The bike that failed

When I was a kid, my father bought me a used bicycle, from some people in the neighborhood. I already had a bicycle. but it was smaller. The new bicycle was large and heavy, and had a small chrome coil spring on the front, almost horizontal, and narrowing sharply at both ends. The new bike was a blue-green color, while my previous bicycle was red. It was a Schwinn, and like the previous bike was a single speed, and braked by pushing the pedals backward. It was much harder to ride than my old bike, though. It took a lot of effort. I think my father wanted it for me because I was tall for my age, and overweight, and he wanted something that fit my size better. I rode it for several years after that, and it was, in fact, the last bicycle I ever owned.

I put rectangular metal baskets on the back, on either side, so I could carry things in them when I bought something at a store. I also put a headlight on it, battery operated, with a white exterior that was a rounded square at the front and widened slightly as it went back, before tapering to a cone shape. Beside it on the right I put a horn that looked like a much smaller version of it, except that it was chrome and tapered more at the sides than the top and bottom, and had a grill in the front instead of a lens. I used the bicycle quite a bit, even going at least once to the Woolco store in a town that bordered ours.

Years passed, and I learned how to drive a car. I drove the car sometimes, but also made an effort to sometimes ride the bicycle. I could see the time would come when I would not ride the bicycle at all, but I wanted to put it off as long as I reasonably could.

Sometime when I was 17, I think, and probably in September 1970, or near there, I decided to go to the local drugstore on my bicycle, to see if they had gotten any interesting books or magazines in. It was probably on a Saturday or Sunday, and it feels more like it was Sunday, though I can't be sure now. I had intended to go earlier in the afternoon, but I kept putting it off, reading probably and maybe watching some TV. Finally, as it was getting close to sundown, I told my mother what I was going to do. She objected, saying it was too late, but I insisted on going.

I got on the bicycle and went down the driveway into the street. The street is slanted slightly downhill, so that helped, though it would make it more difficult when I returned. I started standing up on the pedals and pushing hard, to build up a lot of speed, because it would still be a fair amount of effort to pedal it, even going slightly downhill. I intended to sit down and glide for a while, after the bicycle was going fast.

Suddenly, though, after I had gone past a few houses, I found myself lying in the street, halfway over the handlebars. I was still holding on to them, with the end of one of the handlebars, probably the right one, jabbing hard against my ribs near my side. I didn't know what had happened. I think one of the wheels, it had to be the back one I guess, was still slowly turning. I had a faint impression of just coming to a stop, sliding there, just the last few feet.

After a few tries I managed to get off the handlebar that was sticking into me. It was awkward, because I had to let go with one hand to find a better place to push at, and without the support of both hands my weight fell much more on the handlebar that was jabbing into me. I finally did it though, and got to my feet. I felt kind of banged up, but seemed to be alright. I was wearing a light jacket, blue in color, and I found that one of the sleeves, the left one, had a small triangular tear, about an inch long, in the upper part of it. That was a little odd, since I had been laying in the street on my right side.

I felt totally betrayed. To be going down the street and everything seeming to be alright, pleasant even, and then to end up laying in the street on my side with no transition. It didn't seem right.

I looked up and down the street, but didn't see any cars driving on it, just the ones that were parked by the sidewalk and in the driveways.

I put the bicycle back on its wheels. The shaft the handlebars was on had gotten twisted around, and the handlebars were no longer aligned with the front wheel. I think I had noticed that while it was still laying in the street. I put the front wheel between my legs and twisted the handlebars around until they aligned again with the front wheel, then started walking the bicycle back home.

I was significantly farther down the street than my last memory before the accident. There are two slight bends in the street, one going one way and the other the opposite way. My last memory was before the first bend, and I was quite a ways past it now, perhaps five or six houses. The street was in a light shadow, too, meaning the sun had either gone completely down, or far enough that it was hidden behind the houses, maybe because of the bend in the street causing this section of street to not be pointed directly west, and putting more houses in the way of the low sunlight. Or perhaps some unknown period of time had elapsed while I was laying in the street. I had no way of knowing, though it couldn't have been long, as it wasn't really dark yet. And there was that wheel that had still been turning, even if just a little.

I still didn't know what had happened, and felt betrayed, just betrayed, that the universe could allow something like this to happen, with no explanation for it. I walked on with the bicycle, feeling very bitter.

As I walked, I eventually noticed something laying in the street, a few houses back from where I had fallen. It was something small and dark and flat. As I got closer to it, I saw that it was a bicycle pedal in the street. I looked at my bicycle and noticed that the right pedal was gone. I realized then that it had fallen off the bicycle while I had been standing on it, and that that was what had caused the accident. I had no memory of it happening, or of the struggle I must have gone through, fighting to keep from falling over while I went that distance down the street to where I finally fell. I pictured then that I had fallen back on the bicycle seat, and pushed out with my right leg over and over trying to keep the bicycle from falling, and ended up halfway over the handlebars when the bicycle fell over.

I think now that, since I was leaning forward, I probably fell forward when the pedal came off, and may have missed the seat entirely. My foot would have hit the street and instantly been dragged back, the impact and extra drag trying to tilt the bicycle, along with me leaning to that side. I would have been partly sticking out past the handlebars, low over them and maybe even with my upper body actually resting on them, with my leg well to the back, with my foot, probably mainly the toe, jabbing against the ground trying to keep the bicycle from falling over. I had apparently gone past three houses like that, before finally losing the battle. Since I had been going fairly fast, it would have just taken a few seconds, though. The impact had been great enough that it wiped out my memory of it, along with a little more, to account for the missing memory of going around the slight bend in the street and what happened after that.

I picked up the pedal and continued home.

After I got home, I told my mother, who was there in the living room, what had happened. As I told her, I noticed one time a sharp pain in my side, when I turned my body a particular way, but I straightened my body and continued talking. My mother, who was sitting at the opposite corner of the room from the front door, was mad at me for tearing my jacket, and said that I couldn't wear it to school now, and we didn't have the money to buy a new one, and probably said something like "I told you not to go." She also said, "I hope you're not hurt, we don't have any money." I assured her I wasn't, just banged up and bruised a bit.

I sat down by the front door, and started working on a jigsaw puzzle I had been doing. I did a lot of jigsaw puzzles in those days. After a while she said, more conciliatory, "You're not really hurt, are you?" Again I assured her I wasn't, just beat up some.

I wondered though, to myself, about the pain I had felt. It wasn't like anything I had felt before. When I finally stood up again, I tried twisting my body again, and the pain was enough to take my breath away. It was a very bad pain somewhere internally, low in my chest toward the side, sometimes it seemed more toward the back. It was hard to be sure exactly where it was, and I didn't know what was actually injured. I realized that I had to keep my body fairly straight from now on until it was healed. If it healed. If I made it for a week without it getting worse, or maybe killing me, I thought it might heal on its own.

From then on I was careful to keep my body straight. When I had to talk to someone who was off to the side, I turned my whole body to face them. When I got into bed, I started at the foot and went in on hands and knees, keeping my back straight, before carefully laying down and then carefully turning my body to the position I wanted to sleep in. After a week or so I checked to see if the pain was still there. It was, perhaps just slightly diminished, just slightly duller. A few weeks later I checked again. It was quite a bit less but still there. I forgot about it for a while, and then after several more weeks remembered and checked again, and it was gone.

