Dreaming...

 When I go to sleep at night my brain, my subconscious, or my other other self, whatever you want to call it or whatever it is goes to places I used to be 40 or 50 years ago. Maybe it's because I am old but a couple of nights ago I dreamed I was walking down old Press Road in Southern Nacogdoches County, Tx. 

They may have some blacktop on the road these days but in my dream it was a dusty, red dirt trail through pine woods and dotted with old country houses. I was walking in the hot summer time and I soon arrived at the old rent house where several friends lived and trudged up the driveway. As I arrived it suddenly became apparent to me that I was naked. 

My friends sat in old wooden chairs in the yard (this was the days before we all had bag chairs from big box stores) and I don't really recall particular people that were there. The people in my dream were just composites, familiar to me so much that I was comfortable to to be naked to them. 

There was one feature of the yard that was not there in reality but in my dream I saw a faint woods trail, wide enough for cars leading from the pine and oak forest behind the house around the edge of the property and joining the driveway at the main road. As my naked self approached the people in the yard a car and some foot traffic appeared on this dim, little used path. 

The car was old ragged and rusted. The people and it seemed to be all women in the car and on foot were also ragged and a bit rusted like people in old depression era dustbowl photos. I was ashamed of my nakedness and I lay down in the dry leaves accumulated under a strip of trees between the road people and the people in the yard. I lay facedown and tried to cover my shinny hinny with the leaves. It was taking a pretty big pile of leaves. 

Eventually traffic on the road subsided and someone directed me to an outdoor shower set up at the edge of the road. Somehow I had a green fishing shirt that I wear to the lake and camping and I wrapped it around my waist as I walked to the shower. This is the most recent photo I could find of the green shirt. Apparently I wear it playing guitar also. 

I was ready for a shower because I was dirty from laying in the leaves and summer time in the hinterlands of Nacogdoches County is a great place to discover yourself covered in ticks. Right at that moment another woman came down the road. She was younger, fair skinned and wearing a long ragged dress. She pointed out a plant growing around the shower area. It was like a green onion but with a large bulb at the end and two foot long green shoots for leaves. The woman said, "when we shower, we scrub with these."

For some reason this tip flared my temper with impatience. I told her, "I know that!" 

I woke up from the dream and sat on the side of the bed. It was about four in the morning and I needed to urinate. My stomach told me I should have just had two pieces of left over pizza instead of four. After I took care of my businesses I sat on the bed and thought about the dream. This is not unusual, to wake and have my mind get busy in the middle of the night over what it's been doing when I have not been actively driving it. 

As I write this it occurs to me that there are several people that lived in the old house on Press Road might read about this dream and I wonder if they have dreams also.    

  

       

Maybe I Need to Walk There Again...

My doc asked me if I slept well. I said after sleeping several hours I wake up and use the bathroom but get back to sleep easily but then in a couple of more hours I wake for another bathroom break but them I sometimes don't get to sleep as easily and I have to get up and read a book for 30 minutes and then I sleep on till dawn or sometimes after. When you do the math that adds up to 7 or 8 hours sleep which the journals tell us is about enough. 

What I didn't tell him is that second wake up is usually after a very vivid dream that leaves my mind awake and busy. I also didn't tell him because a family doctor seeing a basically well patient that he can get rid of in less than 15 minutes or anyone else for that matter other than a blog reader does not give a flip about what you dreamed.  

A couple of nights ago I woke from a dream like this and carefully sat up on the side of the bed. I kept very quiet so as to not wake Cathy but I wanted to think it over and have good recall since there were many themes at work.

I dreamed I was walking through the French Quarter in New Orleans with someone I knew but it was like the person was a composite of every person I had ever walked through the French Quarter with and also every person I knew that had told me a story about walking through the Quarter. Soon we were out of the neighborhood influenced by the old Spanish and French styles of architecture and entered a darker more slum like area. World beat music with a lots of congas, heavy bass and soulful vocals in an African language carried to us from an indistinct source. It was loud but not overpoweringly so. My composite friend tripped along lightly, almost dancing, occasionally whirling around to see if I was still with him.

We came to what seemed to be fire escape type stairs and began to climb. The steps seemed uneven and hand carved. A tall man in colorful African dress began to ascend the steps behind us and we all arrived at an open air restaurant or bar.

Inside there were quite a few people sitting at a plywood bar on barrels for barstools and it seemed like I knew most of them. We talked about walking down Bourbon Street and after looking at a menu on the wall written in a foreign language that I couldn't make heads or tails of someone told me to order the mosquito plate. "It means something special to them" they told me indicating the waitstaff behind the bar so I ordered. 

