Tag: perspective

The Aircraft Learning Dream

I was traveling again, a younger person but adult. With many others, all strangers. Most of them were traveling in groups.

I was traveling light, with just a few things. It was cold, kind of dark, as we headed from one classroom to our next one: a jet aircraft.

The jet was spacious and well-lit, with many halls, classrooms, and lounging areas. People rushed around, hurrying to get to preferred spots. As the jet took off, I wandered around, looking for a place to sit. As I did, I would think, oh, no, I forgot something – book – which was green — phone, laptop. But then an insight would come: no, I didn’t bring it, or no, there it is, over there.

Almost all the other travelers were females. They seemed younger than me. Classes and their locations were announced. I tried to get there but found I was too late: the class was always full.

Meanwhile, people left things on their seats to save them, so I couldn’t use their seats while they were in class.

Becoming very dejected, I passed a man in the hall who asked, “Do you need a seat?”

“I do,” I replied.

“Come on,” he said with a gesture, turning away. “I can find something for you on the flight deck.”

We got up there. He explained to the crew up there what was going on. Another crew member said, “We have no problem with letting him sit up here but we just gave the seats away to others, right before you arrived.”

They all apologized and I headed away, looking to see, do I have my phone? My green book? Laptop? As I confirmed, yes, I had those things, they announced the flight was due to land soon.

Dream end.

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Sunda’s Theme Music

Sunda, July 20, 2025, has entered the play. 73 F, summer is currently riding the norms in Ashlandia. A high of 90 F is expected and the sky is cloud-free blue. Smoke scents surf the wind, enough to be a smelly irritant but not enough to change the air quality or discolor the sky.

This is the Apollo 11 moon-landing anniversary. One giant leap, all that. Seems like it was last night that I sat in our Penn Hills wood-paneled basement game room, watching the news on the big color television as a 13 year old. Then I went outside and looked for the moon again. Seems like we progressed for a long time after that, but now as a nation, as a world of people, we’re falling backwards. Bummer to consider as my body curves into its 69th year. Of course, history slides on its own spectrum of peaks and valleys as nature and political wins and losses bend the trajectories. Time will tell what we’ll be remembering as history in 2075, and how a person like me will look back on it.

I perused this morning’s news with sighs. Flooding and deaths in South Korea, questions about Trump’s state of mental health, death and disaster in more places, lawsuits, etc. As far as Trump’s worsening gibbering, I don’t expect his loyalists to do anything about it because that would disrupt their power trips. That’s what it’s all about for enablers like Noem, Biondi, Kennedy, and the whole Project 2025 gang.

We went dancing yesterday. An annual thing, a troop of fifteen humans and one dog met on the shores of the Lake of the Woods Resort at 3 PM. Chatting, dancing, eating, we enjoyed being outside in sunshine, cooler air, smoke free air, enjoying Lisa & the Dynamics as they ably covered pop, rock, and country hits. Nice being away from the routines and the news for a few hours.

Today’s song comes from yesterday’s outing. “Everyone just have a good time,” was said and The Neurons said, “Kick it.” So, this morning has “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO from 2011 in the morning mental music stream. The song was a pretty big hit back then, was frequently heard via television and radio while I was traveling and running errands, but I haven’t heard it in a few years. Synth music, it’s made for dancing and has simple lyrics.

Back to Sunda I go. Hope you have the best day possible. That’s what I’m gunning for. Cheers

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Keep On Keeping On

Daily writing prompt
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?
View all responses

Well, the challenge is to keep on keeping on. I get tired and frustrated. Like, “Oh my God, I have to vacuum the floor again? It’s time to take out the trash? I just took out the trash.” I mean, the tedium of these things… The weariness builds and grows…

My wife is with me on this. It seems like she’s washing clothes every other day. There are just two of us living in the house. How in the world do we use so many clothes?

Then there is the irritating, always-asked question: “What should we do for dinner?”

This is truly a song of the first world blues when you’re complaining about what I have to cook to eat. Like, waah.

Which delivers me on the doorstep of the biggest challenges facing me in the next six months. To keep perspective. To remind myself that things like higher gas prices are minor for me but major for others. To remember that my health complaints are minor and not to get too absorbed about who I am and what’s bothering me. Because let me tell you, brothers and sisters, there are many out there with a much worse fucking life than me.

That’s the challenge to keep in mind.

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Oh, The Wonder

Daily writing prompt
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
View all responses

Time’s spend has changed since I was a child. Then I came to understand, oh, it’s not time that changed, it’s me. Time speeds up as we age. But with time passing, I also gain greater perspective. I can look back at certain events and interactions and comprehend them with better insights because my life’s experiences expanded my base of understanding.

