Month: August 2018

Wednesday’s Theme Music

It’s warm here today (but with clear, smoke-free skies!), so how ’bout a little Coldplay.

“Trouble” has been streaming in me over the last several days. Thinking about the song, I think that it came out while I lived in Half Moon Bay, California. I’m surprised to realize that makes it eighteen years old. The suspicion that I’m wrong drives me to wikipedia.org where I find confirmation, yes, it came out in 2000. Holy guacamole, Batman! That time sure passed by fast.

Here it is, in case you need a reminder.

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The Good-bye Dream

I’d been thinking about J on and off during the past week, a typical melange of, “How long has it been?” blended with “I wonder what he’s up to?”

Easy math answered how long, coughing up thirty-four years. I choked on a “wow” response as tangent thoughts about his children’s ages and lives bounced through. Thirty-four years since I’d heard or seen him, thirty-four years since I’d heard anything about him.

These thoughts boiled into my dreams, bringing a visit from him in a dream last night.

I was in a steel, glass, and concrete complex. Dust motes surfed wind currents as people walked along the corridor. Hot, I squinted against sunshine through the windows. I thought, it’s winter outside, but it’s so hot an stuffy in here. Then I paused, looking ahead at an intersection.

His back was to me but I knew it was him. “J,” I said, increasing my stride. As he turned, I caught up, but we didn’t close the distance.

Always a smiling person, even when pissed off, he was smiling and much, much younger in my dream than when I knew him. “Where you been?” I said.

With the smile hanging on his face, he said, “It’s okay, I’ve moved on.” Giving me a wave and a shit-eating grin, he walked on down the corridor, leaving me behind.

Awakening, I wondered what that was all about, and whether this was a signal that he’d died. I searched for him through social media this morning, but he has a common name. Not the first time I’ve search for him, but it was the same results.

Not surprising. He didn’t trust computers as they were emerging. He didn’t really trust society and the government. Buying and stashing gold and silver coins in a safety deposit box, he planned to buy a large plot of land after he retired.

We’d always had good times together, and we’d work well as a team. A few years older than me, a survivor of the Vietnam war (although served in Thailand), I wish him well, whatever he’s doing, and wherever he is.

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Catstar

Catstar (floofinition) – a feline who serves as a model, guide, or inspiration.

Synonyms: floofstar, lodestar

In use: “The three-day-old kitten was mewing for food and attention, refusing to give up, becoming Cristiano’s catstar. Picking up the kitten and stroking her belly, he said to her as much as him, “I, too, will not give up.””

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

“And the love that I feel is so far away. I’m a bad dream that I just had today. And you shake your head and say, it’s a shame.”

Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick album was released in 1972. Sixteen years old, I bought it on vinyl and wore it out playing it. Listening to this concept album last night – concept albums were big in those years – it reminds me of some of the era’s Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer music — or they remind me of Jethro Tull. Like most art, it’s a continuum of exploration and imagining, building on what’s heard and done.

“But your wise men don’t know how it feels, to be thick as a brick.”

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Monday’s Theme Music

I remember hearing this song for the first time. I’d been retired from the military for a few years and was living in Mountain View, California, and working at a medical device start-up, PAS. We were renting a place but we always treated the places that we rented (or provided to us by the military) as if we owned it. In the case of this duplex that meant a lot of yard work to make the place look better.

So I was out there on a Saturday morning in 1998, doing yard work, when “Closing Time” came on the radio. I wasn’t familiar with the group, Semisonic. Although I bought the album with “Closing Time” on it, I never listened to Semisonic on a regular basis and they faded away from my awareness. I still hear the song, though, and it reminds me of that morning when I was working on the yard.

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Floofsayer

Floofsayer (floofinition) – someone who can predict a cat or dog’s behavior.

In use: “I met a man who claimed he was a floofsayer. He gave me a kitten and said, “This cat will love you more than any person or animal has ever loved you. She will follow you everywhere, including the bathroom, and sleep on your pillow against your head.” He was right in all regards. That kitten is now ten years old, weighs twenty pounds, and still sleeps on my pillow against my head.”

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Heartbreak

I knew heartbreak yesterday when, like many people, I was afflicted by shopping cart envy.

Oh, don’t deny that you haven’t experienced it in one form or another. You know what I’m talking about. Some of you have felt it when you’ve seen a cart filled with riches that you don’t have the money to buy. Others experience it when, like me, they look into another’s carts and see the stuff that you don’t eat because it’s not healthy for you, but you want to eat it.

I am a chronic sufferer of shopping cart envy these days. When I was younger, I could eat anything. Eating anything caught up with me as my activities and metabolism slowed and the speed of my waist line’s expansion increased. Ice cream, pizzas, burgers, milk shakes, sandwiches, steaks, cake, pie, doughnuts? Pass them over. Anyone want that last cruller? I’ll eat it.

Yes, I went through that period when I said, “I’m an adult. If I want to eat ice cream for breakfast, I will.”

Then I became, “I am an adult. What responsible adult eats ice cream for breakfast?”

Waistlines change. Diets change. Attitudes change. Yesterday, in Costco, I saw another man’s cart. He had a case of beer, cheesecake, a large pizza, and other treasures. I can’t describe more, as my mind went blank at the dazzling sight. I think I wandered, for the next thing I know, I was standing in a pool of my own saliva in the bakery section with a box of cookies in my hands.

I wasn’t alone.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Everyone sing.

I took her home to my place, watching every move on her face
She said, “Look, what’s your game, baby?
Are you tryin’ to put me in shame? ”
I said, “Slow, don’t go so fast
Don’t you think that love can last? ”
She said, “Love, lord above, now you’re gonna trick me in love”
All right now baby, it’s all right now
All right now baby, it’s all right now

ht to lyricsfreak.com

I’m always surprised when people do and don’t know the words to popular music, but then again, we’re not all in the same vacuum. A friend of mine insists he only really knows and likes one song. That song is “Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton. That I knew it and could sing it to him impressed him.

His wife is like me. I guess we listened to a lot of music on the radio. Her husband’s excuse is that he was doing tours in Vietnam during that time. (Cue, “Country Joe and the Fish” and the “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die” rag. No, he doesn’t know that one, either.) He’s older than us.

I’m surprised, too, by the young people who know the classic rock songs. Many know them via their parents and older siblings’ listening habits, while others learn the music through movies or video games like “Guitar Hero”.

Here’s Free from 1970 with one you may or may not know, “All Right Now”.

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