Again, I dream of houses

I dreamed of houses again last night, only this time I was searching through them for a strange girl who had a book, because within the book were the secrets of Frankenstein's monster.
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I Dream of the Shape of Houses

Well, my strange dream life continues. Last night I dreamed of the shape of houses. I dreamed I was looking for a house that was uniquely shaped - not decorated, but shaped. There was no other theme to the dream, just a dream of the shape of houses.

(You may or may not notice I have comments turned off - I got "comment spammed" yesterday. Someone or some clever bot took the time to go through a lot of entries and put nonsensical words and inappropriate links on many entries. I'll turn comments back on once I've cleaned them up. I was too lazy to do it last night.)
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Where Monkeys Run Amok

I’ve often commented that the inside of the mind is a pretty amazing place – there are all kinds of crazy monkeys jumping around in there and if they get half a chance they will take it over.  I went on an amusing trip into my monkey mind on the drive into work this morning and I thought I would share it with you.

It was pretty much an ordinary morning and the commute was normal.  I was running a little bit late so the traffic was heavier than usual, especially at the intersection of Williams, Moorpark and Lawrence Expressway, but I have seen worse, especially there.  I get through the intersection on onto Lawrence Expressway and it shifts into a very ordinary commute.  Then, as I drove down the road and listened to the Corrs, my brain went like this.

My nephew is waiting from his income tax return check. Since he lives in a shared housing in an apartment where he doesn’t entirely trust the neighbors he used my address.  Soon enough the check will be overdue (if such a thing is possible with the IRS, who tends to move at their own pace) so he has been anxiously awaiting its arrival. I was thinking about that and it made me wonder if he had filed his taxes for the last year (he didn’t work much, his income was minimal, and his dad has a track record of not filing his income taxes). Then, I imagined that he hadn’t filed in the previous year(s) so old Uncle Sam had pounced on this filing and grabbed the return to pay previous tax bills.  Then, I imagined that they now had MY address as his last location and in a frenzy to collect revenue the IRS, in coordination with the Sheriff’s department, swooped down on my apartment to seize property to pay delinquent taxes. In the course of seizing MY property to pay my nephews tax bill, they DROPPED my big screen TV.  I was ticked off about it! 

And of course, it was all imaginary – it was just a place my brain went as I was driving into work but – I could feel myself getting agitated at their lack of respect for my property.  Once again, the brain is a strange amazing place.  Where monkeys run amok.

 

A Simple Morning Prayer

Often, upon waking, I pause to say a simple prayer. Usually it is some variation of:

"God. Thank you for this life. Amen."

I like the simplicity of it. Another night full of miscellaneous dreams, none of which particularly stand out. I think I may spend this week meditating on the question of the missing spoon.
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A Strange Mood

Basically a good weekend but I slipped into a strange mood about midafternoon. One of those hard to describe but pervasive moods. I searched for words to describe it and the best analogy I could come up with was I felt as if I had sat down for dinner and my place setting was missing a spoon. A sense, a mood, a feeling that I am missing something.
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Dreams of...Bowling?

Okay, last night I had a dream that was strange but connected to the waking world. I dreamed that I was at a bowling alley with a whole bunch of people I work with or worked with over the years and I was trying to find a bowling team to be part of.

The dream connected with the reorganization ongoing at work (the people I dreamed of representing the various groups I've worked with over the years) and the incidental fact that, last night, while going to dinner with my nephew, I drove by "Strike" bowling alley at Cupertino Square, which is the last place we went on a department bowling trip a two years ago.

The neat and tidy subconscious in action.
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Thoughts About Blogging

While I was thinking about what to do with my blog – whether to continue writing here in Rod’s Floating World or to move over to a new blog, or perhaps to open multiple blogs so they could be subject specific, I realized I had never really contemplated what I wanted to accomplish with a blog. The short answer is – I don’t really know the answer to that question. What motivates me to write and to publish those writings online?

I am really not interested in a commercially successfully blog. I’ve read quite a few of them (and subscribe to a couple) and though they’re enjoyable they lack the “personality” that I like. When I read someone else’s blog I like to get the sensation that I am reading what a person is writing. Not an assumed virtual persona whether the handle is anonymous or masked or not. I think one of the great powers of the internet is the ability of people to connect with other people. There is plenty of commercially produced content online and I really don’t feel a great need to contribute to that sea of stuff. So, whatever I decide to do, ultimately, it is going to be a personal blog – I am going to try and keep that personal touch that lets you understand that you are reading something that is writing by someone. Not something that is produced according to some magic formula for the sole intention of selling ad space.

