More Cars in A Dream

A hard rain pelted the road and darkened the sky.

We had three cars. All were Porsches: a 924S, 944, and 944 Turbo.

All were red.

I was driving on a four lane highway with a median strip of dark green grass in the middle, like an Interstate. I drove the 924S. The road was empty except the three Porsches.

This is where the weirdness begins. I was driving the car, but I was looking down on it from about one hundred feet above it. I could see all three cars, and I could see through them. While I was driving, and they were driving, the drivers and I were all talking as though we were in a room together.

I was telling the others that the 924S was more capable than they realized because of its light weight, and that while the original 924 didn’t have much power, the later 924S had power and excellent handling. To demonstrate it, I drove the 924S around the other two Porsches as we went down on a hill, into a sweeping turn, and up a hill.

1983-porsche-944-white-wallpaper-8 — Porsche 944

“You’re right,” one other driver said, and the second driver said, “I didn’t realize it had so much power.”

So ended the dream.

I dream often about cars, especially high performance sports cars, and especially Porsches. Porsches captivated me as a child. First, I loved the Jaguar E Type roader, and then the Chevrolet Corvette, and then the Porsche 911S. Porsches became more dominant in racing, with the 908 and 917 variants arising, so I embraced them with greater fervor. Porsches came to mean performance, success, and style.

I’ve twice dreamed about Porsches in 2018 and wrote about the dreams, calling each dream, “The Porsche Dream”. In each, I’d won, or was advancing, and was thrilled. In this one, I was demonstrating a capability that others didn’t know about.

So, good or bad, right or wrong, hopeful or silly, I take this dream as something positive.

July 5, 2018 0

Catversation

Catversation (catfinition) – an informal conversation between a cat and one or more other cats, humans, birds, or other animals.

In use: “The feline struck up a catversation with the kittens on the screen, sniffing as he spoke, and looking behind the laptop to see if they were there.”

July 3, 2018 0

An Inconclusive Dream

First, my sister-in-law was visiting my wife and me. She was upset and came to talk to us.

I can’t describe where we were at. My observations were limited to a very close personal point-of-view. There seemed to be a place in black and white, and seemed like it was night, but we were inside, so I’m not certain of much beyond those basics.

I don’t know what upset my sister-in-law, either, nor why she came to us. All of that is hazy. My wife and I were tired and got into bed to go to sleep, and my sister-in-law got into bed, too.

None of us could sleep. First, one of my cats (the ginger fellow) came in, walked up to my head and looked at my face. I tried pulling my covers over my head so that I could sleep.

Then, I heard voices. After listening and failing to identify who it was or where they originated, I got up and started talking about them. My wife said that she heard them, too. I went to find the source and discovered my nephew. He’s my wife’s other sister’s son. Sitting cross-legged on a bed, he was engaged in a noisy phone conversation on speaker.

I went back and reported that and then left for downstairs. Downstairs was daylight. Part of it was a gas station, but there was also a junk yard, and other things that I couldn’t make out. The gas station owner turned out to be my lawyer. I was being tried for something. I don’t know the charges. He and I walked around, supposedly to talk about the case, but neither of us were interested in it. He thought I was going to be convicted, and I unconcerned. Strolling around, we were under lights, but outside, but remained daylight. Others were there. They distracted the gas station owner/lawyer, a big old white male with short brown hair dressed in blue overalls. He drifted off to talk to them.

Sitting down, I gazed around the pile of junk. It was mostly old cars, tires, pieces of fencing, and a few appliances. Across the way, I saw a Studebaker Hawk. Rusted and faded, it had lost its side windows and wheels, but was otherwise intact. When the lawyer/GSO returned, I pointed it out for confirmation that’s what I was seeing. Yes, he answered, and then launched into a meandering story about how it came there that I couldn’t hear or understand.

He went away ago. Turning, I discovered a red Ferrari Testarossa Spyder go-cart. I wanted to know if it ran, and what it used for an engine, whether it was electric or gas-powered. I put these questions to the lawyer/GSO when he came back.

“Sure,” he said, with a good ol’ boy laugh while scratching himself. “It runs.”

“Can we start it?” I asked.

The laywer/GSO looked around and said (I think), “Let me see if I can find him.”

