Tag: flooding

The Pigeon Dream

It was a dystopian setting. My wife and I were in a small gray econobox, trying to make our way home. Torrential rains reduced the area to a muddy swamp. Mudslides were prevalent. Confusion ruled and more rain was coming. How to get home, where do we go? These were the things we were addressing to one another when a pigeon appeared.

I don’t recall the exact details but we concluded that this pigeon was trying to tell us how to get home. We got the pigeon into our car, along with our cat, the ginger boy, Papi. I started driving. Every now and then, my wife would tell me that the pigeon is telling us to go a certain way, or I’d look at the pigeon and say, “Look, he’s telling us to go that way.”

We reached our home parking lot. Large vehicles blocked the way. Backing, pulling forward, wrenching the steering left and right, I managed to get around them and safely to our garage. We then all went into the house with our belongings, the cat, and the pigeon. We talked about the pigeon saving us. We didn’t think we’d made it without the pigeon. My wife went to feed the pigeon when it attacked her.

She tried fighting it off and couldn’t. I chased the pigeon away. My wife was shouting, “Get rid of it, get rid of it.” Papi the ginger cat went after the pigeon. I didn’t want the cat to get the pigeon.

The cat had chased the pigeon to the front door. While I didn’t want the cat to go out, I wanted the pigeon out. I partially opened the door but as the pigeon beat its wings and pecked at the cat and the cat tried getting the bird, the door closed. Then, someone, the pigeon hooked the door’s edge with its beak and pulled the door open. I caught the cat, the pigeon escaped, and I closed the door.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Welcome to Saturday, September 4, 2021. Here in Ashland, smoke veils a cloudy spread. We’ll probably see 80 F in our area. The sun arose at 6:39 AM. Pearlescent hues on the cats and walls. Sun fade will be at 7:40 PM. The window of daily sunshine is closing.

After a week of noisy news, my soul seems spent. People are enduring some hard times in the U.S. from coast to coast, Canada to Mexico. Fires and flooding, hurricanes and tornados. Lies and more lies. And, yeah, COVID-19. People who otherwise fasten their seat belts, go through security with shoes off, without water, passing through metal detectors, who otherwise agree that public safety and security are important now can’t wear a mask. Others remain vaccine hesitant. They have their reasons, we’re told, and shouldn’t be mean to them. Meanwhile, others still find time to be racist and cruel. Murders and abuse continue.

I sort of chuckle, though. I’m reading HIlary Mantel. The Mirror and the Light. About Thomas Cromwell and that period. England. Henry VIII. Anne Bolyn’s beheading. Henry’s other wives. Conflict with the Pope. Empires and kingdoms. Dukes and ladies. The church and the state. Wars. Among it all, the poor, the starving, the diseased. We are better off now. I think where my disappointment builds is that we could be so much better. We should be so much better. Guess I watched too much Star Trek as a child.

Muse filled my mental music stream with “Uprising” from 2009. Specific lyrics.

Another promise, another seed
Another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed
And all the green belts wrapped around our minds
And endless red tape to keep the truth confined
(So come on)

[Chorus]
They will not force us
They will stop degrading us
They will not control us
We will be victorious

h/t to Genius.com

Anyway. Test negative. Stay positive. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. Please. Here’s the music. Enjoy your day. I’m gonna enjoy my coffee. Cheers

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A Multi-layered Dream

I began, with many other people, in a domed city. I was on the circular city’s perimeter. Spaced every six feet were covered holes. The covers were hard plastic. Opening one, I discovered water within them. My curiosity was satisfied.

We were aware that storms were going on beyond our city. It didn’t overly concern us. To the north, pieces of a golden city appeared just outside of our domed city. I, like others, stopped to marvel at it. Who built it? How was it built so quickly? Exquisite looking, with multiple levels, it already towered over our domed city. But more was being added. How was that possible?

I went with a handful of others to see more. When I reached our domed city’s northern exits, I could see that the city beyond was a holograph. There was no city, and it was pouring rain. I was baffled; why would anyone create an illusion like that? I wondered about motives and angles.

It dawned on me that we were being distracted from a danger to our domed city. Hurrying back, I returned to roughly where I’d been and pried one white lid from a hole. The water was higher, and churning. I realized, the water is rising. Our city was in danger of being flooded.

