timwburke

I woke last week with a muscle cramp in my right shoulder spreading from my forearm to outside my shoulder blade. I tried to gut it out over two nights bad sleep. Then I was reminded of the deep tissue massage kiosk at The Mall. I paid $30 to be pummeled over a total 30 minutes. Felt better just in time for a day off so I could work on the revision that I realized I had been procrastinating.

Drank a cola at lunch and the pain came back almost as bad as before. At Panera, in front of my laptop, it did not subside.

I looked at my hand. I honestly became concerned. The ache spread so badly. Would this interfere with my day job? Would I even be able to type?

A realization quieted everything.

“Would I be able to type?”

I thought the pain may be something like how my body reacted when it was time to become Big Time Publisher and throw panic attacks at me.

Immediately, I opened my draft. I began fixing the first sentence of the chapters. And the ache ebbed away.

Then the pain came back. No easy answer here. No such luck.

I did a pass on the last three chapters for clarity. Now that I’m done, the pain is like an ice-cream headache centered on my shoulder.

I’m rather happy for this book.

Had a dream after seven this morning, maybe based on the ibuprofen kicking in. I dream often of enormous wooden structures, boarding houses the size of stadiums. Usually they are in need of repair. This morning the building was seemingly brand-new. I was part of a loose-knit theater group that had forgotten that today they were to perform.

The performers were a few former members of my comedy group and a variety of 30-ish people like those at my day job. The performance was supposed to be a multi-media comedy/drama of some critical importance. My first reflex was to head for the hills.

We pulled together and created this piece that mixed back-stage preparations of the show with the show’s performance, which is something I had wanted to do for decades. Dozens of 30-ishes leapt in with big trucks and lots of their own props to assemble spaces throughout this small area of this enormous victorian house. The set pieces include existing stairways, storage rooms, porches, rooms where one wall faced the outside. Props were automobiles, stage lights, tapestries, junk, all in the earth tones of the discarded. Audience wandered through all day.

At one point, though, I am not wearing clothes. A few 30-ish audience see my genitals. They giggle or show disdain at my performance faux pas. The performance had taken a hit by my blunder. What I remember is a 30ish telling me that one of our performers Dean Martin (that Dean Martin) took off his shirt and did a GG Allin punk-rock body thrash on the small wooden stage.

It was understood that overall the show had satisfied, in the way an ensemble piece satisfied; my own performance had not been good that evening, but it was the performance and its dialogue with the audience that had created a unique, satisfying moment. I awoke feeling that a portion of me had briefly reawakened; that bit of brain from being an impulsive kid at heedless play, something more basic than professional improvisation, or maybe a place without consciousness. The feeling opened a sunny, living part of me I had forgotten.

If I’m lucky, I have thirty years of life before me. If I can get back to that state of mind, I will count myself fortunate.