Anefloofia (floofinition) – Missing an animal who was never met.
In use: “Anefloofia often strikes people who enjoyed other’s happiness with animals and empathized with their losses when their fur friends departed.”
Sunday’s Wandering Thought
He learned something about himself. Half an apple fritter is not enough when the other half is available. Nobody else was there to eat it. It would just get old. Stale.
It was really about not being wasteful. And it went well with coffee.
The Ant Dream
I dreamed I was an ant, but I had my own head and face. It was the face and head from a younger me, maybe one seen on me in the mid 1970s. I was running around, as were other ants. Seemed to be a frenzy going. I was confused because, I was an ant and I’m not normally an ant. As I saw the others running around with their human heads and faces, I wondered if they were going through the same process of self-realization.
A rough blackish wall was on either side. Although thinking like a human, I was acting like an ant, following the white ground beneath me, feeling things with frenzied antennae, following along the others in chaotic urgency. Same time, I’m thinking, “I’m an ant. Can’t I climb this wall and go up and see what’s up there?”
I do that but get up there and can’t make any sense of it. The view doesn’t help. My senses are limited. Then, epiphany, I’m a brick wall. I need to change the way I’m looking at things because up isn’t up, there really isn’t a firmly idealized up or down.
I awaken from that. Oddly, almost instantly, I thought about the novel in progress and experienced a burst of productive creativity.
Sunday’s Theme Music
You ever leaped out of bed and remember that you’re not at home and this isn’t your bed, so there’s a piece of furniture blocking your landing, remembering all of this midway through what was planned to be a burst of energy to start the day?
Yeah, me, neither.
But did you ever get out of bed full of spirit and rushed outside to check the weather and took a deep breath and asked, “Hello, world, what is that smell?”
The smell reminds me of a giant being cremated. To my knowledge of the area, there aren’t any crematoriums around but there could be, because I haven’t been here in a while. Maybe someone saw an available vacant lot and realized their dream of building their own crematorium. I don’t believe there are any giants in the area. Could be that there are and I missed the news. We’re living in strange times, as many people have said before me. I’ll conduct a net search for giants of Pittsburgh later, if I remember.
Birds are lustily giving voice in Mom’s yard on this Sunday morning. One keeps singing, jewka, jewka, jewka, chew. (Kind of reminds me of a Steppenwolf song, “Sookie, Sookie” from 1969.) I don’t know what kind of bird it is. I’ll google it later, if I remember. There are sparrows urgently flying around. All of this could have to do with the giant being cremated, I guess.
It is September 18, 2022, and the sun rose over three hours ago. That means about another nine hours of daylight are available. Leaves are falling like they do in some places that mutter, “Oh, time for autumn. Let the leafing begin.” Then a button is pressed and the trees start with a little surprise at being goosed because they’ve just been sunning themselves and enjoying life. Once they understand the goosing, they get with the situation, drop leaves and start changing their colors.
Mom was in great spirits last night. I visited her telephonically in the evening, because my COVID. (Much better, thanks.) They’re moving her to another place this week so she can rehab for a return to the outside world. She and I talked about her wishes should she go on. You know, pass. Die. She wants cremated. We talked about what music to play at her celebration and she said we should start with “Amazing Grace”, which she believes is a beautiful song. I agree with her. Neither of us think she’s going anywhere soon. We could be wrong. She scared me two weeks ago, and we often don’t have death tell us, “Heads up” before the final breath is taken.
Because it’s September and leaves are falling through the sixtyish weather under a charcoal-sketched sky, The Neurons have brought up, “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day wrote the song. The band released it in 2005.
Stay posi and test negy. Have coffee or whatever works for you, within reasonable parameters. Don’t want to get into the mess of defining that. What’s reasonable to one —
Well, anyway. I’m pouring coffee now. Enjoy your Sunday. Here’s the video. Go Steelers.
