These are the FIFA paintings on display at the Columbus Circle Mall. There are a total of 33 paintings, but I am posting only the 20 decently phographed ones. Click for larger version.

It's something that I watch for every year. Since I was young, I always looked at the sky before going to bed, and I always made special note of when I could still see sunlight outside. 9PM was mandatory bedtime for me until some time in my teens. For about a month every year, bedtime happened when there was still light outside. That just made it feel extra wrong, but it already felt wrong enough without that, because my bedtime was the only mandatory one.

I can now go to bed almost any time I want, with the exception of Sunday nights, but I still make a mental note of when I can see sunlight at 9PM. I wonder how much of my nocturnality is based on rebellion against this imposed bedtime. My primary reason for being self-employed is that it gives me the freedom to choose my own sleeping patterns. I wonder how different my life might be if I had not been forced to go to bed at 9.

On the night when my grandmother died, I felt it, or deceived myself into recalling that I did. It certainly wasn't the first time I thought about her death, and the not improbable coincidence of being informed of her death after thinking about it could have produced a distorted memory. She had a brain tumor for several years, and she was 89 years old. The tumor had caused terrifying hallucinations and weakened her legs. Because she had fallen numerous times and often screamed at night, my parents decided to send her to a nursing home. She was there for over a year before she died. During my visits, I noticed that she had become more cheerful than ever before. I wondered it if it was the medication or the activities that she got involved in. She had won a bowling tournament.I had no idea that she even knew how to bowl. When living with my parents, she stayed at home not doing much of anything except for going to the doctor for medical exams.

Prior to going to bed on the night when my grandmother died, I took a moment to meditate, trying to sense her condition psychically. I don't know why I did that. It's not as if I could summon psychic powers whenever I want to. I just did, maybe as a psychological trick to make myself feel better about never calling her. That night, I had a dream about her spirit visiting me. She didn't say anything, but she somehow communicated a message about her death. I was not surprised when my mother called me the next day to inform me of the death.

At the wake, I asked my sister about the choice of casket. It was a very elaborately decorated bronze casket. My sister was the one who selected and paid for it, because my parents were poor, but my sister had a decent income. She told me that she chose the most extravagant casket that she could find, because our grandmother always said "you will bury me in an old broken cardboard box" whenever she had an argument with our mother. This was a phrase that I had not heard in over 20 years. I had completely forgotten that it was ever said, but it clearly had made a deep impression on my sister.

Today is the 9th anniversary of my grandmother's death.

I am on an airplane in Russia. I can see through the windows that we are no longer on the runway. We don't seem to even be in the airport, but we are still on the ground. The plane cruises through the streets picking up new passengers as a NYC bus would.

I contemplate the recklessness of the driving and wonder if I should take over as pilot. I am a military test pilot and can easily fly this plane, but I have to keep my identity and skills secret. This causes hesitation in taking over for the pilot. I remain seated, nervously watching for a crash.

The plane eventually gets to the roof of a building. It doesn't fly there. It is driven through a complex spiral path that leads up to the top. There isn't enough room on the roof to make a decent runway, but the height of the building makes the takeoff possible. Once we are in the air, the plane flies past several bridges, very narrowly escaping crashes with them by a few inches. After passing a few bridges, the plane begins to ascend.

I finally relax, because we have enough height and clearance that not much disaster would be likely to happen due to incompetence of the pilot. I look at a small book that I have with me that looks somewhat like it could be a passport, but it isn't. It is some type of document indicating my military credentials. On one of the pages, it show that I first piloted a plane in 1927. I put that away and take out another booklet. This one is a top secret document with details about my current mission. I read it and see only love stories. I wonder if the true instructions are encrypted. The stress of trying to decipher the document causes me to awaken.

I'm considering the possibility of getting an eyepatch. My left eye has been significantly weaker for the past three days. Since a training accident when I was young, my left eye has had problems. I can usually see very clearly through that eye, but vision in the eye gets noticeably weaker around once a week. It isn't entirely random. My left eye tends to be weaker when I am more tired regardless of the reason for tiredness. It's not necessarily associated with anything like reading a lot. I can do a lot of physical activity and still have the same effect.

I discovered that I can fix the vision in my left eye if I close my right eye for a while. Forcing myself to use my left eye somehow gets it to start functioning again. I could just keep my right eye closed, but it gets to be tiring after a while. I think an eyepatch might be good for me. It's not an unprecedented technique. Ophthalmologists have used eyepatches to fix amblyopia in the past, although that is becoming less common.

I can go to Italy with an enormous erection, perfect vision, blueberries grown in shade. strawberries, and a deeply discounted gold watch.