A girl sitting next to me who I did not know asked if I always wore a suit. I didn't realize what I was wearing but it was my old grey thrift store sport coat. I told her yes, this color in winter but come summer I would shift to seersucker suits for the hot weather. She asked if I was heading back to walk down Bourbon Street. I said no. I might never walk down Bourbon Street again.

I awoke from the dream and after a period of thinking all this over it occurred that while I've been in the French Quarter a number of times over the past decade I have not actually walked down Bourbon Street since Mardi Gras 2014.  

I never did get that Mosquito Plate. 

               

             

I Splurged...

 I like getting magazines in the mail and while Cathy can often be seen at the box by the road in pajamas as she collects them the diligent carrier tosses my newspaper way up in the garage so the only special going to get the paper dress up required first thing in the morning for me is a cup of coffee in hand. No matter what I am wearing this is how I get the majority of my news. 

One magazine I take, Rolling Stone Magazine, once a great bastion of the counter culture which I somehow managed to acquire a lifetime subscription to pictures a world of music and culture I'm not a member of. It's changed.  The other magazine, The New Yorker has a great mix of poetry, politics, short story fiction, science, books, music,  theater, current events, food and more reported each week in it's pages. The Lufkin Daily News is a Pulitzer Prize winning paper and while at three days a week it's a shell of it's former self I think it does a good job. 

Now I know some will say, "I knew he was a commie liberal when I saw him in boxers fetching up that rag the LDN out of his garage." Because we live in historical times and I wanted the best coverage I splurged on the introductory offer made by The New York Times to deliver to my email in box the entire paper for the vast sum of $1 a month for the next 6 months. The Times has been around since 1851. They probably know what they are doing.

I guess in addition to being a commie liberal I'm now a member of the East Coast Elite because Lord, Dorothy, out here in Kansas we don't even think about New York but the thing I see all these news sources have in common is that if it walks like a duck they say so with no bias. It's left for you to decide if it is indeed a duck. 

Recently there was a story in the Times that touched my heart. A photo accompanying the story of the civilian causality toll of war in the middle east showed two wounded brothers, about the age of my grand children laying on cots. One of the kids badly wounded himself was rolled so he could keep his arm on the other in comfort. I watch my grandkids as they help each other, finding lost shoes, getting a drink of water or a snack, teaching the little ones how to climb and putting all that together with the picture of the two wounded boys I get just a glimpse into how we should treat each other in the world.

That's not how it is. It's the 21st century and in the middle east, the Ukraine, Sudan and other places human beings still bomb cities and civilians. 

To try and get a grip on thoughts about this I turned to an unlikely place. I thought of the Grateful Dead song China Cat Sunflower. It can be tricky to turn to pop personalities for wisdom because like Popes and Presidents they are flawed fallible men and women and the song certainty has it's psychedelic overtones but reportedly the authors say it's less about this than it is about the connection we have to each other and what it's like to remember being three years old. 

That's my prayer today. Let everyone splurge and remember what it's like to be three years old. We might then walk out to the mail box to some different news. 

                

  Look for a while at the china cat sunflower

Proud walking jingle in the midnight sun

Copperdome bodhi drip a silver kimono

Like a crazy quilt star gown through a dream night wind

Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandanna

Like a one-eyed cheshire, like a diamond-eye jack

A leaf of all colors plays a golden-string fiddle

To a double-e waterfall over my back

China cat, china cat

China cat, china cat

China cat, china cat

China cat, china cat

Comic book colors on a violin river cryin' leonardo

Words from out a silk trombone

I rang a silent bell, beneath a shower of pearls

In the eagle-winged palace of the queen chinee

Turtle Soup...

Last time I was in New Orleans I went to see a band at Chickie Wah-Wah on Canal St. A few blocks away was one of my favorite restaurants in the Crescent City, Mandina's. As things go sometimes, the best laid plans and all, I did not make it over there. The next day, we were camped across one of the longest bridges in the world in Mandeville at the State Park there I was delighted to learn that there was a Mandina's near by. Maybe not as cool as the old Mandina's uptown in New Orleans that had it's origins as a grocery store making sandwiches for working class Italian immigrants in 1898 but I was still able to satisfy a Jones for their famous turtle soup. 

Don't worry, since we did not have a shot of sherry to serve on the side like they do in Mandina's, it comes out in a shot glass on the side of the plate and you dump in in the soup yourself for flavor we did not make soup out of this turtle. Cathy claims she has cleaned and cooked a turtle before although it's probably been about 40 years ago since she did such so if we had had sherry...

Not an appetizer although I did dream last night that I was fishing at the beach and someone cooked stuffed crabs that were so good that I ate shell, legs and all.     

