Category: miscellaneous

A Dark & Stormy Dream

Awakening this morning, I was surprised. Sunshine was flowing into the bedroom.

Where was the dark rain?

I listened to the house’s silence. Wednesday, I thought, considering my plans.

No, Sunday, I corrected myself.

I’d expected night, rain, and Wednesday because that’s what I dreamed. Alternatively, maybe that was a different reality embracing me — which I thought was a dream — and now I’m back here again, where it was sunny, daylight, and Sunday. It’s something to contemplate.

The dream had leaned toward the odd side. My wife and I were with many others. We’d gone somewhere where I was to receive a prize and she was to be honored at a dinner. Pretty exciting stuff.

Meanwhile, I was eager to continue writing another novel which I was working on. But first, the dinner.

We’d all parked. I had my black RX-7. It was night, pitch black, and pouring rain. Despite those circumstances, it was a boisterous crowd streaming into the festivities. I knew many and was busy waving, calling out greetings to friends, and laughing.

We got into the hall’s foyer, a lovely warm, tall, and pink marble place with thick carpeting and golden chandeliers. As I chatted with friends, my wife moved away from me, but I could still see her. I called to her so we could go in and find our table.

She turned back around. Shock was on her face. I went to her and asked what was wrong.

“Doctor D is dead,” she answered.

Others approached us, inquiring if all was okay. I explained to them what she’d told me and who Doctor D was to her. Meanwhile, I wondered how she’d received the news; I’d been watching her. Nobody talked to her and she wasn’t on the phone.

Using our coats to protect our heads from the rain, we hustled through the dark rainy night back to my black car. Many other cars were already started and moving, shiny dark shapes, filling the air with exhaust smoke and startling me, because I thought they were staying for the dinner. While wondering why they weren’t I started entering my car.

Another person called to me. Sitting in her car, her window partially down, she explained that she was trying to use her computer writing program but it was asking for a code. She didn’t know how to get a code.

“Yes, you need a code,” I said. She replied that she’d never heard of that, and I said, “I think I can get one for you.”

Returning to my car, I started it and plugged my computer in, then typed some keys.

A series of red characters came up on a black screen. I memorized them and ran through the drenching rain to the other person. “Here, put these numbers in.” When she was ready, I repeated what I’d memorized.

We had to do this twice. I worried that I’d gotten the numbers wrong but it worked after the second time. “Good,” I said, and she replied, “Thank you.”

Head and shoulders hunched, I dashed back to the car. My wife was inside it, waiting. The rain cut visibility like a sheet had been tossed over the world.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

She looked at me. “You’re not wet.”

The dream ended.

First, after dreaming this and thinking about it, I eventually fired up my ‘puter. When I checked Facebook for messages from friends and family, FB showed me a post under its “Memories” category; it was the photo I shared in this post. I thought it a stretch as a coincidence to dream of a car that I haven’t owned in over eight years and see a picture of it on the same morning.

I liked that car a great deal, owning it for almost twenty years. A 1993 Mazda R1, it’d been bought as a gift to myself in 1996 after I’d retired from the military in 1995 and landed a good-paying job with a civilian company, a medicial device startup in Silicon Valley. The car reminded me of that life era, and how much my life changed at that point.

All that rain and darkness intrigued me. Despite that, we’d been very happy. I was getting a prize, and my wife was being honored. The mood quickly changed with news of a doctor’s death, but I don’t know of that doctor in real life, so that left me puzzled.

Overall, I don’t have any strong grasp on any insights about the dream. As always, it could be Neurons just having fun, or some weird neural scrambling brought on by unknown causes.

That’s how it goes with my dreams. If anyone can tell me what it means, it’d be appreciated.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

I saw a photograph of a USPS envelope in an online post today.

The photo was supporting a story about the first female postmaster in colonial America. First thought: I didn’t know they had cameras capable of doing such clear, detailed photographs in colonial America. The colonists were more advanced than I thought. (Yeah, that’s snark.)

Second thought, looking at the envelope in the photo, what is v-mail service?

As it was part of the return address for the War & Navy Departments, I figured it was related to WWII, and the v probably meant victory. I looked it up online and verified that. But there was more to the story:

“Generative AI is experimental. Info quality may vary.

