Category Archives: dreams

Sometimes you just want to be the biggest loser

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After many months of prolonging the inevitable torture, I am finally ready to admit it is time to be serious and get myself into summer-shape.  And by summer-shape, I don’t mean round.

violet2

(image credit)

It’s time to hold myself accountable for those invisible pounds that crept into my room at night and methodically attached themselves to parts of my body whilst I slumbered.  My wardrobe has begun to mock me while threatening to abandon ship.  It’s time to get a buddy and make the goal a reality.  It’s time to put the spring back in my step instead of breaking the diving board.  It’s time to get back what I’ve lost.  No, wait.  It’s time to lose….what I….got back.  Now I’m confused.

A few years ago, I went on a very noble quest to get healthy.  And that I did.  I diligently tracked my food choices and the only processed food I ate was food I had processed myself.  There was no bread involved, nothing packaged and nothing I couldn’t pronounce.  I simply ate whole, natural food and at the end of my journey I had lost fifty pounds and felt amazing.

As reality is wont to do, it came stomping in and replaced my determination with dejection.   It exchanged my willpower with weakness and it magically turned me into a shape-shifter.  I went from healthy and happy to fleshy and faking it without even putting up a fight.

Well, the gloves are back on.  I remember what it felt like to be so proud of my accomplishment.  I recall how wonderful I felt being so healthy and I wish that for myself again.  Since I began my first journey on May 1st, I shall do the same again this year.  The lemons will be stocked, the spices abundant and the determination back and in high gear.

Cooking has always been a passion so now I shall choose a much more intelligent selection of ingredients before I lift the “mystery box” and delve into the long-lost world of cooking with the right food.  I may not win a million dollars at the end of my arduous journey but I will be The Biggest Loser….or the smallest loser…..why is this so confusing??

 

 

 

The wind beneath his wings – fiction

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Da-Vinci-glider

His ambition was unwavering and his dream was simple.  He wanted to fly.  And not by way of a commercial pilot’s license, he wanted to soar like a bird and feel the wind on his face.

He had studied Da Vinci’s sketches and the logic behind his contraption was irrefutably genius.  He set out to recreate Da Vinci’s brilliant apparatus and after a great deal of toiling and more than a few expletives he was able to stand back and appreciate all of his efforts.  It was finished.  It was brilliant.  It was ready for its first test.

After his laborious journey to bring Leonardo’s masterpiece to life, he intuitively knew he must wait until morning.  He wanted to be mentally and physically prepared for what would happen next and he knew a good night’s sleep would help him be at his best.

He looked up to the ceiling and yelled, seemingly to himself, “Get a good rest tonight.  Tomorrow, we fly.”

Morning came and the weather was perfect.  The sky was clear and the breeze guaranteed a splendid baptism into the world of flight.  He climbed the stairs to the attic and the sun beams peeked through the cracks in the roof.  The man in the corner of the room looked terrified.  The stranger was haggard, unkempt and the duct tape over his mouth prevented him from nourishing himself.  But even in the man’s fatigued condition, he was sure this man would still make a great test subject for the inaugural voyage.

He left his captive once again and wheeled his new gadget out onto the crest of the large hill that protected his house from unwanted visitors.  He had already created the launch ramp and after some serious effort on his part the plane was set and ready to be cut loose.

He ran back into the house with the enthusiasm of a child and dragged the man out of the attic.  The man put up a great struggle but he was no match for the willpower of the scientific mind.  Once the man had been strapped in, he viciously tore off the duct tape.  The man’s curses echoed in the valley below.  He methodically explained the steering mechanism to the man and explained what would have to happen during updrafts and downdrafts.  There was a pause in his instructions when he sadly mused that he would not be the first to test his gizmo but he was not stupid and knew there was room for error.

Once the tutorial was finished, he wished the man well and cut the umbilical cord holding the plane to the launch pad.  Gravity took over and the plane began to pick up speed.   The man’s screams could not be heard over the cacophony of the plane hurling down the launch ramp.  The loud noise of the wheels on the track stopped suddenly and the plane was in the air.  As graceful as an Eagle, the plane hovered on a gust of wind and seemed to stand perfectly still for a few seconds.

The breeze changed direction and he thought he was about to witness a magical flight.  But the plane seemed front heavy and could not maintain itself in the air.  He watched in horror as the plane did a nose drive, plummeted and crashed violently in the valley far below his house.

