I sit here out on our rooftop patio on a stool at my makeshift, bar-height table, eating a vegan, gluten-free naturopath's dream of a late, salad lunch, watching the clouds form, play and die in the distance. A light breeze. Comfortable temperature, right in between Summer's warmth and Fall's fresh. Nom. Sigh. Fuck...don't exhale with a mouthful of masticated salad, especially when there are fresh, organic jalapenos chopped up in it. You might cough one into a nasal passage like I just did.
My point? Oh...a break from eating, I fiddle with the coins in my pocket, pull them out. Penny. yay. Dime. weee. Shiny penny. Copper. Love copper. Love the shiny. 2018 D. Why do we still mint these things?
"In God We Trust".
"We"? Bullshit. I have never believed in any kind of over-arching deity. I have lived my 49+ years (counting gestation) putting up with the stress that my country's currency brings me every time I look at it. That statement does not represent me in any way, shape or form. Never has. It certainly didn't my parents, either. My beloved grandpa thought we were put here by aliens. Putting that statement on things might have had more weight when the initial decision was made, by all white males, and like so so many of our laws it needs to be updated with current considerations and effects in mind.
I am not looking past it today. Not today. Today I am ticked off by this. Why so deeply under my skin now? I actually went inside to grab my laptop to type this out. Writing is therapy and I need to do it more often. I think many of us do.
SQUIRREL! Oh, nope. Just a really great, rainy, dark squall in the distance. Awesomesauce. They told me we could get lightning today. I'll believe it when it hits me...this is Seattle. <3 Cliff Mass though.
"There is No God But God". Who said that...? Reza Aslan I think? Dunno why that popped in there but I think it might be a book I intended to read and forgot about.
Why the fuck do utensils have to slide sideways into whatever it is you are eating, just to mess itself up for you? This is partly why I eat (only at home, mind you) with a shirt I call my 'napkin'...so I can use it as such. I use a salad spoon. More on that in another post...maybe.
Yes, yet again I am allowing my ADD to talk me out of being pissed off at yet another part of our current state of affairs in this country. Again. Some people obviously harbor the ability to brush off these issues in favor of their bubble but I can not. Doomed to care, like so many others, how things affect people and other living things.
Currency, as with our executive, judicial and legislative, should be as neutral as possible. As with any form or facet of government - trying to do the most good for the most living things. Every time. And there is certainly no excuse for not doing our diligence today - we are too damned smart to be this stupid.
Fucking spoon. Fucking yellow jacket. They're always monumentally pissed off at the world this time of year (in Seattle) too, not that I blame them. They redefine 'hangry', and I actually do empathize with them at times. Hmm...I don't think they suffer 'hypoglycemia', do they? Will have to look that up. With colder weather returning it has to beyond suck to have your metabolism shutting down. They have to suffer the ultimate hunger pang as they die from it. Now I'm thinking of small children with distended bellies the world over dying of the same thing. And polar bears. Fuck this yellow jacket though...if it gets too close I'll put it out of both our miseries.
Like my tablecloth? Rain. By the way, organic as possible salad ingredients if you are curious, all chopped finely enough to eat with a tablespoon:
Romaine
Jalapeno
Red onion
Spinach
Honeycrisp apple
Dried blueberries
Dried cherries
Diced super firm tofu
Crushed pecans
Cherry tomatoes
Turmeric
Paprika
Cayenne
Red pepper flakes
Olive oil
Sesame oil
I'll have to come back to this to finish my thoughts on this god-on-currency shit though.
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
My Weird Little James Cameron Dream
12/6-7/2017
Typical night, to bed a bit early, maybe 11pm. Dean Evenson's Dreamstreams playing. As always.
I woke up a couple of times already, seemingly for no apparent reason; I do not recall the times, maybe 1am and 3am or so it felt. Right back to sleep both times.
It has been a while since I've dreamt so lucidly, at least by accident. Lucid/conscious dreaming is much fun and I highly recommend it.
This time around I was up a kind of massive, metal construction. Huge air intakes, piping, metal catwalks with access areas to various openings, panels and what have you. Nothing specific or very detailed. The structure felt like it was a total of 500-600' high and I felt like I was halfway up...I did not know what I was doing there. Obviously a dream as I am fairly acrophobic. A vast, old, paved area expanded around it for a long way, into old warehouses and what have you. It struck me very much to be a variation of Seattle's industrial SoDo area.
It was 100% overcast...one of those warm, totally gray days you see in Spring and Summer in Seattle. Almost no breeze, very comfortable temperature. I was looking around.
