Friday’s Wandering Thought
He eavesdrops on others. He always does, the rogue. This time, he’s listening to three attractive women as they meet and discuss their lives. Their shifting topics could have been lifted from his own existence. He has to restrain himself from chiming in when they try to remember the name of a television show or when they struggle over recalling the name of Amor Towles’s latest novel or Jerry Seinfeld’s writing partner. He’d love to plunge into their brief discussion about The Mists of Avalon as one tries to tell the others about the novel.
But he doesn’t know them, and they don’t know him. They might think it’s rude.
Super Floof
“Away,” the floof cried with a flashing leap,
Traveling faster than their paws.
Their antics amaze us, they are so stupendous,
We literally drop our jaws.
They dash into the room and look around,
Then they’re off again with a single bound.
A super floof in their own eyes,
Super cat, super duper dog, they try to prove they can fly.
And when they wear out all their speed,
They bring their empty tummies to us to fill their needs.
Friday’s Theme Music
Friday, January 6, 2023 barged in like a lion, gusting like March. Sunshine flickered in at – guess what, 7:40 in the morning, again – ameliorating the gloom, licking off the rain’s remains. Sunset comes at 4:54, just like a Chevy big block (yeah, that’s a 454). It’s 46 F now, gonna be 50 F before the sun’s remains drift away.
A lovely sky, striated and marbled blues, lords over the area. Winds keep coming and will keep coming till this evening, they inform us. Down California way, southwesterly of our location, it’s flooding, with trees crashing down, and rocks and mud slip-sliding away, as the atmospheric river wrecks havoc. I think we should name that river the Shitstorm. Then we can just say, “The Shitstorm is running fast again,” and the rest of us will nod and understand. “It’s coming our way.” Then we’ll all know to batten down the patio and get some books and puzzles and candles, and food that can eaten without being heated, and figure out how to keep warm. Been there in other life segments.
I wasted some of my morning singing to my cat. (What, you don’t sing to your pets? Animal.) I was singing to the tune of “Fell in Love with a Girl” by the White Stripes (2002). It was one of those songs I regularly heard while blitzing errands in that era, living in Half Moon Bay, dashing over the hill to go to work Monday to Friday and shopping on the weekends. The floof in question was Tucker, who was shadowing for attention, so I cheered him up with the song. That was the plan but the boy looked more like he was thinking, “That’s not what I wanted at all.”
Anyway, The Neurons of course delivered the real song by the White Stripes to the morning mental music stream, where Jack White still delivers chords and manic vocals to my head.
Time for coffee, isn’t it? Are you sure?
I’m sure, so here I go again, for the day’s first cup. Have a merry one. Stay pos and test neg. Here’s the Stripes. Cheers
The Best Years Dream
Totally different environment for me. A young man, I didn’t look anything like the me from RL, except of the commonalities of being a white male with brown hair. I’d joined a household. I’m not sure what my status. I was given tasks and expected to get them done. I was working alone.
I was working alone, going in and out of the kitchen to the outside, as others came but mostly went. They ignored me so I only glanced at them, seeing who they were and so on. My job was to select fruit, mostly pears, to throw away. The pears were large, of the Bartlett or Bosc varieties often found in grocery stores, but larger than you’d find. Some were almost as large as my head.
As I worked this, transferring them from one location to another, I thought, why are we throwing these pears away? After examining them, I questioned what was going on and concluded they would be perfectly good to eat. Changing my process, I removed the tossed pears to a kitchen location and moved the rest of the pears there.
Then, on a whim, I made lunch for everyone. I wasn’t certain what to do and learned on the fly but made and baked a square pizza. Without planning to, I ended up with a house on it. As I did this, I encountered a bearded man with curly hair leaving the bathroom. Saying, “Excuse me,” I pushed past him, but thought, who is he?
I turned back and introduced myself, sticking out my hand as I did. “Michael,” I said.
We shook as he said, “Patrick.” But he didn’t call me Michael at any point in the dream. The name he called me was something like Metcalf.
Most of the people, including the head man, had returned. Seeing the pears, he said, “What are those?”
I explained what I’d done and asked him, “Do you think you can eat these?”
I cut one up for his inspection. As he looked at it, he said, “Where did these come from?”
“There were grown here, in your garden,” I replied.
He looked at a woman beside him and asked, “Is this true?”
“Yes,” she answered.
I gathered that he didn’t know what he was growing here.
Next, I showed them my house pizza. Patrick and others declared that they wouldn’t eat it. They thought it inedible. I defended the pizza but they refused. Shrugging that off, I cut some off and ate it myself, finding it delicious.
We’d moved outside. There were sixteen or seventeen of us on a sloping green lawn. As a sort of outside, I was on the edge and alone. A tiger approached me. Patrick said, “Don’t worry [some name], I’ll take care of him.”
Annoyed, I answered, “That’s not my name, and I’m not worried.”
They began talking. I asked, “What are you talking about?” None replied to me, feeding my irritation.
Finally Patrick said, “You haven’t said what you think, [some name].”
I said, “Why can’t you get my name right? I introduced myself to you. I’m Michael. And I can’t say what I think because none of you would tell me what you’re talking about.”
The head guy said, “We’re talking about how we would summarize 2022. What would you say about it?”
After a second of thought, I said, “I’d call it one of the best years in the last fifty years.” I was saying that to get a rise out of them because they’d been saying that it was a bad year. Then, doing the math, because ‘fifty’ was an impulse, I realized that fifty years ago was when I turned sixteen.
Dream end.
Michael Seidel, writer 