Tag: Dreams

M.A.D.

Yep, M.A.D.: More Awesome Dreams.

The dream waves continued last night. All the remembered dreams were about going on picnics. Thinking about this, I laughed: this is all a picnic. What a ‘tude.

So the three dreams were about going on picnics. Each had wonderful weather and different settings. I was an adult in each but in different stages of life. In dream number one, I was youngest and my picnic companions were mostly family, augmented with friends. The second dream featured military members (although none were in uniform – I just ‘knew’ they were military members), while the third dream was community. Again, it was a surprise and a laugh to think, interesting, I’m going on picnics with three pillars of my existence in family, military and community. Although I knew in the dream this is what these were, nobody from any of those areas of my life were actually there. That is, Mom was there but it wasn’t my Mom from life.

All the dreams shared a very joyful, flirtatious, happy and energetic atmosphere. The picnics were planned and now were being executed with small details gone awry. For instance, in the first picnic (with the family), there was confusion about my food and the proportions, but I was working it out. In the third dream, the ‘community’ dream, a young female stranger sought me out as we were preparing to leave. She had a computer issue and couldn’t open a file with a certain application, and was asking for my help.

I won’t subject anyone to further details. They were cool dreams and I awoke feeling uplifted, rested and energized. I laugh just remembering them. I give them four point five stars on my scale of one to five.

After all, they weren’t perfect.

3

Strange Brew

I dreamed last night about the power of eight. That is literally and explicitly what the dream was about, no B.S. I remember all of this thanks to a cat.

I know that will surprise you.

In the dream, I was in a class with others but not a classroom. I don’t know who the others were. Someone unknown was explaining that the power of eight shapes everything. Basically in a ‘Matrix’ reveal, I was shown how streaming digits make up reality. Then we were told, “If you can find the power of eight in the numbers, you’ll unlock the power of creation.” Then, as we all talked and looked, I grasped that within the threads were sequences that added up to eight. As I realized the implications and began bubbling with the thrill of knowledge, I began showing them to the rest of the class and elaborating on the instructor’s explanation about how to see and capture the power of eight. As example, I explained, laughing, “Like this one.” I captured a sequence. “That’s eight hundred thousand dollars.”

At that point, whiskers, licking and kneading awakened me. Quinn the Black Paw was hungry. The food in the bowls didn’t suit his mood. It didn’t matter that it was oh dark A.M. Resigning myself the power of the cat, I fed him, and then used the opportunity to pee and ponder the dream.

I was pretty much at a loss about what it meant then. Like, what was I supposed to do? Take a pill and find an eight? Returning to bed, I resumed sleeping.

The lessons about the power of eight continued with further dreaming. They were explaining how the power of eight was part of a balance. But now, instead of being in a class room, I was standing atop stairs. Others, like my wife, accompanied me, but they were incidentals. Dark, dark, dark cheery red, these steps were worn smooth. Like contoured hillsides of rice paddies, they extended in either direction, leading down to something that I couldn’t see. In fact, the only other thing seen was a blue grey sky.

I knew I was to go down the stairs, and I did. This was a learning expedition, and I felt pretty good about the whole thing. My wife and a few others accompanied me. At the bottom was a land, and people who…well, they identified themselves as the common people. They explained I was to kill two of them.

That shocked me. It could not be right. But no, they were comfortable with my intentions. I’d done it before and others did it, too. They liked the way I killed them, demonstrating empathy and kindness when I did. Besides, they told me, I often gave others gifts. Which was true, I remembered then, as I absorbed it all. On the way down, I’d left and given packages as gifts.

Then, my instructions were to return to the top of the stairs and resume my lessons in the power of eight. I returned to the top of the stairs and awoke, confused.

What in the hell is the power of eight, and how am I supposed to harness any of that dream information in this real existence?

At that point, I wanted to return to dream with instructions to myself to provide further explanation. But sleep eluded me. Instead, I thought about my recent state of mind.

It’s been that time of month, when I’m coping with my darkness. Essentially, my darkness has a mission statement that I’m to feel so depressed and miserable that I question, why the hell am I even alive? Arriving in this depressed state, I become all, J’accuse: Thou art a shite writer writing shite fiction. Nobody wants to read the hot sloppy piles that you write, so why do you torture myself with this pursuit?

