Miracle Mile

This morning was ghastly - about 4AM a headache moved in, but since I was on a doctor-ordered fast since 8PM I took no aspirin and just endured. By 7AM I was sweating feverishly and very tired, but I had to go to the Palo Alto Clinic to submit bodily fluids in conjunction with my physical Monday. I went to the basement lab, walking for the first time through corridors and around corners until I reached a packed waiting area - seems it's peak time and I was an hour past opening. On the way up I'd paused a couple times to pull over, recline and rest a bit; when the medical person told me the wait would be an hour or maybe just half, I asked if I could come back and she said "Sure" so I went out to the car and rested some more. When I returned, I only had to wait about five minutes more. My blood was drawn as I looked away, and then I was told to produce a urine sample in a special restroom, which had a little door in the wall next to the toilet. When I opened it I saw a laboratory in the room adjacent, and I set the tubular labeled plastic on a little shelf - then I closed the door and was finally free. Back at the car I took the waiting Esgic tablet and ate a banana during the drive home, under threatening gray skies with scattered raindrops on the windshield.

After a short nap I awoke feeling fine - a 100%, the morning's trauma remembered as if a nightmare. A visit to the City to buy music at "Amoeba" was the plan, even though rain began in earnest as I motored up the 280. Not as lucrative as most visits, but okay: I was hoping for a used Spiritualized disk, <1> but was forced to pay full price. Also got a "Miracle Mile" soundtrack by Tangerine Dream: like the "TransEurope Express" I examined it was marked with a little

"Out Of Print" sticker, thoughtfully affixed by Amoeba to trigger the crafty consumer's purchasing instinct. A used "Miracle Mile" was priced to move at $6, but unfortunately no previously-owned Kraftwerk was in stock at this time. Other used I was hoping to find, but they only had on-the-shelf new: Beaver and Krause; the "Next Stop Wonderland" soundtrack, and Sun Ra's "Space Is The Place." Outside the store and back to the car, I drove south through a section of The City where I'd never been - suddenly I was way uphill in a region my map calls "West of Twin Peaks." The road curved round along a wall near the crest of the hill, and since no other vehicles were about I paused to admire the view west, out over the Sunset towards the Pacific Ocean. At the edge of resolution I could see the surf breaking in the distance, under foggy white skies. As I coasted away, 'round the bend, the apex of the triangular tower on Twin Peaks loomed up behind its nearby ridge. Back on the freeway heading south, it started pouring rain - finally reaching home I put on the jittery Tangerine Dream soundtrack. "Miracle Mile" could be grouped with the other mid-1980's portrayals of nuclear war, "The Day After" and "Threads". I actually saw "Miracle Mile" when it was new, and have a copy of it on videotape.

For the past decade I've been trimming my ear hairs. For maybe the last five years I've noticed a new sort of hair growing into my eyebrows and around the outer edge of my nostrils... hairs a little thicker and more vigorous than their brothers - much faster- and longer-growing - I've also been trimming these, with my stylish "Jahenckels" embroidery scissors - they're perfect for those tight jobs. I decided to try resisting the urge to trim my eyebrows; I'm thinking "Why not?" to bushy. I'm still ever on the verge of shaving the rest of my scalp.

Listening to Garrison Keillor now; because I'm writing this I've lost the thread of this week's monologue. Recently though he had a curmudgeonly old Lake Wobegon character say

I don't think nothin is ever gonna be what it was ever again. We've 'bout seen the last of it. I'm getting too damned old.

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<1> Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
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