Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floofanomics (floofinition) – the costs and budgeting process associated with feeding and caring for housepets. The four pillars associated with floofanomics are, keep your pets happy, get your pets healthy, keep your pets healthy, and keep your pets happy.
In use: “With floofanomics, decisions sometimes become difficult with cats. While dogs seem willing to eat any- and everything, cats sometimes shun what they just scarfed down a minute before. It’s a mystery.”
In this throwback, I started streaming this song sometime yesterday afternoon. “Show Me the Way” by Peter Frampton, from the Frampton Comes Alive! album was a monster hit from a monster album. Nothing against Frampton, but this isn’t one of my favorites as an album, song, or performer, but I heard it often as I traveled throughout 1976-77. I always preferred edgier stuff, but edgier stuff in rarely heard on commercial radio in those years.
I’m not certain of the genesis for streaming this song yesterday or continuing it this morning. Is it the weather triggering memories of youth, or the jetsam of a lost thought? Perhaps it’s just echoes of mortality or mourning for another time. It could be just a misfired neuron setting others off.
Who the hell knows.
A canopy of dark green branches shielded me from sight and sun when I stopped.
My head was wet. Breathing fast, I wiped water from my face with both hands and blinked my vision clear.
I was standing in running water. I was in it, but I don’t know how high it was, just that it was somewhere below my waist. To my right, the water ran in a hard and noisy rush, spilling over rocks with chaotic splashes. To my left was a calm pool.
Something white was in the calm pool. Wiping my face and blinking water out of my eyes, I squinted at the thing. I realized the white thing were words floating on the water’s surface. I leaned forward but I couldn’t make them out. Worried about displacing them, I waded toward them.
The words stayed in place. I moved forward until I was upon them. Though I looked down on them, I couldn’t understand them.
I have no idea what the words in white in the pool were.
Thinking about this part of the dream this morning, I chuckled. Classic writer angst dream, isn’t it?
This is such a maudlin, sloppy song. It started streaming apropos of nothing that I can recall, but as I streamed it from memory, I thought about how meaningless the words might be for a younger listener.
“Sealed With A Kiss” came out in 1962, when I was six. It was a hit, so it was on the radios often, but I’m more familiar with the Bobbie Vinton version released when I was a teenager. This song is all about being morose because they’re missing their love, so they’ll send all their love, every day in a letter, sealed in a kiss.
I thought, well, these days, they probably wouldn’t be sending a letter. I imagined youth saying, why didn’t they just send them a text or a selfie? Why didn’t they just Skype?
I decided that, “I’ll send you all my love, every hour in a selfie, clicked with a kiss.”
WTH.
Surfing my thoughts this morning as I thought of my dream and tended my dream, I began streaming a Rolling Stones song, “Beast of Burden” (1978). I always considered the song a defiant protest song, but also a pondering reflection of relationships’ complexities, asking at its base, what does it take?
This was in direct response to dealing with Quinn. I was giving him his meds. He doesn’t like them, and hides in anticipation of receiving them. Giving them to him is a small battle, but with experience, I’ve developed a winning technique. Afterward, Quinn takes off and hides from me, distrusting my approach. Yet, he returns in a little while, looking to me for comfort and food.
As an aside, the meds seem to be doing as hoped. His energy levels have gone up and he seems less miserable. While he’d been declining, he’d stopped grooming himself, and had lost his voice. Yesterday, I saw him wash his face after eating for the first time in weeks, and today, he’d found his meow, and his tall was pointed up in classic Quinn fashion when we went into the room for me to feed him.
So I’m hopeful, but I usually am.
Alone, I was coming down into a valley, leaving forests behind me. The end of an exhausting journey, I’d been walking through the mountains for a long time. It’d been stormy and chaotic up there. I’d been drenched to the skin through my clothes but now I was dry. Even though it was almost the day’s end, it was warmer down here in the valley.
Mountains edged the broad, green valley. A wide river wound through it. The sun’s final beams pierced the clouds in a space where the mountains were lower. Clouds still loitered but there wasn’t any threat of a storm. It was an idyllic, calm scene.
Weary, I slowed to regard the valley, although I still walked, not really thinking of anything but which the direction I should take and my next steps. With that happening, the sun winked behind clouds and mountains, making it instantly chillier. Past the clouds, stars began making their entrances.
Hearing a thunderclap, I started and turned to my left. A huge purple wave raced across the valley, It had a sole peak of amplitude that seemed about ten stories high.
Shock and alarm bolted through my me as I struggled to get a handle on the wave. I was thinking, “What was that?” I answered myself, “It was a wave. Yes, but why?” While I answered, the wave reached the valley’s far end and burst. A white flare arced into the night.
It was the wave that exploded, I thought. That’s a good thing, I decided, smiling to myself. Wasn’t it? Yes, I felt. It meant a big change had taken place. Not sure what had changed, or how, confidence surged into me.
I resumed walking, looking forward to the future.
The dream ended.
“Magic,” she said.
She saw his eyes narrow and his facial lines smooth out, a typical reaction (although some laughed in scorn (or disgust) and others often swore and walked out on her). This reaction was considered the polite one, but he’d probably already decided that she was a nut, and that he would leave.
But he was still there now.
“Magic,” he said in a bland, heavy voice.
“Yes, magic. Magic is everywhere, and in everything, but magic takes different forms. Magic is universal, but the magic you have and how you use it can be different.”
Ah, a rarity. Pupils widening, his eyes opened a millimeter. The light in his brown irises changed.
“Consider water,” she said. “Broadly, water is the same everywhere, a transparent and tasteless liquid chemical substance with the formula H20. But water varies, doesn’t it? Water can become ice. Water becomes snow, hail, and steam. Sea water, tap water, and river water are different, aren’t they?
“Our magic is akin to water in this way, it has different forms and qualities. You have to find your magic in you and learn how to use it.
“That’s the secret to success.”
Michael Seidel, writer 