Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floobsession (catfinition) – a cat’s persistent preoccupation with an activity or idea.
In use: “Papi’s water floobsession drove him awake in the other room. A thump was heard as he jumped to the floor, followed by thundering paws as he galloped down the hall, into the kitchen, and leaped up on the counter with a Cheshire cat grin and a question mark tail.”
One of last night’s dream seemed structured like a feature film.
It began with me becoming aware of a contest. I can’t tell you the details of the contest. They were vague and dreamy. But I entered the contest and was selected as one of the winners.
That thrilled me. As a prize, I was going to drive a Porsche 911 Cabrio. It wasn’t the current model, but a car that was part of a collector’s garage. I was happy and excited.
But the dream took a twist. Other people needed help. It wasn’t inconsequential help, but help they needed to survive. Although it meant that I would miss out on my prize, I did what I needed to do to help others. Yes, on the one hand, I regretted that I would miss out on my prize. On the other hand, come on, it’s a silly prize, compared to the larger picture of helping others who are fighting to survive. There wasn’t a question; it’s what needed to be done.
Smiling and happy, they thanked me after I helped them (I literally gave a number of people helping hands to climb out of muddy, swollen rivers.) When it was all over, I waved good-bye to them, satisfied with the result.
Taking another turn in the dream, though, a friend, Kevin, showed up. He said, “I called the guy and told him what you did and why you didn’t get your prize. He admired you, so he came up with another prize for you.” I was presented with the keys to an Arctic blue Porsche 911 Cabrio.
Oh, it was gorgeous. Although it was a cold day, with melting snow all over the place, it was sunny, and the car’s top was down. Kevin and I got into the car. I started it up and drove it carefully through puddles of slush and over patches of snow and ice.
Kevin said, “Come on. What are you doing? My grandma drives faster than this. Open it up.”
But I’d had a plan. I was getting to a place where I could turn and go up a hill onto a mountain road. Right as Kevin finished making his plaintive statements, I downshifted and mashed the throttle. As he was slammed back in his seat, he laughed and said, “Whoa, shit. This is more like it.”
Laughing, with the car’s engine in full song, I accelerated up the mountain road.
That was the dream’s ending.
I was thinking about another problem that’s not really a problem, and was surprised that some car company hasn’t already solved it.
Driving through the school zone, I wondered why my car didn’t have a “School Zone Button.” My car, a Mazda CX-5, is a pretty smart car. Its lights and wipers go on whenever the need is detected.
It’s locks are always tricking us, evidence of how smarter it is than us. The door locks are key-less, and depends on you having a fob on your person. You press a button on the outside door handle to unlock it. The car gives you a few friendly beeps and lets you in. But if the button has already been pushed on one side, and someone pushes on the button on the other side, say my wife, the car goes into a frenzy of beeping warning that kind of reminds me of the robot on “Lost in Space” saying, “Danger, Will Robinson!” Walking it is much easier; you just walk away. The car has options to change all of these settings, but they’re exhausting to navigate.
The car has a built in navigation system. This system will show you the speed limit for the road you’re on, and tell you when you’re speeding. You figure that if the car already knows the speed for the road, and knows that I’m in a school zone, I should be able to press a button that will keep the car at the school zone speed.
Yeah, I know, how hard is it to keep a car at that speed? Well, from the number of people who ignore it, it’s pretty damn hard. The school zones seem to go a million miles around the schools in Ashland, starting at 7 AM and going to 5 PM. I rarely see a child in any of them.
The School Zone Button. It’s an idea whose time has come.
When I was young, I imagined great careers for myself, glamorous and exciting vocations, like rock star or racing driver. Didn’t come close to either of those, but fulfilled one of them in last night’s dream.
Yes, I was a racing driver, an unknown in Formula 1. Being unknown bothered me not. I was just happy to be there. I was with another rookie driver. Short, he was from somewhere in South America. This was the season’s second race. He’d won the first race. I wasn’t in the first race, but the media was mobbing us because we were rookies, especially him, winning that first race, and his F1 debut.
The time for the current race arrived. There wasn’t any qualifying for reasons I don’t know, and I was starting from the back. (I think this was just a dream contrivance as a metaphor for how I view myself and my life sometimes.)
Then, just like that, I was surging through the field, was at the front and gone. My wife was in the pits, watching, and was mega-impressed. (Yes, I was given that view.)
“Where’s the other guy?” I wondered about my fellow rookie while the race was still going on. That question permitted me to view a screen in my car that showed the car’s relative positions, a setting that you can sometimes select in video racing games.
There was my car, in light blue, number one, and well ahead of the pack. The other rookie, in red, was fifth from last. I was exuberant for myself, and sympathetic for him.
I won, of course, amazing all. My wife’s excitement seemed to equal my own. If only life could be more like my dreams….
Little late posting about this, as I dreamed it on winter solstice.
It was a simple dream. I was driving one of three vehicles. Other people were driving the other vehicles. One vehicle controlled the others. I wasn’t in that vehicle, so I lacked control. But I wanted it. Lack of experience with the vehicle and ignorance about what was transpiring hampered me.
The cars were impressive. Closed cockpit, but definitely road cars, they were extremely low, powerful, silent and fast. They were also identical. I knew the other two drivers in the dream as people from earlier years of life.
We took off driving. I was third in line. In an interesting twist (maybe interesting only to me), I went from a close, over the shoulder point-of-view in which I saw myself, my controls and the road ahead, to a long, wide shot that featured the three sleek, silver vehicles silently racing along an elevated white highway.
