Dream - Contacted by space aliens, a father prepares to leave

On the night of November 12-13, 2008, I had a dream about a father, previously contacted in some way by space aliens, who told him they would come back and take him with them, and also perhaps one of his children. He was sorrowfully preparing to leave his family, perhaps forever, as he awaited the aliens' return.


In the dream I was part of a large family. There was a prediction made by somebody, it's uncertain who, but the husband had some kind of interaction with a space alien or intelligence. It's kind of vague. He might have seen some one or more aliens physically, or there might have been just a spaceship and a light. I know there was a very deep voice speaking and a light, and I think there was also a ship, perhaps not quite landed, and some presences in or associated with the ship, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet away bathed in intense light, but also seeming closer, because of their impact on his mind, their burning presence. They were roughly like traditional gray aliens with big black eyes, but seemed slightly taller and more substantial, and their eyes were narrowed at the top, giving their faces an angry intensity. He knew what was going to happen in the future regarding him, that they were going to come back and take him and I think one of his children.

I was also aware, very strongly, that it would unfold like a movie script, that it literally was on some level a movie script, that direction was being given. Sometimes I could hear a faint but close deep voice somewhere above and behind me, saying something about what would happen or what was happening now.

The family consisted of a husband and wife and maybe six or so kids, perhaps even a little more, with the oldest in the early teens and the youngest probably around three. They left home and went on a trip somewhere, that the husband was or had been directed to by the aliens or their prediction. He had a specific destination or interim destination in mind, but they didn't go very far without stopping. I was under the impression that it was a temporary stopping place and they were going to move on, perhaps the next day. It was evidently a hotel or motel or inn, something they were paying for, but seemed very homelike. It also felt like it was associated somehow with a friend, that he was staying because of the friend, that it was perhaps owned by the friend.

The father looked something like Robin Williams in his thirties, though he also looked a little like me. I was one of the older kids, perhaps around ten or twelve, maybe slightly older, though toward the end I became more strongly associated with the husband, though still not quite him. The family seemed to be a happy one, though the husband was tormented by his visitation and what was going to happen.

Most of the family was in the living room. The kids were doing various things, playing, a TV might also have been on. I was behind the mother, who was on her knees playing with one of the youngest children. She was also talking, sometimes to the one she was playing with but also to the husband and maybe also to some of the other kids. She looked something like a younger version of my mother. I was behind her, maybe on my knees, leaning forward and hugging her, and maybe sometimes talking also. I dimly heard a deep voice above and behind me, perhaps around ceiling height. It talked for a while and then stopped. The father may have been aware of it more than I was and may have heard it more often. There was later strong indication that this was the case.

I went into the kitchen area, where a couple of the kids had gone. A medium-age kid was playing with a younger one who had been put on or had gotten on the counter. They were talking about a game or something else, some other activity, something they were playing, kid-type stuff. It seemed another little kid came in and then left, and the others started to leave, too. I may have lifted the littlest one off the counter, or someone else may have done it.

Then I went into one of the bedrooms. One of the kids, not one of the kids from the kitchen, but one who was part of the game being played, which may not actually have been what was being talked about in the kitchen, had hidden under the bed. After being found, the kid left. I think I may have helped the kid out from under the bed. I knew there was also another one, a little girl, and felt she was in the closet. As I turned toward the closet, which had a folding double door, the door on the right began to tremble, then shake, as she increasingly tried to get someone's attention, to show that she was still there and hadn't been found. I was talking to her then and she was talking to me. I was becoming increasing overcome by sadness, and I opened the door and took her into my arms. I held her and hugged her. She kept talking about the game and things. I was saying how much I would miss her and the others. It seemed I was now the father or strongly associating with him.

We went back to the living room. The father had evidently received another message from the aliens, from the voice. It seemed to be something only he could hear. I'm not sure if the others could hear what was said earlier in the dream, perhaps even I was not supposed to be aware of it. The father was standing near the middle of the room now, among the children. He had been giving them little hugs. The mother was a few feet away. The father was crying a little and was trying not to, his face contorted a bit. He was standing a little stooped. He said that he would have to leave shortly, and talked about how much he would miss them. I knew he would take one of the children with him, but I didn't know which one it was. Perhaps it was the little girl who had been in the closet. I felt that this might be the case.

There was a door toward the left, at the edge of the living room that led to a carport or garage. The door was at a corner that projected inward into the house, a corner that was a little more severe than 90 degrees. The door was directly at the corner, at the left, and may have been part of a double door system with the other door on the right side of the corner, with the doors having their hinges on the sides away from the corner.

The door on the left started to open slightly, and we all turned toward it, looking at it. The door opened a little more and air was softly coming through it. The air seemed both slightly warmer and slightly cooler than the air in the room, and much fresher and also a little dusty, and maybe also a little damp. The door opened more, much wider, like it was being opened by the wind. Was this them, was this it? The room beyond was dim, and had a concrete floor with a lot of stuff piled in the middle, some in boxes and some not, going up maybe five or six feet high, but broad areas around it were clear. A broad walkway or sidewalk was beyond it, lit by some light from an unseen source, perhaps a yard or street light. Two or three kids ran by from right to left, evidently playing, and after a pause, two or three more. Was it just the wind and just the kids, were the aliens still out there, about to appear any moment? We continued to watch.


My mother came to the bedroom door and woke me up then, wanting to say something to me or ask me something. She was wearing glasses, something she doesn't normally do when walking around. I raised my head and looked at her and replied. A tear rolled down the side of my face as I talked, perhaps something from the emotion of the dream, and I wiped it away.

Line 'Em Up

This is another humorous poem. The numbers in the poem refer to the lines in it, with each number corresponding to the number of the line in the poem. The last two lines are not numbered, though the last one is otherwise referenced.

This poem is dated 12:41 PM, August 28, 2007, Arizona time (MST).


LINE 'EM UP

This is the first line
And here is the second
The third comes next
As the fourth one's beckoned

The fifth went down
And then the sixth
Then the seventh was next
And the eighth forthwith

The ninth went in
Before the tenth did come
The next line's the end
And I'm really bummed

Dream - The bird-boy, the Christmas pageant, mall shopping, stolen presents, and the award

On October 4, 2008, I had either one very, very long dream that was in two parts, or two dreams that seemed later to be connected. Either way, they were both interesting. Even though the part I remember is very long, the actual beginning is forgotten.


In the dream, I went into a small shop, a gift shop of some kind I think. It seemed to be part of a mall or plaza. I think I was just going to look at things quickly and then leave, but they had some kind of strange new bird that somebody had brought in, a type of bird that had been discovered a little earlier and was just now being reported to the world. The reporting itself was a news story and not part of this shop and maybe not even about this particular bird, though it seemed to be one of the first ones that were brought in.

There was also a second bird of some type in the store, on the other side of the room next to the wall, on some shelves or some piece of furniture or display. It was smaller and different from the first and much more like a bird in appearance, and I didn't pay much attention to it.

The first bird, on the counter, had a head very much like a human toddler, a little boy. Its body was also vaguely like that but its legs, which I never really saw clearly, were bird's legs. Sometimes it seemed to have hands and sometimes little white wings. Its neck was a little long for a boy and it had wrinkles like an old man. Sometimes when it moved its head down and smiled, the wrinkles moved into its face, otherwise its face seemed smooth. It was a little smaller than a human, perhaps only fourteen inches tall, not counting its legs, which were in any case very short and I think dark colored. It was brought in by a man in late middle age and I think with a woman with him, probably his wife. The bird/baby boy was being propped up by the woman behind the counter. I had looked briefly at things in the store and then gone back to it. The man and one or two other people were there at the counter, women I think, talking about and oohing over the bird. I talked some to the bird, too, like one might talk to a baby or even a little dog. The bird looked back at me and sometimes made little sounds, not much and not anything meaningful.

The bird's body was originally wrapped in a pale blanket. This was taken off and I was confused that the bird apparently had two pouches across its lower stomach, one above the other, tight against its body. This was like a marsupial, but it was supposed to be a bird. Then they lifted it out and it turned out to be just a leather pouch it was in. Out of the pouch, it was revealed that the bird was wearing a white diaper.

I kept talking and making sounds to the bird. Eventually we went to the back of the store, where a few tables were set out for people to eat at, though we didn't use them. I was standing talking to the bird, which was flying and hovering in the air, moving its tiny wings. Sometimes I was on my knees partly looking up at it. It was getting better at making sounds and seemed almost like it was making words. I said "Goo-goo" one time to it and it said the same thing back to me. The man at that point came over and tried to discourage me from doing it, saying that they were going to be putting it in some kind of school shortly, maybe in a few months, I'm not sure. The impression is that he didn't want the bird learning nonsense sounds, he wanted it to learn real words.

The man sat down at a table while I continued to look mostly at the bird and sometimes talk to it, while I also talked to the man, usually continuing to look at the bird and only giving the man occasional glances. I wondered how long the bird could live and how old it was and how long its childhood was. I asked the man how old he thought I was. He was saying something about how he didn't know and I could be blah, blah, or could be blah, blah, etc. I said I was 55. He said he would never have guessed.