Several years later, I had lost quite a bit of weight, and was laying on my left side in my bed, leaning on my left elbow, reading. I had been noticing, from time to time, that the ribs on my left side seemed to bulge out at the bottom when I did that, but I assumed that it was because my left side was stretched out in a curve, emphasizing the lower part of my ribs there. It bothered me though, that it should look like that, and now I finally decided to check it out further, to test it, to see if the explanation was correct. I laid on my back, and found that my ribs on that side still stuck out too far, and the ribs in general on that side stuck out in a rounded shape, sticking out farthest at the lower edge. On the other side, the right, the ribs actually had a section in the lower half that was depressed some. I turned onto my right side and right elbow, to see how the ribs looked when stretched like the left ones, but the right ones hardly stuck out at all, just a little bit.

This upset me quite a bit, to think that something was wrong with me like that. I eventually told my mother, and talked about it with her. I knew I hadn't been that way back when I had lost some weight back in the early to late 1960s, and I hadn't been that way when I was much younger and also a more normal weight. It must have been hidden by a weight gain that had occurred during high school, and for a couple of years afterward, before I started losing it again. I finally figured out it must be the bicycle accident that had caused it, having no other possible explanation for it.

It bothered me to have to be like this, to be deformed in this manner, though it was not noticeable to others unless I pointed it out. I also noticed, later, on rare occasions, that when laying on my left side reading, when I shifted position some it felt like one rib grated against another, and shifted to a new position slightly on top of the other one. It was another annoyance, but it didn't usually happen, and after a few more years it didn't seem to happen at all.

My mother worried about it a lot, and still sometimes does, even saying that I should have an operation to fix it. I keep turning her down though, saying that it's not causing any problems, and they probably wouldn't have done anything for it if we saw a doctor at the time, other than maybe putting tape on it. And although my mother worries about it, it long ago stopped being a worry to me, becoming just a curiosity, and a bit of a mystery over exactly what damage was done.

I never did see a doctor for it, but one time, maybe 15 years or so after the accident, I mentioned the ribs to a doctor while being checked for something else. He said that injuries to the breastbone could cause the cartilage to scar when it healed, twisting the ribs. I accepted that as a possible partial explanation, but not a total one. I still felt that it didn't explain everything, though I didn't say so to the doctor. To me, the ribs seemed to have too much deformity to be totally explained by something like that.


Sometime after the accident occurred, perhaps weeks, I'm not sure now, I went to a bicycle store and looked over the pedals on the revolving rack they had of them. I found some that looked like the ones on my bicycle, but I may have gone home and checked to be sure before I bought one. I don't remember now. In any case, I did buy one, and put it on my bicycle, still feeling somewhat bitter about it.

I rode the bicycle several times after that. I never quite felt confident when I was standing up on the pedals, pushing at them, and I tended to do that less than before, and not as vigorously. There was always the thought that, though unlikely, it could happen again. As time went on, though, I drove a car more and more, and I eventually just drove a car to where I wanted to go, wherever that might be, as I had known would happen, and never rode the bicycle again.

Dream - The choice

I had an interesting dream on the morning of Friday, April 18, 2003, involving an important choice in my life. I'm not sure what was happening in the first part of the dream, perhaps something about school or work. Then the direction of the dream slowly changed.

The dream was mostly very dimly lit. I was in a large house or other building, with several rooms, some of which were oddly shaped. I went into a large dark room with an audience seated, waiting for me. Some sort of initiation was to be performed, but it was almost like a coronation. I was the honoree. The room was also filled with people moving about in a large central area with a broad, relatively short aisle leading to it. I saw a glimpse of a young woman and some other people who greeted me. I was led into the room by an older man, and maybe one or two other people. The young woman initially appeared to be largely undressed, wearing a light-colored small poncho-type garment, tapering to a point between her shoulders, and nothing else. I noticed as she moved quickly away toward the front, though, that she was actually wearing some tights made out of some shiny, relatively heavy, material.

I followed after her and was presented with a choice. Both the young woman and a small boy, perhaps three or four years old, were placed before me. I understood that I was to choose one of them. I realized that it was to be a very important choice, determining the future course of my life. I felt it was also in the nature of a test.

Everyone was waiting expectantly for me to choose. I started talking, analyzing the situation. I said that the boy was symbolic of various things, the last one of which was the future. As I said each thing, the audience nodded expectantly and seemed to become more pleased as I named each additional symbol. I turned to the woman momentarily, having temporarily exhausted my symbols for the boy, and said that she was also a symbol of the future.

Wishing to postpone my decision as long a possible, as both choices seemed desirable in their own way and I didn't wish to exclude one and choose the other, I kept talking. I asked if I could ask other people for their opinions. Everyone nodded expectantly while continuing to smile and watch. I asked if I could choose both of them and they nodded and smiled more deeply, seeming to be pleased.

Though I did not choose then, and seemingly never did actually choose, it seemed to lose its urgency after that and the dream moved forward to a new situation. I became aware that people were happily cheering and the initiation was over for the moment. I felt that I was actually some figure of ancient royalty that had just passed the test, fulfilling some ancient prophecy for the return of the prince.

As I moved away to exit through the way I had come, I noticed the CIS Manager, the computer person from Fallon, Nevada, a tall man with gray-white hair and beard, in the crowd that had been sitting but was now moving toward the exit with me. I didn't get close enough to speak with him. Outside the room, I felt that there was some enemy approaching, but I had passed the test successfully and was filled with power. I even flew about, leaving the building and coming back. I talked briefly with the young woman, at one point asking her what she thought my choice should be. Her personality seemed happy, but somewhat respectful, perhaps because of my rank. She seemed to be willing enough to talk, but she seemed evasive and somewhat quiet on this subject. Both she and the boy seemed at times to be somewhat foreign, perhaps Mexican, although this was much more prominent with the boy.

I left again and then came back in through a small entrance way/hallway that immediately branched in all directions. My mother was there and I talked to her briefly. She seemed to be cautioning me about something. She was also one of the people that were with me when I originally came there. I then went back in, and woke up shortly thereafter.


In looking back on the dream, although in the dream I was definitely leaning toward choosing both the woman and the boy, I never explicitly made the choice, which seemed very attractive and seemed to represent a family and the continuation of the family line, through the boy, into the future. The choice of either one separately would have meant other things. The woman, of course, would have been an attractive companion. Choosing the boy instead of the woman, though, would have meant companionship on a different level, that of childhood. In a way, in real life I chose the boy instead of the woman, as I did not wish to grow up. I felt the best time in my life was when I was too young to go to school, and I viewed growing up with great anxiety, feeling a great foreboding regarding it. In a way, this foreboding was correct, though some would argue it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. (I have had, though, many psychic experiences, including correct predictions of the near and far future.) In the dream, even if not implicitly, I chose a different course.

Wordzzle 102 - The mountains and the road

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.

This is my entry number 46, for Wordzzle week 102.


Ten Word Challenge:

sugar daddy,
page,
Copernicus,
liquid,
craggy,
trapezoid,
milquetoast,
blizzard,
food cream,
dental problems

The milquetoast ate a Sugar Daddy
And turned another page
Would craggy curves and trapezoids
Become all the rage?

Was Copernicus a good guy
Or a villain in his day?
With history's revisions
Will nothing ever stay?

