Swimming with sharks, or drifting in a dream?

Last night was less than stellar. You’d think that, having read a bit of S. J. Perelman‘s highfalutin candy-floss just before hitting the pillow, I’d immediately hie myself into some delightfully weird and comical dreamland, but no. Instead, my dreams were shaped by an earlier TV-watching moment of some crime show involving postmortem decomp, and spent much of the night involved in various episodes of corpse disposal and crime scene cleanup. How this relates to my life and waking experiences I dare not speculate. It may even be significant that, while the topic in general was fairly repulsive, I didn’t wake in terror or horror so much as mystification. This, from a notoriously squeamish customer.

All of it only serving to bring to mind once again that wonderful performance of Sylvester the cartoon “poothycat” belting out his rendition of ‘You Never Know Where You’re Going ’til You Get There’. Not simply because, if memory serves, he was doing so in order to keep the ever-tormented Elmer Fudd from sleeping soundly, but because the very theme of the song is a life-talisman for me, a perfect description in the title alone of how my life’s path meanders and takes the odd acute-angle turn.

It’s thus that what first appears to be a view into a fish tank turns into the scene framed by an airplane window, not only in my art but in my perception of the world, and what seemed ominous turns out to be utterly benign, the factual is revealed to be a ridiculous concoction invented by the lunatic fringe.

There’s something reassuring in knowing that what seems fixed in reality is actually mutable and flexible.That change is possible, even when insignificant Me happens to be the superhero on call at the moment. It’s not necessarily that I have plans that will rock the foundations of the earth, just that I like considering the possibility and seeing where that contemplation might lead. I may discover I like paddling around nekkid among lead-eyed hammerheads just for the frisson of it, or that I suddenly figure out how to levitate and enjoy Google Earth views while soaring about without benefit of mechanical support. I’ll keep you posted.