Rain Update

We finally have had enough rain to display above the bottom of the chart.

The amount of rain and its timing are fairly random, but....

Here comes the rain again

Falling on my head like a memory

Falling on my head like a new emotion

I want to walk in the open wind

—Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart

This probably isn’t interesting to anyone except Suna and me. After an inch of rain over the last two nights, our ponds are finally full again.

The top chart shows we have had enough actual rain this year to climb onto the chart. Based on a completely unreliable model, we should have a fairly wet year this year. Last year, we finished with an slightly better than average year. But we had enough rain to meet that milestone by the end of June when the taps turned off for a couple of months.

The bottom chart shows when we get rain each year since I’ve been living on the Hermit’s Rest Ranch. While monthly distributions are fairly chaotic, it’s starting to feel more like a tropical pattern. That is, we get heavier rains early in the year, almost nothing through the summer, and light rains in the fall. Unless a tropical storm or hurricane brings a flood.

The pattern of rains, their scarcity, and the melting of the permafrost have been causing me nightmares of late. The climate is always changing, but is this the beginning of the apocalypse climate scientists are warning of? As my dad used to say, “We’ll see.”

Dream About Missing the Old Office

Zombie image source: Fun Lover What doesn’t kill you
often makes you wish it had.

I am posting this much later than it is dated while going through some old journals. I list the souces as a dream about one of my least favorite parts of the corporate world. Apparently, it left lasting scars.

SELF
I’m going down to the crapateria to grab a bite.

OTHER
That won’t…

SELF
Kill me?

OTHER
No, but it will make you suffer.

SELF
That will have to do.

Working for Another Grateful Monday

This lonely flower lived just long enough to bloom. Dad says we have to be more like plants and animals. They do whatever they can to survive. Maybe that’s why he has lived as long as he has.

This is a time of sadness for me. I have been having film noir dreams again about an alternate reality where I live alone in a dingy one-room shack somewhere on the Texas coast where I grew up. Last night I dreamed I awoke to go to the bathroom, where I knocked over the box fan that cooled the house and circulated heat from a space heater in the winter. Then I explored a countertop piled with debris, junk gathered over a lifetime but with too much sentimental value to throw out. All this with a sense of comfortable resoluteness and acceptance of such a fate.

I think these dreams—I can’t call them nightmares because no matter how horrifying they are, they are not scary until I wake up and think about them—must stem from the trapped feeling that unemployment brings.

I hate not having a job. I hate not being able to provide. And I hate that I had to sell part of a farm that has been in the family for more than a hundred years—even if Dad suggested it and basically told me who he wanted to have it. It is a bittersweet legacy.

But sometimes to prosper in the long term, we have to survive the short term. As Greenspan once said, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” So I am grateful that I have that bittersweet legacy to help me survive the short run. I am grateful that Dad advised me to sell. And as much as it irks me to listen to him tell the same stories over and over, I am glad that he is still around at 85 to do so.

Tornadic Dream

Beautiful pictures like this belie the destructiveness and horror of tornadoes.

Photo source: National Severe Storms Laboratory

I dreamed last night that I was working in a high-rise office again. Everyone was in a panic because a tornado was visible from one of the windows. We were looking for a place of refuge inside the building. I found a white-painted two-panel wooden door. Ah, the staircase! I thought it would be safe. But as I looked down to the next wooden landing, I realized that the stairs were lit by windows. The one at the landing had peeling white paint and was tilted open. I decided to go down the stairs, thinking that the ground floor would be at least somewhat safer than the upper floors.

Downstairs, everyone was pouring out of the office building into a candy store across the street. The candy store was an old one-storey structure with canopies and fruit stalls in front of it. As we crossed the dirt street (It hadn’t even started to rain yet!), I asked someone why we were all running into the candy store. “It has a basement,” he yelled. Then he shoved his hat down tighter on his head and ran.

“It’s dropping!” someone nearby yelled.

I turned and got my first good look at the “high rise.” It covered about half a block and stood three stories tall. It was cased in stone and a short, square minaret graced each corner—they looked more like battlements, but minaret is what I remember thinking of them as. Centered between the two visible minarets and about a quarter mile beyond the building, a tornado snaked down from a slate cloud. I woke up then. My heart was beating fast, but it wasn’t racing like it has been after several less eventful dreams lately. I remember thinking that at least I had a reason for an elevated heart rate.

Another odd thing about this dream is that the perspective was different. I was shorter in the dream than I am in this life. Could it be a memory of a past life? If so, it wouldn’t be the first such for me. Or is it more likely to stem from reading a book in which the main character remembers glimpses of past lives? There’s no way to tell.

I have had a number of dreams lately (undocumented here) that were no more threatening than the one about Rose breathing. I would awaken from these dreams with all of the symptoms on an anxiety attack—that is, all the symptoms except for anxiety. As an experiment, I stopped drinking diet soda for a few days, and they seemed to abate. Too much caffeine?

