Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Your life’s song flows through you, notes and chords struck by your routines and emotions. Sometimes, though, in your life of bent notes and thundering crescendos of cymbals and drums, you hunt different notes, just for a day, something to hear so that you can appreciate your life’s song more when you resume it, like maybe a piano concerto.
It’s like an interlude.
Floofscotch (floofinition) – a game played among housepets. The simple rules dictate that when one housepet finds a sleeping space, another housepet must find and sleep in it the next day, forcing the first housepet to find another space. The game is most popular among cats. There is no scoring nor end.
In use: “Papi had found a pleasant space under a bush by the spigot outside the back door, but Boo claimed it the next day, forcing Papi to displace Quinn under the elephant leaf tree. Quinn countered by moving to Boo’s favorite space on the mat in front of the pet door.”
This song, “Out of My League” by Fitz and the Tantrums (2013) reminds me of early 1980s techno-pop. I like its rhythm and peppiness. Although lacking screaming guitars, it’s jaunty, and acts like a musical mood enhancer.
Listen, and see if it has the same effect on you.
Flooftocracy (floofinition) – a housepet (such as a cat) ruling with unlimited authority.
In use: “The flooftocracy’s nature, that the cat was only answerable to itself, meant that the people’s efforts to limit power often failed.”
Floofboard (floofinition) – a quantum game housepets play, using furniture and space to watch and check one another’s moves.
In use: “The living room had become a floofboard, with one cat on each chair.”
I think of it as the old dream, but I recall it, too, as the star dream and the blue dream. I’ve had it, or some variation, since I was a teenager, at least in my mind. My memories can be faulty, but I seem to remember being in basic training and having this dream, and remembering that I had it when I was in high school, after I moved in with my father. That thought also brings the dream a new label, the transition dream. I seem to dream it when my life is going through a change. I haven’t had it in a long while.
Roughly, because there are slight variations, but this is the dream experienced or remembered last night, I see a ridge of purple-blue bare mountains. A clear sky is shifting from azure to indigo.
At first I see a single, amazingly bold, bright star above the mountains. Then, I’m on a mountain.
I’m looking at my hand. I’ve made a fist around a cold chunk of lapis lazuli. A large piece, although it’s been tumbled and is smooth, one end is rough. I always think, it was tumbled, and then broke in half.
After seeing the lapis in my fist, I look up. The sky has darkened into a shade of midnight blue. Millions or more stars and galaxies light the sky. It’s so amazing, it transfixes me into staring and wondering about all the existences beyond now.
The dream ends.
I always feel young but pensive in this dream, and elated but thoughtful when I awaken. I don’t know what change I’m going through now. I’m not moving or starting a new job. One of my cats is probably dying (I’d be surprised if he’s alive when this year ends), but that change affects him more than me. I can argue, though, no, it’s the survivors who remain behind after another dies who are more affected (as far as we know), because we, left behind, are dealing with a void.
Writing about it helps me think and understand. I remember thinking the other day, in a moment of pique, crystallizing a decision that I am re-inventing myself. Perhaps I’ve triggered some internal change, summoning the dream.
Maybe it’s all just wistful thinking and vivid imagination. Perhaps that’s all life is.
As I’ve done on other days, I selected today’s music because it was streaming in my mind when my dream ended.
“While You See A Chance” comes from Steve Winwood’s Arc of A Diver (1981). It’s not my favorite song from the album, but some of the song’s lines were going through me.
When some cold tomorrow finds you
When some sad old dream reminds you
How the endless road unwinds you
While you see a chance take it
Find romance, fake it
Because it’s all on you
I thought those lines were being remembered because I was thinking that it was an old dream that I was remembering, one that I recalled dreaming before (and thinking, oh, great, my dreams are in re-runs — or maybe I’m remaking them, rebooting them, in accordance with the current television and film trends — and scoffing), and it was a cold morning. Perhaps subconsciously summoning the song, I thought about the endless road of life and drifted into tangents about my life’s minutiae. Then the song streamed in.
I had a final laugh, then, because a cold tomorrow had found me, and then got up to feed some beasts and hunt down coffee.
You ever get into that zone where almost everything you see, hear, or read seems to trigger a novel concept and, or, title?
I love it. It’s like my mind has declared an open house for the muses, and they all come in to share.
Michael Seidel, writer 