I was in a big mall, then. Thousands of people were in a huge room sitting in built-in seats watching a performance, apparently a Christmas pageant, though I'm not sure how much of it actually directly related to Christmas. My mother and one or two people with her were in the seats, also watching it. She sent me out to shop, holding a list of things to get, mostly gifts for my brother. I visited various small shops, getting almost all the presents. They were almost all in clear plastic bags, separately, though one or two bags may have had more than one thing in them, and an item or two did not have a bag. All of the items were very small, including a camera.

I went to the far end of the mall where a movie theater was, visiting a restroom. It was getting late, and I was getting concerned about dinner. I started heading back finally to the huge section where thousands of people were seated watching a performance. Middle-aged women in makeup and jewels and fancy clothes crowded around the entrance with me, pushing against me, smiling, talking to themselves and sometimes to me. Inside, people were singing, and some of them were going down the aisles and through the rows singing and doing various minor performances and interacting with the crowd.

I finally managed to get away and make my way back along the shops, stopping every few shops and sitting down at little tables just outside the shops, and going through the collection of bags and looking at things. I thought that I should combine some of what I had, and put the items without a bag, there were perhaps only a couple that way, into the bags, combining them with whatever was in there.

The last shop I stopped at, some kind of eating place, there was someone at the back, a relatively young, short, thin person. It seemed like it might be a man and then it seemed more like a woman. The uncertainty went back and forth for a while, even later after we had talked some, though finally near the end it seemed that she was definitely a woman. She was a little like Rachel Maddow at MSNBC, short hair and all.

Now, at the beginning, she was at the back, behind the counter, saying something sardonically about someone saying something about Stephen, and that her name was Stephenson. I perked up and became interested at that point, because my own name was Stephen, though I hadn't said anything and it didn't seem possible that I was the one she was talking about. I called out that my name was Stephen. She seemed interested and said, smiling, something about it being a coincidence and went to her right and exited the counter and the room. She came back into the store, then, or maybe appeared just outside it. A woman in the store and I think another employee were singing and going to this place and that, sometimes popping out of some different place unexpectedly, at least once appearing outside the store. The first woman was part of this performance and also singing and popping out of different places. This didn't go on for very long before fading back in intensity and then mostly stopping. I wondered if this was something they did there frequently.

I had gone forward into the place at first to get a little closer after I said something to the woman and she started talking to me, and then I went back out as they were performing. I went back now to where I had been sitting to get the bags and try to sort through them and find good places to put the items without bags, and found almost all of them gone. Someone had stolen them. I started searching an accordion-like briefcase I found on or by a picnic table-like seat by a small rectangular table just inside the business. A man sitting there and talking to a person on the other side of the table partially turned towards me and was upset that I was looking through his briefcase. I continued looking but didn't find anything but some papers and other normal stuff. I finally stopped looking in it. I had to leave, I had to search elsewhere for them now. I went back out.

I sat at a very small, round table just outside the place and looked through what I had left again. I came across two knives I had picked up along the way at different places. One of them had maybe an inch and a half broken off the blade, and I had earlier used the square corner at the break to carve something in the face of a soft brick-like thing, kind of a message, though I think the carving looked almost like runes. It was way back where the thousands of people were watching the performance, in the seating area. The other knife had a wavy blade, like it had been bent and then straightened out, and it had some big raised smooth dark areas like old rust or old food.

I considered just leaving them on the table. They would be picked up when the tables were cleared, but I worried if someone should find them, maybe even some kids, and get into trouble with them. I finally decided to take the broken one. It seemed for some reason to be more dangerous, the other one seemed old and worn and weak. I left it there and went out into the mall.

I looked briefly at some places nearby, and then started flying sitting up, partially cross-legged. Some people were beside me to the right, following on the ground, mostly women. As I went on they came closer, touching me with their shoulders or heads, oohing and aahing and making little appreciative comments about my flying. The mall seemed much larger now, and had aisles go off at angles to the one I was on. I was flying back toward the movie house at the far end. I had to go to the bathroom and thought I could use the restroom there and look for the missing stuff on the way. It was getting late and I would have to go back to the others afterwards and we would have to decide what to do about the missing items, to try to get them again or get something else instead or maybe just do without them.

The aisle was much bigger and longer and fancier than it had been. It was paved in different areas with different kinds of paving stones or tiles. Some areas had large tan shiny brick-like tiles, some had smaller brighter squarer ones, etc. A largish shiny brick-like one of one kind or another was predominant, though. The mall aisle had a gentle downhill trend with a series of a few downward steps every few hundred feet.

At a place where an aisle crossed this one, I saw outside through a large window area a giant Wizard of Oz-like head pushing its way through the dirt with hands sticking up by its jaw, palms out, coming toward the mall at an angle. Like the Wizard in the movie, it had a scowl on its face. It went to the mall near the intersection of aisles and got inside. I thought it was probably a hologram and part of the show. Inside it met another head coming the other way and they stopped, facing each other a few feet apart. I flew over and around them, and as I did they faded to a grainy semitransparent blueness, confirming they were indeed holograms. I felt satisfied by this, and as I flew I saw a large dark bronze lion head on the outside wall of the other aisle, filling a doorway. I felt that it was also capable of movement, particularly facial movement. I got the impression that it was somewhat amused, but it didn't seem to move much, if at all, while I was watching it.

I went back to flying down the aisle and soon came to two tall, short buses, one immediately behind the other, and heading away from me, apparently used for tours of the mall. A very tall, very hairy man was laying on top of the bus closest to me. He was probably seven or eight feet tall and dressed like a street thug from an old movie, even having I think a soft cap. I wondered if he took the things I had bought and I think asked him about it and pulled or pushed him by the shoulder, turning him partly over. I saw part of a large clear plastic bag or two under him. He said, "Hey, what is this, I can get a gun!"

I pulled him off the top of the bus and he fell flat against the ground with his hands and arms partly under the end of the bus and his head against or at the end of it. The bus had stopped. I fought an accomplice then, a much smaller man but much larger than me, who also said that he could get a gun. They were both dead now, or apparently so.

The police came and a detective questioned me. I told them what had happened, that I had done it, that they had said they could get a gun. The detective immediately accepted it then, happily, and said something like, "Well, that's it, then!" and the small bus was found to have a lot of stolen loot in it. Most of it was other people's, but they happily gave it all to me, happy that the case was solved and they had gotten all the loot back before it could be gotten rid of. In fact, most of the stuff that was mine was still missing, so presumably they had gotten rid of part of it. They were happily giving everything to me, though. I wondered if I should say anything and worried about what would happen if they found out later. They kept going on about it and it was getting more and more awkward to bring it up.

I was being congratulated and about to be given an award, including prize money. It was going to be given, they said, by Bill Maher, but I had Regis pictured in my mind and associated with that name. I was pointed toward an ornate box the size of a small room, in the street that was the mall aisle. The room/box had heavy raised simple designs on it, and was apparently made of dark brass with a door of the same material and its own heavy raised simple designs. A person stood guard there, acting as a doorman, dressed in court finery from around Shakespeare's time. A crowd had gathered, everyone was happy. It looked like I wasn't going to be able to get to a bathroom right away, though I glanced somewhat wistfully around the area as I flew toward and around the box/room, waiting for the door to open and the person to come out with the award and the prize money.

Dream - Zombie dinosaurs!

On October 1, 2008, early in the morning, I had a dream in which I was chased by dinosaurs that turned into zombies.

In the dream, there was a large, pale, square building, maybe as much as five or six stories high later, but maybe not quite so tall at first. There was a balcony at the back that went around to the left side, as seen from the front. It was dark. Dinosaurs were in the back yard area, including Tyrannosaurus rex. Someone had antagonized the dinosaurs, teasing or taunting them from the balcony, despite my warning not to do so. We were being chased now, particularly by a T. rex, and I was running from them around to the side.

We passed the stairs at the side that led up to a landing that might have been an extension of the balcony. The stairs were narrow. I looked at the stairs, wondering if the dinosaurs could somehow pull themselves onto the landing/balcony. I decided we had to get up the stairs and try to get inside. I urged the person to get up the stairs. He went up them, then, and I got up them somehow, too. I was worried that the dinosaurs would get up on the balcony again. We had had quite a fight with them before driving them off into the yard.

Then the dinosaurs changed into zombie dinosaurs, white with pale blue shades, and we were being chased by a zombie T. rex. We got into the building and were making our way across an encircling hallway and into and through rooms, some of them large. They got inside and were after us. I realized that the interior of the building was something I had seen before, several times, and it had a comforting sense of familiarity about it.

We passed people at various places, then we started running into zombie people, like the dinosaurs white with blue shades. Evidently zombiness was being passed on, like a contagion. The dinosaurs seemed to be changing into people, too. Some of the zombie people were very large, maybe seven feet tall, and heavily built. I also saw some that seemed part dinosaur and part human. The zombie people sometimes looked at us evilly. They seemed to be wanting to get us, too, though they didn't always try very hard.