Another Strange Dream

Rose even smiles for the camera Photo by: Suna

I have taken to sleeping with earplugs because of the noise the dogs make at night. So last night I dreamed that one of the dogs was breathing really loud. I thought is was strange that I was hearing the breathing through the earplugs. I looked down and there was Rose smiling and wagging her tail. She is such a loveable dog that you can’t hardly get mad at her no matter what she does. So I smiled back and reached to pet her loving head. That’s when I woke up.

Food Dreams

Last night I dreamed of food, breakfast foods in particular. Kolaches the size of my hand, fritters glistening with icing: all of the foods I love, but I wouldn’t let myself eat them. I left the little bakery and went to work someplace I didn’t recognize. Then I went back, and the little bakery had a for rent sign on the door. Sigh.

Nostradamus

Ah, the more it changes, the more it stays the same

And the Hand just rearranges the players in the game

—Al Stewart

Do parallel universes line up in a series of infinite minute variations?

Original Painting ©1997 by Slawek Wojtowicz

So last night, I visited the parallel universe where X2 and I split long before I met Suna. In that place, we had never left the coast, and I was still earning my living through manual labor. I think I was still working at the Rice Factory. I know my boss at the Rice Factory, Old Easy, was in the dream and much older than he had been when I knew him.

(This was the second time people from that place—and Old Easy in particular—have appeared in my dreams recently. In both, they were older than when I knew them and their personalities had aged, too. That’s what makes me think I am slipping through to a parallel universe.)

It was interesting to note that X2 and I had the same problems as we had in this universe and the same results. The only difference was that I was alone, too. It was a much sadder place for me—not only because I was alone, but also because I knew I had wasted a lot of potential by staying on the coast.

This dream started me wondering. How much are we shaped by our experiences? How much do we shape our experiences? And how much do we simply shape our perception of our experiences?

Without everything that has gone before, would I still be me?

Photo by: Suna

Grateful Monday

So that brings us to this week’s Grateful Monday. I am grateful for everything that has happened to me in this universe. Things could have turned out much worse. I still feel that I have wasted a lot of potential and that I should have done more to help other people. I fantasize about joining the Peace Corps or something like it when I retire, but …

But even the icky stuff in life shapes us and makes us better people. So I am grateful for all the good times I’ve had—and for all the bad times, too. I hope I am continuing to grow and become a better person than I was.

Mohammed’s Radio

Nine of Swords—The Nightmare Card
Photo Source: Learn Tarot

Everybody’s restless and they’ve got no place to go

Someone’s always trying to tell them

Something they already know

—Warren Zevon

As part of last week’s Friday Feast, I said that I seldom remember my dreams. That was enough to get my id upset. So two nights in a row, I have awakened in the middle of the night—OK, an hour or so before the alarm—after a bad dream. I can’t really call them nightmares because they left me more uncomfortable than frightened.

Endless Work Obligations

I was in a meeting at work. It was at ALE, in the department where I currently contract. My employers kept loading on more and more responsibilities and tightening deadlines in the way that ALE does. I was trying to tell them that I couldn’t possibly accomplish everything they wanted by the end of my contract. But all that came out was, “OK.” I couldn’t get back to sleep after this one and eventually woke Suna up a few minutes before the alarm. Sigh.

Wolves not drempt
Photo Source: Veracity

The “Wolf” That Wouldn’t Die

Suna and I were looking at a house in the country. It closely resembled a floor plan she showed me just before we turned in—a nice two-story that was sided in rough cedar and nestled between a couple of hills. I went out on the back deck to look over the lake. Suddenly, a wolf-like creature started running over the surface of the lake, almost directly at me. I knew this, even though the deck was probably 40 feet above the lake.

Luckily, I had an automatic rifle handy. I squeezed of a shot and missed. Then I missed again. I held down the trigger for a short burst. The creature went down, rolling over backward. Then it got back up. It ran past me. I emptied the cartridge. Again and again, it got back up each time I hit it.

Finally, I woke up. I was not scared so much as frustrated, and I had a very full bladder. I went back to sleep fairly quickly after crawling back in and pulling up the covers.

Now I don’t want to go into a deep analysis of these dreams. It is fairly obvious that I am worried about something, probably nothing that a stable job wouldn’t provide the right ammunition for.

---

31 October. Another interpretation of the second dream, if not this sequence, is that I have been feeling my own mortality recently. Death stalks us all. We may knock it back a bit, but it always gets up. Just like in those stupid horror movies.

Rock Candy

Candy can make your breath smell better, make your teeth rot, and act as a disease vector.
Photo Source: Baylor College of Medicine

When you’re seventeen reachin’ for your dreams

Don’t let no one reach it for you.

Stretch out take a chance.