“V-mail, short for Victory Mail, was a mail service used during World War II to expedite mail service for American armed forces overseas. The Post Office Department officially inaugurated V-Mail service on June 15, 1942. 

“V-mail worked by: 

  • Letters written on pre-printed forms were photographed and reproduced onto microfilm.
  • The rolls of microfilm were transported overseas.
  • The letters were printed again at one-quarter size and mailed to their destination.”

They were using microfilm to transport letters in WWII.

I’ve only been alive for almost 68 years, and wasn’t alive during WWII. In all that time, I’d never heard or seen v-mail service referenced anywhere. Maybe it just flew over my head. I don’t know.

It’s really surprising as Mom was a little girl living in a small rural town in Iowa during WWII. She had brothers who served in the US Navy, as did her friends and classmates. Stories from the fronts transfixed her. I thought she would have mentioned v-mail service. That causes me to wonder if she is aware of it. It’s something to ask her.

What’s more astonishing is that the v-mail service wasn’t original. This system was based on a British service called “Airgraph”. Giving me another pow-pow moment of discovery, Airgraph was developed by the Eastman Kodak Company in conjuction with Imperial Airways and Pan-American Airways in the 1930s.

Pow. I’m knocked down in amazement.

Once again, learning something new and astonishing. It makes me smile.

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Perspectives

My wife shared a friend’s anecdote.

She hadn’t seen the friend in a while. They have a regular gang that meet for coffee at Growlers after exercises classes each M-W-F morning.

Converted from an old gas station, Growlers, nominally a purveyor of beers, is in downtown Ashland. It actually shares its space with a small coffee shop. It’s normally not busy in the morning. That allows the coffee gang to pull together tables and make noise as they please. Outdoor seating with firepits is available, and that’s where they’ll typically be.

The gang is a flexible group with active lives, so the group meeting ranges from four to fifteen people. They’re mostly women. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers, retired teachers, programmers, nurses, musicians, accountants, architects, artists, firefighters, college professors, and so on. They’re characters, and have been coming to the same exercise class, with the same instructor, Mary, for over thirty years. My wife, in her mid-sixties, is the youngest. She started the coffee gant back when she began taking the class after we moved here in 2006. Always pursuing fitness, when she arrived here, she began looking for a new exercise routine, and heard about Mary’s Y class. That’s where she was told this tale this morning.

Weirdly, my wife doesn’t like the coffee at Growler’s, so she has tea.

“We’ve downsized,” L said. L is the friend. “I’m 76 and my husband is 82. We had a 3,000 foot home and five and half acres just outside of Ashland. We were talking and agreed, we don’t need all this property. So we sold our place and bought a smaller one here in town.

“Well, after we’d sold our property, the new owners called us. They wondered if we could meet at our old house and walk the property line with them so they can learn about their new land. Naturally, we agreed, so a time and place was set.

“We’d never met them. Well, we got out of the car to wait, and then they arrived. Well, they were older than us! Both had walkers.

“Then they told us, they were downsizing, too. We were speechless.”

I laughed when I was told the story and wondered, moving into a 3000 square foot home with some land while downsizing, just how big was their last place?

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The Maze Dream

This dream began as a military variation.

I was in the US Air Force in the dream, as I had been for twenty plus years in real life. Arriving at a new assignment, I was created warmly by new co-workers. They’d been looking forward to my arrival.

After settling into a room, I change into my uniform to go meet my new commander. My pants an shirt were crisply sharp and mustache and hair cut were aligned with regulations. Very satisfying. Putting on my highly polished shoes, I discovered I had no shoe strings.

No shoe strings. The situation flummoxed me. How could I have shoes with the strings to tie them?

It was late, I had an appointment, and nothing was open to buy new laces. But needing shoe strings, I went around fast, knocking on doors and talking to people, looking for shoe strings to borrow. I found a pair of shoes with purple shoe strings but rejected them; purple shoe strings with a dress uniform wouldn’t work. I’d rather go without shoe strings.

Co-workers came to the door, urging me to hurry. I told them about my problem with the thought one of them may be able to help me.

