Sort of a non-exact reply spurred by Force User.
If you look up flabby and hairy in the book, there I am. I'm a wookie.
I had a dream about a year ago, very surreal, very strange and rather pointless, but it stuck with me. I was at a huge housing project, like something out of a Gibson novel (hadn't read Gibson in years, though) ... and I had to be there for some reason. I get met by two large black men in dark suits, and they lead me to an apartment, to see "Him". I go because I know if I don't, they'll kill me. And I wait for "Him" because, if I don't, they'll kill me. There's something I have to do. The apartment is full of other black guys, dark suits, different styles, they're all very quiet, distant. None of them are as large as me, of course (I'm 6'8"), it's a quiet air of necessity: even if I were armed and willing to kill to get out, there's something I HAVE to do, and if I won't, I have to be killed.
At any rate, I stay, sitting alone on a couch, wondering why I have to see "Him". I know what I have to do, but I don't think about it, nor remember it when I wake up. I'd do it anyway, so I don't know what "He" has to do with anything. But, eventually, He comes in ... slightly older, somehow wise looking, in a white suit. Four guys come in, grab me, and rip my shirt off of me, then wrestle me onto a mat on the floor, face down. He takes off his suit coat, loosens his tie, and takes up the tools. I forget where I saw the thing, on Discovery I imagine, years ago, but it's an old tattoo tool, islander, Maori maybe. Looks like a small razor-sharp back scratcher, and a mallet like a dowel with a handle cut in it. But instead of bone and wood, they're gleaming stainless steel. And he starts to work on a tattoo on my left back/shoulderblade area. Big one. Hurt. That's part of why I remember the dream so vividly ... usually pain either wakes me up or is distant, unimportant, sanitized. This HURT. I could feel stinging and warmth.
The tattoo itself comes and goes, isn't as clear as the rest of the dream. Tribal, but old, thick bands and whorls. I woke up after a while, when it was done, because I knew that it would help me do this thing I had to do ... that without it I'd have failed, but now I wouldn't. And then I woke up.
I was never a big tattoo guy. Mostly because, it seems, everybody and their little sister has a tattoo. It's pop frigging American culture. Have to have a tattoo and a facial piercing to be cool, these days, and I usually refuse to do anything if it's just pop culture. That and, as I said, I'm not exactly the shirtless "Look at THIS ladies, yea" sort of guy. But I've been meaning to change that, and that dream nags at me every other day. So I've made a deal with myself ... if I tone up, firm up, look good ... I get the tattoo, literally, of my dreams.
Here's to daily attention to diet, exercise, and weight lifting.
--HT