If it can be done, you can do it.

—Montrose

Friday Night Lights

I learned tonight that I only like close games when I am not attached to either of the teams. I never minded when the Cowboys had a close game because I always knew that they could pull it out of the fire at the last minute. Whether or not they did so was another question.

But tonight the kids’ high school team played and lost a fairly tight game. They took the lead early. Then they relinquished it and played catch-up the rest of the night. Neither team played very well, but it was a high school game, after all.

Since I really wanted the kids to win their Homecoming game—especially since some evil administrator forbade a dance—it was a long night.

Friday Feast

Appetizer: Name a great website you would recommend to others.

http://www.bloglines.com/

Bloglines provides a simple interface to manage your favorite RSS feeds (blogs, news, whatever) and access them from anywhere. You don’t have to have a copy of your selections on a USB key to see what’s happening when you’re at work, at Starbucks, or anywhere else.

Soup: On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 as highest), how often do you dream at night?

Almost everybody dreams every night. The question is whether or not you remember your dreams. I used to be a 10; now I’m closer to a 1. When I was a kid, I would dream movies—plots, character development, and all that. I would even go back to sleep and rewrite the ending of dreams if I didn’t like the way they turned out.

 

Now I hardly ever remember my dreams, unless they are bad enough to wake me up—and that happens more often now than I like. When I remember them, my dreams are more often than not just me floating somewhere in a vast sea of information trying to categorize and file all the random bits that are streaming in.

Salad: Did you have a pet as a child? If so, what kind and what was its name?

Do you have a couple of hours? I almost always had a dog, and a variety of other pets came and went over time. Just no cats. My mother and I were both allergic to cat dander.

 

I grew up with so many dogs that I am often accused of being one. I get along better with dogs than I do with most people. Dogs are honest. They don’t lie. If they like you, they like you. If they don’t…

 

Dogs also understand hierarchy. They like to know who is in charge. If you feed them, love them, and show them a little kindness and respect, they are more than willing to let you be in charge. But you must be willing to remind them occasionally.

Main Course: If you had the chance to star in a commercial, what would you choose to advertise?

There are really two answers to this question:

1. First, I don’t have a product that I am in love with enough to back with my own name and reputation.
2. How much are they paying?

Dessert: What is your favorite kind of hard candy?

I don’t really like hard candy. If I had to choose one though, it would be those free mints they give out at Mexican restraints.

Báthory Dreams

Elizabeth Báthory:
The Bloody Lady of Čachtice Photo Source: Wikipedia

I don’t know what it is. First it was zombies at work. Last night it was Elizabeth Báthoryrunning a theme park in southeast Houston. The dream was plotted like a bad horror movie.

I started out looking for auto parts in what I think was Spring, Texas as it was in the early 1980s. I found out that I could get the part I needed but only if I traveled across Houston at rush hour. Somehow, that involved walking through a multi-level mall, where I became unconscious.

Still in the dream, I came to in a dungeon-like setting. The view zoomed down a long hall of rickety wooden stairs and dirt walls. I remember thinking, “That is a really cheesy effect!” And then we were at the room at the end of the hall. There was a very pale woman taking a blood bath, and I knew immediately that it was Elizabeth Báthory.

So she was a real vampire after all. At least, in the dream she was immortal. She seemed to be absorbing the blood through her skin like a sponge. It would run off of her skin like water, leaving the skin the color of limestone, unblemished and unstained.

Then the scene changed again. I was in a set of review stands. There were hawkers selling Elizabeth Bathory products to the spectators. A bound young woman was brought out to the theater floor. She was forced to kneel in the dirt and beheaded over a bathtub. The spectators all thought it was part of the show. I seemed to be the only one in the dream who knew it was real.

I knew I had to escape. Or to help someone else escape. But EB’s minions were loyal. Violence ensued. Then the alarm.

For such a dream, there was no emotional involvement, not even the involvement I would get from watching a movie. Not even dread. Just plodding through the plot. The characters were all involved. Even when the dream was in first person, I was detached from it. Strange really.

Zombies at ALE

Image Source: Blizzard

Last night I dreamed of work and zombies.

For some reason, ALE had moved into a huge office tower. The phones and network went dead. I think the power was out, but the lights were still on. Almost everybody had gone home, but a few others and I remained. I don’t know why.

I got the impression that those of us who remained were there for days, waiting for something to do, waiting for something to happen. We were just little larks, sitting on our perches and wondering when the food would run out. The elevators were not working, and we were afraid of the stairwells. There was a sense of doom, and we complained that none of us had any weapons. Occassionally, someone would venture down a stairwell, and there would be horrid noises, and they wouldn’t come back.

We just waited. No real violence. No real danger. Just apprehension and waiting. It was like Sean of the Dead without the action, adventure, or humor.

Just like at work the last two weeks.

I didn’t sleep much.