A Dream of Breaking into Freedom

I have just finished my morning shower, and while toweling off I recalled a late morning dream I had just before waking.

I had gone up to Whistler in a snappy silver compact rental car with some family and friends, and we were all visiting my friend Robert who was in hospital.

He was wrapped in an orange blanket, his body and head covered and seemed not to hear us speaking to him. While we continued to talk he suddenly spoke saying, “Do you hear the glacier moving?”

At this cue, I could hear a dull and distant roar and looking out the window saw a nearby mountainside in motion, the white side of it rippling down like melting icing on a cake.

All of us looked in amazement as the rippling became a full-fledged avalanche and turned into an explosion of rocks and boulders which spread to the surrounding peaks. As we watched in growing horror the volley of debris came cascading towards the village and I realized that it was going to reach us and probably destroy the rental car, cutting off our means of escape from the devastation that was about to engulf us.

We all began racing toward the exit and fled from the hospital as we could hear the rocks crashing into the building behind us and destroying it. We seemed to be running through a forested area towards the ocean as my dream Whistler was also a waterfront town.

The harbor looked peaceful and I noticed people walking about their business seemingly oblivious of the disaster we were fleeing from. I turned around and could see everyone emerging safely from the forest at full run and I looked up.

In the sky a flock of white snow geese appeared in V-formation, and I felt the thrill of freedom and knew at that moment we were safe and all would be well.

Installation Blues & Sage Advice

It is just after 9:30 and I am awake and up slightly early after another night downloading antivirus software file updates.

When I got home from work yesterday I set right to work to try and un-jam my laptop by manually un-installing Trend Micro Pro upgrade which support had linked me to in error and which was now “stuck” in my system. Of course I could not…and so I tried the tack of reinstalling it, got as far as unloading the installation files, found the diagnostic “toolkit” and ran that to un-install the program.

To my great relief it worked. So then I re-installed PC-Cillin 2007 my original version.

And then...I re-installed Trend Micro Security 2008 but it could not remove 2007 for some reason so I tried to re-activate the 2007 version and it worked. It is good to go for another year if I want to leave it that way (knock on wood.) But what a headache!

This is nearly 2 weeks of off-target support from Trend Micro, failed installations and inability to connect to the net.

My friend and coworker Leon laughed at me when I explained that my days off had been screwed up by this. He admonished me, “With all you have to worry about, you are complaining about software problems?”

The Paramount Hotel Seattle reps visited us yesterday and bought huge heaps of pizza so I stayed in for my break avoiding the heavy rain outdoors.

My intuition told me that I should probably go down and look for my friend Trevor in case he showed as he said he probably would, though with the rain I doubted it. But when I looked out the front doors, there he stood in his hoodie, for all the world looking like my own long lost son.

So I invited him up to the office and offered him pizza. He refused the pizza as he’d already eaten but we went into the Zen room and had a talk for about a half hour. He and his girlfriend of 4 years have broken up and she has left their shared house. He says that they are still talking but that the relationship was not working. He is in search of himself, as so many young men are (and were ).

We didn’t have too much to talk about, and he would not admit to any problems that needed to be addressed. When I addressed the issue one last time before he left he gave me that look of what the hell and said, “Ted, get back to work!”

We had more or less spent the entire time bullshitting (shooting the breeze as we used to call it) and laughing for the most part.

So much for imparting sage advice!

The Rain, The Lark and my father.

This morning is one of those gray, rain-soaked ones that mark the approach of the winter season in this West Coast Rain Forest climate.

I am taking my time as I prepare for work this morning listening to CBC’s I Hear Music with Robert Harris, a program on the influence of the violin in music.

He is playing that remarkable Hungarian gypsy piece “The Lark” that I have heard once before which after a fireworks display of masterful virtuosity strays off into the stratosphere imitating the sounds of birds towards the end.

The recording I heard before was by Kalman Balough and the Gypsy Cimbalom Band but this one was performed by someone with the name Sandor. Maybe it was the same group, I am not sure.

I just Googled it and the name of the group is Sandor Deki Lakatos and his Gypsy Orchestra. Robert Harris suggested, “Maybe if you to Hungary you can still find his recordings somewhere.”

He followed this with some more modern recordings by Natalie McMaster. And he closed the program with Django and Stephane Grappelli.

I could not help but think of my father as this music was being played, and stopped to say a silent prayer for him. If not for his playing of the violin at home when I was a young boy, I might never have been inspired to become a musician.

I can still remember the fine-tuned vibrato he applied using his left wrist like a dowser might use a wand.

Thanks for those beautiful memories dad!