Things I’ve noticed lately
It’s getting darker earlier. I hate that.
It’s getting a mite colder, too. That, I don’t mind. In fact, I rather like the change.
I’m getting more tired of cooking and more into eating prepared foods. These Power Bowls aren’t bad.
As my car gets older – it’s a 2010 Ford Fusion SEL – my car insurance goes up. And I’ve got all those special discounts already: I don’t drive all that many miles per year, for example.
A lot of my friends are ill right now, and I don’t just mean the flu. Parkinson’s, heart problems, cancer.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been having a recurrent dream about Gerard. It’s now over a year and a half since he died, so I was initially puzzled about why I’d be having these dreams at this point. In the dreams, I suddenly realize I haven’t heard from him in a long long time. In the dreams it’s not because he died, it’s because he’s angry with me or is just moving on. In one of them, I catch sight of him in the grocery store from afar, and he looks fine. In the others, I’m just trying to figure out why he would have stopped calling me, when we used to speak just about every day. I think the dreams are a form of denial of his death, and they are connected with the fact that I’m about to start selling his essay book on November first.
This may sound a little weird, and not sure how you’ll take this, but I’d say be grateful for your dreams. I lost a very dear friend a few years ago, and for some reason I never dream about her. I very much wish that I did. I like to think it’s my psyche protecting me somehow. But I’d love for her to pop up in a dream, especially one where I realized I was dreaming, and I could really talk to her.
It’s not usual, I think, to subconsciously harbor feelings that you’ve been deliberately left when someone dies unexpectedly. It doesn’t make sense, because of course Gerard didn’t get cancer on purpose; but when you’re working so much on publishing the book, you think of him often, and he’s not calling you. And it doesn’t help when friends in our age group begin to get really sick also. I am so sorry for this melancholy autumn for you.
On a practical note, time to buy a new car before federal regulations make it impossible for you to buy a nice little gas-powered car for your local errands.
I don’t think I ever had dreams – or very rarely- about my Paternal grandfather until after he died. Then I had a number of them. And it seems that since my dad’s death the dreams about him come in cycles.
That book you are working on is probably part of the reason you are dreaming.
Kate:
Yes and thanks, but I think it’s weird that I had no dreams like this till the last few weeks. Odd that I didn’t have them the first few months.
All dreams are metaphors. All dreams are messages.
I have dreams about my dogs, those that have made the journey across Rainbow Bridge and wait for me on the other side, at play in the fields of the Lord. I believe they come into my dreams to comfort me. I believe I will see them again, and when I do it will be forever.
All my dreams are in the nature of journeys. I am always trying to get from one place to another, with varying degrees of success.
I wish I could write as well as I dream. My dreams are visually and thematically complex, extraordinarily so. Incredibly vivid. Very entertaining. Even the troubling dreams are entertaining, after a fashion.
Mike Plaiss:
I think I know what you mean. However, so far in these dreams, I don’t actually interact with him.
I don’t think dreams mean much, except that maybe Gerard has been on your waking mind lately.
About a year ago I had to part with a long-time friend due to some circumstances which we both agreed were not under the control of either of us, but yet I think left each of us worried that the other might feel hard done by. A few times I had dreams that we had smoothed things over and things were back as they were.
These dreams made me feel like I should be trying to do something to put things back together, and guilty and uncomfortable because I wasn’t. I kept thinking it through, but in the waking light it seemed like reaching out was more likely to do harm than good, and besides that I was very busy with a new baby.
A few months after that, my friend contacted me, and we did (I think) smooth things over, though I’m not sure things are quite back as they were. I made it 100% clear that I was not in the least aggrieved by what happened; the least I could do since my friend took the initiative in reaching out.
I don’t know if the dream came true exactly, and it didn’t make me feel better either. At least the situation got better.
I wish spring and autumn were as long as summer and winter and summer and winter were as short, as spring and autumn.
Cooking is best, when done for and with those we cherish.
In the democrat’s imagined urban utopia… we will be ‘persuaded’ to give up our cars for the greater good.
Old age is preparation for turning in our old ‘model’ for a new ‘vehicle’. Those who have passed on through the ‘curtain’ have moved on to a new ‘stage’. Our acceptance of that allows us to be ‘present’ in this moment.
