The Holy Roman Empire may be the invention of Irony.                                                                                                                         

I respect Charles V, because he is the only Holy Roman Emperor’s name that I remember. That has to count for something. 

I’ve seen the massive maps from the middle ages plastered over the Vatican’s walls. They almost got Europe right. Pay an indulgence to the church, save your loved one’s from an eternity of purgatory. God needs to hire more paper pushers. 

Imagine if Carthage had sacked Rome, instead of the other way around. Hannibal had three chances. He  poisoned himself in a cave, kind of like Socrates.  

What if Hector had slain Achilles? There are more editions of the Iliad published than the Bible. Virgil’s not as good, but he got paid. 

The Thracian Horseman inspired the image of St. George. I think Charle’s V won a lot of battles. I know he wore golden armor.

Nobody knows how Alexander the Great died.  

A monkey ate my sunglasses. First, he stole them. Then he proceeded to eat them. It was a shitty day. He didn’t eat them right away, first he played with them a bit. He looked at them from all angles, the way monkey’s do. He made some monkey sounds as put them on his forehead. They didn’t fit right; he made some more monkey noises, and then he ate them. I had to run and find somebody that resembled a zookeeper, because they were some hefty, metallic sunglasses. I found some guy I thought was a zookeeper, and he ran over looking all worried. I walked away. I wondered, would they pump the monkey’s stomach? I don’t know how monkeys do with sunglasses. He just reached his little hands through the bars and took them right off my face!

I was taking a personal day at the zoo, because why not. The zoo would have been cool if I was with somebody to see the whole monkey thing. It would be a funny story, but now it’s just a weird shitty thing that happened to me at the zoo. It’s not funny. I think I paid forty bucks for that pair of sunglasses. I wonder how much a zoo pays for a monkey. This monkey was a chimpanzee. 

I left the zoo and lit up a cigarette. Three left. Monkey’s can’t smoke. Good for them. They are smart though, everybody knows that. Planet of the Apes smart though? Not likely. You blew it up! Exhale. God damn you all to hell! Inhale. The monkeys in those movies never wore sunglasses.

The bus is arriving but I’m still smoking, so I’ll walk. I spent the rest of the day furiously comparing myself to monkeys. Monkey’s can’t cook! A hearty, hot meal off the happy hour menu. A beer too. Monkey’s will seek out and eat fermented fruit, however. I bet I could get drunk better than a chimpanzee could.

I was alone at the bar. My girlfriend and I just broke up. She hated the zoo. I loved it. Monkey’s live in large groups. They are seldom totally isolated. 

“You want another one?” the bartender asked.

“Yeah.” I pursed my lip under the last sip of beer. “Hey do you know if a monkey eat’s a pair of sunglasses, do you think they would pump his stomach?” 

“I have no idea man.” He set the new beer on the bar next to the empty basket of fries and walked away, slipping out of sight. 

“Me niether.” 

Last night I dreamed that I woke up in a shack made of dark grey wood. Pale daylight came in through the cracks in the boards and I went outside to discover that I was in a forest glen covered in wet moss and surrounded by looming trees. Everything was still, in the way the morning after a terrible storm is still, and sheep stood scattered through the grassier parts of the glen. But why did each of them hold one leg close to their coats as though it were broken? My only neighbor in the neighbor in the neighborhood, in the only other shack around, came out and began to tend to a little brown sheep with a back leg at an odd angle. We may have exchanged words; I wasn’t listening.

Thanks Winter’s Bone… at least the dream felt the way I imagined Winter’s Bone to be. Maybe it’s all this creative literature that I have been exposed to over the quarter but my dreams have gotten more vivid and strange. Maybe they are anxiety Dreams but they have an odd way of comforting me in the morning.

I wish I could capture the mood of these dreams and distill them into the imagery that I want for my film. The script at least exists, the good and the bad parts, it has a life of it’s own that dictates how I develop it. But I am still at a loss about what images will pervade the back of my character’s thoughts and projected onto their surroundings. The script is really half a story, the yet-to-be images its ghostly other half. If only I could (Oh how I am getting carried away by fantasies) give these characters images that both unsubtle and comfort them the way these dreams affect me.

I think that the very brief clip I made of fleeting projected images has the quality of what I want, vibrant yet warped, unobtrusive and striking. These images just need content. And on that point I think I’m falling victim to thinking about product before process. They represent subjective view-points anyway, let them be disjointed.

3/1/16

 I’m diabetic, don’t give me insulin if I pass out

I wasn’t feeling very well this morning, no real surprise. Some mornings my blood sugar is low when I wake up. Lately, I haven’t been able to eat enough to keep my levels up. I take very little insulin since the surgery. I sometimes resort to candy to correct the lows.  I was out with a friend and got dizzy, sat down and I guess I passed out.  

She told me that she panicked and rummaged through my bag. Seeing the insulin, she was sure that it would fix my problem. So she loaded up the syringe and gave me a good dose of it.  She had no idea what she was doing.  Later she would tell me that she saw on TV that people pass out from diabetes and if they do they need insulin. She thought that she was doing the right thing, and she almost killed me.

When I didn’t wake up immediately, she called 911.  When they arrived, she told them what she had done.  The EMT’s checked my blood sugar and it was 14. It should have been around 100.  They quickly put in an IV and started the glucose water.  A few hours later, I woke, in the hospital.  It took a couple of days for my levels to reestablish themselves.

I had a long talk with my friend, so did my doctor. She had relied on TV and movies to learn about my illness and emergency treatment.  She didn’t understand that it is more common for a diabetic to pass out from low blood sugar, where the treatment is to eat some sugar and then some carbs, then it is to pass out from high blood sugar. And if your blood sugar is high enough to make you pass out, there is lots of warning signs. Giving a big dose, unmeasured of insulin to anyone, is an almost sure way to kill them.   I think the doctor finally got through to her when he told her that.  She was told to always call 911 and don’t try to treat, unless you are directed to by a doctor. And never inject someone with anything unless you are sure you know what you are doing.  

I also have allergies and carry epinephrine in my bag for emergencies. That also has the potential to kill me.

It could have ended so much worse. I’m glad she finally understands that.