An amputee's lesson, LEDs and the G-word revisited -- Oh, and it's Saturday

I dreamed that I was an amputee, limping around on one leg. I guess I'd been in this condition for a while, since I was pretty used to it. Then one day, someone gave me a prosthetic limb. I strapped it on and walked around for a bit. It felt so natural, like I had my old leg back. I felt gratitude, and it hardly mattered that I had this relatively crude stick of plastic in place of a leg. I was back in business, walking without a limp.

----

I get it, ok. Deprivation creates appreciation. Alas, how crude a mechanism. It's my "Gratitude at Gunpoint" theory, with a twist of torture. Whatever deity or universal Consciousness, or the Great Pumpkin, whoever, wants us to feel grateful, He/She/It just can't deign to exist and let exist without this coercive, passive/aggressive manipulation of our psyches. If you won't just worship and be thankful spontaneously, well -- "We have ways to make you grateful."

Last week was a perfect example. I had a couple of days of unpleasant eye problems. For entire days at a time, my whole consciousness was plagued by an awareness of physical discomfort. It was like a grain of sand in my eye. Then I had a day of gut pain, where that was my primary source of irritation. Even in that less than comfortable state, I could recognize that the eye problems seemed to have abated. And for that I was, ugh, grateful.

So, now, when I have a day where I'm not forcibly conscious of any one primary sensation of pain, I have to call that a "good day." Strange, how when I was younger I never had to go through these hoops to determine whether or not a day was good or bad. Physical health was taken for granted. I'd wake up in my own skin without cringing in fear of the next ailment. I had plenty of things to worry about, unrelated to health, things to obsess over, dislike or complain about, but the baseline I was working from was one of relatively good health.

So, I wake up today, Saturday, with no immediate concerns or "in your face" types of maladies plaguing me. I have to determine that it will be a good day, despite starting from a less than optimal, somewhat tenuous place. I'm still a 56 year old man, in a decrepit 56 year old body, driven by a 56 year old, depression addled brain. But my eyes aren't buggin' and my gut ain't hanging out of my abdomen, so I have to acquiesce and determine that it going to be a good day.

Plus, it's Saturday. Did I mention that I like Saturdays best? 

-----

And in other news, the LED came on briefly last week. I was downstairs getting some writings together to transcribe and upload to this blog. Mostly older stuff from my '90s era lovelorn phase. I am trying to fill in the gaps in my story, providing a more accurate picture of who I am, who I was and how I became the version that I am now. 

I was so glad to see the light (my little afterlife indicator of Sharon's presence) that I stopped what I was doing for a moment and had a brief conversation with the intermittent Christmas tree strand. It was dim, but it became brighter and flashed on and off rapidly, sometimes staying on sometimes staying off. I always wonder what it is she is trying to tell me, if indeed it is something more than just a random electrical phenomenon. 

Other things routinely seem to malfunction too. Like my Ipod or my PC. I can't attribute all of this to a dead person's hijinks. But I can't entirely rule it out either. Whatever is the case, I choose to take it as some kind of a sign, one which I am just not quite able to interpret, but am glad for, nonetheless. Whether she's cheering me on, rolling her eyes or just saying "hello," I don't know. But I'll take it. And I'll never fail to be, ahem, grateful for that silly little LED, whenever it decides to wink at me.