Tangled Small Talk: Existential Fish

Hoo boy. I'm exhausted. I have been unleashed on the unsuspecting general public today far more than I am generally comfortable with so of course, it's time for another installment of Tangled Small Talk.

This weekend is the world famous Seattle Edible Book Festival. I entered last year and resoundingly lost so of course, I will be entering again this year. My jBird is, too. It's a family nerd thing. She's had her idea for months and I had been wracking my brains to no avail when suddenly one day at the library, a book leaped out at me and made me giggle. So now I have my book. Shh. Top secret. More on that later. But all of this is why, when I was at the grocery store today, I decided to harass the fish monger.

Me: Um, hello. Can I buy a whole sole?
Fishmonger: [Blank, open-mouthed stare.]
Hooligan: I have a soul! Why do you want to buy a soul?!
Me: No, the fish.
Hooligan: Are we having fish for dinner?! I don't really like fish, you know. [begins playing hopscotch on the floor tiles and chanting] Step on a crack, break a sole's back!
Fishmonger: A whole sole? [gestures vaguely toward the giant stack of beautiful fillets of sole in the case.]
Me: Yes. A whole sole. Like the trout you have here, only a sole. [At this point, I can't stop saying "sole". I want to say it over and over without reason. I have spent the better part of the day talking to strangers in uncomfortably hot rooms and listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds*. Which might have been a mistake before some impromptu sole shopping.]
Fishmonger: No. We don't sell whole soles.
Me: Oh. Well, do you know who might?
Fishmonger: [looking over his shoulder as if for the cameras or some other explanation for the woman and the hopscotching Hooligan who want to buy his soul] I don't know. I don't think you can get whole soles. I think they just come in fillets.
Me: [imagining these ghostly white fillets of sole flapping about like amoebas underwater. I'm shocked by this mental image and possibly sound a wee bit more confrontational than I intended] What do you mean? They come in fillets? Surely they're whole at some point. Like a fish. [I added a little flappy hand motion to illustrate my point.]

Monkfish. Now that's a big-ass fish. It would eat your sole.
photo courtesy fishingkites.co.nz

Fishmonger: [I kid you not, taking a wary step backward and clearly losing his composure.] Well, who buys a whole sole? That's a big-ass fish.
Me: [Because I can't seem to stop myself for love or money.] Like how big? Like Salmon big? Monkfish big? [I am also gesticulating wildly to show the variety of sizes among fish.]
Fishmonger: [Deep sigh.] I don't know. Big. We have the fillets. See the fillets? Hey Todd!
Todd: [Interrupts his shakedown of another store employee for her part of the store's March Madness pool.] Yeah, man?
Fishmonger: How big is a sole?
Todd and Another Store Employee stop and gape openly at me. I gape back. Hooligan continues hopscotching and talking to the lobsters in the tank.
Todd: Ummmm...
Fishmonger: No, like the fish. [He clearly understood the possibly existential undertones of his question.]
Hooligan: I don't want to eat fish for dinner. Can we get a lobster?
Todd: I don't think they're that big. Did you see the fillets?
Me: Well, that's what I thought. Isn't the fillet like its whole side? [In case anyone in the meat department didn't understand what a fillet was, I turn and demonstrate on my own side where the fillet would come from.]
Todd: Uh, yeah. I could probably special order a sole for you but it might take a while.
Me: Thanks, but I don't have a while. I need a sole by this weekend. [I realize exactly what this sounds like.] Come on, Hooligan, let's go find some vegetables I can knit with. Thank you for your help!

Alas, I will have to try again tomorrow and frighten another fishmonger by attempting to purchase his whole soul. All in the name of edible literary art. I'm sure this happens to everyone.


*There is heated debate in some circles about whether this song is about drugs or about the devil. Of course, as everyone knows all rock and roll songs are about drugs and the devil and sometimes sex. So it's really sort of a moot point. 

David Is Not My Pal

They are at it again. The Davids. They are after me and this time they tried to break my brain.

[Back story: Read this post which explains, in chronological fashion, how the Davids have plagued me so.]

