Tag: change

A Dream Snippet

I’ve been having many dreams each night. A short source yield three to six dreams a night, so I’m average. Maybe it seems like more because they’re vivid and intense, and I remember a lot of them — or so it seems. Remembering dreams always brings a challenge. Trying to remember them usually causes me to remember more of them, but then I get into this cycle of dreaming more, remembering more, dreaming more, until it seems like I’m taking a lot of conscious time thinking about the dreams. As with everything, a balance must be found and maintained.

I’m just going to highlight a series of scenes from one dream last night. Friends and I had gone to a club. I wasn’t in the military but many military peers were in the dream. They weren’t in the military any longer, either.

We were talking about DJs when we arrived. I’d heard one on the way while in my car, and thought he was great. I learned that he was going to be at the club. That excited me. I wanted to meet and speak with him, if I could. It was late in the afternoon/early in the evening. The club had only opened a short while before. Staff was still setting up. My friends and I were some of the first customers. As we walked about looking for a table, I heard the DJ’s voice. Saying, “Hey, that’s him,” I went to find him.

He and I almost ran into one another, earning me a resentful look from him. I apologized to him but he blew me off. Well, okay. Shrugging that away, I returned to my friends, who had now selected a table. A waitress came around with typewritten menus. Although there were many pages, there wasn’t much on them as offering, one or two items per page, and nothing that called to me. I thought I’d just order an appetizer and a beer.

Asking about what beer was available, I discovered that a young Penny Marshall was my server. My question about what beer was available seemed to upset her. As I preferred dark beers, I asked her what darks were available. Looking sour, she responded, “I’ll check.” Then she turned to take others’ orders.

She suddenly reverted her attention to me. “We have some new Sam Adams in.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll take a Sam Adams Octoberfest, if you have that.”

Penny looked upset again. Her companion — a young Cindy Williams — said to Penny soto voce, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” I was like, WTH? Why is Penny so upset? My friends and I joked about it after she left the table.

Some conversations took place about different topics. Then I was watching some people. Some were previous military I worked with. They were out now. Some were belligerent toward one another. Turning to comment to my friends, I discovered that I was alone at the table. There was silverware, and my beer, but there were gone.

Picking up the silverware and beer, I walked around. Finding that they moved to another table angered me. I tossed the silverware onto the table. It slide across and fell on the floor. That caught their attention. I then put my beer down and set six dollars on the table to pay for it. They were asking, “Something wrong?”

I replied, “Yeah, thanks for telling me you were moving. I appreciate it. I turned around and you were all gone. How did you expect that to make me feel?”

They were sort of chuckling and stammering apologies about pulling a bad prank, but I walked out, deciding that I didn’t need friends like them.

Outside, I entered my car. It was a cool, sunny evening, still early, Putting the top down, I took a drive, enjoying myself as the air flowed over me.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s song comes as a reflection on 2020 and its events. As I cogitated about what was and wasn’t, and what might be, I thought of how mojo rises and falls. What will the mojo be like in 2021?

All that thinking led me to a Cat Stevens song, “Wild World” (1970). I was fourteen when I heard the song. His singing tone spoke to me as it did a significant swath of my generation.

“But if you want to leave, take good care. I hope you have a lot of nice things to wear. But then a lot of nice turns bad out there.”

Yeah, you never know how things will turn. You can predict and plan, expect, hope, and pray. It often turns without warning, spurred by a sudden wind, a sharp word, a surprise pain, a shy glance, a quick smile, a brief hug. For want of a nail…

Have a good day. Stay positive, test negative, and wear a mask, please.

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A Packed Dream

I sorted out all the elements as a catalyst to remembering this convoluted nocturnal offering.

  1. Racing cars from the late 1960s and early 1970s.
  2. The mother of a childhood friend in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
  3. The television show Glee.
  4. My sports car that I drove in the 1990s.
  5. Co-workers from the early 2000s.
  6. A book store and change.
  7. The Vietnam war and the Huey gunship.
  8. Walking and driving.
  9. An embarrassing bathroom incident featuring an elderly Robert Duvall doppelganger.
  10. Sending a coded message.

It was a lot to take in. I dreamed this between 6 AM and 7:45, times that I was awoken to let Youngblood (Papi) out and in again. I was the same age, in my forties, throughout the dream.

Let’s begin the madness.

