Leavenworth, Washington

I took Memorial Weekend to escape!
Yes, I drove to Leavenworth,
About 200 miles away,
Without my PTSD kicking in!
Great start to the weekend!

Stopped in Cashmere for a little antiquing!
Found a few Mustard tins I did not have,
eg: Nash's and several Cresent tins.
Also two Walter Foster painting instruction books,
And a Hungarian cookbook,
 To remember my grandmother,
The Swiss Marquist, aka:Lady in English.
Her family was Spanish and Hungarian.

Eh, something new to learn.

And unexpectyedfly,
The memoirs of Sydney Laurences' wife!
Talk about a rare book!
Laurence was the Godfather of Alaskan painters!

So, not a lot.
No Indian anythings,
No coins,
Just books.

As for Leavenworth,
It is always fun to roam the shops,
Save for the prices!
I did get a shirt for half price ...

I stayed at Der Ritterhof Inn on the west side of town.
Half the cost of the "in town" hotels,
But is clean, nice beds, and rooms.
Morning was a hot breakfast service!
It was delicious and so the room became  even cheaper!
Nice staff -
Recommend on this hotel for you!

Dinner was at King Ludwigs,
A German food source of note in the past.
Today however:

Barely passable German food,
Mostly cold!
So, microwaved food,
Not cooked!
And no longer recommended!

A good destination if you are flush with cash ans in the area!

Return of the Wunschmädchen

Wunschmädchen, that Germanic mythical perfect woman for you.
She is perfection in motion.
Whom loves you freely and openly, without reservation.
And kisses your boo-boos to make them better.....

---------

Friday, when I posted the music video for Saturday, little did I know it would trigger something!
Talk about a restless sleep!
The Wunschmädchen returned with a vengeance!

I have mentioned the dream and dream like state many times, because this is so unlike me.
And here it is!
Replayed in my damaged mind several thousands of times now ....
Maybe it might make a book?

-------------
I am by a river.
There are many large rocks, by and in the river.
I stand between two of the rocks on the bank.
All I can hear is the roar of water.
For some reason, I can not go forward nor backward.
The rocks are slick and there are no hand holds.
I am stuck.

Suddenly, a woman appears from above my line of sight.
And lends me her hand to help me retreat from my predicament.
I gladly accept and she escorts me back to a large rock where we sit and dry out.
And we talk.
For hours.

Seems we have much in common.
And she is complimentary to me.
No names, no judgements.
Uplifting conversations.

-----------
In real life:

I realize this could be allegorical.
Women have never treated me nicely.
I am just the nerd to be abused.
My history with females is abysmal!
I used to have a niece whom commented - that with my history, she is surprised I not gay!
In contrast here is one whom treats me special.

As the dream continues,
I drop all of my walls.
To a painful point of being completely open and transparent.
In love ... as if my first and only love.

The wrap-up of the dream is her becoming like every other woman I have ever known.
Lies upon lies to cover the problem I am not supposed to see or know.
Disjointed accusations, which make no sense, and hatred is poured over me.
And I truly do not know why.
I am caught unaware and clueless.
Then she just vanishes.

No conclusion.
She just stops interacting or communicating.
And I am abandoned once again.
Yeah too close to real life.

But those dreams, at the beginning, are all that carried me through seven surgeries.
I was valuable to someone ... if only in a dream.
The termination of the dream is unfortunate.
I like happy dreams.
But, it was only a dream - etched upon my memory now after thousands of forced viewings.

It is so weird!

As with any encounter with a Wunschmädchen, a small part of you wishes it was real.

I am sure a psychologist would have a hay day with this one.
But she is no one I know since the memory loss.
And I doubt she is real.
I would never have let her go ......

Yeah, the eternal romantic.

Deje Vu

Talk about total deje vu!

It began on Sunday night.
A song echoing faintly through a dream.
I knew it,
I knew the words,
I knew the singer and her sultry voice well!
Real stuff she would probably never say in public.
Somewhere our paths must have crossed,
And she spilled her guts to a weird German.
Yet I knew nothing once awake.
So very odd - so very normal anymore.







Then, I was at Toyota Tuesday shopping for a new car, or at least the next car for me ....
Suddenly this song begins to play and in a semi-dreamlike state I was transported elsewhere!
So very weird!

I knew the song,
I saw a face I no longer know,
But not the one from the memory-dream of the other night.
A very different face.
But, I knew well.
And all of the seasons of her being.

And the words stung me deeply,
But I know not why.

Another place,
Another time,
Another Kris,
Before I was robbed by the fates:
Of my body,
Of my mind.

I will post the song on Saturday.
Maybe I will know more by then?

An official Kris Mystery I need to solve!
For now she will just be the Wunschmädchen of my dreams ....


