Friday’s Theme Music

Friday. I’m ready for the weekend. Wednesday felt like Friday. So did Thursday. Now Friday is here, and Friday feels like Friday.

I ruminated about what that means, when a day feels like Friday. It feels like you’re ready to rest and have a change from your routines. Mind you, I don’t work. I set my own routines. So all this is a mind game for me. The mind is winning so far.

Yeah boy, it’s Friday, January 13, 2023. Last night’s winds were the worse of this season’s offerings. They reached sound levels where I looked out expecting to see huge animals stampeding past. I’ve been in hurricanes, typhoons, and tornados. These wind sounds didn’t achieve those levels, but they did inspire The Neurons to say that if this keeps up…

It didn’t keep up, though. After a few power short power outages, not even enough to restart the clocks, but enough that the clocks opened and closed their eyes, the winds finally tailed off in the night’s middle. Rain kept going and still is. Today’s high is 54 degrees F. We’re at 52. After peaking, we’ll going to go downhill into the lower forties. Still not bad temperatures, right? Snow was sitting on some of our surrounding mountain ridges and peaks yesterday. We can’t judge that and whether our drought is over until it’s all done in the spring, but at least rivers and cisterns are full for now.

Sunrise brought enough light through the clouds after 7:39 this morning to look around for damages and see none in my area. Hope the other areas fared as well. I’ll check it out before the sun checks out at 5:02 this evening.

Wind thoughts brought “The Zephyr Song” into the morning mental music stream today. The Red Hot Chili Peppers released it back in the new century’s early years. Lot of rhyming going on in it. It’s a mellow tune with a few harder splashes about being on a wind and connecting with others. Those are thoughts I entertained when I was a teenager, the “wouldn’t it be neat to ride a wind whenever you wanted to, go wherever you wanted, meet others and take them with you” variety of mind playing. Naturally I thought of riding last night’s wind, hurtling the Cascades and Sierra Nevada, thundering over the rivers and plains until energy is spent and a calmer place is found.

Coffee has arrived to soothe The Neurons and uplift the rest of the body. Stay positive and test negative. Worry about tomorrow the day after tomorrow and move it forward. Here is the song. Cheers

The Writing Moment

My writing moment came yesterday afternoon. I awoke in a grumpy mood yesterday morning and was in full curmudgeon mode before my first cup of coffee.

Some of it could be put on my reaction to some of my wife’s comments. I was feeling sour about my novel in progress. First draft was finished and now I’m reconciliating, slicing, and dicing. It mostly went well, but sometimes a section was encountered that forced a gag reflex.

My SO was preparing for her book club meeting. She always takes that as seriously as doing a doctoral thesis or presenting a business plan, devoting time, thought and energy to the exclusion of many other things. Extra effort was going on this time because she was the moderator. She owned responsibility for driving the discussion.

The book was A Friend by Sigrid Nunez. Each month, one member selects a book for the others’ reading and discussion. My wife suggested this book to another book club member. She’d read reviews, and after reading it for book club (twice, because she was the moderator), she raved about the book, author, and the author’s glittering literary career. Nunez is serious about writing (yeah, like most writers are not, right?) and has an impressive career.

My wife raving about Nunez’s success settled poorly on my wounded writer psyche. I’m not usually like that. I generally am just as enthusiastic as her about these things, or even more bullish on writers and their works and rewards. But circumstances threw dark shade on my own writing efforts, and her comments dropped me into a place where there’s little light.

That happened in the morning. Vowing to myself to do better and get through this, I went off to the coffee shop to slog through writing requirements. I knew there was a problem with the section I was editing, but didn’t know what it was. Then, pop, pop, pop, three epiphanies about the what-and-why arrived. Those epiphanies energized my writing and pulled my spirit from the gutter and set it on top of the world.

I’ve through those moods and endured that kind of writing low before. Nothing new. Nor is it something that other writers haven’t experienced. Happy I’m out of it.

Time to write — and edit — a little bit more, at least one more time. Cheers

Thursday’s Theme Music

Thursday landed on us. It was a soft landing for me. My brooding, dark mood vanished yesterday afternoon.

It’s already 53 F outside. Winds from the southwest have dropped to 16 MPH and they tell us we’ll see 63 F. For reasons such as mountains and valleys, and high and low pressure systems, the atmospheric river swamping California and gifting us almost a full month’s rain quota is going around us now.

Sunrise wasn’t much to crow about. The earlier light was appreciated, coming in at 7:38 this morning, but it was short on the shine penetrating the cloud base. I’m optimistic some shine will clear the clouds before the sun takes it light elsewhere at 5:01 PM.

This is Thursday, January 12, 2023.

Today’s theme music will be a Jeff Beck song. Jeff Beck passed this week, 78 years old. While some people went for singers, looks, or drummers, I was a lead guitarist fan when I was a young teenager. Five me fast fingers and wailing bent notes. Beck was an early name I followed. The man knew his way with a guitar. I haven’t listened to him much in recent years but I have multiple Beck favorites. One that The Neurons pulled into the morning mental music stream was Beck and the Rolling Stones doing “Going Down” in 2012. That song has been covered by a range of guitar artists and bands and is very familiar to me. It’s been part of my mental walking music for yonks. It is good for keeping the feet moving, especially after a long and exhausting climb up, where you finally crest and begin the downslope. Yes, singing, “Going down. Down, down, down, down, down,” in your head as that happens satisfies me. So does this Stone & Beck collaboration.

