Karma and Cole Slaw



NC Museum of Natural Sciences


Hinduism's version of reincarnation -- you know, karma as my only gift of inheritance, my sole happy-birthday-to-you present -- is definitely the view of existence that will be applied to my miserable excuse of a life;  That is, to my next one.

Um, as far as I know.

Which is exactly the point!

This morning, first thing, I opened a cheery, breezy, e-mailed invitation to a Memorial Service for two people (one an acquaintance, one a friend) I did not know had died, and quite some time ago, apparently.
It's wrong on so many levels.

So I hurried on over to the Reincarnation Station, took the test, held my breath, and was told I'll be coming back around as a bear, and that:

Almost 32% of people will be reincarnated as a higher form of life than [me].


[I'm] not perfect, but [I]'ve lead a better life than most. With a few changes now, [my] next life could be even better.

Oh, good, look:  Crime and Punishment is on!  Glover, Hurt, Redgrave, Kingsley, Kidder. That one.

Raskolnikov:  what a rookie to believe in his capacity to give karma a helping hand!  Surely something vegetal awaits my presumptuous, fictive kin -- a kumquat, a rutabaga.

In vegetable vein, I broke in my new refurbished Kitchen Aid Food Processor with remainders of cabbage, carrot, onion (more juiced than chopped) and broccoli stems, and with a frothy, weird, creamy vinaigrette.  Cole slaw.  It took me 40 minutes to clean up after the 5-minute process.  I was so tired, and before noon!

I fell back into bed.

In my dream, in my 55 minutes of nap, I relived an old nightmare. 

This really happened:  I had pneumonia, and was being put on a ventilator.  Apparently, I was bucking the process.  On my end of things, the rushing noises of the breathing machine became a mechanical voice that said, over and over, in the rhythm of  expiratory bellows, everywhere:

THIS IS WHERE
YOU HAVE ALWAYS
WANTED TO BE

Today's mourning dream changed The Machine's line, ruined its perfect syncopation, syllabication, so that it said:

IT IS NOT ALWAYS ABOUT YOU.

Cole slaw in the fridge, done.  Check.
RSVPs to make, for Ed K. and Michael P.