Tag: sirens

Monday’s Theme Music

Mood:

Good day to you from Ashlandia, where the road construction continues as we move into autumn’s waters.

It’s 9/11, and you know what that means in 2023. It’s also a Monday. Everyone will be looking back on the 9/11 part. We’ve already had 60Minutes do it. No doubt, that brave journalistic effort will be repeated with solemn broadcasts across the country. Some will probably speculate, could 9/11 happen in America today? Others will remember how the tragedy ‘brought the country together’. More will point out that many of the security measures installed after 9/11 were kneejerk reactions that created the cumbersome Homeland Security. Another faction will discuss the intelligence failures and whether we’ve fixed that while more pundits will write that, noting how Americans reacted to fear, the GOP has seized on fear as their Big Tool for getting voters’ attention and scaring them into supporting the GOP. The GOP will blow things out of proportion and flat lie to that end in these days. We have the videos.

So, first, a correction; I’d seen a weather report that said we were going to be climbing into the upper nineties in our area. I don’t know if I imagined that or if they changed it, but that’s all gone. We’re going to stay mostly in the 80s F. Today we’re at 60 F and we’ll hit 82 F. It’s good tedium to have these manageable, predictable temps.

Sirens are going by down on the main road. I listen and wonder about the story behind them. They stop abruptly; I listen and watch to see if they come up our street. Muses in me automatically created a speculative vignette about what’s going on. My rational mind wonders, what type of vehicle is driving that siren. Worries about fires and friends butterfly around my head.

Flying out tomorrow, so we have prep work underway today. Packing, final cleaning, final coordination with the house/floof sitter. She’s a good friend and good person who enjoys floofs. We’re lucky to have her. It’ll be a day of traveling tomorrow, beginning pre-dawn thirty, flying across the nation from left coast to where the three rivers meet in western Pennsylvania. We’ll be there a while with a wedding in the middle of the visit this weekend.

The Neurons are feeding “A Day in the Life” by les Beatles (1967) into the morning mental music stream (Trademark in jeopardy). The lyrics also hooked my mind and take me into more introspective places. I’ve always thought it was a telling commentary on different points of view with one enjoying drugs, shaking their head at the endless news stream, and the other just dealing with the mechanics of existing and working, doing little thinking about anything outside of that. To those end, I considered it a yin and yang statement on where we are as a modern civilization. But that’s just me. The more existential question is, what are The Neurons up to, feeding this into me? Well, this time my guess is about watching and reading the news and noting others’ reactions to these cycles. They tune in and tune out; and I do the same.

Off to wage peace on the day. Stay pos, be strong, and keep chill. Coffee mug is warming my hand whenever I pause, sipped and gulped to stir the gray beings populating my brain. There must be billions of them. Here’s the music. Cheers

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The House Buying Dream

My wife was buying a house. The street address numbers were either 124 or 214. She was also buying it for either $124,000 or $214,000. She kept it as a secret from me, and it was supposed to be an investment.

I’m not certain how I learned what she was doing, but the dream was taking place on the night she was closing the deal. She was buying the home in her original home state, but we were at home, and her sister, B, was visiting.

Other guests were present, including a young airman who’d serve with me at different locations, R, and a young officer, J. They were all at my house, which was a large condo located downtown. R and I were walking around talking. We were reminiscing about racing. I was particularly remembering that R had worried a few years before that he was going to be exposed because he’d been racing in one league. The other league didn’t know about it, and he was worried about their reaction.

At one point, I was on a large, well-furnished landing. R and I were talking. J joined us, drawn by the conversation. It switched to houses. I commented that this was the only place that I owned. J said, “Well…”

I asked and he confirmed if he was talking about my wife’s secret deal. I told him I’d overheard people talking about it, and I wasn’t worried; she was doing it as an investment. I was confused about the address being either 124 or 214 Maxwell, and then realized that the price was also those numbers.

J had been staying with us in a guest suite off that landing. I talked about how it’s a nice suite, but it’s in an odd location, out of the way, so you’re often forgotten, but you often overhear things being said on the landing because people forget you’re there.

Many sirens were going on outside. R and I went out to the street and stood on the sidewalk, trying to learn what was going on. It was night, and it had been raining. The sellers were starting to arrive. I knew them, didn’t like them, and wanted to avoid them. I thought this was probably one reason that my wife was keeping her purchase a secret.

R, J, and I returned to inside. It was now later. R was saying good-bye, and J was saying good-night. My sister-in-law, B, was talking about saying good-night, and then we talked about movies and music as my wife joined us. I had to unwrap my feet. They were in bandages. As I did that, the others left.

I turned on a movie. It was a huge screen, but I worried about the sound because the guest room where my sister-in-law, so I turned the sound down. I was watching an old favorite movie, but I don’t know the title. As I began watching, I resumed unwrapping my feet and inspected them. My feet looked fine.

The dream ended.

 

0

Sirens of Fear

9:30, sirens erupted. First thought: speeders. More sirens. Second thought: ambulance. Or firetrucks. Both. More sirens. Worries…something big is happening. A shooting? Not been a shooting in our town in the eleven years of my residency time…which means nothing.

Some places are so acclimated to wailing sirens that people exhibit minimal reactions. We react, and wonder. Didn’t help that I’d just been reading a post about mass shootings in America. The cycle between mass shootings is down to about 64 days. How long has it been since Orlando?

Sirens go on, so I worry about fire. Wildfires are our constant threat, unless it’s soaking wet in the winter. Friends are already out there battling blazes up north in Oregon and down in SoCal.

We’re a four mile walk from one end of town to the other. Our television and radio news is provided by the big city down the Interstate. The paper is local but doesn’t always report what prompted sirens. Sometimes all that we get are the police log entries and then depend upon the grapevine for explanations. The grapevine’s not dependable.

We went down to the Saturday Growers’ Market for produce. Nothing out there was burning. No bodies, no crashes, no smoke on the horizon, all good. Probably not for someone, and not for everyone. I can wish them the best, but sometimes that response seems so frail, empty and shallow.

Something was behind all those sirens.

 

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