A Rewrite: Dad laid down and went to sleep

Brother-Unit Grader Boob has returned to his own Home Land after seeing to the Father-Unit's cremation and memorial service, whose attendance was apparently mostly made up of beach locals:

"[A] waitress from their favorite eatery, the guy who does their lawn, their Mr. Fix-It, the brokerage guy from their bank, some guys he hung out with and drank coffee with down at the local BP station..." and a smattering of actual relations.  I'm betting that the waitress knew him best.  I'm betting he smoked when he dropped by at odd hours, alone, ordering some "regular" food item that she prepared just right.  He was a sucker for lemon pie -- maybe he developed a thing for the more available key lime -- the lemon pie was a specialty of his mother's.  Lemon Ice Box Pie.  Awfully graham-crackery and pucker::pucker tart.  But it was "hers" so we "loved" it, air quotes proving our citric credibility.

A scattering of his ashes is planned for Atlantic waters, and there don't seem to be a bunch of laws standing in the way.  Not like over at the western end of that state, where some weenies decided to regulate drifting cinders.  That was my first choice, somewhere (actually, "somewhere" very specific) along the Blue Ridge.  Then a California friend, a busy mother, ceramic artist, perpetual redesigner of kitchens -- but reportedly, by kin, even, a god-awful baker -- someone who eventually went to med school and, I'm willing to wager all my investment income -- income so piled high upon itself that it is seeping out of my Gringotts Wizarding Bank magical money jail cell -- solves more medical mysteries over coffee in her torn-to-pieces kitchen than in some speckled formica-ed San Franciscan examination cubicle...

My train.  That damned train of thought.  Choo!  Choo!***

Anyway, Margaret, this California friend, began sending me a local artist's series of Point Reyes note cards, a national park, a "national seashore." A shore, headlands, grasslands, beaches, a forest, even.  [I am notoriously challenged directionally... A trip up the PCH** meant the Pacific was on the left, the forests on the right.  The return trip required the PCH to be on the right, the woods to my left.  The weeping driver asking for directions, thank God, was *always* to my left, as The Great American Writer Wannabe refused to allow me to drive his Mustang.

Margaret wasn't campaigning that I scatter my ashes anywhere in our nationally shared Point Reyes park.  It just came to bright me, it came as a longing, as a fulfillment.  And it turned out to be a pain in the caboose:


• A permit is required for all areas. 
• Remains to be scattered must have been cremated and pulverized. 
• Scattering by persons on the ground is to be performed at least 100 yards from any trail, 
road, developed facility or body of water, and 440 yards seaward from the shoreline on 
the Pacific Ocean. 
• Scattering from the air will not be performed over developed areas, facilities or bodies of 
water and will be performed at a minimum altitude of 2000 feet above the ground. 


Just at that point in your After-Existence when you're looking for the few people left who love you to have a freeing moment, a laugh in the wind?  Bullet points.  And I gotta say, "pulverized" kinda kills the good mood. Of course, I suppose that if my already cindered remains were not put through some huge spice grinder, I'd shift from a figurative to a literal portion of the Giant Floating Garbage Patch.

I do appreciate, though, the posting of allowable driving speeds.  It reads like a marvelous poem:


15 MPH: 
• The unpaved section of Mesa Road 
• Oyster Farm Access Road 
• Mount Vision Road 
• Estero Trail Access Road 
• Marshall Beach Road 
• Sacramento Landing Road 
• Chimney Rock Road 
• The following sections of trails open for administrative vehicle use: 
• Sky Trail (from Limantour Road to Sky Camp) 
• Bear Valley Trail (Bear Valley Trailhead to Glen Junction) 
• Coast Trail (Limantour Road to Coast Camp) 
• Drivable sections of the Inverness Ridge Trail (Limantour Road to the Mt. Vision 
Road) 
• Marshall Beach Trail 
• Stewart Trail (including Glen Camp Spur Trail from Stewart Trail to Glen Camp)  
• Lighthouse Road from the parking lot to the Lighthouse Visitor Center 
• Bolinas Ridge Trail 
• Randall Trail 
   
25 MPH: 
• Limantour Road (Sky Trail to Limantour Parking Lot, including the road to the southern 
parking lot) 
 

Yeah, so now?  Just put me in a cardboard box, mix with some perlite -- me and some Home Depot volcanic glass -- and plant something that you don't think I'd kill.

Brother Grader Boob wrote this about the Father-Unit:  "Sometime early in the morning of July 3, he got up and went over to his spot on the couch in the living room, laid down, and went to sleep and passed away. Mom found him when she came upstairs."

Photographic evidence shows that he was skinny beyond belief.  I doubt now that he strolled much on the beach, his front lawn, because he surely would have been lifted high as a kite.

I guess Brother-Unit Grader Boob has scads of photos and such to go through -- the inevitable gift to the family photographer (They've never seen TW's work). To lighten things up, and to make me snort coffee up my nose, he sent his "current favorite" of the degrading pictures:

I actually remember that day. We'd been out shopping for carpets for the Father-Units' parents, and someone clearly thought I looked great in shades of eggplant.  I hope to goodness that that was not the carpet we chose.  The box, I believe, was a gift from a stinky cigar-smoking uncle named, quite inappropriately, "Happy," and his wife, the lovely, sweet Doris.  It was a piggy bank.  Without the piggy.  It did some sort of magic trick -- you know, like it took your money and disappeared it.

The funeral, Grader Boob said, was very much against Father-Unit's will.  I wish I knew more as to why he did not want one.

You may not remember [!], but I dreamt of Dad's watch a few nights before he died.  In the dream, it was simply heavy, silver, and nothing special.  Here is a close up of the apparently meaningful item (no matter the number of times I insist on its ordinariness):

Various peer-reviewed studies suggest these interpretations:
--To dream of a watch is a symbol that you are too caught up in structure. Control, rules, and laws rule your day. You are unable to relax and let go. 
--A generation or two ago, a gold watch was the standard gift presented to a valued employee at retirement. So in this sense, a dream of a gold watch would suggest that something was coming to a good, satisfactory conclusion. Alternatively, any watch or clock represents time and gold symbolizes great value. Together they represents the value of time.  [Please note that, in my dream, there was no allusion to "gold" or "great value";  In fact, the opposite asserted itself.]
--Being late or early (or a fear of being so), short on time, or having too much time, or the idea of adhering to a schedule.

