Month: February 2022

The Mountain Claims Dream

As a young man in this dream, I was on team. We were competing against other teams to claim part of a mountain. The mountain was good sized, thick with forest and grassy, rising at a steep angle, with cliffs and sharp drop-offs on either side. Don’t know why claiming this mountain was being pursued. That was never mentioned.

All the teams managed to claim some of the mountain. Some had better parcels than others. My team was dissatisfied with their parcel and were inveigling the other teams to get more parcels or better parcels. I tried telling my team that more mountain was available. None paid attention to me so I trudged up the mountain on my own.

The weather had been cold but clear. Now, as I trudged, the environment turned dark and icy. I kept going up past where the others had claimed parcels and began claiming more for my team.

Some of my team caught up with me and wanted to know what I was doing. I explained it all, which delighted them. They were surprised because they didn’t know the mountain went on past the claimed parcels. The weather cleared as they looked at the new parcels I’d claimed. Two of the other teams tried coming up to get some but realized they were too late and that I’d already claimed the best. I then found a new cement four-lane highway came up to the parcels I’d claimed. When the rest saw what I’d found, they began celebrating.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Tuesday’s sun is full of light and makes the day unseemly bright. Daylight kicked in at oh seven sixteen, sending night fleeing like misbehaving children. Temperatures were coldish, 35 at dawn, but has kicked up to 41 and will go on up to the mid-sixties again before sunlight flees just as the night did, at seventeen thirty-four.

Today’s song is out of a feline interaction. One floof habitually sleeps by my head at night. A second came a-calling in the pre-dawn minutes, snugging himself against my legs. I reached down and scratched his head, receiving purrs in the return. As this transpired, I asked him if he’d gotten cold in the dark, which brought up the Billy Squier song, “In the Dark” from 1981. Friends were huge Squier fans. His music seemed to play whenever I rode with them in the car later in the eighties when we lived in Germany. This song, “The Stroke”, and “Everybody Wants You” were frequent members of my friends’ playlists, so I came to know the songs well. I haven’t seen those folks since 1999 but I see and hear them as soon as one of those three songs play. The power of music, yeah?

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters when possible. Here’s the music. I’m off for coffee. Don’t wait for me. Just play the song. I’ve already heard it. Cheers

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Flooferential Calculus

Flooferential Calculus (floofinition) – The effort to decide which animal is most preferred and why.

In use: “Some animals, like Flash, were aware of flooferential calculur and decided that the best way to avoid it was to not allow other animals in the vicinity. Thus, she was a fierce, vocal defender of her territory and people.”

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Monday’s Theme Music

Monday has popped in. Only plans to stay for a day.

Sunrise on this Feb. 7, 2022, came at 7:18 this morning. It was another fine exercise in bright sunshine and mountain blue sky. The impressive color values and clarity could have been featured in a beer commercial. Was 35 degrees F at sunrise but it’s 43 now and we’re under the impression that it will reach 65 before sunset at 5:33 PM. Of course, we were promised 70 yesterday. Only 64 was achieved, so don’t get yer hopes too high.

Today’s music comes from my wife’s exercise class. Conducted by Zoom by her friend operating from the local Family Y, she sets up her laptop on the dining room table and exercises in that room. The dining room is part of the ‘great room’ and that portion affords her the space to move freely about. This morning’s exercise music was a medley of Beatles covers. Well, I was in the adjacent kitchen, making breakfast when “Eleanor Rigby” came on. The morning mental music stream sucked the 1966 song right into its environments. Soon I was singing it as I fed the cats (with some mods to the lyrics for the activity at hand).

I fondly remember the song. It came out when I was ten and my elementary school music teacher had my class singing it as well as discussing its aspects of weddings and loneliness. Some schoolmates’ parents were appalled because *gasp* death and a funeral are mentioned in the song. *What kind of song is that for children?*

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax and jabs when you can, and have a cuppa coffee with me. Mine is black and fresh. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

It’s a gorgeous Sunday out there, pure blue sky and sunshine, the sort of day, in my working past, when we would leap up and say, “It’s a gorgeous day. Where should we go? What shall we do?” But today, we’re on our computers, in our books, in our chairs, in our office, reading, eating, communicating, writing.

