In my final three years of my US Air Force career, I was involved in the Quality Air Force initiative of the 1990s. This dram seemed to pull out of that.
I wasn’t in uniform during the dream at all but quality management was constantly referenced. To begin, I was in a modern classroom with many others. We were there by invitation to participate in a quality management session.
I didn’t know the man in charge. Large-bodied, white, tall, and bald, with a small mustache, I did know his work and was eager and excited to be included in his project. His name was never given.
As we invitees sat and waited in the glass room, he walked around the room before calling out four names. I was on called. Pleased, I went up to him. He told me and the other three that we had ‘outstanding and extensive’ quality management experience and so he was presenting us with the opportunity to be his class assistant. Flattered and eager, I accepted, and he gave me a little booklet to use.
That’s all the dream was but short as it was, it felt strongly re-affirming.
I was gently serenaded awake by the dulcet tones of a cat upchucking somewhere nearby. Investigating, I found it was Tucker heaving up kibble and a hairball. Fortunately, I had an exercise towel down. It was for foot and leg exercises to cope with my ankle injury, based on recommendations from my sister, a physical therapist. Tucker and Papi had staked out the green towel as the new ideal napping spot in the house. That’s where Tucker was sleeping when I went to bed. Apparently, he slept there until he awoke and puked.
That’s how my Wednesday, June 19, 2024 began. Hope yours was better. I raise my coffee cup to Juneteenth and my fellow Americans who celebrate it for all the right reasons.
Spring’s hold is weakening in Ashlandia. Sprummer has burst back onto the scene. It is a beautiful blue skied morning. Sunshine baths runners, bikers, grooming cats, and everything else under the sky. 61 F, today’s high will bounce into the low 90s. With this abrupt weather shift will come high winds.
After the puke check, I squirmed back into bed, and then tumbled with dreams and thoughts. The thoughts went down a parental aisle. Dad in the hospital. Mom was there in April. The two are divorced, with new partners. They actually divorced over fifty years ago. Dad has been with his ‘new wife’ for 35 years, his third marriage. Mom has been with her beau since 2009. Family whispers say that she’s been married seven times. Mom has a secretive gene so vetting information is a challenge.
Mom professes to constant pain. She complains frequently and often about her existence, frequently demanding her daughters’ attention, repeatedly regaling all of us with tales hospital visits, doctor appointments, and health details. Going backwards, appendicities, and before that, a perforated appendix put her in the hospital. Her pacemaker was replaced. COVID hospitalization, spinal stenosis, swollen foot (but not edema, she tells me, although she had sixteen lymph nodes removed during foot surgery), and of course, fifteen years ago, the disastrous fall down the steps. She sleeps with a mask on to help with her breathing because of emphysema. Hardly able to walk, she insists on tottering around the house to clean it, though to most eyes, it’s immaculate. She takes dozens of medications, vitamins, minerals, and supplements.
Dad tells me from his hospital bed, “I’m fine,” with a chuckle. “They have a hundred doctors helping me. They want to put me on dialysis but at my age, they worry about whether I’d survive the procedure.” He’s been stented over ten years ago. Uses a wheelchair and a cane. Has oxygen at home, which he insists that he doesn’t use. Only his wife is there to help him.
Mom always complains about her beau. He can’t hear, she says, and I’ve witnessed the truth of the 94-year-old man’s hearing issues. “He’s forgetful,” she angrily hisses. “I always have to tell him things and make him lists.”
Dad’s wife laughs about Dad and his idiosyncrasies. He never says a harsh word about her.
What a difference their worlds are.
Today’s song choice by Les Neurons is a little ditty called “Twilight Zone (When the Bullet Hits the Bone)” by Golden Earring from 1982. A song inspired by an adventure spy novel, it’s presence in my morning mental music stream (Trademark split) is all on me. See, I was feeding the cats and somehow ended up singing, “You will come to know when the kibble hits the bowl.” That’s a variation of Twilight’s chorus, “You will come to know when the bullet hits the bone.”
Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue for 2024. Coffee has stolen into my body. Here is the music video. Cheers
This was a dream where green dominated. I mean, it seemed like it was being viewed through night vision goggles and turning it all green.
So I was supposed to be taking some position of power. But on my way to accept it, I discovered a nefarious plot to replace me as soon as I accepted it. Following some dream plotting that I don’t understand, the position was vacant. I’d been selected to fill it. But once I filled it, I could be removed and another put into place. Apparently that involved a prophecy. I understood it all when I was in the dream but the plot evades me now that I’m awake.