I needed to warn others. I started pointing out the holes to others. Directing them to take off the lids, I showed them how the water, now foaming with a faint yellowish tinge, was rising higher and higher. Meanwhile, a young man approached me with a U.S. military-style flight cap. He had a pen and wanted to write on it. I was baffled; why couldn’t he write on it? What did he want written? It was a joke, he explained. He wanted someone to write, ‘I went to command school and all I got was this hat.’

Not much of a joke to me. The hat had two stars on it, signifying it belonged to a major general. Instead of being silver, the stars were gold, however. That puzzled me; silver stars are always used on American insignia. I looked for a name inside the hat: Redmond. I recalled dealing with a Redmond. He’d been buying Dionne Warwick and Friends concert tickets.

The general himself appeared, a short and amiable guy with neat and wavy black hair. I encountered a handful of major generals in my Air Force career. This guy was more affable than any of them. I told him that I had his hat and exposed what the other wanted to do with it. The general thought that was a great joke. I talked about his Dionne Warwick tickets. He remembered wanting to go to the show but didn’t remember buying the tickets nor going. I recounted helping him look for the tickets, having the tickets delivered, and then a conversation with him about going to the concert. He vaguely remembered these things, he answered with a broad grin.

Meanwhile, water was almost boiling out of two of the holes and had become more yellow. I thought the yellowing was a serious sign of something being breached, based on a conversation I’d had with an engineer earlier. We needed to do something. Evacuate the city? Find some way to relieve the flooding? I asked the general for help. He shrugged, replying, “I can’t do anything.” I told him, “Yes, you can, you’re a general, you were a commanding officer. You know how to direct people and coordinate people.”

He said, “But I don’t know what to do.”

I replied, “I’ll tell you what to do then.”

The dream ended.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

The rotations continue, no matter what is done, sunrise, sunfall. 5:46 AM, 8:47 PM in slice of world in southern Oregon. The revolution continues, despite what is done, carrying us through summer, speeding us toward autumn.

Today is Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Wildfires continue catching and growing. Two are contained, five more start. Smoke doesn’t fill the sky but bleaches the blue into a yellow-tinged gray haze. Fine grey granules, almost white, sprinkle cars and the land. Think of how they coat skin. Get into airways. Spread into lungs, interfering with body functions like breathing.

The smoke is a cooling shade, keeping temperatures from rising over one hundred F but unable to keep us from experiencing high nineties heat. Green has been dried out of the grasses. They turn into a sandy shade of brown.

But, you know, good news. COVID-19 vaccinations appear to be helping, where people are allowing themselves to be vaccinated. As disease variants rise, the unvaccinated and vaccinated become positive, but it’s the unvaccinated who are typically hospitalized and dying.

The other good news is that people are shedding their masks, unless they need it to deal with smoke (at least out here in the American west). Stores are opening. Restaurants. Movie theaters. One can again attend movies. Isn’t that good news? And the All-star break is underway. Good news, right? Good news.

While drought spreads in the west, places are flooding in the south and east as hurricanes and tropical storms strike. Did you see the photos of the flooded New York subway and roads? Places are also experiencing power outages. Sometimes from storms, sometimes because power is cut off due to wildfires, sometimes because the wildfires burn power lines. Melbourne, Australia is locked down again but the NFL is looking forward to full stadiums. There’s a water shortage growing in America but a housing boom is underway. The stock market has never been better, and look how that economy seems to be recovering. Also, the Emmy list has been released. That’s good news, isn’t it?

An ad on an Internet page seems it all up for me. Showing a pristine red and white Chevy Corvette from the early sixties, the ad informs me, “Jag EType” (that’s how they put it) “in any condition, nationwide.” While showing a Vette. Makes sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m an optimist. Hopeful. Hell, I keep grinding away on my writing routine. Must believe some future exists for it. Which brings me to the music.

Here’s the Pretenders from 1986. They do an homage to an old television show, “The Avengers”. My wife and I quite enjoyed that series as children. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax. Cheers

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What Dreams

Two dreams gained press in my morning reflections.

The first dream placed me in an old white house. My deceased mother-in-law was there, puttering around in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in her hand, as she did in her healthier years.

Looking outside the kitchen windows, I saw fast-moving brown water had taken over the creek. As I did made coffee and looked at books, I kept an eye on the creek. The waters were rising.