Then this small, brightly-colored two-seater convertible with its top down drove up and parked at the base of my tower. Yellow, orange, washed-out red, something of the like but I forget the color...more on that in a bit. A man got out. White hair. Jeans. Short sleeves on a tucked-in button-down. From that height, looking down on top of him I could not tell who it was. Then two other identical cars, both again with the tops down, drove up and parked next to his. Then four more drove up and parked a couple of dozen feet away at a slight angle, all facing the tower. I did not see other drivers. Lined up together they looked like a package of brightly-colored, unwrapped Starburst candies.
The man started climbing the metal staircases toward me. We were still the only two people there and nobody else in the distance. It was at this point that I realized that there was also no activity going on anywhere. We were alone.
I don't know why I wasn't walking down to meet him, but when he got within earshot we started talking, as if we were already well acquainted. I do not recall the conversation, but it was obvious we were 'talking shop'. Ideas, inventions, possible solutions to technical challenges, problems, issues. It was James Cameron.
It needs to be said that I pretty much idolize the guy to a point unlike anyone else. He strikes me as a person unimpeded by himself or anything, anyone. Single-minded when he gets an idea. Patient. Impatient. Devoted. Loyal. Highly creative. Highly intelligent, interested in everything. The guy has been married five (?) times, and to all highly intelligent, motivated, successful women; successful in that they are achieving much with their chosen careers, productively as well as financially. Five different women of this ilk don't risk marriage with a divorcée like this unless he has something to offer...and these aren't gold-digger types who are after the money and fame that come with being attached to him...they are attracted to this man's dreams, commitment, sensitivity. But he is a pain in the ass when he finally starts externalizing some idea that he has been gnawing on for likely years...that single-mindedness percolating to the surface where he needs to give it its due attention and little else will distract him, much to the chagrin of whoever he happens to be in a relationship with at the time.
My ideas, his, quite the mix. It isn't lost on me that I've daydreamed about conversations with him and people like him. Sure, I need/want money, there are things responsible and not that I would love to be able to partake in but at the end of the day I want waterfront facing Seattle, acreage looking into the Olympics and whatever else that allows me to work up my ideas. I just need enough budget to do what I want when I want, and I don't need a $65m personal jet, nor any single house over 4,000sqft. Shops...metal, wood, plastics, everything. Photography studios. Lots of gear and tools. We talk about our processes. He had stopped at a platform one below me, maybe twenty feet. We were both futzing with this soft, brown, granulated stuff that covered everything; grabbing handfuls and kneading it out between our fingers. Then he said, some of the only words I actually recall him saying: "I can do something with this".
Coffee....grounds. Had been roasted but not boiled into coffee. That was it...a massive coffee bean roaster. In Seattle of all places. Then I had the feeling that I had been looking over this contraption for someone else, trying to solve a problem for them. Was he just there to help? Had I asked him to lend a neuron? Then I recall him grabbing a couple of big handfuls, pressing his face into them while rubbing them together to eek out some aroma and he said, somewhat resignedly, "rubber". Yeah...this batch hadn't turned out very well.
Coffee. Why the fuck coffee? The only thing I can think of is that I don't drink coffee, at least not since college and even then it was, as with so many, with purpose. Once in a blue moon I'd partake just to see if my own physiology and thus taste buds had changed. A few years ago my beloved naturopath Dr Jon joked with me that I "might develop a responsible coffee habit". More recently, very recently...as in last week...I asked my partner Grace to help me develop my palate. What was I missing? Why did I not like the stuff? I mean, I love the smell of coffee. Lovelovelove. But...the bitter is lost on me. I feel like I could learn to appreciate the finer distinctions, but how? I've been a wine chemist and 'get' various levels of appreciation and description, but I almost always have to turn coffee into syrup before I can stand it, mostly because I also love anything coffee-flavored. Maybe Jim was also there to help me solve this problem? Seems like something a good friend might do...just a thought that it wasn't my taste buds that were the problem but with virtually all the coffee that had been produced that I had tried to this point.
Yes, I'm toying with my own variant of dream analysis. weee.
