Tag Archives: dreams

Adrift

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adrift: (adj) 1. of a boat or its passengers, floating without being either moored or steered. 2. Of a person, being lost or confused.

You see, I think we have a quandary. We have to learn how three words are quite different:

  • Uncaring
  • Bohemian
  • And peaceful

When I graduated from high school, I didn’t want to be normal. I had studied “normal” through twelve years of the educational system. Now, I was not critical of it. Those who found it appealing were not my enemies, but I did not get in line to take my number, waiting to be “the next one served.”

I found myself adrift. Those around me believed I was uncaring.

Not knowing what to do, I basically chose to do very little. Truthfully, I didn’t do enough to survive–at least, financially. The critics rolled in their opinions. Family was enraged. Friends deserted me.

I was on my boat and decided to float for a while instead of feverishly paddling or hooking some sort of motor up to my life so I could troll the waters of existing social acceptability.

I knew what I liked. I liked music, I liked performing and I liked writing. Was I good? Honestly, it was difficult to find out because I was always dodging the bullets of my pistol-packing townsmen, who were determined to “gun down” my laziness and put me back into submission with the grown-up way of thinking.

Yet I resisted.

Because I didn’t paddle and try to resist the tides and currents, I bumped into a lot of things, did some damage and appeared to those around me to be Bohemian.

“Adrift,” by definition, connotes a loss of control. But you see, I believe the GREATEST loss of control was giving it to someone else, who held my life as a timecard and asked me to punch in for permission to eat and breathe.

It took me about eight years to finally blend my motivation, talent, purpose and opportunities together, to come up with a lifestyle which was acceptable to those around me because it possessed some sort of pay stub.

I never resented those eight years that I was adrift. They were painful, often stupid, frightening, lonely and occasionally enlightening. They gave me the determination I needed to set a course and right my ship in a direction to follow my dreams instead of toe the line.

So even though “adrift” may seem to be a negative posture for any vessel, be it nautical OR human, for me, it was an oxymoron: a meaningful aimless quest.

Acrimonious

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAcrimonious: (adj.) typically in reference to speech or debate, angry and bitter: e.g. an acrimonious debate about wages.

About a mile-and-a-half outside our little town of fifteen hundred souls, there was a location set aside, commonly referred to as “the city dump.”

I’m not so sure those places exist anymore–whether small towns have them. I think we now use landfills, which are similar but much larger.

But about once every three or four months, our family would load up a small trailer and head out to the city dump to get rid of everything that had somehow become displeasing to us.

My mother was always concerned about taking us children out there because we might step on a nail, get lockjaw and die. But I always pleaded to go on the journey because it was a fascinating destination. There was always just a little bit of fire burning close by, with some of the dumped materials ablaze.

And it was remarkable how we could back up our trailer, disconnect it, tip it up, and dump our useless bullcrap into the pile, then re-hook the trailer and drive away with no fear or burden. The trip to the dump was always bumpy, and the car would pull, tugging the rejected items behind us. But the trip back was so much lighter.

That’s the way I feel about “acrimonious.”

Do we ever know if our discussions with one another are truly pure and on point? We may just have failed to go to the garbage heap before we began to discuss.

After all, there’s so much crap that builds up inside us in the process of one day:

  • So many disappointments covered up with a smile.
  • So many dreams we had that we now sidestep because they failed to bear evidence.
  • So much frustration about being told to wait, when patience seems so useless.

And therefore, the least little thing can set us off, and rather than dumping our trash where it belongs, we do it right in the middle of the town square–to the alarm and disdain of the citizens.

I’m not so sure that any Republican or Democrat really knows what they think on ANY issue. They are too busy being acrimonious over old battles.

So even though I was sometimes sad when we threw things away at the city dump because I had developed a fondness for them in their decaying state, I can’t tell you that I missed them or felt any absence whatsoever.

Sometimes we just need to dump before we come back and interact.

If we don’t, we end up scraping our garbage onto somebody else’s plate.

Abash

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAbash: v. cause to feel embarrassed, disconcerted or ashamed: she was not abashed at being caught.

So I was thinking this morning about what my favorite nightmares were. I guess “favorite nightmares” is the definition of an oxymoron. Maybe I change it to “recurring themes in the night-vision terrors.” Unfortunately, that phrasing smacks of too much drama.

Anyway, there are three events which inwardly terrorize my soul and if they were ever outwardly duplicated, I would be embarrassed–abashed, if you will.

First: My brain conjures visions of me being naked in a room in front of strangers. It is the personification of revealing my shortcomings. The anxiety that permeates my feelings during those apparitions often awakens me with a start–heart racing, chill running down my spine. I know there must be people who are totally confident about the prospect being naked in front of others, but truthfully, if anyone is going to see me naked, they must be willing to apply for the job, go through a drug test and survive three months of probation.

The second dream of horror is finding myself in front of an audience, and as I fastidiously and faithfully offer my gifts, the auditorium is gradually depleted by the viewers departing one by one. There you go. Apparently I am extremely embarrassed by the prospect of being abandoned on stage based upon my ideas or persona.

And the final example is driving in a car or some sort of vehicle, heading off for a destination which for some reason or another, is never achieved or even looms on the horizon–a frightening mixture of being lost and fully aware that I am in charge of the steering wheel, which has deposited me in the wilderness.

I guess the key is this: if you know what embarrasses you and you can be honest about it, you can avoid being abashed.

So I don’t like to be naked unless there is great profit and blessing to it in front of someone who is very forgiving.

And I don’t relish rejection, so I will use some wisdom in avoiding those who take pleasure in critiquing instead of doing.

And getting lost or running late obviously terrifies my soul, so an earlier departure and an excellent set of directions is my best remedy to such a fiasco.

Embarrassment is often what befalls us because we fail to acknowledge its existence.