210. Restless Brain Syndrome

For the last two weeks my mind has been very disjointed. I have thoughts shooting off all day and all night. Some shoot up, others shoot down. Some go crosswise. Some just sit there teasing me. I can't get no sleep, and you know how important that is for a dog. (I wrote all of this chronicle at 3:00 A.M. this morning.)

I went to a medical website to figure out what was going on. I typed in my symptoms. (I use a pencil between my teeth to type 'cause my paws can't hit a single key.) The website started churning. I knew it was churning 'cause a white dot kept moving around in a circle.

Pow! The churning stopped. The website diagnosed me with Restless Brain Syndrome. Yep, that's what I got. This is a condition that causes an uncontrollable urge to think. It typically happens in the evening or nighttime hours, but it can happen during daytime hours too. In extreme cases it occurs continuously. Restless Brain Syndrome, also known as Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, can begin at any age and generally worsens as you age. It can disrupt sleep, which interferes with daily activities. There is no medical treatment available for this condition, but meditation and yoga may help.

Meditation—no way! Trying this would just give my runaway thoughts free rein. Yoga? Maybe, but I would need yoga pants, and I haven't found any retailer selling yoga pants for dogs. I feel trapped.

On top of this malady, I have an earworm—you know, a song inside your head that keeps playing over and over and over. My earworm is Dylan's "Visions of Johanna". I like the that song a lot, but gimme a break. Listening to it hour after hour is driving me crazy!

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet
We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it.

Now my gibber jabber mind has taken me to West Africa, along the coast. There's a village there with no running water. The women have to walk for miles with pails to fill with dirty pond water and then carry them back to the village. Me, my engineer, and crew set about fixing this problem. We found a suitable water source and then constructed a water pump and a water purification system. We then laid pipe all the way back to the village and installed a valve and spigot. Now when anyone in the village wants water, all they have to do is bring over a pail or bowl and open the tap. Out comes clean, fresh water.

The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.

The villagers were really appreciative of what we had done. To promote ongoing friendship I gave each man in the village a survival knife. They were overjoyed. The women got bolts of brightly colored cloth and bags of Reese's Cups. I gave each of the children a toy from my toy chest. As I was getting ready to leave, I noticed a little girl standing away from the other kids and crying. I realized that she didn't get a toy. So I rummaged around in my toy chest and found a little stuffed monkey doll. I went over to her and handed her the doll. Her tears melted away. She clutched the doll to her chest and smiled. Then she gave me a big hug.

Oh, how can I explain ? It's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna they kept me up past the dawn.

My fickle fackle mind is again astir. It took me to the north rim of the Grand Canyon where I watched a government-sponsored guided bison hunt. But am I really here, or is it just the trickery of my out of control mind? At first I impulsively thought I would enter the fray, blow past the killers (or should I say, hunters?) and stampede the herd, thus stopping the carnage. My rational side emerged, even as my mind was shooting off thoughts like fireworks. I am a fast runner, but I am no match for a 7mm Regent Magnum long-range rifle fired at me by a skilled hunter in order to guarantee his chance to kill a bison.

So I watched, thinking about all of the euphemisms the hunters and government use to avoid saying they are killing beautiful 2,000 pound herbivores that just want to be left alone. They're culling the herd, harvesting the animals, bagging or hunting down the bison, and reducing the herd size. And for what? Are they leaving the carcasses for the park service to remove, taking the carcasses to a slaughterhouse, or cutting off the dead animals' heads so a taxidermist can make them into trophies the hunters can mount on a wall in their dens while they watch football on TV? I was gone in a flash, taken by my rambling mind.

Inside the museums
Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa must of had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles.

Now I'm in Sandy Koufax, Nova Scotia, or so it seems. I'm on the waterfront looking out at a churning sea. An old timer walks up to me and says, "There's a nor'easter aheadin' our way. Better find a safe place to hunker down."

I didn't know what a nor'easter was, but I didn't want to seem stupid, so I replied, "Thanks old timer for letting me know. Hunkering down is my specialty." I thought a nor'easter might have been a prelude to Easter, but why in the world would you want to hunker down from it? Oh well. I walked along the seashore and noticed that a lot of gray clouds were forming and that the fishing boats were heading to shore. I turned around and walked back to town.

I was getting hungry, so I started looking around for a place to eat. I would love to find a restaurant where I could enjoy some local cuisine: Sandy Koufax donair, hodge podge, and blueberry grunt. Just then my mind exploded: What is the best zoo in Singapore? When is the best time to visit Fiji? How big can Maine Coons get? Did Jerry Lee Lewis really marry his 13 year old cousin? Why is wombat poop cubed? Whoa, my head was spinning.

My restless mind whisked me away. I was standing on the side of a dusty road looking out at barren farmland. The sky was red. The air was very hot and there was no wind. Cornhusk Man slowly rose from a field, brushed himself off, and walked over to me.

He spoke: "All of the soil has turned to dust. There is no water. Nothing will ever grow here again. Humanity has failed." He turned around, walked back into the field and laid down.

And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes everything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes.

I materialized in front of a little house in east Phoenix. I walked around to the side of the house. Honeysuckle was growing there. I smelled the lovely aroma of the flowers. It must have been springtime. I entered the house like a ghost. Inside were two young women and a young man. He was taking a bath in an old bathtub. The two women were giggling as they stealthily walked over to the bathroom, opened the door and took a picture of the man using a Polaroid camera. He laughed. They laughed. It all was in fun.

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
Saying, "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him."
But like Louise always says, "Ya can't look at much, can ya man."

Once again my mind took me flying. I landed on a street in a rundown part of town. In front of me was a shabby little house. I entered it ghostlike once more. The inside of the house was empty except for a man sitting in a chair and a bed made of a sheet of plywood on cinder blocks with a thin foam pad on top. The man's eyes were closed. It seemed that he was meditating. After a while he reached into his shirt pocket, took something out, put it in his mouth and swallowed.

The man slowly began changing. His consciousness began ascending from his body. As it rose it shed his ego like taking off a heavy coat. He continued to ascend until he reached the ceiling. He was at peace. He smiled sublimely and said to himself, "This is so simple. I am It." After some time he slowly descended, put on the heavy coat, and entered his body. He felt sad and alone.

See the primitive wallflower frieze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeez
I can't find my knees."

Holy carbuncle! I'm back home, or at least I think I am, and I'm exhausted. I don't know how much more of this scrambled egg thinking I can take. It just goes on and on. I'm going to try to sleep and forget about today until tomorrow. I got into my bed, circled three times, scratched the bed vigorously, lay down, curled up, and shut my eyes.

The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.