Essentially, I discovered the plot early. What shocked me was that one of my sisters was involved in it. I vowed not to take the office because once I did and she removed me, she was installing a tyrant. That, I felt, wouldn’t be good for the world. So, added by others, I set off on a series of escape and evasion adventures. Many times, sis’s forces would have me partially surrounded. I’d feigned going in one direction and gallop in another, or I’d dress someone to look like me and then sneak out while the decoy distracted sis’s forces. This happened about a dozen times with variations in location and settings.
During this, sis would often be in a heavy fur coat, sometimes white but it would be black once in a while. She was being driven around in an old black Rolls Royce.
Meanwhile, I was mostly on foot. The settings were usually woods or fields with fences, and felt like a maze, but I discovered or created shortcuts, sometimes tunneling, and sometimes scaling walls to escape. People, mostly strangers, were usually helping me.
Besides all of that, my sister would sometimes call out to me to surrender. She would insist that I was misunderstanding. I’d shout back to her about how disappointed I was by what she was doing, and frequently mocked her inability to capture me. I also pointed out that even if she captured me, I would never accept the office, so she may as well give up.
In the end, I found myself on the crest of a green ridge, part of a mountain range, standing, looking down and back. Below was my sister’s Rolls and her forces, looking lost about where I was.
My wife I were with others in a tall white office building. The rest of the people were strangers. We were there for testing but kept segregated in different rooms, so I had no idea how many people were present.
The way the testing went is we’d be called into the testing room in groups of six at a time. The test administrator was a tall white woman, brunette, in a lab coat, carrying a clip board, wearing glasses, a scientist stereotype. Several younger people, mostly men in their early twenties, assisted her.
Of the actual testing, I know nothing. In the dream, I’d see the door, enter, and then return. That’s it.
While milling around after the fourth test, rumors began spreading about grades. Someone, they said, scored 95. 95 was unheard of. The usual recorded high was in the upper eighties, and several were in that zone. Another person then came to me as I circulated, waiting for the next round, and said, “You’re the one who scored a 95.”
I dismissed that as rumor, pleased, but also sure that it wasn’t me with that score. I didn’t want to get my hopes up only to be let down.
Then the final two test blocks were finished and testing was completed and the head verified I’d scored a 95 and lauded me for the achievement. finishing by presenting me with a trophy.
Well, cool, I liked that but disliked all the attention. With the whole thing over, the staff began cleaning up. I rushed to use the restroom before leaving but one of the male assistants, apparently realizing what I wanted to do, rushed ahead and blocked restrooms so they couldn’t be moved. I thought was a dick move and confronted him. He and I argued. I ended by shaking my head and saying, “Your organization rewards me because of what I achieved, and then you go and pull this shit. Just shows how little that trophy and recognition really means.”
Today’s lifestyle is delivered to you by Monday. “Monday: always the best way to start a week.”sp
It’s 68 F and June 10, 2024. Continuing the sprummerish lead up to summer, we expect a high of 87 F. The sky presents no signs that 87 F won’t happen. Clouds are boycotting the area morning. The bluest skies are clear above the southern forested pinnacles.
I was reading the Frank Luntz piece about undecided voters and how Trump’s 34 guilty verdicts affected their voting decision. I was struck by the fact that several blamed it on President Biden. Makes no kind of fucking sense in a sane world. But to further the insanity, they suggested, what if Trump appeals his decision and wins that appeal?
Yes, quite a ‘what if’ idea, isn’t it? But it needled me to think, well, Jesus, if President Biden is so powerful that he can influence a state’s legal system and find twelve citizens that he somehow forces to call a guilty verdict, why in the world would this powerful individual not also have the appeals system sewn up? Because anyone with a tenth of an active working brain knew that Trump would appeal if found guilty. So that avenue would need to be covered, too.
Of course, several of these geniuses also speculated that it’s not much of a crime and that ‘they had been out for Trump’ since 2016.
Idiots.
Glad to get that rant out of my blood.
Also, to those who thought that they were ‘out to get Trump’, have you not followed Trump’s legal issues for the past forty years or more? Really, can you wake up and think a little?
Of course, one individual also kept saying, “It’s about the economy for me,” and was worried about inflation. He should really read some history about how we arrived at our current price levels.
Relating to nothing, BTW, did you see the news that Target, Aldi, Walgreens, and other retaillers were announcing price cuts because heir high prices were driving away customers? Really makes me fucking wonder how and why they’re suddenly able to announce that, hmmm?
