What It Is (posts below left; rate sheet, client list, other stuff below right)

My name is Bob Land. I am a full-time freelance editor and proofreader, and occasional indexer. This blog is my website.

You'll find my rate sheet and client list here, as well as musings on the life of a freelancer; editing, proofreading, and indexing concerns and issues; my ongoing battles with books and production; and the occasional personal revelation.

Feel free to contact me directly with additional questions: landondemand@gmail.com.

Thanks for visiting. Leave me a comment. Come back often.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Chemical Imbalance Finally Pays Off, Momentarily

"Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible" (from a Dow Chemicals Vietnam War-era ad campaign)

A shift in my chemical regimen (for the better [I guess], I should report) has left me with the most uncomfortable side effect of remembering my dreams. It's not that I mind dreaming per se, but my dreamworld usually renders experiences that, as Ignatius J. Reilly said, "[leave] me bruised and muttering." I have a friend who's a recovering alcoholic who reports such a horrid barrage of images each night that he usually has to go for a walk with a cigarette and a cup of coffee just to shake it off. I know the feeling.

Last night offered a few moments of bliss. I slipped into sleep while sitting up on a sofa and trying to finish off the last 20 pages of a manuscript about Muslims in US prisons (yet another barn burner from the desk of Land on Demand). Across the room is the television that I never turn on.

All of a sudden I'm dreaming about seeing Lou Reed and John Cale in concert, except they are playing Cale's songs from his solo career. Reed would start out on the guitar and then push the microphone over to Cale behind the piano for a song like "Fear" or "Guts." This never happened in real life, as their reunions were either doing Velvets material or Songs for Drella, their Andy Warhol tribute. So to hear the boys performing from the Cale songbook is something I'd never hear in conscious life.

The strange thing is that I was watching this concert right where I was, in the seat on the sofa and on the TV in front of me.

I mentioned this to my wife this morning, and she had a bizarre thought: "Do you think Cale might have died?" I am happy for many reasons that today's news didn't present that report. The garbage coming out of my hometown of Staten Island is bad enough.

So after finishing the manuscript a few hours later I actually go up to bed and lay down long enough to have a dream that involved me all of a sudden being on deadline to proofread my 1977 high school yearbook -- like, my 54-year-old self, today. Doesn't my unconscious remember that I worked on the newspaper and not the yearbook?

Prompting thoughts on two pictures and the best email I received this year, work division:

Photo 1:

Police Chokehold Death Staten Island

That would be the Verrazano-Narrows bridge (as the truckers call it, the Guinea Gateway), looking toward Brooklyn. That little tower atop of brick edifice you see off to the right of the bridge would be the school where I spent the years 1969 to 1977. Poly Prep. If you search "Poly Prep sex scandal," you'll find a world of pain and bad times that were in full throttle during my years there, a revelation that only came about recently. This photo accompanied an AP story yesterday about the outsider borough of Staten Island. Why they presented an image of that bridge facing Brooklyn, I have no idea.

Picture 2:



I was working on an index for an author in Israel, and when his name came up attached to a Lou Reed homage, I sent him this picture. His response:

"Nuff said that I'm thanking the gods and [the press's managing editor] for introducing me to you, sure.  But how did you and your wife come to be in a room with a warped acoustic ceiling and John-fncking-Cale?"

Ah, authors. I occasionally love 'em.

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