And I have found that I can keep learning. But changing? Changing also becomes harder as I age. It seems like I’m like water. Like a stream, I was looking for my course to follow. Once finding it, I don’t want to leave it.

Time’s passing also changed perspectives on fashion. I’m less enthused about dressing to impress others these days and more focused on being comfortable. I can more easily shrug off others’ opinions of me because I know how transitory and incidental these things are.

My final observation was that I didn’t really fully appreciate my body when I was younger. As I aged, different alarms went off at specific times, triggering events and changes that I never expected. Like my metabolism jumping off a cliff. And my prostate en

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Perspectives

My wife shared a friend’s anecdote.

She hadn’t seen the friend in a while. They have a regular gang that meet for coffee at Growlers after exercises classes each M-W-F morning.

Converted from an old gas station, Growlers, nominally a purveyor of beers, is in downtown Ashland. It actually shares its space with a small coffee shop. It’s normally not busy in the morning. That allows the coffee gang to pull together tables and make noise as they please. Outdoor seating with firepits is available, and that’s where they’ll typically be.

The gang is a flexible group with active lives, so the group meeting ranges from four to fifteen people. They’re mostly women. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers, retired teachers, programmers, nurses, musicians, accountants, architects, artists, firefighters, college professors, and so on. They’re characters, and have been coming to the same exercise class, with the same instructor, Mary, for over thirty years. My wife, in her mid-sixties, is the youngest. She started the coffee gant back when she began taking the class after we moved here in 2006. Always pursuing fitness, when she arrived here, she began looking for a new exercise routine, and heard about Mary’s Y class. That’s where she was told this tale this morning.

Weirdly, my wife doesn’t like the coffee at Growler’s, so she has tea.

“We’ve downsized,” L said. L is the friend. “I’m 76 and my husband is 82. We had a 3,000 foot home and five and half acres just outside of Ashland. We were talking and agreed, we don’t need all this property. So we sold our place and bought a smaller one here in town.

“Well, after we’d sold our property, the new owners called us. They wondered if we could meet at our old house and walk the property line with them so they can learn about their new land. Naturally, we agreed, so a time and place was set.

“We’d never met them. Well, we got out of the car to wait, and then they arrived. Well, they were older than us! Both had walkers.

“Then they told us, they were downsizing, too. We were speechless.”

I laughed when I was told the story and wondered, moving into a 3000 square foot home with some land while downsizing, just how big was their last place?

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A Dream of Nines

Although a military dream, the aspect of nines being repeated struck me more.

The perspective was interesting. I was up above the scene, looking down on everything, following ‘me’ around. I was in the military again, young again, a young NCO again, at a new command post again, and I was nervous. I knew an exercise was kicking off. I worried about being up to it. Being led around the console areas by a young, nervous officer, I was being shown dozens of things simultaneously. Several other controllers were already on duty, tracking aircraft, on the phones with the squadrons and theater headquarters, or on the radio with aircraft or ground operations. A lot was going on and I was a little dizzy with it.

Per standard procedure, the command post was a secure area. A cypher lock was on the door. I’d been given the combination and was walking around repeating it to myself as I took in everything. The numbers were six three one eight. I kept saying them to myself under my breath, “Six three one eight, six three one eight.” Meanwhile, others had come in, taking up positions up in the battle staff and over on the reports console.

Then, as I was listening to the officer, following him, repeating the numbers, I thought, six plus three equals nine. One plus eight equals nine. I looked at the clocks. The local time was almost six AM but it was almost nine PM GMT. The officer said, “It’s going to start at nine Zee.”

That’s nine Zulu, aka, nine GMT. I acknowledged that but thought, “Six plus three equals nine and one plus eight equals nine, and nine plus nine equal eighteen. If you break that down, one plus eight equals nine.”

Looking around, I realized, there were nine people in the sprawling command post now, including me. Then the officer said, “It’s nine Zee, time to begin.” Emergency Action lines began ringing. As controllers turned on the red lights, secured the console zone, and put the EAL on speaker, the officer looked at me and said, “Let’s get started.”

I replied, “Okay.”

Dream end.

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Perspective

He said, it’s just an accident, it’s just a death. Nothing to worry about, not worth the mess.

He said, everyone gets sick, it’s nothing to fear. Nothing to worry about, it’ll all come clear.

Then, when it was his own family who died, he said with a sad face, who could’ve known that this could take place?

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