Dreamy Advice

Once again, my dream life has been active.

The first ‘remembered’ dream amuses me. As a loud voice spoke from some unseen space, I was told, “Drink more water.” The visual accompanying it showed me in a dark place, pissing like a race horse.

Okay, I’ll drink more water.

The other dream…hmm. I had three dreams with the same characters and message.

I was part of a group. Dressed in suits and ties, I was aware that others were present but only actually knew of myself and my leader, who was my boss, in one group. The other group was just one person, the boss, also in a business suit.

Each of these dreams were variations of the same scene and message. Each time, my group was told to report to the boss because something wasn’t going as expected. Each time, my immediate boss, in my group, would, with deadpan humor, assure the rest of us that it wasn’t anything to worry about because his boss didn’t know what was going on, and that we’re not to worry about it.

Then we would go in, as directed and meet with the boss. Dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt, his sleeves would be rolled up. He wore a tie but the tie would be loose. He would be at a desk and at once launched in a profane condemnation of what was going on, mocking our attempts to “change,” while decrying our ignorance, stupidity and general witlessness.

My immediate boss listened with aplomb and then dismissed him by saying, “You’re living in the past. You don’t know what’s going on. You will never know.” That infuriated his boss, even while it delighted me.

As I said, I had variations of this same dream three times, awakening after each time and thinking about it. I was amused by my dream’s direct approach about needing change.

It’s given me a lot to think about. Meanwhile, I need to drink a glass of water.

January 15, 2017 0

Today’s Theme Music

Look at that light. Smell that air: inhale; exhale.

Smells like the eighties doesn’t it? Yeah, I thought so, too.

Does it ever happen to you, that you wake up refreshed from a delicious night of sleep and you feel so young, that you feel like a different person, that you feel like a younger person?

Yeah, me, neither.

But I awoke thinking about the 1980s. I had a good time in that era. So how ’bout a little Pat Benatar. Let’s go back with her to those days before the Internet captured us.

I choose this song because its beat and pop-culture music craft. Once again, I’d never seen this video before, as with many others I share here, and honestly, watching it, I cringe. But it’s a good song to sing to yourself, walking around or sitting around, gathering strength to do things. Sing to yourself, “We are strong.”

Here is ‘Love Is A Battlefield’ from 1983.

January 14, 2017 0

Today’s Theme Music

Ah, it’s Friday. Are you comfortably numb? Will a couple Davids help?

Here is Davids Bowie and Gilmore, addressing the question of our numbness in 2006, doing the Pink Floyd classic in concert.

January 13, 2017 0

Today’s Theme Music

I don’t think times were ever simpler in my lifetime. They were complicated and busy, and got more complicated and busy. But I nostalgically remember a time when I was younger and matters were simpler for me. They were most likely because I was young and not burdened with a life of personal history and adult choices. That doesn’t matter; I still enjoy remembering them.

That brings out the young Billy Joel for me. He seemed to come out of nowhere in 1973, and was definitely not the sort of music I usually listened to, which was dominated by Pink Floyd, the Who, Frank Zappa, the Stones, ZZ Top…you get it. But a zeitgeist of folk rock seemed to sweep pop-culture in that, my high school junior year, and Billy Joel became entrenched on the airwaves.

Here is ‘Piano Man’.

January 12, 2017 0

Today’s Theme Music

I had a Flock of Seagulls song lined up for today but we have a last minute substitution. After last night’s series of dreams, I’m going with the Rolling Stones.

Here is ‘Get Off of My Cloud’, from 1965.

January 10, 2017 0

Today’s Theme Music

A little late but what the hell. It’s still the ‘Edge of Seventeen’. Although the song’s creation was inspired by Jane Petty’s story about meeting Tom Petty, and then further defined by the loss of her uncle and John Lennon in the same week in December, 1980, Stevie Nick’s song is about change, exploration and maturation. It’s about what, too, matters, and how so much can pivot in an instant to become the only thing that matters. I think it’s an appropriate song for the ninth day of the new year, 2017.

I’d never seen this video before. I guess it was released in 1982, when the song came out. Things were different then, my friends. That was the hair of the era, though.

January 9, 2017 3

Starry Dream

It was a trip of dream, setting itself up and apart from all the other dreams. Not long, nor very detail.

My perspective was outside of myself, so I could see me. It was a younger me, in a tan Member’s Only jacket so popular in the 1980s.

I was in a place I first thought of it as a void but I believe that’s incorrect. It wasn’t a void. It was in space, though, but there was gravity and I had no problems breathing. I was standing on something but it defied my senses to know what I stood upon.

A little old man was present, opposite me, essentially a bearded, robed, bespectacled fellow of cream-in-coffee complexion. He had an aura of age with a sense of being timeless. He was moving stars around.

I watched. He would move stars and then look off. Down, to the right, toward the world, to my left. I realized he was moving the stars and showing me the impact. I was delighted. “He’s helping me cheat,” I said to myself. Then I realized he wanted me to do as he was doing.