My wife came down. I told her about the Studebaker and the Ferrari, showing her the latter, telling her that I was waiting to see if it can be started.

The dream ended on that note.

July 2, 2018 5

Be Careful Out There

If you like to walk, as I do, around your town, be careful.

Caution and awareness are seared in my head. A friend in another town was walking his dog one morning several years ago. A vehicle killed him and his dog. The driver was never identified.

People get distracted, even drivers. Some don’t like stopping for people in crosswalks. I know it, because they’ve told me. They don’t care about the law, safety, or anything else. Some are too busy with other things. I’ve seen people eating as they drive, talking on their phones, or putting on make-up. Some looked at me as they passed and gave me a nod or a wave. So they see me, but kept going.

Crossing in front of the Jackson County Library in Ashland where Main Street becomes Siskiyou Avenue is the most hazardous in my experience. There’s a traffic light – the final one downtown as you’re going south – about fifty feet in front of it. Leaving downtown frees drivers from the multiple crosswalks, traffic lights, and twenty miles-per-hour speed limit. Now freed, they gun their engines and race up into the twenty-five MPH zone. They don’t to stop again, not when they’ve already had to stop so many times, especially for someone crossing the street in a crosswalk. Better to just miss the person and keep going, right?

Yes, it happens. It’s not fiction or exaggeration.

Perhaps the most disturbing incident this week was the Ashland Police Department‘s car that didn’t stop for me. It was about one in the afternoon. Traffic was light, and it was a beautiful summer day. I was in the southern crosswalk, crossing Main Street at First street. An APD vehicle was approaching. The blue and white SUV was several car lengths away from the northern crosswalk in the center of three lanes. He didn’t stop; he didn’t look my way. I could clearly see him, a white guy with a goatee, with a heavy, burly build, and a receding hairline and sunglasses – but he couldn’t see me (I guess).

When he didn’t yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk, neither did two other vehicles, both following him, but in two different lanes. Why should they? The APD car didn’t stop, so it must not be the law, or enforced, they probably assumed. Both of the drivers saw me, giving me a look as they passed, with one driver, a young woman in her twenties waving at me.

The APD car didn’t have his emergency lights on. He, and the others, stopped at the traffic light up the street at Second and Main.

So be careful. Lot of people are distracted. It happens. Many just don’t care or don’t want to stop for pedestrians. And many just don’t see you.

Or so they pretend.

June 26, 2018 0

Remembering A Dad Moment

1971

Besides being a rock fan and fifteen years old, I was an auto racing fan. My father was in the U.S.A.F. He’d just returned from being stationed in Germany and was now stationed at DESC near Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio when I moved in with him. He surprised me with tickets to the premiere of LeMans with Steve McQueen.

Whenever I hear the movie’s opening minutes, I’m back in that packed movie theater, one of the few children in the place, remembering the movie’s beginning, and Dad. The start is just the sounds and images of racing cars of the era screaming around the French race track. To non-fans, it’s probably noise. But to racing fans, the sounds of Porsches and Ferraris of different-sized engines, Alfas, Corvettes, and Matras can all be heard as individual howls.

Dad had no interest in seeing the movie, but he knew I wanted to. So, thanks, Dad.

June 17, 2018 6

The Chaotic Dream

What an exhausting dream it was.

Being nowhere in particular, but planning to go somewhere, I was trying to pack and prepare myself to leave. People surrounded me. None of them paid attention to me, but kept walking around, having conversations and calling out to each other, or laughing. None of them addressed me.

Phones kept ringing. Weirdly, I recognized the phones from my life. Mom’s cherry colored wall phone, with its long cord, rang. Later, a beige Trimline with pushbuttons, of the sort my wife and I had in our house at one point, rang. Another time, it was a green Trimline phone with a dial that rang. Cell phones and Blackberries would ring, along with black phones and red phones without dials used as hotlines in the Air Force.

I answered the phones but never heard anyone on the other end, something that angered me more and more as the dream progressed. “Why is the phone ringing?” I would ask aloud. “Who’s calling? There’s never anyone there.” I was trying to pack and would think that I had forgotten something, and then remember what it was, and go to get it, only to get diverted by a ringing phone. Nobody else would answer the phones.

