Making Hay While The Sun Shines

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There were plenty of cues that I was dreaming. I don't know why I ignored them. I kept waking up and assuring myself, "I'm in my own bed in my own house. I'm in my own bed in my own house. I am not lost and trapped in a really, really weird city. I am not drunk in Galveston wandering from freak bar to freak bar..." Maybe...

I kept my appointment at the arthritis clinic at the VA Hospital in Durham again. Things went swimmingly there. I got in line for the valet parking and the black dude handing out the tripartite tickets pretended to look over my car for damage and wrote down that I had a bent door on the passengers side, and that the window on the driver's side didn't work.

He told me that there were no more parking spaces in the valet parking area, and when I saw the No Parking Spaces Left by the side of the road that I had to go to the parking area behind the hospital. I had seen the sign by the entrance. So, I asked, "How do I get there?", and he said, "No, you can use the valet parking today.", and put the top part of the ticket on the dashboard of my car and handed me the other two parts.

I eventually got to pull behind the other waiting cars in from of the hospital entrance. Another black dude came toward me and told me to roll down my window and leave the key in the car. Then he asked me if my driver's side window worked, I told him it didn't, so he told me to roll the other window down. He took the ticket the other guy had handed me, tore it in half at the perforated line, handed me the bottom third of the ticket I would use to claim my car when I was ready to leave.

When I got out of the car, another young black man came up and asked me if my driver's side window was broke. I told him "Yes.", and he told me to roll the other window down, and leave the key in the car. I did just that, and walked inside the hospital.

Once inside the hospital I walked straight to the arthritis clinic, waited for another veteran in front of me to check in, and then got checked in myself by a very pleasant black woman who noticed that I have a birthday coming up. She told me to have a seat and the nurse would weigh me and check my blood pressure before the doctor would see me.

I hadn't sat there long before a plump black woman called out my name and I followed her into her office. It was the first time since I've been going to that clinic in Durham that I didn't get checked in by James, the black head nurse. I was pleased for the difference. The female nurses all seem to like me.

Once she weighed me and took my blood pressure and asked me the boiler plate questions and wrote down my answers on the check-in form I went back to the waiting area and found a seat over to the side, and immediately began meditating to pass the time. I got to theta in good time and waited for the doctor.

In what seemed like no time at all I heard my name being called, and looked up groggily, and there was my new Oriental female doctor looking for me in a rather blase mind state. I got up and followed her back to her office noticing that she's a little bow-legged. She's suspicious of me because I was rude to the former male Oriental doctor who asked their supervisor to assign me to another doctor. No blame.

I waited for her to instruct me on ever move I made. I waited until she asked me to close the door, and then I waited for her to invite me to sit down. I was excessively polite. I knew very well why she didn't trust me. I knew immediately this was going to be a brief meeting. I had brought the bottle of dope I wanted renewed, and handed it to her.

She turned straight to her computer and started reading. I sat in silence. In a few minutes she asked me to take my shoes off and sit on the table. She didn't listen with her stethoscope, but looked at my foot where I'd had the problem she had ignored on my last visit when I asked her to. She acted like it had nothing to do with the arthritis I was there for and mumbled something about me needing to see a podiatrist, but she didn't make me an appointment.

I told her I had changed my mind about the medicine I'd refused before, and she warmed up a little. My refusing the medicine was why the male Oriental doctor didn't want me back (other than the fact that I had sniggered at his claiming to be the best doctor in the hospital). She said she would submit my request for the medicine to her supervisor, but then added that I would get it in the mail. She told me I ought to wean myself off the prednisone steroids, and I agreed to, even though for the most part I'd already done that.

What surprised me about this visit was that there was hardly any line at all for waiting to get the travel pay they pay for me having to drive a two hundred mile round trip. There were only three or four people with lower numbers than me, and I got through that procedure without much hassle. Outside, while I waited for my car to be brought up, I walked back to see where to park behind the hospital, and when i got back the white lady had just driven up in my car. I'll explain why I notice the various races of the people at the VA Hospital one day.

I got enough travel money to pay for my gas and go by the health food store in the big city and buy a new supply of NAC and a different brand of probiotics. I asked the clerk who showed me where the probiotics was located which brand sold the best. He showed me a brand I was familiar with, and told me that several customers told him their doctor recommended SolarRay by name, and it was half-price, so I bought it. Of course, it only had half as many billions of "good" bacteria and half the "strains" of bacteria as the one advertised on PBS, but I'm too poor to get the good stuff in the informercials anyway.

Once I got home I went for a walk with the dogs in the back field, but I didn't walk all the way to the river. The dogs were nervous because my trigger-happy nephew was shooting his guns. He was a long way away, but it seemed to make them jittery. They stayed close by until we got about a half-mile on down into the cowless pasture, and literally kept stopping in my path to assure themselves I was there for them. Wimps.

When I got back I hesitated to use the binary beat software to meditate. I knew my brother and his wife would go out to dinner at this place that only opens on Friday nights. It makes them feel special, but it forces me to wait for them to have a good time for my brother and I to go on our walk. Actually his walk. I'd already gone and came back.

I went over a couple of days to download the Gnaural software for her to use. I had given my brother a DVD demo of binaural beats to carry to her. When I asked him if she had used it he told me she couldn't get it to work, and she had downloaded something else. I knew it was crap without asking, so I went over and downloaded the Gnaural and showed her how to use it.

She sent me an e-mail about her experience that only said, "Wow.", so I figured she had gotten to the theta state. I hesitated to use the Gnaural myself last night so we could talk about her experience a bit, but then I got miffed at having to wait for them to act like big shots for my brother and I to take "his" walk, and went ahead and did my own meditation. It's hard to go wrong with the Gnaural.

I've meditated for around fifty years now. I know what I'm looking for in a binary beat program or without it, but for a person who hasn't really gotten there using the traditional method the Gnaural software can really do the trick by demonstrating what to expect when the theta state comes on.

That's what happened while I was waiting to see the doctor at the VA yesterday. I got to theta fast because I had associated the binary beat program with my breathing from my root chakra. It's the same deal as associating the classical music with traffic jams back when I commuted fifty miles to work. Except in this case, it was a positive association.

With the classical music (Beethoven's Ninth directed by Bernstein) I played the audio tape to divert my attention from the edginess associated with getting caught in traffic jams. Eventually, without me realizing it, I couldn't listen to the Ninth without associating it with the anger of being caught up in a traffic jam, which ruined it for me as a way to relax. Associating the binary beats with my breathing worked in the same way, but beautifully.

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