Cheers
The Reminiscent Drive
He cruised old familiars. This is where he lived from sixth to nine grade – only four years? But that was in child years when time stretched for him. Aging math is often astonishing. In this case, fifty-one ellipses around the sun were done since he’d last lived in the red brick ranch house with the single car garage. It was a laughingly small place to the mind of these times but had worked for a family of two adults and five children. Yes, bedrooms were shared. One bathroom provided service for all. But there was also the basement, converted into a laundry room and family room. That gave a little more space.
Seeing streets and houses, he plugged in who lived where, wondering where each now lived, or if they lived. Oddly, houses remained almost identical to what lived in memory. It felt the same. If cars weren’t parked in the driveway, it could be the same year that he last lived there; no other differences marked the elapsed time. Temptation seeped in to park and walk up to a door, knock, see if a friend was available. “Hi, is Curt home?” Or Bruce. Rick. John. Chuck. Their remembered faces light up like a game in his mind.
Then he notices that the large old oak where he and Vicky first kissed was gone. With that seen, he knew, time to drive away. Home was somewhere else.
Saturday’s Wandering Thought
Preparing to go out, he said aloud, “I need my sunglasses,” and picked up his hat, “and my hat,” picking up his sunglasses.
A weird system, but it worked.
Cynofloof
Cynofloof (floofinition) – An animal who is the center of attention.
In use: “Flash insisted on being a cynofloof, easy to do, because she was a gorgeous character, sweet with her human, but not interested in relationships with anyone else.”
Saturday’s Theme Music
Sunrise in Pittsburgh on Saturday, September 17, 2022, brought diffused yellow light to the steel city. 7:02 AM, it would take time to heat the chilly air. Summer was heading south for the winter. Fall was making its move.
Now at ten AM, heat has stirred the thermometer to 16 C. 81 F is where the air temp is expected to go before the sun’s impact shuts down at 7:28 PM.
Staying in Mom’s home, where she’s resided for over thirty years, I’m struck by both change and stasis, again. Some things about the house are so familiar and have been as they always were. That’s not in the architecture or layout but in the details of décor and organization. Mom’s authority and control is seen in every niche and nook. She decides all. This allows me to visit as if I’ve always been here. Just remember her habits and how she organizes, and everything can be found. Probably true for most people, especially when they’ve inhabited a space for so long, but I feel it more deeply with this place of Mom’s. Of course, it’s absolutely clean – cleaning is her therapy as writing is mine – she has told me that she loves to clean, because I thought it something imposed on her, but no, she says, no – and also inside that organized structure is bizarre chaos. Wild how the two co-exist.
Thought of change prods The Neurons to resurrect a favorite song in the morning mental music stream. “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke came out in 1964, when I was eight. It’s been part of existence’s fabric for almost my entire life, and it has always spoken to me. I’m not alone in this; Sam plugged into something special when he created this song. For today, though, I’m going with a Beth Hart version. She infuses it with that same strength of belief and sincerity that I hear in Sam’s voice. Hope you hear it, too. In some ways, she reminds me of Janis Joplin with this song.
Stay positive and test negative. Here’s the music. I’m off for a second cup of coffee. I’ll go out on the porch into the sunshine-warmed breeze to enjoy it. Enjoy the world in the best way you can. Cheers
The Rope Dream
It was hot, dry, and clear. I was on a broad and empty plain. Two riders on horseback galloped toward me. I watched, trying to understand, who are they? Nothing auspicious about them, they resembled cowboys out of a revisionist western. They were approaching at slightly different vectors, dust pluming out behind them. I realized with some slowness, hey, they have ropes. Hey, they’re going to rope me.
Out in the open, nowhere to go, I thought that I’d run toward them, separating the space. Yeah, that didn’t work. They lassoed me. I awoke with a start, heavily sweating, struggling against the ropes. Took several seconds to understand that I’d been dreaming — or maybe experiencing another reality.
Michael Seidel, writer 