Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: upbeat and restless

Today is Saturday, June 22, 2024. Summer had asserted itself with a firm hand. A solidly blue sky gazes down on Ashlandia and bright sunshine blisters our skin and browns the land. Currently 73 F, Ashlandia’s area will experience low to mid 90s for the highs today. The wind has shifted and the smoke has drifted out of our valley to go plague others in another valley, so it’s breathable outside. Take precautions against the heat and outside activities can be pursued. It supposed to get cooler for a few days, with temperatures dipping into the eighties.

It feels like it’s been a long week. Realizing it’s Saturday surprises me. The big Biden-Trump debate looms on the calendar. Personally, I have a physical this week. Slowing down, moderately overweight, I feel like I’m aging by the day — which, yeah, we all are — so I’m not looking forward to the physical.

Mom and I spoke yesterday. She related one of her favorite precautionary tales. Her mother had a thing about smells. She was living alone, in her nineties, as her children discussed putting her into a nursing home or assisted living facility. Those discussions had stalled.

Meanwhile, on a cold December Nebraska night, her mother put on a light jacket and took a banana peel out to put in the outside trash. She slipped and fell, staying on the ground for forty-five minutes before noticed and helped. That was the end of her living alone. She lived for several more years but wasn’t the same.

On her part, Mom’s big fall over a decade ago triggered her long health decline. For my part, when I was immobilized with an obstructed bladder a few years ago, I saw changes quickly emerge. I was suddenly stiffer and less fluid in my movement. My balance felt slightly off. My metabolic rate had changed as I aged, of course, but suddenly I put on weight. Much of my muscle seemed to slack off overnight. Then, boom, my skin all seemed to be sagging.

It’s likely that all those things were happening but I didn’t notice until my routines were changed. Seeing those changes made me more cognizant of my retreating hair line, and the color fleeing my hair and beard. I feel older, slower, and weary. Reading news of the world and its people, and political news, doesn’t seem to help at all. I turn to coffee for energy boosts but I know I shouldn’t be drinking it any longer. Like Grandma and her banana peel, I can’t stop myself.

I read Jill Dennison’s blog as frequently as I can. She and I seem like kindred political spirits, part of the same tribe as many of you who regularly visit my blog and comment. I read one of Jill’s posts and commented yesterday. In her comments back to me, she mentioned that she’s looking for a rainbow.

That was like a set up for The Neurons. As soon as that was read and digested, they began playing Chris Rea’s song, “Looking for A Rainbow” from 1989, in the morning mental music stream (Trademark smoldering). The song starts out slow as it carries forward the album’s theme, The Road to Hell, but becomes jauntier and of course features Rea’s slide guitar work.

Well we come down to the valley
Yea we’re looking for the honey
I see a rainbow
I say that’s the land of milk and honey

Me and my cousin
Me and my brother
My little sister too
Come looking for a rainbow
Yea we’re looking for a rainbow

Well we come down to the valley
Got our babies in our arms
Yea we’re Maggie’s little children
And we’re looking for Maggie’s farm

Me and my cousin
Me and my brother
My little sister too
Come looking for a rainbow
Yea we’re looking for a rainbow

h/t to Genius.com

Yeah, Jill, baby, I think many of us are looking for a rainbow and the land of milk and honey. Some seem to believe the only way there is by holding others back, beating them down, or banishing them. Yes, I’m looking at you, Republicans.

Stay positive – yes, it’s hard – be strong – yes, also hard – and lean forward and Vote Blue in 2024. Maybe we can create a place that attracts rainbows. Here’s the music. Cheers

Just A Moment

I heard thunder. Racing outside, I witnessed the end of a rain shower. Sunshine was back on the scene.

That delicious smell of rain-freshened air and earth pulled me in. Moving to the porch’s edge and look up into a deep well of dark gray clouds. Capping the view across the valley was a bold, full rainbow stretching over the entire scene.

A good way to finish a day.

Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

I’d been sitting and writing for almost ninety minutes. The coffee was cold, the mug almost empty.

My rear end requested a break. I agreed that it was a good time to break, so my rear end and the rest of my body went for a walk.

Sunshine flooded the area as I left the coffee shop. Within a minute, heavy rain began descending. My head whipped around in search of a rainbow. None spotted.

A woman was coming up the sidewalk in the opposite direction. Slowing as she reached me, she asked, “Where’s the rainbow? I see sunshine and rain. There’s gotta be one.”

Laughing and nodding, I answered, “I looked and didn’t see one.”

She resumed her previous pace. “Well, there’s gotta be one out there, and I wanna see it.”

The Silver Rain Dream

I alternated between being inside hotel rooms and office buildings, and outside, in a park-like setting with fountains of silvery water. The dream was densely populated and I never seemed alone. Sometimes I thought I recognized friends and family. Sometimes these were in a distance. For the most part, I felt like I was supposed to be chasing something but would forget what I was chasing.

