Thursday, February 23rd, 2017  —>  +9˚C / +47˚F @11:07 am with bright and hazy sunshine in Atlantic Canada —> It’s another ex-next-door-neighbour – Ellen’s Birthday —> & Binnie Klein’s Birthday today —

– This is Moe – in a photo taken almost exactly one year ago – when we had a whole lot less snow – & This is also the photo I used for February when I designed our calendar for this year. – haven’t loaded this photo into this blog yet, so it feels appropriate enough. –

— Moe had been trying to get outside to investigate our wood shed – wings we added to the steel shed we put together the first autumn we were here in this neck of Atlantic Canada. He did escape on a bit of a snow-globe like day and ran to the wood shed, investigated hastily – did not like the snow getting between his toes and strutted back triumphantly – but not quite as triumphantly as he would have returned if he found a mouse hiding between firewood logs in the pile we had there. He does look thoughtful, doesn’t he? Instead of his snow dance – trying to shake the snow from his paws with each step – he opted to just plain hurry back into the sanity of a world that did not include cold wet white stuff that ignobly inserts itself between your toes with each step —

— Birthdays today: Ellen was a younger next door neighbor for quite a few years – she grew up to be musically creative and played her guitar during quite a few church services after I was in other states (As in Vermont and New York) and she developed a thing for Dachshunds – and is still in touch with us through facebook.  Binnie Klein is a poet, performance artist and radio personality with a volunteer gig at WPKN-FM { <— That’s a link }  in Bridgeport, CT. If I remember right, there is one week during the Astrological month of Pisces in which more people who were born that week become famous than any other week in any other Astrological sign. Messes up the law of averages big time. This might be that week.

— Dream : I dreamed a close friend of mine was in a very weird automobile accident. The vehicle he’d been riding in obviously collided with something – and was mangled on the front passenger side as if another vehicle had rammed into the car he was riding in – The really weird thing is – There was no evidence left behind from whatever collided with the vehicle my friend was in, no paint chips, no glass – *And* – A large chunk of the vehicle my friend was riding in had vanished – disappeared completely – all gone – not a trace – including my friend. —> In the dream I had privileged information that ‘normal’ people didn’t get – I was a reporter for a news paper/television media outlet and I arrived a couple minutes after the investigating police and medical emergency guys got there. —> I went into shock when one of the survivors told the police who had been in the passenger’s seat. —> We had a ‘sort of’ funeral – believing that nobody could have survived that – and some conspiracy people were claiming that some shadowy government dark ops group had invisible cars and they probably ‘cleaned up’ the accident – including any evidence that might have been there, including my friend’s body? Another weird theory involved something from an anti-matter universe jumping in and out of our dimension. —> And then, inside this dream, I dreamed I heard my friend calling for help and I was scrambling around the scene of the accident looking for him and couldn’t see him, until I saw a bright light form of a human being, as if it was a shadow, but made of light – and it scared me – I woke up, still inside the dream – and sat up in bed, breathing heavily and saw a vague outline of what had been a brilliant light form in the dream – I gasped and asked him if that was him – and interpreted the frustrated gestures that form made, “I can’t hear you – I can barely see you, but I’ll take that to be a ‘Yes’ -” —> I went to see a clairvoyant I had interviewed and described what I’d seen. The clairvoyant nodded, said that’s what she saw when she began to develop her ‘gift’ and she looked around and shrugged, said, ‘There’s nobody here right now-‘ —> A couple more dreams and a couple months passed and I dreamed I could see him better and better and he still looked like the person he had been- not all that worse for wear -. In the dreams I could shake his hand, even hug him – and feel him as a solid presence and immediately upon waking up from some of these dreams, I could see his light-form better and better – And then I began to be able to touch and feel his arms and hug him while I was awake and after maybe six months I could hear his voice and we could carry on nearly ‘normal’ conversations. He believed he’d become trapped between dimensions – in a place where there were solid objects and light forms and shadows of people – he had no idea how to tell whether these people were ‘alive’ in a three-dimensional world, or had died and become spirits – Then one day he came to me while I was working on an assignment – photographing and video-taping an area where local residents had reported weird lights and spooky noises and stuff – he came to me and very excitedly – told me he thought he could touch me and bring me over into the world he was trapped in – I said, ‘Hey wait a minute, I don’t want to be trapped there too -‘ He picked up a small rock, which vanished – and carried it a slight distance, dropped it – and it reappeared. And then – before I could convince him that just because he could make a rock do that – didn’t necessarily mean he could get me in and out of the world he was trapped in. – He grabbed me and pulled me through – to the inside of what looked like somebody’s sadly neglected hunting cabin, which was a mess – looked like somebody or some animal had gotten in and knocked stuff over and pretty much trashed the place – I could see him, see through him, and hear him as if he was speaking through a lousy old transistor radio whose battery was dying – but when he shook my hand – I felt he was solid – I tentatively tried to pick up a pot that looked like something anybody would cook soup in and it felt strange – I did pick it up – it felt like it was coated with something slimy and wet – And when I looked at my hands it looked like some glowing liquid had imprinted on my hands and left a pattern something like what a fillet of fish might leave on a plastic coating it was packaged inside of – if it had been left outside of refrigeration too long and had started to go bad. It didn’t stink – I heard him say, “You may not be able to feel things in this world, but you can certainly see them -” —> I was wondering if the slime would wash off my hands as I woke up and Moe, the mischievous real-world orange cat – whose photo adorns the top of this article/post – pushed through our closed bedroom door, announced his presence and moved around with his tail acting like a flag in the early morning half-light. I grumbled something scatological and got up and walked to the kitchen and got the cat something to chew on – Then came into my office here and wrote down everything I could remember of that dream. —> Hmmmm? —-> Now where the bleep did that dream come from? —> I get that kind of dream, in which everything looks and feels ‘real’ quite a bit – usually if I haven’t written anything I’m happy with for a while. But I’m pretty much happy with what I’m working on lately.

