caveat: zap-o-matic number 30

i dreamed i was driving my dad’s 1928 ford model A through rural korea. i was alone. i had stopped to fix something, along a dusty road that on closer inspection resembled rural mexico more than rural korea. my brother rode by on a motorcycle and refused to to help. he was wielding a flaming tree branch.

then a man stopped and gazed on me as i worked. it took me a while to realize he wasnt korean. he had a stark, expressionless face, and blue eyes. he asked me where the post office was. when i said i didn’t know, he ran off as if upset. i finally got the model A running again, and drove into a town. there were men with cows standing around, arguing. i saw the blue-eyed man who had asked earlier about the post office. he was carrying a basket of snakes.

the model A was full of junk. trash, really. my brother came by and insisted that the best way to deal with it was to light it on fire, which he did. the flames roared, and i pulled the trash out of the car as it became clear the flames would consume the vehicle too. as i did, there was a woman among the trash. she was on fire. andrew and i kicked dirt over her, trying to put out the fire. the woman was screaming.

the men with cows watched. the man with blue eyes ran away.

i awoke, wide awake, at 530 am.

(the picture, above right, is a scan of one taken of the car in 1969. my dad still has the car.)

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today is my last day of the x-ray tomographic radiation therapy.

now i just have to get healthy. that’s going to be rougher than i expected. somehow, in conceptualizing this process, i had imagined, quite inaccurately, that i would finish the radiation and then immediately go back to my regular life. this is clearly not going to happen: i expect the next week or two to actually be the worst in terms of discomfort and incapacitation, as my body begins the slow and difficult work of rebuilding and repairing all the things in my mouth and neck that the high-energy photons have broken and damaged.