IrishOtter:
Your write very well about your dreams 🙂 .
I likewise tend to have very vivid and complex dreams. Many of them involve journeys through a large house that’s somehow familiar but I’ve never been there before.
However, so far in these dreams, I don’t actually interact with him.
Yes, yes, I understand. But don’t you desperately wish you did?
Mike Plaiss:
I think I had some dreams early on where we interacted. They were pleasant, but they didn’t change any of the reality, of course.
When my grandmother died – whom I loved very much – I was nineteen. Since then, I’ve had many very pleasant dreams where we’ve interacted, but not any recently. I also had a number of dreams where she was sick or disabled (which she wasn’t in real life; she died very suddenly in seeming good health), for example using crutches.
Thanks, neo!
Btw, I have recurring dreams about several different houses. I like those houses. I hope I see them on the other side.
I certainly could be wrong but my belief is everyone has dreams.
My pet peeve is daylight savings time, I H8 the change.
IrishOtter:
If you’ve never read it, you might enjoy a short story by Ursula LeGuin entitled “Small Change.”
Speaking of dreams, and the impact they can have, any fans of this movie amongst our commenters?
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/what_dreams_may_come
A horribly reviewed movie, but only because, They. Don’t. Get. It.
A re-telling of the Orpheus myth. I like it very much, but I have two friends, who I respect tremendously, that say this is the movie that most touches their soul. That is not to be taken lightly. Both have experienced profound loss.
I agree that for frozen food Power Bowls are quite decent.
Living where you do far (but not the farthest) east in the Eastern Time Zone you get earlier sunsets than most of the country. But you also get earlier sunrises which is great if you’re a morning person.
I don’t understand why your car insurance price would go up as your car gets older, given that a car’s value decreases with age.
@Marisa:I don’t understand why your car insurance price would go up as your car gets older, given that a car’s value decreases with age.
What you’re primarily and legally required to be insured for, is liability–the harm you will do other drivers or pedestrians–and that is higher for drivers over 70. But inflation probably has something to do with it too.
I remembered my dreams more when I was young. I even kept a dream journal.
Maybe if I still kept that journal I’d remember more of my dreams.
On frozen foods rather than cooking, I have had a couple of outbreaks of hives in the last year. It starts with an insect bite and then expands. I can only stop it by taking steroids and avoiding food allergy triggers. Every one of those nice Power Bowls has tomatoes in it. I will never be able to give up cooking, alas.
You’re having the dreams because Gerard is a former editor, and he knows a lot more about going to press under a deadline, than you do. What ever he has to say will come to you, eventually.
I’m sorry for your sad autumn, Neo.
As for dreams, I often dream about a rambling old white house, much like the old rambling house my grandparents lived in when I was small, only infinitely larger. The dream house has rooms opening upon rooms, back stairways, secret passages, attics, nooks and crannies that I can never quite exhaust. In bad dreams, I might be lost in the house, or searching for something I can’t find, or being pursued through all those rooms, trying to find a place to hide. In good dreams, I find new rooms full of interesting curios and treasures that have apparently been there but undiscovered all this time. The house is always more or less the same, but also never quite familiar.
Sometimes I have variations on this dream set in a college dorm or a big hotel — but it’s always a relief to get back to that nice white house with its green shutters and many windows!
I was going to suggest you try a Warm Bowl from Angie’s Lobster/Prime Grill. The namesake, Angela Christofellis, was a restaurant operator in your state. But I discovered that Angie’s is an Arizona chain, started by one of her children. He also started Salad to Go, who makes a very affordable and large salad in several ways for about $7. With all the other fast-food places dropping salads as unprofitable, they found a hole and filled it.
For lobster, you get a roll, fries and drink for about $13. That’s jumped in the last year; I think lobster has gone up. The warm bowls start at $7 for grilled chicken, $9 for grilled steak or shrimp. A bowl is good for two meals for me. There’s brown rice, feta, dried cranberries, grilled sweet potato, apples and candied pecans, plus the meat. There are five other flavors but this is my favorite.
The operation is very streamlined to keep costs low. You won’t get a straw; the lid is sippable. Inside they use fryers filled with water to flash portions to the right temperature, all carefully timed. There’s no indoor seating. They want you to order and pay before you get to the window.