I know, intellectually, I’m coping with an emotional state that affect huge swaths of population. None of that really helps. I’d been reading to manage it. In the marvelous way that the world works, I’d come across a T.C. Boyle interview and a John Scalzi post. Both helped bolster my resistance to quit.

Boyle’s post was ‘Writing Advice from T.C. Boyle’, in which he provided five points to help you keep writing. His second point:

2. The .357 Magnum. The second tip goes (if you’ll forgive me) hand-in-hand with the first. In recognition of the fact that all writers are manic-depressives, alcoholics, drug-addicts and fixedly specialized degenerates, it’s always helpful to keep a loaded pistol on your desk, perhaps located conveniently beside the ballpeen hammer, depending, of course, on the size of the desk. This acts as an aide-memoire, a spur to creativity and, of course, the ultimate solution to writers’ block.

The other post, by John Scalzi, was Rejection. He closed:

In the meantime, I’ve already sent a query off to another agent. You can’t sit around moping after a rejection, you have to rush into the arms of the next rejection. Because who knows? It might not be a rejection at all.

Heartening words, the words that every writer embraces, the essence being, who knows when you’ll get your break? It’s a strange brew where writers reside. As other writers have written, we’ve developed good taste about what we like to read, and we’re attempting to envelope that good taste in what we write in a difficult and often lonely, and solitary endeavor. And I, being of low self-esteem and a person who eschews attention, struggle with writing and wanting attention for what I write against being a solitary creature who is pretty happy writing in his isolation. It’s a messed up, strange brew. And again: I know I’m not alone.

I told my wife about my dream this morning.  She suggested I hunt down meanings for the power of eight. Doing a web search, I came across Christine DeLorey’s website, Creative Numerology. She’d specifically written about ‘The Power of Eight’.

Reading her post reinforced my understanding of the dream. Frankly, I was startled by having such a dream and then discovering such explanation on the web. I’d wondered if I’d read about the power of eight before, and had simply regurgitated previously required knowledge.

I don’t know. My wife’s book club met last night. Their book in discussion was ‘Ordinary Grace’. As always, they investigated the author, William Kent Krueger. They’d discovered some good interviews with him that she shared with me, where he discussed his frustrations with writing novels and trying to become published. I mentioned that’s what writers, including me, are always seeking, that perfect strange brew where the good taste that we’ve acquired through reading is blended with the good taste we infuse in our writing, but also with the good taste that civilization displays by finding and reading our work. It’s a very, very strange brew, and none of us are sure of the exact ingredients.

But my wife closed, “Well, you can’t stop writing. Writing is part of the Perfect M. Writing is your drug, and it keeps you balanced.”

M is my private nickname, BTW, to clarify. I began using that initial to sign things like a zillion plus years ago and she adopted it as her term for me. But she’s right. I write because I need to write. Everything else is just the strange brew of being.

And now, since it’s the song that I sang to myself while walking down to write, here’s another shot at today’s theme song: ‘Strange Brew’, by Cream, 1967.

 

 

 

 

0

Dream Meanings

I don’t know what dreams mean but I visited with a dead friend last night.

Randy died this year in May, colon cancer, fifty-nine years old.

He was in the last part of my dream. In the first part, I was in a wilderness area not far from a two lane road. It was a pleasant day, sunshine and clouds mixing to keep it from being too warm or bright. Rugged topography dominated, with mountains in the background. This was difficult land, mostly granite, with a few stands of tall fir trees and meager dry, brown brush.

I was with other men. I think there were eight of us but I’m not certain. We were out ‘visiting with nature’, which is all I can guess from my memory of the dream. We’d deliberately separated, fanning out to do different things. I came across an older friend, Frank. He was part of the group. Frank is alive and I see him every other week or more.

A cougar was stalking Frank. He didn’t know. I saw it and warned him, and the cougar left without incident. Frank and I talked briefly in general terms. He drifted in one direction. I headed back toward the road, where a small pavilion on a stony hillock was erected.