I'm the type of person who is massively successful at getting in his own way. I'm also badly ADD. If I may be so bold, I have potentially massive ideas. Played right, a billion-dollar company or three. A competing theory to the Big Bang. Inventions up the ass of a black hole (that's big as well as small, right? interstellar rectum? OK, maybe a wormhole...gimme a break, I got out of bed at 5am to get this out of my head). Lots and lots of ideas, and good ones. My photographic art project list alone is insane. It was never lost on me Jim took on the design of a deep-sea creature for the Deepsea Challenger...biomimicry at its best. I love think tanks. But I have trust issues...serious trust issues. I fear my ideas will die with me because I fear more people stealing and taking credit, profiting from them. It has already happened, though these days I have sharper claws and teeth. Maybe 5-10% of my ideas are on paper with some now out in the wild but the rest are locked up in my gray matter. I believe strongly in credit where it is due, and I do believe in rewarding those who contribute. A sense of fair play. Of course, if I am a billionaire, I didn't get there alone. I fantasize about putting Oskar Schindler to shame in terms of expressing 'gratitude'. Why have money if not to spoil those around you and build things for the community? Within reason, of course...we don't want people to just sit back and live luxuriously off of the backs of others, right?
But I digress.
We eventually started making our way down the stairs, yapping the entire way. It strikes me as a bit odd that in my dream we never appeared to get to within maybe a dozen feet of each other. I'm not sure why that is...he strikes me as being like me, in that we're competitive against challenges but not so much against other people. Competition has always been lost on me, preferring hands-down any type of cooperation. I'm also the type of person who, when playing a competitive board game with several others, will sacrifice myself just to put a massive dent in the ambitions of the most (unreasonably) competitive person at the table, and enjoy doing it.
I feel like I've used the word 'digress' already but I...suppose I'm trying to solidify some change within myself as this is absolutely something different to be learned from.
Stairs. More conversation. In fact I feel like it rarely got more than a moment's breath of silence. Because there is so much out there to discuss.
We reached the ground where he headed toward the car he came in on. Still nobody else around, with a feeling not unlike some old ghost-town scene with a tumbleweed and a wispy dust-devil. Then a woman appeared out of nowhere...a beautiful, young woman carrying a tablet in her arm. Obviously highly together...maybe a personal assistant? Beauty aside it did strike me that Jim, probably like me, would go for the most qualified and personable candidate, someone who I'd work extremely well with; in this case it just happened to be this woman.
My conversation with Jim ended abruptly but not uncomfortably...not remotely. Was this our dynamic? Showing up at each other's location, anywhere on the planet to help out with a question? And why in person, not on a call? The answer seems obvious as it is far more fun, but I know we're both busy people. There again that is probably the point, even though neither of us would be unaware of the impact we'd be having on the planet as a result of jetting off to see a friend 180º (x2) away.
I asked the woman about the cars...were they all automatons that could be driven manually on-demand? She smiled and said yes. Also yes to GPS tracking that allowed all six of the others to track where Jim was and keep up with him...redundant vehicles in case the one he was driving failed. I actually have no idea what kind of car would interest him. These had a Ford badge on them with a Hybrid badge on the rear, which is odd because he and I both would go full EV if given the chance and they are available now. Maybe testing something...seems likely. Kind of a modern, sleeker-looking Karmann Ghia with a rear like a Porsche Boxster. Hydrogen Hybrid? I tend to dislike almost all Porsche body styling, FWIW. Maybe it was my dream just screwing with me.
It was at about that point I recall an increasing lucidity...recalling the entire dream but losing dialogue. It does strike me that it was very much a variant of my own self-talk, daydreaming about what other people might say when talking to them about an idea I or they have.
I do think about Jim a lot...mainly how he approaches getting things done. I think the biggest thing is that if he needs a tool to get something done he just works to invent it...something I very much adhere to, I just need to be better about finding people I can trust and who will work with me to get it done, so we and others might profit and partake in what it has to offer. These days I just try to use that to motivate myself as I am very successful at directing my energy to helping others and have always had a problem doing for myself. Ultimately it would never be just for me, but it does boil down to, as much as it pains me, chasing my own dreams and not letting anything get in my way.
6:35am...I got out of bed at like 5:06ish? I am awake...yawn...
7:00am...yeah, had to re-read and edit. Figures. Maybe more later but I think I've recalled as much as I can for now. <3
Typical night, to bed a bit early, maybe 11pm. Dean Evenson's Dreamstreams playing. As always.
I woke up a couple of times already, seemingly for no apparent reason; I do not recall the times, maybe 1am and 3am or so it felt. Right back to sleep both times.
It has been a while since I've dreamt so lucidly, at least by accident. Lucid/conscious dreaming is much fun and I highly recommend it.