Then we ran into zombie objects. Even objects were being converted. I was pushing at the objects with something. Some of the objects were boxes, even wooden boxes, and some were types of equipment, I guess, and maybe small statuary and some furniture. I was using the thing I was holding to damage the objects I was pushing at, which were generally boxlike things. Sometimes I was able to push all the way through them, almost ripping them in two. The objects were all pale like the other zombies, but unlike the animal and people zombies the objects seemed weak and easily damaged, like the material had been damaged, like it was rotten.

Then the zombie people and zombie objects started getting friendlier. The people had little smiles and they didn't seem to want to get us anymore.


More happened earlier in the dream, but the memory of it has largely faded away. There's a feeling that my grandmother's house, the one in Arizona, might have been where it started, and that it changed into the place where the dinosaurs were. In real life, of course, it was a much smaller house than in the dream.

Color Bother

This is another light, good natured poem, this time talking about finding rhymes for colors. I wrote some parts of it fairly easily, as some colors have many possibilities for rhymes. Some other colors, though, required extra thought. Also, although I already knew that the final color listed would not have a rhyme, I thought of a few different ways to handle it before finally deciding on the one shown here.

This poem is dated 6:27 AM, August 27, 2007, Arizona time (MST).


COLOR BOTHER

This charming fellow,
Found a rhyme for yellow.

And one for red,
Popped out of my head.

And one for green,
Came quick and clean.

I found one for blue,
And you can, too.

For the color purple,
Roger Miller used syrple.

But orange has none,
So I ate one.

Who is the best?

When you say that someone is the best at something, you are automatically comparing them to others. You can't make valid comparisons unless you know what the capabilities of this person are versus the capabilities of the others. A ranking has to be established. If the knowledge to make such a ranking doesn't exist, then the best cannot be determined.

You might say that somewhere, the best person at something exists, and that this best person is not known to us as best or to anyone as best. This may be true, but it falls into the vast quantity of things we don't know and may never know. Not only is it unknown, but it's unlikely to affect us to any great degree. That being the case, it becomes largely or totally irrelevant to us.

We may speak, for instance, of the greatest artist known (and different people will pick different artists for this). We don't usually speak of the greatest artist unknown.

It may be sad to think that the greatest artist may not be known to be such, perhaps not even to himself. However, if a person's work is unknown or unrecognized, there would seem to be little we could logically do unless we were made aware of it.

Great works of art and literature, and even great inventions, may be lost to us because not enough people are aware of them or their significance. In fact, this may be more the rule than the exception, as we are probably aware of only a tiny fraction of what is out there.


God sees everything, and knows who is the best and who is not. We can't see everything, and make determinations on who is best based on what we do see. If we can't see it, we can't make those determinations.

The Candlestick and Jack's Friend

This is something I came up with not long ago, though I'm not sure now what prompted my thoughts on the matter. It is, of course, a sequel to the "Jack Be Nimble" nursery rhyme, in which he jumped over a candlestick.

This poem is dated 1:59 AM, November 29, 2008, Arizona time (MST).


THE CANDLESTICK AND JACK'S FRIEND

When Jack jumped over
The candlestick,
His friend thought that
Looked really slick,
And said, "I, too,
Can do this trick."

But her overconfidence
Was a little thick,
And she burned both ends,
And called in sick,
And she still can't sit,
But she's one hot chick.

Dream - In France in World War II

On July 10, 2008, I had a dream that was at least suggestive of reincarnation, though I don't know if it actually was of a past life.

I remember thinking, while asleep, of US soldiers, and lists of them, and soldiers eager to volunteer for combat missions, feeling that it was an honor. I then saw a tall white cliff with metal rungs driven into it, with the enemy somewhere at the top, and soldiers, widely spaced, climbing the rungs. It was France during World War II.

I was on the beach, on the sand, and I had a huge thick rectangular pack that I had been wearing across my front and apparently another one on my back. I was taking the pack off my front now, apparently feeling that it was too awkward to move around with it on, and as I was lifting it slightly and moving it to the side a heavy bullet struck it about half a foot in from the lower corner, on the side that had been moving across the front of me as I was moving the pack off to set it down. A fraction of a second later and the bullet would have hit me instead. The pack seemed to have stopped it, with the bullet somewhere inside. When the bullet hit I stopped moving the pack and hesitated, then looked around the edge of it at the hole, with interest and wonder rather than fear.

Dream - On the run

In the morning of April 2, 2008, I had a dream or combination of dreams. Though initially the dream was not too unusual, it changed and became increasingly strange, finally becoming a long story where I ended up running from the law and able to change reality.


In the earliest part of the dream that I can remember, I was driving the 1970 Cadillac, but there was also another car, perhaps dating from the sixties or seventies. There was something about checking or perhaps changing the oil or looking at the waterpump seal. The engine had a lot of space around it, and it was easy to see things.


Then I was back home, in bed. There were some crumbs on the blanket, partly on top, partly underneath. I think that my brother and mother showed up at separate times and then left. I got up, tired. I may have gotten up more than once.

I went toward the hall, then, thinking I was alone but evidently hearing something. The house was filled with a dense fog. I went cautiously forward. I could definitely hear someone then, faintly, at least two people.

Becoming acutely aware that I had just gotten out of bed and was not fully dressed, I fell to my knees, going back into almost a sitting position, doubled over somewhat. I was wearing just a shirt and underwear, what I had been sleeping in. I pulled my shirt down as much as I could, in that position covering my underwear and part of my legs.

A little girl came into the hallway, appearing out of the fog. She was not someone I knew in real life, though I seemed to know her in the dream. She happily talked to me, saying that someone (perhaps my mother, perhaps another person) had brought her, and she had been sent to me to help me. I was a bit uncertain about this, but I kept my reservations mostly to myself, and generally only made brief responses, mostly acknowledgements, to what she was saying.

Though she took no notice of my current situation, I still felt uncomfortable and decided to go back to bed and get back under the covers so I wouldn't be so exposed. I got up, trying to keep my shirt pulled down onto my legs, and somewhat nervously walked back to my bedroom. She followed along and we continued talking, though she was doing most of it.

When I reached my bed, I looked down at it, frowning. Though I had been about to get back under the covers, the crumbs were still there. It seemed unpleasant, now, to get back into bed with the crumbs there, and somewhat embarrassing to have someone see my bed this way. I started brushing the crumbs off the covers, but a lot of bugs were there now, also, and the more I brushed the more appeared. They were mostly pale, fragile, skinny-winged things, and most of them seemed to be dead or dying already, even before I started brushing at them. New ones kept flying in or even falling from above, and it was hard to get them adequately brushed off. Pieces seemed to stick to the covers and stay behind, too.


Later, perhaps in the same dream or perhaps in a different dream, I went outside, dressed in dark work clothes, to the backyard and then around to the side yard. A fence ran around the backyard, extending partway along the side yard. There was a gate in the side yard in the part of the fence facing the street, and then more fence ran along by the driveway. The fence was much higher than in real life, perhaps eight or ten feet. A chain was attached to the top, somewhere back along the fence, perhaps even back close to the backyard, and I used it to do something, though I'm not sure what now. I think I stretched it to the end of the fence that is toward the street but I'm not sure what the purpose was. It seemed important and/or useful at the time, though.

At some point it came to be that a rough wooden stairway went down from the top of the fence in front of the gate. I don't think it stretched all the way to the ground. Someone was with me and had been for some time, and I think they went down the stairs first, and then I went. It seems we were supposed to go inside now. Perhaps a meal was about to be served, but I'm not sure now.

I went toward the carport and got involved with doing things there. The carport kept expanding and lengthening, and turned into a garage, a business. There were several people there, and a sliding garage door that opened toward the house. There was some problem near the door, some loops of cable or something like that, that were on a square hook up high beside the door. For some reason the people needed to have them taken down so they could reach them, it was for some reason important.

At the far end of the garage near the street, some chain was attached to the wall. I went and got it and somehow stretched it out all the way across the garage to where the loops of cable were, pulled the chain tight, and then holding it more or less tight used the tension from it to walk up the wall and take the loops of cable off the hook. In real life this would not have worked, because the chain was to the left side of me, not in front of me, but in the dream it seemed that it should. As I got the loops down, someone started going through the garage door opening, as though I had to get the cable down before this could happen. The people were happy that it was taken down and someone was reaching for it even as it was coming down.


I was in a nearby house, then, perhaps the first house over toward the main street. I heard sirens that got louder and louder, and I saw, through some narrow window openings (curtains or perhaps cardboard were blocking most of the glass of the windows), an emergency vehicle go past. It went past my house and to the house on the other side, or perhaps the house on the other side of that. I wandered over to see the emergency vehicle, and went out back and to the front and back again. I started to feel that I was reliving to some extent a horror novel (a specific one), the mood was getting darker and somewhat scary and menacing. It seemed to be very late afternoon, almost twilight, sometimes after sundown, sometimes earlier. I started going around a big building toward the street, a little nervous.

