Wordzzle - The brigadier general, the hummingbird, and the gods

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.


Ten Word Challenge:

apoplexy,
doctor,
hummingbird,
shallow end of the pool,
brigadier general,
mustard,
greed,
parallelogram,
slumber party,
casual

The hummingbird said to the doctor, "Do you have any mustard?" The doctor seemed for a moment to be suffering from apoplexy, but finally said, "I need to save some for the slumber party. Don't be greedy." The hummingbird said, "Oh, I won't, I eat like a bird. Where is it, anyway?" "I keep it in the refrigerator," the doctor said. "You mean the parallelogram over there? Would you mind getting it for me? And opening the mustard, too? After all, I'm just a tiny bird." The doctor walked over to the refrigerator, grumbling, the bird following along. "It says General Electric, not refrigerator," the bird said. "Is it a brigadier general?" The doctor looked baffled for a moment, then silently put some mustard on a little plate. The bird pecked at the mustard. "He wasn't the bravest of generals," the bird casually said. "He wouldn't get out of the shallow end of the pool. He wouldn't let me have any mustard, either."


Mini Challenge:

Mount Olympus,
arsonist,
portraits,
birch trees,
"that car needs a new muffler"

The artist went up on the mountain to do a painting. He found found some nice birch trees by a meadow and decided to paint them. He normally did portraits, but that business was a little slow right now. He had been painting for a little over an hour when suddenly there was a flash of light and a figure stood about twenty feet in front of him, wearing a white garment that looked something like a small toga. The artist blinked, and bent down to pick up his brush, which he had dropped. Cleaning the dirt off the bristles, he considered the situation, and finally said, "Who are you?" The figure threw a lightning bolt at him, which caught his easel and painting on fire, and said, "I am Zeus. Who are you and why do you dare to come to Mount Olympus?" The man got back up off the ground, to which he had somehow fallen, and began desperately trying to put the fire out. "What are you, some kind of arsonist?" he said. "No, I am Zeus. Leader of the gods. We live on Mount Olympus. Surely you have heard of us?" The god looked at him quizzically. "You're not one of those slow witted, demented people the villages sometimes throw out, are you?" The artist looked up, having finally put out the fires. "I've heard of you, but you're not much in the news these days. People don't care about you, and don't even believe in you anymore. And in any case, this is Colorado, how did Mount Olympus end up here?" "Mount Olympus is wherever we wish it to be," Zeus said, and then looked thoughtful for a moment. He finally said, "These are strange developments. Perhaps we should start a war or simply lay waste to a few cities. Something that will remind them of us, and show them the dangers of having forgotten." The artist squeaked out a reply, "Couldn't you do something more positive?" The god looked at him. "These developments are not positive. Punishment must be given." "I'll just be going then," the man said, heading for his car. He opened the door and got in, while the god looked on in amazement. When the car started, the god jerked back and flung a lightning bolt at it. The car rocked violently and part of the exhaust system flew away, to land clattering and rolling in the meadow. The man sat in the car, bent over the steering wheel, trembling. After a time he raised his head, opened the door, and slowly got out. He walked a few paces toward the god, shoulders slumped, swaying a little, then stopped. He raised his head, and looked vaguely in the god's direction. "Begging your pardon and all, but you really, really ought to do something positive for a change. You could do some advertising, to remind people you're here, and then every now and then you could do something positive, some little act of kindness for someone that would have a major impact in their lives. It would be like winning the lottery. Lots of people would try to get on your good side then." The god paused, considering. "What acts of kindness would these be, do you think?" The artist said, "Oh, it would vary from person to person depending on the situation." He turned and pointed back toward his car. "If it was me, for instance, well, that car needs a new muffler."