An enormous brown bear appeared. Its size shocked me. As it ambled in my direction, cutting me off from the pavilion, I realized it was far bigger than the pavilion. Round and broad, the bear dwarfed some of the granite boulders strewn about.

I worried about him getting me so I was staying as still as I can, and moving carefully when needed so the bear couldn’t get too close, trying to keep the pavilion between us. When that failed, and the bear might come my way, I went invisible for a bit.

The bear entered the pavilion. He could barely fit and it was somewhat comical. Frank appeared then and I re-appeared to warn him about the bear. As we watched together, the bear left the pavilion and walked away, sniffing the air as he traversed the rocky landscape.

The others came and I told my story, trying to convey the bear’s incredible size. Then we were off, headed for home, separating at different points along the way. I was soon traveling with another group.

Here’s the weird part. They were traveling in a vehicle that wasn’t a vehicle. Five abreast, they were lying in something that conveyed them but had no color or form. It made no sound and was open to the world. It was like they were just lying in the road, five abreast, reclined at a steep angle, like in an airline seat, but they traveled on a unlined black asphalt road faded gray with age.

A guide was with them, talking about what was coming up. She stopped to introduce me to the group as I stood off to one side, calling me by my name, Michael, and mentioning I was one of their leaders. Then, proceeding to tell what was to happen next, she mentioned that they were coming up on Randy’s house on the right. Then she faltered, unsure what to say about Randy.

Realizing she was at a loss, I said, “Randy isn’t there any more. He’s a great guy, but he had to check out early.” After I spoke, the people drove on. I turned, and there was Randy. I put my arm around his shoulder and told him I was sorry what had happened to him. He, in his typical manner, told me not to worry, it’s not bad, that he was alright.

We separated, with him walking away in a green shirt and blue jeans, just like we’d run into each other while shopping. I continued on.

Reaching the end without incident by following the road and then cutting across a field, I came to a large, well-lit white warehouse. I knew this was where I was heading. The doors were open. People were busy inside. Dusk was gathering. I was just beginning to enter when I awoke.

I’ve been researching dreams for a novel in progress and discover that progress about them has been made but we understand little. While Freud and Jung had their ideas, others later bashed those ideas. Studies estimate that 70% of people dream, and the average person has five to seven dreams per night. Dreams seem to take place during R.E.M. sleep. Dreams last longer when they happen later in the sleep cycle, which is usually later at night. It was once theorized that dreams originate in the brain stem and was related to more primitive processing, but a neurologist discovered that people with brain stem injuries continue dreaming while those with parietal lobe damage (in the forebrain) did not dream. We don’t know why we dream or what they mean.

Studies continue.

 

 

 

0

Today’s Theme Music

I dreamed of pretzels. People, mostly women, were pushing around small forest green shopping carts crammed with food. Many had large pretzels in them. I wanted one of those pretzels. I tried asking, “Where did you get your pretzel?” But each turned away as though I wasn’t there. I took to a double-decker bus to find the answer, and returned to the same place where I began. I till didn’t have a pretzel.

Ah, pretzel logic. I always fail to grasp it. ‘Pretzel Logic’ was also the name of Steely Dan’s third album. But this is Fond Final Friday, so I elected to post ‘Black Friday’ from their fourth album, ‘Katy Lied’. Sue me if I got it wrong.

Sing along if you know the words. Fake it if you don’t.

2

Endless Good

Mucking through the morass of memories, moods, and meditation, I sought other directions. I wondered about my surfeit of wild dreams, trying to gauge, do others dream so much? It was like the Dream Network – Dreams, 24/7. (Your dreams on the eights.) Or is it that I’m just remembering more dreams? Maybe others remember but don’t talk about their dreams, citing their upbringing: “Mom always told me it’s not polite to talk about your dreams.” That needs modernizing: “Mom texted me it’s not PC to blog about yr dreams.”

Out of the meditations and meanderings, I remembered Florence Scovel Shinn. Following a whim, I duckduckgo’d her and found a website devoted to her. (What we can google but not duckduckgo? Yeah, it’s not as clean, is it? I predict it won’t catch on.)

On FSS’s page is an opportunity to do a random affirmation. I clicked the button, and this came up:

“The four winds of success now blow to me my own. From North, South, East and Wet comes my endless good.”

