The Cougar Dream

I awoke in the dream in a bed. As I sat up, I realized a young cougar had walked in from outside. Before I could do anything, it jumped up on the bed and came to me. I was freaking but urged myself to relax and stay calm.

My wife entered the room and gasped. “That a cougar?”

“Yes,” I quietly answered. “Don’t move fast. It’s pretty chill. Don’t do anything to upset it.”

The cougar was sniffing me and sometimes licking me. Wasn’t real big, about the size of a small large dog, if you follow. It wasn’t threatening me.

My wife said, “I’m going to back up back into the bathroom and close the door.”

“Do it slow,” I replied.

She did. The cougar spent several more minutes with me and then left through the door. I gathered from what I saw in the dream that I was in a living room sofa sleeper and the front door was open on the other side of the room. When the cougar left, I hurried out after it with an intention of warning others. The cougar meandered along the sidewalk, literally sniffing the flowers, along with other things, and then went down a hill away from the place through thick foliage.

I went back and dressed, and my wife and I walked down the sidewalk to the dining room. My sisters and brothers-in-law were there, so we told them about what had happened. As I finished telling the story, my older sister came in and listened. Giving a hand wave, she said, “Oh, that’s just Leslie.” She explained that Leslie was a young cougar who lived here. He never bothered anyone.

I was mildly indignant that she was so blase about my cougar encounter and that she’d known about this cougar and didn’t say anything.

Dream end.

Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

I watch people cross the street and they’re indifferent. All ages and genders. Car coming? So? Hit me or stop. Your call, their actions proclaim.

Yeah, and I’ve been in those days, walking and thinking, I don’t care. Hit me. I’m fine with that today. I think most of us have been at that nadir.

The Land Dream

I never saw any person in this dream. At a high elevation, I was looking and across a shallow valley. It was hazy with distance but I made out places terraced with book stones. Ponds dotted the landscape, along with colored patches such as pink, magenta, yellow, and various greens and browns, where I knew things were growing.

A voice said to me, “Take what you want. It’s all yours.”

I replied, scoffing, “I don’t need all of that.”

They insisted, “Take what you want.”

So, I took it all. Then I broke it up and gave it away to others, including family, friends, and strangers. I kept one small piece for myself, and that made me happy.

Insightful Pieces

Over at Salon, Chauncey DeVega has an excellent piece on the state of Trump. The article is called, “Donald Trump is suffering from a severe case of political whiplash”. Culling information from multiple news sources and events, DeVega brings it together with intelligent analysis.

The gist is that Donald Trump, master of destructive tactics, can’t find a new handle to attack the Harris -Walz campaign. Flailing, his desperation is showing.

First, there’s the fake crowd angle. Trump is accusing the Harris – Walz campaign of using AI to create fae crowds. Brief but sharp, Chauncy DeVega brings in Jonathan Chait commentary from New York Mag. to demonstrate how Trump has fallen into a deep well of demented thinking.

“Trump is literally claiming Harris spoke before an empty room, created a false impression of a large crowd, with the participation of the national media that reported on the event as it occurred. He then bootstraps this ludicrous assertion into the charge that Harris is stealing the election and ‘should be disqualified.’ The most important thing about this Trump claim is that it confirms once again that he is both completely demented — the fake-crowd theory is less plausible than the notion NASA faked the moon landings — and totally unwilling to abide by the democratic rules of the road. It has become tedious to say so, but supporting his candidacy, even if you prefer his policies on taxes or regulation, in any way is deeply irresponsible.”

I have friends who announced that they are voting for Trump to save them from taxes. Deeply in debt, medical professionals, they want to pay less in taxes. We believe a large part of this is that they’re living the live style they think they deserve, even though they lack the means to support it. They despise Trump as a person, they claim, but they want the tax breaks his presidency might bring him. I think it’s sadly shallow and delusional logic to employ when so many other matters of government, freedom, and democracy are also at stake.

In her post, “Finally! A Reason to Smile!”, Jill Dennison shares another thoughtful Dan Rather article about the positive energy that seems to radiate from the Harris – Walz campaign. I’ve observed this several times, and, man, I just love it. I hope it can be sustained. It seems real, natural, authentic, and other words from a thesaurus.

Rather begins, “For the past nine years Americans have been subjected to a political reality suffused with anger and acrimony. Ever since Donald Trump entered the political arena, he has been in fighting mode. His anger is ever present. For many of us, it’s also incredibly tiring. Almost a decade on, the act is getting — like Trump — a little old and a lot stale. And if it was possible, this time around the former president is angrier than before. His temperament has hung over our nation like a persistent dark cloud.

