Author: Michael Seidel

Science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. Singer (sorry, no shows) & nudist (in my home). Beer, cat, cheese, coffee, pie and wine friend. Left IBM and Silicon Valley for the southern Oregon life but I miss the ocean. We're too far inland. Gotta move.

Friday’s Wandering Thought

He recalled the mother of his youth. She was always reading. Michner, Robbins, Jong, paperbacks purchased at drugstores. Movies fascinated her. She always recommended actors, directors, movies.

Now, she doesn’t have time to read. Hasn’t in years. She’d moved from fiction to true crime to nothing. She doesn’t like movies, she says. She wants drama and none of them provide it. Time is spent watching MSNBC, or shows like Doctor Pimple Popper, My Feet Are Killing Me, and Dateline.

It’s not surprising. Everyone changes. He thinks about the episodes, powers, and energies that shaped and reshaped her, rising to a comparison with the planet, and how unseen events work together to reshape the world.

2

Vivid Dreams Again

I binged vivid dreams again last night. The most striking one found me as an alien. I didn’t look like one; I looked human as I do now, though younger.

Living among humans, I’d been hired by a secret government agency to infiltrate a group of five women and get close to them. My employers thought the women were the aliens. The five were gorgeous women, I guess in their thirties, intelligent and educated. The five didn’t know that I knew all of them. Each thought that I was having a relationship with them. I quickly became intimate with three of them. The other two held me off a bit, moving more cautiously. I was comfortable with that because I knew those two didn’t need to be intimate to spill their secrets. They just needed to trust me, and they did.

The whole time, I knew they were humans, and not aliens, but I yielded to the agency’s desires to find intelligence on them because this allowed me insight into the government’s analysis and planning.

Then, recovering one of my alien powers, I duplicated myself so that I could be with all five women simultaneously. To further my endeavor, I also created a dup of me that met with my bosses. I had one mind shared among the six so I could gather greater understanding. I treated the whole thing as a lark.

Then, dream pivot, I was called out from those locations. I was being given a prize, a high honor to recognize my great contributions. I didn’t know what they were talking about but being the devious mutt that I was, I was eager to accept these accolades. Five of my six beings had to be re-integrated into one, as easily done as walking through a door.

The worst part of it was that reintegrating into one made me appear about five years younger than before. As people saw me and remarked in astounded tones about my youthful appearance, I laughed it off and told them it came from easy living.

Dream end.

1

Thursday’s Theme Music

We’re rocking October’s first week of ’22 in the Steel City. Yesterday delivered a gorgeous day of 70 and a mildly cloudy sky. Will today to the same?

A bright sunshine unveiled clear skies and a calendar-worthy autumn dawn at 7:22 this morning. Sunset will be at 6:53 PM. Meanwhile, it’s 47 degrees F with a high of 19 degrees C in the forecast. Among the trees’ greenery, leaves are shimmering with reds, blazing with yellows, stirring in gold and orange. Today is Thursday, October 6, 2022.

Animal activies have waned in the yard since autumn throttled summer and declare its intentions. One deer in the past three days. Chipmunks are busy, the red squirrel and gray squirrels aren’t seen as much, and the ground hog only made one appearance. More birds are active and present. I wonder if this is part of their staging to head south.

I’m suffering computer constipation problems. Things don’t want to load. Small messages in the corner announce things like “Waiting for google analytics” as the little thing at the top spins like a clothes dryer drum with a heavy, wet load. Tedious beginning to the day. Haven’t had my morning cuppa coffee so my brain cries out, “Alas, alas, why me, cruel world, why me?”

Musically, The Neurons loaded “Movin’ On” by Bad Company from 1974 onto the pathways. Sis and I were driving around on errands yesterday. Familiars from my past ferreted their way into the moment. Like, hey, I know this road. So-and-so lived up there. This street looks familiar. Oh, yeah, and there’s where that guy jumped John. Well, we were driving from town to town, and although The Neurons also loaded a few other songs in response to the memory cycle, “Movin’ On” won the morning mental music loop.

Now I must get coffee, ‘kay? Stay pos and so on, ‘kay? Here’s the tune. Close your eyes and relive the seventies for a mo’.

Cheers

2

The Writing Moment

Writing has been a struggle. Taking care of Mom means that I give her first priority. My time and thinking keeps getting fragmented. Also, I’ve been on meds to eliminate my cough. As it’s almost gone, I quit the meds. Looking at the bottle, I saw that it can cause drowsiness and dizziness.

Lightning struck. The meds were dulling my thinking. That was behind my writing struggles. I immediately said, no more meds, and it was like a curtain was pulled back.

Time to write like crazy, at least once more.