A pleasant sentiment, and apropos for a windy day. At the least, I read it and smiled before urging myself, “Come on, believe.”

 

5

Variation on a Dream

It came again as I slumbered, montages of being swept up in wild currents. They carry me through channels and cataracts. I tumble over falls. Through it all, I’m battling for direction, enduring difficult circumstances.

Yes, it’s the flood dream.

The flood dream is one of several recurring dreams in my dream folio. I don’t know when it first developed and presented but I do know it frequently returns. I’ve never been able to pinpoint its return on any cause. I’ve only spoken of it to others a few times. Mostly, it renders me thoughtful and meditative when I awaken from it.

In its first iterations, I was young and the dream begins with me exploring areas of Wilkinsburg and Penn Hills, PA, outside of Pittsburgh, where I lived about ten years in my youth. The dream was an accurate reproduction of landmarks, events and geography in its early years, more like memory than dream. Sometimes childhood friends were present.

After dreaming it a few times, the flooding began. Typically, I was in the woods, on a recognized steep hillside of dark loam. The skies darkened. I knew a storm was coming. As I hustled toward safety, monsoon rains begin. Storm sewers and creeks overflow. Water engulfs everything. Raging with power, floodwaters pick me up and toss me like a cat playing with a toy. I’m rushing past fallen trees, rocks and boulders. Periodically, I emerged from the floods to stand on a broad, white dam, where I could look out over the floods and consider what was happening. Sometimes, then, I felt worried.

But the dream’s evolution continued. While I never died, nor even felt terribly exerted by the dream’s events, I learned to navigate the waters. I was never in full control in any sense, but was staying afloat, avoiding obstacles and riding the sinuous waves.

Eventually in the dream, I began reaching a calm zone. ‘They’ were waiting for me in the calm, they being people, just people, nobody in any way special. Typically they were a man and a woman. All I fully understood in the dream was that I’d managed to exit the stormy, turbulent waters and reached a special place.

It was twilight there, and placid, a relief after the trying flood waters. Strangely, the dream identifies it as the North Pole – the top of the world. Stars are rising to light the moment. I’m invited to float out on calm black seas to reach the ultimate top of the world. It’s peaceful, restful. And so, I enter the water, which is cold, but not numbing, and float on my back out to the North Pole, where I gaze up at rich spectacle of stars, galaxies and nebulae.

Last night’s variation added a twist. As has happened more recently with the dream, the first act, where I’m young, and the skies darkened and the rains begin, was cut. I was immediately being carried by the currents. This time, the currents raced through icy white chasms and tubes. And this time, I was leading a small group, telling them what to do and urging them to follow my example. Reaching rocky or sandy banks from time to time and pausing on the journey, they were breathing hard, coughing and choking, bent over with weariness from their efforts. Each time, I let them rest and then said, “Come on. There’s more.” Then we plunged back into the water and rode the waves.

But in this iteration of the dream, when I reached the special place, I was pleased, joking with the other travelers, “Okay, you’ve gone through some tough places, but this one is something else,” setting them up to believe that, oh, no, there’s more? And so they said, with disappointed and weary sighs.

I led them into the twilight stillness where the others waited, grinning as the others explained, “You’ve reached the top of the world.” Indicating the smooth black water to one side, they continued, “Get on your back and float out, and you’ll be on top of the world.”

Smiling as my fellow travelers expressed puzzlement and skepticism, I lowered myself into the water and floated toward the North Pole on my back. And then, my fellow travelers began to follow….

 

5

The Progressions

I awaken, and experience a progression of guilt.

I called Mom last week. Reaching her answering machine, I left a message that I would call again later in the week.

I didn’t call, hence the guilt. I haven’t spoken to her in several weeks. The exact date is progressing into the unremembered past.

But I’m in the writing zone. I’ve caught the big wave. Big waves are rare. I jealously guard the ride, not wanting to do anything to upset the balance. Sorry, Mom. I’ll call when the ride is over. She’ll understand.

Marking the sunshine’s progression through the blinds, I gather it’s time to leave bed. Feeding the cats take me through the next progression. I fill their bowls, and watch their behavior and motion, and then return to their bowls when they’ve walked away, to see how much they’ve consumed. Nothing triggers a worry watch.