 

The Uptown Mandina's opened as the restaurant we know today in 1932 in the same building the Mandina family opened the original grocery store and the family still runs it. There's a lot of history there to go with the food. The old days and all that. They are important, especially when eating turtle soup. 

 

When You Should Pick Up the Guitar But Don't....

 My resonator guitar was leaning on a stand in it's spot in the living room. Cathy's guitar also has a spot in the living room on a stand. The idea is that when creativity strikes instruments are handy and you grab one up and create. It's not always that smooth a process because I played a gig in October using this guitar and had not picked it up since. I played other guitars plenty. I played electric guitar in my room, bass guitar at church for services, a couple of funerals and weddings and of course tuba for a civic band concert, and several Drum and Tuba Christmas gigs. Yesterday I picked the resonator from it's stand, removed the stick on pickup and cord I use when needing to electrify it and said to myself, "self, you need to play something on this." I didn't and then that night I had this dream. 

In the dream I rode a bicycle on an East Texas farm road or isolated state highway shaded by tall pines. I turned on a dirt driveway and went through a cattle pasture gate and followed a rutted track to a small white frame house. I was expecting a party but there were no cars signaling the presence of people and I wondered where everyone was. I entered the house to find a room full of people sleeping on mattresses on the floor. Men and women slept together and some people slept on singles by themselves. I thought to leave but they invited me in and everyone rose from bed. They were all hippies, men with beards and shaggy hair, barefoot women with waist length straight hair, long dresses and plain cotton tops. 

As they got around neighbors, men, women and children from a house next door walked across an open field to join us. On a small rise of ground my late friend Gary, a bandana around his head sat playing his drums. As I think about it there may have been other deceased friends in the dream, all gone about the time cell phones began their rise to prominence and before Standley cups were such a thing.   

Here's Gary at the drums.       

In the living room of the old house people began setting up to play music. I expected Gary to bring in the drums but some other guy brought in a child sized set and put it up in a corner. While people were deciding who would stand where I sat down on my amp which had magically appeared but I did not have a guitar. I thought if I leave now on the bicycle I can go get my guitar and return by automobile but if I stay for the jam I'll be riding the bike home in the dark. 

This situation never concluded because I woke up to a windy storm. The power was out. I could hear high gusts of wind dancing the chimes on the porch. Those chimes are tuned to an E Major chord which is the very heart of rock and roll. Mother Nature played random never to be repeated arpeggios with the notes on the chimes and I though I heard snippets of "Rumble," "Smokestack Lightening," and "That's All Right Mama." Rain spattered across the metal roof of my house saying, "Wake Up Little Susie!" Get that guitar off the stand!  

  

We Will See About That...

 I dream almost every night. Usually I can relate these dreams to something that's on my mind, anxiety caused by some job I had one time decades ago, or if a water dream I awake with a powerful urination urge. In the case of the water dream it's a good thing to wake up but I get tired of the other ones waking me and setting my mind on busy. I told Cathy I would ask the doctor for something to make me not dream. She said don't do that. It's a red flag. Don't need those. My doctor does not have to doctor on me very much but sometimes when they do start doctoring on you things can get sideways. 

Last night I dreamed me and Cathy were going to a music festival. It's something we often do. We had on our festival clothes. If you don't know what festival clothes are the woman wears something which in the words of my dad, "you can see up it, down it or through it" and the men wear a crazy hat, a colorful shirt or no shirt and shorts shorter than what you might wear to a ball game or some place like that. We parked the car and walking in we spotted a hippie taco place and as in ever conscious senior citizens on a fixed income in search of a bargain mode we decided to eat there to avoid the premium priced festival food. 

Going to certain festivals can be a culture. You plan for it ever year, get on the internet message boards, buy the early bird tickets and in this taco place we sat with people we knew and had met at the festival before. Everybody ordered tacos, refried beans, chips and queso cheese. 

Everybody except me. I've noticed sometimes places like this have an item on the menu that is so out of whack with everything else that either no-one ever orders it or it is the most exquisite especial that you will ever taste. You don't have much time to make this decision. If the server says "do you need a minute" we all know this means I'll be back in an hour because this guy has done messed up the preparation sequence of ultra processed food service which in a hippie place like this we know means that yesterday's charro beans are today's refireds. So I made the split second decision to order the chicken fried steak with spicy sauce. 

Everyone else got their food. I had chips and salsa, bites of Cathy's tacos and munched on appetizers. The chicken fried with spicy sauce never came but I got full on that other stuff. When the waitress, a blond hippie girl with wide set blue eyes came I said "we need the check but cancel that chicken fried steak with spicy sauce. I never got it." She said, we will see about that."  

I woke up. It still needs to be seen about and maybe that's what I am trying to do here. 

    

      

Things That Go Bump in the Night...