It wasn’t raining but I put together that it’d heavily rained after several days of snow, and we were seeing melting run-off. I told the others about it. Nobody seemed to understand what I was talking about (a common issue in my dreams). The water was then actually three inches above the window’s bottom edge, but it only flowed past on one side. Looking out, I confirmed it was flying above the banks but staying to the banks’ formation.

I told the others, “It’s going to flood. We need to leave.” My mother-in-law said, “No, I think I’ll stay here.”

I thought it was a bad decision but it was her choice. I donned my hat, put my laptop into my backpack, and swung my pack into place. Going to a big white door to leave, I encountered a small white dog looking up at me. With a spurt of blood, its head popped off. I was horrified and struggling what had happened. The dog’s head turned and looked at me from its spot on the wooden floor, and then the head and body re-attached. Tongue lolling, the dog stood, looked at me, and wagged its tail.

“What’s going on here?” I said. “Water overflowing its bank, but continuing to flow as if it’s in its banks, a dog loses its head for no reason, and then it re-attaches? What the hell?”

Nobody paid any attention to my comments. The dream ended.

***

The next dream found me waiting for friends in a parking lot by some docks. I was excited, because we were doing something special that day, going on some sort of ride.

They walked up, my friend and his girlfriend. He was having second thoughts, which disappointed her. He asked me, “How ’bout you? Are you ready to go?” “Yes,” I said without hesitation.

We encountered four other friends. They were going in another car. Grabbing some gear, we got into my friends’ little silver car and took off. It was a quick ride. My friend voiced his uncertainties about what we were going to do, and the girlfriend turned to me and said, “He’s been like this for the last few days.”

I sympathized with both but said nothing.

We arrived and parked, and unloaded our gear. Then we approached the entrance. There was a line and we’d need to wait. They gave us a number. It’d be called when it was our turn.

We went out and sat on a grassy area by a sidewalk. One employee asked us if we wanted to play a game. The game involved us using a small bat, about eighteen inches long, to hit a ball about the size of a golf ball. The ball’s landing place established what you got, from out to home run, with every kind of hit in between, along with things like force outs and put out. Sure, we agreed.

My friend tried first and ended up with a little dribbler that ended as an out. Taking my turn, I hit a single. By the rules, you keep going until you’re out, so I kept going, hitting several more singles, getting better with each until I hit a home run. Everyone was impressed.

I surrendered my turn so that others could play. They were all quickly out, and it was my turn again. I continued hitting doubles, triples, and home runs. The employee said, “You’re better at this than anyone that I’ve ever seen.”

It was time for us to go on our adventure. I opened on of my bags to get my helmet out. I immediately spotted a Royal Stewart band. Pulling it out,  I confirmed that the crash helmet I had had belonged to Sir Jackie Stewart, a retired three-time Formula 1 world champion. I’d been a huge Jackie Stewart fan in my teens, so having the helmet delighted me.

My friend and his girlfriend discovered that they’d forgotten their helmets. As they bemoaned that, I said, “Don’t worry, I have extra helmets.” Opening bags, I found racing helmets. As I wondered why I had so many helmets, I thought that they belonged to retired racing drivers and was going to pull them out to look, but had to pass them on to my friends.

The dream ended.

 

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Beyond Politics

Beyond politics (like Russia meddling, Brexit, immigration, Black Lives Matter, #Metoo, refugees, and votes of confidence), I’m trying to follow other stories. They’re mostly natural disasters.

I follow the fires out west, naturally. These directly affect me via the smoke polluting the air. I’ve notice a normalization trend emerging. Although the AQI is unhealthy today, people think, “It’s better than yesterday.” They also go without masks because they didn’t feel anything from their exposure yesterday, last week, and last month. Many don’t seem to understand the long-term impact of breathing air loaded with particulates.

I’m following the Puerto Rico recovery because they’re humans, American citizens, and they’re suffering. I’m following volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in several areas, and flooding in the U.S. and India. Our technology allows us to visit disaster scenes. I’m not certain that this is healthy.

I’m following the job situation and housing market in the U.S. Many don’t recall that the way that unemployment is tracked was changed under Dubya in the early years of this century. The change created a rosier view of the economic. Unemployment is declining, they claim, but then note that real wages are slipping for most Americans, and most Americans can no longer afford a home.