This time around I was up a kind of massive, metal construction. Huge air intakes, piping, metal catwalks with access areas to various openings, panels and what have you. Nothing specific or very detailed. The structure felt like it was a total of 500-600' high and I felt like I was halfway up...I did not know what I was doing there. Obviously a dream as I am fairly acrophobic. A vast, old, paved area expanded around it for a long way, into old warehouses and what have you. It struck me very much to be a variation of Seattle's industrial SoDo area.
It was 100% overcast...one of those warm, totally gray days you see in Spring and Summer in Seattle. Almost no breeze, very comfortable temperature. I was looking around.
Then this small, brightly-colored two-seater convertible with its top down drove up and parked at the base of my tower. Yellow, orange, washed-out red, something of the like but I forget the color...more on that in a bit. A man got out. White hair. Jeans. Short sleeves on a tucked-in button-down. From that height, looking down on top of him I could not tell who it was. Then two other identical cars, both again with the tops down, drove up and parked next to his. Then four more drove up and parked a couple of dozen feet away at a slight angle, all facing the tower. I did not see other drivers. Lined up together they looked like a package of brightly-colored, unwrapped Starburst candies.
The man started climbing the metal staircases toward me. We were still the only two people there and nobody else in the distance. It was at this point that I realized that there was also no activity going on anywhere. We were alone.
I don't know why I wasn't walking down to meet him, but when he got within earshot we started talking, as if we were already well acquainted. I do not recall the conversation, but it was obvious we were 'talking shop'. Ideas, inventions, possible solutions to technical challenges, problems, issues. It was James Cameron.
It needs to be said that I pretty much idolize the guy to a point unlike anyone else. He strikes me as a person unimpeded by himself or anything, anyone. Single-minded when he gets an idea. Patient. Impatient. Devoted. Loyal. Highly creative. Highly intelligent, interested in everything. The guy has been married five (?) times, and to all highly intelligent, motivated, successful women; successful in that they are achieving much with their chosen careers, productively as well as financially. Five different women of this ilk don't risk marriage with a divorcée like this unless he has something to offer...and these aren't gold-digger types who are after the money and fame that come with being attached to him...they are attracted to this man's dreams, commitment, sensitivity. But he is a pain in the ass when he finally starts externalizing some idea that he has been gnawing on for likely years...that single-mindedness percolating to the surface where he needs to give it its due attention and little else will distract him, much to the chagrin of whoever he happens to be in a relationship with at the time.
My ideas, his, quite the mix. It isn't lost on me that I've daydreamed about conversations with him and people like him. Sure, I need/want money, there are things responsible and not that I would love to be able to partake in but at the end of the day I want waterfront facing Seattle, acreage looking into the Olympics and whatever else that allows me to work up my ideas. I just need enough budget to do what I want when I want, and I don't need a $65m personal jet, nor any single house over 4,000sqft. Shops...metal, wood, plastics, everything. Photography studios. Lots of gear and tools. We talk about our processes. He had stopped at a platform one below me, maybe twenty feet. We were both futzing with this soft, brown, granulated stuff that covered everything; grabbing handfuls and kneading it out between our fingers. Then he said, some of the only words I actually recall him saying: "I can do something with this".
Coffee....grounds. Had been roasted but not boiled into coffee. That was it...a massive coffee bean roaster. In Seattle of all places. Then I had the feeling that I had been looking over this contraption for someone else, trying to solve a problem for them. Was he just there to help? Had I asked him to lend a neuron? Then I recall him grabbing a couple of big handfuls, pressing his face into them while rubbing them together to eek out some aroma and he said, somewhat resignedly, "rubber". Yeah...this batch hadn't turned out very well.
Coffee. Why the fuck coffee? The only thing I can think of is that I don't drink coffee, at least not since college and even then it was, as with so many, with purpose. Once in a blue moon I'd partake just to see if my own physiology and thus taste buds had changed. A few years ago my beloved naturopath Dr Jon joked with me that I "might develop a responsible coffee habit". More recently, very recently...as in last week...I asked my partner Grace to help me develop my palate. What was I missing? Why did I not like the stuff? I mean, I love the smell of coffee. Lovelovelove. But...the bitter is lost on me. I feel like I could learn to appreciate the finer distinctions, but how? I've been a wine chemist and 'get' various levels of appreciation and description, but I almost always have to turn coffee into syrup before I can stand it, mostly because I also love anything coffee-flavored. Maybe Jim was also there to help me solve this problem? Seems like something a good friend might do...just a thought that it wasn't my taste buds that were the problem but with virtually all the coffee that had been produced that I had tried to this point.