I started using one of those cpap machines. I think I've mentioned before that I snore loudly and according to my brother I did so as a child and I don't mean to infer that I've slept with everyone in town but a lot of people know about the snoring. A few months ago on a doc visit he put two and two together and asked me if I snored. When I said yes he asked if I would do a sleep study. He's a nice guy, he askes if you will do things as opposed to when I was practicing as a physical therapist assistant and I would tell patients that if they did not do what I said they were going to die. Smart patients already knew on arrival that to get through the situation they were going to have to do hard things and people that either were not so smart or had a resistance to doing hard things died in piles. I told my doc I would do a sleep study.  

Sure enough the sleep study showed I had what they termed mild apnea. I mean I know people who play gigs with guitars mildly out of tune without ever addressing the issue but they went ahead and ordered my machine. Apparently anyone who takes a sleep study has mild apnea because those machines are in short supply and it takes a bit to get one. 

The deal is that if you use the machine three months for at least 4 hours a night my insurance, Medicare, pays the rent and then I own the machine. They know if I'm using it because I scan it with my phone ever so often. I have driven the machine across the country, flown it on an airplane, slept in the camper under the east Texas pines and used it while cooled by gentle ocean breezes to fulfill my obligation.      

When I check in person with the rental company or my doctor with an occasional issue they check the reports from the phone and say "oh, you are doing so good." Then they write a note in my chart that says "PATIENT TOLERATED TREATMENT WELL CONTIUE TO FOLLOW MD ORDERS AS MEDICALLY INDICATED" and Medicare says , "well good, here's the money." I'm not complaining about this because I did the same thing, got that money and retired early and comfortably. 

I am complaining that I have not consistently slept well for several months now. I look at the clock and do some quick tuba player math on when four hours is up and then if I awaken and I've done my time the mask comes off.  Usually it's by then what Chuck Berry called the "Wee Wee Hours" which for me is between 2 and 6 am. I often have trouble going back to sleep so I get on up. Cathy, who has her own sleep problem of not being able to go to sleep says that the machine does keep me from snoring. A gag probably would also and might actually be more comfortable and a possibly a little bit sexy.     

Finally to get around to what this is really about is while I am up during those wee wee hours I hear things bumping around on the hot tub deck right outside my bedroom door. I have heard it before usually in the cool months of the year it seems. It's a sound like running, jumping, or scampering. I went out with a flashlight as I have before and I didn't catch anything in the act. Last night after a check I came back in and the noise started again after 5 minutes. I slipped out quietly, stood in the dark waiting and eventually flicked on the light but still no sighting of the perp. 

So what is it? Possum? there have been some sightings lately. Coon? Occasionally I see one out here. Rats? There is evidence that the cat is controlling this population. Cats? He does have friends. Aliens? I'm not saying it's aliens but it could be. 

So I don't know what goes bump in the night out on my deck. If I stay awake enough maybe I'll see it. The doc did ask if I thought the machine was helping me, making a difference. I am not sure at this time. I guess helping could be helping to catch a critter of some kind.

There is a show business story about the great singer song writer Roger Miller. When a band member was asked how long Roger had been awake he replied "I don't know, I've only been in the band a year."  

When I retired I thought about how life would be if I just slept when tired and got up when awake. Since I babysit grand kids who take an afternoon nap I usually join them so I guess I am kind of doing that.  

 

All Hail the Turtle...

 When I was a child I recall, and of course after all this time this reminisce might not be exactly factually correct, the family making the discovery of a large snapping turtle crawling through our backyard. 

There were still woods behind our home and the houses and streets back there were a few years away and there was a creek drainage snaking through this undeveloped area to emerge into a man made system of under street culverts and ditches to funnel the water away. This makes the turtle unsurprising as when you have woods you have mammals, reptiles and if there is enough water there will be fish.

I think and I'm not sure they thought like this back then but that now days parents make the attempt to turn anything a child experiences into a learning experience even to the extent of diminishing the traditional classroom.  I might be wrong but maybe my parents were ahead of the game but they did allow us to take a stick and poke the turtle. 

This of course made the turtle furious in the exact same way it would make you furious if you were poked with a stick and it exhibited the behavior for which it was named. It snapped at the stick. My parents told us that if it snapped a body part it would not release till it thundered. Surly a teaching moment and I probably told my kids the same thing and I'll tell the grandkids also but I now see signs at the boat launches on the nearby lake that due to rarity and approaching extinction I should report to Parks and Wildlife sightings of certain snappers including photos and GPS coordinates. 

The sighting of this statue in a Texarkana BBQ restaurant kind of boiled all this up in my mind. Why? They did not offer turtle on the menu which is quite common in certain parts of the country. 