(and how the heck did I, out of nowhere did I remember an old German term from mythology for what appears to be untranslatable?!?!?!?  Such is the moment by moment struggle within  my mind!  Too many expressions, too many languages - and I truly know nothing, and yet, somehow I do! Almost every moment of everyday is Deje Vu!)

Memory?

Was it a memory of something I did or know of?
Was it just a dream?
I do not know!

If its a dream, my brain must be whacked!
My father was in it - I almost never dream of people I know!
But if a memory .... OMG!!!!!

It becomes something beyond belief!
Warped and twisted, exactly like my father!
The paranoid delusions of the Cold War.

So I set out to research the subject of the dream.
To my horror, I discovered that my dream too close to possible!
Last night I was quite ill from what I confirmed!

And I knew things that my conscious mind had nothing concerning.
Too much detail as if real it seem.
It worries me as a lifelong pacifist, for a great many people died because of it.

Did father really do something so without excuse?
Did thousands really die due to his Soviet paranoia?
How could I have known about this?

Isn't amnesia fun?!?

I think I might rough this out into a story -
It is truly appalling!
;)

Shades of '67

According to this blog, all through 2016 I was to experience the same series of dreams - which were really memories - over and over and over again!  Well, I have no memory of them now!

And like last time, dreams are memories - reality floating through what is left of my mine.  This time around, it is 1967 and seventh grade I seem to be lock in!  Really?  Seventh grade of all of the memories to now be stuck with!  Good Loird, not the best of memories ...

Awkward.  Yeah, that would be the word.

I was to be moved from my Zweibruchen Canadian school to a NATO school in Ramstein.  Why?  Because mother was blowing a gasket and father wanted to move her to an English speaking environment by relocating us to the NATO base housing in Ramstein.  So German boy uprooted again, stuffed back into a foreign culture again and unfortunately I could not even write in English!

So,  forget making new freiends.
Forget passing classes, except math and multiple choice history questions!
And begin the process of learning all about injustice and inequality.

Yeah, my new memory set is now set to 1967 and memories no one should have to have suffered through, much less be stuck with .....
Thank God 1967 was a year of some great music!

Dreams

Been almost a year since I started having the oddity of the same memory, as a dream, every night.  Totally weird.  As I was to learn, also totally worthless, it was just memories to torment me.  I finally just gave up trying to stop the dream - just live with the fact that you are stupid and God will continually remind me it seems.  But, I was not stupid - naive perhaps but not really stupid.  I do not how I could have taken any other path ...  Sigh.

Then I had a series of real dreams over the weekend!

In one, I was walking in the Arizona desert.  Weaving in and out of the cactus, it was beautiful.  And then, yeah, a gila monster clomped on to me!  Well it was a little freaky but he had bit my titanium leg - so no harm, no foul.  But, there was no way I could encourage him to let go!  Nothing worked.  So, I walked back to the car, lizard swinging back and forth on my jeans, and drove until I found a Highway Patrol type.  I pulled over and walked up to his car.  I asked him how to get a lizard off my leg.  He freaked out.

I was able to get him to understand that cutting off the head of the stubborn reptile just was not what I desired.  Eventually he got it off, with much effort and commented that cutting off its head would have been so much easier!  Then we had the discussion with his dispatch at how to wash the poison from my jeans without contaminating my washing machine!  Yeah, my dreams are always convoluted.

Then I was in Costco, looking for new jeans and the choices were not good.  There were lots of big butt pants, but I lack the middle age spread so many enjoy, so no huge butt I fear.  But, I need a new pair of jeans!  It was quite an odyssey!  And it was horiffying to me find myself then, having gone through checkout, to be putting my new pants in the middle of the departure area!  AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!  Yes, I am one of those people whom is not comfortable dressing or undressing in public!  If there is a hidden message here, I am terrified of what it could be!


As one of my friends told me, "Kris, I think something is really wrong with you ... you have the most convoluted dreams I have ever heard of ... "

LOL!

Or, try this one from Saturday night ...

I was setting up for a gem and mineral show, arranging the displays and thinking to myself I should have gotten up earlier because I was only wearing my pajama bottoms!  Then I got to thinking about what was I going to do!  The show would open and there I would be - in my pajama bottoms scaring off buyers!

Just then, I heard: "Uncle Kris, Uncle Kris!"

It was my pseudo-nephew Paul.  Paul!, of course, he could drive to my home and pick up some clothes for me and get back in time for me to be presentable!

Paul continues, "... there is a giraffe running around the woods!"

Our eyes met and the next thing I knew we were stomping through the woods looking for a giraffe ....

Don't ask me ...

The Fever Continues

So I know you will forgive me for having nothing for today - the fever runs unabated, it is still way down but still running 102.

