Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I dreamed that I was the U.S. Navy but was preparing to get out. (Amusing to me after awakening, as I’d been in the U.S.A.F. for a career.) While I was in the Navy, I started making some improvements on some forms and processes they were using, and briefing commanders. My briefings became popular; the commanders sought me out for information, which provided a great positive vibe.
All that prompted me to think, maybe I should stay in the Navy. But my wife said, “No, don’t you want to get out and become a doctor?”
I answered, “Yes, I do, but I really want to be a writer.”
My wife replied, “You always said that you wanted to be a doctor.”
“Yes, I do,” I answered, “because I like helping people and I think I’d do it well. But I want to write. Why can’t I do both?”
She said, “There’s no reason why you can’t do both.”
We agreed I’d get out of the Navy and do both.
Dream end.
It was another wild night of dreams, with this one making a deeper and more lasting impression.
I found myself in another land. After meeting a man and speaking with him, I realized I was in Australia. My wife was also present. No reason for being in Australia was given, but I was pleased. I’ve always wanted to go to Australia, and have just missed several times. I still plan to go.
Anyway, in the dream, I was given some papers that turned out to actually be a little book. I didn’t know what to do with it or why I had it. Reading it didn’t help because it seemed incomplete, and my wife couldn’t figure it out, either. Finding another fellow, I asked him about it, and he showed me how it was a continuation of other documents. He said they were living documents, and took me to a huge wall of like documents. After he explained it, I was excited and explained it to my wife. She wasn’t interested.
I was then informed I had to get to another part of Australia. I hopped into a car and began driving, trying to figure out where I was going as I went. The roads were holed and shoddy. Most of them were like slick mud. As I complained about them to myself and merged onto a highway that was also like slick mud, I was overtaken by cars. They passed at shockingly high speeds. “I forgot they don’t have speed limits here,” I said to myself in the dream car, accelerating to match the pace while I looked for signs and directions.
I found myself out of the car and running. Everyone was running. Instead of driving, we were running everywhere. I was still on the highway and looking for where I was going. Somehow, running, I found it and arrived.
People were there, but it was no one that I recognized. They gave me more books. Where all the other books were white, these books were red. I immediately understood that these were new books, and that I had to take them back to the other location, which I did right away. That pleased the people on the other end. Understanding the books and system at a fast rate, I took on the role of explaining to others how these books continued the stories.
Everyone was told to line up to go somewhere else, part of some planned activities. I got in line and found that I was at the line’s beginning, with my wife beside me. As I started to go, I encountered the first man that had given me the books in the beginning. He and I exchanged some comments, and I told him that I knew how the books worked. That made him happy, and he let me go. As I walked through the gate with my wife into a green field bordered by a white picket fence, I realized that he’d been my teacher.
He was young, maybe, I don’t know, sixteen or seventeen, using limited impressions: long light brown hair, no split ends, clear and firm white flesh, a slender jean-encased body with a hoodie.
She was black and young looking, on a leash. Racing along with her long ears flying and flapping, she was pulling him down the street. Riding a skateboard, he hung onto her leash with one hand and clutched an acoustic guitar in his other hand. “Wait, Rachel, wait,” he called.
Pink tongue exposed, she slowed and glanced back in a questioning canine grin. When he said no more, she turned her head back and accelerated her young, muscular body, intent on her mission, regardless of what he wanted.
Today is a sunny, drizzly, wintry late spring summer day, a rich day for meditating and harvesting nostalgia.
Such weather induces silence. The cats huddle for warmth, seeking places to stay dry and out-wait this weather. Children and adults find indoor activities. Less people prowl the neighborhood in cars, bikes and motorcycles. Nobody is cutting their lawn or trimming their trees and bushes. Few walkers and hikers pass the house. The birds become dormant on branches, indulging in their own weather meditation.Even the crows and jays aren’t saying anything.
With this quiet, I think of faded intentions and plans. I’m almost 60 now, and can pause and look back on what I thought would happen and what I planned, and compare it to what transpired. More, I remember insights that I planned to act upon and never did, words that I meant to say to people, feelings and emotions that were to be spoken, but never touched my lips. Time is an avalanche, and buries these moments. They may be our intentions but they’re subject to everyone’s timetable and existence.
Some people say this is summer, despite the calendar and the official start. Summer begins with some when Memorial Day passes, or June begins, or the schools let out. Whichever way you consider the season, as late spring, or summer, today’s air carries wintry odors and chills. It reminds me of Okinawa winters. Our tiny apartment, made of cinder blocks and lacking insulation, didn’t have any heater. We’d purchased a small electric heating tower to keep us warm. Our family was me, my wife, and the cats. The cats were Crystal and Jade, felines that others surrendered for different reasons, that we took in. For a time, the family included Jade’s three kittens, too, but we found them homes.
Jade, a terribly smart and willful tabby cat, loved the heat and despised cold. She planted herself in front of the heater about six inches away. If you tried sharing her space, she’d bite your ankles until you moved out of her way. Mess with the heat and get the teeth. She’d make her displeasure known through her biting without moving anything except her head and mouth. The rest stayed huddled, keeping warm.
Such memories flooded me as I gathered my laptop and gear and packed it away to ‘go write’. We were in the snug, the small room where we do most of our living. The house is about 1850 square feet but we can usually be found within the snug’s hundred and twenty four square feet, reading books, on our computers, watching television, cats on the desk and laps. A small electric heater was on to combat the chilliness. The room’s thermometer claimed it was 69 in there but it didn’t feel that warm. It felt like an Okinawa winter. So the small electric heater was on because its more energy efficient than running the entire gas system.
We’re spoiled, I think, remembering back to those days of Okinawa. But sometimes it’s good to be spoiled.
I wish everyone was.
Michael Seidel, writer 