Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Dream Lesson
I believe that our minds do productive work while our bodies sleep. Often, the dream we recall when we wake up is so bizarre that whatever meaning it might hold for us is disguised beyond recognition. Yesterday morning, I awoke to a very rare occasion of having had the same situation appear in two different dreams, one right after the other. I’ve not thoroughly deciphered all the possible messages for me in these dreams, but I’ve been given a pretty clear pair of situations from which to ponder a meaning.
In both dreams I was playing soccer. For some reason, I have better recall of the first dream, where I was out wide to the left of the goal, and my teammates repeatedly moved the ball out to me for a shot. The ball kept coming to my left foot. Three different times it happened. Each time I was hoping for it to arrive for a big shot with my dominant right foot. I found myself off balance to react well with my left, because I was looking for it to be on my right. I finally made a weak attempt with my left foot and the ball slowly rolled toward a crowd of players and then, to my surprise, somehow it squeaked into the very corner edge of the net for a goal.
I woke up just enough to realize my dream, then turned over and went back to sleep. Then it happened again. All I remember of this dream was that the ball came to my left foot when I wanted it on my right. I begrudgingly kicked a weak shot with my left anyway. It went IN!
When my alarm went off, the thought that was on my mind was the remarkable fact that I had two different dreams about the same thing.
I could easily interpret this lesson literally and practice being more prepared to use my left foot, and just take the shot whether it’s strong or not. It could also be symbolic of many other things for me.
I don’t usually put a lot of analytical effort into interpreting my dreams. I tend to let them influence me subconsciously. It seems the most congruent match for the oblique, bizarre image-stories that are broadcast in my noggin at night. That might explain some of the slow evolutionary progress I am able to demonstrate thus far in my life.
The message of these dreams appears much less complicated. I am inspired to take a LOT of shots with my left foot at my next morning futsal games on Friday. If I score a lot of unexpected goals, you can expect to hear more from me on this subject.
Revisiting Archives
Not feeling quite on top of the world today. Some bug has got my white cells working double-time. What better excuse do I need to dig into the archives to revisit a poem first published here in April of last year? And what a nice segue from yesterday’s post… This one has colors, too!
From a Sunday morning, April 11, 2010… it was titled: Confusion
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confusion floats
can you feel it?
all the colors
masquerade as sounds
little reasons
rolling on the ground
all the castles burning
bright lights shining down
answers everywhere
just unmatched
to the many smells around
as if we’ve known it all
but kept it secret
from ourselves all along
while some have found an answer
by accepting all the chaos
with expectant nonchalance
never fearing for the worst
as if witch trials never happened
nor slavery either, too
we carry on oblivious
wondering what there is to do
never having learned a way
to speak of things taboo
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Color Burst
I don’t know about you, but this time of year I’m starting to feel a need for some more color in my world. Not to mention it’s another Monday. These just keep showing up, these Mondays.
Bring it on, I say.
Oooh, pretty colors!
Imagine This
Imagine if one day at work there was a laugh track simulating a live audience watching everything you did.
Imagine if, when one person learned from experience, every other person on earth instantly gained the same insight.
Imagine if everything we thought was broadcast out loud while we were thinking it.
Imagine if it was physically impossible to eat any more calories than our bodies would burn.
Imagine if we knew how upset someone was going to feel before they became upset.
Imagine if the people who don’t think they know anything found out how much more they know than they realized.
Imagine if no one ever tried to swindle another person.
Imagine if truth and justice actually trumped everything laid out to obscure them.
Imagine if it was impossible for traffic to jam.
Imagine if pizza didn’t have any calories.
Wait. Don’t imagine that. It could get ugly.
Imagine if toothpaste with the word, “Whitening” on the label, actually made teeth noticeably whiter.
Imagine if, no matter what time we go to sleep at night or get up in the morning, 8 hours transpire for our body clock.
Imagine if humans were able to sense everything impacting their health at the moment of exposure and take corrective action to prevent undesired outcomes.
Imagine if no one ever fell for the cheesy images of UFOs but everyone believed in the likelihood there is life in the universe beyond this planet.
Imagine if people practiced mental exercise with the same dedication they give to physical workouts.
Maybe food for thought is worth snacking on.
Shovel Love
Yesterday was another quiet day in John’s wobegon neighborhood. ‘Bout the biggest excitement to report was the delivery of new snow shovels to my doorstep. I ordered them online and had them delivered. When I got home from work, I found them leaning up against my front door. Instead of bothering with a box, they just wrapped them together with stretch-wrap, so it was clearly visible what was being delivered. I was like a kid at Christmas.
When one of my favorite tools wears out after years of service, all I want as a replacement is a new version of the very same thing. In this era of constant innovation and new product introductions, by the time my favorites wear out, that model is often long-gone, replaced by the next “improved” version on the market.
It happened with our toaster oven recently, and it happens to me all the time with clothes and shoes. When I was no longer able to find my favorite shovel at the local retail stores in my area, I went online to YO-HO Quality Tools, the source of the best snow shovel for my uses. As long as I was ordering, I bought an extra one, too, in case they discontinue this model for some newfangled one next year.
While researching the site, I found a very nice looking shovel without the metal blade on the business end of the scoop. I needed one of those, too, since I broke the one I usually keep for clearing the wood deck. A plastic shovel is also what I take up on the roof, because I don’t want to damage my shingles with a metal edged one.
