Month: July 2017

Today’s Theme Music

I woke up in a Foghat state of mind.

I’d had an exciting and interesting dream about a recent dream. Without disclosing more, it was tremendously uplifting, bolstering my self-confidence to scary levels. I will note that I dreamed about the number eight again, which makes, unofficially, but what I can remember and enumerate, seven times. I’m waiting to see if I’ll dream of eight an eight time to end the series.

Back to Foghat. Those of you of certain ages and inclination will remember this song. “I Just Want to Make Love to You” is a blues staple that’s been well-covered by some great artists. But I encountered Foghat’s version first. It was nineteen seventy-two, and I was sixteen, a wonderful combination. By then, I was enamored with rock and guitars. Foghat’s cover of this song opens with rocking guitars, and doesn’t let up. What else needs said?

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The Last Name

Well, this is an embarrassing confession.

Here I am, on page three hundred thirty-four of the first half of the novel, when I encounter a little reminder to insert Brett’s last name. So, being a semi-pro, I open up the novel’s bible to look it up.

Damn if it’s not there.

I know I used it at least once elsewhere in the novel. Of course, this is a sequel, so the last name was used in the first book. But searching for it has proven daunting.

I’m surprised this happened, and it’s irking me. I keep documents to help me remember and understand who’s doing what to who, and what’s happened to everyone, to sustain internal logic. I can’t believe I can’t find his last name.

In my defense, this is a science fiction novel. Although the majority of space-travelers and colonists have westernized their names for public use, names aren’t critical in the future. Digital personal identifiers are what identify you and socialize who you are. You P.I.D. is constantly being broadcast and scanned. The P.I.D. defines you. Based on your birth date, time, location (including planet), universal master number (U.M.N., which includes your cultural and ethnic heritage, and is assigned sequentially), and D.N.A., it’s generated when you’re born. While first names are used in conversations, the last names are generally superfluous. There are cults that hold to traditional norms, bandying their last names about as though they’re greatly important, but you don’t need them.

It’s the second day of the search. A rational internal section cheers me to ignore it for now, that this can be found later, but finding it has become an obsession. Tangentially, I believe my writing soul is enjoying the departure from the editing routine. Plus, fortified with a quad-shot mocha, my confidence about finding it is racing along on wings of caffeine, sugar and chocolate.

Let the search commence! Or, recommence.

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The Breakup

They were a sweet couple, and seemed so nice, as a couple, and individuals. No one suspected either of being killers or thieves.

We didn’t know anything was up, at first. But gradually as a slow-setting sun, we noticed snippiness nuance their voices, and covert hostility shade their glances.

Well, a little rain falls in every relationship. It’s not always smooth sailing.

The rumblings intensified. Witnesses reported seeing fissures open and smoke billow out. Still, they were young, or relatively so. They hadn’t been married that long, relatively, again. Of course there would be adjustments. Still, it was his second marriage, so…what could we make of that?

Two little girls came along. They doted on them. Photos and videos appeared on Facebook. They were everywhere, doing everything.

Then, he, gradually, slipped out of the photos and posts. Later, he began sharing his own photos and posts.

Word reached us after a few years, he’d moved out. He had a new girlfriend, and she had a new boyfriend.

Why? we asked ourselves. What had gone wrong? They were nice people. Neither were killers or thieves. But something, apparently, had gone wrong elsewhere. The unexplained that attracted them to one another had evaporated.

It was something that we just could not see.

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Today’s Theme Music

Ah, love songs. I love them, especially when one side is singing to the other, attempting to sway them to stay together.

Such is what I take from this song, “Buddy Holly,” by Weezer. It came out in during my second or third spring, in nineteen ninety-four. I always understood a few refrains:

Oo-ee-oo I look just like Buddy Holly
Oh-oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore
I don’t care what they say about us anyway
I don’t care bout that

~ h/t AZLyrics.com

It’s the rest of the song that always mystified me. Fortunately, we moved into the Internet age, where Google searches and various websites, like AZLyrics, are able to clarify the words.

Sing along if you know them. As a bonus, Spike Lee directed the video. Fun stuff.

 

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Singufloofity

Singufloofity (Catfinition): A cat with one color of fur.

In Use: “A black singufloofity, Crystal’s shade was so deep, it often cast a sheen like black oil.”

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Tighten Up

He knows he needs to tighten up, but the threads are stripped, and the nut just spins, and spins, without getting anywhere.