Oh, all right.  It's not hard.  I lost my time with him, I ran out of time, but maybe, maybe, maybe -- there is something that is timeless?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

***One day when we were on the subject of transportation and 
distribution, it came Bolenciecwz's turn to answer a question. “Name 
one means of transportation,” the professor said to him. No light came 
into the big tackle's eyes. “Just any means of transportation,” said the 
professor. Bolenciecwz sat staring at him. “That is,” pursued the 
professor, “any medium, agency, or method of going from one place to 
another.” Bolenciecwz had the look of a man who is being led into a 
trap. “You may choose among steam, horse-drawn, or electrically 
propelled vehicles,” said the instructor. “I might suggest the one which 
we commonly take in making long journeys across land.” There was a 
profound silence in which everybody stirred uneasily, including 
Bolenciecwz and Mr. Bassum. Mr. Bassum abruptly broke this silence 
in an amazing manner. “Choo-choo-choo,” he said, in a low voice, and 
turned instantly scarlet. He glanced appealingly around the room. All of 
us, of course, shared Mr. Bassum's desire that Bolenciecwz should stay 
abreast of the class in economics, for the Illinois game, one of the 
hardest and most important of the season, was only a week off. “Toot, 
toot, too-toooooootf” some student with a deep voice moaned, and we 
all looked encouragingly at Bolenciecwz. Somebody else gave a fine 
imitation of a locomotive letting off steam. Mr. Bassum himself 
rounded off the little show. “Ding, dong, ding, dong,” he said, 
hopefully. Bolenciecwz was staring at the floor now, trying to think, his 
great brow furrowed, his huge hands rubbing together, his face red.
“How did you come to college this year, Mr. Bolenciecwz?” 
asked the professor. “Chuffa chuffa, chuffa chuffa.”
“M'father sent me,” said the football player.
“What on?” asked Bassum.
“I git an allowance,” said the tackle, in a low, husky voice, 
obviously embarrassed.
“No, no,” said Bassum. “Name a means of transportation. What 
did you ride here on?”
“Train,” said Bolenciecwz.
“Quite right,” said the professor. 


-- "University Days," James Thurber


**State Route 1 (SR 1) is a major north-south state highway that runs along most of the Pacific coastline of the U.S. state of California. Highway 1 has several portions designated as either Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), Cabrillo Highway, Shoreline Highway, or Coast Highway. Its southern terminus is at Interstate 5 (I-5) near Dana Point in Orange County and its northern terminus is at U.S. Highway 101 (US 101) near Leggett in Mendocino County. Highway 1 also at times runs concurrently with US 101, most notably through a 54-mile (87 km) stretch in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, and across the Golden Gate Bridge.
The highway is famous for running along some of the most beautiful coastlines in the USA, leading to its designation as an All-American Road. In addition to providing a scenic route to numerous attractions along the coast, the route also serves as a major thoroughfare in the Greater Los Angeles Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and several other coastal urban areas.


SR 1 was built piecemeal in various stages, with the first section opening in the Big Sur region in the 1930s. However, portions of the route had several names and numbers over the years as more segments opened. It was not until the 1964 state highway renumbering that the entire route was officially designated as Highway 1. Although SR 1 is a popular route for its scenic beauty, frequent landslides and erosion along the coast have caused several segments to be either closed for lengthy periods for repairs, or re-routed further inland.

Directed Dreaming: Elephant Teeth and Roller-Coasters

Enchanted Kingdom, Sta. Rosa, Philippines, photo by  pattyequalsawesome (Patty Lagera) 

Without meaning to, this blog has become a chart of sorts, plotting the course of the infection in my bones, and the always amusing neurological affliction that is CRPS.  As I approach a new surgery date for the removal of my left shoulder prosthesis and a good old-fashioned washout of the joint, the primacy of the physical seems to be reasserting itself.

No, that's not true.  More the primacy of misery, a matter of pure choice.

You'll be forgiven if you added: "Don't forget the insanity and considerable free-floating anxiety that is your baseline, dear, dear prof-de-rien!"

I passed an uncomfortable night, marked by fits of chills followed by hours of very painful spasms, mostly in my right leg, but also with some jerkifying input from the left side.  I still have the chills and am happy to own so many soft and organic layering pieces, happy that hoodies are the rage, as my hoods are up, up, up.  My temp is only 100.6, not abnormally high for me, but I cannot stop shaking.

So distraction is the name of today's game.  It worked now and then during the night, taking me through several hundred pages of a trilogy I'm reading -- all the while continuing my obsession with peach yogurt and kettle corn.  Buddy the freakishly large kitten appreciates my food fixations (see the video from a few days ago featuring buddy and the yogurt carton).  Seeing him with the container stuck on his head has become a common sight but it still cracks me up...

In good news (there is always something from the Order of Good going on, if I will just look):  I continue to sleep way more than usual.  I also continue to have fascinating dreams -- thanks, I believe, to a doubling of one of my medications.  Drug-induced or just happenstance, I enjoy dreaming, so long as the oneiric life is not one of terror.  There are some interesting recurring characters my mind has developed, including one anorexic elephant who speaks with a lisp and sends me on scavenger hunts for obscure culinary items.

Okay, so by "recurring," I mean "twice."

My charming pachyderm doesn't have a name that I can recall, but he does have a cyst or something in his mouth, along with a huge, single tooth smack dab in the middle of its lower mouth (jaw?).  Clearly, I am challenged in the field of elephant anatomy but a quick read tells me that my dream very much misrepresents their dentition. Most teeth of our acquaintance originate from the top or the bottom of the mouth, but these creatures have molars that emerge from back to front.  Their tusks are considered incisors and they are without what we call "canines."

"Most teeth of our acquaintance..." -- another landmark moment in my writing history.

I was doing fine with my anorexic and thoughtful (though rather demanding) elephant until I started looking up teeth among the order Proboscidea. You'd think photos and illustrations would be helpful, but no, in this instance, I just grew more confused.  Finally, the Honolulu Zoo provided a description that cleared things up:

Think of them like a conveyor belt moving slowly from back to front. When the foremost tooth is so worn down and is of no further use, it is pushed out, mostly in pieces and replaced at the rear by a new one. An elephant grows only six complete sets of these molars during its lifetime; the final set finishes growing in at about the age of 40. This method of replacing teeth prolongs their dentition until that age. Many elephants do reach the age of 60, but few elephants reach the age of 70 because the teeth will be worn down and decayed to the point of them not being able to eat any more resulting in death by slow starvation.