Started in traffic. I was in my black 1993 RX-7 R1. Highway was a undulating, rolling affair of six lanes filled with cars. It could have been El Camino Real along the Peninsula.

I saw bright cars up ahead. After some seconds of watching them accelerate and race through traffic, I decided that those were race cars. Downshifting, I accelerated to catch them, then I passed one; it was a 1966 Ford GT. Catching up with others, I saw a trio of Ford GT40s, then several Porsche 908s, a couple Ferraris, Porsche 917s in Gulf colors, and finally, Mark Donahue’s fabled Sunoco blue Porsche 917/30. Flabbergasted, I speculated, why are all these vintage race cars racing in traffic on a public road? Before I could fully catch them, a traffic light stopped me.

I was no longer in my car, but standing with a crowd of people, waiting for the light to change. It was a sunny day. When the light changed, we started walking forward. We were going up a large hill, paved, six lanes wide (three in each direction). A woman beside me said, “How do they expect us to walk up these hills when we’re not warned about them?” I thought that an odd complaint. Looking back, I realized I was having no problem with the hill, but everyone else was, and all were lagging far behind. Shrugging that off, I kept going.

Almost at the hill top, I turned into my destination, a shopping center. There was a book store that I wanted to visit. Entering, I hurried upstairs and then turned in what I remembered as the way. But it was changed; packed with books and bookshelves, tables and chairs, there were so many people and books that it was hard walking through. I gingerly managed to get through, then turned another corner, and found myself in a deadend.

I heard my name being called. As I wondered why anyone would be calling my name, I looked down and realized that my name was written on the tee shirt I wore. A young woman caught up with me. I recognized her as a co-worker from a company I worked at in the 2000s in Palo Alto.

She was asking me for information about a book. She knew some of the people I used to work with flew Huey Gunships in Vietnam. That baffled me; she didn’t work with any of those people. Also, those people were too young to have flown Hueys in Vietnam. A third man (black) came up, trying also to get through the book store. The three of us decided that there was only one door to take, so we would take it to reach the book store section that we wanted.

As we were about to leave, a black man hailed us. Identifying himself as the store manager, he told us that we couldn’t enter until people had left, because the store was too crowded. While we were talking to him, I looked out the window. Realizing where I was, I decided I would leave the store and approach the part I wanted from the outside. I took off to do so.

Now I was in a bathroom. I needed a bowel movement, so I copped a squat. People were watching me. One resembled an elderly Robert Duvall. Staring at me, he said, “Are you really going to do that here?” Thinking I was on a toilet, I replied, “Sure, why not?”

Then I realized that I was peeing on the floor. As I tried addressing that, I discovered that I was shitting in a urinal.

No, no, no! I was hugely embarrassed and recognized that I made an enormous mess. Well, hopping off the urinal, I found some paper towels and starting cleaning. Robert Duvall mocked me. “You’re going to clean this whole thing?” “Yes,” I answered.

My friends began helping me. As I cleaned piss off the upper walls, I realized that there was no way that I’d made all of this mess. Robert Duvall said the same. But I decided to keep cleaning until it was all clean, which I did with friends’ help. Robert Duvall grudgingly congratulated me on doing the right thing. I felt happy about that. Then my friends and I left.

I was out in a busy, busy place. I realized that a high-ranking military officer was coming here, but it wasn’t safe for him. I had a code that I could use to warn him off, but how would I get the code to him? It had to be surreptitious due to the situation.

I saw that some others were on a Zoom call. He was on that Zoom call, too, on the other end! I could write the code on a card or piece of paper and hold it up. As I worked, putting that all together, I did another assessment. Deciding that the threat had passed and the warning overcome by events, I left.

I was at my friend’s house in Penn Hills, PA. He wasn’t there, but his father was. He was coming down the steps as I was going up. I needed to wash my car. I crept into the house, a little concerned that I didn’t belong there, that I was invading someone’s private space. Upstairs, I found a bucket and soap and started filling the bucket with water at the sink. My friend’s mother (Lois) entered. The kitchen was messy, and another person was in there. I apologized for being there, stammering my way through that. She shrugged. “That’s okay. We’re making smoothies.” She held up two large glasses. Then she talked to the other person, asking him if they’d DVR’d Glee.

That threw me off. Lois had died in the eighties (cancer). Glee didn’t exist when she was alive. Neither did DVRs.

Leaving, I returned to my car (still my black RX-7), and then left to reach the bookstore.

