MY BUGATTI WALKER

Sometimes you gotta go minimal on your dreams. Bugatti or Lamborghini would be good; Ferrari too.. As at various other stages of life, I must now confront a new reality: my cane is beginning to feel slow.       

It’s a welcome problem when you outpace your cane. And notwithstanding my long-term Astaire fantasies, I think a good, fast, sleek walker might be the next interim device to accelerate me down the long, well-paved road without handrails toward cane minimalism, something that will take the curves like a dream and leave my fellow caners in the dust. Plus it has wheels. If Bugatti or Lambo don’t make walkers yet, maybe I can get a genuine logo or hood ornament to put on it, or at least a bunch of decals to stick here and there for when I zip past my ambulatory confederates. 

Dreams take time to fulfill, which is what gives them value. Infants, pure as they are, don’t need value, don’t even dream of walking, let alone squealing around curves to take the lead; they live in bottomline reality (where it is best to retain a foothold); they’re happy to waggle their legs in the air for as long as it takes to get wherever it is they might be going, whatever that might mean. They don’t know until they graduate and get their legs, like I’ll get my Bugatti walker. 

Figuratively, I’m just departing a new infancy. I’m long past waggling my leg in the air, which is boring if you’re an adult and have been to Le Mans. A good Bugatti, though, that hugs the road, with maybe not disc brakes -- I’m no longer into that kind of speed-- but with serviceable stoppers, ‘cause I plan to be veering a lot. I still love the verge of control, which I overdid a few times in the early cane phase and on the old motorbikes now trashed, plus even earlier a couple of cars, more lessons learned and life thankfully continued. But a saner life looms now, in a rather novel way for me: a new life of streamlined walking, with a world-class brand.

Now I have to find a reputable sports walker lot within decent driving distance, where they have a full range of the latest models with all the accessories and options right down to flames and pinstriping, ideally in a nice candy apple red...  I can cane around the lot and view the selection, kick the tires, so to speak, ask expert questions like what's the 0 to 60 for this baby? How’s the turning radius on this model? Can this one do wheelies? etc. Maybe even take it for a test walk, well below the speed limit at first.

Be great to be on the road again, that leads anywhere I choose...

SO DID YOU DREAM OF AN EGGPLANT OR WHAT?

Even better, you dreamed of a hawk; or if you had the best dream of all you dreamed of Mt. Fuji. No? Well at the very least, some tobacco or maybe a blind acupressurist?

According to the tradition of hatsuyume, the first dream you have in the new year is auspicious, and tradition covers some pret-ty weird corners of the old racial memory, as we all know. Probably the weirdest corners we all know. But tobacco or a blind acupressurist? Who could combine those things, let alone as sequentially auspicious, but tradition?

So here's to tradition for the new year. We could sure use more of it, by the look of the leftovers from last year. BTW, any traditionalists know if chocolate ice cream in a highly foreign country is anywhere on that list?

RAMBLE IN BLACK AND WHITE

Sorry to jump up and down and shout all suddenly like that at this hour of the morning, but I was up till after midnight last night not watching tv but rather engaged in an increasingly antique activity known to members of my generation as “reading a book.”

As a result of that and the fact that it was dark until so late this morning, I overslept on what I suddenly realized was a work day, so when I lumbered out of bed and looked out the window I couldn’t help but jump and shout since even in the dark I could tell it had snowed, because the entire landscape was just the opposite.

All over the ground I could see this whiteness that must be snow, unless during the night there'd been a bigtime explosion at a styrofoam factory nearby which I doubted because there isn’t one and anyway I would have heard it, since dreams mean shallow sleep and as I recall I dreamed a lot last night-- I dream in color, which makes them easier to remember. I’ve heard that more people who were born before color tv dream in black and white, but if they lived here even they could tell it snowed last night and would jump and shout in the morning dark like I did.

But then again, since I grew up before color tv and read books, maybe I’m dreaming all this in black and white, and this might not be a work day, so I'll just stay asleep a bit longer and see...

EARLY DAWN DREAM

In the night, the August night, I barely awoke from a dream about deer and the world was still of the dream; I heard the sound of deer taking careful steps through the high grass in my garden, then there was a soft crunching as of deer browsing on my prospering verbena or my surviving basil, their chewing so intent that I arose and peered out the window in the first hint of dawn and was able to see a morning's dream: a summer dawn rain falling in soft waves, with a rhythmic, tender sound like the slow chewing of lush, new-grown leaves, as from the house eaves came a slow regular dripping, like the soft steps of deer though high grass in a dream to which I returned at once, awakening later to find the basil and verbena not only intact, but fresh from dreams of rain...