in the wake of a
timequake always come in alphabetical order.
The following chronological list of the subjects covered by last night's dreams shows
exactly what I mean:
Antique gnats
Artificial mammilla
Bottled sorrows
Boulder-free chow mein
Bronzed teardrops
Canned ecstasy
Diapered aspirations
Diced sand
Enchanted epidemics
Flood-prone lies
Folding skyscrapers
Gilded microbes
Glib mutes
Heaped hermitages
Infra-red invitations
Intensive clarifications
Just deserts
Kaleidoscopic night vision goggles
Lace indictments
Lip-shaped pianos
Microgasmic touchables
Natural fiber coffins
Oak-infested octagons
Pain-free junctions
Peripheral taste tests
Petrified sheep
Portable goodbyes
Quaint megatheres
Recycled boos
Standardized miracles
Subliminal French kisses
Subpoenaed rain
Ultrasonic RSVPs
Trickling banjos
Virile passports
Whipped steam
Xeroxed wine
Yelp-enhanced tangos
Zip-loc cats, cars and carrousels
Zoo-studded Wednesdays
Looking over this list, I'm awfully tempted to count all my dreams up - but I just can't.
There's something about the unasked for order already imposed upon them by the
timequake that renders the act of counting superfluous, unnecessary, and maybe even
pointless.
Oh, it's an evil, evil thing that can render counting pointless!
Even Hans has been reduced to silent flight, leaving me to contemplate the enormity
of the evil in silence.
Well, except for the occasional wheel-count shout from Sylvia.
Forgive me for wanting more from life than that.
Forgive me for abandoning this entry at this point in order to go TRY to forget my
pain and my sorrow by straightening out exactly 97 vinyl-clad paperclips....
Forward To A Reinforced Future
(©On The Very Fault Line Of The Now by Dan Birtcher)