The Games Dreams

Last night’s dreams were sooo long and involved, but they all featured two central themes: I was playing games, and I was winning.

At one point in one dream, I’d won some huge prize. I’m on a stage, being cheered. People are crowding around to congratulate me. Ecstatic and incredulous, I kept saying, “I can’t believe I won.”

Later, I was playing another game, and winning, but said, “Why am I playing this game?”

“Who cares?” a man said. “You’re winning.”

I said, “But I don’t like this game.”

He said, “Are you kidding? It’s your dream.”

The moment’s duality caught me. It was my dream, and I was dreaming it, but it wasn’t my dream to play games.

After that, it all made sense.

May 6, 2019 0

Wednesday’s Theme Music

I almost titled this piece, “Monday’s Theme Music”. It feels like Monday. I blame my dreams for that. In one dream, I was living by a calendar, taking lessons, learning, and pushing to achieve goals based on the calendar. I awoke exhausted and confused.

Meanwhile, as many have noted, the Notre Damen Cathedral fire is terrible. As others have pointed out, hundreds of millions of dollars have poured in to repair the building, money not shared to address many world problems. How money is shared — and released, as one billionaire put it — is indicative of our wealthy population’s general senses of duty and caring toward other humans. Ain’t none of us surprised by it.

Of course, the Catholic Church itself isn’t a poor entity, either. They hold onto their treasures because those treasures are part of their history. Meanwhile…people suffer. Guess that’s part of their history, too, then, innit?

It all makes me bang my head, from the exhausting dream of relentlessly chasing and proving knowledge and attempting to reach higher goals, to the craziness seen in the world, as delivered by the news.

So, here it is, “Metal Health” by Quiet Riot (1983). Feel free to bang your head.

April 17, 2019 0

Lost in the Words

I pray for hope

I haven’t kept you too

long as I know that you’ll

always be the drink for

me and you, it always

seems like we’re getting lost in the

words can make a difference, especially how

they come and go through the spirals of

our changing lives and times because

what was once familiar has become

strange that I think of this now in

conjunction with where we’ve been and

where things have

gone are the expectations and

dreams are what keeps me

going for the goal that

I pray for hope.

April 3, 2019 0

On A Beach

embalmed with denigration

drowning in clichés

paralyzed with expectations

frustrated by delays

harpooned with envy

mesmerized by guilt

sucked into disappointment

sunken in the silt

riding all the waves

hoping in belief

searching for the way

getting stuck on a beach

March 22, 2019 4

Aristotle Said

March 22, 2019 2

Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music is a surprising turn for me. I blame my dreams.

I had a cluster of dreams last night that shared the theme of saving. I saved some people and animals in a few dreams, but I was also saved, most memorably once by a Jack Russell terrior. The dog led me out of what appeared to be a benign situation. After I thanked him, he left.

Keeping with the weirdness of all that, I awoke thinking, “And it said so in my dreams.” I immediately knew that line from “Candida”, a hit song by Tony Orlando and Dawn back in July 1970. I never had one of their albums, but they were immensely popular in the early seventies. That popularity translated to a lot of AM and FM radio play and appearances on television shows — or did the radio play and appearances on television shows lead to immense popularity? Either way, I heard them often. Pop culture tends to be like that.

February 17, 2019 0

The Flowing Dream

Posting a great deal today, I know. I blame the dream.

Last night’s dreamisode had me spilling out out of myself. See, I was me, and the hairy flesh-colored white male that I am, except I spilled out like mercury, flowing over sidewalks and streets, splashing around buildings, plants, and fire hydrants.

I’d been walking through a warm, sunny day in downtown Ashland when this began. I didn’t understand what was happening at first, and then, I panicked, because, oh my God, I’m all over the place. I worried about people walking on me, or having my liquid flesh clogging the sewer drains and drowning others. In a fit of Lucille Ball-like comedy, I scrambled to collect myself and return my mercury-ness to my corporal existence, scooping up handfuls of myself and shoving it into my shirt and jeans. But I couldn’t hold onto myself. It just flowed through my fingers. As my efforts to collect myself wasn’t working, I just let it flow.

Then I was sitting, trying to understand what was happening. Settling back, I watched me flow across the land. My body, like went around others, but didn’t kill them. They embraced it with surprise. As I sat on a chair by a table on a patio and watched myself flowing out, I saw that there was more, that I wasn’t everyone, that I was spreading, but I was still there. I wondered, how far do I go?

With more astonishment, I saw that where I flowed, other things grew and flourished. I wasn’t killing anything at all. Whether the light had changed or my vision was clearer, the day seemed brighter. As I watched, I realized that I was growing even as I sat. From where I sat, I began to see over trees and houses. Soon I saw across the valley and then over the mountains, to the beach and the sea.

Then, in a part that brought tears to my eyes in the dream, the sun was rising wherever I looked. Even as I thought, that’s not possible, I saw, but, yes, that’s what’s happening.

The dream ended.

***

I’d forgotten the dream until I was walking and thinking about my character, Anders, and who he was. In a flash I remembered the dream. I was walking in Ashland, and for a startling moment, I felt like I was in the dream, and experienced this bizarre sense of duality. As that passed, I sharply aligned with Anders and who he was. A black teenager in America, I was trying to get a handle on him, but then saw that I was tagging him through the prisms of my experiences.

He, though, doesn’t think like us, not because of his skin color, but because of his generation. His parents are black, and he loves and respects them, but their experiences don’t shape him. To him, that’s an old way of being. The new way is to shape himself. He eschews and shuns much of popular culture because of that because popular culture attempts to normalize him and push him to conform to a popular conception of who he should be, what he should buy, and how he should behave. Anders rejects and resists that.