While all of this was happening, I kept checking the weather, because I worried about it changing. Meanwhile, I kept saying, “Oh, I need to go write, but I don’t have time. I need to make time to write.” While I was packing, saying this to myself, checking the weather, and answering phones with people walking around and past me, I kept giving car keys to people. Different people, they needed the keys for different reasons. The keys didn’t look familiar, but I knew they were to my shiny red car, and they were my keys. I kept handing the keys to someone, and then someone else would approach me a little bit later and ask me for my keys. Every time I picked them up, the keys would jangle, and I’d check them to confirm they were the right keys.

All of this culminated in me waking up thinking that a phone was ringing. There wasn’t one ringing. The house was quiet except for rain falling on the roof.

Thinking about this dream now, I chuckle at what I see as its meaning, that I resent intrusions to my writing, because to go somewhere, I need to write, and I feel like it’s been a life interrupted. Yes, all the decisions made to bring me to this point were my decisions, but those decisions were all driven by other events and people.

Funny how my mind speaks to me when I go to sleep at night.

May 25, 2018 0

The Drive

I’ve been watching a show on Netflix called “The Fastest Car”. I like speed. It’s my one weakness. This show plays on the challenge, are sleeper vehicles faster than exotic machines like Lamborghinis, Ferraris, McLarens, Ford GTs and Vipers?

The sleeper vehicles are home-built machines. They frequently look like junk but are fast vehicles. You can’t call them cars. Cars are included, but so are trucks (including a diesel) and vans. There’s been a huge variety of machines. While presenting the challengers, the people talk about cars and their relationships with speed, racing, and the vehicle they’ll be using. Family is often a large thumb on the scales about what they’re doing and why.

With four cars racing, all can’t win. The defeated are usually philosophical about it, although some get hissy, challenging the fairness of something that happened. What is really interesting, however, is their absolute belief that they can and will win in the lead up to the race. They express doubts, but typically circle back and say, “I think I’ll win.” It’s that attitude that draws me to the show. As everything is considered and the cars are prepared, the men and women say, “I think I can win. I’m ready. We’re going to win.”

I like that attitude. That’s the sort of fire that writers struggling to make it need to exhibit. “I think I can win, and I’m going to do everything to prove it. It’s not for me as much as it is for xxx.” Xxx is the blank to fill it. They don’t want to win for themselves, but for those who believe and back them.

Isn’t that like a writer. We want to be published, and we’re driven to write. People often lurk in our lives, and we’re seeking to validate their belief in our talent, creativity, determination, and dreams. It’s a fuel that keeps us putting our ass in a chair with paper and pen or pencil, or at a computer keyboard or typewriter.

It isn’t just about me, we tell ourselves. It’s for everyone else. Remove them, though, and I think most writers will still be writing. I suspect those drivers trying to win would also still be going, even without trying to prove themselves to friends and family.

May 10, 2018 0

Monday’s Theme Music

Streaming back via the Wayback Machine to 1971, I was reminded of a lot of music that I enjoyed. The Who, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, The Doors, Jethro Tull, Yes, John Lennon, Elton John…a solid foundation of future classics were out that year. Against all those albums was a simple sound delivered by Bad Finger. Right off of Straight Up, here’s “Baby Blue”.

I admit, the album disappointed me a bit. It seemed too simple and a little derivative. Once again, my exposure, through an eight-track cassette on a continual loop, came via a friend. He played this album whenever he drove his father’s Ford 500. This was about two years after the album came out. I honestly think he only had three or four eight-tracks. He played this one so often, it developed all sorts of warble.

I still laugh thinking about it.

May 7, 2018 0

Thursday’s Theme Music

I always have enjoyed convertibles. Named spyders and spiders, roadsters, rag tops, I include the targas and tee tops in this group. The top down lets the world in when you’re motoring along.

I was trying my best to emulate that yesterday. A gentle spring sun warmed the day into aspirations of summer. Our little town was an idyllic verdant green. Sunroof and windows open, I was cruising home like it was yesteryear. To help me on that journey, the radio station played C.C.R.’s eight plus minute version of “Suzy Q”. Turning it up, I felt like a teenager for the six minutes that I listened as I drove home.

Not too much to the lyrics. Very straightforward, but I enjoy the guitar work and the variations on the drums and cymbals that arise.