Numbers fell in blizzards
And as liquids ran away
Is food cream the answer
Or just a step along the way?

Would dental problems be included?
He really couldn't say
So much still to study
And the test would be today!


Mini Challenge:

Hersey kisses,
pregnant,
scarring,
cadet,
grist mill

Grist for the grist mill
They stand at attention, then march along
Cadets without number
Though I suppose a number is recorded somewhere

I sit here, watching them on TV, eating Hersey kisses
Too many can make you look pregnant
But I'm not female, and never wanted to be a cadet anyway
And it hides the scarring of the mind


Mega challenge:

sugar daddy,
page,
Copernicus,
liquid,
craggy,
trapezoid,
milquetoast,
blizzard,
food cream,
dental problems

Hersey kisses,
pregnant,
scarring,
cadet,
grist mill

The land lay like liquid food cream
Under a strangely empty sky
The road disappears into a point
That I must travel by

Craggy mountains in the distance
blurring into haze
Took forever to come closer
Though I traveled all the day

Sodas caused dental problems
Or so the dentist said
So Sugar Daddies and Hersey kisses
Were what I had instead

Problems without answers
Occupied my mind
Pondering the mysteries
Finding what I'd find

Should milquetoasts be beaten into cadets
To make the world go round?
And would the world stop spinning
If no more cadets were found?

Should blizzards fall in summer
To cool the hottest days?
And if they did would we complain
And wish for the sun's rays?

If Copernicus looked through his telescope
And found scarring on the lens
Would he give up and walk away
Or start over again?

Pregnant pauses proliferate
And bring forth what they bring
But sometimes what they deliver
Is not much of anything

The grist mill grinds so slowly
And grinds so very fine
The particles like dust all float
And clutter up the mind

Pages dance and flutter in the wind
And decorate the day
Recording all that man has said
And all he couldn't say

Through trapezoidal glasses
The world looks clear again
It seems to keep on spinning
Without going round the bend

The mountains stand before me now
And seem to fill the sky
The road still disappears
And its end I cannot spy

No road leads up the mountains
None that I can see
There seems no way for me to cross
To get where I must be

I see the end ahead now
The road turns right for me
And I drive along it
Past where the mountains be

The mountains gradually lessen
And behind me all recede
And I go on without them
To the place where I must be

Favorite posts, Part III

These are some of my favorite posts, from the third hundred posts.


291. Fun with the DOS prompt
275. National Novel Writing Month 2009 - Winner!
261. My time at GeoCities
231. My head under me, trapped in darkness
217. Finding my grandmother

297. Wordzzle 96 - Pixie party
294. Wordzzle 95 - Other realities
283. Wordzzle 93 - Food fright
279. Wordzzle 92 - The Scarecrow and the King of the Turtles
276. Wordzzle 91 - No telling
273. Wordzzle 90 - Passing inspection
269. Wordzzle 89 - Sugar-coated
265. Wordzzle 88 - Who done it?
250. Wordzzle 87 - Impractical nurse
243. Wordzzle 86 - Past times
237. Wordzzle 85 - Puppetry
232. Wordzzle 84 - Breaking through
228. Wordzzle 83 - Exit, laughing
218. Wordzzle 81 - Under the sun
213. Wordzzle 80 - The alligator people
209. Wordzzle 79 - Shadows and smoke
206. Wordzzle 78 - The wall
202. Wordzzle 77 - The silent majority

295. Dream - Crashing the car, then saved, then a woman who was drinking
293. Dream - A game with superheroes and a villain
290. Dream - Band of brothers
286. Dream - A car with the Golden Girls, and I become a giant and move my car by hand
285. Dream - Working as a policeman, mistaken for a black woman, and the pie-slice shaped books that I took without paying
282. Dream - The Old West town in another dimension
281. Dream - Hidden areas under the ground covered with a layer of hard dirt
280. Dream - Using a computer that shows a list of news stories
274. Dream - Finding my brother's apartment and trying to get ready for work
270. Dream - The long line and the door with no return
266. Dream - The small buildings in the lake, some with red liquid and some with blue
244. Dream - The tornadoes and the dinosaur tree branch
240. Dream - Summoning the Grays
239. Dream - Attacked by a giant Phillip from Guiding Light
238. Dream - Oh how high the shadow grows
234. Dream - Captured by miniature golf playing mobsters
233. Dream - The plane like a fly, and as Spider-Man I am captured and taken deep under the ground
230. Dream - Getting strange powers, running from people as a woman
229. Dream - Traveling, carrying engines, and the building in the grasslands with the old woman and the folding luggage
225. Dream - Finding an old schoolmate, Sally Field [not really]
221. Dream - A massive engine being revved higher and higher
219. Dream - Writing exercises that affected reality, and the way station to another world
214. Dream - I am in a TV reality show
211. Dream - Gangsters, and a red blotch in the air
210. Dream - The mobster restaurant and the Cadillac
207. Dream - The new timeline and the psychic lecturer
204. Dream - The auction of the lion-thing
203. Dream - My grandmother is voted president of a club

Wordzzle 101 - Dr. John

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.

This is my entry number 45, for Wordzzle week 101.

Dr. John Linna, a mostly retired minister I believe, was a major Wordzzle player. He recently passed away, and the words in the Mini Challenge word list refer to him and his creations. He maintained several blogs, including Dr. John's Fortress, Dr. John's Word Play, Pigeon Falls, the Dragon's Lair (Fandango), and others. When I started playing he had a picture of an odd looking superhero, with a mohawk haircut, as his icon. He later changed it for a while to a dim picture of his face, and then changed it to a colorful ink drawing of a knight on horseback, heading at an angle toward the viewer. The superhero and knight references in the poems refer to those icons.


Ten Word Challenge:

smoothness,
crafty,
purchase,
brief,
chirping,
forever,
shift,
moonrise,
lampshade,
stereotype

Caught within the moonlight
The crafty creeping thing
Stepped into a lampshade
And could not step out again

Chirping in frustration
It struggled all in vain
The lampshade would not let it go
To be as it had been

It had to purchase the lampshade
That would not let it be
And they walked out together
Unstereotypically

Though not the normal couple
No brief affair had they
Locked in an allegiance
They continued on their way

They went that way forever
Or so it sometimes seems
With a shifty lack of smoothness
As a lampshade sometimes brings

After many a moonrise
They can still sometimes be seen
The lampshade and its partner
The crafty creeping thing


Mini Challenge:

remembrance,
Dr. John,
Agent 012,
dragons,
Fortress

The Fortress door hangs open
Its superhero knight has gone
The dragons circle sadly
Left now on their own

A town in a basement
Where the trains once ran on time
Has an interruption in its schedule
Over which it's hard to climb

To Agent 012's list of bad days
Add another one
One that will be especially
Hard to overcome

Words spoken in remembrance
Of the superhero knight now gone
The great Internet tale spinner
The mighty Dr. John


Mega challenge:

smoothness,
crafty,
purchase,
brief,
chirping,
forever,
shift,
moonrise,
lampshade,
stereotype

remembrance,
Dr. John,
Agent 012,
dragons,
Fortress

Stories of crafty smoothness
Or poems or anything
Long or brief or in between
Were things his thoughts did bring

He had a mighty Fortress
That overlooked everything
And from it his creations
From his mind did spring

A knight that laughs a lot
And a tiny town and train
And old and obscure words
Were written once again

Agent 012's adventures
And the Fandango dragon colony
And words that came from pictures
Created stories seamlessly

But a shift has somehow happened
Forever was cut in twain
Dr. John has left us
This is in remembrance of him

Perhaps somewhere a ticket
Is purchased for a tiny train
Perhaps somewhere Agent 012
Looks out from behind a lampshade

Perhaps somewhere dragons fly
Past a swift moonrise
Awakening the chirping birds
But unbothered by frog spies

Unstereotypical moments
Continue on with ease
With story after story
And it will never ever cease

More favorite posts

These are some of my favorite posts, from the second hundred posts.