I’m following generational differences. The latest generation hasn’t been given a name yet (perhaps that’s their name, temporarily – the Nameless Generation, a reflection of how unknown they are beyond the basics), and we’re still discovering Gen Z’s trends and tendencies. It’s fascinating to see how they compare with the previous generations in their buying habits and preferences. I encounter Gen Z regularly because they’re usually the ones working in coffee shops and restaurants. They seem just like you and I, but this is also a college town, and most of them are white and come from middle-class to upper-middle-class families. I don’t think they’re necessarily representative of the rest, but I don’t know where to draw the line.

I’m following space developments (no, not the space force, thanks), and the discovery of water and exo-planets, etc. Naturally, I’m also following some cultural develops. Some cultural news seeps into my awareness without trying. It’s hard to avoid it, here in America. I’ve also been reading a lot of interviews with authors, and essays about writing. (I’ve also been contemplating other novels to write. I can’t help myself.)

What about you? What are you following?

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Disjointed

Last night’s dreams must be characterized as disjointed. They seemed to jump from scene to scene. Funny enough, that’s also my writing practice. Maybe one is a mirror of the other.

The dreams themselves were also fun, exciting and inspirational. As far as I can tell from the jumbled pieces, I was a racing driver, there was some heavy rain and flooding occurring, and I was being permitted into special places where others can’t go.

In our first program, titled, “Racing”, I was with another young man. We were exuberant fellows. As part of a project, we were going around giving presentations to others. I never saw one of the presentations but was aware they were happening, or had happened. He and I were casually dressed in neat sporting clothes. We would talk about what was to be done and laugh. This was happening through the progression of a season, I discovered. Then I discovered it was a Formula One racing season, and I’d won the first two races. Apparently, this was unexpected by anyone, as I was the younger and the accepted number two driver. But nobody was bothered; all were happy and pleased with my success, celebrating it more than I celebrated it.

As part of our traveling presentation show, we went somewhere special. I knew that another person, a female relative that I wanted to see, was nearby but wasn’t quite sure where she was. There was a large white building, which was apparently a school. That’s where I thought she was.

So I stole into the building alone. Inside was as white as the outside. I found classes going on and saw her. I watched the class for a short period and then began exploring the building. There seemed only one way out. I became intent on finding another way. That drove me to slip down into a lower level. It was supposed to be off-limits. There weren’t any exits there but there were secret rooms. As I was exploring them, I was caught by white-garbed employees. One accosted me for being there, but the other corrected him. “No, it’s cool. He’s not supposed to be here, but it’s okay, because he’s special.” They then left me alone. I kept exploring and actually found the exit I sought.

I walked into another dream. In this one, I was watching a swollen brown river. Tumultuous with energetic flood waters, it was perhaps one hundred to two hundred yards away and not threatening to me at all, but was threatening others. The river was located in a valley. I  stood on a road that led to the river. Others were present, too. The river had clearly overflowed its banks and had wiped out the bridge that was supposed to be there, because the road continued on the other side.

I knew it was destined to get worse. Following the road with my eyes, I could see the road rise toward some hills on the other side of the river. Those hills alone were dark with rain. There were three hills. As I watched, I noticed streaming silver lines forming on the hills, one on each hill. I knew those were new floods. I was with a man, who was apparently my guide. I pointed the streams and hills out to him, along with the flooding. “It’s going to get worse,” I said and saw that yes, those three silver streams were thicker and more visible, and were obviously increasing flood waters. The rain was clearly increasing on the hills, as well.

Turning away from that, I went toward another building. I can’t remember anything of that building. I was not quite expected there but, recognizing me and my name, they made an exception, and welcomed me. I was there to see a man. He was considered a young genius. I had some ideas to present to him. I had to wait for him as others went about their tasks in a flow around me. While waiting, I discovered the teams I’d driven for were McLaren and Ferrari. I was surprised, pleased and impressed, for they represented two of the most respected and oldest teams in Formula One racing.

Then the man I was there to see came out and found me. I apologized for being there, but he waved that off, telling me he was excited that I was there. He’d heard about my ideas and had been waiting to meet me and discuss them in person, so he was very happy that I had arrived.

So I awoke thinking, Wow, aren’t I special? Then reality returned, and I went off to pee and feed the cats.

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