My first impression was that little boy has two turtles but someone pointed out that it might not be a boy and I'm ok if you present how you want to. I felt the figure was showing a certain carefree joy so I looked up the symbolism of turtle and it's what you might expect. Longevity, slow and steady perseverance, healing, retreat, the Earth, receptivity, survival and determination are just a few things people associate with turtles which by the way are related to crocodiles and birds. Demonstrations of all these traits are necessary for a successful life and there are many ways to put them to good use. 

What do you think about the statue? 

That snapper we were poking with a stick that day was allowed to proceed on it's way. It's entirely possible that it's still crawling today as the life spans of these are thought to reach 100 years. I have not poked another turtle with a stick since then and have not had another snapping turtle encounter. I have caught a few fishing, all gently freed and observed many in the wild sitting on logs and once while canoeing in cold clear winter waters every time I looked down seemed like the turtles were swimming like aquatic acrobats under my boat. I've probably killed a few by running over them on the highway accidently when they crawl in the spring but I've tried to make up for it by stopping to recue others from the same fate. It's the way of the car. I've probably run over everything you can run over with a car but that's a diminishing occurrence as the wooded places near where people live, just like those of my childhood are now less and less.        

     

A Dream...

 I woke up about 5:30am after a dream. 

In this dream I was standing in the nurse's station of a hospital where I used to work. I was there as a physical therapist assistant to treat the patients in deficits of strength, balance and mobility. Before beginning these tasks I needed to see the charts and check for new doctor orders, the diagnosis, any medical precautions, discharge planning and the physical therapy goals to continue any treatments other clinicians had begun. 

The nurse station was absolute chaos and I could not find a patient chart anywhere. I asked a nurse where they kept the charts and she seemed incredulous that I did not know. I told her, "well it has been 11 years since I worked here and I thought things might have changed." 

Before I worked in hospitals and then nursing homes and as a home health therapist I had a career working at a paper mill. It's been 18 years since I last did that kind of work and I occasionally have a dream where I'm wrapping rolls of paper. About six months ago I told an old co worker I still dreamed about the mill. He said, "you too?" 

So once I was good and awake and thinking about these dreams I wonder is this some kind of anxiety dream? Some kind of striving to improve or something not found or attained? These thoughts led me to examine Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs which I have not thought too much about since Psy 101 and all those boxes seem to be checked off  

Maybe there is a patient progress note floating around out there that I have not signed. Since I'm retired and technically not even a physical therapist assistant anymore because I let my license expire good luck getting me to do that. 

         

Do They Even Dream...

It's a sign of approaching fall. The squirrels at my house are eating pine cones and their seeds. Maybe they will eat pine cones all year long but for some reason I notice the remains of their activity on the ground more this time of year. 

My granddaughter, Parker likes to see squirrels. When she was younger, in an effort to get her to alert to the natural world when a squirrel would appear everyone tried to show her the creature by shouting "squirrel, squirrel." Now big enough to spot them herself she thinks the name of the critter is squirrel squirrel. Whenever I see a squirrel I say to myself "there's old squirrel squirrel." You probably think, "that guy does not have much to say to himself." You might be right.   

I wonder if, in the course of pursuing squirrel business, the squirrel checks the pine cones periodically  to see if they are ripe. Kind of like when I check to see if the mail or the newspaper has arrived. Sometimes I know damn well it has not but I look anyway. 

Apparently squirrels will eat the green or the dry brown cones. I know some of ya'll are doing good research on the latest Covid cure this morning but I found out that squirrels eat probably three quarters of the pine seeds produced by the forest each year and that's a good thing because I don't want that many pines growing up in my yard. I also found that the green cones are easier to shuck, they eat the seed and the cone and that with a little prep work the squirrels will prepare the cones for winter storage so they keep better but I have not seen evidence of that around here.

The evidence of squirrel feeding in my photo is at the base of a large oak tree. The pine tree is fifty feet away. The squirrels apparently pick the cones from the pine, transport them to the oak and sit there to eat them. Which tree is best? When I was a child there were pear trees in my mom's yard that she made the best pear pies from and also pears growing in our neighbors yard. They got ripe about this time each year and sometimes while playing in my backyard a pear would come crashing through the foliage of a large, tall oak to the ground. I was at first amazed that a pear came off the oak but I realized that the squirrel responsible was sitting up there hidden in the tree. As tasty those pear pies were I imagined him to be sad after the work of carrying the huge pear high in the branches that he dropped it.     

I did some of this wondering aloud about all what a squirrel thinks and how he approaches his business to my wife. She said I was attributing human behavioral characteristics to an animal. As a rhetorical question she asked, "Do squirrels dream of electric sheep?"     