It will be fun to see if my dream elephant changes now that I know his tooth is an aberration.  Good thing there were no challenges to his ability to speak English or to his love of ham and cheese sandwiches -- provided you can find the correct bit of pig, because otherwise, he would as soon do without.

Right.  Still there?

I also hope to program myself to dream something in particular.  This is a recurring effort, one that I've never completely actualized.  On several occasions, I've been able to "direct" my dreaming but only in the most general way.

What bit of directed dreaming do I hope to achieve?  Well, as usual, Fred started it all.

We ran into each other, quite literally, around midnight, in the kitchen.  (Colonel Mustard, in the Conservatory, with the Lead Pipe)

In my attempt to reconstruct how we got from Subject A to Subject H, I believe much of it stemmed from a remark I made about Dr. Greg House, lead character on the television series House.  It's not a show I watch often.  For instance, I have no idea how House ended up in prison, friendless, trading favors, mopping floors, still dispensing acerbic medical advice but claiming to no longer practice that art.  Clearly, that situation not being the premise of the show, it is a temporary thing.  Somewhere in all of that how-the-mighty-have-fallen stuff, House says something about an enduring interest in physics, and makes a passing reference to black holes.

That bit of insight into the man demanded sharing -- in the chilly kitchen at midnight.  In my defense, Fred mentioned House first, in the context of Marmy Fluffy Butt needing a diagnostician.  She is refusing to poop in any of the available litter boxes.  She will urinate therein, but daintily steps out and away to finish her proverbial business.  Having to deal with her contributions directly, Fred could not help but notice streaks of blood in her stool.  We have taken her to the vet twice, and even had a fairly extensive workup done last week, and have been repeatedly told that she's in robust health.  If she weren't such a fierce poop and pee segregationist, and if it were not for the presence of blood, we wouldn't press the issue, but we love the crazy cat.  As we were cogitating over Things Marmy, and both of us were tired, and since we were, after all, in our own darned kitchen, Fred launched into an imitation of one of those House scenes -- you know, where The Team is gathered around their Chief and a whiteboard listing the symptoms of some patient's diagnostic enigma, shouting out "it could be lupus," and suggesting a bolus of a billion milligrams of hydrocortisone.  Fred loves the "lupus" line and -- because of an intensely personal love/hate relationships with prednisone, which I have been on, almost continually, since roughly 1997 -- he always reacts to the easy mention of corticosteroids.

The vet had mentioned possibly putting Marmy on a course of steroids.  He mentioned it ONCE and I suppose our eyes bugging out and the involuntary hissing sound that flew around the cubicle stymied a second attempt.

So I didn't just say, "Fred, House is interested in physics."

There was a well-established, straight-as-a-line context.

Once apprised of Greg House's proclivities, including the black hole part, Fred decided it was the perfect time to share fascinating tidbits about theoretical physics.  My contribution for the entire rest of the conversation was this phrase, repeated:  "What I don't get is how no one ever calls them on the fact that they're constructing whole paradigms out of what is clearly *theoretical*, just hypotheses!" (Over and over and over.  I really, truly don't get it.  I mean, I can think of scads of unproven and unprovable things that are fascinating and interesting, but that won't bring me a tenured position anywhere, harrumph!)

Fred knows to include accessible anecdotes that infinitely approach whimsy when he attempts to educate me about anything beyond the Chanson de Roland, and so it was that he regaled me with a story of Einstein developing his various theories and foundational axioms (?) by imagining himself flying through the universe on a roller-coaster.  To hear Fred tell it, and I did, it was like tripping alongside the very phenomena one wants to explain. Being able to wildly coast at the speed of light and see -- well, I have no conception of what he might have seen, maybe just distortion at a more observor-friendly rate?  Like I said, I. do. not. get. it.

Of course, this bit of fluff turned into something phenomenally important when I couldn't sleep, when the pain, the chills, and the jerks set in.  When no novel could be witty, scary, or remotely interesting enough.  When peach yogurt, even, could not avert the inward gaze.  Popcorn? Don't make me laugh!

Talk about a diversion!  Me, on Einstein's roller-coaster!

But not, for me, to figure out great mysteries.  Rather, I rolled up, I rolled down, swerved left, and swerved right, all midst events I had seen mostly in photography, homely and amateurish as much as great, or by words alone, my stepmother's tales of dancing en pointe until her toes bled (in a midlength romantic tutu of black over shimmering slate gray tulle), the imperfect waltz of the Bovary, and Pliny across the bay from the erupting Mount Vesuvius, all slowed to an observable rate, directionally mine, reversible even.  The great cosmic roller-coaster ride, with the cosmos, like the emphasis, being mine.

Of course, Fred had gone on to talk of evaporation within black holes, who have their own thermodynamic laws, apparently, and of the universe conceived as a ginormous hologram, or as projection, anyway.

The last thing I actually remember, word-for-word?

"Imagine what might happen if you were cruising along in your spaceship, precisely even with the speed of light... and you turned on your headlights!"

Fred knows how to talk to silly thinkers like me.  I knew immediately what would happen to that poor soul, doubtless in possession of his spaceship operator's license for mere moments before the fickle decision to put on the brights popped into his little tiny head.

Whiplash, that's what would happen!  Pistons and gears, oil and water, futuristic unitards in a bind!

I do love Fred.  And tonight, as I prepare to dream, I'll be hoping to make wild coaster runs, maybe with my friend the anorexic elephant, who will lisp into my ears possible explanations for the wonders we'll fly through, and who may reveal what we can do to calm Marmy's gut, and my legs.  There's gonna be some major Einstein hair come morning.

*************************************************************************

Of probable interest:  The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride by Cliff Burgess and Fernando Quevedo in Scientific American, October 14, 2007.

the virtuosity of his goofiness, i miss it

The old admonition is whining at me again today, the Stones, being all truth-telling and such.

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you just might find
You get what you need

Oh, why not?  Take a moment for the music.


Uploaded to YouTube by mariule2 on Apr 21, 2010
The uploader notes:
Probably their pest performance of the song. It [was] recorded in Brussels in 1973. 
Fantastic solos from Mick Taylor and Bobby Keys.