Mega challenge:

apoplexy,
doctor,
hummingbird,
shallow end of the pool,
brigadier general,
mustard,
greed,
parallelogram,
slumber party,
casual

Mount Olympus,
arsonist,
portraits,
birch trees,
"that car needs a new muffler"

"We must capture Mount Olympus," the brigadier general said. "I shall put my forces around the gods while they have their slumber party. We shall form a parallelogram, with the walls closing in on them. They will never suspect a thing, until it is too late. Then we will not only have Mount Olympus, we will control the gods and all their power will be at our disposal." "You military types are so greedy," the doctor said. "In the end it just makes more work for me, patching up everybody. And by the way, you've got mustard on your face." "I do?" The general paused, wiping his face with a handkerchief and carefully looking over the results in a small mirror. "You're always sloppy when you eat," the doctor said. "It's legendary. All your portraits show food on your face." "I am simply enthusiastic when I eat," grumped the general, an eye twitching slightly. "I am enthusiastic in everything I do." "You're not trying to suffer from apoplexy again, are you?" the doctor said, peering at him. "No, no," the general said, waving him off. "It wasn't really apoplexy anyway, I just drank too.... enthusiastically." "Well, whatever," the doctor said, turning to look again at the mountain. "Those birch trees look kind of dry," he said, changing the subject. "I hope you don't start any fires. That last place looked like it was overrun by arsonists after you got done." "Oh, I'm sure everything will be alright," the general said casually. He paused then. "That hummingbird over there, watching us. Do you think he could be a spy for Zeus?" The doctor looked. "I thought Zeus used larger birds," he said slowly. "Perhaps, though, he is economizing these days, and using smaller things." The general turned and looked at him. "You're not going to bring up that thing about me using the shallow end of the pool again, are you?" The doctor looked momentarily puzzled. "Eh? No, no. At least not right now. Although I do have a complaint about what you drive. That car needs a new muffler." "It is just enthusiastic about being alive, as am I," the general muttered. The hummingbird flew over and hovered in front of the general's face, while he looked at it cross-eyed. It then pecked his nose a few times and flew away. "What was that all about," the general said, wide-eyed. The doctor peered at him. "I think it likes mustard," he said. "You've still got some on your nose."

Dream - The figure in the tree

Back in July of 2007, probably around the middle of the month, I had a long dream with a lot of things happening in it. Earlier in the dream, I tried to help my younger brother a couple of times in a minor way, but he coldly rejected it. One time I remember he had been eating a sandwich and had gotten a lot of crumbs on his arm and I tried to brush them off with a paper, but he looked at me coldly and said I was just making it worse. The dream also had a lot of separate incidents with what were apparently pirates and odd raft-like ships made out of big metal tubes and tall masts and triangular supports that were also made out of metal.

At one point I was looking in a big hollow tree that leaned or curved slightly to one side, trying to show someone the light that was visible in the sky past the dark leafless branches of another, thin tree that was inside the hollow trunk of the big tree. The light was strange and pale, roughly circular, with a border around it like twisted or woven purple cloud, with a dark but not black nighttime sky as the background. It shown down inside the hollow tree and made a round bright area on some dark water, a lake or maybe a river, that was perhaps 10 or 15 feet underground. This time, though, I was having trouble finding the light. I just saw a broad washed-out pale area with the skinny branches of the small tree in silhouette.

I was leaning into the hollow trunk and peering upward, looking closer and moving my head back and forth, trying to find the light past the branches when I became aware that a small figure, perhaps three or four feet tall, was sitting in the tree and apparently blocking my view of the light. I moved my head closer at it, feeling somehow that I should be able to somehow see through its eyes and out the back of its head, as though there wasn't anything back there. Its face was round and broad, almost slightly square, and its mouth was stretched in a wide toothy grin. Its eyes were relatively small and very round, and were entirely black with a slight cloudiness, and looked somehow soft like round dark grapes.

As I came close to the head, looking at it and the eyes, I suddenly realized that it wasn't really alive, not as we think of life, that it had an emptiness about it, but that it was somehow nevertheless animated, though by something that wasn't actually living precisely in it but behind and somewhat above it. It gave a short laugh and said that I would never be able to look through its eyes that way.

I was fairly close to it now, and there was suddenly a feeling of great danger and of tremendous power held in check, power that could be released at any time and to any degree necessary, and that it was only letting me do as much as it pleased it to let me do, and that I should not tempt it too much.

I had a brief vision, then, of what could happen. I saw its body silently crackling with white energy going out all around it like electricity, and its arms becoming much longer and reaching out for me, with long hands and long fingers ending in pointed nails. Its face seemed more angular, but still with the wide, toothy grin and small wide open black eyes. Its face got closer to me and also seemed to somehow project inside my head, and I felt tremendous terror wrap around my brain like a fog, not the kind of terror where you run, but the kind of terror that brings you to you knees, hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. I felt my awareness and my brain cringing, shrinking in on itself, feeling like something caught in mid-spasm, shrinking to a point and then starting to fade out, leaving only the face and the eyes and the terror.