 

A Catfish Dream...

 I have an active dream time every night when I sleep. Last night I dreamed about fishing.

The whole family was together on a trip to the lake and we were fishing off the bank. The catfish were biting well but something happened to my fishing pole and I was left using a beer can reel. A beer can reel is one where you wrap a length of line around a beer can, tie a weight and hook to the end, bait it up, throw it out and when the fish bites you wrap the line around the can as a means to reel it in. 

I caught several small fish this way. As I am wont to do when the fish are biting I often deviate from the method we are using thinking that if that works, this will work better. I guess long years of critical thinking on the lake makes me use creative thinking to increase the haul. 

I go to a camp area we are using and take a gym bad, zip up with handles like you might pack for overnights and empty it of it's contents. The contents of the bag were pretty much what I take outdoors in my dry bag, camera, phone, knives and so on. I put a hook on each end of the bag, tie a thick grass type rope (I have one like that around here somewhere) to the handles and prepare to fish.

If standing facing the lake is north on a compass point I sling the baited hooks and bag to a point on the compass north west and sit, holding the rope to await a bite. Nothing happens and everyone is readying to leave. Suddenly I notice the rope is now at a compass point north east and begin pulling in a large catfish.

Fish is not huge but maybe 15-20 pounds and I get him to the bank without much trouble due to the thick, heavy rope. The bank is slick red mud and I hold the catfish like a sad child to my chest and carry him up to the camp as my group pass in cars leaving. They do not see me.

Back in the camp a few people are left and I grab the kids, including one that is not of my family, put them in the back of my truck with the catfish and make a photo.

I wake up with a fierce need to urinate. That is par for the course with any dreams I have where water is present.   

Dreams...

 I was scrolling through my newsfeed and I saw a headline about Covid 19 dreams. It had a sub headline that said "seven minute read." At this point in the year 2020 I aint spending seven more minutes reading anything about Covid. I'm washing my hands, wearing a mask, limiting my gatherings and just generally spending a lot of time in the back yard playing the tuba and the banjo. Of course my neighbors wish there were seven minutes in a day where I'm not in the back yard with instruments.

So without reading the article or looking at pictures which I know from long blog writing experience and reader feedback is all ya'll do anyway I deduce that people are having some weird dreams and experts think it's the Covid. In my own personal research, which I spend at least 6 to 8 hours a day on I have been having some doozies myself. I wish I had written them all down and in fact I have written in this space about dreams in the past but if I wrote more you would by now be scrolling past. 

  

I did think my latest was worth sharing. I dreamed I was skinning a bear. I have been known to hunt, shoot and eat small game but I would never shoot something like a bear and have a membership in a no kill bigfoot hunting facebook group. I don't want to have to skin a large game animal, certainly don't want to cook and eat a bigfoot or a bear and am in no way on the side of what ever bear hunting group that my be imagining that their rights are being denied. 

In the dream I had a very sharp knife and do in fact own a very sharp skinning knife that I have never skinned anything with. I ran the knife along the inside of the pelt, peeling it back to reveal the inside lining to be velvety black with no blood or gore. The outside fur was thick, black and I remember thinking how warm I was going to be wrapped in it. 

At this point the bear seemed to roll to the side on it's on to better facilitate the hide removal and while I was not startled by this it was unusual behavior for a carcass. I floated to awakeness to ponder what the meaning in this was and if there is any at all. 

I don't know if this actually falls under the category of a Covid dream. I suspect those dreams deal with issues of loneliness, isolation, depression and hopelessness, and other feelings I can't pretend to have an insight too. I can only hope that those dreaming those find the comfort of a warm bear skin to wrap themselves in as protection from these elements.      .     

I Dreamed Last Night...

I was at the Alamo. I mean I was really at the Alamo and it was not just one day when I was standing around all fat and full after a large Mexican dinner at a restaurant on San Antone's River Walk. I was at the Alamo in the courtyard and my best guess was it was during the legendary, mythical, historical scene where Colonel Travis draws the line in the sand and it was time to decide go or stay. In my dream I want to stay but really need to leave. See I dreamed I had a home health patient to see in Tyler.   

I stand there and look at my watch. It's digital and it's 4:15pm. I calculate and think. Maybe I can be in Tyler by 5:30, spend about an hour with the patient and be back on  my way here. I voice this possibility to those around me and people say, "that's not going to work." We know now that this is a dream so it is possible for Tyler to be one hour and fifteen minutes from San Antone. I do get paid for mileage if I do home health but in reality it is a 308 mile trip between two cities although as I think about it I doubt that's a record for home health miles in a day.  If I could drive to Tyler to see a patient and them have a patient to see in San Antone on return and therefore charge miles for the round trip it might be a record. It also might generate a red flag in the payroll office. That brings to mind the question about how late at night could you see a home health patient. In a nursing home or hospital setting I commonly roust people out of bed. I have never gone to a patients house late at night to do this and it might happen because in my dream it's now 4:30pm and that sets my arrival back a little bit. I need to get out of here. 