Going through the morning’s progression of eating, cleaning up and dressing, I peruse a mental list of items. It’s a copy of a list my wife and I made the other day. We began a process of cleaning, organizing and simplifying last July, and listed what remains during breakfast last Friday. I compare the list with the weather forecast and other chores to decide what I’ll do this day.

The bathroom mirror takes me through a progression of assessments about my hair, weight, skin and body tone. I progress through disappointment and dismay to rueful chuckling acceptance.

The morning’s walk to the coffee shop takes me through more progressions. Regardless of what I saw in the mirror, I feel young, energetic and happy as I walk. Autumn has arrived and the air is progressively cooler each day, as the days are progressively shorter, with night arriving progressively earlier. The trees are proceeding through their own progressions, with the leaves changing color but not yet beginning to fall.

All the town’s schools are in session. Encountering university students, who just began classes this week, I judge from their expressions that they’re progressing from starting classes to being dazed or numb to their new adventure. High school has been in session for a month already. Their marquee announces the Homecoming Ball next month. That, and cigarette smoke clinging to other pedestrians, transport me to youthful memories of high school and smoking co-workers and friends. I progress to wondering where those friends might be now and what became of them.

Last night’s dreams return to me. I dreamed I was asked by others to drive their dilapidated bus. Their request amuses me. They seemed to think it was very important and challenging, while I took it quite lightly. I easily agreed. The subsequent drive was a dream’s blink between beginning and ending, with some short vignettes of visits with passengers asking me more about my background. Nothing untoward had happened. Being grateful for my service, they’ve prepared a gift basket and present it to me when we’re off the bus. The gift basket is a plastic storage container with a bow. Fun size candy bars have been collected and put into plastic baggies, along with other food stuffs, such as cookies, muffins and brownies, including red and green peppermint cheese pizza. I’m never had it before. There is also electronic junk and toys in the storage box. I’m touched because all of this means much to them. Telling them it’s too much, I ask them to take whatever they want. They close in and take many items. One man asks for the peppermint pizza. He explains, he has a sore throat, and the peppermint soothes it.

We then enter a city square of faded, low brick buildings. The community is poor and the town is sparsely populated. I join others at one cafe. Its decor amounts to an eclectic assortment of bare tables and chairs and robin’s egg blue walls. They’re eager to please me. Their eagerness and obsequiousness embarrasses me. I work hard to make us all feel at ease. A small but pleasant party begins as we relax. They pour ale into a jar for me. There is nothing more I remember from that dream.

My progress is tracked through landmarks. I’ve passed the one mile mark. One mile remains until I reach the coffee shop. My thoughts progress through my writing plans of where I was, what I dislike and like, and what I need to change and how I might change it. I progress from that back to other plans. Friends are meeting for beers at 4:30. It’s downtown, a two and a half mile walk from my house. I calculate what time I’d need to leave, and how much time I have for yard work after walking home after my writing session. The timing will be compressed but it is doable, if I’m disciplined.

I reflect upon the differences in energy requirements between having a beer with friends and chatting with my mother. It’s like accounting and budgeting, in that these energies come from different buckets. I begin writing this post in my mind.

I progress to an acceptance of being disciplined about the timing, and then I’ve arrived at the coffee shop. Business is light. Madi saw me coming down the street so she has my quad shot mocha prepared. We chat about her college classes. She’s majoring in poli-sci and history, and plans to be a lawyer and prosecutor. Naturally, we discuss the presidential debates.

Then I’m at my table, at my laptop, with my coffee, opening the document, embracing the moment. I compose this post. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

I’m making progress.

0

Too Personally

Some days I take it all too personally. Rejection of my writing, my words, my voice – it hurts. It feels like a personal rejection. I say things. A tenth seems understood. Grasped. I write things, more digital information in a digital swamp.

Some days I feel like I’m battling alone against bureaucracy, mediocrity, conformity. But I also see myself as those things – bureaucratic, mediocre, conforming. It strikes me that I’m battling myself as well as the world, which isn’t a comfort to realize.