They laughed it off and urged me not to worry because I wouldn’t be needing my shoes. Plans were afoot (sorry) for me to wear different clothes and footwear.

Mystified by that, I went with them.

I met the commander, a light colonel. After welcoming me, he immediately asked, “Didn’t they tell you about your new assignment?”

“No details,” I answered, hiding confusing.

He chortled and gestured. “We’re going to make you big. Then you an help monitor the maze and guide people through it.”

Those words completely confused me but I reigned that it and responded with a respectful, “Sir?”

Seeing my confusion, he continued smiling and answered, “You’ll see.”

The next I knew, I was very large. I guess I was twenty-five feet high and proportionately as broad as a fit young man. No longer appearing as I had, I’d lost my mustache, and was very pale skinned, with short, razor-cut hair. My clothing and shoes were now tight black pants, a tight white tee shirt, and black canvas shoes.

And I was in a maze.

Lined with white cement, the waist rose to about my waist. The walls were about a foot thick. I could see people wandering through the maze. I then understood, oh, I’m supposed to be helping them because they can’t see where they are, nor where they should go. Others large individuals, like me, male and female, of various ethnicities were finding lost individuals and calling out directions abut where to go.

Finding a young woman near me in the maze, I began doing the same.

Dream end

I often have dreams which focuses on my military career. I always think of it as a subconscious yearning for that period of life, which was ordered and structured, but also full of purpose and direction.

The twists, of needing shoe laces, and then becoming a large person, helping others through a maze, were quite unique in my dream experiences. I arrived at the conclusion that I’m trying to tell myself that I’m worrying about something which doesn’t matter, and that I’m ‘bigger’ than that. It’s not others I’m helping through the maze, but myself.

Or The Neurons were yet again just messing with me.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: spirited

The crescendo you might have heard earlier today was Tuesday, October 17, 2023, arriving. We’ve now passed half of the tenth month. Many are gearing up for the holiday season to launch.

It’s 53 F in Ashlandia, where the animals are feted and the people drink coffee all day. It feels curiously warm and pleasant. Forecasters expect our temperatures to crest at 71 F. We may see another degree or two at our house. Where and how we’re situated in relation to mountains and sunshine often results in a little more heat found in my space.

Beautiful out there, though, with stingy white clouds drifting through a strong azure sky and an invigorating sun.

A friend forwarded some humor to me. I plucked a few out for your morning jollies. They seem relatable to modern life and might distract us some from the wars and political messes swirling through October.

I’m feeling much better today. It’s been days since I’ve had any energy. This illness drained and wearied me, and became a stanch reminder of how often we don’t appreciate things until they’re gone. In my case, it was energy, willpower, clear thinking, and being pain free. I hope I never reach that state on a regular basis. So many people live like that with diseases and sickness. I saw it regularly when I visited Mom and witnessed her enduring and coping with multiple issues.

I also see it with my buddy, Larry, who lives on an oxygen bottle these days, Most painfully, I see it in my wife as she fights with flares of pain and stiffness delivered by her auto-immune issues. I took my own decent health too much for granted.

The Neurons have “Love Will Keep Us Together” looping in the morning mental music stream (Trademark flabbergasted). Although Neil Sedaka was co-writer and originally released it, I have the Captain and Tennille cover from 1973. As I said the last time I shared this song, back in 2018, it’s not my style but it was being played frequently on the radio stations where I lived, so I heard it all the time. I don’t know what prompted The Neurons to bring it out of the music vault but I fear I must play it for others or it will keep going around my head.

If you read a previous post this week, you might remember that my wife and I couldn’t remember what I thought I might buy Mom for her birthay. Well, one happy tidbit is that my wife pulled enough out for me to recall all the details. See, two brains are better than one.

The converasation was about genealogy. We were specifically talking about the Mayflower and William Brewster. Three of us are related to him via DNA. In my case, he would be my great-grandfather by ten. From that conversation, I thought buying Mom a gift to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. I wonder if they shorten that to ‘the society’ or ‘the descendants’ in private conversations?

Stay positive, be strong, and keep optimistic. I’m up for coffee. Anyone else?

