Monday’s Theme Music

I know multiple versions of today’s song, but a little background to coming to it.

I dreamed of ear wax and getting rid of this morning. That apparently opened a direct channel to the mid-sixties in my head (that’s the 1960s, boys and girls, in case, you know, you were wondering…) because I was channeling sixties music this morning. Some early Beatles, Beach Boys, Lovin’ Spoonful, Richie Valens, Little Rascals, Monkees, Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Supremes, Dave Clark 5, Stevie Wonder… Whole songs didn’t playing. A snippet would begin, I’d identify it, and the stream moved onto another song. You can see from the list that it was mostly American pop, with a little Motown thrown in.

After a bit of this, “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone” settled into the stream. Although I enjoy the Sex Pistols’ version, in keeping with the stream, I chose the Monkee’s 1966 version. You should watch the video just for a taste of 1960s TV pop America.

The song’s sentiment, though, resonates, which is probably why the stream settled on it: “You’re tryin’ to make your mark in society, you’re using all the tricks that you used on me.” I like that declaration: I know what you did, and we’re done.

July 15, 2019 0

Saturday’s Theme Music

After staggering out of bed and then using the bathroom, I started feeding the cats. “I Am the Walrus” by the Beatles from waaayyy back in 1968 when I was twelve, began streaming in my head. “I am the eggman — woo — they are the eggman — woo — I am the walrus. Goo goo g’ joob.”

WTH? Why? It’s another mind mystery, innit, a nonsense song in a nonsense world after some nonsense dreams. Guess it’ll work for a quiet summer day that seems like a warm autumn day, as though the seasons have been turned into a jigsaw puzzle that need to be assembled.

Listen to it. Let me know what you think. Goo goo g’ joob.

July 13, 2019 2

The Healer Dream

The healer dream followed the wrestling dream last night.

The wrestling dream was about me taking another’s place in a wrestling match. Throughout the dream, I mocked myself for being part of this crazy scheme where I would wrestle a high-schooler. I was doing so to keep the team from forfeiting. My match was either going to be first or second. I told myself and everyone else that I had no chance, that what we were doing was illegal, and that we were going to be caught, humiliated, and disqualified. In the end, I handed someone my watch, some expensive and exotic time piece, went and dressed for my match, and then waited, learning at the last second that my match would be the second one.

Dream end.

The healer dream was brief. I walked into a room. The room reminded me of a classroom, with desks, windows that looked out onto a lawn and playground, but I have no idea where it was. I don’t know why I was there. A woman dressed in a dark blue sundress in there told me she was sick, and then rattled off her health complaints. Brunette, with auburn shoulder-length hair, she looked tired and pale.

“I can fix that,” I said. Then as I touched different places on her, I would say something about infusing her with healing energy. For example, I touched her shoulders and said, “Infuse your shoulders with healing energy. Infuse your joints with healing energy and strength. Infuse your collagen, ligaments, tendons, and muscles with healing energy and strength. Infuse your bones with healing energy and strength.”

Although I did this all over her, it was done in a couple minutes. She stood up and said, “I feel great. All my pain is gone.” I nodded, like, yeah, that’s what I expected. That’s what I told her she was going to do. I was quite casual about it.

A man had entered while I was doing this with her. He was wearing clay-white walking shorts with a gold, short-sleeved shirt, sweat socks and activity shoes. He seemed in his fifties, with sandy hair cut short but casual, bangs across his forehead. Clean-shaved, he looked healthy enough, tan.

“Do me, do me,” he said.

I didn’t think he needed it, but he’d asked. Shrugging, I started healing him as I had her. When I did, he squatted down and grinned, continuing to grin as I healed her as I had him. He seemed very happy and satisfied with what I was doing to him.

Dream end.

July 13, 2019 0

The Dogs Dream

Last night’s dream shook me. I’m not certain why.

I was with my spouse. We were at her mother’s property, with her mother. Her mother passed away in Feb., 2018, after several years of illness. Her illness and care were instrumental in a family schism with one sister. The property is over twenty acres in the countryside.

The estranged sister wasn’t present. I had an impression that it was she who’d passed away. My wife, mother-in-law, and I were talking in general. As the conversation progressed, I was inspecting the house and thinking about what needed to be fixed and how that would be done. We were mostly talking about the dead sister’s husband. He was planning to stay on the property (he and his wife had a home on it) and would continue taking care of it.

I went outside to walk around. It was a gray, quiet, chilly day. While there was a lawn around the houses and outbuildings, fog swathed the woods. Tree trunks obscured with a gauzy swirl.

