Posts in the “personal” category

In one of my ongoing nightly dream series, I’m a young man who works at a restaurant at night. Two nights ago I was working there when a female co-worker told me she bought a Christmas gift for me, and wanted to see if we could do a gift exchange. I hadn’t gotten her anything yet, so I said something like, “I, I ... I can’t do it right now because <insert excuse here>. How about tomorrow?”

After work I went out to buy something for her. “Think, think,” I said to myself, probing my dream memory, “what would be a nice gift?” Then I remembered that a few weeks ago she told me about something she always wanted when she was younger, so I went out and found that item, and wrapped it up.

Last night we exchanged gifts during a break at work. She opened hers first, and when she saw it she began to cry. “Uh-oh,” I thought, “now you’ve gone and made her cry. This might not be good.” But then she said it was beautiful and thoughtful, and said her gift to me was nothing compared to it.

Tonight I think I’m going to call in sick to work, or maybe just stay up all night and binge-watch Stranger Things.

~ December 13, 2017

I was going through old photos recently and found this “Bleeding Heart” drawing that I made on a Buddha Board back in February, 2015. FWIW, Buddha Boards seem to make good Christmas gifts. I got this one as a Christmas gift in 2014.

(In December, 2020, it reminds me of the heart infection I had last Christmas.)

I fall into the category of “spiritual but not religious,” but I like this affirmation at the end of the little booklet, The Law of Success, by Paramhansa Yogananda:

“Heavenly Father, I will reason; I will will; I will act; but guide Thou my reason, will, and activity to do the right thing that I should do.”

(As a note, the “will will” part is not a mis-quote or mis-type.)

This is a Christmas gingerbread house/hotel they had at The Lodge at Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This was during the Christmas/holiday season in 2012-2013.

Son, she said
Have I got a little story for you
What you thought was your daddy
Was nothin’ but a ...

While you were sittin’ home alone at age thirteen
Your real daddy was dyin’
Sorry you didn’t see him
But I’m glad we talked

~ Alive, Pearl Jam

“It’s only fear that makes you run,
The demons that you're hiding from.”

~ Melissa Etheridge, I’m Not the Only One

Which reminds me of this:

“There are two kinds of people in Alaska: those who were born here, and those who come here to escape something. I wasn’t born here.”

~ Rachel Clement, Insomnia

“It’s very hard to grow, because it’s difficult to let go of the models of ourselves in which we’ve invested so heavily.”

~ from the book One Liners, by Ram Dass

I took this photo of the Badlands in South Dakota on my drive up to Alaska in May, 2007. It’s still one of the most unique things I have seen.

Growing up, I remember that Dick Allen was considered a controversial figure, but I had no idea why, I was too young to comprehend those things. He passed away today, December 7, 2020, and the following text is from a story he tells in this video. The background is that the story takes place in 1963, in Little Rock, Arkansas, and he was a minor league baseball player:

They send me to Little Rock on a 24-hour recall, and left me there by myself. And when I say “myself,” I mean the only black player. Me being from Pennsylvania, I thought there was no racial tension, but geez, going to the soda machine to get a Pepsi out of the soda machine, and a cop car pulled in with the lights and there he is with a gun in my face. Hell, they’re trying to kill me right here. In America.

I come home, I think it was only a nickel or dime, and I put it in the pay phone. “Mama, I want to come home.”

You listen to me, boy, you hear me?

Back in May, 2007, on my drive up to Alaska, I stopped at Mt. Rushmore. One of my former co-workers found this little genie figurine that I/we started referring to as Little Buddha. When I held it up to take this photo, some guy that was also visiting there got really upset with me, and his wife had to calm him down.

At some point over the last few months I realized that nobody in the fitness center wears a mask, so I haven’t exercised significantly since September. So I was pleasantly surprised to see my heart rate get down into the low 50s, even without that exercise.

I woke up at 3am and made some notes about a long dream sequence, which seems to correspond to the low in my little dipper there.

In a related note, if I die from a lack of exercise, this is a result of Covid-19: People don’t wear masks, so I don’t go to exercise in the fitness center. I can walk outside, but that’s nowhere near the level of exertion I can get on an elliptical trainer. (And you can’t really bike-ride safely in this area.)

Season 2, Episode 8 of Fringe, titled, August, has to be one of the Top 10 episodes of that series.

“She seduced me with baked goods.”

~ Walter talking about Fauxlivia (alternate universe Olivia) on Fringe

I rarely listen to music from this century, but I am a fan of Let Me Love You Like a Woman by Lana Del Rey, which I heard yesterday by accidentally having my radio on the wrong station.

Back in 2018 I couldn’t find any decals I liked, so I bought some black chalkboard paint and painted the old computer I use as a Linux laptop. With a piece of chalk, I can now have a different logo on it whenever I want a new one. :)

If someday the Moon calls you by your name don’t be surprised, because every night I tell her about you.

~ Shahrazad al-Khalij

As I wrote about in this Facebook post, two nights ago I dreamed about a man dying and gently singing a song as he was dying, which led me to listen to The Impossible Dream, from Man of La Mancha, by Brian Stokes Mitchell. Here’s another terrific performance of that same song, as he sings with an orchestra and choir.

A friend’s young child has been having some serious health problems recently, which led me to this song titled, I Won’t Let Go, by Rascal Flatts:

I will stand by you
I will help you through
When you’ve done all you can do
If you can’t cope
I will dry your eyes
I will fight your fight
I will hold you tight
And I won’t let go

I had forgotten about Rascal Flatts. The last time I thought about them was probably 2010 or earlier. I was sitting at the bar area of a Tumbleweed restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, and the bartender was trying to tell me how good they were.

[In a Season 1 episode of Fringe, Olivia has been thinking that she’s losing her mind because she’s having dreams where she sees people being murdered, and when she later wakes up and goes to her job as an FBI agent, she finds that they have been murdered. But now they’ve found a potential suspect named Nick Lane, which leads to Olivia and Peter sitting in the lobby of a mental hospital, waiting to meet a doctor there.]

PETER: You know, until this year I’d never actually been to a mental hospital.

OLIVIA: [Bent over, her head in her hands, looking at the floor] Learn to like new things.

PETER: Maybe I never gave it enough thought ... what Walter went through. I only ever saw it through my own perspective. His being crazy was something that he did to us. To my mother and me. It wasn’t something that happened to him.

OLIVIA: Well, you were young.

PETER: Well I’m not young any more. [long pause, looking off into the distance] It must be a terrible thing to not be able to trust your own mind. [sighs]

OLIVIA: Yeah ... [rubs her hands together, then puts her head in her hands again]

Wow, how embarrassing. It has taken me *years* to realize that when I run on all fours in a dream that I’m actually a dog (or maybe some other four-legged animal).

I finally realized it this morning when I was running like that and came up to a group of human friends, and one said something like, “Hey, look over there, it’s your new friend.”

When I looked in the direction he was pointing I saw a group of people who didn’t look familiar, and a black dog. Just then the dog came running at me. When it got to me it started licking and biting me and I thought, “This dog is crazy, why doesn’t someone get it off of me,” when everything suddenly made sense.

(A Facebook post from November 14, 2014)