And then I was moving my face back, somewhat nervously, and trying to look around the figure to each side, trying to find the light in the sky. I finally reached up and lifted the figure, the little man, down from the tree, but I still couldn't find the light, just a broad diffused light through the dark branches, and light that shown down softly on the dark water below. I finally left the tree and the dream proceeded to other things.


That Sunday, after the dream, I happened to watch the last half of Waterworld on the TV, a movie I had never seen. In it, the main character had a boat made of metal or metal-like pontoons and with tall metal masts and supports. Near the end, he rescued a little girl by blowing up an oil tanker run by pirate-like people. He did this by dropping a lighted flare through a wide metal pipe that led to a lake of dark oil far below. The light fell onto the oil, which then erupted into pale streamers of fire and exploded. Fire boiled through all the openings of the ship, and blew open new openings. People were running everywhere in mindless terror.

The movie had in common with the dream the metal boats, the light on a dark liquid far below, bright streamers that were electricity in the dream and an explosion in the movie, and terror.

Dream - A future or other-time self tries to kill me

Around July 1, 2007, I had a dream in which a future or other-time self came in my bedroom, where I was laying in bed, and pointed his hand at my face, with the fingers formed into a gun shape.

I begged him, "No... please... don't..." He pulled the "trigger" anyway.

Nothing apparently happened when the trigger was pulled, but I felt that somehow something did happen, that the effects were or might be somehow delayed.

I realized sometime later, after awakening, that the figure looked more like my younger brother, as he looked twenty years ago, than me. I'm not sure of the significance of that, as I did not feel in the dream that the person was my brother. Perhaps the person was far enough removed from me genetically to have just a family resemblance, instead of looking specifically like me.

A vision of small Gray head swooping toward me

Around July 3, 2007, I was sitting at the computer and closed my eyes to try and go to sleep for a while, and immediately saw a tiny head in the distance ahead of me and slightly to one side. It seemed to be the head of a Gray-type entity, the ones commonly assumed to be extraterrestrial aliens. It rapidly moved toward me, enlarging as it came, though it always remained small. As it approached it became clearer and its appearance was also shifting, becoming somewhat different. It remained approximately the same color (which I think might have been light blue instead of gray), but the shape was almost the reverse of the standard Gray alien shape. It had a very small, rounded head with bulging cheeks. Its eyes were like shiny plastic, and ran around to the sides of its face. The eyes were straight on top and rounded on the bottom, giving the Gray a slightly angry look. The eyes also had thick, black rims around them, like goggles.

Oddly, although it felt at the beginning to be far away, it also actually seemed to be only four or five feet away for some reason, only actually getting a foot or two closer to me as it swooped toward me. It was almost like it was more a representation of distance than actual distance. Or perhaps the distance was not a physical one.

This was not a dream, at least not in the traditional sense. It was more like a vision. I wasn't sleeping when it happened, and I didn't try to sleep for a while after it happened.

At the time, the face reminded me somewhat of a gerbil or hamster with its cheeks stuffed with food, just because of the bulging cheeks, not for any other reason. After thinking about it some more, it seemed to also resemble a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle a little bit, although it wasn't that exaggerated. However, I soon found something else that was startlingly reminiscent of it.

A day or two before the vision, I had gotten an issue of Discover magazine in the mail, but I hadn't read it yet. About a day after the vision, I started looking through the magazine and found a picture of a swimmer's head sticking partly out of the water. The picture was evidently taken fairly close up at a low angle, and the top of the head, covered with either the top of a wet suit or a tight cap, was a smooth light blue and appeared very small. The front of the face was exaggerated and the bottom part was apparently in the water, with a yellowish snorkel in the mouth making the bottom part of the face seem to bulge enormously. The swimmer also had enormous black-rimmed goggles on that were straight on the top and rounded, in an angular sort of way, on the bottom.

It seems likely that the vision was for some reason connected with that picture, though I don't know why. It may also be that more than one thing was represented by the vision, and the different things were combined into one image, but I don't have any real evidence for that.