199. Comics art imitating life
187. A dog without a... toilet paper holder?
181. Red Rover, Red Rover
175. Elongating shadows
169. The sailing curtains
163. The shoe salesman's cigarette
141. The papier-mache dragon
127. Forgotten dragons
126. The bark dinosaur
122. The blue flame
107. Sliding down the stairs
102. A sly school paper

197. Wordzzle 76 - Masks
194. Wordzzle 75 - In their image
189. Wordzzle 74 - Judgment
176. Wordzzle 72 - Horse play
171. Wordzzle 71 - Knight time
164. Wordzzle 70 - Sunflower fields
158. Wordzzle 69 - The spill
152. Wordzzle 68 - Bass notes
142. Wordzzle 66 - Lost
123. Wordzzle 61 - The mouse and the mongoose
117. Wordzzle - The eyes have it
115. Wordzzle - The acrobat, the optometrist, and the bumble bee
112. Wordzzle - The brigadier general, the hummingbird, and the gods

198. Dream - The creatures in the basement
195. Dream - Chased through a forest of giant stalks into another dimension by the robot
192. Dream - Iced tea with Paul Newman
191. Dream - God of storms
190. Dream - My grandmother's birthday party, and old cars disappearing into fog
184. Dream - An angel beside me?
180. Dream - The vampire who loved me
179. Dream - Superman and the two Superboys, and the superhero hideaway in another dimension
178. Dream - I meet my grandmother in a hardware store
173. Dream - Walking home from the Nevada border, finally riding a three-wheeled motorcycle
172. Dream - A team of heroes, and the double spiral of boats under the ground
168. Dream - The Cadillac and the mysterious valley
167. Dream - Being Batman
166. Dream - Tomorrowland
165. Dream - With my grandmother, on the bridge
162. Dream - Low purple clouds and mutant creatures
161. Dream - Low purple clouds and disaster
160. Dream - My grandmother is younger and admires herself in the mirror
159. Dream - I was Art Bell, and flying
155. Dream - The man whose head opened on a hinge and whose brain fell out
154. Dream - Pizza-size pancakes, transparent figures in the sky
150. Dream - The cat in outer space
149. Dream - Being Aquaman and spinning around
148. Dream - Something like Superman
145. Dream - Part Two of the Forever Car
143. Dream - The hill and the long, long stairs
140. Dream - The toxic waste collector man, the moving statues, and the doomsday bomb
139. Dream - A tiny Tarzan from a book
134. Dream - Super-Neanderthal
133. Dream - The robot box with the girl face
130. Dream - Flying away from the castle on the mountain
129. Dream - 'Uncle Jed' and flying
124. Dream - Collapsible cars and my mother the pirate
121. Dream - The talking Pekingese
120. Dream - The levitating train
118. Dream - Releasing Jesus from the cross
116. Dream - The space alien with the missing ear
111. Dream - The figure in the tree
106. Dream - The hidden town and the TV Superman

Wordzzle 100 - Captured

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.

This is my entry number 44, for Wordzzle week 100.


Ten Word Challenge:

transfixed,
treachery,
basics,
fragrance,
sampler,
pregnant,
cartoons,
lark,
spartan

He watched the Saturday morning cartoons, and the treachery therein. It had started as a lark, but he sat there now, transfixed. He felt his brain being driven back to basics, the overlays of civilization falling away, until there was just the fear, and the fascination, and the tension. He felt he was seeing a sampler of terror, infused with a fragrance of frustration and utter failure. He watched, trembling, as pregnant pause after pregnant pause brought forth yet more disasters. He tried once to gather his resolve and his strength, recalling perhaps how the Spartans of old had held out against all obstacles, and tried to turn it off. The remote fell from his limp paws, however, as the Road Runner prevailed yet again and his adversary met a particularly ugly fate. The coyote sat there, watching, a whine escaping from between bared teeth, a whine that slowly grew into a howl, a howl that seemed as if it might never end.


Mini Challenge:

rapid,
camping,
blandishments,
transitory,
plug-ins

Should he be a he-man, an outdoorsman, go camping, wrestle bears, save people, be a hero, and enjoy the blandishments of others? Such things were transitory, though, and rapidly faded away. He looked among the other plug-ins. Ah, here was one for President. That looked more promising...


Mega challenge:

transfixed,
treachery,
basics,
fragrance,
sampler,
pregnant,
cartoons,
lark,
spartan

rapid,
camping,
blandishments,
transitory,
plug-ins

It's amazing how rapidly things can change. He had been out in the wilderness, hiking along remote streams and forested slopes, camping each night in a new place. Everything had been going well, until one night a horrible fragrance had gradually spread throughout the area, increasing until it was stifling in intensity. Then something had come and taken him, and he didn't remember what happened after that.

When he had woken up, it was daytime, and he was alone. He was laying on branches that had been formed into a bed, or perhaps nest. He was in an open area the size of a small house, surrounded on three sides by the mountain. A partial cave formed at the back where the inward slanting slope provided a partial overhang.

He walked to the front and looked down. The slope was very steep, but should be passable, at least for those who came prepared. He wasn't prepared now, though, and lacked even the basics. Everything was back in camp, wherever that was, even his shoes. It looked like he might be here for a while. He wasn't sure how to get out in stockinged feet.

He spent the rest of the day alone there, and examined the place thoroughly. There didn't seem to be any easy way out. Some plants grew there, but he didn't see anything that looked much like food. There wasn't any water either, though he supposed there would be quite a bit when it rained.

Late in the day he crouched by the edge and looked over again. There just didn't seem to be any way he could keep his grip for very long. He would start sliding, and the slide would turn into a tumble, and a series of falls, toward the trees below. If nothing else happened he would eventually have to try it, though. It was that or stay here and die.

He meditated for a while on the treachery that had put him here, and on how transitory life could be. If this was something from the cartoons, a fix would appear, even if the fix was something impossible. If this was something bad happening on a computer, downloads or plug-ins might be available to fix the problem. Life wasn't that easy, though, and sometimes fixes just weren't there.

That night the creature came back. He had been sleeping, but became aware of the smell, and forced himself awake. He saw a huge figure, indistinct, coming towards him. It was carrying something, and thrust it at him, making strange hooting sounds. He tried to push the material away from his face, feeling branches and maybe roots, and what seemed to be huge hairy fingers. The creature was persistent, though. He rolled, trying to get away, and the creature grabbed him. He pushed out at it, and felt a huge belly. He was puzzled for a moment, and then realized the creature must be female, and pregnant. He paused, momentarily transfixed by the thought, and then the creature was pushing his head down, into the mass of sticks and roots. He struggled violently, swinging his arms and kicking, hitting whatever he could. The creature grunted and threw him through the air what seemed to be a considerable distance. He landed awkwardly and painfully on his shoulder, and lay there moaning. The creature came to him and began to roll him back and forth, slapping at him and screeching. It went on and on, and eventually he lost awareness of it.