Yes, I'm toying with my own variant of dream analysis. weee.
I'm the type of person who is massively successful at getting in his own way. I'm also badly ADD. If I may be so bold, I have potentially massive ideas. Played right, a billion-dollar company or three. A competing theory to the Big Bang. Inventions up the ass of a black hole (that's big as well as small, right? interstellar rectum? OK, maybe a wormhole...gimme a break, I got out of bed at 5am to get this out of my head). Lots and lots of ideas, and good ones. My photographic art project list alone is insane. It was never lost on me Jim took on the design of a deep-sea creature for the Deepsea Challenger...biomimicry at its best. I love think tanks. But I have trust issues...serious trust issues. I fear my ideas will die with me because I fear more people stealing and taking credit, profiting from them. It has already happened, though these days I have sharper claws and teeth. Maybe 5-10% of my ideas are on paper with some now out in the wild but the rest are locked up in my gray matter. I believe strongly in credit where it is due, and I do believe in rewarding those who contribute. A sense of fair play. Of course, if I am a billionaire, I didn't get there alone. I fantasize about putting Oskar Schindler to shame in terms of expressing 'gratitude'. Why have money if not to spoil those around you and build things for the community? Within reason, of course...we don't want people to just sit back and live luxuriously off of the backs of others, right?
But I digress.
We eventually started making our way down the stairs, yapping the entire way. It strikes me as a bit odd that in my dream we never appeared to get to within maybe a dozen feet of each other. I'm not sure why that is...he strikes me as being like me, in that we're competitive against challenges but not so much against other people. Competition has always been lost on me, preferring hands-down any type of cooperation. I'm also the type of person who, when playing a competitive board game with several others, will sacrifice myself just to put a massive dent in the ambitions of the most (unreasonably) competitive person at the table, and enjoy doing it.
I feel like I've used the word 'digress' already but I...suppose I'm trying to solidify some change within myself as this is absolutely something different to be learned from.
Stairs. More conversation. In fact I feel like it rarely got more than a moment's breath of silence. Because there is so much out there to discuss.
We reached the ground where he headed toward the car he came in on. Still nobody else around, with a feeling not unlike some old ghost-town scene with a tumbleweed and a wispy dust-devil. Then a woman appeared out of nowhere...a beautiful, young woman carrying a tablet in her arm. Obviously highly together...maybe a personal assistant? Beauty aside it did strike me that Jim, probably like me, would go for the most qualified and personable candidate, someone who I'd work extremely well with; in this case it just happened to be this woman.
My conversation with Jim ended abruptly but not uncomfortably...not remotely. Was this our dynamic? Showing up at each other's location, anywhere on the planet to help out with a question? And why in person, not on a call? The answer seems obvious as it is far more fun, but I know we're both busy people. There again that is probably the point, even though neither of us would be unaware of the impact we'd be having on the planet as a result of jetting off to see a friend 180º (x2) away.
I asked the woman about the cars...were they all automatons that could be driven manually on-demand? She smiled and said yes. Also yes to GPS tracking that allowed all six of the others to track where Jim was and keep up with him...redundant vehicles in case the one he was driving failed. I actually have no idea what kind of car would interest him. These had a Ford badge on them with a Hybrid badge on the rear, which is odd because he and I both would go full EV if given the chance and they are available now. Maybe testing something...seems likely. Kind of a modern, sleeker-looking Karmann Ghia with a rear like a Porsche Boxster. Hydrogen Hybrid? I tend to dislike almost all Porsche body styling, FWIW. Maybe it was my dream just screwing with me.
It was at about that point I recall an increasing lucidity...recalling the entire dream but losing dialogue. It does strike me that it was very much a variant of my own self-talk, daydreaming about what other people might say when talking to them about an idea I or they have.
I do think about Jim a lot...mainly how he approaches getting things done. I think the biggest thing is that if he needs a tool to get something done he just works to invent it...something I very much adhere to, I just need to be better about finding people I can trust and who will work with me to get it done, so we and others might profit and partake in what it has to offer. These days I just try to use that to motivate myself as I am very successful at directing my energy to helping others and have always had a problem doing for myself. Ultimately it would never be just for me, but it does boil down to, as much as it pains me, chasing my own dreams and not letting anything get in my way.
6:35am...I got out of bed at like 5:06ish? I am awake...yawn...
7:00am...yeah, had to re-read and edit. Figures. Maybe more later but I think I've recalled as much as I can for now. <3
©2017 Michael Pichahchy
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