I passed a difficult night, one that culminated in slumber among spilled (or spilt, depending) popcorn kernels.  I don't know that culminating works well, as a word, to convey that itchy, fibre-filled quilt of a slumber-fest, but what the heck?  It's very much a "why not?" kind of a day, as a result.

And, of course, I can hear all you Smarty-Panted Ones out there, crowing:
"How else would culminating work, if not as a word?"

Peppered with Kettle Corn, dosed in sucralose, I dreamed, and also dreamt, about John Hartford.  Not in passing, not in a cursory fashion, no.  He came alive again, he stood profiled against the setting sun, hat cocked -- and that's not a bicorne reference, not even inadvertently, since I'm refutin' it as you read,. before your very eyes!

He shuffle-danced, way more nimble than he was at the end, though the fool kept dancing, didn't he?

A fool, in the fool tradition, that's exactly what John Hartford was in my dream, and is, in my narrow understanding of his genre.  A banjo-picking fiddler, and a shuffling fool.

Here is a sentence I love, written about the English Medieval fool tradition: "The rigid social hierarchies of medieval society relied on these reality maintenance constructs which were closely related to traditional inversionary re-enactments of mis-rule to create a sense of release for and in the population." You gotta admit, that's a sentence that means to pack a wallop.

I'd give you the reference but it's an unpublished document and I'm unsure that the author, one "Bob," would appreciate it.  Also, I think Bob may have picked it up off the floor at some SCA swap meet, or whatever, as his phrasing is rather... errrr, popular. For what it's worth, Bob is part-and-parcel of the San Francisco-based industry of good will Fools For Hire, sort of a project affiliate of the aforementioned Society for Creative Anachronism.

I know, I am bleeding all over the page.  But so it was as I slept, and therefore, so shall it be here.  Lots of grandstanding, and stuff.

Right.  So... John Hartford.  The quality of my mind's reproduction of his music may safely be filed under "Q" for Questionable.  I wonder how the brain manages a trick like that?

Right.  So... John Hartford.  Skimming over the YouTube videos in which he figures, I wanted one with the Aereo-Plain Band, because my wrecked memory keeps telling me that the John I dreamed was that John, of that era, with hair everywhere and aviator goggles. Newgrass, and all that, too, I suppose.

Of course that was the John Hartford of my dreams;  I lack a knowledge base of the Mississippi River Basin.

Here's John at the 30th Anniversary Reunion Concert with the Aereo-Plain Band, November 11, 2000, in Albany, NY. He was pretty doggone sick at this point but the performance warms the heart.

Theme song of my dreams.



Uploaded to YouTube by AcousticBoxOffice on Jan 16, 2009 "...In addition to John Hartford, Tut Taylor, Norman Blake and Vassar Clements [there] were special guests Sam Bush, Chris Sharp and Mike Compton..."

Steam-Powered Aereoplane

by John Hartford

Well I dreamt I went away on a steam-powered aereoplane.
Well, I went and I stayed and I damn near didn't come back again.
I didn't go very fast on a steam-powered aereoplane.
well the wheel went around and up and down and inside and then back again.


Chorus:
Sittin' in a 747 just watchin' them clouds go by,
can't tell if it's sunshine or it's rain.
I'd rather be sittin' in a deck chair high up over Kansas City
in a genuine, old-fashion, authentic steam-powered aereoplane.


Well I dreamt I was a pilot on a steam-powered aereoplane.
I'd turn that pilot wheel around and then back again.
I'd wear a blue hat saying "Steam-Powered Aereoplane"
with the letters go 'round the brim and then back again.

location::location::location

Good morning.

I woke up optimistic, figured it best to rush and tell the world, surprise my friends, amaze my family!

Let's give the credit to Interesting Dreams, the plots of which I chose to let drain from the sieve of my claptrap mind -- Interesting Dreams mostly due to the appearance of good people not thought of in a long time.

My Oneiric Planner is off-kilter. The dream, as I said, was nicely peopled, well-cast, but the location was clearly temporary. Most of the episodes, in fact, might have been scouting attempts to score A Place For This Dream. That must be why we passed from motel rooms to strip malls, from motel rooms to rectangles of office parks, from motel rooms to cafeterias. We congregated on walkway/sidewalk intersections, in front of my stepmother's old family home, behind the former Dumas/Giddens Oil Company beach cottage, before 313 Fitzgerald Avenue, 8260 SW 145th Street, 301 Walnut Creek Drive, 466 Kentucky, 58th Street.  Everything was stateside.

I won't carry the dreams too far with me into the day, there is too much to do. 

Tomorrow is Ketamine Treatment #4, dosage at 125 mg.  A helpful friend {gagging cough} sent me two studies claiming that chronic/longterm CRPS is unresponsive to ketamine, that -- like sympathetic {choking spasm} blocks -- they're only useful within 3-9 months of onset. 

Yeah.  Well.  Your Mama!

And on that note, I'm off to eat soup... and see why the fire department has arrived down the road, in front of the Digital Drugs, Nutmeg, and Paraphernalia Renaissance Villa and Dairy Farm (where "Weekend Warrior" has a whole other meaning...).

Potpourri: The Stuff of Nightmares

It's more dried stinky stuff (That's potpourri to you.). This is what happens when I wake up agitated.

I'm reading a sub-par detective novel and fell asleep with it in the wee hours. It's a John Sandford book -- Hidden Prey. Without giving away the plot, let me just say that there is a "cell" of old school Communists hanging out in a small town in Minnesota -- Sandford's hero, Lucas Davenport, resides in Minnesota, and is something of a "fixer" for the governor. Anyway, there's this sleeper cell, and a bunch of confused Communists, also one or two assassins -- the most interesting still in high school, obsessed with boobies.

So there is that percolating in my head.

Also, I became somewhat upset earlier in the evening, after watching the Clijsters/Williams match. [Aside: Please note that my customary role as jinx and source of mala fortuna did not come into play; That is, my favored athlete did manage to win, albeit not in a way she, or anyone, liked overly much.]

Actually, I was babbling even before Serena was subjected to that IDIOTIC foot-fault call by The Timid and Conniving LinesWoman. No, the smashing of her racket at the end of the first set didn't set me off -- surprising, I know, given my reaction to Gonzalez yesterday.