Yeah, the end.

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Tuesday’s Theme Song

I was thinking about change. Part of this came as I watched NFL quarterback Tom Brady and wondered whether his skill sets and strengths are in decline. Part also came as I watched various politicians make statements.

Change comes. Some of the changes forced onto your body by nature and circumstance can’t be resisted. But damn we try. Some of us remember staying up late partying and studying, rushing to work, and then doing it all again. We remember thinking, “I’ll go for a run,” and taking off for three miles, letting the sweat pour out. The blaze of intensity of what we were fades until what we are flickers and sputters.

Gave me a chuckle, pondering those things. I know some who also shrug at being seventy and eighty. You’d never know their true age. Seems like it’s another spin of fates wheel, which way you’ll come out.

From all those morning mental maundering came a song about change and what was, Coldplay’s 2002 wistful tune, “The Scientist”.

Wear a mask, stay positive, and test negative. Cheers

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Such Screwy Dreams

My dreams left me laughing and shaking my head. One involved food and family; the second was about military and ID (again) (but with changes).

In the first, my stepfather was there. ‘He and I didn’t get along’ is a loaded understatement. He was a large part of the unhappiest part of my life.

I knew that history in my dream, and even wondered, what’s he doing here. But I tried making nice, and he was being nice. My wife was there (she’d never met him), along with a couple of my sisters, and my mother.

First, weirdly, we — my wife and I — set up a television connection with the net to watch porn. Really. The plan wasn’t mine in the dream, and left me scratching my head, but I did as told. Then, lo, my stepfather and family sat down and turned on that porn. They were all laughing, asking, what’s that?

It was a flat screen TV. Distracting them, I spun it around so they couldn’t see the screw. Then I ran to the bedroom. Lifting the bedskirt, I located switches to change what they could see on the television. Then I dashed back, and turned the television back to them.

As they watched television, my wife and I prepared food for ourselves in the other room. I was having a Philly cheese steak sandwich; she was having a veggie version.

We went outside to eat. The food was on a plate. The house was on a busy corner. Some people passing asked if they could have a sandwich, offering to pay for it. My wife said, “Yes,” while I was like, “What? Don’t we need permits?” She was certain that we didn’t. Well, my wife and I started making and selling the sandwiches. Sales were great. We were happy, and sold them until we ran out of supplies.

The dream ended as my wife laughed, counted cash, and joked about doing it again.

The next dream took on a military spin. We wife and I were in temporary quarters, leaving a base. I think we may have been leaving the military. Well, we’re in bed when the door bangs open. Two guys walk in. I leap out of bed and rush across the room to confront them. I’m not big; they’re a good six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier. But this is the military and I’m a senior NCO, and that’s the power I’m using. I brace them, telling them that this is my room and they have no business being there. They’re disagreeing, saying the rules changed. I haven’t heard about changes, so I don’t give a shit, you know?

But I tell my wife what they told me, that there’s been unspecified changes that shifts our roles. Then I go out to learn more. After a few minutes, I return and tell her, I’ve confirmed what I was told, that it’s changed. Sitting down, we discuss the changes and agree that they were overdue, but that they don’t really matter, because we were done, suggesting we were giving up our military ID cards.

Then we leave with our baggage, and the dream ends.

In both dreams, I notice that it’s about changes. In the first, my relationship with my stepfather changed. Then my wife and I were making food for ourselves, but changed and started making and selling food. In the military dream, of course, there were changes that seem to reference the structure and our roles.

Then again, my dreams are often about change these days.

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Evolflooftion

Evolflooftion (floofinition) – 1. The process by which how people’s thoughts change about animals.

In use: “He once thought that animals were dumb and soulless, but as Brenda’s father aged, evolflooftion and observation caused him to change his opinion, and he gave up hunting when he was sixty-two.”

2. A modification of a household situation regarding animals.

In use: “Through evolflooftion, they went from having a kitten (acquired before the first-born child) and then added a rescued dog, and then kept adding — hamsters, lizards, birds, turtles, and more cats and dogs — as more children were born into the family.”

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Saturday’s Theme Music

A 1980s power ballad burst into my head this morning. I was a little lethargic getting up. Not really looking forward to the day.

Seems like I’m in a rut. I don’t think I’m alone in that self-appraisal, not just in the U.S., but in many parts beyond our coastlines.