Today’s music comes by way of a dream. I was awake at 5:27 this morning. Don’t know what awoke me. After hearing what sounded like four small-caliber gunshots, I checked on my floofs. Tucker was in but Papi was out on the back patio. He seemed to be watching something invisible to me but rushed in as soon as the door was ajar. As far as the shots go, morning silence resumed as if it’d never happened.
So back to bed I went, and to a dream. As I remembered it, I recalled that there was a comment made by my sister-in-law. We were at her wedding. She was marrying a guy I’d never met. Weirdly she was really tall, towering over me by about thirty inches. Anxious to get out of there, she said, “I want this done. I’m worried about the weather. Remind me to tell Becky (her daughter), I need to get through everything before the weekend.”
Okay. I brooded on that a bit, but The Neurons launched 10,000 Maniacs with “Like the Weather” from 1988 into the morning mental music stream (Trademark under the weather). I found this lovely live version. Such a mellow and reflective song.
Got my coffee soothing The Neurons. Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024 for a saner, cleaner world. Here’s the music. Cheers
This was a chaotic dream, almost fractured, with abrupt shifts. It began with me running around a city. It reminded me of downtown Pittsburgh, PA, at the point, because of all the on and off ramps and intertwining roads and multiple bridges. While cars were zooming around, I was on my feet, jumping and darting from place to place.
“I need a car,” I told myself. “A vehicle, so I can get going.” At this point, my dream was giving me a heroically backlit presentation of a younger me standing on a white cement onramp looking toward the city.
With dream insights, I knew I wanted/needed a car because I had to cover a lot of ground. I was looking for books, and books could be anywhere.
This set up a set of scenes of me finding a car, driving, getting out of the car, and looking and discovering a book. It seemed like I did that a bazillion times (yeah, that might be hyperbole). The cars were always different and were sometimes a car I’d drive in real life: a ’68 Camara, signal orange ’73 Porsche 914, white ’72 BMW 2002, and a 2013 white Prius. Not always, though.
Finally, I was in a house. Not recognized from RL. Looking across the carpeted floor, I spotted something underneath a sofa. “Is that a book?” I wondered.
Walking over there, I lifted one end of the sofa and confirmed, yes, that’s a book. With a beige cover, it seemed worn and old. With some disgust, I realized that they’d been using it to prop up the sofa because a leg was missing.
I put something else in its place and dusted the book off to examine it. That’s when I found that I’d written. “I thought so,” I exclaimed, and the dream ended.
Saturday, May 18th, 2024, came upon us in the Churchill Valley with a load of leaky clouds. Rain was doing a heavy metal drum solo against the house. Dressing for it, I thought, maybe it won’t be as bad outside our slice of Penn Hills. Turns out our situation was better than others. Rain just increased with no evidence of mercy coming.
It’s part of a trend. Yesterday’s day of intermittent rain ended with tornado warnings and alerts, and a long downpour. Then there were tornado sightings and videos on the news and social media, and flash flood warnings. Potholes became lakes. I appreciated all the drivers’ calm and patience. Only one driver was witnessing doing something stupid. (Cue Frank and Nancy Sinatra singing “Something Stupid”.)
As for temperatures, it’s 66 F now and supposedly climbing to 77 F today. So, it’s not an overly cold rain.
Mom continues to seem to do well. Except for back pain from stenosis, and this weird cough. The cough could be associated with GIRT. She’s just hanging in there. While she often expresses disbelief in others, she has a powerful belief in herself. So, she tends to endure until she’s forced to ask others for help. I recognize it because I’m her son, and I’m the same as her in this regard. Decently intelligent, she (we) wear obstinance like it’s armor.
I am beginning to plan my return to home and my wife and floofs. One segment of last night’s dreams had me petting Tucker, my toothless black and white floof. When I walked away, he clamped onto my hand with his mouth and drew me back. That scene happened three times.
Being here, staying with Mom, watching over her and trying to help, has The Neurons playing “Victim of Love” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark flooded). The 1976 Eagles song is apt, in my cogitating. See, I wish to be back home, pursuing life, but here I am, across the country. It’s love, but also an aggravated sense of loyalty and duty. I really appreciate my wife’s support in this.
Hot, black coffee is blessing the system. Stay positive, lean forward, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music. Cheers
I’m back in spaceship Coffee Shop, beginning to fill with propulsion. We’re heading for another world here.
It’s Wednesday, May 15, 2024, back on Earth. When I first woke, sunshine poured through the eastern windows, bringing serious heat to us. But clouds swarmed in and censored the light, dropping us to lower levels. Presently 63 F, 74 F with rain and thunderstorms are in today’s forecast. Not bad for a sprimmer day.
