Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I saw a segment on television about the Arlington National Cemetery and Memorial Day activies. Following a whim, I looked up my little brother’s marker and location. Four years younger than me, he lived for just over a few weeks. I remember the night Mom received the notification that he’d passed. Washing the dishes at the time, she stood there at the sink, a dish cloth in her hand, and cried and sobbed as I watched, asking her, “What’s wrong?”
She still mourns him.
Mood: Coffstained
Today is Thursday, May 23, 2024.
The weather has dialed it back a scooch. Only 65 F now, we’ll peak at only 80 F today in the Churchill Valley. Thunderstorms are suggested for later today but we didn’t get within sniffy distance of them yesterday. Was supposed to rain, too. Around 4 PM, I asked Alexa when it would rain. Alexa replied, “The rain will stop in a few minutes.”
That flabbergasted me. There was naught but sunshine and some towering cumulonimbus beast. We did eventually catch rain but that was after the sun’s show had gone over the horizon.
In personal news, Mom’s first cleaning service went well. Mom and the cleaner have known one another for over 20 years, and like each other. Kathy did an impressive job. I was pleased all around.
I’ve bought my tickets to return to Ashlandia at the end of next week.
One of last night’s dream featured my wife. We were both young and healthy, as it once was. The dream triggered The Neurons’ memories. They ended up inserting “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark dreamy). This was a Culture Club song. My wife likes it because it’s one of her exercise tunes, and the base of several jokes with her exercise instructor and fellow exercise mates.
Stay positive, remain strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. I have coffee spilling into the body. Here’s the video. Cheers
Mood: Mystified
It’s 65 F. That’s the low for Penn Hills in the Churchill Valley today. The house’s east side is being sunblasted. Clouds? Yes, some particles are stringing together thin white cloud structures. The thermometer is supposed to stop up by 90 F today. It’s Tuesday, May 21, 2024.
Mom’s energy was strong yesterday, a change from the usual. See, there was a birthday celebration on Sunday. Mom was there for about five hours. Normally, such outings deplete her energy stores, so the day after leaves her listless.
But not yesterday. She was spirited and energetic, good to witness. Did her exercises and was quite engaged. Holding my breath on today, but I hope we’re seeing a new trend’s beginning.
I was thinking about my brother-in-law. Married to my oldest younger sisters, he and I have known one another for fifty years, since we were seventeen. Long time to know another who isn’t related or married to you. Sad for me, he swung toward the right wing over thirty years ago and is now a full-blown MAGAr. That limits our conversation and introduces some awkwardness. We’ve tried talking around it, but he often introduces racist or sexist comments, and has that MAGA habit of ignoring one set of facts while adhering to another. Yet, I’m looking forward to being a guest at his house his weekend for a Memorial Day cook-out.
My family is big into gathering for holidays and eating food. Memorial Day cookouts are the standard, even though the starting lineup has changed, and new players have been added through marriages, divorces, deaths, and births.
The Neurons have introduced “Tin Man” to the morning mental music stream (Trademark well-done). I don’t know why. The 1974 song by America has no discernible links to my dreams IMO. Nor are there conversation or activity links. For that matter, the mellow, comfortable song has silly lyrics. Lots of hooks and easy to sing with, but little deep to it.
That’s okay. Maybe The Neurons are ordering me to chill.
BTW, today is birthday boy’s actual birthday. So happy sixteenth, Michael. May your days be as complete and fulfilling as you dream them.
Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue for 2024. Here’s a good summation of why Vote Blue is important this year.
Coffee has traipsed over my tongue and down my gullet. Here the music. Cheers
Mood: Coffpassionate
May continues is march. Today is the month’s 17th day.
It’s Friday. Clouds have won the morning, but they’re a modest whipped cream overlay. 63 F out there, 70 F is today’s top. 70 F isn’t bad for me, although it always comes to me as ‘not quite hot, and not quite cold’. I feel like Goldilocks writing that.