The sun burst over the mountains at 7:19 AM and we’ll lose the sunshine at 5:32 late this afternoon. It only dropped to 38 degrees F last night and quickly reach fifty today, promising to, um, 70 degrees F. What? Can the weather service be right? Is this really mid-winter in Ashland, Oregon? Well, the record high, in 1992, was 72.

Today’s song trickled in as I thought about the landslide dream this morning. “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac was written by Stevie Nicks and released in 1975. Although covered well by The Smashing Pumpkins and the Dixie Chicks, I have connections to that original song. In ’75, I was nineteen, married, serving in the military without my wife in the Philippines. So when you’re sitting in your room after work at night, getting your uniform ready for work the next day, sipping some alcohol, listening to music, connections are created.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax and booster when you can. Time for a coffee break. Cheers

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The Landslide Dream

It began with me as a teenager visiting in a small town. I was going from house to house, slipping between hedges, visiting friends. All the friends happened to be elderly women. One was my great-grandmother. The town was lifted out of the fifties, with small houses, typically white, single levels, with shutters, and tidy yards lined with flowers. I always entered the houses through the back, kitchen door, because that’s where I knew the people would be. And I was always right. They were in their tiny kitchens — smaller than the bathrooms in my house — busy cooking, moving around a small table with four chairs. All greeted with smiles and laughter and offered eagerly accepted food, mostly cookies and donuts.

After, though, I left, and found myself wandering in old homes where no one lived any longer. The further that I went, the less there were of the houses. First absent were the flowers and lawns, and then the walks and the windows. Inside, I found empty, dusty rooms.

I was a little older now, perhaps in my twenties. Soon the houses lost their roofs and doors, their siding. I was out where the hills rose, then found myself in a quarry. A house or building, maybe part of a mining operation, had been erected to one side. Little remained of it except an oddly stout brown wall.

I went through the quarry, clambering over boulders and rocks, scaling short cliffs. I became aware that two children had entered the quarry. They were about eight, blond and fair. One was taller than the other by two or three inches.

I watched them for a moment. They had as much right to be there as me, so I continued my exploring. As I climbed a sheer wall, picking handholds on the sandstone and flint outcrops, dirt and rocks fell over me. I threw myself back and away just in time to avoid a huge granite boulder. I didn’t know where it’d come from; its size astonished and scared me. As I recovered from jumping back and away, I saw a large slab of the wall break free and fall.

Scrambling backward took me to safety. As dust rose, I thought of the children. I saw them about forty feet away. They’d climbed as I had and had reached a ledge. I shouted at them that it wasn’t safe, that we need to leave. Rocks tumbled around them. From my vantage, I saw larger, heavier rocks breaking free above them and called out a warning.

The children slipped into a small crevice about twenty feet above the quarry floor. Rocks fell without striking them. Yellow dust thickened as gravel slid down the cliff. The children were coughing. With more rocks falling around me, I made my way over rocks and stones across the quarry to help the children.

Their rock wall moved in, like it was taking a breath, carrying them in with them. The children disappeared from sight. Dodging rocks, waving away dust, I hurried to find and help the children. A rock taller than them pushed them out of the crevice. As they moved aside, it teetered for a moment before rolling down the cliff, jarring more rocks loose with its thunderous landing.

I was almost to the children. Realizing their danger, they were taking action to get down. I reached them in time to help them to the quarry floor. The walls on three sides were spasming and then stilling. I feared something more catastrophic was about to happen and raced with the children to get out. When we reached the point where we’d entered, we discovered our way blocked by collapsed rocks.

The children were panicking. So was I. Frantic to do something, I saw the brown wall. Crossing to it, I jumped up and caught the top of it. Very carefully, I tilted it backwards into the quarry. I found a huge off-white strap, inches thick and about four inches wide, which reminded me of a fire hose, that I used to help me leverage the wall back toward us.

When the wall was low enough, I directed the children over it. They climbed onto it and slid down the other side. Once they were safe, I precariously balanced the wall. More quarry fell in behind me. As it did, I used the white strap to cautiously climb up and over the wall to safety. When I was done, I pulled the brown wall back up into place and regarded it before moving on.

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