Stay positive and test negative. The coffee has been drunk. Let the music begin. Cheers

Food & Growth Dream

It began with drinking a cup of coffee. I was at a place which I knew was my home but it wasn’t a RL home. I seemed about forty years old so younger than RL but otherwise the same. Drinking the coffee, I walked along the living room’s length toward the kitchen. A hallway which led to the bedrooms and bathrooms broke off to right. The floor was carpeted with a light China blue plush carpet. I was wearing shoes and I noticed all this because my head was almost brushing the ceiling. That amused me as I’m only 5’8″.

My wife comes out of the bedroom hallways and we chat. I then go back across the living room and back. This time, my ceiling is rubbing against the ceiling enough that I’m bending my head to avoid it. I point this out to her, laughing that either I’m growing or the ceiling is being lowered. She checks it out and agrees, I seem to be taller. I muse that it must be a practical joke; how can I be getting taller? Someone — one of my nieces, nephews, or cousins — must have inserted lifts into my shoes without me noticing. But then, going to set the coffee table down, I found that I’m even taller. They can’t be putting lifts in my shoes because I’m wearing them. I must be growing. How was that possible?

The dream scene changes. I’m having dinner with former co-workers from various employers. These are all RL folk that I’ve not seen in decades. Men and women are segregated. That puzzles me and I ask why but nobody gives me a reasonable answer. Most commonly heard is, ‘because they made the food’. I’m basically sitting alone at the end of a table, with others to the right. Food is being served. I’m making fun of some of the food because it seems unusual and I’m annoyed that we’re being served like the wives are our servants, but it’s tasty food and I’m eating it, and enjoying myself.

Friends call me over to another side. I respond, heading over there. One of the wives wants me to try this special dish which she made. Her husband sets a plate in front of me. It looks like a flat hotdog bun with a hotdog splayed open lengthwise, covered by what looks like dark green ice and a thin piece of steak. I want explanations for what I’m facing. For one thing, I don’t eat hotdogs. She tells me it’s not a regular hotdog, that she actually made it herself, and that it’s very healthy. Okay, I trust her about that, but what about the green ice? I’m not given an answer.

The thing is hard to keep together, but I do so that I can try it. I’m stunned by the flavor, especially the green ice. It’s an exhilarating, cleansing flavor unlike anything I’ve ever had and not anything like I expected. For starters, it’s not cold.

I exclaim appreciation for it, which delights her. She tells me that she knew I would appreciate it. She won’t tell me anything about what it is, but I don’t mind. We joke about it could and I thank her.

Her husband calls me in to join him and other men and women in another room. It’s like a round table setting. They’re having a conversation and he wants to know, what was I good at when I was younger, and gives some background to what he means. I tell him without hesitation, “Music, computers, and art,” then I shrug. They were always effortless to me although I never pursued any of them and regret that.

Dream end.

Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

Wednesday felt like Friday. He searched through his layers of mental dirt and emotions about why Wednesday felt like Friday. As he found no reason, he concluded that it was Friday, not Wednesday. It was everyone else who was wrong. Not him.

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Time for electric Elevens. Yes, we’re on the 11th of Jan, 2023. Coming up on the month’s halfway point of the new year’s first month.

Little has changed for me and it feels depressing. I’m sipping coffee in hopes of elevating my mood. Don’t know why I’m down but I can speculate on reasons. Could be the fog, rain, and wind swirling around outside. Wind sounds like it’s planted someone right outside the window to make ghostly woooooo noises. Writing the first draft and working on it to improve the story could be depressing me because it feels like there’s so much more still to do. Maybe it’s just the news and its unchanging flavors of death and politics, and the ugly, jaundiced textures that infuse it. Or, it could be that I’m in a rut and it wearies me, looking up the rut’s same walls. Probably just my time of month, when hormonal changes bring out my dark side. I could also chalk up to SAD, one supposes. Reminder to self to not make any impulsively stupid decisions today, because this will pass, brother.

Wednesday has landed on us. The fog has moved back and up, so I can see more world. Chainsaws and chippers drone and sing, informing me of another tree’s demise. Outside, it’s 42 degrees F again though it feels like 33. Flat white clouds with a tincture of gray have overwhelmed the sun. Sunrise was same as yesterday, 7:39 AM, but sunset has inched a few minutes back and will now be at 5 PM sharp.

Two songs compete in the morning mental music scream stream. The Neurons have me hearing “Just My Style” by Gary Lewis & the Playboys from 1965. Okay. The other is “Self Esteem” by the Offspring from the middle of the 1990s. I can guess why The Neurons are doing this to me. The same lines keep repeating, from one and then the other. First we have the bass delivery, “Don’t you know that she’s,” followed by the rest of the band singing “Just my style,” from the first song. Then the Offspring sing, “The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right? Yeah.” Both have been featured in this space before. I’ll flip a mental coin for which one is today’s theme music.

Time to drink up this coffee and pretend it’s a day. Stay positive! Test negative. Rise above yourself, I tell myself. I’ll suggest the same to you. Let me end this whiney scree. Hey, look sunshine! Too slow — it’s gone. Keep an eye out; it’ll be back.

Cheers

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