26.9.13

radio-links

 
 
one time i had a dream that a lady told me that she was stuck in a wheel with delayed solutions and the engines were shutting off.

she turned on the inter-stellar radio bound in the apple seeds and communicated with distant cow-hearders and railway engineers. they reminded her that appeasements backfire and not to waste her time on pointless struggles.

instead, they counseled her, remember that her charisma ignites radiation to illuminate the galaxy.

14.9.13

the spectacles of kismet

 
 
one time i had a dream that my spectacles allowed me to anticipate blueprints.

while i was at the gas station i bought a new set of sunglasses off the rack. i wiped them down with hand sanitizer before i wore them because i didn't want other people's germs. when i wore the glasses i got to see some of the most amazing buildings that were never built. there were whole cityscapes that didn't exist but that might one day be. it was freaky travelling through the imaginary architecture in the process of growing into being. it turned towns into forests of possibilities.
 
i was travelling around the new hudson valley understanding the succeeding structures that the glasses provided. i figured that i needed buy some chewing gum. i went back to the petrol station. the proprietor was talking to a man with a blue baseball cap with orange writing on it.

the man was the wizard kismet. when i entered the gas station they both heaved a sigh of relief. kismet smiled. he asked if i bought the sunglasses there.

i told him that i bought them there only a few hours ago.

he smiled even wider. kismet said that he knew this because the proprietor of the gas station and he had gone back to watch the security videos. sometimes it's good to be able to look back as well as look forward he said. then he told me the sun glasses actually belonged to his wife. she had taken them off to buy to try on a pair of regular specs. she accidentally left them on the display rack. he had done an incantation on them to help her on save time her job as an architect. she was completely distraught at loosing them.

kismet offered me a considerable sum of money to buy them back. i told him that he could have them back for free. he was gratefully astonished and said he really must give me something.
so, i asked him to buy me a lottery ticket. he bought me a five dollar quick pick and two scratch offs. he also paid for my chewing gum.

my pet fish bubbles said that we should use the knowledge from the glasses to invest in property. we could buy the spots were the most elaborate edifices would be built and sell them for a profit. i tried to tell him that the glasses didn't predict the future. they only suggested plans for buildings that could be built there.
bubbles didn't seem to understand this. 


kismet also said if i was ever in a place where he was performing, i would get free admission to his show.

8.9.13

eat your dinner

 
 
one time i had a dream that i was remembering the time my cousin harold wouldn't eat his dinner back when we were boys.

we were having a river-front picnic. there was celery soup and gorgonzola cheese. there was jazz apples cider and asparagus tips. best of all there was ripe peas with margarine. it was delicious.
 
harold wouldn't eat his dinner. he only wanted to watch the boats go by on the river. we kept telling him that the peas were fantastic. he didn't care.

he ran up and down the edge of the water with his napkin tucked into his shirt. his parents threatened to pack up the picnic back into its wicker basket. that didn't work.  they told him he'd have to spend the evening doing extra multiplication home work. that didn't work either. he wouldn't eat his peas.

each time he ran past us he said "i can float like boat. i can glide like the tide."

all the other people down on the strand, including his parents, shouted "eat your peas!" but he wouldn't.

7.9.13

sending the biscuit


one time i had a dream that emma, the cousin of mathilde who is the fiancée of my cousin harold, sent a me a postcard from florida.

emma was working on a documentary about shuffleboard. she was researching the different styles of paddles used by devoted players in st petersburg. not all of them were old people in pastel cardigans, she wrote.

the postcard had a painting of an orange grove and the words "welcome to florida" in blue sans serif letters on it. this set me wondering about the difference between a grove and an orchard. the best thing to do in situations like this is look it up, so i consulted a lexicon. unfortunately, the scholars who compiled the big dictionary weren't as helpful as i would have liked.

our readers and definers who wrote the dictionary  claimed that the word orchard was descended from the latin word hortus and this term means garden. the word grove was germanic. but it was so old no-one knew where it came from. making the it even more mysterious, the word grove has no relatives in any other language. orchards, if i understand this correctly, always refer to highly cultivated tree farms. groves can also refer to such arrangements, but they can also refer to closely clustered trees that grow wild.

my pet-fish, bubbles, said this reminded him of the word rabbit of which no-one knows the etymology. one day people just started to use it in the 14th century without any explanation. i told him that it wasn't exactly the same. in the case of one word it was just very old and in the other instance the word was just very new. after i said that i realized they raised quite different questions. bubbles responded that they were similar since they both had problematic etymologies and that i was just splitting hairs.

anyway, bubbles said, the whole matter of shuffleboard left a sour taste in his mouth. he told me that he once won a semi-large sum of dough in a semi-professional tournament. however, he lost it in the semi-final round.

6.9.13

the magical appointment

 
one time i had a dream that bubbles, my pet-fish, got another gig playing a beach dj in a film called "the magical appointment".

bubbles was reluctant to take the role. he said that he was afraid of being type-cast as a musical lightweight and beach performer.

 

5.9.13

the prince of breukelen

 
 
one time i had a dream that my original ancestor in new york, nakktgeboren zonderbroek, was mistaken for an important minister of state back in the netherlands.
 
he was first arriving in utrecht from breukelen. the princeling loaned him a set of clothes because when the princeling met him on the road nakktgeboren was wearing some tattered rags held together with fishing line. the princeling was from a very noble location in the holy roman empire. when nakktegboren arrived in utrecht he was taken to be the princeling himself. they bowed to him. he bowed back and acted very royal. they wanted to take him to the palace of the archbishop.
 
when he opened his mouth and started speaking, however, things changed. people realized, because of his accent, that he couldn't possibly be foreign royalty. they asked him what was going on.
 
he told them he was from breukelen. people lost interest in him. they were hoping that he was an exotic -maybe even from china. they shook their heads. a couple of young whippersnappers laughed.

then, they got excited about a cart load of oranges that was coming in on the kanaal. the crowd was in such a rush for the new fruit that he had to jump out of the way to avoid getting stepped on.