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Lost Identity Dream

Well, that dream was something, starting with the carnival, and finishing with a “Wizard of Oz” ending.

To enlarge, I was at a carnival, and it was day. Several women were present, but nobody I knew. I was working in a roughshod office; I don’t know my job, position or task. Three women – maybe they’re my muses – were distracting me, and then making enticing offers about what would happen if I go with them. One, a tall brunette, was dressed in a sky blue dress, and danced as she moved toward the exit.

I was interested, and more than willing to follow. But, I discovered I was missing items. First, I was missing my car keys. Then, I was missing my green Tilly hat, and finally, I was missing my wallet with my identification and credit cards.

That last shocked me. As the women said good-bye and left, I started a furious, intense search of the carnival grounds. I knew it was a carnival, but it was little more than a few tents and booths set up over sloping, grassy ground. Others were present; one man told me to go to another section. There, I would find a little woman. I should report my loss to her.

I did so, and she provided me with a gold credit card to use until I recovered. It was in a clear plastic sleeve with money and other items to help me. I thanked her, but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted my wallet, keys, and hat. I wanted my identity, damn it. Yet, I was aware, the clock was running; if I didn’t soon find my lost credit cards and identity, someone else could use them and rip me off. I became concerned about how to explain it to my wife.

I kept searching, and stumbled across my Tilly hat on a patch of grass. Relieved, I picked it up. Underneath it were my wallet and keys. I was overjoyed by the finds. Locating a computer, I checked my accounts, and confirmed that nothing had been charged. Apparently, I decided, I’d just misplaced it all. I was relieved.

Then, though, I acknowledged I had this new, unused credit card in its plastic sleeve, along with the money I was given to assuage my troubles. I tried giving them back, but that option was rejected. I could keep it, I thought, to have something private available for emergencies, but I couldn’t reconcile to myself why I would need something private.

It was still day, as though the sun hadn’t moved. The dream ended with me putting on my Tilly hat and walking away, keys, and wallet in hand, undecided about what to do, but realizing that I’d had all my identity all along.

I’d been worried about nothing.

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Beginning Again

Cut those strings, he told himself. Release the ballast. Unfurl your sails. Anchors aweigh.

He wasn’t certain about that last expression. “Anchors aweigh.” Sounded like he should be readying a scale. He was pretty sure that’s how the song went, “Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh.” He owned a computer, and could easily look it all up, but he thought it a dated reference, anyhow.

Searching for something more appropriate for the digital age, he came up with “Just Do It.” Unfortunately, he couldn’t use that; the slash folks have trademarked it, and zealously guard their carefully cultivated expression.

Sliding back into the rocket age, he counted down, “Three, two, one…we have liftoff.” But those words failed to lift him, and he became a little depressed, because Major Tom entered his head. The Air Force song came up, “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,” but yonder construed a vague distance and direction.

“Where are we going?”

“Over yonder.”

“There?”

“Yes, yonder. There.”

Umm.

“Once more into the breach, lads,” he thought, but it would not do. Various people and rock performers sang about being back in the saddle again. Where was his creativity today?

What the hell. He needed an ending so he could start. “Lit ’em up,” he said, wincing. Time to reboot, he decided, pressing start, but it was such a dejecting way to begin. “On the road again,” he hummed.

Curse Willy Nelson.

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Today’s Theme Music

I awoke with Tom Jones singing “What’s New Pussycat?” in my head.

I don’t know how Tom got in there; I thought he was a bigger person that that. There are multiple unguarded entries into my head, of course. He may have slipped in through an ear opening, my nostrils, or my mouth. My mouth tasted like Tom Jones might have walked through there during the night, when I awoke.

Shrugging off the song, I instead began streaming the Foo Fighters’ “Best of You” from sometime in the first decade of this bold, new century. According to what my memory tells me about an interview I read with Dave Grohl back sometime in the shadow of the song’s release, it was written about breaking away from things that confine you, or something like that. I might be thinking of another song, or making this up completely.

Several lines in the song attract me. Like, “Were you born to resist, or be abused?” I’ve pondered the ways in which our systems abuse us, and how we take it with a tautological shrug, because that’s the way things are.

Later, he sings in a calmer moment, “I’ve got another confession my friend, I’m no fool.
I’m getting tired of starting again, somewhere new.”

That’s really I feel this lethargic summer Friday. I’m getting tired of starting again.

 

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