Weirdly, I still heard my wife and her mother talking, even though they remained in the house. While walking around, I saw a large, gray or dirty white curly-haired dog cross the property. To me, it appeared that the dog had dragged itself out from a hole under one of the outbuildings. When I went to check that out, I saw another dog come out of a hole from under another building. That was soon happening in every direction. There were quickly seven or eight dogs of different sizes, colors, and breeds running around.

I spotted a small ginger tabby cat. Seeing all of these, I ran back to tell my wife and her mother about the animals. They either didn’t understand or didn’t believe me. I kept repeating what I was telling them, and then insisted that they come out to look. They finally agreed, and when they looked, the number of dogs seemed to double, and then two ginger cats were there standing up and looking back at something. As if a signal was given, the cats dropped to their feet and darted away. Seconds later, the dogs did the same. For several moments, it was a helter-skelter scene of dogs racing to their holes.

And then they were gone.

End.

June 27, 2019 0

Shipwrecks

Edgy dreams undermine my rest even while I sleep.

Sometimes they seem malicious,

but they help restore balance and serenity.

More frequently, they’re insane, causing me concern about my mental health,

although sometimes, they’re not remembered, listing in the gray of my thinking’s edge

like shipwrecks from other times.

June 25, 2019 0

The Hot Mess

Dreams wrecked my sleep like booming thunderstorms. While the dreams went all over the place, often with multiple storylines and settings, and frequently anxiety fraught, one theme stayed true: the leads were missing or broken. I kept hunting them or trying to repair them. In one example, others brought in a large and heavy broken motor. “Know what we found in this?” one man that helped deliver the heavy electric motor said. He was affable and burly, curly-haired and sunburned, a little dirty and greasy in his blue uniform with its red and white name tag with “Mike” in script, and a gap in his teeth.

I grinned. “Broken leads, right?”

Mike grinned back. “Yep. You got it. The leads weren’t working.”

Stepping back, I’d finished the first draft of April Showers 1921 a few days ago. I found it a hot mess. Good writing, yes, but shitty storytelling. The concept had over-excited me, and I’d peed all over the place. It’s my big friggin’ writin’ weakness. The first draft had become six hundred Word pages and one hundred fifty thousand words. The last quarter and ending were weak. The beginning and middle were confusing.

When something goes wrong, I try to figure out what to do. That’s been try for me for as long as I can remember. Sometimes, the process requires me to walk away from the project. Grant my mind some space and let it work. This isn’t one of those projects, though. I felt an urgency to keep working on it.

The writing hadn’t been a waste of time, of course. One, it entertained me. Second, I learned more about the concept, and then the story. As I’ve quoted Terry Pratchett before, “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

Now I knew the whole story, and it needed to be re-worked. Many hours of thinking and walking were conducted in search of what to do. Well, I roughly knew what to do: revise and edit. Sure, but I thought, more structure was needed than to proclaim revise and edit and go forth. I needed a better, more solid plan. I just wasn’t satisfied enough with this draft to begin considering revise and edit. I was thinking, write again.

I didn’t wanna write it again, I whined. I know, I answered. That’s writing.

Decisions were made. Each decision took me down a tangible plan. I began seeing how and why I’d concluded the ending and last quarter were weak. Glimpses of what to do began emerging.

Wasn’t easy to get there. The journey from proclaiming hot mess to saying, okay, this is what I’m going to do, took hours of thinking and plotting. It was intense. I was not a good person to be around. Fortunately, I was mostly on my own.

Then came the dreams.

The dreams were beneficial. They didn’t dictate, “DO THIS,” in a deep voice that might’ve been Jehovah or James Earl Jones. No, the dreams were more like a thundering rain storm with strong winds, blowing out the mess.

Now, it’s been accepted. The first hot mess was done; work is required. The path has been defined. Jaw is set. Coffee is at hand. I’m in position.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

June 24, 2019 0

Monday’s Theme Music

I began as a ZZ Top fan in high school art class in 1973. I introduced them to my friend, who became my girlfriend and then my wife when Tres Hombres came out that year. “La Grange” become a song that had her reaching for the volume knob and twisting it hard right whenever it came on.

I’ve seen them in concert three times. Today’s song came about from a dream last night. Multi-tasking in the dream, one sequence had me trying to feed the cats. They were going nuts for the food that I was offering them. I was trying to keep them out of it while putting the food in bowls for them. Meanwhile, a dozen interruptions were transpiring.

Anyway, from that feeding sequence, I started singing to them, “Gimme all your kibble, all your hugs and kisses, too,” because that’s how it seemed in the dream. My music stream picked it up and started cranking out “Gimme All Your Lovin'” from Eliminator (1983).

Never seen the video before, though. I was overseas during those years in places that usually didn’t have television available. Kind of a cheesy video. But it was the 1980s.