When he awoke it was morning again, and again he was alone. He went to look at what the creature had brought him, and he found that it was indeed some branches and roots. He guessed it was supposed to be food, but he wasn't sure it was something humans were meant to eat. He gingerly gnawed at the roots for a while. They tasted strange but not overly bad, but he couldn't bring himself to eat much of them. He wondered if he was going to be reduced to eating wrens and larks and mice and bugs, and a whole sampler of forest life. There didn't seem to be much of it where he was, though, and he wasn't sure how he would catch any of it anyway.

The creature didn't come back that night, nor the following night. The next day he dug in the dirt with a rock, hoping to find something, anything. He found some worms, and to his surprise, he ate them. He could really use some water now, but none was available. He worried about the creature coming back, but almost hoped it would. He hoped it would bring him something to eat, something that looked more like real food. He had given up on trying to fight it. It was simply too big. Even the ancient Spartans would have trouble fighting such a thing. And if he somehow managed to really hurt it, it would likely strike back much harder, and he might not survive. He thought of trying to talk to it, but there seemed to be a significant language barrier, and he wasn't sure anyway what niceties he could say or blandishments he could make that would convince it to let him go.

The next day it rained, and he spent a long time trying to catch drops from the air, but finally abandoned it and began drinking from the dirty puddles. He found himself eventually crawling along the edge, drinking from little streams of water shooting out over it. He moved along it, searching for better and cleaner streams, when suddenly he slipped, and slid over the edge. He grabbed and clawed desperately at the slope, as he slid down it, water rushing around and over him. Finally he came to a slightly depressed area and managed to stop. He clung there, unable to move, almost drowning in the water, as the hours wore on. Finally the rain eased up, and then stopped. but he found he still couldn't move, as there was no place he could go without sliding again. As the day darkened into night, he began to shiver uncontrollably, and he was afraid he would lose his grip anyway, and be lost.

Then a giant hand grabbed him, and he was thrown over a hairy shoulder and carried back up the slope. It brought him back to the nest of branches again, somewhat scattered now by the water, and laid him down. In a minute it threw something down by his face, something that smelled like a fish. At least it wasn't branches and roots this time. He was too tired to do anything right now, though, too tired to do anything at all.

In the morning, he found a sharp rock and scraped the scales off and began to eat it. He wasn't used to eating raw fish, particularly like this, but he got quite a bit of it down before he began to feel sick. He stopped eating and went off a ways and sat down, waiting for the feeling to pass, hoping that it would. By midday he was feeling a bit better, but still not ready to eat any more of the fish yet. He saw some more worms in the mud, but wasn't quite ready for them either. He found some puddles to drink from, and toward the end of the day nibbled some more at the fish.

The next night the creature brought some fungi, and he really wasn't sure if he could eat that, but he tried it and it didn't seem to cause him any harm.

Over the next few weeks the creature brought him various things to eat, usually some form of plant life, but sometimes other things. He had difficulty in eating a lot of it, though, and found himself growing thinner and thinner. He began to talk to the creature, and while the creature seemed interested, he wasn't sure it understood anything he had to say. Nevertheless, he talked to it about his life, and about why he had been in the mountains, and about how it wasn't going to work out keeping him here, that he was slowly starving to death. The creature occasionally made comments in its own language, and seemed sympathetic, but still kept him trapped there, on the mountain. He showed it his skinny arms and legs, and his ribs, and his stomach, and pleaded with it in a voice that was increasingly faint, and increasingly sounded strange in his own ears.

One night as he slept the creature came and picked him up and carried him away. He swatted at its back ineffectually for a while, and then gave up and just mumbled complaints in an odd, old-man's voice, before growing too tired even for that. After a long time the creature set him down, and then he was alone.

In the morning he found that he was back in camp. The tent was still there, leaning to one side and partially collapsed, and the pack of supplies was still hanging from the tree where he left it. He got a can of Spam from it and found he barely had the strength to open it. He did manage to open it, though, and ate the whole thing. He drank the water in his canteen, and then got some more from the nearby stream. He ate and rested for a few days before he felt well enough to pack things up and start the long walk out of the wilderness.

He wasn't sure why the creature had captured him. Perhaps it just wanted companionship. It had realized in the end, though, that it wasn't going to work out, and had brought him back. Perhaps it had understood something of what he had said, but more likely it had seen that he was getting skinnier, and in the end wasn't going to survive. It was nice of the creature to bring him back, and not just continue to keep him until he died.

He could never say anything about it, though. Few people would believe it, and those that did would fill the woods, looking for it, most of them trying to shoot it. He didn't want that. He would just say that he was lost for a while. That was easy to believe. He had been gone a long time and looked it. They probably even had people out searching for him now. In fact, he saw a helicopter in the air, coming this way.

Some favorite posts

These are some of my favorite posts, from the first hundred posts.


46. The Journey to 479

88. Howdy Week
84. Where's my shoe?
80. Where's my sock? or Sock on, sock off
73. The Idea of a Circle
67. What lay around the bend
64. A nail, or something like it
56. My first cars
54. The cactus came through
45. The broken baby brush
44. A record at school
43. The cat that wasn't fooled
32. Streaks in the air
28. Fears
26. The Clarabell Clown doll
24. Is this really necessary?
22. Murmuring voices
21. Half paralyzed, and something tried to take me away
18. Is someone calling my name?
17. UFO - A silver grain of rice against the sky
15. The noisemaker
14. Pouring water, hot and cold
11. The hidden spider
9. Blood poisoning
8. My father and the Air Force
7. Paper airplanes
6. My mother tries to teach me about God
5. Crackers and butter
4. Perfume
3. Snakes

99. Dream - Contacted by space aliens, a father prepares to leave
97. Dream - The bird-boy, the Christmas pageant, mall shopping, stolen presents, and the award
91. Dream - On the run
87. Dream - The descent: Witches, flying reptiles and the tall tree-like man
83. Dream - Young self one and two, dreams of different lives
79. Dream - The superimposed cat
74. Dream - Leaving Earth
72. Dream - The figure with the hat and coat
70. Dream - The watchers in the walls
69. Dream - The underlying structure of reality
66. Dream - The doomsday machine
63. Dream - The figure that came out of the wall
62. Dream - The long white hallway
59. Dream - A warning from a future self
57. Dream - The mall under the ground
55. Dream - Getting lost
53. Dream - Flying with the professor
48. Dream - Through the doorway
47. Dream - The elephant entity
41. Dream - Footsteps, mine and others
40. Dream - The pale spider-like thing
38. Dream - The girl with the disappearing face
37. Dream - The figure in the doorway
36. Dream - Composed of bright particles
35. Dream - Flying with a leprechaun
34. Dream - And fly away
33. Dream - My dead grandfather helps me look for the dogs
31. Dream - The drugstore outside the universe
30. Dream - The brilliant light
29. Dream - Acquired by China
25. Dream - The girl on the mountain
20. Dream - Destroyer of worlds
19. Dream - First contact
16. Dream - Captured and consumed
13. Dream - The contest
12. Dream - Possible futures and what came after
10. Dream - In the Matrix
2. Dream - The cloud came down

Wordzzle 99 - The tower

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.