Anyway, it’s a shame they don’t have one near you, but if you get a chill and need to warm up, flights to PHX or Mesa are cheap, and I’ll be glad to haul you to the nearest one. Beats a power bowl six ways to Sunday!
Auto insurance has inflated tremendously recently. There are reportedly big regional variations. Repair costs is one stated reason in the news.
I’ve got many new friends and while most are healthy, a few have serious illnesses. Oddly, it is exactly neo’s list. Heart problems, Parkinson’s, and two cancer patients. One who’s apparently licked it already, the other more recent one that sounds like it’s terminal.
Having lost my wife some years ago to cancer, my impression is that it takes some time for the gravity and awareness of the full consequences to be appreciated.
“…getting darker …”
This is what happens when you cross “Biden”:
“NYC Mayor Eric Adams indicted by grand jury in historic federal probe…”—
https://nypost.com/2024/09/25/us-news/nyc-mayor-eric-adams-indicted-by-grand-jury-in-historic-federal-probe-sources/
Musk is next on the Great Lawman’s list….
Mrs. Whatsit:
Lovely, classic dream stories!
The few recent dreams I’ve had were about my mother and brother, both long departed. In the dreams I don’t know they are dead. I’m still trying to work things out with them.
By taking up electric guitar I know I’m poaching on my brother’s territory. But it’s also a way to be closer to him.
Mrs Whatsit:
Your house dreams are something like mine – a familiar yet unfamiliar place that keeps expanding into rooms not seen before.
You might also like the Ursula LeGuin short story I recommended to IrishOtter earlier, “Small Change.”
marisa:
Inflation. I think the higher price for insurance is mostly based on the higher price for auto repairs.
Perhaps launching Gerard’s book has something to do with recent dreams, completing his task and the love you have shared would make this come up to the surface in the nocturnal brain concoction we experience at times when you are sleeping. Seems as if these are memories and thoughts to be cherished now that a bit to time has passed however, I don’t know.
As i am closing in on 80 years old I have a lot of friends who have moved on to their next adventures and I have an older brother in a fragile condition who will be 90 next month and the really dislikes talking about his health. My friends, we are aging on out, being a three times cancer survivor I have been in overtime for more than a few years and I am all so happy to still be here. So, there’s that.
Old Texan:
Glad you are here, too! 80 doesn’t sound so old anymore. You are definitely made of strong stuff.
You can be sure that you’re not the only one around here who sorely misses Gerard’s writings and no less so his persona.
I made a joke in a dream the other night—unusual. Someone was telling me about a horrible experience they’d had while on a cruise ship and I said to them, “Wait, do you hear that?” And they said, “What?” And I replied, “That’s the sound of me never getting on a boat again in my life!”
One reason for high auto repairs: shortage of experienced mechanics. Several years ago it took nearly three weeks for a garage to get to and finish a repair. It’s a good shop, so I wasn’t about to go elsewhere. As a shop with a good reputation, they had a backlog. (They didn’t increase the labor charge when they needed to do more than they had quoted, but simply charged me for the added materials. )
My auto insurance has about doubled in four years, to where I calculate I am paying 50 cents a mile for insurance- and that is with minimum coverage- liability but not collision. Collision for a 16 year old car?
One consequence of the shortage of experienced auto mechanics is good wages for auto mechanics. A friend’s 17 year old grandson, who graduated from high school a year early, started work as an auto mechanic, with a starting wage of $25.50 an hour. The shop asked him if his 19 year old brother would like to come to work as an auto mechanic, but as the 19 year old brother is making $6000 a month as a restaurant manager, he declined the offer. Who needs college?
Who needs college? I am reminded of an older student in my engineering cohort, who got his degree at 30, telling me why he went back to school. He was making good money in construction, but got tired of hearing from his workmates explanations that made no sense.
Someone should make sure not to forget to “return the sausages”.
Oh, and while they’re at it, tell these countries to fuck right off: https://x.com/AcrossTheBay/status/1839120976950309039
For me –
Dreams are the threads of the futures past
winding thru my memories
I often dream of people I’ve known or places that I’ve been.
I never dream of places that I have yet to see
or people that I have yet to meet …
Or have I ?