Reluctantly, he climbed into his ATV and drove down the long and winding path to see the carnage and sort through the wreckage.  His pilot did not survive the crash.  There were pieces of the plane he could salvage and he would begin building as soon as the light of the morning allowed him to begin.  Tonight he had another job.  Tonight he had to find himself a new pilot.

~~

Written for the Grammar Ghoul Challenge to use the above photo of Da Vinci’s sketch and the word “dream”.

mutant750-wk

 

Gazing into your own eyes isn’t weird, it’s necessary

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For us to be ultimately happy, we need to take the time to understand the person that we truly are, blemishes and all. It is not very often that we allow ourselves that pause to face ourselves and spend a while gazing into our eyes of truth.

mirror

(image credit)

 

It takes a great deal of honesty, and some humility, to admit to ourselves the things that are important in our lives and what will make us truly content – to embrace the person that we are and to love everything about ourselves. We are each born with unique qualities and characteristics and understanding what really makes us tick is half the battle. Being able to accept those things and allow ourselves to be satisfied with those traits is the other half of that battle.

Contemplating our own thoughts and feelings is a daunting task. But to really reach into the depths of our souls and seek what is most important to us means we are required to admit to ourselves the truths that we avoid on a daily basis. Sometimes that revelation is uplifting. But sometimes realizing who we are and what we want makes us really understand the distance between our reality and our true bliss.

Before we can be honest with anyone else, we need to be honest with ourself. Mirroring someone else’s happiness will only delay our gratification. If we take the time to really delve into our psyche, to look deeply into what makes us who we are, we will come to terms with what gives us the greatest pleasure in our life. So many people spend so much of their time trying to be something they are not. They only try to present the image they feel others want to see. But they do themselves a grave injustice by not being their genuine self. Maybe our warts are what make us truly special and by ignoring those so-called inferior qualities we lose our individuality.

We are all truly unique but embracing those true parts of ourselves means we have to go face to face with nothing more than our honest perception of who we are to the core. In no realm of our reality should we give the power of that perception to anyone but ourselves. There is no single person on the planet that has the right to tell us who we are or what we can become.

Hold a mirror to your face. Look deep within yourself and be honest enough to admit who you are and what it is that is right for you.  Everyone has warts – some are visible, some are masked. Being introspective will allow you to embrace those warts and realize that the things others see as flaws make you stand apart from every other human on the planet.

The portal of wants and wishes

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I love dreaming.  I love waking up in the morning and putting together the pieces of colors and images that have splashed themselves onto the blank canvas in my sleep.  I thrive on spending time over coffee attempting to put together the jigsaw cut-outs and make sense of what they are trying to tell me.   Mornings are a constant source of recollection, collaboration and interpretation.   The maelstrom of the previous day becomes a masterpiece in my dreams that only I can put together the next day to make any sense of it.

Does that ever happen to you?  You spend so many conscious hours with something or someone at the forefront of your brain that they unwittingly seep into your nocturnal hours and wreak havoc in your dreams?  And it may not be the type of havoc that has you waking in a panic, covered in sweat, but the thought of them is left lingering in your mind to chase you around for another day.  It happens to me quite often with a myriad of things I encounter during my day.  It could be work or it could be a person I just can’t seem to shake from my thoughts.  I spend so many minutes of my day thinking about those things that I carry them into my dream world in a back pack that seems to open of its own volition and spill out into the landscape of my REM sleep.

(Image courtesy of Google)

And it is not that I go to bed with these thoughts whirling around in my head.  I have found a way to relax my brain before I drift off into that long-awaited slumber and wipe the stress and experience of the day from my mind.  But no matter what good intentions I have as I let the night pull down the shades of my eyelids, those waking thoughts transform themselves in my nightscape and travel through that mystical door of my dreams.  The invisible portal is opened and a new world of ideas and scenarios creeps into my subconscious.

And sometimes, if I wake early with the dream still lingering in the realm between awake and asleep, I long to get back to the dream.  Cherished moments, although created in another dimension of my reality, seem so real that I can live there again if I could only drift back into sleep.  My wishes wait there for me.  My desire holds firmly in its place to anticipate my safe arrival back through the portal of my dream world.