* * * * *

— & Now the “Labels , Politix and Social Movements” stuff —> This morning on the CBC radio program called “The Current”  { <— Link } The host { Anna Maria Tremonti } Interviewed a woman named Jessa Crispin – who wrote a book with a title something along the lines of “Why I don’t call myself a Feminist”. If you can get the above link to work it might be worth the effort to listen to what she has to say – She basically says the Feminist movement has been hijacked by women who want to make themselves rich and powerful –  and/or rich and famous & powerful – and make it in this nasty world the way it is – instead of trying to change the world & make it more friendly to all genders, all races, & all species we share this planet with. She basically identifies with what she believes the original intent of the Feminist movement was – but believes she doesn’t want to be lumped into a group that includes a couple famous examples she mentioned in the interview. She included a Pop starlet and the new ‘First Lady’ of the USA – in the group of those she doesn’t want to be associated with. I’m remembering that part of the hippy movement included creative artists and thinkers who did not want to be labeled anything at all – I remember hearing David Crosby telling the host of a lip-sync teen age dance and showcase the latest rock and roll bands program in the late sixties – David Crosby said he didn’t want to be put into a box and left there – Jessa did have a couple moments where it sounded like she thought that too many men with their sub-conscious belief that they should be in charge and embraced sub-conscious views that women are second class citizens in their estimation – were a large part of what’s wrong with the world today and she said she hoped she made them uncomfortable and forced them to look at themselves and their assumptions and hopefully work on changing their attitudes and actions – I’m thinking back to friends I met in Ithaca, New York state – like one guy who was a writer who called himself a feminist and refused to use his full name when he signed his work, saying he was using his initials because it didn’t matter whether he was male or female. { The guy was a tortured intellectual student – and I never got the impression that he was gay. Back in those days, gays were ‘fair game’ for anybody who wanted to beat somebody up and have the cops either look the other way or pat them on the back and say, ‘keep up the good work.’ } —> So whether feminism has become too watered down to be considered a viable movement, or has been hijacked by greedy power-hungry women who want to win fame and fortune in the world the way it is – Jessa Crispin does not want to be labeled as a member of that social movement – She’d rather avoid being labeled and live by her own inner values and try to change the world on her own terms.

— um,

— That pretty much sums up this morning for me — There were quite a few deer waiting for me this morning, not the usual morning ‘customers’ – I don’t think – This was a large group, almost a dozen, and they were a lot more jumpy than the usual morning foursome who greet me with patience and grateful smiles. 🙂 —

— Have a nice day — ,

~~~~~ Jim