Over lunch a few weeks ago, a friend of ours (whose name is Mark and is in no way affiliated with any Davids of which I was previously aware) told us about this "sleep machine" that he had purchased. So well did this machine work that the only problem with it was that he would awake at 4 AM, completely refreshed and ready to go. The Chief Lou was intrigued and I was really only half-listening because I was still mulling over the previous conversation topic - some sort of water repellent that you could spray on your phone and then dunk it in water to no ill effect. I asked if it helped with the cell phone face cheese problem and everyone at lunch acted like they had never gotten face cheese on their phone before. Which is, of course, a lie. (Score one for the Blurters! Nothing says polite conversation like "face cheese".) So, imagine my surprise when this past Sunday, the Chief Lou danced up to me holding what looked like a camera bag. "He brought it!" [Insert confused conversation here. Who brought what and why? And why does that bag say "Brain Wave" on it?!]

Figure 1: David Pal. I have no idea what those nipple
clamps are for. They weren't in my kit.
Photo courtesy of Mind Alive Inc.

Skip to bed time Sunday night. We crawl into our bed, immediately roll into the giant divot in the middle, claw our way back up to our respective sides and turn on our reading lights. I am reading a book of essays with my hot pink reading glasses. The Chief Lou (so I thought) is reading some sort of dreadful "Hard Sci-Fi" (otherwise known as man-mances in our house. "Just because the women are robots does not mean they are not being objectified," says I. "I like the descriptions of the planets and technology," says he. "Suuuuurre," says I.) I momentarily thought his sci-fi had come to life because suddenly our room is full of beeping sounds and flashing lights. I look over and he is reading what looks like a homemade book whose cover says simply in block letters: David Pal. "I think I need setting C-3," he says and slips on the glasses and headphones. Yes, the glasses and headphones. (See Figure 1) Within about 10 minutes he's snoring away and it looks like a disco in our bedroom.

When I awoke on the couch the next morning I asked him how David Pal treated him last night.
 "I don't know, he did something. It was weird."
"Well, I'm sleeping with David Pal tonight and you can lie there and have seizures while I snore."

A few excerpts from "David Pal Operator's Manual":

"Welcome to the experience of the DAVID PAL, a digital audio-visual entrainment (AVE) device, designed to support you in your quest for wellness by promoting various areas of the brain to work together in a harmonious fashion. Through the use of AVE, you may experience yourself in a new and beneficial way."

Sounds good. Exactly how, you may ask does David Pal harmonize your brain? Well, according to the manual, in three ways:

"The first aspect of AVE involves dissociation.... Secondly, cerebral blood flow increases... Thirdly, EEG activity changes."

These all seem like very safe and innocuous things to mess with in the privacy of your own bedroom, right?
So, I selected setting C-3 because I was overwhelmed with my choices (there are 18 in varying wavelengths) and that was what the Chief Lou used and he didn't die or start to bleed out of his eyes or anything.

"Delta - The Sleep State - These sessions help bring on sleep by turning off the 'chatter' that sometimes occurs after a busy day"

C-3 is "Sub-Delta" (sounds like a cut-rate sorority) and is listed as being only "mildly dissociating". I donned the glasses and headphones and lay down. The glasses are muffled with a piece of foam on the inside of them and you are supposed to close your eyes when you wear them (so you can't read the warning sticker about seizures or scald your retinas, I suppose.) Lights pulse in patterns and rhythms across the glasses, which immediately my brain glommed onto and tried to make sense of. The headphones emit a series of tones in different frequencies, overlaid with a steady heartbeat that sounds suspiciously like a bass drum. In short, it's kind of like an instant, legal acid trip. (Hey, I've read Ken Kesey novels!)

