Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
The dream began with me in a small town with two friends, a male and female. We were all youngish, I’d guess in our twenties. An attack by Russian aircraft on another place in the world was underway. I had three models of the aircraft involved in my hands. These models were about a foot long but made of plastic. Somehow, using magic and the models, we were able to down the five jets. We knew this by watching it in a shallow puddle of water. Although the three of us were involved, the other two credited me with doing it.
Afterward, as we walked around the small town, with its parks and wide, quiet streets, news of what we’d done spread. People kept showing up out of nowhere asking for details and then asking if we could do it again. I was certain that we could. My female friend arrived with a video camera and told me that she wanted to interview me. Then she would broadcast it and put it on the net. I agreed to that, and was ready with the models, but small matters kept delaying us from beginning the interview.
She said that we would do it later and walked off after I agreed. I walked around more with the models and came to a fast moving, swollen creek. While watching the water rising up over rocks and crashing down, I grew aware that I could see other scenes happening in it. They mesmerized me. Leaning in to see things more clearly, I lost one of the models in the water. After some frantic searching for it, I spotted it floating down the creek and rushed after it.
With a little effort, I captured the model as it passed under a bridge. I realized then that it was time for me to meet my friend for the interview. As I arrived there, people approached me and told me that news crews from CBS and NBC were there to interview me. Someone else told me someone wanted to have me on their television show but I couldn’t understand the television show.
I saw my friend set up with the camera by a pavilion under a wide oak tree. I told everyone that I had to do my interview with her first and then walked in her direction.
Dream end.
He permitted his small train of cars to scrub off speed until it was almost stopped, and then gently pressed the brake pedal, encouraging a full stop.
Because he’s cautious, he opened several surveillance systems. Cameras and ground radar went up, scanning the remnants of I-5. Nothing else is untoward in this wasteland, but he picked up the AK-47 and looked around, watching his rear view mirrors and cameras as the engine idled. Selecting neutral, he set the hand brake and observed.
One of the packages moved again. It’s something that was alive or remained close to alive, or a ploy to invite him to stop and investigate. The wreckage was mostly cleared here. Rust, decaying plastic and rubber, and vegetation cracking through the pavement attested that more than a few months have passed since this crash or battle took place. Something alive is out of place. Manipulating a camera, he focused on the two packages. They appeared human, maybe females, adults.
Debating options and running scenarios through his head, he drummed his fingers on the console. He’d felt like Noah, building this vehicle. Sometimes he thinks of it as the vehicle, but other times, he calls it his train, an engine without a track, towing five cars. The instructions and scheme to build it reached him through nocturnal visions. He rejected referring to them as dreams. They were too cogent for dreams. The project, as he called it, trying to keep it abstract, ended up consuming money, energy and relationships. His marriage had already terminated, Mom and Dad were dead, and the children were forging their own paths of mistakes and successes, so it was pretty easy to burn those ties.
The thing was, though, the visions had never explained why this was being built. It seemed incredibly ridiculous and impractical to him, this “land train,” an absurd expression, since trains ran on land. People kept after him about why he was building it. He couldn’t explain it, not wanting to explain those nocturnal visions, falling back to weakly saying, “It’s just a whim.” He knew they thought he was crazy, an opinion he’d shared most of his waking hours. Then the sierra slathered the spinning fan blades onto a new wreck of a world, and here he was, a man alone with two cats and a dog, traveling destroyed America.
That’s what must have been behind the nocturnal visions, right? Why else have him build this thing? He was impressed that something had reached out to him with such guidance, even though it also scared him shitless about his sanity. Okay, but now, here he was, alive and on the road as the rest of humanity, at least in America, as far as he could discern, completed the cycle, dust to dust.
Yet, two people on the road, apparently needing help, were before him. How did that fit? As he watched, one progressed through the jerking motion of standing, confirming, it seemed to be a woman, small and white. He pulled his binocular to his eyes for a better image. Swaying, she straightened her back and squared her shoulders. Stooping, she pushed and pulled the other one, also a woman, until she stirred and rose to her knees.
The nocturnal visions hadn’t included others. Yet, he’d always wondered why his train was five cars. It was overkill for one person. Cursing cowardice and indecisiveness, he checked the time and watched the two. Holding on to one another, they minced across the road with staggered steps. Only two in the afternoon, it would be hours before night. Hours before his nocturnal visions came, unless he could close his eyes and sleep now. But if he did, they could leave. They could die.
The vision had brought him here. Now he needed to decide who he was. None of the others remained. These were the first living people he’d seen since he left his home after the fall.
Maybe their vision had brought them here, to meet him. If so, shouldn’t they be looking for him? They seemed oblivious to his vigil, even though the engine’s rumble probably carried to them.
He didn’t have a choice. The vision had brought him here.
It was up to him to finish the vision.
My dreams were like glass last night, slick and transparent, and then breaking with sound, jarring me from one direction and composure, launching me into a spin.
I saw myself in different worlds, and viewed myself in different times, leaving me to awaken and wonder, where am I now and where have I been?
My body was rigid. The colors struck me with hurricane force and the sounds were like boulders falling down around me. Stars stared down at me and I stared back. The Sun lit the darkness with a sudden flare, and I saw more, and further, in its blaze. I saw mountains and seas, buildings and cities, volcanoes and swamps, violent red sunsets and cold red mornings where my breath fogged the air into crystallized obscurity. I saw sunshine on ice and moonlight on ink.
But I stood straight and remained myself throughout the changes. And awakening, thinking and contemplating the melting shards of dream, I was pleased that I had that much.
I’d been reading articles on success by Nichole McGhie at The Excited Writer, and how success is defined by Lisa Kron at Writer Unboxed, along with posts about believing in myself and being great, both by Jay Colby.
I was intimidated about trying to be great. I am intimidated about trying to be great. Who am I, to dare to think I can be great? Hell, I’m intimidated about trying to be mediocre.
I used to facilitate strategic planning sessions for U.S. Air Force units. The steps were about defining how the units viewed themselves and what they wanted to achieve. The mission was who they were and why they existed; the vision is who they wanted to be, which would be gained through their accomplishments. Goals were established and plans put into action.
Likewise, I used to write and conduct performance reports. While I’m unimpressed with the standard performance report processes and mechanisms the USAF and many corporations use because they’re rich with folly, the best part of the process for me was asking myself and my people, “What do you really to do? What do you really want to be? Who do you really want to be?”
This worked well. My teams and the individuals were stronger for the effort. The visions provided structure and discipline.
I did the same for myself for my writing endeavors. Such a vision is a powerful, sustaining force. When you’re tired, depressed, frustrated or bitter, a vision of what you’re pursuing is a magnificent catalyst for taking a deep breath, mining out some new source of energy and determination and pressing on regardless.
It’s done wonders for me. I write consistently and patiently, defining and re-defining my process as I learn. I’m pleased with myself as a writer.
I’m not pleased with myself with the business aspect of writing. As I’ve noted before, I had a vision, write a novel. Done, done, and done again and again and again. But guess what? As writers, editors, and publishers all know, writing a novel is the beginning. So while my vision was beautiful for being a writer and writer, it was not significantly developed for being a successful published writer.
I was thinking of all of this today. Using Jay Colby’s questions in his post on greatness as a starting point, I decided I would treat myself to an off-site and set aside a large part of a day to defining my vision for being a successful published writer. Along the way of thinking and deciding this, I considered my meager, weak efforts so far. They’re frankly embarrassing and depressing, yielding the results you’d expect from such half-assed mediocre work. That’ when the voice in me said, “I will do better.”
I know that voice; it’s my inner voice of determination. It’s not a wheedling, apologetic voice used while called on the carpet and groveling. It’s not a voice employed to mollify another, nor a voice of regret when I’ve been caught doing something another doesn’t like. This is the voice of one who has been down, recognized he’s down, and decided that he’s fucking tired of being down. I know this, because I’ve heard this voice before, several times in my life. Each time, though, it took a descent into a morass of doubt, self-pity and self-flagellation for me to speak and hear the voice. The difference this time is that I only usually answered with that voice only after others told me I had the potential to do more and be more; this time, I’m telling myself.
“I will do better.”
Sometimes the theme music is about trying to influence my mood, reflect a more general mood, or capture a sentiment. Today, pining for the end of 2016 and commencing the countdown to 2017, I turned to Bruce Hornsby and the Range and ‘The Way it Is’, 1986.
I selected it because he sings, “Some things will never change.” He alludes to judgments based on appearance, beggars and the unemployed, and people’s callousness. “That’s just the way it is.”
I’m one that doesn’t believe that’s just the way it is, and things will never change. I’m not a student of history but I enjoy reading history. I know of other times when matters were worse for many in almost every term we can think of to phrase it.
But that’s not how it stayed. People hunted medical solutions to reduce and eradicate disease, or sough technological advances to benefit our planet and civilization, economic improvements for all classes in all societies, or pushed for freedom and equality for all without regard to how they, as individuals, differ or conform with anyone else.
I am one that believes that if we c0ntinue developing and articulating visions of a better world, we will achieve such visions of better lives for everyone. I turn to Bruce and the Range because that’s what one stanza states:
That’s just the way it isI
Some things will never change
That’s just the way it is
But don’t you believe them
Yeah, I don’t believe them. Things will change.
For the better.
Michael Seidel, writer 