A load crashes down. What am I doing it, and why am I doing it? Why don’t I just stop and live some other life? What is it in my nature that forces me into this hole where I don’t fit?

Some days I feel pitted against the world. The cats desire attention, which is good, isn’t it? But it stops me from advancing my plans – exercising, cleaning, writing. And there is another lost cat out there, crying for food but otherwise healthy, pretty, young and glossy, and well fed. But I take care of it, sneaking it food, telling it to go home, looking for posters advertising someone is searching for it. An hour later, it’s gone.

Even my dreams reflect all this. One out of two, maybe three, days, I experience a mega dream. The mega dream is your summer blockbuster movie, lots of hype. You don’t want to see it but you can’t escape it. Advertising and branding efforts push it on you through your drinks, television, internet, print media, in interviews, commercials, and ads. It cannot be escaped.

That’s a mega dream, too. It can’t be escaped. I awaken and it’s there, crowding out more coherent thinking, vivid, loud and real.

Last night’s mega dream came down to fighting evil. It started at a writing conference, because that’s where evil lurks, right?

Of course not. The writing conference was enormous. It was wrapping up. Hundreds of earnest writers in folding chairs sitting in a semi-darkened hotel cavern, trying to soak up the juice, the energy, the mystique, of one who made it and created a writing career. Got published. Made money. Won awards and recognition. Talks about their writing, their processes, the stories that they’ve published.

And I, in the dream, was in the back row. That’s me in the corner, out of the spotlight, hugging notebooks, a tote bag, and a computer, collecting my pens and writing exercise and handouts. That’s me, listening and frowning, not agreeing, hearing the same thing I’ve heard before, understanding it, yet still failing.

A guest speaker was replacing the guest speaker, and as it was the last day, we were going to socialize, because, as writers, we socialize too little. So let’s all collect our things and go off to the movie theater. We’ll need to brave the night air but it’s just around the corner.

Yes, I know where it is, I’ve been there.  Off I go, alone, as others break up into knots, groups and trios, chattering away in friendly, excited manner, while I, dour as Holden, wander off alone, to first stop and pee. In there is a man in a trenchcoat. Twentyish, of average build, clean shaven with neat short dark hair, about five feet ten, white face, dark eyes, tired looking, endlessly talking. No one I know. He’s following a women. Pestering her. Annoying her. Scaring her.

I tell him to leave her alone. He mocks me but continues after her. So, I push him. He falls off into a pit. He falls silent. We’re done, I think. The woman thanks me. Leaves.

But he arises again. Now, he’s following me. Pestering me. Annoying me. Angering me. So I push him off again, and again, move violently each time. Each time, he arises again. His demeanor doesn’t change. He knows he’s evil. My efforts amuse him. He knows he can’t die. He knows that I’m realizing it. He knows it’s getting to me.

I know it. I run from him. I realize more, like him, very similar, in trench coats, but always white, always male, sometimes taller and skinnier, are emerging, going after others. So I begin warning them. I realize the evil plans to escalate and that we can’t fight it but must escape. So I try warning the others but I won’t be heard. The evil begins pestering others. Annoying them. Scaring them. Panicked noises arise. I try to fight the evil. I explain to the others that they must stay calm. If they can’t escape, they must fight.

But I’m not heard. I remain alone, fighting evil, trying to help others escape, until, at least, the evil is in a restroom stall, and I’m pissing on him from across the room in a strange climax that we both recognize as absurd. I’m just pissing energy away.

Inside my brain of brains, I know others feel the same. I believe this is the stereotype of the lives of quiet desperation and fading dreams, that this blog, and this post, is one of many writing about modern angst, desperation, and frustration. They’re also searching for a way to cope, to explain, to call for help, reinforcements and reassurances.

My coping mechanism is my writing. I’ve always written for myself, but I always believed, as every writer does, that someday, someone will read what I wrote. Yet I’ve reached a moment when I stand alone and tell myself, that might not be true. Maybe you should stop writing, stop pissing away your energy. Quit fighting evil, bureaucracy, mediocrity and conforming. Eat the fast food and drink the flavored sugar waters and be as happy as the vape heads on tv and in movies, and not give a shit about dying bees, animal abuse, the murders, police brutality, privacy, the state’s power, workers’ rights, minority rights, equality, freedom, greed, global warming, unending war, and of course, zombies. Maybe I am the zombie, acting from some part of my reptilian brain that I don’t understand and can’t control.