Neo, at least you’re auto insurance hasn’t gone up like in Springfield, OH which has turned into real life bumper cars.
I shouldn’t make light of it, since fatalities have increased as well.
Here is a Google Doc of a list of auto accidents in 2021. It’s 80 pages long.
I don’t know what’s considered average for a town the size of Springfield, but residents have claimed 8-10 a day.
This document would suggest it’s more like 4 or 5 a day. That still seems like a lot.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p1Pwnreb72-tW6Stoc1awREjaL9Q5smD/view
Here’s more concrete evidence of a problem in Springfield. Crime statistics.
The crime rate in general is twice the national average adjusted for population.
https://www.areavibes.com/springfield-oh/crime/
Since the thread is mostly about dreams, I’ve noticed for some time I’ll have a dream about or including someone I think I know, but I can never see their face. It’s almost like the face is blurred out.
I also really like the Power Bowls.
I dream of my deceased father fairly often. In all of them I am aware that it is a dream so I mostly just enjoy them until I either wake or my mind wanders off into another, different dream. I am glad for the dreams though they do sometimes leave me sadder for them ending.
Such a lovely, personal thought to share!
I’ve been doing this, too, myself, with dreams about my late father and an ex-GF of five years (including several living) together.
I agree with your final thought about connection. And about the possibility of anger projected on Gerard in your dream. I’ll bet that’s a manifestation of your vulnerability towards him. In other words, your love.
Very sweet. I mean, we are talking about the lost or dead souls. And how we ultimately move on without them. Perhaps with regret. But certainly felt loss.
For example, this ex left me for an older man (but with unresolved childhood trauma moving her insecurity away from me). And sometimes every 5 or 10 years I do a name search and discover where in the world she’s living now. After St.Croix, US Virgin Islands, it was Naples, FL. Recently, it’s Western South Carolina.
Anyway, in my dream, I follow her to a bus stop. Then I find myself on that bus route and discover that she’s in the back seats. So, I go to the back and sit, facing her, recognising each other. I then take hold of the bottom of her very long legs from the feet and begin massaging them in my lap. She moans — then I wake up!
The secret fact making sense of this scene? Despite being a six-foot tall glamazon — but for sports, she always wore heels. Heels are a challenge to the feet, you know.
That’s me, missing the communion of the intimacy we’d shared. And in the spirit of moving on, I though I’d share too.
Listening to people’s dreams gets old fast. But here are three of mine.
1. Trying to get home, but am lost or keep going through funky environments, or can’t make train connections.
2. Talking to loved ones who have passed away. When I wake up, I realize who they are.
3. Dreams with jokes or puns, where I wake up laughing.
I used to read books in my dreams.
Unfortunately, I could never remember the plots when I woke up.
The sensation of walking through a well-known place that is somehow different was also quite common for me, usually the old junior high I attended, which had an unusual floor plan. It was also the building my mother and father attended high school in, having been demoted to JHS when the new HS was built in later years.
The other most common dreams in my repertoire are also school related: showing up for a class that’s having a test, and realizing I’d never been there before, or trying to open what I knew was my locker and not being able to.
I don’t remember my dreams much these days.
Probably comes from staying up too late at night.
BTW, we are home from our mission in Wyoming and at least I am sleeping in my own bed now!
Related?
“Dreams from My Father” revisited…
NIGHTMARES, rather.
Here’s Turley:
“The Counter-Constitutional Movement: The Assault On America’s Defining Principles“—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/counter-constitutional-movement-assault-americas-defining-principles
Key grafs:
Trying to pull it all together—anxiously, frighteningly, culturally, religiously, historically, unflinchingly…
“ Legends of the Fall”—
https://archive.ph/nZhwo
H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2024/09/25/legends-of-the-fall/
I am starting to experience the same bad news/contraction among my circle of friends.
As an expat I lost track of many when I moved, and have already made and received some “what ever happened to…” phone calls and emails.
I have seen this happen with my parents – when they first retired to Israel they and their friends were still young enough to fly back and forth. Many also had children here… Then it got harder. At least one friend has made her last trip to the Holy Land in a pine box… which allowed me to catch up with her kids, who were childhood friends.