If I close my eyes, I can easily find myself back in the saddle again.

At one point the surgeon left the room but I had already slipped away.  I heard Swedish Rocket Scientist say, "Kris? Kris? What are you doing?"

I snapped awake and I was bend over the examination chair.  I guess only in my dreamstate was I inspecting the saddlestraps ....

And the dozens of time since, the dream calls me back ...

Feverish Dreams

Usually, when I have a fever or am delirious, my dreams are more like nightmares - so really not worthy of comment unless I found something humorous in them.

For instance, my Thursday through Sunday nightmares - bizarre beyond all belief, was complicated because I lost vision and could only speak in German!  Of course, no one else could speak German, so no one could understand I was trying to convey that I wanted to live ... 
But, I was out of my mind with fever.  I was quite normal when the fevers' would ebb.

And then sometimes, I just do not want to wake up ...

The blue of my uniform was dark and clean against the dust and sage.
My gold cording and ribbing were all gleaming.
My sword was at the ready, for Black Hawk had only been put down months before.
I wore one of my Roger & Spencer revolvers.  I had worn two through the Black Hawk War.
Over eleven years at war, against the south and then against the Indians, I was tired of death.
And, I was at peace internally.
My closest friends were with me.
I had no idea why I was here.

The sound of gravel underfoot, drew my attention behind me and slightly downhill.

She was dressed in yellow, a shade which complimented the desert grasses, with white trim.
Her yellow hair set a glow about her face.
I am placing this setting to be 1870 as my "mind" is now playing catch-up.
There are other women with her.
I recognized the man: her father and a local elder in our isolated community.
I was completely at home.
It was to be but a simple ceremony.

Mounted on my horse, she was lifted up and seated across a pillow laid on the McClellan saddle.
"John Wesley, where are we headed?"
Her arms were around my neck, her head on my shoulder.
"Well, Elizabeth, my dear, I have a team at the Springs and then the West is in front of us."

The dream became spotty: pieces of the Oregon Trail journey mixed  pieces of forming a new life.  I knew where this would end, because I realized these were my great-great-grandparents.  I had heard of the tragedy of their lives as a child..  But, I am the only one in the family to understood the happiness they had found together ...

Narc-o-mares

I really hate what narcotics do to me.

I mean they do have their value - nothing cuts pain like a narcotic, except for black scorpion venom, but it acts like a narcotic and why such drugs as Ultram disappeared so rapidly in the market place.

The worse ever was one time dreaming I was on a bus with a very recently deceased co-worker.  I do not make friends quickly and their loss is mourned.  His death was a stunner, just as was that nightmare of being on a bus with him and talking just like any other day.  Too weird.

This morning I was awaken at the end of the latest nightmare wherein I am meeting brother Timmy at some exhibition all.  He is late, I have to go to the toilet, I hunt hi and low for one, find it, go in and there is a little kid in there playing and standing in the bowl.  Heck done that one a few thousand times!

Then the kid slipped and grabbed for the valve to catch themself .... WHOOSH!  Kid swept from sight!

So I ran outside to call 911 and they are demanding the kids name, parents address, etc.  Such utter stupidity ...

Timmy now walks up, tries to open the door - it is locked now, and suddently - it is too late to find that elusive toilet.

Sigh.

The inner angst of Kris: world run by idiots, spinning out of control and me unable to find a toilet as needed.

Sigh.

Hoping to be off narcotics very shortly .......

Bad Day

Friday was just a plain bad day.

I woke up due to a dream I was having wherein I had a computer monitor which displayed all of the computers in my domain I was responsible for.  My monitor would warn me when one of them was about to go down or had suddenly crashed.  My job then was to go and fix the computer, if it had not crashed, or rescue it if it did crash.  It was then I realized that the computers were all people and the warning light on my monitor was one of my friends in trouble and I really did not want them to go down hard!

Prayer, lots of prayer, but a very troubled spirit.

So, I hopped on Blogger to reread some of my old posts.  Utterly bummed me out because I remember all too well the details behind some of those less than detailed postings.

So, I hopped from the Apple over to my story blog of my father's life.  And I tell you, I went straight into depression big time!

I so desperately needed someone ... I was one of those computers about to crash I fear.  And I did.  Nose dive straight into self pity and anger ... I do not do well with anger, it is Satan's major access route into me.

Once I had calmed downed, I wrote what is tomorrow's post on prayer.  It helped.  But, I have been badly damaged internally from this - three nitros in 24 hours and my heart is still not stable.  No doubt I will end up in the hospital at some point this week if this episode does not stop - for now I fear that stress is winning.

And if stress wins, then my foot and leg reconstruction surgery will be pushed back even further than June.  Sigh, there is just no winning when you are me.