A couple of friends of mine have had knee surgery recently, and one of them is having terrible, persistent pain at night (though it seems to be not so bad during the day), but the most interesting thing he told me is that the body apparently has some reactions to major surgery that no one tells you about. For instance, his sense of smell has gone AWOL. And so it is with great interest that I note my brother Michael's reference to a similar loss of smell after his heart surgery. Will either or both of them regain this sense eventually? I suspect that they will, once they've healed from the tactical outrage perpetrated upon their persons, but I'm taking notes for when I get the hip surgery I suspect I'm eventually going to need. I really like my sense of smell. It's almost as much fun as my sense of taste.
The whole Sense of Smell thing wasn't even the main point of Michael's latest installment, written while on the road to sell drums, but it has twinkled at me among all the other ideas. What twinkles at you? (Or honks? Or tweaks that sense of smell Michael doesn't currently have?)
End of January
2:30 a.m.
Here I am again. Middle of the night. Not really awake but not really asleep. I am a pillow flipper both in the real and in the allegorical sense. Looking for the cool side. Always chasing that.
They’ve given me four at the Quality Inn this time. Four great ones. Perfect shape, size and feel to go along with the perfect shower head under which I luxuriated for way too long tonight. After all it’s their water bill and not mine. Yeah, I know, good old eco-conscious Michael assuming these guys have an efficient and functioning gray water system nourishing the local flora…….
To be truthful though, I’ve been traveling for several days, and this is the first shower I’ve taken. My sense of smell was queered by the heart surgery so I can’t tell, nor do I care what I smell like. The shower decision was driven far more by tactile than olfactory preferences.
Cool sheets, cool pillows. I know I should be sound asleep if all that’s being served is a value judgement. Problem is, moments like this toss me about from pad to pad on those little ponds of self-reflection.
I have no answers and, frankly, don’t crave them at all. Everything seems like hypothesis to me. I have no fear of not knowing. I’m simply afraid to stop asking. I know life is finite. I could have given this truth more reflection before the operation, to be frank, but I didn’t. All I could think about was the strangeness and the wonder of it all. I witnessed vast and brilliant colors as I was coming out of the anesthesia post-op. I’d heard of people’s descriptions of witnessing a bright white light when passing on from this life, only to return. Never heard of a technicolor show. Certainly not that. All I could think of was that if this was “passing,” it was pretty damn beautiful and pretty damn painless and cool. Then I heard the voices. I was waking up.
My life as an artist over the past fifty years has been arguably nomadic. I’ve turned a lot of pillows far from home. Driven a lot of back roads through small towns in quest of God knows what. I’ve talked to so many strangers that I’ve grown convinced that there really is no such thing as that. Strangers are just people I’ve not yet met. Cool sides of other pillows.
I don’t consider myself a hoarder, but I’ve gathered large numbers of artifacts along the way. I often as not tell myself that they’ll be incorporated into some art piece, which in some cases they have been. Some of them. Most have not. Perhaps I just want them near me to remind me of the hunt. I don’t spend much time reflecting on it.
This restlessness - this endless turning of life’s pillows in pursuit of the “cool side” - came from somewhere, I know. It is not an emulation of the “cool” envisioned by Jack Kerouac. It is merely a comfort thing with me. It makes me happy. I’m going to flip them again, nestle on in and go back to sleep. Perhaps I’ve gotten it out of my system for the moment.
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