No... it was Wozniacki's tennis dress. She is the second woman in the tournament to be a fashion disaster in what can only be described as a Failed Dropped-Waist Contraption. And it was beige. Ecru, if you like. Sand. Café con leche. Whatever.

All that beige really brought out Caroline's pale visage and blond hair.

Yes, I know that the dress is from the new fall/winter Adidas line by Stella McCartney. It certainly does not look bad on Wozniacki, a beautiful girl. But imagine it on your average woman. Imagine it on La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, for instance.

I'm sorry. No, I'm not! It reminds me so much of a schoolgirl's jumper, deliberately ugly, with a band that bisects the wearer at precisely her widest point. Oh, and then let's amplify that impression with... RUFFLES. Quite the philosophical construction -- all business up top, very hip, spare, monosyllabic, c'est-à-dire masculine -- and all fluff down below, very flouncy, excessive, babbling, c'est-à-dire feminine. Oh, the dichotomy. Oh, my. My.

Again, put The Castafiore in it and suddenly even the umpire would be howling "Foul! Foul! Fashion fault!" Alternatively, the tennis audience would cry out, in alarming syncopation, "My eyes! My eyes!"

In fairness, or at least in equal time, Wickmayer seemed to be wearing something terribly... polyester. It was shiny, an ugly blue. She was brought to us by Nike, I believe. That's a big negatory to Nike. Wickmayer even suffered from that well-known phenomenon of the inner pocket which tunnels its way out of the tight shorts to hang below the leg line. Yes, that well- known phenomenon. Did I mention polyester? [Shhh! Yes, I know that fabric has come a long way, that there's a wicking action, and blahblahblah. It's still POLYESTER and POLYESTER will always be, for me, a failed sign of the failed seventies.]

Anyway.

I also dreamed about George Carlin, and the "seven dirty words you can never say on television." Just to get it out of the way, those words are --

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Motherfucker
Tits

Purists will remember that "motherfucker" constitutes a duplication, so for some, Carlin's bit is better known as "the six dirty words you can never say on television -- with an asterisk."

Now, I figure that the events of the evening were still at play in my dreams, because Carlin is not someone about whom I would normally build castles in Spain.

I was absolutely enraged on behalf of Serena Williams, even though I know that, technically, the supervisor had no recourse but to follow the rules, and the rules are clear enough. Technically, Serena behaved badly and got her just deserts, made her bed, and got what she deserved.

Still... what idiot makes a foot fault call (and makes it erroneously, making me really wonder about her motivations) in what appeared to be the final game of a semi-final professional tennis match? And, I swear, if one reviews the film, one sees a slight smirk on the face of the Dweeb Lineswoman, as she cowers behind the ref and the supervisor.

Remember Marat Safin, and his cool response to a foot fault call? Let me refresh your memory:



In short, my latest oneiric experiences seem to be an apt commentary -- crazed assassins running around in odd flouncy beige polyester leisure suits ... murdering lineswomen, especially of the Dweeb variety.

I have never been very complicated.

*I want to say that I've long been a fan of Brian Earley, the chief U.S. Open ref, and know that he must have felt very conflicted last night -- though he would never say it...

Dreaming Chakras

It just now occurred to me that the novel I am reading may have something to do with it: The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld. Freud and Jung figure prominently among the characters. Rubenfeld also includes G. Stanley Hall, Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, and Sandor Ferenczi.

In 1909, Freud, Ferenczi, and Jung truly did travel to the United States, to a bustling New York City that was enthralled by the idea and actuality of skyscrapers, bossed by Tammany Hall, and obsessed by the idea of modernity, before continuing to Massachusetts.

Clark University, of which G. Stanley Hall was president, was honoring Freud with a doctorate and an invitation to deliver a week's worth of lectures on psychoanalysis -- for which Freud was pulling down a hefty $714.60. Jung was also to lecture. Ferenczi, a close friend to Freud and disciple of psychoanalysis, seemed to be along for the ride, thrilling to America.

After insuring his life for 20,000 marks--$4,764--Freud took a train to Bremen to join Jung and Ferenczi the day before boarding their ship. Hosting a farewell lunch, Freud ordered wine. Jung, a teetotaler, didn't want wine, but at Freud's insistence he agreed to have some. Curiously, after Jung capitulated and drank,Freud fainted.

(Jesus wept.)

While the three were in the city, Brill served as the primary tour guide. Jones came from England, via Canada, to join the group.

The first place Brill took his illustrious friends? Coney Island.

After the success of his lectures, and the receipt of his first, and only, academic honor, Freud spent 8 more days in the U.S., "...and most of it was downhill. He was in constant pain not only from his prostatic condition but also from intestinal disorders, which he blamed on American cooking. He felt that his hosts were not sympathetic enough toward his illness. He disliked not being understood when he spoke in German, resented the lack of Old World manners, disapproved of the inhibitions and prudery he perceived in most Americans. Forever after, Freud rarely had a kind word for the U.S. He told Jones, 'America is a mistake; a gigantic mistake, it is true, but none the less a mistake.' He told Hanns Sachs, who later taught psychology in Harvard Medical School, 'America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.'"

Rubenfeld couches his fiction in Freud's dislike of America and in a series of murders --which, of course, require the careful application of the new analysis.

A victim survives the murderous attack, but loses her ability to speak, as well as her memory for the event. Certain that the young woman is an hysteric (and was, prior to the attack, of course), Freud endeavors to cure her, so that she will be able to provide police with a description of her assailant.

I'm only about a third of the way into the book.

The book has to be behind it, don't you think? Behind the dream, my incredible dream?

I didn't think it possible to dream so intricately within a 45 minute period, a time marked by severe discomfort and a measure of indigestion from a surprise dinner of Chinese food -- one dish of which was coated with a questionable garlic sauce.

My dreams are notorious for their boring and literal nature. If I have spent the day correcting papers, by night I dream of working through essays with a trusty red pen. Even interesting opportunities for rich dreaming are made facile by my mind -- the day I first read Saussure and discussed the arbitrary nature of signs, I simply re-experienced a long walk down Shattuck Avenue, seeing once again the lone cast-off black patent leather Mary Jane shoe sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, pristine. Thoughts of a [one-legged?] goth with style. Worry for that goth. Was she alright?

Wow. Where in the world did that come from? The mind, the mind! What a wonder. Even one like mine, in decline, my mind! The arbitrary nature of signs has been the fundamental nagging element since the dream was dreamed.