I miss my cats, Tucker and Papi. Note: I also miss my wife but I get to chat on the phone with her every day. She presents updates: “It’s nice outside, so they’re out there sleeping somewhere.” Not much color there, but then, but they’re low-key floofies. My wife does tell me that Tucker sleeps with her every night. Papi, of course, wants out. I’ll be happy to be back with them.
The Neurons have plugged a Sly Fox song into the morning mental music stream (Trademark reflected). The group came out with “Let’s Go All the Way” in 1985. As an 1980s product, it offers an eclectic and intriguing mix of techno sounds with mellow, laid-back vocals.
What’s interesting about this song is that many perceived it as a tune about sex. The truth is, it’s about politics. Here’s the initial verse:
Sitting with the thinker
Trying to work it out
It’s a traffic jam of the brain
Makes you wanna scream and shout
Presidential party
No one wants to dance
Looking for a new star
To put you in a trance
And the chorus is about a better way:
Let’s go all the way
We need heaven on Earth today
Aah-aah-aah
We can make a better way
Let’s go all the way
Go all the way
Let’s go all the way
Yeah
h/t to Genius.com
I think The Neurons’ choice is pitch-perfect. We have that guy, Trump, a Bible Belt darling with some. He practices as they preach: hate and name-calling is his daily delivery, for, as the Bible orders, “Hate thy political opponent with all the anger on Earth.” Their Bible seems to also state, “Treat women like they have no rights. Grab by the pussy and move like a bitch. Cheat on thy wives and lust after thy daughter.”
Also in their Bible is the guidance about morals and ethics: “Lie and cheat to get ahead, for more money is key to your place in Heaven.”
So, my fellow Democrats, let’s go all the way. Vote out those MAGA Republicans and make it a better day.
Coffee has made its way to me. Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Then let’s work on restoring voting rights and women’s rights, and rights for everyone everywhere, and act like a compassionate nation that immigrants helped build, instead of treating them like garbage, as the MAGA Bible apparently directs.
Here’s the video. And there’s the rain. Cheers
I dislike it when I encounter someone who raves about what a great memory I have, and how smart I am, and then denies what I heard them say just the day before.
Really shifts my impression of them.
I read a NYTimes article about Dr. Richard Restak’s new book on aging. His new book is “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind.” The Times’ article’s title is “How to Prevent Memory Loss”, and that sums it up.
As I reach toward the end of my sixties, I think about memory loss, especially forgetfulness. Whenever a moment of forgetfulness strikes my wife or I, she tends to say, “We’re getting old.”
I dispute the idea that my forgetfulness is automatically a product of aging. I didn’t at first but then I began thinking back to previous episodes of forgetfulness in my life. I’ve had brain farts at one time or another, so I don’t think we should assign much importance to them now. Further, I think blaming it on aging is a sort of surrender that will propagate the myth and acceptance that my memory burps are all about aging.
For instance, if you will.
We’ve gone shopping without a list prepared and forgot to buy something. My partner’s almost kneejerk reaction is, “We’re getting old. We need to remember to make and take lists.”
Well, yes, dear, lists are useful. We learned that lesson forty years ago. That’s why we began using lists in the first place. So, it ain’t necessarily because we’re getting old now. It’s because, like those times in our youth when we forgot something, we were busy. We didn’t slow down to think. We let our mind wander from the task.
That’s almost exactly what Dr. Restak notes in his paragraph, “Some memory lapses are actually attention problems, not memory problems.”
That’s why I liked this article. Many of the suggestions and ideas Dr. Restak presents to help prevent memory loss were ideas I’d discovered for myself. So I find it validating. I think practicing self-awareness about how I approach it whenever I forget something is key. Think about the circumstances around why something was forgotten. Reflect on it: was it an isolated moment or part of a larger trend?
A larger trend is more problematic but dig for the roots of it. Don’t automatically react, well, I’m getting old, so I’m getting forgetful. No, be mindful about remembering.
Finally, what really triggered me to think about this as a post subject was his point about reading novels.
One early indicator of memory issues, according to Dr. Restak, is giving up on fiction. “People, when they begin to have memory difficulties, tend to switch to reading nonfiction,” he said.