2

A Prize Dream

I was in some amorphous school. I never got a good handle about what it was. People aged up into their fifties were there. We lived, worked, and played there, but also had other homes.

Some kind of reward program was initiated to honor the best and brightest. Admin wasn’t forthcoming about what was going on. Meanwhile, with my wife and others visiting, I was working on an art project, using trash and garbage to make things, really just goofing around and exploring. I’d made dozens of objects, nothing impressing to my eye, just killing time, when I was summoned to another room. There, I was told I’d won and could select any prize from anyone. Well, I still didn’t understand. Like, won what? I learned that twelve had been chosen and I was one of them. I’d been selected to receive the first prize but that didn’t mean that I was first. It just meant that I was one of the twelve.

I walked through the school’s maze, looking for a prize to select. Others congratulated me as I did. Another student told me that a male teacher was overheard saying that he hoped that I wouldn’t be one of them, because he couldn’t stand me, and then I was the first one chosen, which upset the teacher.

I hadn’t found a prize I wanted so I started changing to leave. As I got down to my shirt and boxer shorts, other students found me and told me to go with them because they found a prize which they thought I’d like. So I went and yes, the gave me a prize, which I don’t remember. I started some four-year-old boys with their father watching. He was a friend and another of the selected winners, and the prize I’d taken was something he’d made. I felt a little embarrassed about it and apologized to him, but he waved it off, telling me, those are the rules. One of the boys announced that he didn’t want to play with me because I’d soiled myself.

Flabbergasted, shocked, and embarrassed, I covered my rear and left, but I hadn’t soiled myself. At that point, I saw another of the prize winners going by. Preparing to leave, they’d selected all of my art as their prize and was taken it with them.

End dream.

0

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Last night’s sunset was like gold dust was thrown across the sun’s final rays for the day. Pretty and fascinating, shared as photos by a few, it caused me wonder: what’s in the air reflecting the light like that and giving that color?

Today is Wednesday, mid-week of October’s first week. I’ve been here in Pittsburgh a few, visiting, helping Mom and the fam. Also learning the dynamics of who is cool to who, or angry with another family member, and what words and questions to avoid like it’s a UXB.

It’s October 5, 2022. In my mind, we’re racing toward completion of the first quarter of this century. So much potential floats in the air like the stuff turning our sunset gold last night. Sunrise today is silvery clean, coming on at 7:21, about twenty minutes after I opened the back door, stepped into the 42 F air, and breathed deep. The weather the announced it’ll be 70 F and sunny today. I’ll pop the shorts back on. Sunset will sneak in at six minutes before seven in the evening.

Mom is doing a lot better by day. All her appointments and visits went well. Strength, balance, and co-ordination is returning. Her old personality and ways are emerging out of the sickness morass. But as noted, some things require walking on eggshells, broken glass, smoking coals. Gently, gently, lest you alienate another or get hurt yourself. Caution will see you through. Taking it in, The Neurons said, “This sounds like an opening for Annie Lennox.” They commenced playing “Walking on Broken Glass” from 1992. The album was part of my wife’s music rotation when we cleaned house every Saturday in the mid 1990s, so I heard it a chunk o’ times.

Stay positive and test negative. Coffee has already answered my call. Needed it to assist Mom with some matters and present her breakfast. Ready to jump into the day, starting with a shower. Here’s the tune. Y’all have a good ‘un.

Cheers

0

A Celebration

Another friend has passed away. He beat cancer four years ago. Earlier this year, he said it had returned. Last time I saw him, he looked wan, gaunt, tired. He had beautiful brown eyes which glint with humor, mischief, and intelligence. All were absent that last time that I saw him. He didn’t speak much. He told us he was going to a family reunion in Europe. On his return two months ago, he told us that he was withdrawing from our weekly beer group meetup. I had a bad feeling.

But I’m not here to grieve. Grieving has worn me down. Death, sickness, and illness are all regular segments in the great cycle of life. Better instead to celebrate the friendships and love of these people who complete the circle and go on. We don’t know what they go on to. I just know what he’s left behind. I’m pleased that he took time to be a friend and join me to tip back a beer once a week and talk politics, philosophy, science, art, pop culture, music, and literature. He’d tell me about his life and his travels, how much he loved his father and sisters, what he and his daughter do as traditions, how proud he was of her.

I cherish those days and will as long as I can. And I will celebrate that such a person lived. My face still hurts with feelings of loss and tears sully my vision, but that’s me wallowing in self-pity that I lost such a friend. No more, no more. I will celebrate the human I knew and how he made me laugh, think, and wonder. And sometimes I’ll raise a beer and have a drink, and smile, as if he’s still there.

0

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