Strange, isn't it, that I am psychically caught up in these early years of the 20tho century?


Fred served up a surprise dinner and you'd have thought we hadn't had proper food in weeks, the way we devoured it. We ate in that awful way -- with the television blaring, sitting up in bed, surrounded by cats. And not ten minutes afterward, I was asleep.

In the dream, I resided in a large house that may have been a museum -- it was empty except for a central area that contained only one piece. A piece of art? No... it was a beautiful thing but the sense was that it had utility. And was very important. I was its guardian.

My brother-unit TW arrived. There were moments of long silence, and we walked and talked on a rolling green lawn that stretched out from the back glass walls of the house/museum. From the outside, you could see that the house/museum was built of distressed white brick.

We spent a long while standing in the dark, out on the lush green (it sort of glowed), looking in at the lights and airy space inside the house. Always, though, our eyes were drawn to the careful kaleidoscope of color of the... beautiful thing.

I don't know what to call it. There was a moment there at the end when I knew precisely what it was -- in the dream. But, awake and remembering, I cannot see how it could actually be what it was.

We went back in and stood in front of the beautiful thing.

Suddenly, it was reduced to a single item, a lovely, gleaming glass bowl, full of highlights of various blues with swirling creams. I held it up, told TW that I was entrusting it to him "for keeping, for keeping safe."

"She will need it," I declared, adding: "It is worth 5.5 million dollars."

Don't ask me, I don't know -- who *she* is, why $5.5 million?

And I handed the bowl to him. He reached out to take it, but instead came away with what looked like a large coat button. The button, like the bowl, was swirling blue-cream glass, but broken. In half.

He looked at it, quizzically. "It's a chakra," I said.

"It's a broken chakra, and we have to have it fixed."

At that point, TW delivered a speech, the content of which is fading.

That's a lie. It's not fading, I just don't want to remember it.

It was about feeling unworthy, and sad at having missed so many occasions of import in *her* life.

Uncomfortable listening to him, I shushed him by saying that he had been chosen to safeguard this gift, this broken chakra, worth so much. He obviously mattered, he obviously was a part of a whole.

Transformed back into the bowl alone, TW and I carried the glass swirl of a beautiful thing out the back, down across the long, long lawn, and out onto what looked like a busy old-timey English village -- consult your own subconscious for that visual!

We took the first road to the right, which dipped down into a sudden, unexpected forest. Suddenly, we stood before a wonderfully stereotypical cottage -- right out of Hansel and Gretel. A very nice, and obviously fairy-tale wise, elderly woman invited us in.

Somehow, we knew she was An Expert. In Chakra? In beautiful things? In brother-unit feelings of abandonment and worthlessness? I kept waiting for her to fall fully into her role of wise and wizened matron, hoping, to be honest, that she might serve tea.

The bowl turned back into a broken glass button. I handed it to her, and she smiled, then did magic.

The button became whole, vibrant, shiny, milky-blue, smooth.
It grew, with a sound like a ((pop)) -- but was only briefly in its prior incarnation as a bowl -- it kept going, morphing.

I think it had a copper wire "skeleton," the structure that resulted. From the copper wires were hung many bright sterling silver beads and filigree -- delicate wire work, again in silver, but some in gold. Metallic lace. I have the impression of woven baskets supported by all of that airy interlacing wire.

Impression, because when I focus my eyes, they are no longer woven baskets, but rather an expanded set of those magical glass bowls -- now golden swirls along with cream and blue, a deep but distant teal.

Without any of us discussing how it could be so, we agreed that it was the most beautiful bassinet we had each ever seen...

and that *she* would love it.

Pensieve

For you to truly have a pleasurable reading experience, I need to encourage a certain frame of mind. The fastest and least painless way to achieve this proper receptivity is to repeat the following, adding an extra five repetitions until you feel it:

They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.

Despite the fact that everything I write here, in these rarefied environs, is little but a hodge-podge of emotion, factoid, and self-reportage, now and again I will actually TRY to extract the loose ends of my brain.

Ever since reading about Dumbledore's pensieve*, I have wanted one!

If you are unfamiliar with the Harry Potter series, you may be cursing me under your breath (for you are ever circumspect). This stone basin apparatus, covered in runes, is filled with a silvery fluid or gas, wisps of which are always swirling and threatening to escape its bounds.

Here is an elaboration that may help:

The Pensieve has multiple functions.

At times, when one's head is so
full of thoughts that one cannot hear oneself think, it is useful to be able to take some of those thoughts and literally set them aside. The practiced Wizard can extract a thought from his head and store it in a phial or in the Pensieve for another time. If it is in the Pensieve, it is possible to stir the thoughts stored there together and look for patterns. It appears that the wizard has the choice of extracting an entire memory, leaving no trace of it in his head, as
Professor Snape does in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, or extracting
a copy of a memory, retaining the original, as Professor Slughorn does in Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It is also apparently possible to edit these
extracted memories, though it is a difficult task and one which is often not
done well.

If one places one's head within the Pensieve, one becomes immersed in a memory that is stored in the Pensieve, and is able to relive it as if one was living that time over again. Harry experienced Professor Dumbledore's memories of the Wizengamot trials of several death eaters this way in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Professor Snape's memories of Harry's father in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

A thought or memory stored in the Pensieve can, with proper stimulus, appear to nearby viewers as if standing on the surface of the basin. Professor Dumbledore used this technique to show Harry the prophecy that had been made about him, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and it is used in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when full immersion in memory was not needed.

It is also possible to take another person's memories, place them in the Pensieve, and then enter them to relive them as if one were the person whose memories you have just added to the Pensieve. Harry and Professor Dumbledore do this a number of times in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in order to determine the salient points of the early history of Tom Riddle, or as he later styled himself, Lord Voldemort.

Most interestingly, the memories viewed by the person watching in the
Pensieve are more complete than the person's own observations. For instance, in
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Bob Ogden visits the Gaunt family.
Morfin speaks to him only in Parseltongue, which Ogden does not know; yet Harry, reliving Ogden's memories, not only understands what the Gaunts are saying in Parseltongue, he is able to perceive things happening outside Ogden's range of vision.

Spacing out in front of the television this morning, I found myself weeping at the images and sounds of yesterday's inauguration, thinking of my friends who can finally look to the seat of this country's power and see someone who looks like themselves, someone who can reference black history with both the dignity of higher office and the intimacy of personal truth -- which surely extracts much of the paralyzing venom from our past that keeps us from addressing the persistent conflicts and politics of race.