This is my entry number 43, for Wordzzle week 99.


Ten Word Challenge:

thermometer,
Pandora,
vivid,
langourous,
Saturday,
pancreas,
apple dumplings,
watch tower,
lichen,
sparrow

All along the watch tower
the apple dumplings watched.
Lichen covered sparrows
washed up upon the rocks.

Seven painful pancreases
waited to cross a road.
If they ever made it
still has not been told.

The thermometer was steady,
in an unsteady sort of way.
The sudden chills and heat spells
evened out they say.

Long languorous Saturdays
marched by everyday at noon.
Pandora opened up her box
and began to play a tune.

Vivid scenes aplenty,
remembered for a while.
Now it's time to go to sleep,
so good night my child.


Mini Challenge:

rigid,
spiritual,
ribbon,
web cam,
vitamins

The web cam saw the tree in the forest fall, but it had no microphone to record any sound that was made.

It wasn't lack of vitamins that had killed it.

Some vines had wrapped around the tree like ribbons, squeezing its rigid trunk, choking it.

It lay there now, dividing the forest floor into before and after.

To those near or on the tree as it fell, the results were physical and sometimes even traumatic.

To distant watchers on the Internet, it sometimes had a more spiritual component.

The web cam itself made no judgments, but merely watched.


Mega challenge:

thermometer,
Pandora,
vivid,
langourous,
Saturday,
pancreas,
apple dumplings,
watch tower,
lichen,
sparrow

rigid,
spiritual,
ribbon,
web cam,
vitamins

In the middle of a barren plain
a lonely watch tower stood.
From its heights a watcher watched
was he up to any good?

He had no web cam to help him out,
or assistants of any kind,
and his days were all spent watching,
usually well into the night.

Occasionally he'd see travelers
passing through from there to there.
Often they'd be merchants
on the way to sell their wares.

Sometimes people would stop by
and he'd hear tales of other places.
And sometimes he would buy some things
but not in all cases.

He also had a garden,
and a well that was drilled deep,
and a small grove of trees
with fruits and nuts to eat.

There was also a stand of windmills
to supply electricity,
and a small pond nearby
to attract ducks and geese.

The winds tended to blow briskly
whether it was dark or light.
The thermometer changed swiftly, though,
as day went into night.

In times of plenty he ate well,
with roast duck and vegetables and fruit,
and gravy and biscuits and homemade bread,
and apple dumplings too.

But when food was scarce it might be
sparrow and pancreas pie,
or leaves and bark and insects,
as the days and nights went by.

He watched from his tower
high above the barren plain.
As the days and decades passed
he watched and watched again.

The view was usually vivid,
with little chance of rain,
and usually changed little,
remaining much the same.

Sometimes he felt he was caught in
one of the ills Pandora released,
listless and languorous,
trapped there in defeat.

One day he took a piece of stone
off the tower by a crack,
and threw it out as far as he could,
and the next day it was back.

Most days he felt better,
and was satisfied with life,
and felt full of vitamins,
and his mood was light.

The choice he made so long ago,
almost like a spiritual thing,
he still felt was for the best,
and still made his heart sing.

One day some merchants stopped by,
but were not met at the door.
They found his body in a hallway,
laying on the floor.

They held a small service,
and spoke the words that came,
and fashioned a marker for him,
and buried him in the plain.

As travelers went by the tower,
sometimes stopping to pick fruit,
they swore they felt a presence
and sometimes saw one too.

And sometimes a dark figure
was on the tower high,
watching all the scene below
as in the days gone by.

Some people stayed away,
though others came to see,
but as the years went past
it faded to history.

One Saturday a traveler stopped
and saw the garden overgrown.
The trees were hanging low with fruit,
and the wind blew a mournful tone.

He saw the marker in the plain
and the grave where the body lay,
and he found other markers
marking other graves.

He went over to the tower,
as if he'd heard a call,
and put his hand on the lichen-colored stone
that made up the wall.

His schedule was not so rigid
that he could not stay a while.
There was so much here that he should do
he thought with a smile.

He would clean up the garden,
and eat some fruit from the trees,
and go all through the tower,
and see what he could see.

The days passed as he worked
and ate the vegetables and fruit,
and he often went to the tower top
to take in the view.

He decided to clean the tower too,
and read some journals he had found,
left behind by those who'd come before,
now bodies in the ground.

The days turned into weeks and months
and there was always more to do,
and more and more he was on the tower top
as the wind about him blew.

The dreams of travel faded
as into a routine he grew,
as he became part of just one place
instead of a salesman on his route.

One day he realized a year had passed
and that he was here to stay.
He put some long ribbons on a pole
to celebrate the day.

He put the pole upon the roof
so everyone could see,
and the ribbons flapped along their length
in the constant breeze.

Distant travelers saw the sight
and knew what it meant.
The empty and haunted tower
had a new resident.

In the middle of a barren plain,
a lonely watch tower stands,
and from its lonely windy heights,
a watcher watched again.

Dream - Tiny crystal skulls

On Sunday evening, May 18, 2008, I fell asleep while a TV show about crystal skulls was on, and dreamed I was watching a show on TV. The dream TV show had a couple of simple cartoonish cars, like paper cutouts, on a road, and then I was part of the story.

I parked the car at the edge of the road, on the pavement. There was some kind of car trouble. The road wasn't too wide and was unlaned. It had room on it for two or three cars. My mother was with me. We went somewhere, to a big building.

Someone met me on the way and talked to me. He had an invitation or ticket to the conference. He had a small crystal skull, a little smaller than a baseball, and people who had been sent them or received them somehow were people who were invited, like the crystal skulls acted as invitations or tickets in. He thought I had gotten one too and was surprised that I didn't. He went on, then.

It was dark now, and had been for a while. I looked through the iron fence at the building, and somehow got past the fence and then went on in myself. My mother had gotten separated from me, and I'm not sure now whether she made it into the building before me or not. Evidently people could get in without a skull, though it was worrisome at first and the people with the skulls, apparently one or two thousand, tended to act elitist.

There were exhibits of lifesize or larger crystal skulls, many or all of them homemade by the participants, though some may have come from other cultures and earlier times. A lot the skulls were quite bizarre, and some of them had the top of the skull cut off. I reunited with my mother as I was looking at the skulls, and tried to show them to her. It seems we had to leave now, though, and I went down the row of them at the back of the building, partially a double row because sometimes they were on both sides. A raised counter with a slanted glass display ran along behind them, with an occasional person behind it.

Wordzzle 98 - Inside the box

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.

This is my entry number 42, for Wordzzle week 98.


