My day started when I awoke from a particularly vivid dream. Personally, I love dreaming, and often marvel at my brain’s ability to concoct such outlandish scenarios from my wholly ordinary life. But in Chinese medicine, vivid dreams are a symptom of a spleen qi deficiency, and in fact ancient Taoists believe healthy people should not dream at all. One thing is for sure: Healthy people probably aren’t dreaming about defrosting, roasting, and eating skinned chimpanzees from their freezer.
“I had this crazy dream last night!” I effused to Mr. P, who was still clinging to his last moments of sleep. “I had a dream that the meat CSA delivered us frozen chimpanzees, and I had to cook them!”
“They eat chimpanzees in Africa,” Mr. P muttered, thrashing around in the comforter as if to ward off further nonsense from his wife.
I headed to the gym for a morning work-out: One hour of distracted pedaling on a bike while reading the New York Times, which vaguely disappointed me this morning except for a review of Green Day’s broadway musical American Idiot and an atypically astute Thomas L. Friedman column called “Everyone loves a winner” (here), about how pushing the health care bill through Congress has made Obama “geopolitically healthier”:
You don’t have to be Machiavelli to believe that the leaders of Iran and Venezuela shared the barely disguised Republican hope that health care would fail and, therefore, Obama’s whole political agenda would be stalled and, therefore, his presidency enfeebled. He would then be a lame duck for the next three years and America would be a lame power.
In the locker room, I showered and then changed into the work clothes I had packed. Due to poor planning, it looked like I was doomed to wear blue jeans along with a blue jean jacket — an extremely dorky look for me. For anyone, really.
At work, a co-worker noticed the poster advertising my community orchestra’s spring concert, which I hung outside of my cubicle. His eyes widened. “You play an instrument?” he asked with absolute amazement, like he just found out that I’m a world-class mime.
(“Why is it hard to believe that I play an instrument?” I asked Mr. P later.
“Because you look like a dork,” Mr. P said frankly, an assessment I could hardly argue with — I was wearing all denim — although I think Mr. P, a cellist, is in denial about exactly who joins the community orchestra.
“Only dorks play string instruments!” I said, which is true, although not all dorks play string instruments. )
At lunchtime, I stopped at the organic grocery store to buy some raw almonds. A man leaving the store held open the door for me as I entered, and I was reminded about my favorite thing about the South: their innate gallantry, which was so much less awkward than the self-congratulatory decorum of Northerners (“I’m holding open the door for you to make me look good.”)
The afternoon tettered forward in stops and starts. It’s school vacation week, so half of the workforce is MIA while the other half slacks off in their absence. I managed to maintain about a 70% productivity rate, with occasional lapses into reveries, like where my next vacation should be, how tonight’s orchestra practice will go, and what does it mean when you dream of eating chimpanzees.
