Friday’s Theme Music
A bitter chill haunts the morning air. Sunlight blighted by gray clouds wearies its way through the windows, casting dull shadows from the partially nude trees. Welcome to Friday, October 29, 2021.
The temperature hovers around 61 degrees F right now but my skin whispers, it’s not that warm. The high today between sunrise at 7:40 AM and sunset at 6:09 PM is just forecast for three degrees more. Like the sun is saying, “It’s Friday, and I don’t feel like giving as much today.” Beautiful colors that burst into the leaves are all acting spent, fading by the hour, dropping from the trees, filling streets and lawns, turning to brown and crumbling.
Today’s theme music was inspired by food. Truthfully, it was a food pick-up. Called in an order to a local establishment, then ‘ran out’ to get it by getting into the car and driving over there. But my wife said, “Why don’t you run out and get it,” and I totally understood it would involve the car.
So I was taking food on the go, which my brain shifted to say, on the run, and voilà, I was thinking that I’d take food on the run, which led to REO Speedwagon’s 1981 song, “Take It on the Run”, to slip into the mental music stream, where it still resided this morning. I like the song’s rising guitar sound and embellishments as the tempo increases before it crashes back down to a soft note, and a final outro, “Heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another, you been messin’ around.”
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and booster when you can. I’m gonna listen to the song again and sip my coffee. Here’s to ya. Cheers
The Spy Dream
I’d arrived in a foreign country, traveling as part of a group of men, except for one pre-pubescent boy. We were white, except for one black. I was neither leader nor follower. We dressed down a little, in jeans or khakis, and shirts or sweaters, as American tourists. We were going through a large gift shop and museum, killing time, stalling, building our cover. Every now and again as we walked around, I’d look out the large plate glass windows at a flat, featureless landscape under a flat diluted gray sky. Small features, hints of tall buildings and industrial smokestacks, hinted at the world. A few lonely black birds winged through the sky.
Inside, we walked around, gawking like tourists, murmuring at displays of giant stuffed brown bears, cut geodes, and pieces of fossils, evidence of the life that was here before humans took over and dominated. I remember bending down to the young boy to point out a display about a volcano that once erupted in the region.
Then, time for us to move on. We separated. I got into a rental car and drove down a wide, empty road, again killing time until we were to rendezvous. At this point, it becomes a little obscure. I drove across a large, arched bridge to an intersection and parked off to one side by a food truck. I went to the blue food truck where I purchased two chicken sandwiches in flat bread from a swarthy, friendly man. Ice covered the chicken on the sandwich. I met with a small, blond woman and furtively explained to her my theory that the sandwiches being sold at the truck were being used to pass code between foreign agents.
I returned to my car to await the rendezvous, holding onto the sandwiches as my evidence. But I was hungry, so I heated one up on the car’s heater. After tasting it, I thought it was warm enough and was pretty good, so I ate one, and then, as I was still hungry, heated up and began heating the second one. But then I realized that I needed to hold onto it as evidence, so I stopped after two bites. Examining that sandwich, I concluded that I still have the evidence.
Dream end.
A Flood Dream
A short dream, but with impact. Boxes of food were being handed out. Large boxes but not of a uniform size. Mostly brown. Although the boxes didn’t have lids, I don’t know what food was inside them.
Like others, I hurried to get a box of food. That required me to go onto a cement portico surrounded by shadowy white colonnades. The boxes were happily given out and equally happily received. After getting one box, it was suggested that I go back and try to get another one. When I went back, the person giving them out recognized me. He said, “I wouldn’t be going for these boxes, I’d be going for something to survive the flood.”
I didn’t know what flood he talked about. I accepted the box and returned to the others, puzzling over what he’d said. I told them. We debated what he meant, and how the boxes might be different, if they’re for a flood. I decided that I’d get boxes to survive a flood, just be on the safe side and went back to the issuing area. Dark brown flood waters were already to my knees at that point. No more boxes were being handed out. The people giving them out were gone.
Michael Seidel, writer 