Ten Word Challenge:

treasure chest,
idiom,
pantry,
crippled,
baying wolf,
wind chill,
time,
angel,
salamander,
laundry list

The crippled angel's laundry list
held many things to do
Things were added everyday
but some were checked off too

A wolf cried out in loneliness
and lack of things to do
And the baying wolf's idiom
across the landscape blew

A squirrel looked in its pantry
at the acorns grown more few
and thought of warmer weather
when food in abundance grew

A salamander sat upon a treasure chest
waiting for the dew
and hoped for better weather
as the wind about it grew

A cow out in a meadow
was disturbed by wind chill too
and dreamed of summer days
as the wind about it blew

As time passed the wind was less
and the earth warmed anew
The wolf rejoined its roving pack
whose members became less few

An owl sitting in a tree
watched and called out "Who"
and the angel crossed items off his list
of many things to do


Mini Challenge:

risque,
radish,
ring tone,
ravishing,
ruler

The ravishing ruler heard a risque ring tone while eating a ripe radish, and reigned down hard on the rogue.


Mega challenge:

treasure chest,
idiom,
pantry,
crippled,
baying wolf,
wind chill,
time,
angel,
salamander,
laundry list

risque,
radish,
ring tone,
ravishing,
ruler

If the treasure chest was opened
what treasures would we see?
Ravishing radishes and ringing ring tones
and radiant rulers three?

Or rash and risque rabble-rousers
talking for a fee?
Or a baying wolf without a mate
a sad sight for to see?

Or salamanders packed in like sardines
for some a special treat?
Or food for empty pantries
if such a thing could be?

Or perhaps a breeze to cause wind chill
when warmth is what you seek?
Or crippled cats without hats
or boots for their tootsies?

Or the missing laundry list
of goals you couldn't reach?
Or a list of obscure idioms
spoken on a beach?

Will good or bad be revealed
when the lid swings free?
Best have an angel by your side
when its time to see.

Posts about posts, Part V

In 2007, 2008 and 2009, I posted collections of posts I made to a message board I visit frequently. This is the fifth 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.


TIME TO WRITE (2)
5:13 AM 12/4/2007

Time to write
If you might



UP WE GO
1:22 AM 1/13/2008

Up we go
Enjoy the show
And if you like it a lot
Post what you've got



HERE I GO
6:56 AM 1/31/2008

Here I go,
Once again,
If this thread is saved,
We all win.



IT MIGHT BE TIME
4:10 AM 4/8/2008

It might be time
To write a post
To prevent a thread
From becoming lost

So a post I write
And place it here
So that this thread
Is not a loss to bear

Threads go by
Some stay, some go
Will this one stay
In time we'll know

Threads go by
And disappear
This stays for now
Please keep it here

Wordzzle 97 - Marshmallow threats

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.

This is my entry number 41, for Wordzzle week 97.


Ten Word Challenge:

teflon,
idealistic,
marshmallow,
opportunistic,
kittens,
beef,
sawing logs,
slapped,
tickled,
scissors

The marshmallows rolled and tumbled over the land, burying everything in their path, the good little kids and the ones who ran with scissors, the invalid in the bed and the lumberjack sawing logs, the kittens and the pit bulls, the slapped and the slapper, the tickled and the tickler, the idealistic and the opportunistic, those who ate beef and those who ate pork and those who ate no meat at all. Everyone fell beneath them, everyone was buried by them, no one was spared. And still the marshmallows went on, mile after mile of them, until there was hardly any place in the land that they had not been, and they were now nearing the sea.

As they went over a low ridge, they found a knight waiting for them on the other side. His armor was dark in color, Teflon coated and flame resistant. He was more used to fighting dragons than marshmallows, but he stood firm before them and raised his sword and pointed it at them. "You have destroyed this land, but you shall not pass on to other lands. This ends here."

The marshmallows paused a bit, building up in height as the ones behind kept on coming, then they went forward, flowing at him and around him. He swung his sword through them, slicing into some but mostly knocking them aside. Again and again he swung his sword, and they kept on coming, as high as his waist, as high as his chest, as high as his shoulders, as high as his head. He continued to swing his sword, and after a while only his sword was seen, and then only the tip of it, and then only a ripple in the marshmallows, and then there was nothing at all.

The marshmallows came to the beach, and neared the very edge of the sea, and paused again, raising up in height, growing taller and taller.

A dragon flew in, huge in size, and landed before them. "How has this happened," the dragon said, "that you have come all this way, and the knight has not stopped you?"

The marshmallows continued to raise in height, building up in an arc in front of and around the dragon, and then there was a ripple coming forward, and something tumbled down the slope of marshmallows and landed in front of the dragon. The dragon looked down at it. It was an armored glove. The dragon slowly bent down and gently picked it up in his claws. "I always thought it would end when one of us killed the other, or when we died together, fighting. The battle between us has been going on so long, year after year, it almost seemed like it would never happen, though I knew one day it must. I never thought it would end like this." A tear rolled down the dragon's cheek. "What will I do with myself now, what will I do..." He took a deep, ragged breath, seeming about to burst into sobs.

And then he released the breath, in a stream of fire, blowing a long column of flame across the marshmallows, turning his head from side to side. An awful keening sound began to spread among them and the fire burned on and on, black acrid smoke going up, the fire growing so large that it created its own wind, which grew stronger and stronger, sucking everything into it. The dragon crouched down, wrapping his wings about him, and let the wind blow past him.

Finally it was done. The dragon raised his head and saw a desolate, blackened, gooey landscape. All the marshmallows were destroyed. He looked down at the armored glove he was still holding, then turned around and, still holding the glove, sadly flew away.

After a while there was some movement in the blackened landscape, and part of it heaved up, gooey strands stretching, and a dark figure emerged. He raised a fist at the dragon, now a distant figure, far away. "Curse you, Dragon! That glove cost me good money!"


Mini Challenge:

ripen,
shelve,
laminate,
goofy,
Siamese

The bookshelves were once like Siamese twins, bolted together, but the room had been redone, and they were unbolted and one was left outside all summer and then all winter, and was now like a fruit that had ripened too much and had gone into decay, its laminate faded and coming undone and peeling up and away. Sitting at a slight angle in the dirt, more like a country cousin now than a twin, goofy looking and bucktoothed, good natured but without much schooling, it stood there and pondered the outside world.


Mega challenge:

teflon,
idealistic,
marshmallow,
opportunistic,
kittens,
beef,
sawing logs,
slapped,
tickled,
scissors

ripen,
shelve,
laminate,
goofy,
Siamese

The marshmallows began to ripen, but were not yet ready to pick. The kittens ate their roast beef sandwiches, and wanted more. A Siamese twin was sawing logs, and dreaming of sawing off his brother. Teflon laminated itself along the sidewalks, and then laminated itself again. A person who was tickled slapped the tickler, who responded with a goofy grin and a portrait of a pair of scissors.

"Perhaps we should shelve this thing," a voice said. "What kind of world is this, that makes no sense at all?"

"Some people will think that of any world, while others, digging deeper, will find an underlying order."

"Those who are idealistic are unlikely to be happy with these results."

"Then let the opportunistic be happy, for there are many opportunities here. The idealistic are seldom satisfied anyway."

"Do you really think it can work?"

"Yes indeed. In fact, there's even room for a dragon and a knight..."

300th post

This is the 300th post on this blog. As with the second hundred, it came fairly quickly, in a matter of months rather than years. A couple of major events that happened this time were the transfer, with some modifications, of the files from my site at Yahoo Geocities, and the completing of a rough draft of a small novel for National Novel Writing Month.