You are supposed to think soothing thoughts during the first half of the "program" and then go to sleep during the second half. And then roll over and smash the glasses while you sleep and get tangled in the cords? (More on this in a minute.) Convinced to really give it a go, once I stopped giggling about how ridiculous and sci-fi I must look, I tried to think soothing thoughts. I think soothing thoughts all the time. It is a regular practice for me as I go about my day to soothe my bedraggled brain hamster. But when I am supposed to think soothing thoughts, this is what happens in my head:
SOOTHINGTHOUGHTSOOTHINGTHOUGHTSSOOTHINGTHOUGHTS!!!STOPTHATANDTHINKSOOTHINGTHOUGHTS!SHUTUPANDFOLLOWDIRECTIONS!STOPSHOUTINGATME!IDON'TEVENKNOWWHATASOOTHINGTHOUGHTIS!DOITNOW!STOPWRITINGINYOURHEADYOUSHOWOFFJUSTRELAX!!!RELAXRELAXRELAXRELAXRELAXRELAXRELAX and so on.
I believe this is why I have never been successfully hypnotized.

Meanwhile the heartbeat bass drum is bah-booming at a steady pace that does not in any way correspond with my own heartbeat or breathing. The tones start changing from high to low and some background feedbacky kind of noise and the lights are still flashing and it's a regular Pink Floyd laser light show in my very own bedroom. Nay, in my very own brain. So, I try to focus on my breathing like any good transcendental meditator will tell you to do... In... Out...wheeeeee ooooo wheeeee ooooo flash blink top side left side bottom side bah-boom In... Out... SOOTHINGTHOUGHTS! In... Out... What if this gives me a heart attack? In... Out... In... What was I thinking about? Out... In... I'm going to kill Mark In... Oops, I'm holding my breath Out...SOOTHINGTHOUGHTS! In... Out... boing boing boing wheeee ooooo boing boing boing bah-boom In... Out... what will my children do if I die in my bed? In...Out... what if the paramedics come and find me wearing this ridiculous contraption? In... Out... In... Out... what if I fall asleep and roll over and break this?!I don't want to buy Mark a new one! In... Out... what is my name again?

THINKSOOTHINGTHOUGHTS! Hanging with David Pal.

David Pal, that rascal, did do something strange. I found myself in the position of not being able to complete a coherent thought. I would test it by trying to think about something and then lose it right in the middle, drift off into Neverland with my lights and my boinks and my bah-booms and feel like I was floating on some sort of sensory deprivation island. Not quite asleep, but completely at rest. Can I say this? I don't often get to experience a quiet mind, not even while I'm sleeping. It was at once uncomfortable and a blessed relief. I suppose at some point either the Chief Lou finished laughing at me and took the contraption off, or I did it in my semi-conscious state because it was on the floor by my bed the next morning. (I've got to say, the latter option is a little disturbing. I'm not entirely sure what my body would do if left to wander around at loose ends while my mind was vacationing on Neptune.)

But let's talk about the next morning. The morning on which I thought for a good 3 hours that I had broken my brain. Or rather, that David Pal had. I stood up out of bed and immediately fell over. Stood up again and the room was spinning. Not the room, exactly, but the inside of my cranium. I was so dizzy I could barely see straight. I crept down the stairs and went about my morning: making breakfast, packing lunches, getting the monkeys to school - all very quietly and calmly so as not to alarm small people. I got home and sat down and watched the room slow its whir and seriously panicked for another 15 minutes or so (including a quick email to the Chief Lou: "David Pal broke my brain! Mark is dead!") until I sneezed. And sneezed again and again. I never sneeze unless confronted with direct sunlight, so three in a row only means one thing. That one thing is decidedly not "some crazy brain wave apparatus dislodged some really old fat soluble psychedelia from deep within the folds of my brain and now I am ruined for life just like all those pamphlets and after school specials said I would be". Thankfully. It means I'm catching a cold.

I just returned from the doctor's office where she pronounced my left ear "full of fluid" and issued prescriptions for dealing with said fluid. When describing my symptoms, I did not in any way describe David Pal or his presence in the sudden onset of this cold and its terrifying implications. I'm pretty sure I would have ended up with a few more prescriptions and possibly a referral if I had.

I will declare this a win. The Davids tried to get me down again and I rose triumphant with the aid of a simple antibiotic and a nasal spray. Until next time, THINKSOOTHINGTHOUGHTS!

*I am in no way affiliated with Mind Alive, Inc. or its products. I am not being paid for this post except in the way of comment love and my experience with David Pal is pretty much like my experience with other mind altering activities - abnormal.