Partway toward the street, I met a mostly black dog, medium size. The dog seemed friendly, but I felt it was there for a purpose, left there to guard that side of the building and perhaps a nearby side entrance. I went by or around it, but it wanted to follow me at a little distance, with its mouth open and its tongue hanging out. I didn't know how long it would follow me and I kept worrying that it would suddenly attack.

I went up the side of the building, pulling myself up on little pieces of metal sticking out, sometimes in the form of little skinny bars almost flat against the building, sometimes as just odd flat pieces of heavy metal. None were very big and none stuck out very far. Going up the building, working my way back some, following where the metal was, I got pretty high, perhaps ten or twelve feet up. The dog was still down there, looking up at me, happily waiting. I took a piece of metal off the building and dropped it on it. The metal fell on its back, close to the hips. The dog yelped but didn't leave. I felt a little bad about dropping the metal on it, and was now afraid that the dog was more likely to be mad at me and more likely to attack.

I came back down and went down the street a ways, keeping back in the front yards, trying to stay somewhat hidden. The dog seemed to stay behind, at least for now. I felt I was being searched for by somebody, though. I think some police or police detectives were also looking for me. It was dark now, and it had been dark when I was with the dog. The area I was in seemed to be small town/rural, no longer the suburban place where the dream started.


I came to a more open area and turned right into it. I seemed to observe someone, and thinking about his situation and storyline, then became him. The person wasn't too bright, at least at times. The street I was now on went downhill, sharply at times. There was some situation with a car and a tow truck. Then there was something hanging from a tree, a long chain or perhaps initially a swing. I took the chain and pulled it way back, and I was in the air over the tow truck and car then, going back, back, back, the chain seeming to play out from the tree an enormous distance. The road was dirt, somewhat sunken, with slanted, sometimes steeply slanted, shoulders. I was high in the air, perhaps twenty or thirty feet, going back up toward the more main street. Then I was going back toward the tree, going through the air, the road slanting downward in front of me. The chain kept playing out and I kept going forward more and still more, somehow staying above the now steeply downward-slanted road.

I crossed an intersection and eventually another, gradually getting closer to the ground while the ground kept falling away from me. I passed a restaurant on the other side of the road and seemed to be coming in for a landing a little ways past it on that side of the road, on a long pile of trash and large collapsed boxes. A woman saw that I was coming down and pulled a very large flattened box into position for me to land on. The box had a lot of oil or grease on it, but I managed to land past at least part of it, trying to keep to my hands and knees to get as little on me as possible.

Behind me, the chain falling across the intersection had caused some trouble, at least with the first intersection. The chain was or had been in the air, going across the intersection, and one or more cars hit it and had gone on to hit other things. The police were investigating and would eventually be tracing the chain to see where it went.

I left, following the street downhill in the dark, and after a while came to another intersection and more houses, houses that faced the intersecting street. The dog was back, and the house on the right side of the street had another dog. This second dog was smaller and paler, with somewhat longer hair, though I think initially it may have been almost a twin of the first. The second dog was in the front yard, inside a low white stucco wall that ran around the front yard of the house. I think it had just come from inside the carport, perhaps somehow also coming from inside the house. I was on the other side of the wall, on or near the street I had come in on, the street that ran between the houses.

I did something to the second dog, and changed it into a small stuffed toy and put it on top of the low white stucco wall. The first dog had left, moving on before I changed the second dog into a toy. I knew the toy would change back into a dog before very long, and it did so just before I left. It seemed that it might be an even smaller dog than before, and it seemed nervous and somewhat frightened and wasn't really interested in me.


I went back toward the downtown area, trying to avoid the tree holding the chain and the investigators, going in a bit of a zigzag, taking different streets. I think at some point I met someone and talked briefly, and they may have given some advice. In the downtown area, I went past an intersection and saw someone, a man in late middle age, looking at me through the windows of a very small corner store, windows that were mostly blocked by cardboard, leaving just a long slit or two open on each side.

Looking in through the slit as I passed, I saw him looking back readying a bow and arrow. The arrows were primitive, homemade like the bow, and had no heads, just roughly broken-off ends. I had been warned about him and others, though perhaps only in a general way. I quickly hurried across the intersection at an angle, going away from him. He fired at me, though, and I could see the arrow, with its splintered end, coming for me in slow motion. I batted it away with my hand, perhaps even turning it back toward him, though if so, it didn't do any damage, perhaps not even reaching him. I continued to move quickly away from him. He fired again at me. I was a considerably greater distance now, but it still reached me. I batted it aside again.


I came to a room. It faced the street, a side street to the one I had been on and going the same direction as the one with the tree, now far behind me. I had continued to go forward in a zigzag, and the room was on a far corner, with the cross street intersecting another street. I think someone was urging me to go in, to hide for a while.

There was someone already in the room, an older man. I went into the room anyway, through a door that led to a room beside his. I think someone may have come in with me, someone who had joined me somewhere along the way, but I'm not sure. Some other, much younger people were there in other rooms, sometimes coming in or talking from where they were. There didn't seem to be a real hallway, just rooms opening to other rooms. The old man seemed to stay mostly in bed, though he was at least partially sitting up or leaning on his side at times. He showed me and the others various things he had made, some no doubt from long ago, that his room was full of.

Through the window, I could see people outside looking for me and questioning people on the street. I think some of the people looking for me were police detectives and policemen, though I think some of the people were criminals, organized crime figures.

The old man took a very small device and showed it to me. It seemed to be a small piece of metal bent into a V shape with one of the sides longer and curved inward and a long skinny bolt going through the two sides away from the fold, toward the outer edges, tightened just enough to hold them in the elongated V shape. Inside the V, there seemed to be some more stuff, including perhaps some wires. The whole thing, including the bolt, was pale metal. It was intended to be held with the hand almost in a fist and the V part between the fingers, with the thumb inside partly holding on to it, partly pushing the trigger. The trigger seems to have been partly the end of the bolt and partly intention.

Although I described it as the two wide halves of the V being held together by the bolt, it now seems that the bolt somehow also went through the point of the V and down its axis, and that the V was actually a piece of metal bent to form a narrow triangle, with the V formed by the ends closing against each other. One side was still curved inward. The side facing out had a narrow flat area formed by two bends, with a tiny pinhole in it and an open slot below it where the flat area disappeared, leaving just the edges of the sides, and the end of the bolt, I don't know which end, sticking out.

The man demonstrated its use against the window, holding the device and pressing it close to or against the window. He moved it slowly down the window, cutting a narrow line. The window was thick, and had shapes or designs molded into part of it. I felt that it might have been something he had made, and I felt kind of bad about it being damaged. I felt too, though, that he probably didn't have much longer to live and knew it, and that he was no longer overly concerned about preserving physical things, having felt that they had largely already served their purpose.

He had me try it myself then, cutting more into the glass of the window (which may have been plastic instead), making a line from top to bottom so that a section of the window could be removed. It was intended that I should leave through the opening. It would be a narrow opening and awkward to get through, but I felt I could somehow do it. I would also be taking someone with me. Although I seemed to have come in with someone, one of the young people there, a girl, would be going with me. It was her decision, but there was at least some discussion about it. She may have also been the one that came in with me, but there's some doubt about that.

Looking outside through the opening, I could see the people across the street trying to find me. Perhaps a couple of them were questioning people. Associated policemen were also scattered around the area. It would be difficult or impossible to escape through the narrow opening without being seen. I pointed the device at them and fired it. It was difficult to do real damage at that distance, although if I kept it trained on one spot it might eventually start going through. A very faint mist was at times visible from the beam, though not usually in the beam itself, just mostly around the impact area.

The person I was aiming at, a man who had been questioning people and seemed to be a leader, turned partly toward me, his mouth open, his eyes mostly closed, a look of discomfort and annoyance on his face. His head was partly forward and his body was getting progressively wetter as it was hit from the beam. He was pushed back some and I think he might have eventually fallen. I might have also pointed the beam at another person, before the first one fell, if he did. Meanwhile the old man warned me, in an almost conversational style, as I first started to turn the beam on the men, "You know, if you do stuff like that, you'll have to keep on doing it."

When it seemed that I had created enough trouble, I went through the opening in the window and the girl followed. She seemed to be in her thirties, perhaps late thirties, though she had seemed a little younger earlier. She later seemed to resemble a little the full-figured woman on the latest Big Brother (Big Brother 9, with people divided into couples). She was blonde and smiled a lot, with big dimples on her face. Sometimes, though, she had a more subdued appearance, perhaps even approaching that of Adrian Monk's assistant, Natalie, from the TV show Monk.


We went back toward the direction I had come from. We had to keep looking out for the police and the detectives and whoever else might be after us. I was in a more open area now, away from the downtown. I went ahead cautiously, slowly going around corners, staying mostly at or toward the backs of buildings. The ground was sloping away now, sometimes leaving open areas at the backs of buildings, where the building was supported on boards, stilt-like. I came around to one area where some people were underneath the building. I was scared for a few seconds, but then realized that they were just bums. I stayed with them for a few minutes, then continued on. Oddly, they seemed to be at least partly aware of my situation.