Then, I do like a theme. There is nothing particularly wrong with the rambling blogs, but a themed blog is simply easier to follow. A theme is more of an assurance that when the reader goes to a specific site they are going to get articles that move along certain vectors, articles that are about certain things – poetry, short fiction, writing, science, technology, media, - whatever the author chooses to write about., but it allows the reader to find those blogs of interest and follow them, with a sort of implicit promise that if your interest is poetry, you’re not going to log on and find a political rant – or vice versa.

I also write as an internal process. I write to help me understand – well, me. So, to a degree, I write as an act of contemplation and meditation. Call it mediation at the keyboard. I write in an attempt to understand things.

Then, I write to create, writing to create, I write to hone my writing and my story telling skills. Here is an interesting little tidbit – I write a lot for work – I write training manuals, I write technical documentation, I write process documentation, I write informational documents, I write analytical documents and I write persuasive documents – in short, I write a lot. I write a little over 200,000 words a year. That is roughly the equivalent of writing two novels a year. I’d also hazard that, as in information systems analysis manager I make an income that exceeds most writers, probably by a significant margin. Just out of curiosity I used Google to see what payscale.com lists as the average income for a retail book author: 28K to 59K. Compare that to the average income for an IT manager: 59K to 101K. Hmmm, I think I may very well continue to write for the love of it.

So, I am going to write something personal, I am going to write something themed, I am going to write to hone my writing and story-telling skills and I am going to write for the love of it. It doesn’t really answer my question on whether I should have multiple blogs (though it does point toward an answer), but it does provide me with insight. The biggest insight I drew from this little writing exercise is simply this – I write for the love of it. That is a pretty amazing thing. But then, love always is.

(Okay, just a bit of strangeness involving this post - I originally wrote it while winding down the afternoon at work and attempted to use the email feature to submit it to the blog - but the security policy at work caught the email and rejected it for content. I've tried re-reading it, but I can't see what content it would reject, other then perhaps some strange combination of words. Very unusual.)

Nightmares of T.V. Dinners

Oh, just a quick note.  I had bad dreams last night, verging on nightmares – and oddly enough, I dreamed that I was being forced to eat T.V. dinners.  The old school, old style aluminum tray T.V. dinners.

Further Purging

In addition to contemplating the nature of reality, I’ve also been contemplating the nature of objects. I was reading online about people who, in their minimalist quest, have attempted to attain the 100 objects limit.  That is reduce their possessions to 100 objects or less.  Now, in reading, from what I can see there is a degree of gamesmanship going on there – several of the sites I read contained caveats – caveats like – “group possessions don’t count”, “collections count as one”, “things required for work don’t count”. 

Those are some pretty exhaustive caveats.  Does that means my movie collection (literally hundreds of movies) only counts as “one thing”.  Does that mean my furniture (a set) only counts as one thing?  Does my library (a collection) only count as one thing?  If that is the case then that is hardly minimalist. Anyway, I digress to critique other people, but the long and short of it is, in my contemplation of objects and my relationship to objects, I have developed a greater sense of awareness in terms of what I possess (and what in turn possesses me). 

Now, I don’t have any plans to head for the mysterious 100 items, but I do find the idea tantalizing, and I could certainly do with fewer things. Back at the turn of the year when I went through my possessions and eliminated so much stuff, a portion of the remaining stuff was boxed and set aside – and honestly, the vast majority of the boxes and drawers where I stored things I have not be into since I started that particular quest. 

To me, that is a sign that the contents of those boxes and drawers can be donated or disposed of. I kept a five tier bookshelf full of reference material and other books and I’ve been into maybe a dozen of the books on that shelf.  I have twelve boxes of personal possessions in one of the closets and I haven’t been in a single of the boxes since I initially inspected them and put them in there.  I have a four drawer bureau in one of the closets and I’ve only been in it once.

I’ve a lot of objects that are merely occupying space, both physical space in my environment and psychological space in my psyche. Further purging to come.

 

Maya

Lately I have been trying to grasp the illusion of the past. Specifically I think I have been trying to grasp how we are bound by the illusion of the past. It is strange to think that the framework with which we view the world is almost always a complete post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacy. (Believing that because a thing preceded a thing, it caused the thing.)  My going to work on Friday did not cause me to go to work on Tuesday.  It proceeded it.  It shaped the form in took.  But it didn’t cause it.

I came to work today, here, now because I woke up and decided to, because I chose to. That is a strange thing. That is something that is hard to wrap my brain around. I think that, to a great degree, I am struggling with the concepts of time and space that create the framework (the illusionary framework) within which I move on a daily basis.  Am I struggling with the very nature of reality?  Perhaps I am. In reflection, most certainly I am. Not in the sense that I am losing my grasp on reality, but more in the sense that I am seeking a firmer grasp on reality.