The most astounding thing I've heard thus far? There were no arrests made at the event in Washington, D.C. yesterday. That is an incredible commendation of the security force that was so very apparent and of that huge celebratory crowd.

If it is true. I have a hard time believing that no one got drunk or high, then predictably stupid, in all the revelry -- that there were no instances of "terroristic threat" -- that John mumble-tongued Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was able to leave the area unscathed!

Between them, Obama and Roberts managed to absolutely mangle the Oath of Office. Fred and I were at the Infectious Disease Infusion Center -- he was asleep in the Magic Chair while I was having blood drawn and the PICC line dressing changed. It is a miracle that Christina, the nurse, didn't stick the slumbering Fredster by mistake, as her head was swiveling back and forth in an effort to watch the inaugural festivities on the T.V. mounted in the corner of the room. As noon approached, the room filled with doctors, nursing assistants, pharmacists, secretaries, and one ancient gentleman there for chemotherapy -- two, three people piled in each of those magic recliners (everyone glaring at the now loudly snoring Fred), twirling around on those round swivel stools, holding up the walls. We were all circumspect for the initial five minutes or so, and then the commentary started to fly, beginning with the aforementioned ancient gentleman patient, who said, "I have voted in every election since Truman and Dewey in 1948... and never have I wanted someone to be out of office as bad as I want Bush gone, today." I had the impression that we all relaxed after that pronouncement. I was surprised to hear the clearly partisan chatter become uninhibited, wild -- even woolly.** Christina made several lame attempts to be fair to Bush, but the crowd just wasn't feeling it, and she came clean, eventually.

The best comment about the screwed-up oath? From one of the I.D. doctors -- a severe woman whom I saw a few times in the hospital, with an equally severe jaw and angular Eastern European haircut:

"That's okay. He'll get it right next time."

Anyway (Choo choo! train of thought?) -- so there were no arrests reported. I wonder if there were any detentions or similar euphemisms for being tossed in the slammer.

big house, calaboose, can, clink, cooler, hoosegow, house of correction, jail, jug, pen, penitentiary, pokey, prison

So it turns out that the PA I so admired is perhaps as smart as a stick. And I pay for it. Shoot, you pay for it! My insurance company pays for it. Literally! For a reason we cannot fathom, she has decided to be resistant to the idea that the pus flying out of my joints and from the interior of my bones is the result of infection. She badly wants it to be an inflammatory process.

Last week, I let her do the "gout" dance, and order diagnostic tests -- despite a long, intervening conversation that included reading the operative reports where infection was clearly what was going on. She even said something like, "Okay, so it isn't just an inflammatory process... but when I attended that lecture [on gout] last week, I thought of you!" A friend wrote me Monday night, saying that she can't wait to find out what classes or lectures the PA attended last week, because she surely would test me for it!

Ah, but this scream rises from the depths of my soul, or the chambers of my large intestine: Who pays for the tests that she orders without knowing what she is doing? SHE OUGHT TO PAY FOR THEM! She even was told to refocus by her "boss," the head I.D. guy -- she spoke to him last week and again yesterday.

My problem, and it is my problem, is that I lack mental clarity to such an extent that I can no longer advocate for myself. Truly. I am not kidding. The PA could depart from the Path of Logic and Reason and I am so incapacitated by pain and lack of sleep that I don't catch half of it. Bring someone with me? I do! That guy over there asleep in the chair!

Hell, this post is not what I wanted it to be.

"My" CRPS is worse -- particularly on the right side of my body. I was ready to jump out of my skin while Christina was searching for a vein (my PICC wouldn't give any blood, darn it all). Like so many of her compatriots, and in spite of me telling her otherwise, she thinks that gentle stroking of my skin feels good. I will ask her to please not touch me unless it is part of the procedure. She will always ask "why." I will explain CRPS again to her. She will say something that she thinks is compassionate and empathetic and will simultaneously, while wearing gloves, pat and stroke my right arm. The gloves catch and pull on my skin... and it all sends me through the ceiling because of the ensuing pain. When Fred is awake to witness it (this weekly event), I swear that he is ready to kill. She also insists on rotating that right arm out and away from the body, despite my protestations and explanations about there being no shoulder, about the distinct sensation of tissue being torn and ripped, to which she always replies: "They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right." When I rotate the arm back to a less painful position, she insists I turn it out again, else she won't be able to properly dress the PICC line. She has a point, but barely.

"They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right." My sentiments, exactly, and perhaps my motto for years to come.

This morning I learned that I am developing quite the vocal dream life, judging not only by the yells reverberating in the chill air when I jolt awake, but also by Fred's faithful transcriptions. So this is what he does while I sleep!

The most recent pronouncements?

"Ears! There are two of them!"

"I can do it. I can do anything." [Said conversationally, after sitting upright and looking around the room]

"313 Fitzgerald. 8260 Southwest 145th Street." [Old addresses]

and my personal favorite:

"Excuse me, but Derrida is down the hall." [Well, he once was! His son, too.]

Conclusion? I am awfully boring, decidedly literal.



Of course, I cannot give proper shrift to the screams. The screeching scares the whole Marlinspike Hall household half to death. Cats scatter --save Marmy, who, oddly, advances. The Castafiore comes flying, the swirling hues of what can only be called a housecoat -- not so much a peignoir, really, as a kimono-inspired wrapper -- contributing to the squirrelly after-impressions of a pastel dream gone wrong.

So long as no one interrogates me about why I screamed, I usually settle back down. A few times, still caught up in the Terror of Whatever, all I perceived was a blacked-out figure bending over me and pretty much squealed -- but it was Only Fred Freaking Out [OFFO]. What a sweetie.

Hmmm. What else remains in the hodge-podge pile? Would you believe that I have at least three blog drafts written while hallucinating?

No elephants, by the way. Rather, dainty rhinos, and more aubergine than pink, with swirls of paisley in deep burgundy, offset by green forest tendrils, and small stray flecks of gold.

That's a lie!

It is not at all visual.

Rather, there seems to be a talk radio show ongoing between my ears. I suspect that I pick up the background noise of the television, the ambient noise from the street, the cats' purring, the coffee maker, the microwave.