Yes, that anger, that constant assault on everyone and anything that is not unflinchingly PRO-TRUMP and serving his ego to make him feel better about himself sickens me. I reached a point at least a year ago when I did not want to hear Trump’s voice, see his face, or endure more of his lies and outright bullshit. The Harris – Walz is one hundred eighty degrees from Trump. I sincerely believe their approach is the change the nation desperately needs.

The political situation is shifting, in my opinion. That doesn’t mean that Vice President Kamala Harris will win. It does mean I’m hopeful. As we’ve all witnessed and Charles Sykes is warning, even if Trump loses the election, he will not go with dignity and grace. He’ll go down like a spoiled child screaming about a toy being taken away from him. As he did in 2021, he will try to mobilize his base to overturn the results. He will scream for Republican politicians to challenge the results. He will demand that his right-wing buddies at the Supreme Court intervene and declare him the winner. He will encourage discord and chaos with a bellowing, belligerent voice, lying to make it seem like he speaks the truth.

Because, as it’s been shown over the last eight years, that is the character of Donald J. Trump, former President of the United States, and now a convicted felon.

Vote Blue.

The Wife’s Colors Dream

First, I had this dream about sharing my apple pie with a young woman. As she was eating my crust, my wife came along. I went off to talk to her.

My wife and I ended up in what seemed to be a living room. Other family members were vaguely int the area. But my wife came to me and said, “I want you to look at my colors and tell me what you see.”

And I was all, “Huuuhhh?”

Other than being Caucasian as my wife, this dream wife didn’t look at all like RL wife, even though she’d started out as RL wife. Her hair was darker, heavier, and longer, and she had this pale, long, face with bright red lippy.

Second, she was dressed like a goth.

Third, she was holding up some kind of panel in front of her.

I thought the panel was a mirror at first. Then I saw that it reflected with nothing but swirled with images that reminded me of melting steel. I was trying to answer my wife’s request to tell you what colors I was seeing and describe her clothes, skin, and hair. She unleashed a heavy exasperated sigh at me and said, “Not those colors.”

Then I saw the mirror thingy was changing. Yellows and oranges were emerging, along with lesser spots of apple green and pine green. There was also a stretched out blotch of purple that was so dark, it was almost black.

I described these things to her, and then, somehow, I knew the colors had to do with her health, and told her, “I think you can change these colors. Just think of the color that you want to be, and that’ll happen.”

She was doubtful but almost immediately, a soothing fair blue swept across the mirror.

Dream end.

Friday’s Wandering Thought

I watched a crane fly in my house. You know them? Many people mistakenly call the mosquito eaters because they look like giant mosquitos.

Like many of them that I’ve observed inside, this one was banging against the wall, bouncing off and flying back into it.

I thought, what a life. What a way to spent your time.

Then I realized how many people are like that crane fly, doing the same thing over and over again, never learning, never changing.

The Russian Military Dream

I had a cavalcade of dreams last night. One stood out more strongly than the rest. I was in the military for over twenty years. Not infrequently, I find myself in the military again in dreams. It was so again last night.

In this one, I’d been selected for a new position. I was an E7 master sergeant, which is what I retired as. My predecessor, training me, was an E9 chief master sergeant. He was telling me that this position was a catapult to promotion if I do it right, and he thought I’d do it right. Hearing all that pleased me.

Then he gave me a black attaché case. “You’ll always be carrying this,” he said. “You are now the Russian nuke guy. That’s what everyone will start calling you.”

I’d had some idea of what I’d be stepping into even though it’d been a pretty close-hold process. They’d checked my security clearance and records, noted that I’d been on the Personnel Reliability Program because I’d controlled nukes. My top-secret clearance with all the tags of SI, SCI, TK and TQ that came with being associated with a covert intelligence program pleased them, too. Now I got why.

The Chief was explaining that I would be regularly briefed about anything and everything associated with Russia’s nuclear weapons. Locations, capabilities, changes, updates, whatever. Everything from personnel, process, and equipment. I’d be told everything, constantly. The idea was that I would be the national command authority’s primary go-to if any questions about Russia’s nukes came up.

Then he began taking me around offices, introducing me as ‘the new Russian nuke guy’, explaining that I was replacing him. Everyone shook my hand and welcomed me.

The dream ended while I was still in that process.

I have no idea what it all means but I found it weirdly reassuring, because I’d been selected. I was needed. That kind of thing feels validating, you know?

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