As I explored him and his friends, I saw all of this, and how it applied to them. We have stereotypes of our segments of culture and society, from the one percent down to the homeless, from the self-proclaimed Greatest Generation through the Boomers and the rest. Anders and his friends are resisting being called a generation. They’re seeing and seeking fragmentation, breaking old norms and behavior. They don’t want to build something new; they just want freedom to find for themselves if there’s something new out there.

They think there is something new. They can’t see it, but they’re looking through other’s eyes. It’s not until they can find their own way of seeing that they’ll discover their own country.

***

After all of that, it was a powerful and liberating day of writing like crazy. I know that it’s silly, but I felt privileged and flattered to have experience that dream, because it felt so empowering. I felt special, humbled, and amazed as I wrote.

The session is over. Time to go on to other things.

February 13, 2019 4

A Dream of Changing Countries

It was an uplifting experience, although strange.

I was with several groups of men. We’d decided we were changing countries. I connected with a few others to hunt for country candidates. An adviser was telling us what our options were.

My first choice was Japan. I headed to the JP room with a few other men and our adviser. We entered, and then our adviser had us wait while he checked on availability. Coming back, he told us, “Sorry, but there aren’t any openings.”

A little disappointed but still optimistic, we selected another place. I knew the name in the dream but I don’t know it now. Our adviser checked and confirmed, “Yes, eight openings are available.”

Only three of us went, however, with the others backing out. We had to answer questions to be accepted in the new country, and also to put on a shirt with cultural significance to that country.

After putting the shirts on, we entered an office. Bleachers filled with people were to one side. Most of the people were young women. The first man of my group went to a desk. There he was asked eight questions. He passed.

It was my turn. I went to the desk and was asked the eight questions. They were so simple and basic, such as, “What is your name? What is your favorite color?” The process amused me as I wondered, are there wrong answers? I passed and then waited for my friend to go through the process. Then the three of us were sworn in as new citizens and congratulated. A spattering of applause followed.

Now citizens of another country, we walked toward the exit. I remembered that I still had the other shirt on. Wanting my own shirt, I took the shirt off, gave it to someone, and then walked back, shirtless, looking for my own shirt, with everyone watching me. I found this quite funny. The dream ended with me finding my shirt, but leaving it off, I left.

To me, the choice of Japan was interesting. When I lived in Japan, it was a successful and enjoyable time, and I was very happy. That it wasn’t available meant, you can’t go back, but there are other choices. These will give me new experiences (changing the shirt, see?), but they’ll be like Japan, successful and enjoyable.

And it’s my choice.

February 1, 2019 0

The Fighter-jet Dream

Many recent dreams have been like movies or television shows. Often feeling they’re part of a larger series, I often don’t see myself in them. Instead, I’m a viewer.

So last night’s dream was a break from that routine. My and my jet were the primary leads.

Living in a huge, hyper-modern city, I became aware that it was going to be attacked. Warnings were going out. In response, me and another person climbed into our jet-aircraft. In design, they seem like single-seat twin-engine F-15 Eagles, but flatter and smaller, and dark, dark blue in color. Blue dominated the dream. Except for the jets’ exhaust flames, which were blue with yellow, and the final celebration rockets, everything was blue.

Incoming aircraft were reported. We scrambled, lighting a darkening dusk sky with our twin after-burners. I was lead. My wing-man was immediately attacked. Unable to lose his attacker, I stalked the aircraft, causing them to break off their attack on my guy. Flashing around the city’s sky, the other tried and failed to lose me. My aircraft was incredibly responsive, and I displayed a staggering mastery of its capabilities, so much , that in the dream, I thought, the aircraft and I are one.

Finally lining up a shot, I fired a missile at the attacker. It struck his aircraft, causing it to begin breaking up, giving him time to eject.

Afterward, I took my aircraft high over the city and throttled back. My companion joined me. The air was clear. It was night. It felt like we were on the edge of space.

Other aircraft were inbound to attack. He and I went at them. Multiple intense aerial combat scenes followed. Most vividly remembered is a scene where I was being chased. I took my aircraft down along the frozen blue river that bisected the city. My aircraft flashed under blue bridges at hyper-sonic speed. Unwilling to follow me there, the enemy broke off and climbed. Standing my aircraft up on its tail, I climbed up after him, and took him out.

That’s what was interesting about the dream. I was often in my cockpit as me. But other times, I could see myself in the cockpit, or I was watching the action from a third person POV. Whichever happened, I always knew it was me.

After we’d thwarted the attack, I radioed back to the command center to inform them that the city was safe once again. Feeling so brave and pleased with the result, I took my aircraft on a high-speed acrobatic flight over the city, and then, in a surprising twist, fired off colorful sky rockets to celebrate.

It was a damn good feeling.

I had no trouble relating this dream to my life, especially my writing and publishing efforts. My moods travel through a monthly cycle. I’m trending up this week. That translates to being incredibly optimistic and hopeful, truly on top of the world, ma. The dream reflects those emotions, taking off flying, being in control, and winning.

My last writing effort, Four on Kyrios, is out to several agents, awaiting their response. Meanwhile, the newest novel, April Showers 1921, is being dictated at breath-taking speed. I’m struggling to keep up with it. Its pace has startled me, and it’s twists and turns surprise me.

All of that fits with the dream. Even the dream’s blue coloring is cited as being optimistic by one source: “The presence of this color in your dream may symbolize your spiritual guide and your optimism of the future. You have clarity of mind. ” Of course, in their next sentence, they say, “Alternatively, the color blue may also be a metaphor for “being blue” and feeling sad.” But I like the first one better.

Time to write like crazy at least one more time.