Get out of here is what I do. And it's the easy way. I wake up. It's my day off. I don't have to see any patients. In case you are wondering if I have committed some inadvertent violation of patient identity I do not have a home health patient in Tyler and in fact rarely make home health visits. I also rarely go to the Alamo. The only picture I have that is remotely related to the Alamo is this photo taken years ago on a trip along the old mission trail. It's before digital. I used a 35mm. 

I think pictures of me and the Alamo do exist in my mom's photo albums. It's taken on a family vacation  in the plaza on a hot July day. I stand in front of the old mission  in the late 1960s all fat and full. It's sunny and bright but at that age I did not know that there is such a thing as air conditioning and it was a thrill to be at the Alamo storing memories that would turn into dreams all these years later.  

I Dreamed...

I dreamed last night that I was running. In the air. I was naked. Well not really naked but I did call the phone company and disconnected the land line. If you need to get us now it's on the cell which most people, my employer and even my mom use because they can get me most anytime. 

Here's my old phone. Other than the 5 gallon bucket full of portable second phones and answering machines I have owned that now reside in landfills this is the one the kids grew up using. Sorry kids about those bad grades they sent home in the early days of your schooling. You know the work sheets given a child to see if they can sequence tasks? Well they give out one for making a phone call. Only problem it was a push button phone pictured on the sheets. My kids had never seen one. They failed. I had to go talk to the teacher an all that kind of parental type stuff that did not well for the teacher in the fact that nothing was changed. I guess you can say that I finely changed.  

It had just gotten to where I received nothing but solicitations letting me know that my warranty had run out on my 9 year old car on this old phone. I kept my internet service with the local phone company and this will reduce my bill about $20 a month. That will give me an extra $240 a year to blow. I do still have some limited phone privileges. I can receive calls but I will unplug later today. I can make calls for a small fee. I can call 911 in the event cell phones are not charged or towers down or something like that which I kind of think if I don't get 911 on the cell they are not going to come anyway.  

Belly Dancers...

We like belly dancing and have a pretty good collection of music and costumes ourselves. I think it's probably good for you but I am in the mist of a scientific study and am not free to publish results as of yet but I expect the Nobel Prize people are going to be really interested. It does combine science, art and world peace so I expect a sweep of the prizes to be soon announced. Of course you will hear it here first as always. 

This group is the Gypsy Dance Theater. They are good and I bought two of their CDs. This is not a seat of the pants thing. Reading the bios of the musicians and dancers was quite impressive. These folks went to good schools. No hippie drum circles for this bunch. They learned it the hard way through work, study and dedication. 

So keep your dreams lit. Dance. Listen to good music. Turn off the radio. Throw out the TV. Never trust a home without a guitar, a drum, a horn, a belly dancer.     

A Dream...

It's been a couple of weeks and I am finely getting around to a dream I had.

I was on the river in a flat bottom boat. I was somehow involved with a group people that had captured a new kind of animal out of the East Texas river bottoms. It was a big critter called a bono.

In the dream I was in a boat and up on the bank others were leading the animal down to the water. They stood in a clearing of brown grass, a little misty and cold. If you have ever been way off down the river and seen where pipe lines cross, this is what the clearing looked like, kind of an incline leading up a hill from the water. A man stood with the bono. The animal was at least three times as tall as the man and twice as wide. It looked to be a cross between an ape, a bear and a raccoon. The fur was all black, blue and silver. It was quite docile as it towered over the man without any precautions or restraints needed.

I woke up with the combo of ape, bear and raccoon colored fur brilliant in my head, so vivid that my first thoughts were to come to the computer and google this fine beast to discover more about it. It did occur to me that I would get 39,000,000,000 hits in .39 seconds concerning the rock star Bono. So I did not google.

I guess this dream is kind of like other encounters man has had with new animals. They have usually turned out badly.

Not Really Night Screaming, But...

I did have a strange dream. In the dream I was at work, (I did not relate this dream to any of my co-workers) and I was necked in the whirlpool room. Not exactly necked, I had on (my head) a camo trucker hat from the Rusty Hook Bait and Tackle, a 24 hour bait shop that (pre- Ike) used to be out on the west end of Galveston Island and a pair of brown (on my feet) crocs. I do actually own the Rusty Hook hat, it hangs on the hat rack, but I do not own any crocs.

