Dream - The superimposed cat

A long time ago, probably around 1980, give or take a few years, I had a strange dream.

I dreamed I saw my mother (who is still alive) in the dining room near the counter that divides the dining room from the kitchen. She was in the dark but was partially lit, probably from a light over the kitchen sink. She had a sad and somewhat hurt look on her face, and seemed to be waiting for something. Perhaps she was just waiting for the time to pass. It was disturbing to see her there like that, looking hurt, there in the dark in the middle of the night. I don't recall why I came into the dining room, but it must have been for a different reason, as I didn't expect to see her there.

She saw me as soon as I came in, and as we looked at each other, I dimly saw the outline of the form of a cat appear around her. The image of the cat wavered in intensity, fading in and out a bit. The dream eventually ended.

Later, we found out that in my grandmother's house, a few streets over from us, a sick kitten had hidden behind a bed and slowly died, perhaps on that very night. The kitten wasn't found immediately, so the actual time of death is uncertain, but it would need to be near that time.

The Centipede with the Parasol

This is a story that I did for a message board, on a thread normally concerned with comically constructing new words and definitions. They were at that time doing exercises where a user gave a short list of words and other users then wrote a story containing those words. The list of words for this story: gum, prozac, parasol, centipede, tipee (spelled here as tepee).

This was my post number 1000 for that message board, but it was the second time I hit that number. The board software experienced problems a few times over the years and reduced some of the post counts of a lot of the users along with dropping some of the user data. The first time I only lost about 5 or so from my post count, but I didn't have very many posts at the time. Much later, another glitch removed a few hundred. The actual posts weren't affected.

This story is dated 9:23 PM, December 1, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE CENTIPEDE WITH THE PARASOL

The centipede came out of the tepee holding a parasol. It put a stick of gum in its mouth and chewed carefully, blew an enormous bubble, and then released it and let it sail into space. Putting another stick of gum in its mouth, it peered closely at me and said, "The Prozac didn't work, huh?"

Below the Stars

I originally published this poem on a message board, as is the case with many, though not all, of my poems. The poem seems to indicate that I might have needed to think of happier memories at the time. Perhaps the message board also needed to. It did seem to be a time of troubles on it.

This poem is dated 9:14 AM, April 19, 2007, Arizona time (MST).


BELOW THE STARS

Below the stars
Beneath the sky
The Earth still turns
The days go by

Time moves along
Upon its way
Though we cry out
It does not stay

Memories we have
Of things that were
Of times long past
That are no more

Some memories stay
And some may go
Some are happy
And some bring woe

Happy memories
Are generally best
The ones that are bad
Can cause regret

So even if just
For a little while
Let's make memories
That make us smile