So, I received three shovels wrapped together. What I was very pleased to notice when I picked them up to bring them in the house, was how surprisingly light they were, even strapped as a group of three. They weigh less combined than the metal shovel that Cyndie bought a while ago as a potential replacement because it had a yellow handle and a black blade.
In addition to the light weight, another feature that makes this shovel my favorite tool for clearing our driveway and sidewalk is the shape of the scoop. It is shaped with side edges and an ideal curve to facilitate pushing snow like a plow AND picking it up and tossing it. Often times those actions are exclusive in a shovel blade. One design is good for pushing and another design is good for scooping and throwing.
Not to be overlooked is the 46″ fiberglass handle with poly ergo D grip. The D grip is essential in allowing my preferred technique of tossing the snow out of the scoop by releasing my left hand from the shaft as I snap the shovel forward, then pulling it back with my right hand in that D.
Just describing it almost makes me want to go out and shovel. Maybe best of all about these tools, they never fail to start, they don’t require gasoline or electricity, they don’t emit an unpleasant exhaust, and they don’t make near the noise of mechanical snow blowers.
Since the month of March is historically good for one or two big snow storms every year, I think my purchase was made at just the right time. Our local 7-day forecast shows a possibility of a big storm next week. With that ‘backup’ extra shovel I bought, I may even invite Cyndie out to allow her the experience of discovering just how meritorious a design the YO-HO poly snow pusher really is.
For Elysa
Many times I have voiced the insight that my children have taught me more about myself than I ever expected to learn. Try as I did to figure out a way to instill what little wisdom I was able, while also granting them a healthy amount of independence, I never really felt like I was accomplishing a laudable level of fathering. Too much? Too little? Probably most parents share that feeling.
From my early memories of holding baby Elysa while we both watched ice hockey on television (she cried when play was suspended between periods) and the time she guffawed with genuine total body laughter over my silliness with the jack-in-the-box toy, to the difficult days when I didn’t know what to say to the adolescent she had become and she didn’t know what to say to me, we have forged all the firsts. Every time she faces something with me for the first time, it is my first time, too. She is my firstborn.
She has never shopped for a house before. I have never had a daughter make an offer on a house before.
I still vividly recall the overwhelming feeling of taking that newborn out of the safety of a hospital and putting her in a car to drive to our home. Soon there is walking, braces on teeth, and school graduations. In the next moment, buying a house.
I don’t always recognize what my lesson is, out of all the adventures you bring to my life, my dear, but I can tell you that each and every one is precious as can be. Good luck with this latest endeavor. I expect there will be plenty for both of us to learn.
All’s Quiet
No news, is good news, as the saying goes. And that is how it plays out for most of us, each and every day. …That is, on an individual scale. En masse, there are births and deaths, and every possible drama in between, happening all the time. But when all that drama gets spread out across all the people in the world, lots of us end up with days of nothing newsworthy to report. I’m okay with that for me, regardless a strange urge that lingers just below the surface, looking for some cataclysmic event overdue to break the eerie calm.
While many in the world are engaged in serious and worthy drama today, I am humbled to be able to report I have no news.
Mental Revelations
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Life, so they say, is but a game and they let it slip away. (lyrics by James Seals)
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Are we letting February slip away? It’s not like we can stop it. In two days, it will be March. The game of life is marching on whether we think it is us who are doing the playing, or are the ones being played. If you don’t feel you have the ability to make choices about your own life, you just may feel you are being played.
We always have the option of choosing to alter our thinking. Regardless how sure we are about our take on the world, there remains mystery and complexity that deserves acknowledgment. Imagine if technology were able to produce a mirror that would reveal our suppressed anger and sorrow in its reflection. It could be particularly valuable to those who proclaim themselves as having nothing to gain from professional therapy.
Could we make healthier decisions if we became better aware of underlying issues that frame our perspective? Maybe.
I am inclined to believe that our mental health is not well served by our failure to recognize what it is that has hurt or angered us. It would be a shame to let life slip away without taking a chance of bettering our health by simply altering our thinking.
Smile
Don’t be bashful. Form your features into a pleased, kind, or amused expression. Turn up the corners of your mouth. Smile.
If you are not in the grips of clinical depression, the simple act of smiling has the power to alter everything that comes after it.
You are more powerful than you give yourself credit for being.
Go ahead. Wield your smile.
Shhhhhh
I was driving home late last night after my weekly session of floorball (floor hockey played with a wiffle ball) when all of a sudden I became aware that the radio was playing unnecessarily loud, and the song at the time was not one that appealed to me in the least. I shut the radio off. The immediate transition created an impression that the quiet was quieter than the song had been loud, if that makes any sense; along the lines of “a deafening silence”.
It reminded me of an exercise I devised years ago on one of the rest days during an annual week of biking and camping with about 150 dear friends. The object is to practice becoming aware of everything that is audible in a given period of minutes. The process involves acknowledging what sound is closest and most obvious, and then disregarding that in order to move on to focus on the next sound. The priority is to strive to be able to discern the next further distant sound, ultimately culminating in what would be the input you are detecting from a source the largest distance away from you. It is all speculation, but in terms of an exercise, the reward is in the doing, and not necessarily the data obtained.
It isn’t important to know what the sound is. Just becoming aware that it is something you are hearing at that time, and being able to file it and move on, serves the purpose of this exercise.
Often times, what I discover during this process is the space between the sounds. It is there that resides, the quietest of quiets.