So I reached for a star.

I had to spread my arms as wide as I could to envelop the star. Glowing with soft golden light and shaped like an old-fashioned star on a Christmas tree, it was comfortable to hold, and very light. I moved it and then stepped back to see my work in the constellations. I was pleased and amazed. He was nodding while smiling encouragement.

He pointed back down toward the planet. I looked down and saw the changes I made. I knew I was doing that but my perspective only allowed me to see my dream self looking down. I couldn’t see what he saw, but I was laughing.

I thought, “How cool is this? He’s helping me re-arrange the stars.” I construed it to mean I was changing my fortunes, and that really excited dream me and watching me.

I think it’s a good dream to begin a new year.

January 3, 2017 0

The Changeover

I’d been paying a lot of attention. Obnoxious noise and behavior tends to cause that in me. Probably from hanging with cats.

This old, bewhiskered guy was weaving around the ballroom, bouncing off and over furniture and people. Shouting matches would explode as some took offense and yelled obscenities. Several fights almost erupted.

What the fuck? I kept thinking. What the fuck? I hadn’t seen the guy drink anything but he was stumbling and had become ‘the old drunk’ in my conversations with my friends and other patrons. He’d been doing it all night but it was clearly worsening as the hours progressed. Looking like a bum and smelling horrendous, personal demons surely stalked him. As I wined, dined, partied and danced, I kept an eye on him, creating his personal story from snippets overheard.

They were easy to overhear. From them, I decided, this is one who is without friends, someone unloved. He was clearly ‘down on his luck’. I figured, he must be unemployed and speculated, which had happened first? Drinking — or perhaps, drug — problems? Or the unemployment? Or something else, like personal loss?

“The worse,” he shouted at a late hour. “They think I’m the fucking worse. That is such bullshit. It’s bullshit.” Slumping back against the bar, he kept whispering, “Bullshit,” while staring at interior moments.

People had given him space. He was close. Strands of thin, unwashed gray hair hung off his head. His face, thought tilted down and shadowed, was etched against the lights. Snot dripped form his nose tip. His cheeks were weathered in the manner of fallen, worn oak. Poorly healed scars crossed that skin. A long gray and white beard, worthy of being described as withered brambles, drooped from his jaw and draped down his chest. I couldn’t tell his eye colors but those eyes were weary and bleary. He’d once been big but now he was shriveled. I wondered, what shrivels a person so? In that face and those eyes, I thought I also saw…hate…and indifference, a remarkable blend to notice in another.

A man in a white robe and hood went up and offered a consoling hand to the old drunk. The old drunk tried shaking it off, movement that caused him to almost fall over. He caught himself. The other tried helping. “I don’t need no fucking help,” the old drunk roared with sneering drunkenness. “I don’t need no one’s fucking help.”

“It’s almost midnight,” someone shouted. A ragged countdown began, gaining strength and harmony as the last five seconds were called out. As the clock struck the hour, a trio of security guards scythed through the crowd and across the room to the old man. A human wall formed around the meeting. I jostled for space to see what was happening.

Tears streaked down the old drunk’s face. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “What happened? What happened?”

Recognition came to me. Twenty-sixteen,” I said, disbelieving. He didn’t look anything like the year I’d met twelve months ago. I hunted confirmation. People were exclaiming, “Yes, you’re right, it’s the old year.”

“Time to go,” one colossal guard said, firmly gripping the old drunk’s forearm.

Shaking his head, the old drunk muttered. His head shaking seemed more like denial than it was protest. He was crying. His pain touched me. “Let him stay,” someone suggested.

I turned toward the voice. He was wearing a Cubs hat and jersey. “He’s not so bad,” the man said as others considered him.

Smiles of understanding flitted through the gathering. A film star stepped up to help the old drunk, followed by musicians, and then an elderly man with orange skin and blonde hair.

“Let’s go,” a guard said to Twenty-sixteen. “It’s time.”

Accompanied by a coterie of disparate classes, the guards guided Twenty-sixteen across the quiet room to the exit. The Cubs guy looked sadly introspective while that orange-skinned freak was grinning, an ugly look. Of course, I couldn’t see what the man in the white hood looked like.

Silent tension held us until they were out the door and it closed. Relief flowed across the room like fresh winter air through an open window. “I’m glad he’s gone,” someone said. Others tittered.

The lights went off, dropping us into darkness. “Ladies and gentlemen,” an announcer said over the loudspeakers. “Please welcome the new year.”

The lights went up. Twenty-seventeen bound into the room like an unleashed young dog. “Teenagers,” people said, laughing and clapping.

“Looks like a greet year,” others said as Twenty-seventeen ran around the room, slapping hands with well-wishers. Cheers rose.

“I hoped they’re right,” I said into my drink, eager to finish it off and hop off to bed. But I chanced to look across the room in time to see the man in the white robes and the smirking, squinting orange-faced man enter, and I wondered.

An aura of dark satisfaction seemed to embrace them.