Yeah, I take it all too personally.

Of course, I recognize that it’s my dark side arising again, I’m sliding from somewhere on my spectrum, slipping down toward the deep end. While I have an active darkside, it does also get sunny. And writing it all out, explaining it all to the unseen universe, relieves some of my imagined burden. With a deep breath released in a long sigh, I tell myself, “Go on. Get dressed. Clean up. Check the cats and brush your teeth. Time to write like crazy.

“One more time.”

4

178

One seven eight may be my new favorite number. This is a fickle thing so, maybe not. I’ll test it.

Five was my favorite number for the longest time. The problem with five is that it’s a simple prime number, and just one digit. Nothing to add. No other ways of looking at it. I do appreciate and respect that it shows up EVERYWHERE – five toes, five fingers, the Fab Five, five rings, five senses, you can create the list. Five has served me well.

But 178, that’s a number you can play with. First, 1 + 7 = 8. Isn’t that cool? Then 1 + 7 + 8 = 16; 1 + 6 = 7. Neat, right? Or is it just me?

It could be just me. I dreamed of 178 last night, part of a long, rambling dream (like this post, but in color) about delivering a wheeled case for an old man. He was in charge of a place and was wheeling it along, but he was old and the black case was large, and I was there and bored, so I offered to help him. He made some snarky retort and then told me to take it to 178.

Off I went, through a door. I picked up my wife as an assistant, but once through that door, we discovered we were in an airport. Announcements were echoing, people rushing along, as they do in airports during peak travel hours. The place was gray cement and full of ramps, so the sound traveled unabated. White signs with numbers in red were overhead. Where was 178? My wife took off, thinking she knew the way, but I went in a different direction.

Arriving at 178 shortly, essentially an alcove, I found an old white refrigerator. Somehow, I knew I was to unpack the black case. Opening the refrigerator, I found it loaded with cheese. Cheese wheels, sticks, slices. White, yellow, blue. Opening the case to unload it, I discovered more yellow cheese, sliced, in packages. Insufficient room was in the frig for the new cheese, so I re-arranged the cheese to make room and add the new cheese.

“Cheese,” I was telling myself in the dream. “What’s with all the cheese?” I was baffled.

Finishing that and looking around, I realized that I was in someplace from my military career. And somewhere around there had been a locker where I’d kept personal items and military gear. I just needed to find it. It was locker 178.

I walked around, orienting myself and searching, moving through a maze of military green and gray doors and walls, past military members, along cinder block walls with exposed pipes. As I went and remembered, I told myself I was close. It had been locked, I remembered — but I had the key. Yes, the small key remained on my key chain.

It was my real and current key chain, just the house and mail key, but now with the key to to lock to my old storage locker (a locker that never actually existed, except in other dreams).

I finally located where the locker used to be, but guess what? It was gone, replaced by a Base Exchange facility where new uniform clothes were racked. No sign of me or my life there existed.

I looked up 178 this morning, and found that when it’s reduced to 7, it’s a mystical number, the number of cycles, of beginning again.

Yes, I had begun again, a new life, life after the military, life after Silicon Valley start-ups, life after IBM. And I’d been feeling that sense of renewal the last several days, like a song playing through my head, or a lingering perfume after a tight embrace.

I like that, although my explanation for the cheese is rather lame: the cheese represents food for thought.

Yeah.

Don’t know if that’s true. But one good thing I take from it all is that I didn’t wake up a zombie. That has to count for something.

Of course, thinking of that, I immediately begin conceptualizing a story about people who are zombies in their dream – and what happens in their real life.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

2

Counting Waves

You know the words. You can write the cliches for me.

Talking about another, you note or say, “Oh, he/she is in one of those moods today.” Curl a little snark into your tone. We joke about women and their cycles, because that’s how many of us were socialized and conditioned. “Women’s cycles” are visible. They’re “emotional and irrational” when it’s “that time of month” or “they’re going through the change.”