The picture in question is on page 18 of the August 2007 issue of Discover magazine.

What if we didn't die tomorrow?

If we were to die tomorrow, and we put all our affairs in order, and did everything that we had to do and said everything that needed to be said, and then tomorrow came and we did not die, then what?

Was the time wasted? Would we have been better off doing something else, perhaps just going through the day as we normally do?

Probably not. They were all things that needed to be done anyway (assuming that you didn't actually give away all your stuff).

Just remember to treat people well, and even if you do not die, opportunities pass and may not come again. Leave good impressions behind you, and try to make the world a better place.

Sliding down the stairs

For several years when I was very young, we lived in a house in a small town in north-central Missouri. We moved there from my grandparents' farm probably sometime when I was three, but I could have been as young as two. I slept upstairs there with the rest of the family in a converted attic. The bathroom and the living room and the kitchen were downstairs, along with another room.

My little brother was young enough that he crawled around when we first moved there. My mother eventually had my father put a barrier across the stairs, so my little brother couldn't get to them. It was basically just a board, tall enough to prevent him from getting over it, and could be moved out of the way as necessary. Still, I moved to try to push him away from the stairs when he was heading for them.

One day I was going downstairs and had gotten past the barrier, and was on the steps but not very far along. I was walking down and talking to my mother, who was on the first floor a few feet from the bottom of the stairs. Suddenly, somehow, I almost entirely missed a step, hitting just the edge of it with the edge of my heel, which then slid off to the step below. I fell forward with my hands stretched out in front of me, and my whole body fell on the stairs. I slid forward with my head up and my arms straight out in front of me with the palms turned up, my wrists and arms and body sliding along the front edges of the steps, all the way to the bottom. I couldn't stop myself, I just kept sliding. My mother was still there near the bottom, watching. I was terribly embarrassed. I felt that I had failed, that I had done a terribly stupid thing, that it was not something someone my age should do.

I wasn't injured, except for a long scratch on my wrist, I think my right one, going back up probably halfway or more to the elbow. It was really a very minor scratch, but it was further evidence of my failure.

When my father came home from work for lunch, I didn't want him to see it. I held my arm behind my back, even while we sat at the table and ate. He kept turning and looking at me and asking about it. My mother finally said something to him about what happened, something brief and about me being embarrassed by it. I continued to hold my arm behind me, though.

When my father came home that night, I was playing on the floor. He bent down some from several feet away, trying to get a look at me. I didn't try to hide it anymore. It seemed silly to do so by that time. My mother said something to my father about it, and my father asked me something about it. I frowned, not really looking at him, and gave a curt answer, acting like it didn't matter. I didn't want to discuss it, and pointedly concentrated on the toys in front of me.

Dream - The hidden town and the TV Superman

On Sunday morning, November 9, 2008, I had a dream about the TV Superman of the 1950s, George Reeves.

In the dream, I was in a broad grassy valley or plains area, perhaps in Nevada, perhaps in a state to the east, maybe even Colorado. It was someplace I had been in other dreams, though I'm not sure I knew it then. At some point I had to go up a mountain. It was something I had been concerned about earlier in the dream, that somebody would have to do it. A steep path led straight up the mountain. The path wasn't rocky, just very uneven, dirt with humped areas, in places covered with long grass partly laying down. In real life it would have been impossible to drive, as it was something like a 60 degree slope in places. In the dream I think I made it at least part way up in the car, though near the end I went on foot, leaning forward and holding on to the mountain with my hands.

At the top there was a gateway or opening into a small city. The city seemed old fashioned, almost medieval. They seemed to have a lot of pageants going on. I had gone up there with someone with me. We were met at the top by some people and shown around. It was a whole different world up there, dim and a little wet and misty, and seemed to be covered by and surrounded by clouds, hiding it. We were eventually taken to a place to eat. At some point George Reeves, the TV Superman, showed up. He had a big smile and seemed very happy. I think he had some part in the plays. I think he may have even been wearing the Superman suit, though I'm not sure about this. It seems I was actually him for a while, though I switched back. It seems also that he was in black and white, though the rest of the dream had some color.