Here’s the music. Cheers

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The Twelve Powers Dream

Last night’s featured dream included me as a young man. I put myself in my early twenties, with thick brown hair, my brown military ‘stach, tight skin, and a fit physique. Wasn’t in the military, but looked like me when I was in the military.

However, I wasn’t using my real life name. Instead of Michael, I was Richard when I was male, but also knew my name as Adley when I was female. I never was female in the dream, but I knew that as my female name, because I sometimes became a female.

I didn’t know anyone else’s name in the dream.

It began, strangely, with an awakening. I’d been busy with some undefined matters when recent memories were unearthed. From them, I realized that I’d been part of a project. In this project were twelve people who had special powers to change things. That included changing reality by modifying the past, present, and future. We collaborated in various ways as a team of twelve.

The twelve were male and female, insofar as I knew, and all young people into their mid-twenties. We didn’t all usually work at the same place and time, though.

We did wear a sort of uniforms, black pants with a square green tunic. I don’t think I knew the others’ names because the project didn’t want us to develop relationships.

The Project’s goal was to fix things that had gone wrong with the world. When I was part of it, we’d restored water to drought areas, and used our powers to collect trash from the sea and destroy it. To do this effectively, we’d be located in separate locations. This was based on the project’s calculations of how to best accomplish our goals. Everything was sharply compartmentalized.

From my new memories, I understood that the twelve had been reduced to seven. I’d been part of the seven. That was done because the released five didn’t work with us. Their ideas about how to fix the world didn’t match with the rest of us.

Then I learned that I’d been cut, along with all but one. After we’d been cut, access to our memories about the project were curtailed. Apparently, those memories were now restored because there was a problem with the project.

When everyone was cut, a three-year-old toddler was retained. This child had a remarkable ability to remake the world. More powerful than the rest of us powers, project management had concluded that one power was easier to guide, especially since this was a child.

I’d never known there was a child on the project. I usually worked alone, so I was immensely surprised.

Unfortunately, as the child’s powers exponentially grew, the toddler became willful, and, well, evil and destructive. They were doing whatever they wanted; the course the child followed would soon destroy the world. Stopping him was why I and five more were brought back.

We were watching this curly-haired white child as I remembered this information.

Realizing what was happening, I pulled a handgun. As the others gaped, without hesitating, I shot the child.

My peers were horrified. A woman said, “You shot him. You shot a child. Why do you even have a gun?”

“For things like this,” I retorted. “But it didn’t do much. Look.”

All six of us with powers were watching. In the men’s clothing section of a carpetted department store, the power child, shot through the chest, was staggering around between clothing racks filled with dark suits, but not bleeding. I was shocked and sickened.

“We can’t kill him,” another power said.

That confirmed what I’d guessed. I’d read the project manual. Killing us, the powers, if necessary was listed in one section, if that’s what it took if something went wrong. I believed that the project had already attempted to kill the child before they brought the rest of us back.

I suggested to the other five powers that I grapple with the child, power to power. Two others with powers mocked and criticized the idea. One, a male, said, “You can’t. Your powers aren’t not as strong as him.”

“I agree,” I answered, “my powers aren’t as strong, but they’re pretty good. Plus, I’m older than him, with more experience, and I think I’m smarter than him.”

“Still,” another power, a female said, “you can’t beat him.”

Impatiently I shook my head, irritated that they didn’t grasp what I was thinking. “I don’t want to beat him. I just want to stall and distract him so that the project and the rest of you can figure out how to stop him.”

“I’ll help you,” another male power said. “Two must be better than one.”

I agreed. At that point, the child charged us. With a hand wave, he brought the building smashing down.

Instantly countering, I restored the building and flipped the child upside down. I knew the child always worked through other things. Directly working him instead of things around him, would delay and distract him, in my reasoning.

Grasping what I was doing, the power helping me spun the child and wrapped in layers of clothing. Soon he was the center of a ball of shirts, pants, and suits.

Unfortunately, that’s where the dream ended.

Awakening, I thought a great deal about the dream. While flattering to be cast as someone with power to change the world, I thought it a manifestation of wishful thinking, given the course of recent world events and our inability to take decisive action on global problems. The child represents those who would destroy the world without concern for themself or anyone in the world.

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

I’d been sitting and writing for almost ninety minutes. The coffee was cold, the mug almost empty.