Finding myself in a tall building, I looked out the windows and saw a park in sunshine where there seemed to be a fair or a carnival. Further out were trees. Their tops were curtailed by a silver veil. I realized it was a storm, and then saw it as a distinct cell moving toward the building I was in. Lightning flashed within the cell, making the silver shimmer and sparkle. Through it all, I kept thinking, what am I looking for? I came here for a reason. Every time that I seemed to have a grasp, the situation twisted, removing me to another location, among other people. Realizing this was happening, I told myself, you must focus and concentrate.

Then I was again in the tall building, in a room with twenty to thirty other people, holding a drink in my hand. Young, I was dressed business casual. I didn’t know any of the others so I shifted to one side and looked out windows. We were really high. I again saw the rain veil and remembered seeing it before. It worried me. It was darker than before and seemed closer. I thought I saw lightning again and kept watching to see if there was lightning, wondering what the impact of lightning would be on us, because we were so high above the ground.

The veil parted, revealing a rainbow inside it. I looked around to see if others noticed it but they were all busy talking. I wanted the others to see it, so I pointed it out and said, “Look, look at this rainbow.” Nobody seemed to hear me. Growing exasperation, I said it more loudly but found myself ignored. Then a young black woman said, “Oh my God, look at that rainbow.” Everyone then turned and started making appreciative noises.

Annoyed, I decided to leave but it was more crowded than before. I was by the windows and everyone had come over to them to look out at the rainbow. I didn’t know where the exit was. Each time I thought I saw it, someone moved in front of it. I thought I could move around them but became confused about which direction I was supposed to take. Going down a hall that was darker, I thought I saw someone or something around the corner and went to see what that was. The light fell, though, frightening me. I held back, but then told myself, “Screw it, go see what that is.”

I went around a corner and then another. All around was dark but ahead was a window bright with silvery light. I thought, where’s that from? Even as I thought that, it came to me, that’s the rain that I saw coming. It was weirdly bright and silvery on the window, running in thick rivulets. Seeing it, I wondered, how can it be so dark in here when the rain on the window is so bright?

Dream end.

Monday’s Theme Music

Welcome back to the show that we like to call Monday. It’s April 26, 2021, for those keeping score at home, and this is Online Mike. The sun’s peek-a-boo presence began at 6:14 AM and will continue throughout this drizshine day until about 8:04 in the P. Same as yesterday. With temperatures dropping, we ended up with snow on the low local mountains last night.

Not complaining. Rain and snow are needed to stop the drought’s relentless advance. Yesterday’s changeable sunrain caused us to go rainbow hunting. Like multitudes, we find solace and hope from a rainbow’s presence. Took a while but a faint arch was finally detected. As it gained presence, a second showed. Yes, a double. Both steadily grew in brightness and hue for several minutes, rewarding us for our patient search.

Rainbows moved me toward music. Chris Rhea’s 1989 song, “Looking for A Rainbow” fit the bill.

Me and my cousin
Me and my brother
My little sister too
Come looking for a rainbow
Yea we’re looking for a rainbow

Well we come down to the valley
We ain’t far away no more
You can’t leave us dying this time
‘Cos we’re all around your door

h/t to Genius.com

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax.

Monday’s Theme Music

Salutations from the third rock from the sun. Today, we mark Monday, April 5, 2021 on the calendar. Here in Ashland, Sol presented at 6:47 AM and is expected to vacate the area at 7:41 PM. Temperatures are cooler today, just 47 degrees F right now, with supposed highs in the mid-sixties. Rain showers are likely.

Had half a cuppa coffee already. Taste buds are singing praises about the flavor and the caffeine is bubbling in my blood. Musically, me mind is mired in 1979 this AM, with Rainbow’s cover of “Since You’ve Been Gone” dominating the neurons. I think this has to do with a dream medley that I experienced that left me thinking about people I socialized with in different locations who I no longer see. Some have died, but with others, different paths were taken and gap emerged that keep us away from one another.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. Cheers

Raining Color Dream

After thinking about dreams and posting today’s theme music (“Highway Star”, Deep Purple, 1972), I was fixing brekkie when a dream segment blasted into memory.

I was a child, maybe nine or ten, but could’ve younger, outside with many other children. Blue sky, sunshine, laughing, and game-playing established the background. We were having a great time.

I was heading toward a picnic table by tall pine trees when I heard others gasping. That caused me to look up. When I did, I discovered it was raining. No clouds were visible, but rain was falling.

A bold, shimmering rainbow formed. It seemed like it was right over our heads, so close and solid that we were trying to jump up and touch it. Then the rain became drops of falling color. The colors splashed over us, making us giddy with laughter. We discovered we could cup our hands and catch handfuls of color and pour them over ourselves and one another. Blues, purples, reds, yellows, oranges, and greens were pooling on the ground and streaming together into rainbows that flowed across the land.

Splashing and stomping in these flowing rainbows, we discovered that we could pick up the colored water and shape it like very wet and malleable clay.

The dream ended.

My heart rushes as I remember it.

The Goofy Band

A mug of steaming, fresh black coffee in hand, I strode back to the table where my laptop waited. “Okay,” I said, “Let’s write, brother.”

Write brother. That cracked me up. I’m a rainbow, and one broad band is definitely goofy.

Time to write like crazy, one more time.

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