It was time after a while to go back down. George Reeves was also going down on one of his periodic trips. We went toward the exit to the outer world, and I saw that now it had tall thin pillars by it with an iron fence on either side with the top sloping up very high as it approached and joined the pillars. A carriage being drawn by two white horses was going toward it, and I think it was supposed to be George Reeves' and maybe our method of transport. Something changed, though, and the horses weren't used. Either the carriage went on without them or a car was used instead. He went first and I went over almost immediately afterward. The way down was different than it had been. It was paved now, with brick I think, and had different levels, where it would slope steeply but not so steeply as before and then drop sharply for a few feet and then another stretch of steep slope and then another sharp drop, etc. It had low walls on each side, of concrete I think, maybe two or three feet high, and beyond that, a jumble of scattered things on the mountain, various artifacts, little statues and short pillars and maybe small tables and more.

It seemed that his car had quickly gone to the left and over the low wall. I scrambled down to it, calling out to the others back up at the top. I was trying to find him, to see if he was alright. The car seemed gray and very hazy, almost ghost-like. He didn't seem to be there. I worried that he was hurt. I looked back at the path going down the mountain. It had various obstructions in it, small statues and tables, etc., looking something like a pinball machine. I worried that he had fallen and had bounced off of some of them and had gotten hurt. I continued down, trying to find him. I felt that he had gone this way.

After a little while, the path widened and the slope became more gentle, with widely spaced little round tables with central bases, some with white carved human legs or feet sticking out of the sides or at the bottom. It led toward an even wider area that was made of shiny dark brown material, probably tile or brick, and became the floor of a large room, gently sloping. The room was filled with widely spaced little round tables with central pillars and little carved white human legs sticking out at the bottom. They probably had a couple of chairs per table, too, though the other area may also have had that. The tables in this area were much more uniform in appearance, though.

He wasn't here either, but I partly sensed and was partly told by the others that he had gone into the room and then off to the right. The room narrowed in that direction, sloping from the sides in partial steps, like the road had done going down, toward a somewhat complicated wall, like overlapping rectangular painted wood plates with frames around them like 2 x 2 boards, and that he had gotten through it somehow, through some hidden opening or maybe even physically passing through the material at a special place in a special way, and passed through into another dimension, to the world on the other side. It was something he had done before, some kind of periodic business trip.

I thought of maybe trying to follow him, but I wasn't sure how he did it and there also was the matter of the others. Some or most of them were relatives who had also come down but were a ways behind me, back on the sloping road at different places but not too far away. Going back, I came to a place where one of them was, a girl in her early teens, at a place just past the low concrete wall that marked the edge of the road. There were some things in that area, various things clustered fairly close together.

My mother was on the other side of the road and some distance away, I knew, because she had called out to me when I was earlier shouting out asking where everyone was. We talked back and forth a little bit now, loudly calling out our answers. There was also someone else much further up the road, but I'm not sure who right now. There was also a car somewhere. Perhaps the girl was even in the passenger side of it, or was sitting outside but just beside it. A lot happened, especially earlier, that I don't remember.

Dream - A man is served a meal by a mysterious figure, in preparation for a mission on another world

On the morning of August 28, 2008, I had a dream that started out fairly normally, in that it involved driving, something I once did a lot of. It soon changed, though, to something much stranger.

In the dream I was driving on a divided road, seemingly somewhere in the Wickenburg area and past it. My brother was with me in a different car. We might have been competing in some way.

Later I was a giant figure, moving the cars by hand like they were toy cars. Later on I was walking and normal size, though it seems I was also controlling the cars, at least for a while.

Walking, I came to someone who was being given a meal by the road, not a last meal apparently, but a special one-time thing, apparently from God. Various dishes were presented on small, saucer-like plates. They were being served to the man by arms that faded to an indistinct body that faded out before the legs were reached. The food included biscuits and many different kinds of cooked vegetables, and other things as well. I noticed in particular a plate of creamed peas and a plate of corn, perhaps a little creamed also but not much.

The food was supposed to be exact, perfect recreations of things served many decades ago by someone, I think maybe my grandmother on my mother's side. She herself, my grandmother, was coming from maybe ten or fifteen feet down the road, having seemingly materialized there, apparently as a reassurance that the dishes were in fact genuine. She never actually reached where they were being served, at least not that I saw. She seemed to always be in the process of walking there.