My rear end requested a break. I agreed that it was a good time to break, so my rear end and the rest of my body went for a walk.

Sunshine flooded the area as I left the coffee shop. Within a minute, heavy rain began descending. My head whipped around in search of a rainbow. None spotted.

A woman was coming up the sidewalk in the opposite direction. Slowing as she reached me, she asked, “Where’s the rainbow? I see sunshine and rain. There’s gotta be one.”

Laughing and nodding, I answered, “I looked and didn’t see one.”

She resumed her previous pace. “Well, there’s gotta be one out there, and I wanna see it.”

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Monday’s Wandering Thought

I’m a regular at one coffee house in town. There are other regulars but I’m told that I’m one of the most consistent and dependable. I spend a few hours a day in there, drinking my favorite black brew while sitting in the corner, writing.

The baristas and manager all know me just because I’ve been coming here so long, and we chat when I’m ordering. We talk about football, politics, books, news, movies, etc. They know my drink — it’s always the same — so ordering is not necessary, though paying is. It isn’t unusual for them to hand me my drink when I step up to order.

I suppose this is why one small but touching practice has evolved. For whatever reasons — miscommunication or mistake — they’ll end up with food that the customer they made it for doesn’t want it. This includes pastries, cookies, brownies, cake, and sandwiches. So often, they walk across the crowded room to offer it to me first.

I am touched but usually turn it down. I have more than enough to eat. While I appreciate it, I think there are others who would appreciate, enjoy, and need it more than me. And, when I turn it down, they do find another who wants it.

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Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

Austin is gone. I haven’t seen him in days.

Austin showed up earlier in 2023. Just after spring, is what I think. A white man in his mid-twenties, he appeared to be in good health. About 6′ 2″, his hair was bright, shiny copper. His shoulders were broad but he was otherwise lean, but didn’t seem very musular. His clothes, usually green or gray, the sort worn for hiking, were in excellent condition. A large backpack rested on his shoulders and back.

My interactions with him were brief and superficial. I nodded to him once and said, “Hello.” He didn’t answer. I held the door open for him another time and was rewarded with, “Thank you.” Thank you is the most I ever heard him say to anyone.

Quickly becoming a daily regular, Austin usually requested water or ordered tea. His voice was low, with a soft tone. I rarely heard him order, but saw the tea or water. He never spoke to other patrons and sat alone, sipping his drink and listening to his phone through earphones. He didn’t have a regular seat, as I do. He sat wherever there was space, stripping off his huge backback and setting it on the floor beside him. People tried to give him money several times; he always rejected it.

His routine presence intrigued me. I like watching people and observing matters. Regulars and their habits are like a weird hobby for me, which I call ‘coffee shop spotting’. I have made several friends in this way. I’ve often included aspects of what I observe in my fiction writing.

Since we’re located close to the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT), I speculated that Austin was walking it and stopping in Ashland for a break. Many hikers pass through here in that way. They’re a normal, regular sight. Many stock up on supplies, rest and clean up, pick up mail, and receive packages. I figured Austin was doing these things.

But one week became two, and two weeks expanded into several months. Austin spent the entire summer in Ashland, walking Ashland Street with his pack on his back, stopping at the coffee shop, and then going back out and walking down the street again. I never saw him anywhere else. I don’t know where he slept. He always presented a neat and clean impression.

Now he’s gone. I never met him but I worry about him. He’d become part of my daily landscape. I asked the coffee shop workers if they knew any more about him; no. Several shared my concerns and had made many of the same questions. Austin never elaborated to him about any of his plans and situation. I know that local homeless individuals tried becoming his friend, but he rebuffed him, too.

I hope he’s okay, and that he’s not same killer or something on the run, and that whatever brought him spend the summer in Ashland has been resolved in his favor. Maybe there never was anything. Perhaps he was just taking time out from his life for a while.

It shouldn’t be important to me; other people have come and gone. It’s that Austin was a regular but an enigma. That made him a puzzle.

Now he’s gone but the puzzle remains, probably never to be solved. I hope he wasn’t injured or hurt. In my mind, I’ve sent him back to the world where he started. He’s resumed his life, and is back in college.

One can hope.

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