Dice Street

So the other day, Thursday 30 November 2006 I got a bunch of stitches in my hand- Friday before I cracked one of the larger vases we use at the Omni and filled it anyhow; vase degenerated even more in transit; Thursday we were changing these items out and I went to carry it to the dumpster (with intent to shatter violently as I could); jostled door, thicker part of vase collapsed under its own weight and guillotined my right hand from the pinkie to middle of palm. There's a lot of padding and tensile material that comprises the meat of your hand, I found, when this ribbon of fat decided to ooze from the gash and remind me of a liberated brain or the edge of a giant clam. Since has teemed with surrealities aided, no doubt, by this hydrocodone they gave me. The poor old guy in the bed next to me looked like he might not have made it- his wife was friendly and kind and for both their sakes I hope he did. She took it like a champ and there were a few apologetic little jokes he couldn't breathe to tell, but she knew them as well. And then since I escaped I feel socially lubricated or lucid enough, or free enough from my caustic sarcasm, to account for moving smoothly among a handful of friends I hadn't seen in a while, and an obscure pair of sexual encounters: I notice these things because I often want to escape my own skin, and in fits of momentary intensity I end up across some chasm even from the people I know and love best. Recently I read a self-congratulatory little book by some jerk named Paulo Coelho, and he (there's attempted no division there between author and narrator) would volunteer a reason that involved Living instead of being, maybe, but certainly some sort of self-imposed pleasure. That's no compelling or even interesting rationale. Nor is a chemical basis. It's just kind of nip to walk around and wave this leper's hand wrapped in spotty gauze.