random stuff I woke up thinking about last night ... and this morning

It's part of an idea I think.

Last night I had a dream that was all sort of pieces, not put together, and I'd like to note a few of the "chunks" ...

There were three characters ... one, a "bad guy" who was pursuing a "good guy" who was trying to protect or render aid to "an innocent" ... almost exactly like Mario Brothers ... and life, I see that now.

The "bad guy" was two separate people who moved together in synchronized evil, yet there was a tension between them, flares of conscience stirred in one or the other, as pangs of remorse at a willingness to go this far rose up to be sliced down in mutual glee ... they celebrated who they had become egging each other along they destroyed themselves and each other as they focused destruction on their primary prey ... the innocent ... and gamed with the "good guy".
The good guy was also represented by two guy moving in tandem ... they also struggled with tools to implement in their fight for the preservation of "innocence" ... they liked fighting, as warriors tend to do.  They called each other back from the edge of too far stepping closer ... I wondered were the bad guys once good guys and vice versa ... neither team seemed all good or all bad, both were pulled along stretching a bit this way then that, like a snake steadily "flowing" or rocks and hot ground in pursuit.  These guys pursued each other with an ancient push and pull.
And innocence ... also two, mostly pure (I'm still looking for the correct word here ... I know mostly pure is not pure at all ... ), yet duplicitous, thrilled and cowered vacillating between the position of victim or prize, like the stereotypical woman of the 50s or 60s ... the outcomes felt the same to me, the prize would be a victim, the victimized the prize.

"Innocence" seemed to be less a part of the drama playing out (the drama was about the events of the intra and extra- team struggles)... yet somehow at the very center of it pulling strings like a master puppeteer.  Yes, the players moved as twin marionettes held up and manipulated from one set of vertical and horizontal control bars ... good held in one hand, bad in the other with Innocence somehow the face I associated with the hands.  Yeah ... it was creepy, but awake I see how it works.

Another chunk ... Both teams were battling on a mountain ... like the pictures I've been looking at of Mt. Everest the goal was to descend rather then climb the mountain with the first team who arrived in a field of flowers at the foot of the mountain clearly having a huge advantage of time ... to deal with Innocence as they chose. The good guys came up with what I thought was an excellent plan.  There was a constructed reservoir which was designed to funnel water ... snow and ice ... from the top of the mountain ... to the bottom of the mountain.  The snow and ice were heated to liquid and gradually warmed in the descent.  The good guys planned to enter the reservoir and basically dive to the bottom. I don't dive, but I believed the good guys would move faster and faster as they went along because of the weight of water above them and because of moving more freely in warmer water.  I thought it was a good plan.  The draw back, as I saw it, was, once they entered the reservoir there would be no escape until the exit point at the bottom.  They figured out a way to keep the bad guys thinking they were on the mountain, setting up little explosive red herrings ... appearing to be engaged.  They needed a head start because if they didn't appear to be present, the bad guys would figure out the descent strategy and possibly be waiting at the bottom ... the good guys needed a head start ... and the diving gear that being a good guy effortlessly procures in dreamland.

Okay, briefly ... those vices and virtues seem to be a lot like those dream teams pulling each other into and out of shape for the task they were purposed on/for.

Just like me. I don't think I'm a glutton ... but later today I will grocery shop ... the meals planned for this week are modest by some standards, but definitely lavish by most standards. Sammy's food bin will be replenished today ... he's a Purina dry food kinda dog, but there is a bin of doggy biscuits in his view ... Sammy is grateful for his treats. The long full aisle of dog food chastises me and yet ... I don't know what to do so I do very little ... that is sloth. It's hard to grasp from my first world perch how lacking in virtue I really am. I am unaware and ignorant of my lack of awareness. Looking at the vices is ... eye-opening at least. Realization is a step in the right direction.

Falling Upward.  Haven't finished reading it, but I am thinking about the idea of a person becoming the whole of what may be offered back.  I'm thinking about the parable of the talents.  I'm thinking about how I might best offer back.  And ... it might be easier to see when someone else is asking the question about their own life.  What if one died and was revived ... sort of another chance at things.  Or ... as it sometimes happens, the person standing right next to you in life dies, but you don't ... you are fine.  What are you supposed to "do" with your "fineness"?
We sit as this table and are served ... life, some more or less abundantly ... and we take this nourishment and become ... as Momma would say, you are what you eat ... and then, we have an opportunity to serve ... or we can sit at the table a gorge ... or life shoves us away from the table ... or we never got a seat in the first place and had to contend with the crumbs ... .
This guy, Kidder, writes about Haitians wearing our old t-shirts and busted up Nike's.  I have a bag of stuff like that working in the foyer closet ... too good for rags, but just barely.  My certificates and ratings would have funded a village hospital or a school ... and I sit on the ground wondering what is next for me ... I push back from the table ... full and wipe at the crumbs.
That's not the whole deal ... feasts in some areas famine in others ... everyone knows what it is want.

Walking is a lot harder for me then flying was ... lots of time to think when walking, my brain was otherwise engaged while airborne, everything outside my bubble was a blur ... .

I love dreams ... so many possibilities in lala land.

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow! 

And, in parting from you now, 

Thus much let me avow

You are not wrong, who deem 

That my days have been a dream; 

Yet if hope has flown away 

In a night, or in a day, 

In a vision, or in none, 

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem 

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep - while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream