Freakout!

The littlest cat, Mittens, the tuxedo cat clone of her mother, likes her privacy and will disappear for most of the day, sleeping in closets, boxes, behind books, etc., mostly coming out for meals. (Despite this, she is a friendly kitty and, almost every night, accompanies me down the hallway to my room when I'm ready to retire, climbing on the furniture, changing the discs and/or tracks on my CD player, knocking over books and begging to be petted.)

Yesterday afternoon, she was in my brother's room napping in a large twine-handled, flat-bottomed, paper shopping bag, the kind with the store's logo printed on the sides. Unfortunately, when she woke up she tried to exit the bag through the twine handle which was big enough to accommodate her head but not the rest of her. She turned so the rest of her was outside the bag but couldn't figure out how to free her head.

So she panicked.

She ran.

She ran around my brother's room, around and over his bed, knocking clothes on the floor. Around his easy chair, spilling another bag containing empty aluminum cans awaiting recycling. She ran out into the living room, dragging the designer bag around her neck, spilling a couple of Mom's ceramic vases (miraculously not breaking them), skidded across the coffee table scattering magazines and newspapers, up one side of the couch and down the other.

The more she ran the more the bag flapped behind her and as it flapped it turned and as it turned the twine noose tightened around her neck scaring her even more.

My brother chased her as she crashed through the dining room and flipped a chair over. The other cats scattered.

We finally cornered her in my room next to my easy chair she loves to claw, under the table she hops on to preen for my attention every night. My brother held her still, wild-eyed and panting, while I carefully untwisted the bag and pulled the handle over her head. She was so traumatized she didn't even notice us laughing our heads off.

As soon as she was free she made a beeline for my closet, climbed a couple of boxes and hid behind my shirts. She stayed in there for a little over two hours. Her mom and sister came into the room a couple of times and just sat by the closet door. It was nice to know they were concerned.

We shall have to wait and see what lessons, if any, were learned.

The Community Library

The lady collecting signatures on the petition to include medical marijuana on the ballot (again) for next year's election was out in front of the library all this week, sharing space with the Christians who are something of a permanent, although, as far as I can tell, ineffectual, presence.

She has a nice homemade-looking display on her card table and says "Hi," to everyone walking in. When I stopped to talk to her she said she just greets everyone entering and only engages them on the way out. I told her I probably wouldn't be leaving until closing time so, unless she was planning on hanging around until then she should really talk to me (and a lot of others, too) every chance she got. She admitted she hadn't considered that possibility and wasn't planning on staying that late so I signed the petition right then and there. For the record, the initiative won a majority last time but, since it's trying to amend the state constitution, needs two thirds of the vote to go into effect and "only" received about 60%. The main sponsor, a very successful ambulance-chasing law firm, vowed to try again and so . . . here we are.

Meanwhile, inside, the notice for the ayurveda yoga classes has been replaced with one announcing the upcoming tai-chi sessions.

The Christians, despite a professional looking literature display just seem to sit out in the heat and talk amongst themselves.

The Recurring Architecture of My Dreams: Part 2 The Adult Years

So, those were my childhood dreams and the beginnings of fixed-place, lucid dreaming.

My adult recurring, lucid dreams occur in three locations:

The first is an overcrowded bus zipping along a narrow, forested mountain road somewhere in the Andes (where, for the record, I've never been). We're travelling fast on a downhill slope, mountain to the right, sheer drop off to the left when we fail to negotiate a sharp right turn and go sailing over the edge high above a city of jumbled low buildings with red tile roofs. I distinctly remember the first time this happened, part way through the fall thinking to myself, "No. I don't like this at all. Let's back up and try again," but couldn't and woke up just before impact. The second time, I did succeed in rewinding the scene a bit and became more successful at controlling the fall and the accident with each subsequent iteration. I haven't had this particular dream in years, now, and suspect it's because there's no more challenge left.

The second dream has no specific action but takes place in a large, dark, multi-story wood-frame house (at least it's all unpainted wood on the inside, I've never seen the outside. I assume it's in the Federal style) which is essentially a hollow cube with balconies on each floor running completely around an open, empty, atrium-like core. There are numerous wooden doors on each floor all the way around. I've only been in a few of them but, with one exception, they are all dark and empty with wooden floors and walls and, inevitably a secret panel behind the far wall opening on a warren of hidden passages allowing me to access almost any other room of the house without being seen (which is important for unknown reasons). The exception is a door that opens into a suite of bright, airy, cheery, sunny, interconnected rooms with numerous windows, comfortably furnished with tables and chairs, flowers and pictures, and suitable for entertaining company on a summer afternoon. No one, however, is ever there.

The third dream happens in a casino. This casino is set in a large open field surrounded by thick forest. There is a single road in through the woods which then circles the casino and leads to a large separate parking garage. The casino itself is ultra modern, three or four floors of polished wood and aluminum in the form of an oval, itself encased in a wider oval of glass in a steel frame. There's maybe a thirty foot space between the inner (wood) wall and the outer (glass) one. There are no windows or other openings in the wood casino walls except for the doors which I have never opened. I have neither been in nor seen the gaming floors. However, between the inner and outer walls there are a number of lounges, bars, restaurants, etc., reachable by escalators between floors. There are people here, unidentifiable background extras, but people nonetheless. They are all well-dressed. The only restaurant I have been in, unfortunately, is the buffet on the ground floor, where I waited in line for typical buffet fare and had a hard time finding a table. One time, I found what I thought was a restroom on the ground floor that turned out to have, in addition to a bewildering array of facilities, an extensive locker room, all arranged in a symmetrical array of dark, carved Gothic stone pillars, alcoves and passageways. And once, I started my journey to the casino from several miles away on a typical American highway, several lanes of fast traffic bordered by strings of neon-lit strip malls and "fast casual" chain restaurants. Night was coming on and the sky was purple with a bright orange sunset afterglow on the horizon. I turned left across traffic down a small lane into the woods and thence out to the casino which was bright against the dark sky and forest.

The reason these have all come back to mind recently, is that I may have started a fourth location, although it is still quite undefined in comparison. Twice now I've dreamt I was looking out a standard size window opening (there is no frame or glass) in a wall made either of concrete or stuccoed cinder block. Outside the window is a long, thin pole, much like a flag pole. I can see neither the top nor bottom. I can reach outside the window but not far enough to touch the pole. And climbing it is some sort of ghoul. This thing is almost human size. It's skin is made of dark gray leathery patches sewn together haphazardly, all except for its face which is pinkish-orange flesh sagging and folded as if melting. It has large eyes (can't recall a color) over which its eyelids droop. It has a long melty nose. The first time, I managed to reach out and push the beast back a bit, but in the second dream I missed and it crawled up out of sight.

All things considered, I'd rather hang out at the casino (or in the sun room).

The Recurring Architecture of My Dreams, Part I: The Early Years

I had a dream over the weekend and it has caused me to think about my history of dreams and some of their standard settings. This last one was some place new yet familiar.

I can remember dreams going back to my early childhood (five or six years old). The two earliest were non-repeating: the first has no setting just a dark background and involves a standard wooden school ruler, 12 inches long with flat bottom and slightly beveled top, fractional inch segments* imprinted in black and the small metal insert running the length against which you could run your pen or pencil to draw a perfect straight line. I hold the ruler in my right hand (I'm left-handed) while a pale green, luminescent spider about an inch long slowly crawls from the far end toward me. I watch as it passes each printed tick mark on the ruler, starting and stopping, glowing faintly as it closes and I can not let go no matter how hard I try until I wake just before it touches me.

The second one seems more. . . normal . . . for a five/six year old: The new suburban neighborhood in which we lived backed up to, and was named for, a long, forested ridge on the other side of which was a reservoir. On the crest of the ridge, one tree stood above all the others, a pine with a peculiar top which, if you squinted just right, or had very poor eyesight as I do and couldn't focus properly, looked an awful lot like a Tyrannosaur. Which, in my dream, it became and waved its tiny arms about and chomped its huge jaws but never came down into our little valley because it was still rooted up there.

Both of those dreams are over fifty years old and only happened once.

The first of my recurring dreams started shortly after. It was also the first of my lucid dreams. It was the flying dream.

I remember lying on my back, under the covers, yet not touching the bed. With a little effort I could swing my body sideways, left then right, until I was moving like a pendulum or someone swinging in a hammock. Soon I was flying two or three times a week. I still remember the delight I felt when I eventually realized I could control how far I could arc the swing and when I first performed a full barrel roll.

At some point, I turned over so I was facing down and thus began moving through space. Left, right forward and (with some difficulty) back were mine. The only thing I never got the hang of was altitude control and I remained at a constant (and not coincidental since that just happened to be the height of my bed) three feet off the ground. And this is where the first of the recurring locations came in as I found myself repeatedly navigating through my brightly lit, empty school, into and out of classrooms and up and down the clean, polished hallway, no one else around, until, inevitably, the one long hallway would narrow down in a kind of forced perspective and I found myself with shoulders wedged against the walls unable to move and woke up. The school setting was accurate down to the desk arrangements, lights and radiators in the classrooms, including the overall floor plan. As dream settings go, except for the last little bit, it was quite mundane.

A couple years later we moved to another town and those dreams ended,

* There was no such thing as metric in those days. I wear an onion on my belt.

Ten Weeks, Give or Take

And that's the answer to that question. Not bad, actually.

Back in April I was photographed by the Googlemobile on my way to the library. I have to confess, after the first few weeks I stopped checking every day and lately have been looking only once or twice a week so I don't know exactly when it went up, but the new street view is there now and there I am making my turn.

Can't tell that it's me, but it is.

They didn't blur me out or anything, the shot is just too far away and fuzzy. My brother could tell. No one else ever will.

High Summer

We raised the flag on the new flagpole on Flag Day even though the cement never set properly, mostly due to the continuing rains, and the pole itself wobbles a bit in the sleeve. Also, we didn't raise the flag so much as raised the pole with the flag attached since the pole is extendable but doesn't have a lanyard and the flag snaps directly to the fixed clips. Nevertheless, it is tall, above the lowest power lines so it was a good idea to shift it back a few feet, and looks good.

Flag Day is also my brother's birthday, so we had the traditional shrimp and scallops sauteed in olive oil and garlic butter with threads of red and yellow sweet peppers served over linguine, corn on the cob and biscuits on the side and apple pie for dessert. We were halfway through the meal when my brother realized the lack of lanyard on the flag pole meant he couldn't fly the flag at half staff if necessary but the old pole had no hoist either and that was never a problem in all the previous decades. If the necessity ever arises, he can just take the flag down.

The mango harvest is slowing a bit. The squirrel and birds and insects have had more than their share and a lot of the fruits dropped too small this year but we have a dozen containers in the refrigerator half a dozen bags in the freezer and still there are another dozen on the counter waiting to be processed. And that doesn't count the ones that have been given away or made into salsa or mango bread already. I'll be making two more loaves tomorrow to give to the nurses when I go in for this month's platelet donation Thursday.

We're having to harvest the tomatoes a little before full ripeness due to the rain which is causing them to swell and burst. The peppers don't seem to have that problem.

Every week my brother cranks the air conditioning down another notch in order to sleep at night. We started the season set at 83F (28C) but now it's sometimes down to 79F (26C) which can seem downright chilly. It's the humidity that's making him uncomfortable more than the heat.

Flag(pole) of Our Father

My brother recently bought a flag pole to replace the one our Dad installed when he and Mom bought the house.

What Dad installed could be called a flag pole only in the technical sense that it was indeed a pole and it often had a flag attached to it. It was a plain metal tube sticking ten feet out of the ground with holes drilled into it through which lines could be run and tied to the flag's grommets. The one my brother bought is anodized metal, extensible to about 25 feet, with a goldish finial on top and two preset snap hooks for attaching the flag.

Of course the snap hooks turned out to be one inch too far apart to mount the nice new flag my brother bought to replace the worn one that started this whole project so he'll use the cheap, lightweight, printed flag that came with the pole (and fits) until it fades and then drill a new hole for the lower snap hook.

Yesterday, despite 95F temperatures, 95% humidity and almost 100% cloud cover and thunder rumbling on the horizon, we went out to install the new pole.

Dad was a firm believer in over-engineering projects. In his opinion, the pyramids were done a bit slapdash. And so, of course, the old pole turned out not to be ten feet long but rather fifteen with five buried firmly in the ground. We finally wrestled it out with much cursing and sweating and dug a new hole about a meter further back from the street to avoid the overhead power lines to which the new pole, when fully extended, can come dangerously close. Our hole was not nearly so deep mostly because we used concrete to secure the base and not just earth.

I refilled the old hole with rubble from the new and made sure the shovel, carpenter's level, etc., were all put away so this doesn't qualify as a redneck 70% project. We'll refrain from hoisting the new flag for a few days until we're sure the concrete as set fully.

It never did rain although there were a few bolts of lightning later in the evening.