Usually being necked in the whirlpool room is not a problem. If a doctor has ordered a whirlpool for a patient, that patient has to be necked in the whirlpool room. After the whirlpool, the patient gets dried off and gets a fresh gown. Only thing, in the dream there were no gowns and towels stocked where we usually keep them.

So I was kind of stuck. I peeked out the door, saw none of my coworkers, maybe a good thing, maybe a bad thing since I needed some help. Seems there were a few people around that looked to the door when they heard it open for my peek but things get hazy here in the dream and seems like they did not spot me or maybe just acted like they did not see anything. My wife says people do that a lot, they act like they don't see the things I do.

So anyway that's the dream, I woke up before anymore damage could be done. May be you folks can help. Seems like when you tell someone about your dream they might have a second person sight that sees some meaning you cannot.

Dream Away...

Those old night screaming days seem long past. I sleep quite well in fact sometimes never even waking up. That's pretty good for an old guy. I take that as a sign of good health, you know the plumbings work good and the blood sugar must be controlled. I do dream though.

Couple of nights ago I dreamed I was looking at my other other self in action. I was myself in the dream and I was in some sort of symphonic band setting with my tuba. I looked essentially like me. Not this other other self, he looked kind of like me and I was able to recognize that on some level that I was watching myself. I don't know if other people in the dream knew it was me but they were watching this version of me too.

This other other self had long hair, past shoulders flying in the wind. I have had hair like this before. He was chubby, in the face and in the belly. I mean I am kind of fat, but this guy was bigger. He had those spectacles that turn dark when you go outside. He was grinning seemingly having just pulled some humorous stunt that everyone was watching. The grin was a big tooth hungry grin that reminded me of an early 70s concert poster I saw in an antique store, a reproduction I am sure, of a young, shirtless Elton John with a hungry look on his face, the poster being in the chitllin circuit style you might see posted on telephone poles and grubby quick stops advertising a performance by Bobby Blue Bland, Chick Webb or old Candy Likker. Please don't Google Elton John if you don't know who he is. You won't find this poster. Don't Google Chick Webb or old Candy Likker either for that matter. People ask me all the time how I know about these things like this and I don't have time to tell you.

Anyway, the other other self had on an off white button up shirt with wide green vertical stripes, worn outside the waist band. It was the kind of shirt that makes you look at your own shirt just for an affirmation that you are ok. When I looked at my shirt in the dream it had horizontal green stripes. May be I'm not ok, maybe the message here is that I'm going to be sick, real sick.

other other self had on off white khaki shorts, knee length. He had on those leather shoes, kind of a woven deck style, brown, without socks. You have seen middle age guys wear shoes like this, with a woven brown belt to match, no socks, usually a polo shirt tail tucked in and denim shorts purchased at Sears or JC Penny. Their legs are usually that fake golden looking tan teenagers get at the tan getting place and are not very hairy. I always stare and just cannot tear myself to look away when I see a Guy dressed like this, kind of like when I spot a dog taking a dump on the road side. I must look. And keep looking. I know it makes them uncomfortable, ( not talking about the dog any more) but it's not sexual. I am really trying to cipher out some man thing I don't understand that says this style of dress looks good. It's as if I came on a centaur, he's man from the knees up, but down below is some androgynous thing.

With that picture, I awake. Pretty vivid, colors remembered real clear and everything. I ponder all these things in my old head a few days, what does it mean? Then I post. They will know.

Dreaming...

With the nice warm weather and a big lake rodeo planned for the weekend Mr. 100% whether he is right or wrong dreams he is duck hunting.

In the dream me and some unidentifiable folks are on the lake. We have a pretty fast boat, so we are able to cover some ground looking for ducks. It's real important to hunt where the ducks are. Seems that the have that ability to be where you are not. I do not know how many cold mornings I have stood on the bank of a backwater cove only to have the ducks stand on the other side. The next day I would return to stand on that side in the cold dawn, wearing all those layers of clothing that make a quick urination impossible to find that the ducks are standing on the side I stood on yesterday. It's some kind of allegory of life I think.

Any way we arrive at some sort of camping area and decide that this is the place to hunt for some reason. There are duck decoys already in the water, a huge spread of them, and they seem to belong to some Arabic guys. These guys let us take a place near the end of the spread. They are nice (don't tell Cheney I said this) and have better equipment than us. They look cleaner than we are. My children like to point out that I slip in the mud a lot when hunting, but I don't remember doing it in this dream.

Anyway after a bit a couple of ducks fly over. I remember I have my dad's old Model 12 duck gun, a gun I still hunt with today (not TODAY, silly, duck season is closed, but when the time and place are proper) and I point to the ducks. They fly past and when they are gone, I shoot in the air. I hollar to the other guys, "I saw some, I missed."