Back in the car’s cockpit, I decided I wanted control. So I took it with by flicking a switch. Now I was the one driving as the other two chaffed about me taking control. But I had it and didn’t relinquish it, and they accepted that after their brief complaints.
That’s essentially the dream, but subsequent activity was interesting. First, I awoke on the day after solstice feeling like a tremendous weight on been removed. I felt lighter, stronger, and more energetic and optimistic.
Two, among several dreams was a repeat of this dream a few nights later. It went almost exactly the same way.
I thought it a good omen for a new year, but then, I’m an optimist. Have a good day.
Cheers
You ever watch people driving around, and imagine them behind the controls of a flying car?
Pretty frightening thought, isn’t it?
I need to think about and research these items from last night’s dreams:
The name of the concert was “Trey Chico.” Three boys, I wondered several times during my dream.
It was an interesting concert venue. The stage was on one end in a field, about a mile from a field for parking cars. Between the parking and stage were long, open rows between rows of small apartments. Japanese people set up blankets in the open rows, and waited for the concert in the apartments.
We arrived early, in late afternoon for the concert. My wife was with me. We were in the cheap section. Meeting others, I ate some ham. I never saw any of the concert. I left right before they were supposed to play “The Star-Spangled Banner”. My wife stayed at the concert when I left. I wrapped ham in paper to take with me before I left, and made sure I took my laptop computer with me.
It was dark, but with lighting when I left. Fences blocked some sections. Others were attempting to leave, as well. I knew that the fences were there, but didn’t know how to get around them. A Japanese man came up and told us how to do it.
Walking through the open rows to get to parking, I was warned several times not to step on the Japanese, or their blankets. I cut back and forth, sometimes running, to go the mile to the field, and sometimes entered and left one of the small apartments. I thought they were clever, and that the concert arrangement was clever.
I ran into my wife in one of the apartments. She was with friends. They’d gone to a nearby shop, and then toured this apartment. Showing me Q-tips, she said, “They have the right Q-tip holders. We saw them. Where did we see them?” I knew, but I didn’t answer her.
Reaching the parking field, I oriented myself. After counting the rows, I turned and walked down one row to my car.
The dream ended.
It was peculiar.
My Dad, wife, and other family members – none of them ever seen, but heard in the wings of the dream stage – and I were watching a NASCAR race. It was one of the big banked tracks, like Charlotte, Michigan, or Daytona. I lean toward the last as the site. The cars were in roaring packs. It was the race’s mid-stage. Fans know this means the drivers were racing for position, but were mostly finessing the situation and vehicle to make a run at the end. Stock are mostly high-speed endurance races with a final ten-lap shoot-out, especially with the modern tendencies for the cars to wreck on the last, desperate laps. That stops the race and frequently leads to a green-white-checker situation.
I’d driven in with family in a white Chrysler Sebring convertible, with a beige leather interior. The car was parked right there.
Watching the race wasn’t the same as in reality. While watching on a huge screen, I (and everyone else) could virtually walk among the cars as they raced around the track. NASCAR encouraged this technology as a way for fans to get closer. Further, you could design a new paint scheme for the cars as they raced. The drivers and team could then review your scheme while the race was on, and adopt it for the car, again, while the race was on.
That’s what I was doing during the race. ‘My’ driver was a female (and not Danica Patrick). She’d was leading for most of the race, but there was a wreck. She was eliminated, and the race was red-flagged for track clean-up.
My family wanted to leave. The race wasn’t going on, and the one we cheered was no longer in it; why stay? I was working on that paint scheme, though, and didn’t want to quit. I finally surrendered to their heckling. Then Dad wanted me to move the Sebring up. Although we weren’t in a garage, there was a closed garage door. Using a remote control, I moved the car forward, but resisted getting it too close to the garage door. Dad insisted, move it further forward. Irritated, I did, stopping the car with the nose right against the garage door. I then complained to him about it.
That’s all there was. I found interesting symbolism to move after I awoke: a white car, my father as an authority figure, and a female driver, in the lead. All of those seemed like elements of myself. After mulling it over for a while, I took it to mean exciting times were coming (the race) during which I would be pushed to the limit (the car against the garage door) but that it would be fine (my father), and that while I had control, I wouldn’t be in full control.
As if I’m ever in full control, right?
It was the city’s twenty-fifth gun homicide in forty days, the eighth in five days, statistics that Lasko detested. If the street’s intelligence was correct, the street wars were heating up. Not surprising; it was a good time to own gun stocks.
Traffic whizzed past him, barely heard. He was in the safety corridor. Invisible but effect, electronic cloaks prevented people from walking into the street except at safe places and times, and the cloaks turned cars back. Even if a person were to walk into the street, the cars’ systems would brake and steer the vehicles around people. It always worked.
But Lasko was a police officer. His systems permitted him to go through the cloak wherever and whenever needed. Impatient and preoccupied, he cut through it to reach the murder scene. He expected the oncoming traffic to stop. Most did.
One car didn’t.
Hitting Lasko, he was dead within a few minutes of impact. It was the first traffic death that year, and the first pedestrian death in thirteen months. Citizens were instantly distraught and leery of using their cars. The systems had failed. If one failed, others could as well. They didn’t want to die. Debates opened up about what to do. Commissions were formed, and investigations were launched.
As that transpired, two more people were gunned down in the city’s growing street war. All sighed.
That was the price of freedom.
Michael Seidel, writer 