Floofboard (floofinition) – a quantum game housepets play, using furniture and space to watch and check one another’s moves.
In use: “The living room had become a floofboard, with one cat on each chair.”
An Old Dream
I think of it as the old dream, but I recall it, too, as the star dream and the blue dream. I’ve had it, or some variation, since I was a teenager, at least in my mind. My memories can be faulty, but I seem to remember being in basic training and having this dream, and remembering that I had it when I was in high school, after I moved in with my father. That thought also brings the dream a new label, the transition dream. I seem to dream it when my life is going through a change. I haven’t had it in a long while.
Roughly, because there are slight variations, but this is the dream experienced or remembered last night, I see a ridge of purple-blue bare mountains. A clear sky is shifting from azure to indigo.
At first I see a single, amazingly bold, bright star above the mountains. Then, I’m on a mountain.
I’m looking at my hand. I’ve made a fist around a cold chunk of lapis lazuli. A large piece, although it’s been tumbled and is smooth, one end is rough. I always think, it was tumbled, and then broke in half.
After seeing the lapis in my fist, I look up. The sky has darkened into a shade of midnight blue. Millions or more stars and galaxies light the sky. It’s so amazing, it transfixes me into staring and wondering about all the existences beyond now.
The dream ends.
I always feel young but pensive in this dream, and elated but thoughtful when I awaken. I don’t know what change I’m going through now. I’m not moving or starting a new job. One of my cats is probably dying (I’d be surprised if he’s alive when this year ends), but that change affects him more than me. I can argue, though, no, it’s the survivors who remain behind after another dies who are more affected (as far as we know), because we, left behind, are dealing with a void.
Writing about it helps me think and understand. I remember thinking the other day, in a moment of pique, crystallizing a decision that I am re-inventing myself. Perhaps I’ve triggered some internal change, summoning the dream.
Maybe it’s all just wistful thinking and vivid imagination. Perhaps that’s all life is.
Friday’s Theme Music
As I’ve done on other days, I selected today’s music because it was streaming in my mind when my dream ended.
“While You See A Chance” comes from Steve Winwood’s Arc of A Diver (1981). It’s not my favorite song from the album, but some of the song’s lines were going through me.
When some cold tomorrow finds you
When some sad old dream reminds you
How the endless road unwinds you
While you see a chance take it
Find romance, fake it
Because it’s all on you
I thought those lines were being remembered because I was thinking that it was an old dream that I was remembering, one that I recalled dreaming before (and thinking, oh, great, my dreams are in re-runs — or maybe I’m remaking them, rebooting them, in accordance with the current television and film trends — and scoffing), and it was a cold morning. Perhaps subconsciously summoning the song, I thought about the endless road of life and drifted into tangents about my life’s minutiae. Then the song streamed in.
I had a final laugh, then, because a cold tomorrow had found me, and then got up to feed some beasts and hunt down coffee.
Open House
You ever get into that zone where almost everything you see, hear, or read seems to trigger a novel concept and, or, title?
I love it. It’s like my mind has declared an open house for the muses, and they all come in to share.
Thursday’s Theme Music
Didya hear? There’s talk of building walls….
Too many events IMO degrade into shouting contests and threats, with a sort of you better run and hide mentality steaming up and rippling across the national scene. Accuse someone of something and someone else with counter with threats against you.
All this brought to mind Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell”, 1980, from The Wall.
You better run all day
And run all night
And keep your dirty feelings
Deep inside. And if your
Takin’ your girlfriend
Out tonight
You better park the car
Well out of sight
‘Cos if they catch you in the back seat
Trying to pick her locks
They’re gonna send you back to mother
In a cardboard box
You better run
h/t to Lyricsfreak.com
Floofceny
Floofceny (floofinition) – a housepet’s unlawful taking of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it permanently.
In use: “When Aspacia began her day, she discovered evidence of floofceny. A floofen had stolen her checkbook and torn out all the checks during the night.”
h/t to Aspacia S. Bissass
The Ascendancy
Once again, none of my novels were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Naturally, I was distraught. It almost put me off of my coffee. Almost, but not really. It’s their loss.
Despite that oversight, my spirits are rising. Nothing to do with anything tangible; it’s just that time of my cycle. It’s beautiful weather, and seems like a wonderful to day write and edit.
As part of my lazing about this AM, I read a 2011 Paris Review article, “Catch-18”, by Erica Heller about her father, Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22. Several passages interested me, but I want to highlight two.
At one point when Dad was writing Catch-22 (he wrote it for nine years, which turned out to be something of an average gestation period for his books), only once and quite late in the game do I remember him becoming discouraged, fed up with the writing process and how long it was taking to finish. This brief, uncharacteristic bit of self-doubt caused him to actually set the book aside and try to find distractions. I recall seeing him watching television in the evenings, but his boredom and exasperation was immediate. Within a week, he’d become so sullen that soon he was scurrying exultantly back into the waiting arms of Catch, telling my mother that he honestly couldn’t imagine how anyone survived who didn’t have a novel to write.
It is hard to imagine not having a novel to write. That’s my primary survival/coping mechanism. Computer games help, along with coffee, wine, and beer.
When Catch was finally taking off, about a year after publication, my parents, who had now moved us to a much larger, far grander apartment, would often jump into a cab late at night and ride around to the city’s leading bookstores in order to see the jaunty riot of red, white, and blue and the crooked little man—the covers of “the book,” piled up in towers and pyramids, stacked in so many store windows. Was anything ever again as much fun, I wonder, for either of them? They would come home giddy and very late and go to sleep with their heads still full of the potent magic of a dream poised right on the cusp of becoming true.
That sounds fun and real, and is the kind of thing that I dream of doing, cruising places looking for copies of my books and evidence that my dream is becoming true.
Time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
I was streaming “Eye of the Tiger” (Survivor, 1982) in my head as I was cleaning the carpets today.
“Eye of the Tiger” is one of those songs that was released and gained popularity while my wife and I lived outside of America working for Uncle Sam. In this case, we were at Kadena AB, Okinawa, Japan. I was mostly working twelve-hour shifts in the 603rd MASS Command Post. Between those shifts and typhoons, it seems like we didn’t hear much from the outside world. When we visited Hawaii on leave, we discovered that McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets were the next greatest thing, MTV had launched and was gaining popularity, and Rocky III was the hot movie, with “Eye of the Tiger” as the movie’s defining song.
It all seemed a little surreal.