Yes, indeed, I thought. Remembering characters and plot events and details is challenging when reading a novel and thoroughly exercises our memory muscles.
But if you think reading a novel is a memory challenge, try writing one. Keeping details in mind of a complex character and involved plot will definitely help exercise your memory.
Now let me get back to editing and revising before I forget what I was doing.
Mood: Dreamstalgic
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.
Here’s the music. Cheers
Mood: Bureausilized (when activities are rendered useless by bureaucracy and become fossilized)
Good morrow, gentle folk and fellow coffee guzzlers. Today is Tuesday, May 14, 2024.
For the record, we’re fully overcast in Penn Hills, PA. It’s comfortable out, 61 F, with rain and thunderstorms chugging our way. They’re scheduled to arrive noonish. Today’s high will stroke out at 72 F.
Trump on Trial (the hush money/business fraud business) holds my family enthralled. Details are reiterated and explored. They’re also enjoying Trump’s latest tax issues, whereby he seems to be on the hook for $100,000,000 in taxes.
But doubt has been expressed that anything significant will emerge from either of these matters. Trump is white, male, and wealth, even if he may not be as wealthy as he claims. He’s also an ex-POTUS and the woeful GOP’s current candidate. Looking at the crime and punishment Venn diagram, significant punishment and karma don’t seem likely. The lesson reinforced for most of us, I think, is that the U.S. has a tiered justice system that mocks ‘and justice for all’.
The Hunt for Mom’s Caregiver goes miserably. All agencies contacted have suggested other agencies to contact. It’s a quagmire of links and promises, but little of substance is ever found. Others have found caregivers, so it is possible. Just need to moving out of expectations that any government agency will be useful.
Likewise, there’s no movement on Mom’s hospital bed request. In his case the road goes through her PCP’s office. Calling it is like shouting into a sewer. There’s not even an echo in response.
Today’s theme music veers to remembrance of David Sanborn’s work. The saxophonist died this week, robbing us of another wonderful musical talent. While more talented musicians keep emerging, the ones who marked us with their style should remain recognized and appreciated.
One of the first songs The Neurons pulled up for David Sanborn was David Bowie’s “Young Americans” from 1975. Then, as I read appreciations about him, many more people mentioned this same song. Sanborn’s body of work was much better than that, though.
I like this video which I found to showcase Sanborn. Not the best sound quality, but there’s a lot of talent on display here beyond Bowie and Sanborn. So many of them have passed.
Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and Vote Blue in 2024. Meanwhile, create and adhere to a vision of a better world. We make it happen, yes, we can make it happen.
Coffee is being chugged. Here’s the video. Cheers
Mood: Coffeetized
There I was, at the Mother’s Day cookout. Outside Mom and her beau, I’m the oldest there, edging toward 68. I didn’t feel like a day over 30.
More importantly and striking, we had six mothers there. Three were also grandmothers. One — Mom — is a great-grandmother.
Four generations sharing burgers, sausages, and hotdogs, salad and corn, wine, beer, and sodas, and a mighty sprawl of dessert. Great way to celebrate a holiday. And for this one, all was well.
It’s the day after Mother’s Day, Monday, May 13, 2024. Summer is shouldering into today’s weather. The sky is bursting with hot sunshine. Clouds linger, spectators on the fringes, hanging on to see what happens. 57 F at the mo’, 81 F is mentioned as a high in several weather forecasts.
A song by Alice in Chains, “No Excuses”, rattles around the morning mental music stream (No Trademark that I know). Les Neurons were pretty transparent in their cogitating and choice today. The inclusion of the 1993 song has origins in both dreams and general thinking.
Per cool, stay chill and positive, lean forward, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music video. Cheers
Funny how memory serves and disserves us. My recollection of events varies from others. Not surprising; so much of it is shaped and handled by private agendas, shaded by emotions, chiseled by what has happened since.
I know it’s a component of why I write. Trying to understand the intricacies of memories and the dynamics of being, I look into myself for understanding and then spin this process into fiction.
Michael Seidel, writer 