Posts in the “personal” category

Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds, boy,
She’ll beat you if she’s able,
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet.

~ Desperado, The Eagles

From time to time — usually in the winter months, but not always — I like to write short stories. Some are fiction, some are real, almost all are inspired by true events and dreams.

Here’s a short list of the stories I’ve posted here:

A few years ago I had a party at my house, and there was a woman there that I didn’t know, but I felt like I knew her. To be clear, I knew that she worked with a group of people I had invited, but I didn’t know her. Yet, it was a strange feeling, a thousand miles past deja vu. Maybe I had seen her somewhere before, but I couldn’t place it.

When that thought came to me I was talking to some other people, so I shrugged it off for the time being. The party had just begun, and I figured we’d meet soon enough. A little while later a trash can became full, so I took the bag out of the can and walked it to a garbage can outside by a detached garage. I put the bag in the can and turned around, only to be startled to see the woman standing there.

“How do I know you,” she asked.

[From time to time I write little stories that have nothing to do with programming or technology; this is one of those stories. So, if you’re only here for the technology stuff, you’ll want to skip this one.]

I’m standing in the kitchen of a friend’s house at a Christmas party, making myself a drink while talking to a friend named Angie. This was nothing unusual; she and I were always talking about something. We became friends during our last year in high school, and we’ve been talking ever since.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that I have feelings for her, but I guess you could say that I didn’t appreciate her back then. After high school, my ambition took me away to college, and then to a series of jobs in different states. By the time I decided to move back home, she was married and had two young children.

While we talked all the time, this kitchen conversation was unusual. I don’t remember how it started, but Angie did ask me about something I rarely talk about: my parents getting divorced in high school.

In a lucid dream this morning a bunch of people came into my apartment uninvited. All but one of them were maintenance people, and they immediately started renovating my apartment. I argued with them that a little notice would have been nice.

While that was going on, I saw that the other person was a Tibetan monk. While the maintenance people started drilling and cutting in various locations, the monk walked around the apartment breaking all of my things. He’d pick up a glass and let it drop to the floor and break, or work harder to break other things, slamming them to the ground. I ran over to him and asked, “Why are you breaking all of my things?”

He didn’t reply, but broke some DVDs in his hands. For some reason this made me more lucid in the dream, so I stepped on some of the DVDs he had dropped to the floor so I could crunch them more. “I get it,” I said, “it’s the whole ‘impermanence’ thing, right?” Then I thought of something and said, “Stay right here for a moment. Break something if you need to, but I’ll be right back.”

Then I went over to my DVD collection and grabbed my Dalai Lama video collection. I went back to the monk, handed him the DVDs, and said, “Here, you can break these, too. Or watch them. I don’t care.”

Then I remembered that my tv had just started on fire when the maintenance people did something, but it didn’t matter, the monk took the DVDs and sat down silently.

(January 28, 2020)

(Back in 2015 & 2016 when I was especially sick with the mast cell disease — before anyone knew what mast cell disease was — I wrote the following incomplete, fictional story titled, “The Girl Next Door,” based on a very long dream.)

“Here we are, come in,” I say to my two police escorts as I open the door and welcome them in. “Home, sweet home.”

Before they even get past the front door, the young, hyperactive cop blurts out, “Okay, where is she?”

Huh, not much warm and fuzzy “welcome to my humble abode” time, I think to myself. “That’s where it gets a little tricky,” I say.

“What do you mean? Is she here, or isn’t she? If you lied about her, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt.”

“I didn’t lie, she is here,” I said, “uh ... just not in the way you think.”

“Do tell,” said the older policeman as he fingered some books on my bookshelf, looking around, studying everything. Those were the first words he said since we left the police station.

I paused. This is the part where nobody ever believes me, so I’ve found that it’s generally best not to talk about this at all. But when two policemen have you in handcuffs, my decision is more like, do I tell them fast — just blurt it out, or do I find some way to tell them about it slowly? I decide to try to explain it.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” I say, searching for my next words. I walk over to my dining room window and point with my cuffed hands. “Technically, she’s right over there.”

The young, hyper cop comes over and looks out the window. He sees that I’m pointing at a walkway between two buildings. He quickly turns and looks at me. “What kind of game are you playing?,” he asks, seemingly about ready to punch or strangle me.

“No game, sir. This is the thing: Have you ever read about parallel universes?”

“What the ...”

As I became lucid in a dream this morning, I ran into Ram Dass. He was wearing his long all-white outfit, he was healthy again, with a big beard, and was much taller than I expected — significantly taller than me. (I later looked this up to find out he was 6’3”.)

He was standing next to a doorway and gathering people together for a seminar that he was giving, and asked if I wanted to attend. I said yes, and he said I was welcome if I could be like “The Lamb of God.”

I thought I knew what he meant by that, but just to be sure I asked him what he meant.

If you’ve ever had an experience where you’re falling asleep at night and suddenly your mind is awake but your body is asleep and you can’t move, fear not, the condition is known as sleep paralysis. (The same thing can also happen during the middle of a sleep cycle, where your mind wakes up while your body is asleep.) For some reason it’s featured in a story here in Business Insider (India). There’s also an article about it here on Wikipedia.

Many websites seem to have the wrong lyrics for the Dave Matthews song, Grey Street, so to help correct that problem, here are the correct lyrics for the long version of Grey Street that Dave Matthews played with Tim Reynolds at “Live at Farm Aid 2021”:

For those times when meditation alone isn’t enough. :)

#Bridesmaids

“Better to be on the edge of a party, don’t you think?” Good line, great movie.

“Always kiss me goodnight. Always kiss me goodmorning, too.”

~ as seen in a house in Florida

At one point when I was recovering from a surgery I wasn’t feeling very well, so I ended up watching a lot of movies, including 13 Going on 30. I was struck not only by the humor of this particular scene in the movie, but also the empathy.

For the person in your life who constantly says, “I worry ...”

“There is no death, only a change of worlds.”

~ Chief Seattle

This is one of many cute cards/images from the Great Cosmic Happy A** website.

Maharaji often said “Sub ek,” which is translated as, “All one,” or, “All is one.” He said this in other ways as well:

“Everywhere I look I see only Ram (God).”

“See no difference, see all the same.”

“You can’t realize God if you see differences.”

(There are many more instances, but that’s a good start.)

~ Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba).
quoted in Miracle Of Love

Regarding Jesus Christ, Maharaji began to cry and said, “He lost himself in the ocean of love.”

~ Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba).
quoted in Miracle Of Love

“Stay in the ajna chakra (the point between the eyebrows, also known as the third eye) and think only of me.”

~ Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba), talking to Ram Dass,
quoted in Miracle Of Love

When some devotees questioned him about hatha yoga (physical method of attaining union with God), Maharajji told them: “Hatha yoga is okay if you are strictly brahmacharya. Otherwise it is dangerous. It is the difficult way to raise kundalini. You can raise kundalini by devotion and by feeding people. Kundalini does not necessarily manifest as outer symptoms; it can be awakened quietly."

~ Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba).
quoted in Miracle Of Love

Love the poor. Serve them. Give everything to the poor, even your clothing. Give it all away. Jesus gave away all, including his body.

~ Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba).
quoted in Miracle Of Love