Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
D’jer ever enter a public restroom, basically a one commode affair with a locking door, and stagger back from the smell? But then, you know…you gotta go. So you do so as quickly as possible.
Then, when leaving, you discover a line of people waiting to use the restroom. And you pause to think, ‘They’re going to blame that smell on me?”
That ever happen to you?
This is truth for me. Reminders that others discovered and overcame the same truth inspires me and strengthens my resolve to persevere. But then, it could just be the coffee talking. It is a potent French roast.
New, powerful dreams swept in to replace the soul-dragging sprawl of dreams endured my previous three nights. Now I was once again enabled and empowered. Confident in my understanding of what had happened and what needed to happen, I began installing order on others in my dream.
In one of the dreams, someone who was in charge and outranked me began chastising me for some bizarre local rule. I’d taken my boots off. As punishment, he’d stolen in, taken my boots, wrapped them up in a package and hid them. Now revealing what he’d done, he began lecturing about their rules and procedures in a galling pedantic manner. I gathered from his ridiculing subtext that he thought he would emasculate me and put me in my place.
I didn’t accept the situation. I waited until he finished. Then I politely replied, “But I just arrived here this morning, hours ago. I think you should have set up an immediate orientation for me to know what was going on, if you want me to know your rules and follow them. Otherwise, you would just playing a silly game of ‘gotcha’.”
A person beside me leaned over and whispered, “Right on,” in my dream. Two other dreams from last night were of the same ilk, encouraging me to stand up for myself. Together, the three instilled greater confidence in me. It’s a wonderful sensation to awaken with the belief I know what I’m supposed to do and will do it.
Happy Tuesday, writers!
The licking, nipping, biting, kneading, bunting, rubbing and butting a cat does to you to demonstrate their happiness and, or, their affection for you.
Example: “Trying to catpliment me, Quinn jumped up onto my lap and began purring loudly while making biscuits. I began scratching his head and ears. If I stopped, he would thrust his head against my hand or my chin, encouraging me to resume.”
Today’s theme music streams in from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the massacre in Tienanmen Square.
The Berlin Wall wall was first a fence and then a guarded concrete wall. Built in 1961, it made East Berlin an island of Soviet Union totalitarianism and communism amidst western culture, democracy and freedom. I traveled through East Berlin by train while the wall was up. Still scarred by the tanks and guns of World War II, the streets were ghostly empty avenues behind crumbling concrete and rusting steel.
The massacre in Tienanmen Square is sometimes called the June Fourth Incident. The People’s Republic of China was experiencing a spring of democratic thought in 1989, with its people hoping for greater freedoms and independence. They dissented with their government’s position and were killed by their government for their ideals.
Now, in 2017, the Berlin Wall has fallen. The Union of Soviet Socialists States has fragmented into smaller nations, dominated by Russia. The PRC, often just called China, remains. While shifts have occurred there, it remains a nation of oppressed people with little freedoms.
Here in America, a billionaire has been elected POTUS with less than the popular vote. He wants to build a wall to protect us. As a child and adult who lived with a wall as a symbol of political differences and repression, I’m dubious of his motives and ideals, and leery of what might come to pass.
The events of Tienanmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall inspired Seal to write this song. Let’s hope this song inspires us and we avoid becoming the people behind the wall.
Here, from 1991, is Seal with ‘Crazy’. We’re never going to survive unless we get a little crazy.
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Michael Seidel, writer 