However, the invasion of my reality into those dreams is anticipated.  On occasion, work and family are now holding the seats in the front row of the performance of my dream to watch as the scene plays out for those final moments of my reanimated sleep.  The panorama that I had so carefully constructed in the previous hours of my dream world becomes interrupted with more genuine actuality than was originally anticipated.  Somehow that carefree abandon is now speckled with a plethora of reality and the dream that I truly wanted to dream about is invaded less by my unconscious and is now dominated by my conscious waking moments.  My dream is now a host to real life.

What about you?  Do your dreams take you on an adventure or do your dreams consist more of your reality?

Allegory of Madness – fiction

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Botticelli-primavera

The longer he stared at the painting, the more his grip on reality began to fragment.  His work had begun so innocently but, now that he had become so captivated by this painting, he knew his collection was far from complete.

He finished his lunch and made his way out of the museum.  Every day he spent 45 minutes, vaguely noticing that he was eating because he was so moved by Botticelli’s depiction of these women.  He was hypnotized by the way they seemed to be suspended in time.  He wanted that for his masterpiece.  He wanted to capture the very essence of life standing still as the famous painter had been able to achieve on his canvas.

The day dragged on and his thoughts turned to his work in progress.  If he put his artwork into perspective, it was a little over half-finished.  He knew he had a great deal of work to do before he could compare himself to the master.

As the office day came to a close, he gathered his artist tools and ventured out into the waning daylight to get inspired.  His black van wound through the streets and he steered towards the park.  He saw her from a distance.  Her blonde hair danced in the breeze and he was mesmerized.  Her had found her.  He had found his Flora.

He pulled up under an overhang of tree branches and, after a great deal of effort on his part, coaxed her over to the van.  He could see she was nervous and he enjoyed the ruse more than the actual abduction.  He had told her how much he wanted to capture her vitality on his canvas and she was duly flattered.  She didn’t see the syringe until it had been plunged into her upper arm.

When he arrived home, he flung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and took her to the basement to meet the others.  The three Graces huddled in the corner, chained together, while the man who would portray Zephyrus lay unmoving in the corner.  Flora had not yet regained consciousness and he placed her gently on the mattress in the far corner, making sure to bind her wrists and ankles and chain her to the wall.

He was so close.  He only needed Spring and Venus to complete the picture.  He, of course, would play Mercury and, when all of the pieces were found, he would recreate Botticelli’s masterpiece in a living, human tableau.  He was convinced he would be able to display his masterpiece beside the original painting in the museum.

****

mutant750-wk

Written for the Grammar Ghoul Challenge to use this visual prompt by Botticelli and the verb form of the word “fragment”.

 

 

Eternal optimism while staring at your balls

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There is a local golf course that is always the first one to open every season.  They even have a count down sign on the highway so driver’s passing by can share their enthusiasm for the start of golf season. It is a nice reminder, a beacon of hope that lurking under the mounds of snow lie tiny blades of grass waiting to be kissed by the warm, Spring sun.

noodle-golf-balls

(image credit)

I drove by that sign today and the magic number on the sign is 25 days to golf.  I almost drove off the road I was laughing so hard.  As I collected myself, I began to scan my surroundings.  Mounds of snow still shroud anything that may slightly resemble a golf course and the temperature on my car thermometer was -12C.

Maybe the optimism of the course owner is misguided.  Perhaps he knows something the rest of us do not.  But I’m willing to bet that the sign proudly stating golf season will start in 25 days will say the same thing 25 days from now!

Dare to dream BIG

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Dreams come in all forms.  The one I had last night was a prime example of all of the outside forces in my world coming together in a blend of incongruous ideas.  But dreams keep life exciting.  Dreams are the wishes we make for ourselves and hold close to our hearts.

I have several dreams – some seem absolutely attainable and others seem light years from my perception of reality but I hold those dreams as close as the wishes that dangle at the tips of my outstretched fingers.  Those delusions of grandeur make me strive, not only to succeed but, to make my life as close to my image of perfection as possible.

Dreams give us motivation.  Dreams make the mundane tasks of everyday life seem that much more bearable.  Dreams can transport us from reality into a glimpse of a microcosm so far from our daily routine that the mere idea seems absurd. But those dreams give us hope.  Even though those desires convey the impression of being impervious to our concept of life as we know it, we still need to maintain the assumption that dreams come true. The strength of our imagination makes dreams become more plausible and leaves a door open to a world beyond the essence of our day-to-day life.  Those dreams make us breathe.

