Aha, new batteries for the famous foldable keyboard and it seems the pesky repeated letter and non-working keys are pretty well fixed. Fun times.
At my regular pub in what I guess is the calm before the storm. St. Patty’s Day is tomorrow, though it was evidently “observed” over the weekend by amateurs and professionals alike.
This weekend I had a repeat of an experience I had maybe a year or 2 ago. In the earlier incident I found myself at a movie theater unable to catch my breath or breathe properly. The air there felt musty and thick and I could only catch my breath when the theater’s air conditioner turned on or when I stepped out into the lobby where the air was much fresher.
Fast forward to this past Saturday night and an almost exact repeat of that incident occurs, only this time I am in the company of another (my new friend D.) who noticed my panicked breathing and asked if I was OK. I said no and that I’d be right back. I went to the lobby and to the bathroom, but this theater was in a basement and the air was as bad or worse in the lobby as in the theater. At some point I started trying to throw up but all that came up was air. I left the theater twice before giving up and telling D. I couldn’t stay, that I didn’t know what was happening but I could not breathe in this place. I felt bad because the tickets we used to see the film were given to D. as a birthday gift from her office, and while that may seem like a trivial point I felt nice knowing that she used something like this with me.
I do think it was the rancid air in the theater. I noticed it when we walked in, the stale, listless feeling of heavy uncirculated air that hadn’t left the room for 80 years. It could be something psychosomatic but if it was an anxiety or panic episode then the cause wouled have to be unbelievably deep in my psyche because I am about as self-aware as an individual can be and I can imagine no reason for demons from my subconscious to invade my present like that. I remember a time I was at a Carnegie Hall concert and I noticed how I went virtually narcoleptic when the lights dimmed and the performer took the stage. I fell asleep abruptly, like someone flipped off a light switch in my mind, and I woke up moments later feeling like I’d been out for hours. If there is some psychological angst at work in that episode then the best I can conjure is that it comes from my past as a performing pianist, and maybe at some level I feel failure in seeing others take the stage like I used ! to do.
I do feel more comfortable in an audience when I have recently been on a stage myself, but that can not be too unusual.
No no no, I don’t think there is anything more than stale air maybe interacting with my trusty GERD condition. I wound up throwing up more than just air in the basement bathroom of the Gemini Diner on 2nd Avenue. How glamorous is that? Now my innards are sore in places I never knew existed because my barfing muscles haven’t had much work lately.
But enough about that. It was seriously scary but I was glad and thankful D. was with me. I call her my friend and not girlfriend because I can not stand the latter word, but moreso because I feel the real riches and richness in life come from friendships and the comfort therein. I would probably never introduce her to my other friends as anything other than “my friend” but while thinking about this (to me) obvious matter I just felt a deflation episode — episode averted, I hope. In previous lives the matter of calling a woman companion a “friend” was the stuff of unimaginable drama. Phone conversations ended with a shattering hang-up, e-mail correspondences severed in mid-anecdote lob, other arrangements thrown away in the name of the “relationship” which exists in a separate more business-like sphere than mere friendship.
OK I don’t know what I am talking about. I mean, oh yes I do, but it’s an ugly menntnal noise. And my little keyboard is freakiig out againnn w ith the fucking spastic repeat letters
