Another Nicholas Said
Just A Dream Snippet
Just a dream snippet remains from last night’s viewing. It felt like the dreams were on, but like the television running in the background while I was doing something else. Not much seemed noticed.
The one time that I remembering seeing the Dream Vee, I had butter on my arm. It was a twenty-year-old version of me. I laughed about that and was talking with someone else, showing them where I had butter on my forearm.
I know my dream age, because my image was lifted off a photograph that I saw not too long ago. My hair was dark and thick, but cut military short, and my mustache was dark and heavy. My wife and I had gone to a shopping mall. At her encouragement, I bought a pale yellow, short-sleeved shirt, the top that you pull over, with a three-button Henley packet. It became a favorite shirt for a few years.
While I was laughing about the butter and attempting in dream-muddled-confusion to understand how I’d come to have this thick, long streak of butter on my right forearm, I realized how yellow it was. At that point, I heard, spread yellow light over your body.
That’s all that’s remembered.
Monday’s Theme Music
The sadness of aging is often not what happens to you but the losses of others, from friends who age and disease, to our heroes.
I, and my generation, has seen a lot of our heroes passing away. The inevitability of death can’t be denied. It happens, but we don’t know what goes on past the door. There’s a lot of guesses and conjecture, and some promises and prophecies, but most of us need to wait until we go through the doorway before we find anything, if there is even anything there.
These reflections came as I thought about my dreams last night. I didn’t remember much except one. As I went through the exercise, though, the first lines of the Cranberries’ “Dreams” (1992) entered the head stream.
Oh, my life is changing everyday
In every possible way
And oh, my dreams, it’s never quite as it seems
Never quite as it seems
Those lines reflect my life philosophy. Nothing is what it ever fully seems. We live on spectrums of seeing, remembering, sometimes understanding with a glint of blinding insight, but more often, applying hopeful explanations to what we don’t know, all in efforts to uphold and sustain this stubborn illusion of reality. But then, hearing Dolores O’Riordan’s unique voice in my head, I remembered that she’d passed on, slipping through the next doorway when she was forty-six. She’d drowned in a bathtub. Reading about it now on Wikipedia, I learn her blood-alcohol level was .33. Empty alcohol bottles were found in her room.
So, in memory of dreams and life, here’s today’s theme music.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Today’s music choice is another of those, “Out, damn spot,” selections; a song is stuck in my head and must be dislodged by being shared with others.
The song emerged during last night’s dream quagmire. Can’t call it a dream true stream last night. From my memories, the dream streams all torrented down pipes that burst, releasing the dreams into a big sloshy mess. So, boom, here’s a twentieth century Guns n’ Roses Sunday offering, “You Could Be Mine”.
Alterfloof
Alterfloof (floofinition) – 1. Housepet or animal with more than one personality. 2. An animal or housepet who originated in another universe. 3. Slang for an otherworldly behaving housepet.
In use: “Sometimes Maxine could be terrifying. She was an alterfloof, frequently cuddling and sweet, but then suddenly growling and baring her teeth at everyone, spreading fright through the household. No one knew what caused the shifts.”
Floofzilla
Floofzilla (floofinition) – 1. An animal that is much larger than average. 2. A housepet or animal that terrorizes others or is particularly adept at mass destruction. 3. Mythical pet that is cited as being responsible for the destruction of many ancient civilizations, including Timflooftu.
In use: “At six weeks old, the puppy transformed into floofzilla, wreaking havoc with towels, curtains, pillows, and toilet paper rolls.”
Headfloof
Headfloof (floofinition) – 1. Animal that’s in charge. 2. An animal, especially a housepet, who likes to sit on people’s heads. 3. Housepet who enjoys messing with people’s minds.
In use: “Rocky was a headfloof, which was cute when he was tiny, but by the time he weighed more than ten pounds, his habit of jumping on your head was a pain in the neck.”
Thoughts
We saw the light
and thought it was fire,
held in glass
strung by a wire.
We smelled the smoke
and thought it was grass,
we felt lit
and fell on our ass.
We heard a song
and thought it was love,
we tasted tears
and thought it was salt.
We saw the light
but it was too far away.
We said, “Let’s start tomorrow.”
But tomorrow never came.
Together
I lost you,
you found me,
kicking in the door
that I tried to seal.
Dancing on dreams,
living on smoke,
pennies away
from always being broke.
The crystal was fine,
but we drew lines,
toking on what was right,
and what should be denied.
Never agreeing
in sounds too soft to hear,
straining for space
when we tried to get near.
Blinded by lights
that could’ve been love or hate,
we made our way past others,
knowing too much too little
too late.