I came to the back of a building, then, an open back, that had a bunch of policemen and detectives there waiting for me. They seemed triumphant that I had fallen into their trap. The girl who had come with me remained nearby, lagging a bit behind me, perhaps ten or fifteen feet away and to the side. I pointed the device at what appeared to be the main person and fired it. It was almost like pointing a ring, like Green Lantern, the DC Comics superhero, except that I had to push inside with my thumb, though it may have still been mostly intention that did it. The man's body moved back a little with the impact, his arms going out to the side some, his mouth open and his face in an expression of pained and somewhat angry dismay. His body became very soaked with the mist, though don't remember any hole appearing in his clothes from the beam.

Another man came forward, perhaps to protect the first. He wore pale clothing. He turned his back to me as he came, and I fired into his back. His back arched and his head came back, partly turned, and his mouth opened crying out in pain. His clothes became completely soaked and a tiny hole appeared in the cloth. I think he finally fell over, either before or after I moved on to someone else. They seemed to be mostly frozen watching what was happening to the others, until I turned the beam on them. I didn't spend as much time with the later ones.

I tried to leave, going away down the dirt road that was a little ways behind the building, but there were two other people there, a man and a woman, seemingly waiting for me in case I escaped the others. They came from the direction I had been going away from. I fired at the man for a while. He either finally fell or was incompacitated enough that I could get away from him. I fired at the woman, then, but she kept on slowly coming toward me. She was in late middle age, an expression of sadness and pain on her face, tears in her eyes, looking at me accusingly. She got closer and closer, her dress, somewhat lowcut and medium dark, completely soaked, until finally I was firing the device directly against the bare skin of her upper chest. As she came she spoke to me, about what I was doing to her, and the thought came through, whether directly spoken or just implied, that I shouidn't be doing this to her, it was wrong, and maybe someday I would realize that.

I wondered if she was actually involved in going after me. Perhaps she, along with the man, had only a slight involvement, or perhaps even none at all, and that I was essentially firing now on what might be innocent bystanders, though it didn't seem somehow as important as perhaps it should be, as by now I had to fire simply because they were there. I finally stopped firing, though, and turned away, and took the woman who had come with me, and flew away to another place. I don't know the fate of the woman I shot, whether she recovered or not. I don't know what happened to any of them.


We ended up on what was apparently a ship for a while. It seems that we had both at some point had gotten shot, though I'm not sure now which one I first realized had gotten shot. We were in a lounge area, on big roomy stuffed leather chairs with arms and sides. We were naked but had magically sunken in and blended with the chairs, even taking on their coloring, with mostly just our heads and shoulders and arms and legs sticking out, with just suggestions of other things, so it was hard to see much of our bodies. A suggestion of her chest showed, but her hip region was hidden, as was mine. I had a different body than I do normally, young and muscular, though my body was almost completely hidden. We were leaning back and smiling and talking, not seeming too terribly disturbed by our wounds. Some of the nearby people frowned at us, both because we were wanted criminals and because we were sitting there openly naked. Frowning at us because we were basically flaunting our wickedness.

That night we went out on deck, dressed now, looking for someplace to hide for the night. We were somewhat quieter and more thoughtful now, and our wounds bothered us more, though we didn't talk about them. She found someplace on top of something, perhaps a rowboat, and slid down into something laying on top of it that fit her like a sheath, leaving just her head and shoulders sticking out. I was worried about her and asked if she was alright. She assured me that she was. I was afraid, though I didn't say anything, that I would find her there dead in the morning. There seemed to be nothing more I could do though, and, still worried, I left her to find someplace for myself.

In the morning I went looking for her and calling out for her, but I didn't get a response. I finally found the place I left her, and there she was, her head and shoulders sticking out as before. She lay there still, and I think her eyes may have even been open, staring upward. I thought she was indeed dead, as I had feared, but then she turned her head slightly and smiled and looked at me.


Another time, probably before we got on the ship, perhaps after we left it, we were running from the law and came to the end of a building, toward the back. I paused, and saw in my mind that a large number of people were back there, waiting for us, ready to gun us down. I saw also a future in which I had not paused and they succeeded. I did not see them as people but as vague blobs and swirls of yellowish energy. I changed the furure then, and the present, and created a situation in which they were not there. I then cautiously looked around the corner, confirmed that it was empty, and then led the woman through and past the area.

Another time, perhaps before or perhaps after the other one, I got somehow careless or perhaps thought it didn't matter enough, and went into a similar situation where men waited for us behind a building. There were much fewer men this time, and even though I was looking right at them instead of sensing them, some of them still appeared as energy forms. We were fired at and I guess I fired back, but I think at least one of us was wounded then. Perhaps we both were.


Later, after we had left the boat, we were in some region of the Southwest. I believe we still had our wounds, but they seemed unimportant now. I think we had stolen a car to get where we were. We were in the desert near a freeway, not far from access ramps. The place was a complex containing one or more large service stations and one or more restaurants. We were aware that the police were still tracking us, and would eventually get to where we were. It was night. We were walking, and passed a couple of cars that were parallel parked, with the first one, a convertible, having the whole back section full of food.

I reached out and grabbed one or two of the items, probably individually packaged turnovers, and was just going to take them. The woman who was with me turned around and was saying "No," though, and took out some very crisp bills and gave one of them to a man who was with the car. I don't know where she got the money or what denomination it was. I was somewhat surprised to see that she had any. A couple of other people associated with the car were nearby. I think they were people on a vacation, perhaps retirees.

We went looking for another car at some point, wanting to confuse the pursuit. There were a lot of cars getting gas, so there were a lot of possibilities.

I also wanted to get rid of the device. I felt I had had it long enough and that we would continue to have trouble as long as we had it. I was getting tired of all the running and trying to evade the law. I recognized that the magic would go with it and that I would be losing a lot of power, but I still felt that it had to be done.

There followed a lot of confusion and activity, a lot of which I've forgotten. I remember driving around the parking lot, looking for a distant exit to the street, though I think I went back toward the pumps after finding it. This may have been before I took the food, perhaps even at a different complex at a different offramp. I also remember trying to get away from people who were after us.

In any event, I did locate a woman at a pump and gave her the device. I went with the woman who had been with me to steal a nearby car, then. A bit of confusion followed, though I think I did succeed in stealing a car. Some people were after us though, and I think were even after the woman that I gave the device to. The woman I gave the device to didn't really understand what was happening, and she didn't understand the device very well, though I tried to explain it some to her. She seemed to like the device though, staring at it and looking it over.

At some point, with people running around and trying to get me and probably her too, she pointed the device at some low mountains, including a section of Monument Valley-type mountains, that lay beyond the freeway. The mountains were being used as an earthen dam to hold back water, and water started to come through the rock now, coming diectly out of the rock as well as over it. A huge wave, very tall but more as a burst then having a continuous structure, came forward and over us. More water came, and kept coming. Water was even coming out of the rock high in the mountains, well above the level of any water held by the dam, coming out of rocks that should have been dry.

I realized somewhere in there that I still had the magic, even without the device. I looked out at what was happening from near the edge of the pavement of the service station area, the woman who had come with me standing by me. The water was lessening, now, and I began to think that it was getting time to go down the freeway and leave, with the woman who had come with me. I'm not sure now if we would be walking or taking the car I stole, but I was confident about the future.

Posts from the Story blog

These are my posts to write101.com's Neverending Story, at its blog location. The times given are from my computer and are Arizona time, and may not exactly match that given on the blog.

http://write101-never-ending-story.blogspot.com/


5:29 AM 9/8/2005

"Good thing for you," the owl said, "I have a remedy right here." The owl pointed to a nearby bottle and said, "we can discuss the cost later."

Doctor Morgenes peered into the bottle suspiciously and said, "We should discuss the cost now. What if I don't have enough money to pay you?"

The owl said, "All the other purchasers have been able to pay. And who said that the payment would be in money?"

Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA



2:16 PM 9/18/2005

Doctor Morgenes looked at the portable exorcism machine. "Does this also work on tea chests, or Chinese puzzle boxes with strange, brightly colored creatures inside?" he said, perhaps remembering another time that now may or may not exist.

"Certainly," said Father Wetherley, "but you'll need to pay it with more than just a cup of tea. And you may have to use it twice on the puzzle box."

Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA



9:26 AM 12/27/2005

... Dr. Morgenes, crying, "You're on my foot! You're on my foot!"

Abashed, the giant ape moved to the side. Morgenes, quietly sobbing, took off his shoe and counted his toes.

Abrubtly, an anvil fell on the other foot. "Sorry, " the Anvil said. "Just thought I'd drop in."

Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA



7:54 AM 5/26/2007

He threw her over his shoulder, and then screamed shrilly. He awkwardly dumped her on the ground and staggered back. Quills protruded from his hands and from his shoulder. His wife had turned into a porcupine!