Though the meal was not exactly a last meal, it had the feeling of finality about it, and seemed to be a reward or inducement, perhaps even the promise of a future reward, a showing that the promise could be kept. The man was to be required then, or was being recruited to, perform a duty that involved going to a world that was faded of color, drained of it, where the people there and the reality there were more shadowy things than the reality here, but that reality was nevertheless real to them and had its own rules that it followed.

The meal apparently ended early for some reason, and the dishes that were being held out were put down and the man stood up, apparently having actually eaten only a little of it. The time had come, seemingly a little earlier than expected, for his mission to begin.

If a Burglar Came

This is a scenario I thought of when two bags of trash were sitting in the kitchen against the back door. For much of this time, which was during the day, the door was unlocked, though it is normally locked. I thought of various incarnations of the story, some of them with me starting it and some with my mother starting it, before deciding on the one here.

I planned to tell this story to my mother, but I put it off for quite a while before saying anything. When I did, though, she seemed to be distracted with what she was doing or thinking at the time, and it was hard to get her full attention. She did finally mention that she thought the Boston Terrier was much more likely than the Pekingese to grab the burglar's shoes and run around the yard with them.

This story is dated 12:28 AM, November 4, 2008, Arizona time (MST).


IF A BURGLAR CAME

My mother: There are bags of trash still sitting against the door.

Me: Yes, and the door is unlocked, too. Anyone could get in.

My mother: Yes, anyone could get in.

Me: If someone did, he would go, "What the ??? AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" and fall face first over the trash. Then the little dogs (a Boston Terrier and a Pekingese) would come up and grab his shoes in their mouths and run madly back and forth over the yard with them. The burglar, rendered helpless by the loss of his shoes and knowing that the game was over, would take out his cell phone and call 911 himself and tell them to just come and get him and get it over with.

[Pause]

My mother: That is very strange. [finally smiles]

The Cyclops and the Hockey Match

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 story is changed slightly here in that it is broken up into two paragraphs instead of being contained in just one.

This story was one of two that I did for my post 997 on that message board. The other story was separate from this one, with its own list of words. The list of words for this story: cyclops, hockey, panties, mesa, grudge

This story is dated 3:44 PM, December 1, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE CYCLOPS AND THE HOCKEY MATCH

One day while playing hockey, the cyclops fell off his mesa and tore his panties when he landed. They were his favorite panties, too. Not being one to carry a grudge, he only destroyed part of the mesa, coincidentally the part that held the opposing team. The match was canceled, the newspapers said, because of an act of God.

The cyclops knew better, but he was busy trying to find some new panties.

A sly school paper

Back in high school, a long time ago, a teacher gave us a homework assignment to write something using a list of words. One of the other kids, a boy, wrote something particularly good. We were evidently supposed to read them to the class, otherwise I wouldn't know what he wrote.

He said, in part (this is an approximation), "I had a dream last night about a foxy lady carrying a suitcase with a snake hanging out."

Suitcase and snake were probably words from the list. Fox was definitely one of the words. There was some question in the class about whether converting it to foxy was proper. The other kids liked his story, though, and laughed when he read it. I did, too.

Other worlds with other versions of us

There are theories in which an infinite number of worlds exist in the universe, and theories in which an infinite number of universes exist. Within these infinities, every possibility is explored. It's said that everything that can exist, must exist, and must exist an infinite number of times.

And so, there are worlds where the sea and the land are populated by creatures that do not exist in the seas and on the lands of our Earth, but the humans are exactly the same as they are here. The humans there have our faces and our names and our life experiences, and live in houses that look like our houses and have neighbors that look like our neighbors, and they speak our languages and live in countries that look like our countries, which have histories that are like our histories.

The fish in the sea are different, though, as are the animals on the land, and they have different names. This situation exists an infinite number of times in an infinite number of worlds, because no matter how unlikely, it is possible.

100th post

This is the 100th post on this blog. It took a bit longer than I thought it might, though perhaps not as long as I feared it might be. The total mix of subjects is also not quite as I had at first envisioned. I had originally intended to include some thoughts on some areas of science, the paranormal, unknown animals, time travel, books, current events, and even politics. Perhaps I'll get to some of that in the next hundred posts. Time will tell.

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.