My posts on these can be found here:

My time at GeoCities (Sunday, November 01, 2009)

National Novel Writing Month 2009 - Winner! (Tuesday, December 01, 2009)


Related milestone posts:

200th post (Friday, August 21, 2009)

100th post (Saturday, January 31, 2009)

Well, here we are (first post, Monday, August 22, 2005)

Dream - The road like a dog frame

Around October 8, 2008, I dreamed I was at a military base, probably in Arizona or New Mexico. A lot happened in the earlier part, at or around the military base probably, but I don't remember it anymore. There was a large warehouse-size room there, though.

Then I was driving, showing some other people how it was done, and what they had to do. It seems like some people were after us, or were going to be after us. I was driving through a mostly flat area with some low hills. It was mostly dirt, kind of an oily looking dirt.

I went to an area that had a road like a dog frame, as seen from the top and back and slightly to the side, like an inner frame for a toy or perhaps a stick figure outline for a drawing. There was also a faint body outline, but it was not part of the road.

I drove along the framework, watching from far above and maneuvering the car like it was a toy, making tight loops along the dark line of the frame, loops that also appeared dark like the road. The loops were so tight and close together that they appeared mostly as a dark mass, obscuring the line of the road. I was trying to show the people how they were supposed to drive, how to cover their tracks.

Toward the end I was getting very tired, and as I went down the last leg, at the back of the figure, the tight loops became zigzags with visible space between them. It was going to have to do, just finish it. I was saying something to the effect to them that they got the idea, anyway.

Dream - A block wall across the back yard

Around October 10, 2008, I dreamed that it was around midday, and I was in the house talking with my mother, who was somewhere nearby but not necessarily in the same room. Looking out a window, perhaps the one in the kitchen door, I saw a block wall in the back yard, and went out to examine it. I found that it was being built across the middle of the back yard, going from one side to the other, starting at the east side, but was only about one half or two thirds of the way across and was obviously unfinished. The dogs, the Pekingese and the Boston terrier, had been trapped in small rooms, boxes really, built of concrete blocks attached to the wall. They were apparently put there in the rooms/boxes, constructed for them, to keep them from bothering the person building the wall and also to keep them from escaping into the alley. The wall wasn't very tall, maybe three or four feet, but I think it was intended somehow to be a replacement for the old wooden fence by the alley.

I didn't know who was building the wall, or why they thought they had to do it. I talked with my mother about what was happening. I looked out at it now and then, but I was having trouble catching anyone actually out there working on it, though the wall seemed to progress sometimes between the checks.

I finally caught someone. He seemed to be some kind of Asian person, like a Korean. I went and talked to him and tried to explain that he couldn't be doing this. I seemed to be having trouble being understood, though. He seemed to be trying to ignore me most of the time, with an almost desperate look on his face. When he did talk to me, he was very hard to understand and his English seemed to be limited. Finally, he left.

After a while a middle-aged man came out. I guessed he was the house owner. I got the impression also that there was a somewhat thin teenage son involved earlier or who might have been involved. I had the impression that the Asian man was someone they hired, though it seemed that sometimes he might have had a tendency to change back and forth into the son, at least when he was back or in their yard.

The middle-aged man went over to where the wooden fence had an inset for the time, long ago now, when garbage cans were used instead of the large plastic containers supplied by the city. The inset was gone now. That part of the fence was taken down and the man was trying to put a heavy, bent, angled metal bar across a gap between the block wall of the neighbor and the remaining part of the wooden fence, which seemed to have been extended some at that point, perhaps by some of the inset portion that had been taken down.

The metal bar was about three feet long and had a pale coating of some kind, with a little rust showing through along the edges and an occasional spot of rust along the sides. It seemed to be intended to be part of the new gate, which by appearances was going to be slightly wider than the old one. Most of the rest of the gate was still just open space, though it had a vague something in the bottom third, like a bunch of one inch slats almost matted together.

I went over to him and tried to explain that he couldn't just be doing this, that it wasn't right, that this wasn't his yard. He seemed to be having trouble with the concept though, and kept insisting that it was his right. I seemed to finally get through to him though, and he finally agreed to stop, and as a final effort got the metal bar to latch properly onto the wood. Then he left. I was left there with the unfinished work, and I would have to somehow get something put together with it myself.

Wordzzle 96 - Pixie party

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.


This is my entry number 40, for Wordzzle week 96.


Ten Word Challenge:

Badger,
roll out the barrel,
amazing,
a lovely cup of tea,
pressure,
frozen,
gandalf,
pixies,
top gear

"Roll out the barrel," the badger said, "and we'll have a lovely cup of tea." A gandalf and some pixies watched, and giggled merrily. "We'll eat and drink, and eat some more, and have some frozen treats. Then we'll shift the party into top gear, and dance amazingly." And the floorboards danced with them then, under the pressure of their feet, and even when the kegs ran dry, they never ran out of glee.


Mini Challenge:

smelly,
politician,
favourite,
token gesture,
garden

A garden grew on the compost pile, a somewhat smelly feat. It was a favorite politician's token gesture, an attempt to keep his seat. He said he cared about the land, and would stop eating meat. But alas his skills were a little too green, and he went down in defeat.


Mega challenge:

Badger,
roll out the barrel,
amazing,
a lovely cup of tea,
pressure,
frozen,
gandalf,
pixies,
top gear

smelly,
politician,
favourite,
token gesture,
garden

It looked like a lovely cup of tea, but closer examination showed it to be both frozen and smelly. He had no idea how that happened, particularly since he had just boiled the water a few minutes ago. He opened the door and threw the cup out into the garden. A gandalf, in the process of rolling out the barrel that held the small flowering bush, looked at him, startled. A badger, talking about something with some pixies, shook its fist at him. "Sorry," he muttered, and closed the door. At one time it would have been an amazing sight, but no longer, and he just wanted to block it out.

Things had been bad for a while now, since he had somehow insulted the little people, but it seemed to have shifted into top gear lately, and he was really starting to feel the pressure. Perhaps they had been bothered when he took out the mound and put in the garden. He wasn't sure, but it seemed to have started around then. He had tried to talk it over with them, but they had done a lot of yelling, and he had finally started yelling, too. He wasn't much of a politician in these matters. He didn't want to have to move, and he wasn't sure he could sell the house anyway with them playing tricks like this. It was probably too late to put the mound back. The dirt was long gone, and he wasn't sure he could recreate whatever it was they saw in it.

He fixed himself a lunch meat sandwich while he tried to consider what to do. When he tried to take a bite, though, the lunch meat shot out and flopped around on the floor like a dying fish. He stared at it and set the rest of the sandwich down. He wasn't hungry anymore. It had been one of his favorite foods, too.

He needed to figure out something pretty quick. He wondered if it would help to give them some food. He remembered reading that people used to set out butter for them, but all he had was margarine, and he wasn't sure that would be viewed in the same way. It needed to be more than a token gesture, though, and he didn't know if just getting some butter for them would be enough.

He heard a strange wailing cry and gritted his teeth. Maybe he should just leave, go somewhere, anywhere, even if he couldn't sell the house. He could just throw some things in a suitcase and find a motel for now.

He had finished packing and was about to leave when he heard a knock at the door. He opened it and saw a hooded figure holding a scythe. Beyond him was an old fashioned coach drawn by horses. The figure turned slightly and raised an arm toward the coach, indicating the open door with a bony hand. The man stared at the coach for a minute, then picked up his suitcase and walked toward it.

Nice of them to provide transportation.