Unsuccesfully fighting back tears, he began pulling quills from his hands with his teeth, as the porcupine ambled off into the forest, slowing turning into an anteater as it went. The forest? How had he gotten back there?

From somewhere behind him a voice said, "Let me have a look at that."

Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA



6:06 AM 6/8/2007

...when Dr. Morgenes heard a small squeaky voice say, "Wait, he has no money."

He looked down and saw a weasel, who had evidently managed to go through all of his pockets and placed all the contents on the ground. Dr. Morgenes was surprised to see the large number and variety of things that he had managed to bring with him.

"He has these odd colored papers with portraits on them," the weasel said, holding up some cash, "but they're not that well done and I doubt we'll be able to get much for them. In fact, I doubt we'll get much for the full pile."

"Well, in that case," the tiger said...

Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA



7:05 AM 9/4/2007

The tiger-doctor selected a very large pair of very shiny pliers and went over to Dr. Morgenes, where he paused for a long time, surveying the damage. Finally Morgenes cried, "Are you going to do anything or not? And do you have anything to ease the pain of these quills? They're killing me!"

The tiger said, "Pain is good, it teaches us things. However, we have a complication here. These are magic quills from a magic porcupine. If we pull one out, it will regrow within a few seconds. And even without pulling any out, they are slowly multiplying. Fortunately, I have invented a machine for this very situation."

The tiger then somehow produced from one of the pockets of his lab coat a metal box the size of two shoe boxes side by side. It had a vertical handle on each side and two buttons on top, one yellow and one red. The tiger pushed the yellow one and two small finely toothed wheels emerged from the front and and stuck out perhaps half a foot. They rested against each other, like interlocking gears. The tiger then pressed the red button, and the wheels began to turn rapidly with a shrill, whining sound.

"Allow me to demonstrate," said the tiger. He picked up a small stick and pushed pushed it into the wheels. The stick was immediately pulled between the wheels and into the box, with a grinding, crunching sound.

"The stick was destroyed inside the box, as will be the quills," said the tiger. "Destroying the quills also destroys the magic, or at least reduces it to a disorganized form. The disorganized magic may cause some odd effects in the immediate vicinity, but this should not be a big problem. Though the destroyed quill will not itself regrow, other quills will eventually grow because of the radiated magic field of the remaining quills, making rapid removal of all the quills absolutely mandatory."

The tiger turned toward Dr. Morgenes and raised the machine. "Hold still, I wouldn't want to catch anything in the wheels that I shouldn't. If at some point you find yourself fainting, try to fall the other way."

The tiger tightened his grip on the handles of the box and moved it forward toward the quills.

Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
http://stephen-has-spoken.blogspot.com/



3:45 AM 12/2/2007

"First the good news," the tiger-doctor said. "The quills are gone. The bad news is that the machine exploded, dispersing the magic from the quills into the environment. Especially the environment it was closest to, your shoulder."

Dr. Morgenes, with an increasingly bad feeling, slowly turned to look at his shoulder. What he found there filled him with horror. He stared at it, speechless. It was a small head looking just like his, staring back at him.

The small head finally said, "The really bad news is that the weasel's underneath us. If you don't move you're going to kill him. I'd move us if I could, but I'm not strong enough to override you. That's something I'm going to work on, though."

Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
http://stephen-has-spoken.blogspot.com/



4:09 AM 6/1/2008

The small head said, "There's one too many heads here alright, and I'd like to get rid of the extra one. But it would be kind of, you know, like cutting off your nose to spite your face, only worse." He looked at Dr. Morgenes' head with narrowed eyes. "So I guess I'll just have to do this the hard way."

The small head seemed to burrow under the skin and work its way toward Morgenes' head, while Morgenes' head looked at it with alarm. The small head finally reached Morgenes' head and somehow disappeared inside it. Morgenes began to thrash and claw at his head with his fingers.

The tiger-doctor and the weasel watched in silence for a while. Finally the tiger said, "All this magic can really be a headache sometimes. We'd better leave them to work this out by themselves."

The tiger spread his new magical wings and flapped them experimentally a few times, then picked up the weasel and flew away.

Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
http://stephen-has-spoken.blogspot.com/

Still more posts about posts

Last March and in the summer of 2007 I posted collections of posts I made to a message board I visit frequently. This is the third collection of these posts.

On that message board, new threads crowd out old ones, old in this case meaning oldest last update. Threads can persist for a long time, however, if they are posted to frequently enough so that they stay comfortably away from the bottom of the list.

I help to keep some of the threads going, by posting to them when it seems that a new post might be needed. On threads about writing or poems, I have sometimes posted poems. Most of these poems refer to posts or posting in some manner, and most of them are short, sometimes very short, though a few are fairly long.

As originally posted they did not have titles, but I have given them titles here. The times shown are in Arizona time (MST), not the time on the message board, which uses Eastern time.


SHORTER THAN MOST?
6:31 PM 1/21/2007

This is a post
That's shorter than most

That's longer than some
With still more to come

But the ending is near
It is right here

.
.
.
.

I lied, I fear
The end's not here

Will it be found?
Is it deep underground?

Is it closer than that?
Is it under my hat?

Is it inside my head?
Is it still to be said?

Will it be seen
When placed on the screen?

Will others then post?
And not just almost?

And the thread will go on
But this post is done



HERE THERE BE POEMS
7:39 AM 8/28/2007

Here there be poems
Sparse and lush
Post yours now
And avoid the rush



WORDS GO DOWN
1:13 AM 3/12/2008

Words go down
The thread goes up
But as time does pass
It begins to drop

'Round and 'round
The circle goes
Keep it running
See that it grows

Add a post
A word or two
Whatever you have
Old or new

Place it here
Don't be too late
Threads can leave
When people wait



POEM OR PROSE
5:51 AM 4/18/2008

Poem or prose
Here it goes



I WROTE THIS LINE
3:16 PM 5/12/2008

I wrote this line
And this one too
I could write more
But this will do

Howdy Week

In the high school that I attended, long ago, the first week was called Howdy Week. It was supposed to be a time of gentle hazing for the Freshmen, where Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors could order a Freshman to do something and the Freshman had to do it. It wasn't supposed to be anything bad though, basically just some teasing and mild humiliation.

To identify themselves, the Freshmen had to wear name tags the first week. It was probably something made of paper, maybe construction paper, that they pinned on their shirts. I think they had to write their own names on it.

In that first week of high school, back in 1967, I was somewhat nervous about what might be done during the hazing. To be more specific, I was somewhat nervous about what might be done to me or be required of me. I gave some slight consideration to to leaving the name tag off. I was very tall, 5 feet 11 1/2 inches I think, in the summer before high school, and might even have been slightly taller by the time I got there. Since I was so tall, if I didn't wear a name tag they probably wouldn't know I was a Freshman. I didn't really want to do that, though. It felt too much like cheating, and there might be a chance I could get into trouble for not wearing it, or at least it seemed so to me. And if I left it off I would miss whatever was out there for me, whatever that might be.

Nobody bothered me at first, but I remained nervous about it. Since I was taller than the vast majority of the students, taller than the average height for adults even, potential hazers may not have wanted to try anything with me.

Wednesday, though, as I was walking between the rows of buildings, heading toward one on the end, I saw a group of people with a small kid, apparently trying to put him in a trash container. A few other students were sitting along a large concrete planter, watching. One of them got up and headed in my general direction, not looking at me, moving at a diagonal, heading partially in the direction I was going as if to meet up with me a little ways ahead. I hoped he wasn't really going to do it, that it was just a coincidence that he was heading that way.

As he came closer though, there could be no real doubt that he intended to meet me. I stopped and waited. He was several inches shorter than I was, and came up to me with a strange expression on his face, not really looking at me, seeming to look slightly to the side. Stopping in front of me, he fiddled with the pin on my name tag. Finally getting it loose, he took the name tag, folded it, and put it in his pocket. I think he also clapped me briefly on my left arm, near my shoulder, but I'm not sure now. He turned then and went back, never speaking to me and never looking me in the face.

After that I had no more problems.

Dream - The descent: Witches, flying reptiles and the tall tree-like man

Starting around February 12, 2008, and very bad for a week, less bad thereafter, I was very, very sick, with a bowel obstruction, kidney stones, and a bad case of the flu. I didn't get much sleep for a week, because the pain in my side was too much when I lay down. I didn't spend much time laying down, though I did catch a few minutes of sleep that way. Sometimes I caught a few minutes of sleep sitting down and sometimes even over an hour, sometimes even a few hours. Some days, though, the total sleep was measured in minutes rather than hours. I spent long periods of time standing, sometimes assuming different positions, sometimes even bent over double, trying to relieve the pain in my side somehow.

The day before this started I had worked for about five hours on my sister's yard, starting late in the afternoon, stopping long after dark when I was too cold and sick to continue. I wasn't even wearing a coat.

For a few days before this started I had been feeling bad, and had noticed that my lips were sometimes very pale.

I had a few dreams during the time I was sick, some of them with very disturbing elements. One of the most disturbing ones happened around February 20, 2008.