A large part of my malaise is the novel coronavirus who dances under several names, but most frequently appears as COVID-19. “Winter is coming,” George R.R. Martin has Ned Stark warning us. Up here in the northern climes, the daylight period is falling shorter. Night hangs on a little longer. With an overcast day like this one, there’s no daylight, just a pale grey nothingness to the sky.

I long for my old, comfortable routines. Man, am I a person of habit. I used to be flexible and adapt, but as I’ve aged, my processes have ossified. Change comes hard.

Different songs about change and attitude set the background to my dream reflections and morning routines, but then an absolutely obstinate cat – we call him Boo – crystallized the choice.

Here’s “Never Surrender” by Corey Hart (1985). For Boo.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I’m a pop child, you know? Born in ’56 in the United States in a lower middle-class household and living mostly in suburbs, I grew up as television and radio matured. When Mom cleaned house, she turned on her records and sang with them. Throughout the years, I heard her with Patsy Cline, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash and Johnny Rivers, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Chubby Checkers, Louis Armstrong, Tammy Lynette, Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Steisand, the Ink Spots and Four Platters, to list the ones that jump casually to mind.

Then there was big sis. Two years older than moi, she started listening to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, Simon and Garfunkel, and Grand Funk Railroad. Boys, interested in this attractive young woman and usually a year or two older than her, brought more music in, like the Spencer Davis Group, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and David Bowie.

The radio was always on in the car, and I received small transistor radios from Japan as birthday gifts. AM radio gave me some bubble gum pop like the Osmonds, the Archies, and the Jackson Five, along with Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Don McLean, Steppenwolf, and the Temptations. We had the Bee Gees, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. Television brought along Ricky Nelson, the Monkees, and all manner of performers via variety shows like Ed Sullivan, Hullabaloo and American Bandstand. Movies got into it. Friends introduced me to Sly and the Family Stone and Three Dog Night.

I explored on my own as I aged, discovering Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream, ZZ Top, Mountain, Captain Beefheart, the Moody Blues, early Electric Light Orchestra before they became ELO. More performers came onto the scene, like Elton John.

That’s just a little taste. Music was everywhere then, as it is now, always on, part of the foreground and the background, part of the scene, a topic of conversation. All of this is just on the pop and rock side. Beyond it there was country and western, soul, rhythms and blues, and the blues, and all the offshoots and variations. Beyond the United States were vast seas of music to be found in other countries and continents. Concerts gave us destination. Dancing gave us dates.

Music enriched existence. Oddly, all this came from a 1977 Paul Simon song, “Slip Slidin’ Away”. Time has fled through the year. Whether it’s because the days are less structured or because the usual placeholders of American culture have been disrupted, it seems like time has accelerated. Here it is, already more than halfway through the tenth month of the year. Just two more months and ten days to 2020 remains before we’re kissing it’s ass good-bye and saying hello to 2021.

Yet, we have an open-ended agenda at this point. COVID-19 has disrupted normalcy. The U.S. elections are due. We’re into the thirty-first named storm of the ‘hurricane season’. Climatologists are predicting wilder, more violent, and less predictable weather. With all that’s happening, water and food security for many of the world’s creatures are being jeopardized.

So, you might see why I’m thinking of “Slip Slidin’ Away” might have slipped into my thinking. Opportunities, time, and hope seem to be slip slidin’ away. Some might claim that sanity and peace are, too.

Certainly, it feels to me, probably because where I am in life, the days seem like they’re slip slidin’ away.

Here’s the song. Yeah, it’s a repeat. Used it back in August, 2018. Wear a mask please. And as they once said to the point it became nauseating, have a nice day.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Candlebox’s 1993 tune, “Far Away”, is with me today. I’m in a reflective mood, so the song fits. It’s all about the growing distance between friends.

The song came out in 1993. I was in the military then, stationed at Onizuka Air Base, Sunnyvale, California, right off of highway 101. I worked in a building called the Blue Cube. I’ve been thinking about all the people I worked with there. I’m friends with some on Facebook, and we keep up with one another. Others have veered far right politically, so we’ve distanced ourselves from each other. A few have died. Others have fallen off the map. None, that I know, live in the same place, i.e., Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, etc. All have left that area.

Life is poignant with change, isn’t it? Let me sip my coffee, look out the window (the smoke is back; air quality has been hazardous for the last three days), and speculate.

Cheers

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