My dreams have no restrictions.  I dream small and I dream big.  The image below is one of my big dreams and one that I cannot seem to let go.  I want to own a Morgan.  I have had an infatuation with this car since the late 1980’s.  I can visualize it in my driveway.  I can picture what I am wearing when I drive it.  It has gone from passion to craving.  Oddly enough, I was looking through some old family photo albums and came across a picture of my dad standing in front of a Morgan on one of his trips to Florida.  I had no idea this obsession was genetic!

morgan

(image credit: retrothing.com)

I will never give up this dream, or any of my dreams.  The intensity I feel when I think about this car only fuels my desire to make this dream a reality.  Many of my dreams may not come to fruition but that will never quench my desire to make those fantasies become real.  The day I live without a dream is the day I stop living.

Never give up on your dreams.  The day we stop thinking we can have something is the day we give up.  Dreams give us hope. Dreams give us a drive to succeed.  Dreams make us realize that all things are possible if we only choose to believe.

Live long and prosper – fiction

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spock

(image credit)

Space was not the final frontier and neither was death.  It had been weeks since he had left his physical body and yet he knew his life was far from over.  He didn’t know how to classify the realm in which he currently existed.  It wasn’t space, it wasn’t Heaven, it wasn’t Purgatory and it certainly wasn’t Hell.  It simply felt like what he imagined it would be like in the womb.  The sounds around him undulated and he felt like he was floating.

If he could not recall certain parts of his life, those memories slowly returned as if they were on a trailer reel of a film. It all seemed highly illogical but it was happening and he could not ignore the scenes as they played in his head.  Familiar faces drifted to the forefront of his mind and he knew them all by name.

The face that lingered the longest was of a man he had known well.  William.  His name was William.  As the details of William’s face became more pronounced in his memory, he became overwhelmed with emotion, something he had done his best to conceal throughout his life.

Images rushed by now, tumbling over themselves to make room for others and, as the last pieces seemed to fall into place, the movie of his life began.  He watched his childhood, he witnessed himself as a young man falling in love for the first time and he watched as he tried his first cigarette.  He turned away and the movie paused.  That moment frozen on the screen was the beginning of his end.

He focused once more on the show and watched the legacy he helped build, in his personal life and his career.  The words he uttered many times on-screen came true in more ways than one in his life and, even though this life no longer existed, he would still live long and prosper in the minds of those who loved him.

mutant750-wk

Written for the Grammar Ghoul Challenge – In memory of Leonard Nimoy the word prompt is illogical and the visual prompt is a scene from Star Trek II – The Search for Spock.  I was extremely sad when he passed.  I spent many of my childhood years watching Star Trek and, in many ways, Leonard Nimoy reminded me of my dad.  LLAP.

 

Things are not always what they seem

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As the nights began to get colder and the days grew shorter, a non-conforming sparrow decided not to fly South for the winter. The winds shifted, the snow began to fly and the mercury dropped to frigid levels.  Realizing the decision not to go South was horribly wrong, the sparrow reluctantly began its journey to a warmer climate.

The elements exploded from the winter sky and battered the poor bird.  Soon ice began to form on its tiny wings and the sparrow could no longer remain in flight.  The wind and snow volleyed the bird in mid-air and the sparrow fell to the Earth, landing in a barnyard.  Its heartbeat was weak and the sparrow faced the inevitability of freezing to death in the vast expanse of farm land.

sparrow-in-the-snow

 

(image credit)

No sooner had the bird given in to its undeniable fate, when a cow wandered dangerously close to the dying bird, lifted its tail and crapped on the sparrow.  Stunned by the irony of being shit on while it slowly died, the bird began to feel warm.  The heat from the cow patty was melting the frost and the bird began to feel its heart pounding stronger and stronger with each beat.

With growing warmth and a sudden optimism, the bird began to sing.  It celebrated its narrow escape of impending death.  It basked in the glory of being to continue its journey South and it laughed in the face of fate itself.

The sparrow’s song grew so loud that the bird did not hear the approach of the feral barn cat.  Investigating the sounds, the cat circled the bird and pounced, clearing the cow patty and carrying the now deceased bird back to its lair for a late supper.

There are lessons to be learned from every story.  Everyone who shits on you is not necessarily your enemy.  Everyone who gets you out of shit is not necessarily your friend and if you are warm and happy in a pile of shit, keep your mouth shut.

~~

This was a joke I remember hearing when I was in high school.  I embellished a bit (no surprise there) but I think the lessons are still worthy of sharing.