In the dream, I seemed to be at a house we had lived in in the early to mid 1960s, though sometimes it seemed to be my grandmother's house instead, the one she lived in a little later on after she moved to Arizona. The houses were on the same street, but not close to each other. A lot happened earlier in the dream that I don't remember.

At some point I went out back and toward the side yard to the east. It was dark. A large number of people were there, even out in the alley and other yards. I also felt they were all over the place, even down at the end of the street. I wanted to fly, and went toward the side yard. The people, who it seems had already been witches of some kind, started to become witches in appearance, and some of them turned into flying reptiles, with some of the people riding the flying reptiles.

I was someone with magic powers, like the others, and part of the group of people. I started to change into something else and flew for a while, though I'm not sure if I changed into a flying reptile or into a more traditional witch appearance and rode a reptile (or rode something else). I flew around for a while, east toward the end of the street and back.

The dream turned darker, and it seems the witches were now out to get me, and were apparently also vampires of some type. They were also changing into various monsters, often or usually some variation on the flying reptiles theme, with huge claws even on their elbows and other places. They wanted to get me with the claws, to cut and stab me.

The houses were gone now, the scene changing to uneven ground with different places at different levels, kind of an outdoor scene except it seemed to take place inside an enormous cave. At some point I seemed to have returned to my normal appearance. I kept trying to avoid the creatures, who seemed to be in almost a continual process of slow change. They seemed only marginally aware of me, occasionally turning toward me with an evil look, especially if I got too close.

There was a tall tree-like man with fingers like long branches or roots and legs turning into trunks and roots. At first he was on an area of higher ground in the cave, a place to the side where it narrowed somewhat and then went on. The winged creatures seemed not to be concerned about him and did not pay a lot of attention to him, though there were frequently a few in his area. I went toward him, but as I got closer he raised his arms and started to try to move his legs, to try to come toward me, and I backed away.

Sometime later I noticed that he had managed to move thirty or forty feet, and was now on a lower area but still a ways out from the middle of the cave. I kept feeling that he wasn't really my enemy. I went toward him again and got pretty close, but then he raised his arms with the long root-like fingers that could stretch all the way to the ground and tried to get me again.

A winged creature was passing by behind the tree man, stopping every few feet, seemingly unaware of what was happening or that we were even there. It was bent over in almost a crouch, with extremely long arms and legs and torso. It was slim but muscular, and had big shoulders. Its head was raised up and pointing forward, and was large and bald and somewhat thin, with a greatly exaggerated nose and chin. Its eyes were large and had somewhat wavy slits for pupils, pupils that were a pale yellow in color. The eyes themselves were an odd color, slightly dark and almost clear, and tilted a little with a curved under part and an almost straight top part. The mouth was pulled up in a huge grin. The skin of the creature was a kind of pale greenish-brown, and even bent over like it was it was still about the height of a man. As it paused behind the tree man, its left elbow went through his back and out his chest, splitting it open, the elbow with its huge thick gray claw sticking out the front. There seemed to be no blood, just a big split in the chest.

The tree man stared at me in pain and sorrow, and seemed to somehow be blaming me for what happened. He was not stopped by the injury, and still reached out for me, partially changing into something else, one of the clawed creatures. I pulled back and away. The original winged creature moved on, pulling its elbow out of the tree man's chest, never once looking at us.

There were other creatures everywhere but they seemed to not be paying attention to me, just milling around. Raised areas in the ground went around the middle section of the cave in a kind of square path, or paths. Sometimes the creatures followed the paths and sometimes they didn't.

I could also see a path that led up and down along the far wall, with a creature slowly coming down it. Others had gone up and down it earlier. I felt the creature had come back from someplace higher up, out of the cave or at least a different section of it. I wondered if it had gotten orders of some kind, and was on a mission. I made my way toward it, coming from the side. As with the others, though, it seemed to have no real purpose or awareness unless I got too close, and then its head turned toward me and its eyes got slightly bigger, and long clawed fingers reached out, and when I pulled back the awareness faded, I could see it fade from its eyes, and it turned back to what it had been doing, walking slowly along the path.

In retrospect, the situation in the dream seems to have turned into some kind of a representation of Hell.

Dream - The vault

On Thursday, October 30, 2008, I fell asleep around 12:30 PM for about ten minutes, and dreamed I was in a large dimly lit vault. In the dream I felt it was something like a bank vault, but in retrospect it seems more like a mausoleum. Along the left wall were large polished black granite panels, perhaps 16 inches high and 30 inches wide. They were in rows along the wall, which was the same color, and extended perhaps an inch from the wall. They had a little space, perhaps an inch or two, between them. I was probably six or seven feet from the back wall, facing the left wall and examining the panels, brushing them a little with the fingers of my left hand, barely touching them.

Behind me, shadowy people in dark suits occasionally came and went, one or two at a time, presumably on business of some kind. Sometimes they were not much more than just faint blurred figures, with occasional flashes of a white shirt and the suggestion of a face, looking like pictures taken with a camera that was unable to properly freeze the motion, with the ends of the arms and legs almost fading out. Sometimes they barely felt physical at all.

They never tried to talk to me or interact with me, always going past me toward the back, sometimes then turning toward the right and going somewhere away from me and out of my awareness. I felt that money was stored somewhere behind me and perhaps a little along the back wall, presumably in something like safe-deposit boxes and maybe safes, though I didn't see anything and didn't try to look for it. I was mostly concerned with the panels.

Feeling the panels with my fingers, I had found that some of them were a little rough or uneven, some much more so than others. Some of it seemed to be in the rock itself but some of it, particularly on some panels, was mostly accumulated grime, like it had been a long time since maintenance on them had been performed. I curled the fingers of my left hand and started rapidly scratching at the surface of the panels, starting at an upper one, sending tiny thin pieces of the surface off, so tiny or thin they were hard to see properly, like ashes or the memory of ashes, like the ghosts of ashes and the ghosts of powdery dust.

As the surface of a panel got smoother I moved to a lower one, and then a lower one. The third one down from where I started, the second one up from the floor, was a lot rougher, feeling like slightly smoothed-over dried soap scum. This one was going to take a lot longer.

I continued to work while the shadowy presences came and went behind me. It looked like it would take a long time to do all the panels. I wondered what would happen if everyone left and went home for the day and I got locked in. I thought that surely they would have some janitorial service that would come during the night and clean the vault, at least sometimes, so I would get out eventually, and might not have to spend a whole night or weekend there.

Scratching near a lower corner of the panel, trying to smooth out the final irregularities in that area, I noticed that I was making a shallow depressed area diagonally across the stone. I decided to leave that area as it was rather than try any more there, as it seemed like the irregularities at that point were caused by the inclusions in the rock being of different hardness from the surrounding matrix, and it didn't look like I would be able to smooth it there any further with just my fingernails. Someone would have to use real equipment to get that area any smoother, if they cared enough to go that far.

I considered whether to work on another area of that panel, which was still mostly unsmoothed, or to move to a different panel, perhaps one to the right. I was starting to wonder, also, if this project, a task I had undertaken on my own, without any prompting from anyone, was something I should continue to do. Nobody appeared to notice the condition of the panels, and they would probably not notice even if they were smooth and clean. There was also the question of whether they would mind me doing what I was doing, as I had no authority to be doing anything. It was just something that I found, something that I felt needed correcting.

Snakes! - the poem

I first wrote this poem as a post to a thread about humorous invented words and definitions, as a reply to someone who had written a much shorter poem about snakes. Her poem was a general response to posts about snakes, and had a line that could be taken as referencing an earlier post of mine involving Medusa, the mythical figure who had snakes on her head instead of hair. The general point of her poem, given in a humorous way, was that she did not like snakes, though she did not say the word anywhere, always saying "them" instead. At the time the thread was sometimes being used by people to post humorous take-offs on the "Snakes on a Plane" movie, so quite a few posts had snakes in them, though some had versions not involving snakes.

I later changed my poem slightly, in a version not part of that thread, making it have less of a specific response, making it a more general poem about someone not liking snakes. It fits in rather well in my family this way, as my father was chased by a snake long ago and my mother, when she was young, sometimes had the experience of a particular worker on the family farm showing her snakes he had killed while mowing the yard.

In the poem below, the line "Many other places where" originally said "Places have been listed where" in the version in the humor thread, and the line "Places I have not yet given" originally said "But other places were not given".

This final version of the poem is dated 12:11 PM, December 10, 2007. The version in the humor thread was dated 8:55 AM, May 24, 2007, and the Medusa post was dated 7:40 AM, May 23, 2007. All times are Arizona Mountain Standard Time (MST).


The Medusa post:

Snakes on a Brain

What happened when Medusa's "hair" became ingrown.


The final version of the poem:

SNAKES!

Should a snake always be inside its lair,
And not catch a person unaware?

Are there other places they can be,
Where you cannot, will not, see?

Many other places where,
You would not like to find them there?

Places I have not yet given,
Places where they could be livin'?

If one crawled swiftly up the lane,
Would it drive you quite insane?