The quest for home care help for Mom continues. We’re channeling energy and are no longer flailing. Serious steps forward are being made. Fingers are crossed that this will happen.
Not as positive on the hospital bed for Mom. That’s stuck in the doctor’s office limbo. Calling again today to prod their asses.
Flying dreams dominated my sleep worlds. Awakening, I felt vigorous, optimistic, and powerful. Also felt odd that I couldn’t fly. As has happened on other times, I wondered if this was the dream world and the dream was reality. That’s how it felt, like it was so real, and yet, here I am, in another sphere of reality.
“Sailing” by Christopher Cross occupies the morning mental music stream (Trademark sinking). The Neurons’ choice of the 1980 song works well. The song is about getting away to an imaginary or special place. And that’s how it worked in my flying dreams. I would decide where I wanted to go, like, “Look, is that a lake over there?” A turn of my head, a little thought, and I flew over there faster than any falcon. Gives me some dreamstalgia, remembering it. If only life can be so for us, simple, easy, relaxed.
Time to return to manuscript in progress. Be strong, remain positive, lean forward, and Vote Blue in 2024. Coffee has been ingested and I have liftoff.
I was out on a plaza. Foot traffic ebbed and lifted around me. Nuances of a mid-afternoon carried late spring tones. This was no place known in RL.
Though it was outside, long white marble counters offered multi-media positions. One could step up and use a computer, television, or other digital device.
It seemed like I was on a break and just meandering. A famous man approached me. Tall, white, with curly hair, he wore a black suit of a white shirt. “I want hire you,” he said, “and mentor your development.”
In a dream epiphany, I knew that’s why I was on that plaza. Thanking him for the opportunity, I asked for time to think about it. He was amenable. Handing me a zip drive, he suggested I look at the files on it for a better idea of what he’s looking for and prepare a resume to give him. I agreed.
I headed to a computer station to explore the drive. While there, a middle-aged short and slender swarthy woman with tumbling curly hair approached and basically gave me the same pitch. I asked for time to think about it. She was a little disappointed that I didn’t immediately accept and made a pitch. She told me that letting her mentor me would open doorways for me.
I was flattered but adamant. I needed time to think about it and would not be rushed. She said there was a file on the disk which was a story and asked me to rewrite it so she would have more insight into my current levels.
The woman left and my wife joined me. I told her all that happened and showed her the discs. We began looking at the contents together. Days passed in a flicker of light. The second potential mentor drifted past, eyeing me, and trying to see what I was doing. I knew that she’d wanted and expected a piece of writing that first night, but I said nothing to her.
My wife drifted away. The female mentor stepped over and asked me who my wife was. The impression struck that she didn’t know who my wife was, so I explained. The mentor responded, “She’s not included in this.”
I returned to the disk and resumed writing. The female mentor continued circling. Reminded me of birds in orbit over a dead thing. Then the male mentor returned and said, “Good job.”
A lightning storm ruled for about an hour during the night. I listened to it. Then, when I slept, I dreamed.
I was alone somewhere, standing on a surface. Under the surface, clearly seen by me from the side via a weird dream dual perspective, were outlines of boxes. The outlines was in bold black. The boxes were white inside. Empty, was my take. They weren’t attached and were haphazardly arranged.
Although it was a clear blue sky, lightning flashed. I began thinking. With bizarre dream logic, I decided that I could catch the lightning. So, the next time it flashed, I reached up and caught the bolt, easy as grabbing a string.
Next, with dream logic, I thought I should put this lightning into a box. Then I can use its energy later.
While I thought myself right, I learned by trying that most of the boxes would not take the lightning. They weren’t large enough, or were the wrong materials, even though all were the same black outline empty white things to me.
One larger box attracted my attention. Buried in the fourth level down, I thought, that’s the perfect box, just what I need. Finding a slot in the land beneath me, I fed the lightning down into my chosen box. It took the lightning and then immediately rose one level.
I concluded, okay, catch more lightning, feed it to the box, and the box will rise to where I can grab it. Meanwhile, in the dream, I’m thinking, that’s pretty cool that I can catch lightning. I also realized, wait, instead of just ignoring the other boxes, I should re-arrange them. If I do, I can create a structure that amplifies the lightning’s power for me.
That’s what I did. As I progressed, the boxes’ black outlines changed into red, green, blue, yellow, etc. The lightning box became a brilliant white gold as it filled. The dream finished with me looking down on the box as it rose above the others and began available. I felt quite powerful and satisfied with myself, as though I’d done something to complete myself.
Michael Seidel, writer 