My parents also created a local community of expat retirees which has inevitably shrunk over time. Covid spooked some of their friends, who no longer want to meet for brunch. Others now have aides to help them get around.
My impression is that this blog has expanded your circle – that is a very good thing. One must push against inertia to make new friends.
Actually I hate waking up in the morning and it is pitch black outside. I also love Autumn weather.
Huxley, thanks. I wish that like you, I could dream about lost people like my parents or my youngest brother. I don’t seem to; sometimes I visit with living friends in my dreams, or my living husband, but the lost people seem to stay lost.
And Neo, thanks for the Ursula LeGuin suggestion. I’ve read and loved many of her short stories (and of course longer works) but not that one. I’m looking for it.
Ditto Mrs+Whatsit on the Ursula LeGuin short story. Thanks!
I don’t dream much and I remember less. No clue what to make of them.
I dream vividly, but the details dissipate a few minutes after waking. I do know that one recurring theme is running effortlessly and silently up the street I grew up on, at night, between the streetlights and the shifting tree shadows. It’s eerie but not frightening. Exhilarating, rather. God knows what it means. Is it an arrival? Or a departure?
Neo’s post comes at similar juncture for me. I retired over the summer and have spent most of the past three months in my hometown and the house where I grew up, sorting through my late parents’ possessions and preparing the house for a new phase in its life in our much-reduced family–or, depending on what happens in this state, for sale. I have also been spending a lot of time in the car, driving past old landmarks or where old landmarks used to be. The soft-serve place we used to go to after dinner in the summer. The house where my sister once lived. The family-owned department store, defunct now but still standing, where my mother liked to shop. The retirement community where my parents died, a year apart. The overgrown foundation of the ramshackle two-story wooden apartment house where my best friend and his partner lived and where we used to sit with their pets–a dog and two cats–in the jumbled, messy kitchen and watch the sunset over the hills. The place burned down a few months after my friend died. It’s a fenced-off cellar-hole now, “slowly closing like a dent in dough” (Frost).
There’s a photo of Frost in old age re-visiting the small town in England where he and his family lived from 1912-1915 and where he formed his friendship with Edward Thomas, who was killed in WWI. Frost has his hand over his eyes, as if overcome by memories:
https://www.life.com/photographer/howard-sochurek/ (scroll down)
I feel the same way. There are a lot of ghosts in this corner of New England. Perhaps some of them will visit. In the meantime, I’ll look up that Ursula LeGuin story.
The leaves up in the mountains started turning two weeks ago and now the leaves litter the trails. The daytime temperatures are still warm, but it gets down into the 40’s at night. Time to change the oil in the snowblower.
Neo:
You told me about Rana pasta and I still eat it. Had some last night. Thanks!
Roy Orbison: In Dreams
My dreams never have included someone I knew in real life, no matter how well, how long, or how intensely.
But I do encounter people in my dreams who, in the dream world, may be old acquaintances, sometimes with back stories.
As with Dax, sometimes it involves large, randomly-arranged buildings. Lately, being in Taiwan on business–in the dream–I hopped a ship and got to Japan. On my desire to return, it occurred to me I had no official anything and wasn’t going to get there legitimately.
On the airplane on the way back, we were told a bunch of somebody or others had taken over part of the air field. So we disembarked and went looking for them.
Going on sixty years ago, in a class on Freudian psychology, we discussed interpreting dreams. I couldn’t figure out how you confirmed your conclusions. No way to “falsify” the experiment. The prof wanted dream journals. I hadn’t had enough dreams recently so I made some up. Wonder what he thought.
Dreams: I don’t remember them much, but a recurring one is going to the first day of class and not being able to find the classroom. Or going to a test that I am not prepared for. Terrible feeling. I was not a very serious student in college.
My wife told me that she had a dream shortly after my father died, in which he told her she should reassure me he is ok. For some reason I could never understand, she delayed telling me for several weeks or months.
I had a girlfriend who had vivid dreams that seemed to coincide with events in her life. She carefully wrote down the details when she woke up. At least that’s what she told me — she never shared with me what she had written down. OTOH, she did tell her dental hygienist intimate details of our life together without identifying me, then got mad at the dentist’s office when the hygienist told me the same stories a few weeks later. I felt like that was a betrayal, and we didn’t stay together much longer.