Men’s cycles are more often ignored. But we talk about male bosses and spouses and how they seem angrier, more irritated, or conversely, they’re in a great mood. “Maybe now is the time to ask them for ____.” Fill in the blank of what’s been considered and rejected because of their mood, but now, it’s a possibility, because they’re cheerful today.

Or you notice it about yourself, but you don’t know why. You don’t know why you’re sad. You don’t know why you’re happy. You rationalize reasons, develop a logical explanation for why you must feel this way. We think we know ourselves best, but I know myself better. I have large, dark windows that I can’t see in. Monsters are back there….

Everything seems like it’s on a spectrum for me: energy, optimism, dreaming….

I dreamed many times and vividly last night.

I wrote with speed and intensity yesterday. And what I wrote? Honestly, I’m amazed that I’m so talented. What an imagination! I am fucking brilliant.

I’m optimistic, hopeful and cheerful. I look forward to visiting with friends. My body feels great.

I feel like I’m enjoying life more. Food and drinks taste better, and that sunlight, golden on those scattered soft gray and white clouds above the verdant tree filled mountains against an azure sky late yesterday afternoon, wasn’t that the most magnificent, inspiring sight? Did you see that soaring hawk?

But as I dreamed and awoke last night, considered the dreams and returned to sleep, I thought of how alike it was to being on beach at the ocean. Like waves, there’s a pattern to the dreams and the ocean’s movement, and there are high tides and low tides of dreaming. It’s not the first time I’ve thought this and written about it. Even now, it seems like deja vu. I dream; the dreams increase with strength, vividness, and impact as my cycle progresses through its spectrum. I wake up and write about it. Then the dreams peak and begin diminishing.

Ah, yes, you see that, how my mental acuity increases as well? I’m able to observe more clearly and understand myself better. I wonder, are Jeopardy contestants aware of this? Do their personal cycles affect their winning and losing? I really would like to study that, because, you see, I’m almost at the top.

During the rising mental, spiritual and physical energy cycles, I write, and the words come faster, clearer, more quickly and easily, and then I peak. I begin back down. Writing becomes a greater and greater challenge, until, down in the trough, it’s a slog to get to the coffee shop, sit in the chair and focus on the stories being told. My rituals and routines, and the tricks I’ve learned to encourage and engage my inner writer help them. But the stuff I write. Oh, God, help me, please. How could I ever believe I had any skills? I’m worthless, less than zero, with the creativity and talent of a gnat’s ass.

I know this week’s optimism and cheerfulness will crest. I will begin a slow descent into gloom. I will crave isolation. Small irritations are imagined to be major insults. I become a more aggressive driver, and a more bitter person. I’ll hunger for and reward myself with the junk foods, desserts and fried foods that I deny myself when I’m ‘up.’ Then I’ll bottom out, silent, weary, angry, self-loathing, and begin to arise back from the depths. I drink coffee but derive little energy from it. Even reading sucks. My needs and responses are wildest at the bottom. I’m more emotional, needier. I want to shop and buy new things, as a salve for how terribly I’m suffering, but I want to do it without others bothering me.

I know, too, how my cycles affect my world perceptions. When I’m rising, I’m more open. I post and comment more. More cheerful, I have greater self-confidence. When I’m in the pit, I disappear. I don’t check Facebook and don’t post, because it’s all the same jokes, I tell myself, the same crap, the same garbage from the same people, and the news? When I finally bottom out, I have a sense that the world is a terrible place of killing and brutality, our leaders are shits, and we, the common, the less than 1%, have no chance. I am resentful and hostile.

Being in the depths is miserable. I feel lifeless, a sawdust man, without purpose, direction or hope. Down in the trough, it’s hard to see my way through an hour. Food tastes terrible, and taxes are way too high. Everything costs too much then, and it’s all junk.

I wonder, how many people kill one another or themselves because they’ve descended into their pit. How many cops are more fearful and frightened, more ready to kill because of their state? How many others are more willing to take up a knife or gun and seek vengeance and make others pay because of where they are in their cycles and spectrums?

Now, climbing toward the peak, I’m on top of the world. The view is magnificent, and I believe that we can work together, change the world, and solve all the problems.

We just need to hurry, before I start down again.

 

 

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