Death, sitting on the couch

In at least one of his books, Carlos Castaneda refers to imagining Death as your constant companion, always with you, always looking over your shoulder.

Tonight I don't have to imagine very hard. Death isn't behind me, looking over my shoulder. Instead, he's over there, sitting on the couch, eating two 100-calorie packs of popcorn, watching a holiday movie on my tv, while I'm sitting over here typing up this blog entry, feeling bad about a health problem (my prostate), and generally just feeling sorry for myself.

I drove home tonight in a mental fog, and rather than fight it I decided to just go with it. I noticed that if I crossed my eyes just slightly, making things blurry, there wasn't any real difference between this state of driving down the road, and being in a dream. It occurred to me during some part of this process that some dreams, maybe most, are a little blurry.

As I've noted in other blog posts, when I get into a mental state like this while conscious, the only real difference between this state and a lucid dream is when I touch something, or perhaps hear a loud noise.

Ugh, I just need to go to bed, which I'll do next. Hopefully Death will let himself out when the movie is over.