Ah, Another Military Dream
I was a younger man, actually my age when I retired from the military in RL. I was dressed in a common uniform of the day, the woodland camouflage battle dress that I often wore.
I’d been invited back for a visit. In most of my assignments, contact was limited to a dozen people in a unit; I worked in a command post, one to three people to a shift, locked in a vault-like space. No windows, one door, eight to twelve hours a shift. People weren’t allowed in without proper clearance, previous approval, and a reason to be there. We were often armed, in case someone who didn’t fit those parameters broke in.
But there was one unit where I worked regularly with aircrews, the training staff, admin, etc. Everyone had access to me, and me to them. This was the unit where I felt closest to my co-workers.
These were the people I was back visiting. We’d been a covert intelligence unit back in the day, but the Berlin Wall fell, the USSR collapsed, and our mission ended. I went back to the US to Space Command. Many in that unit went on to special ops, gunships, or on loan to do drug interdiction on behalf of the DEA. It was this last that was going on in the dream.
We were outside in a large field. I was back by special invitation to watch a military operation, and people from then were back by invitation to see me. Several came back and told me what they’d done since we’d last seen one another thirty years ago. One of the last, Capt. Z, said, “I think it’s time for me to go.” He was hesitant to speak. I said, “No, you’re too young. You still have more to give.”
He shrugged. “I think it’s time. I don’t have a choice.”
He left. The operation progressed. An officer said, “Now Priscilla will explain how the unit coordinates with other agencies to intercept and track illegal drug activities.” Priscilla began leading several squadrons of personnel in military uniforms across a wide street.
As I watched that, I realized that it was Priscilla, a RL friend from my current era, a college professor who had never been in the military. I thought, why is she here?
Dream end.
Floofvision
Floofvision (floofinition) – 1. An added layer of telecommunications visible and audible to animals but beyond human comprehension.
In use: “Boo and Oliver enjoy sitting by the television, watching floofvision, which brings them up-to-date infloofmation about animals, new floofnology, and general enterfloofment.”
2. Formally, an organization founded by a woman to end animal abuse.
In use: “Raven tells everyone everywhere, whomever and wherever she meets them, about Floofvision and her goal of a world free of animal abuse. Humans are starting to pay attention, but the animals are beginning to flock toward her as a new Floofsiah.”
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Today is Wednesday, March 23, 2022. I’m still processing my friend’s death yesterday, Mike. It’s remote and abstract to me at this point, astonishing and bewildering. My neurons follow paths for what it must be like in Ukraine as people lose their friends and loved ones suddenly to gunfire and explosion. That life is so treasured to us, that people’s deaths leave such gaping holes, that we work so hard on medicine and health, exercising and dieting to prevent sickness and death, and then that humans kill one another for bizarre fucking reasons when other avenues of co-existence are available, renders me to sighs and head shaking.
A faded azure sky embraces the sun. Full spring is in effect. Sunrise came at 7:09 AM and sunset will take at 7:26 PM. It’s 56 degrees F right now, on its way to a 68 F high. Should be a lovely day.
My beer group is meeting tonight. Mike was a large part of that. Plans had been made for me to hand off a book that was loaned to me, giving it to Mike because he was visiting with the book’s owner. Now, change.
Meanwhile sick cat steadily declines. Eating is next to impossible for him due to tumors. I have the back door open, and he made his way out to sit in the sunshine on the patio. Papi has made a solid recovery. I had the door open yesterday afternoon, and that boy galloped in and out, tail up, playing hide and seek with me. Tucker is solidly recovered, too, reclaiming his space on the bed by my head last night, talking to me this morning about his food and drink requirements, and eating with gusto.
My cheeky neurons are playing Del Shannon’s “Runaway” from 1961 in the morning mental music stream. I was five when it came out, but it was a big hit and part of the AM rock and roll rotation for years.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax.
Quasi-Military Dream
I dreamed that I was in a class, being taught quality management and statistical process control. I’m familiar with these things as I was taught them in the military as part of my career’s final leg, becoming the Quality Air Force Advisor to my unit commander, while I was teaching others, and helping units and groups with QAF initiatives. Although QAF is considered a failure because it became abused and misunderstood, my base achieved impressive success with instituting changes. Or maybe I just want to remember it through rosy glasses. Either way, I received multiple accolades and wide recognition for that stuff.
Taking the course in the dream, I became amused, because I was intimate with the subject. I was the age that I really was when I did those things, a quarter century past. The instructor said that since I seemed to know the material, why don’t I do a presentation in the next class? So I prepared for it, developing slides. As I did, my dream self remembered the real details, a fascinating process to watch. I told the other students that this is about PDCA – Plan, Do, Check, Adjust, and showed them the cycles, and how people can naturally fit them into their lives and their organizations, and how creating organization and a personal vision can work with PDCA to improve your situation. As with everything, mindfulness, balance, and discipline are needed.
It all went well. I think the dream was a subconscious exertion of conscious wishes to be part of a better time for me personally, when I was surer of the world, who I was, and where I was going.