If they came from out your pockets,
Would your eyes bulge from their sockets?

If one fell from trees into your hair,
Would it give you such a scare?

Would one in the sunshade in your car,
Really give you such a jar?

Would one found upon a pillow,
Make you let out quite a bellow?

So many places snakes might lurk,
Would they all drive you berserk?

Is there a place that I could say,
That would not make you run away?

Or would a snake found anywhere,
Be one more snake than you could bear?

Where's my shoe?

This probably happened back in the mid to late 1980s, when I would have been in my early to mid thirties.

I was putting on my shoes in my bedroom and I couldn't find one. I looked under the bed and in the closet and everywhere else in the room, and then looked everywhere again, and then a third and probably a fourth time. I couldn't figure it out. It had to be somewhere but it didn't seem to be anywhere at all.

I finally gave up on it being in my bedroom, at least for the moment, and started walking down to the living room, thinking that maybe my mother had taken the shoes to polish them, something she had on rare occasions done. It seemed only a faint possibility, but I just couldn't find it and I was running out of places to look.

I was walking down the hallway when I realized that I had both shoes on instead of one. I had been wearing the missing shoe the whole time.

Dream - Young self one and two, dreams of different lives

In January of 2008, I had what were really two dreams, one after the other, perhaps one leading into the other, which showed younger versions of myself, when I was a kid, but different from what I was like back then. They were other lives lived in which things had turned out differently, including a different version of my grandmother's death.


The first dream took place in a very large house. My mother was there, and at some point she encouraged me to go out to a patio or porch on the side and back of the house. Lots of little tables were there with food and things. Two little kids had been left with us who were kids or grandkids of my brother or one of my sisters. My mother and I had to watch them. They ran around among the tables, playing and being a nuisance.

The boy later wanted some orange juice, and I went back inside the house, toward the front of a long room filled with rows of tables to get it. I was pointed by someone toward an odd device made of ornate tubes that looked something like a harp frame. It contained orange juice and poured different kinds - high-pulp, no-pulp, normal, spicy - depending on which opening it was poured from. I was surprised at the elaborateness of it, but I was assured that the kid was used to it. A much smaller contraption held lemonade.

It was dark and late at night when my brother came back. He seemed happy. Someone was with him, and I believe some other people also came, including my father. The scene kept replaying itself, changing a little each time.

A younger version of myself showed up, I think maybe actually brought by my brother in one of the replays of the scene (in real life my brother is younger than I am). My younger self was perhaps 12 years old, with short hair perhaps an inch long, maybe slightly longer toward the front. He had a big smile like my brother did, but didn't look quite like I actually looked back then. I'm not sure my younger self knew who I was.


In the second dream, some people were going to make a movie about my life. Danny DeVito was chosen to play my younger self. I thought it was a strange choice, partly because he wasn't tall enough and partly because he didn't look anything like me or have the right personality. His hair was dark and he looked much younger than he does now, but for an instant when I contemplated his age he looked much older with wrinkles and gray hair and then he was young again.

He went to go through a door and looked back at me and laughed, and then continued through the door. I thought, well maybe he was the right choice after all.

I then saw various scenes of my life, my life as it had been in the dream. Apparently my life was being reviewed in an effort to get material for the movie script.

In the dream version of my life, my father was much different. He was tall with dark hair perhaps one and a half inches long on top, a long rectangular face, and a long muscular torso. In real life, my father was tall and strong, but started going bald fairly early, and tended to be overweight. My mother, who was shown in a separate scene, looked about the same as she had in real life, except she was thinner with more of a medium weight. They were both in their mid-thirties at the time shown, and seemed happy.

In the dream, I was put with foster parents for the 7th and 8th grades, but I'm not sure why. I looked back at the 8th grade time and I seemed to be happy. My younger self didn't quite look like I did, looking more like a combination of my brother and myself. In real life, I have a brother and two sisters, but in the dream I didn't have any sisters, though I think I did still have a brother. My younger self also seemed to interact more with the other kids than I did in real life, though he still seemed a little bit shy.

I watched my 8th grade class, at a time when the class was not in session. Kids were in the classroom, standing in various groups, talking to each other. Watching the scene, I saw some girls and remarked to someone with me that I liked a particular girl back then, she was hot. I gave her first name and a couple of different possibilities for her last name, and was a little bothered that I was unable to quite remember it. I don't believe the name in the dream quite matched a real name, but in real life there was a girl something like that - slim with a reasonably good figure, light brown hair and perhaps a little taller and somewhat different looking than the one in the dream. In real life I thought she looked somewhat attractive - especially her figure - but I didn't talk to her and thought someone else looked better (I didn't talk to her either).

My impression is that my younger self, in this new version of my life, did have some interaction with the girls, even if in a relatively minor way. I'm not sure which girls, though, and it may or may not have included the girls mentioned above. And while this version of myself was less shy than I had in reality been, he still tended to let the people around him, whether boys or girls, do most of the talking.

Toward the end there was a scene at a restaurant where I was with my mother and grandmother and perhaps someone else. I was now older than before, an adult, though younger than I am in real life. The tables were widely spaced, and we were sitting down at one in the middle and toward one wall.

Then the scene moved forward in time a little and my grandmother was on the floor on her side, partly curled up from where she fell off the chair. Everyone in the room was staring at her. My mother was leaning to the side and forward, looking at her, an expression of alarm on her face. I was farther down the table, in the process of standing up.

Some time passed, while various people went over to my grandmother and looked briefly at her, perhaps touching her lightly but apparently not doing much else. I could hear them talking among themselves about her, in low, mumbling tones. I didn't catch much of what was being said. I went over there, too, in the form of my younger self, after the others had finished and had indicated that I should come. I bent down and looked at her and I think touched her shoulder, but there didn't seem to be anything I could do.

A little while later the ambulance arrived. Bright light poured in through the suddenly open door and across the floor past where my grandmother lay. A paramedic was in the doorway in silhouette, his shadow stretching across the floor toward us. He went to her and looked at her briefly, then looked up and shook his head and said, "She's gone."

I was watching the scene from the side and above like a ghost. I nodded and acknowledged to someone with me that, yes, this was always sad when things like this happen, though I seemed somehow far removed in time from the scene and even reality itself and could only manage a wistful sort of sadness, like sadness at the passing of an era, and retained a small, understanding smile.

The Pomeranian and the Crawfish

This is another story that I did for a message board for a thread that was normally concerned with comically constructing new words and definitions. At that time people were taking turns writing short stories containing a short list of words given by another user. The list of words for this story: pomeranian, headress, sled, crawfish, creep

This story was part of a group I did for post number 989. I did another group for post number 1000, catching up on ones I missed. And as with post 1000, post 989 was the second time that number was reached, due to the board crash that cut several hundred from my post count but left the posts themselves unaffected.

This story is dated 5:04 AM, November 29, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE POMERANIAN AND THE CRAWFISH

The pomeranian rode his sled across the ice, his head held high. He wore a headdress of nobility and power, denoting his status.

As he turned a corner, a crawfish stuck out a claw and knocked him off the sled. He lay stunned, and the crawfish came toward him, creeping silently across the ice.

The crawfish looked down at the pomeranian's crumpled form, then reached down and took the headdress from him. Placing the headdress on its own head, it went away muttering, "I wondered where that went."

The Dance

Many of the things mentioned in this poem actually happened to me. I haven't seen any sea serpents yet, though. I haven't seen any angels either, at least as far as I know. I do think I have a guardian angel, probably several. Perhaps some day they'll appear more openly and we can have a talk, even if I don't see them dance.

This poem is dated 6:38 AM, August 25, 2007, Arizona time (MST).


THE DANCE

How many angels can dance
On the head of a pin?
Was an argument
No one could win.

How many sea serpents
In the sea?
First depends
On whether sea serpents be.

How many flying saucers
In the skies?
How to tell
The truth from lies?

Would something that goes bump
Within the night,
Still go bump
In the broad daylight?

I have seen something
In the sky,
I have not seen since,
Though the days go by.

My name was called
By no one there,
Though I came when called
And looked everywhere.

Things that might have gone wrong,
Somehow went right.
In darkness trapped,
I saw with more than sight.

Helped somehow
by things unseen,
Who knew just when
To intervene.

So much out there
we do not see,
How can we say
it cannot be.

Could angels dance upon a pin,
Singing merrily all night long?
Would we all be welcomed there,
If we weren't a stranger to their song?

Or do we need to see
What can't be seen,
To join the dance
Where the angels sing?

Where's my sock? or Sock on, sock off

Back when I was in high school, a long time ago, a more restrictive dress code was instituted, requiring, among other things, that socks be worn.

Not long after this, I was sitting in class one day when I felt coldness on one of my legs, near the ankle. I looked down and discovered, to my horror, that I had only one sock on. To make matters worse, I was sitting at the very front of the class, approximately in the middle.

The teacher, a man, was on the far right side of the room, standing up, talking to the class. After a while, he turned and walked to the left, I guess to talk to somebody over there. As he passed me, he frowned at me but didn't say anything.

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