I hear the darnedest things. Some of the broadcasts are in warm, familiar voices -- the Grader Boob's, for instance. The dulcet tones of my stepmother, I think I recognize, I am not sure. Content is the determining factor, and as I hear her recount afternoon teas and toast, being tossed in the gales, and swimming alongside our little overturned Sunfish sailboat as the dark clouds loom, thunder audible, with lightening just a promised thing -- as I hear these details, I welcome her, just as water laps against the shell.

Since my visit with Aunt Nancy a week ago, my stepmother has been almost constantly on my mind. Nancy, herself, peoples my day fantasies, these visions, my noisy dreams, as a young girl in petticoats, scared, lying under the bed, waiting for cruelty. No, no -- back to 301 Walnut Creek Drive, my glory days.

Mom reminds me how to make the toast. It matters. In the rushed early morning hour, two extra pieces of whole wheat toast are buttered, placed in that tired old pie pan recycled from the Sunday morning Sara Lee coffee cake. The bread sits for about an hour at a just warm temperature of maybe 200 degrees before we turn off the heat(never ever open the oven door before being ready to eat them, usually, Mom and I would surely agree, with afternoon tea). So we conveniently "forget" about those extra toast slices, and as we go running out the door into our day, turn the heat off. Don't dare open that oven door until you go there in surprise late that afternoon.

Crispy, aromatic, buttery, cut into triangles, served with Earl Grey or whatever was on hand. It felt civilizing. Better than Melba toast but not a telltale vice like a scone or... a cream horn. Cough. There was a bakery downtown, across the street (and believe it or not, the street was Main Street) from my stepmother's grandfather's jewelry store. This bakery made the most beautiful, light, slightly sweet cream horns and my stepmother and I would buy five -- eat two on the way home, have two with tea... and offer my father the leftover one, which he invariably refused and which we then tastefully halved! Ah, but the toast was still a wonderful accent to the day. 2.5 cream horns a day would've eventually worn us down...

Ugh. Fred just reported a "huge dead rat" in the front pasture, just beyond the Moat to Marlinspike Hall, where he was out cavorting with a friend's dog. Yes, to the three cats, he wishes to add a dog. I am a dog person, never even entertaining the thought of having cats until I met him. We had a dog together but that story is not one I wish to revisit today. Suffice it to say that I will never again subject a dog to the wiles of his temperament. He thinks he has changed and that were he to pick the dog, all would be well. I hope so, because if not, he may find himself alone in all kinds of ways.

It was only a week or so ago that I ever saw the show "The Dog Whisperer." Strangely enough, like The Boutiqueur, The Dog Whisperer advises, over and over, living in the now. I like that he does this without overburdening his subject with whatever that might mean. It may sound snotty, but it is what it is. Maybe it is not that radical a notion, eh?

"You live in the past, you get what you had in the past." I love Cesar -- when he speaks about humans, you can almost sense how frustrated the species makes him. Hence the blurb for the show "I rehabilitate dogs. I train humans."

Persistent patience. "Calm assertive."

Oh Mom.

Nancy was right, and I can no longer block what Mom said, nor should I. Why have I pretended that these things had never been said? To what end?

"[Future] Retired Educator, don't make me choose between you and your father, because I will choose him every time." And so it has gone.

Soon, in a matter of days, I am thinking, I need to honor this aunt of mine who has blown in and out of my path by allowing my mind to think about my grandfather, the sainted child abuser, the orphan who grew up knowing no one knows what. He and I rescued countless animals together
-- he helped me hand raise a blue jay that was deliberately pushed out of its nest. That bird stayed for about a year before being killed by a hawk. "Squawky" and I played outside, the jay hopping from tree to tree, yelling and laughing with me, but he usually came in at night, at least in the first months he could fly.

Oh, and if you did not know, teaching a wild baby bird to fly is perhaps the most humbling of activities. You are familiar with the scenario of a kitten up a tree? Substitute a baby blue jay who was taught to fly by hand flutter techniques, managed to land -- okay, more like crash land -- on this high branch, and now is stuck here with no notion what to do except to call for his largish and clumsy mother, who doesn't have a clue except to turn to her gently smiling grandfather, who quietly went and got a ladder.

My nightmares, my fevers, these hallucinatory days? I hope they will lead me to dream of Granddaddy as he might have been as a small boy -- intelligent, lovable, loving, and orphaned. Maybe I will understand how he could beat his children, but probably not. It's not something I am seeking to excuse or deny, but I know that it is important for me to accept that it happened, and to be less shocked by the many permutations it has had, as it rippled forward in time.

They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.



*A Pensieve is a stone receptacle used to store and review memories. Covered in mystic runes, it contains memories that take physical form as a type of matter that is described as neither liquid nor gas. A witch or wizard can extract their own or another person’s memories, store them in the Pensieve, and review them later. It also relieves the mind when it becomes cluttered with information. Anyone can examine the memories in the Pensieve, which also allows viewers to fully immerse themselves in the memories stored within, much like a magical form of real world virtual reality.


Users of these devices view the memories from a third-person-point-of-view, providing a near-omniscient perspective of the events preserved. This, of course, raises questions of how they are able to see things beyond what they have remembered. Rowling answered this question in an interview, confirming that memories in the pensieve allow one to view details of things that happened even if they did not notice or remember them, and stated that "that's the magic of the Pensieve, what brings it alive". The "memories" contained in the Pensieve have the appearance of silver threads. Memories that have been heavily manipulated or tampered with to alter perspectives, or are simply aged and gone-spoiled (such as Slughorn's), may appear thick and jelly-like and offer obscured viewing. Memories are not limited to just those of humans, since at least one house-elf (Hokey) provided Dumbledore with a memory as well.

** "Wild and woolly"
Meaning: Lawless and uncultured.

Origin: This expression is of American origin and came into being to describe the 'wild' west of the country sometime after the Californian Gold Rush era of the 1850s. The US publication The Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review and Church Register, 1855, included a reference to the "wild and woolly-haired Negillo", which is almost there.

The first example I can find of the precise phrase in print is in the Missouri newspaper The Sedalia Daily Democrat, December 1875:

"W. A. Palmer, the South Bend, Indiana, murderer and paramour of Dolly Tripp, was for several years resident of Clinton. Bill always was one of the 'wild and woolly' kind and would associate with the demimonde."

[Hmm. From further reading, I presume that "negillo" means "negrito," a reference to "pygmy."]