The All-Male Dream
To begin, we were in a huge, pale gray auditorium. A long and low empty stage, softly lit with white light, is across the front. The seating is set up in blocks that are thirty wide and twenty deep. The blocks were three wide across the auditorium but I don’t know how many blocks it went back. Every seat was being filled. Filling it were men of all races, but of about the same age range, in our mid-thirties. All are dressed neat, in business casual. I wore black jeans and a long sleeve maroon dress shirt. We were excited and happy because we’d finished a course and were graduating. Seating myself in the third from last row in the middle front block, ten seats in from the left, I was impressed by the event’s sheer magnitude.
We’d seated ourselves, quieted, and were waiting for the speaker to arrive and begin when an argument emerges between two men. They’re out in one of the broad aisles between the blocks. I know both of them in the dream, though they weren’t familiar from RL. As the argument rose, it appeared it was going to escalate into a fight. I went out there and separated them, talking them down from fighting and arguing, encouraging them to return to their seats.
I returned to my seat and sat. The speaker, a man in a suit, came on stage and began talking. He surprised me by mentioning my name and citing me for my leadership. I was hugely surprised, flattered, and embarrassed — I always prefer to avoid attention.
Then, in a dreamshift, the ceremony is over. I get into a car with my father. The car is a gold sixties muscle car with a black vinyl top, chrome wheels, and chrome straight pipes. I don’t know the make or model but it was a two door. It remined me of a GM product, maybe a Chevelle.
Dad is driving. We’re going to another event. We’re on a divided highway, four lanes in either direction. Dad is driving fast, which doesn’t bother me — he and I always drive fast. The highway twists and turns, rising and falling as it follows the land, but we’re driving through a city.
We come up on another car in the left land. The car looks almost identical to the one we’re in. As I’m commenting on that, Dad pulls up close on the other car. The driver applies his brakes. That infuriates Dad. The other driver is pissed but moves right to let us pass. I note to Dad that the guy — a younger driver, who has rolled his window down and is shaking his fist — is angry. Dad says it’s because we’re faster.
As we go to pass this guy, we find our way blocked by a stopped brown UPS truck. As Dad goes to drive around it, we see head on traffic coming. We’re astonished; why is there traffic coming from the other direction? Then, I look and see that we’re on the wrong side of the highway. But how did that happen? It’s not possible because there is a cement barrier dividing the two directions.
A pause in traffic goes. We go around the stopped truck. Looking back, I see other cars following us.
A dreamshift brings me into a large courtroom. I’ve been empaneled as part of a jury. There are only men present. I’ve been accepted as a juror after passing an oral examination. Others are being questioned. It’s a festive atmosphere. I realize that I’m there to judge entries and award prizes.
Dream end.
The Designing Dream
First, a woman and I each were given a task to design a swimming pool. This was done in a wide building with low lights. I couldn’t see anything except our work. We each built one but came up with the same L design in off-white. We built them quickly. Along the way, we had lessons in ensuring seams were smooth and tight. Then it came time to fill it. I rolled a suitcase up to one side, inside the pool, jockeying it around on its wheels until I thought it perfectly parked. I then opened the suitcase and began pulling out clothing. I examined each piece, ensuring it was neatly folded, then piled the clothes around me. The clothes piles multiplied like rabbits during breeding season.
That segment ended. I was told that I need to come up with a new ear canal. I quickly devised one, put it in someone’s ear, then walked into it. The ear canal was straight, round, and light blue, but tapered as it went in, ending in the ear drum. “Oh,” I said, inspecting it. “It shouldn’t go straight back to the ear drum like that. The ear drum is left too exposed. Curves are needed to protect it.” Developing curves, the ear canal grew light pink. I backed out of it until I was standing beside a man looking into his ear.
A new segment began. I was at my aunt’s house. She’d had a new place designed and built, she said, effusively greeting me amid charming smiles. Many cousins were present, not just from that aunt, but from all my uncles and aunts on Dad’s side. I was about twenty. They were all eager to impress me and show me around. The setting seemed luxurious. Arched stained-glass windows lined the walls, along with paintings in gold frames. Dark green houseplants were everywhere. Dark green carpeting, and overstuffed leather chairs and a sofa arranged polished, dark wood end tables and coffee tables completed the setting. I could see into other rooms as well, glimpsing a long, polished dining table, part of a modern kitchen, and the side of a billiard table through an open doorway.
A cousin said, “Let me show you around.” In RL, this is a man who was four years younger than me, who died years ago, passing away in his forties from a heart attack as a pizza was delivered to him. This aunt wasn’t his mother, either; her youngest sister was the deceased cousin’s mother.
I asked where a specific room is. He answered, “That’s downstairs.” Seeing a staircase that went down, I confidently headed for it.
He caught up with me and asked, “What are you doing?”
I said, “You said that it was downstairs.”
“You can’t get to it from those stairs. Follow me.” He turned and led me up a staircase to an open area above everything. Looking down, I saw people with drinks engaged in conversations and milling about the rooms. My cousin pointed to another flight of stairs going down. “That’s how you get down.”
I said with some wonder, “You need to go up to get down?” I thought that was a strange design.
My aunt appeared beside me and nodded with a smile. “You need to go up to get down.”
The dream ended.
Michael Seidel, writer 