Category: Information

The Landslide Dream

It began with me as a teenager visiting in a small town. I was going from house to house, slipping between hedges, visiting friends. All the friends happened to be elderly women. One was my great-grandmother. The town was lifted out of the fifties, with small houses, typically white, single levels, with shutters, and tidy yards lined with flowers. I always entered the houses through the back, kitchen door, because that’s where I knew the people would be. And I was always right. They were in their tiny kitchens — smaller than the bathrooms in my house — busy cooking, moving around a small table with four chairs. All greeted with smiles and laughter and offered eagerly accepted food, mostly cookies and donuts.

After, though, I left, and found myself wandering in old homes where no one lived any longer. The further that I went, the less there were of the houses. First absent were the flowers and lawns, and then the walks and the windows. Inside, I found empty, dusty rooms.

I was a little older now, perhaps in my twenties. Soon the houses lost their roofs and doors, their siding. I was out where the hills rose, then found myself in a quarry. A house or building, maybe part of a mining operation, had been erected to one side. Little remained of it except an oddly stout brown wall.

I went through the quarry, clambering over boulders and rocks, scaling short cliffs. I became aware that two children had entered the quarry. They were about eight, blond and fair. One was taller than the other by two or three inches.

I watched them for a moment. They had as much right to be there as me, so I continued my exploring. As I climbed a sheer wall, picking handholds on the sandstone and flint outcrops, dirt and rocks fell over me. I threw myself back and away just in time to avoid a huge granite boulder. I didn’t know where it’d come from; its size astonished and scared me. As I recovered from jumping back and away, I saw a large slab of the wall break free and fall.

Scrambling backward took me to safety. As dust rose, I thought of the children. I saw them about forty feet away. They’d climbed as I had and had reached a ledge. I shouted at them that it wasn’t safe, that we need to leave. Rocks tumbled around them. From my vantage, I saw larger, heavier rocks breaking free above them and called out a warning.

The children slipped into a small crevice about twenty feet above the quarry floor. Rocks fell without striking them. Yellow dust thickened as gravel slid down the cliff. The children were coughing. With more rocks falling around me, I made my way over rocks and stones across the quarry to help the children.

Their rock wall moved in, like it was taking a breath, carrying them in with them. The children disappeared from sight. Dodging rocks, waving away dust, I hurried to find and help the children. A rock taller than them pushed them out of the crevice. As they moved aside, it teetered for a moment before rolling down the cliff, jarring more rocks loose with its thunderous landing.

I was almost to the children. Realizing their danger, they were taking action to get down. I reached them in time to help them to the quarry floor. The walls on three sides were spasming and then stilling. I feared something more catastrophic was about to happen and raced with the children to get out. When we reached the point where we’d entered, we discovered our way blocked by collapsed rocks.

The children were panicking. So was I. Frantic to do something, I saw the brown wall. Crossing to it, I jumped up and caught the top of it. Very carefully, I tilted it backwards into the quarry. I found a huge off-white strap, inches thick and about four inches wide, which reminded me of a fire hose, that I used to help me leverage the wall back toward us.

When the wall was low enough, I directed the children over it. They climbed onto it and slid down the other side. Once they were safe, I precariously balanced the wall. More quarry fell in behind me. As it did, I used the white strap to cautiously climb up and over the wall to safety. When I was done, I pulled the brown wall back up into place and regarded it before moving on.

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Flooftidian

Flooftidian (floofinition) – Commonplace, every day, or ordinary activities involving an animal.

In use: “The flooftidian in homes with pets includes feeding them several times a day and playing with them several times a day, along with napping and grooming.”

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Three Dream Vignettes

I experienced three highly detailed, vivid dreams last night, all in a row, flowing from one to the other. First up.

I’m in a car driving in a city in the late afternoon to early evening. I’ve come up to a large and busy intersection. The light is red. I have friends in other cars. We’re all going somewhere. My wife is with me in the car.

I think the light is green and go forward. In a flash, like it’s a film being shown, I see cutaways to friends in other cars saying, “Why is Michael going? The light is red. He shouldn’t be going.” They blow their horns.

I’m driving through the intersection. My wife shouts, “What are you doing? The light is red.”

I’m looking up through the windshield. The light is red, but I thought it was a green light. I’m certain that I saw one.

The traffic turning left against us is light. The drivers of those cars are aware that I’m not doing something right. They give me space and distance. No one is hurt except me and my pride. What is wrong with me?

I pull over to the curb. I’m alone in the car. I’m trying to understand why I thought there was a green light. I look up in time to see a young driver execute in the other direction. He’s driving a mid-sixties Pontiac GTO. Classic muscle car. It’s in impressive condition, with a well-maintained, shiny body. As I watch, this young white guy, maybe seventeen years old, does a U turn and hits the side of my car.

I can’t believe this. He’s pulled over. I get out of my car and look at the damage. My car is silver. The damage is light, toward the rear quarter panel. I approach him, and tell him, “You know the drill. License, registration, insurance.” He’s crying because he just got his license. He knows he’ll face trouble. I feel sympathy for him.

My wife comes up. I ask for the camera. She starts making demands about how this will be handled, wanting me to make promises. We get into an argument. She won’t give me the camera. Irritated, I find my computer to take pictures. I know I can, but, the computer is missing its two AA batteries needed for the camera aspect. But, I have batteries in another part of the computer, use those and take the photos needed.

Number two.

I’m talking to a friend and mentioned something about the Chevy El Camino. I ask him if he knows what they are and how they look. He’s not familiar with it, so I tell him I’ll draw a picture of one. For whatever reason, I’m referring to the fourth-generation design from the early to mid 1970s. I’m explaining the design details as I draw it, talking about the front grill, and how it went from a single headlight to a double-stacked headlight on either side. I realize that I’m drawing on top of another drawing someone has done. I’m astonished. How did I not see that?

I don’t want to draw on another’s drawing. It’s a landscape, sort of a primitive style executed in charcoal. I admire it, erase my drawing, and find another piece of paper. I think it’s blank but as I begin drawing again, I see that there is a drawing on it.

I’m amazed. Why can’t I see those drawings before I begin drawing?

Number three.

We’ve arrived at a huge factory. Besides the factory, it has a large administrative/office section. I’m with a party of friends, all male. I think there are twenty of us. None of them are people known from RL but I know all of them in the dream.

A young brunette woman with a ponytail is showing us around the building. When we walk into one part, we men all start laughing. A tall space, it’s divided into sections and cubicles and is stacked from floor to ceiling with mechanical equipment and electronic gear. I exclaim, “This is exactly the kind of place that I used to work in.” The other men are saying the same thing. We’re all laughing and agreeing, it’s just like where we used to work. We just walk around, talking about the environment. I follow the path, remembering where my cubicle would have been located. In RL, I never worked in a place like this, but in the dream, I turn a corner, and there is my old workstation. Pointing it out to the rest, I laugh. When they see my station, they go off and start finding their own old workstations. How is this possible, we wonder, because we all worked in different places?

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Bonfloofmie

Bonfloofmie (floofinition) – A good-natured animal, or easy friendliness between animals.

In use: “The home was full of animals and bonfloofmie, with cats, dogs, and a hamster napping together, watching activities outside the windows, or following the humans about to see what the what those people were up to.”

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Another Airport Dream

I experienced three distinct airport dreams last night. Two were of the, ‘hey, I’m traveling in an airport’ style, once with my wife, and once without her. They were essentially just in the airport, milling around, waiting for my flights, without any events happening. The third was weird.

My wife and I were in our thirties and looked just as we would in photographs of that time. We were outside on asphalt, between low building with white siding. The buildings reminded me of military buildings erected in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Cyclone fencing encircled the site. Beyond were tall pines and firs in a sandy but flat land sketchy with broken asphalt and foundations where other buildings had been torn down.

We talked as we waited. I asked, “I wonder how much of this land and these buildings are going with us?” Because it was my understanding that they would fly us out by lifting the land we were on. I was struggling to visualize that process.

As time passed, we drifted into another area. Tall, fat, white, cylindrical pillars held ceiling up hundreds of feet above our heads. The paved area was open on all sides. People in knots, clumps, groups, were waiting all around although the center was clear. I walked around a while, looking, wondering when we were leaving, then found that I’d lost track of my wife. As I looked for her, I heard an announcement that our flight was ready and that we need to return to our places.

A stocky pale man with short hair, a red baseball cap, and a goatee asked, “Are you looking for your wife?” As I nodded and replied, “Yes,” he said, “She went to the Starbucks,” and pointed. I turned and saw my wife up on a platform, waving at me. Thanking the man, I walked toward her and waved her toward me, telling her, “Come on. It’s time.”

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Rotating and orbiting as the planet has done for billions of years, we now come to February 2, 2022. A Wednesday, it may be memorable to many people for many reasons, but how does it compare to the past trillions of days? Our human lifespans are so short compared to the universe’s life scale that little of what we do is memorable in the cosmic sense. It’s why we narrow our focus down to our personal spaces and calendars. Contemplating the greater scale may well lead to nihilistic conclusions or heavy consumption of coffee, alcohol, or other drugs. Or eating disorders. So let’s just keep focus on our smaller but amazingly impactful days. They are impactful on us and that’s what builds our memories and experiences and skew our emotions.

Anyway, the sun ‘rose’ at 7:23 AM and will ‘set’ at 5:27 PM. I’ll drink some coffee and eat some food. I’ve already done some of the latter. You’re probably doing something similar, eating, or thinking about what you’ll eat, even considering, perhaps, who you’ll eat it with. Here in Ashland, it dropped to 28 F last night. Now it’s 36 with a high of 44 expected for the day. Dollops of congealed gray and white cloud float on the blue sky. We do not expect rain.

I haven’t done any of my daily games. They’ll come soon. I guessed my first word in Wordle in two guesses yesterday. On the other hand, it required all six in two games. Four other games took three or four. Yeah, I like Wordle. Getting it in two is luck. For instance, in the first game when I guessed it in two, the last two letters of my first guess were green. On a whim, I entered poppy as my second guess. That was the word. Yea for me.

Weirdly, I have a song called “If Not for You” living in the morning mental music stream. Bob Dylan wrote and recorded the song. Then George Harrison recorded it, followed by Olivia Newton John. I had the albums for the first two performers. I heard the ONJ version on the radio one day and then turned around and pulled out the vinyl 33-RPM album to listen to Dylan and an eight-track tape to listen to George’s version. Doing that back then in my bedroom in Pittsburgh somewhere around 1973 (all of the versions were out by 1971), I never imagined the technology that would allow me to sit at my computer and pull up the same songs. Trippy, innit? Just think of how it all might be in another fifty years or so, right?

Part of me thinks about memories like this and wonder why it stays so sharply in my memory today that I can look around that room from my vantage here and see and hear the details of my life then. A sliver of me muses that maybe there’s some cosmic entanglement taking place. Another facet of me shrugs and mumbles, who knows?

For today’s theme music, I’ve selected a recording of Dylan and Harrison playing it together. Makes me smile. Stay postive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters when you can. I’m off for coffee now. Looking forward to it. Here’s the music. Cheers

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