Long ago, I stopped assigning subject categories to my blog posts. I now wish I had not quit doing that, because I can no longer sort posts by subjects. The ability to collect posts according to topics/subjects was useful when I wanted to explore how my thoughts about certain topics changed over time. This post, for example, might have joined many others assigned to the category I called ‘Dreams.’ It would have shared other categories with earlier posts, as well. ‘Life.’ ‘Death.’ ‘Religion.’ ‘Science.’ That is why I stopped, I suppose; Too many topics with too little ‘meat.’
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The Jerusalem Post reports that the U.S. and Israel have dropped 1200 bombs. The same newspaper give Israel the credit/blame for killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an air strike. It also reports that the Iranian Labor News Agency says former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed in a U.S./Israeli strike on his home in Narnak, northeast Tehran. The same U.S. president who said, not long ago, that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been ‘obliterated’ in 2025 by U.S. strikes launched another round of ‘pre-emptive’ attacks on the country. This is the same guy who claims to have ‘ended’ eight wars and who, in January this year, announced the formation of the Board of Peace, after his pleas to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (and who labeled himself the Peace President) went unrewarded. His actions suggest he is either a hypocrite (…you think?…) or is inviting (and might be a cheerleader for) a retaliatory response from Iran and its allies.
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The very idea of death seems to me just as impossible as the idea of life. Efforts to comprehend either of them are futile; mental energy spent on preposterous, unattainable, absurd, unthinkable, endeavors. Can life simply “end?” Religion tries (unsuccessfully, in my book) to treat life and death as mere transitions, one to the other and vice versa. Science, too, attempts to identify what constitutes life and death. Neither religion nor science offer answers satisfactory to me. That suggests, to me, that reliable answers cannot be found; or that the searches are occurring in the wrong places, or with the wrong tools. Or, perhaps, the unfulfilling answers are based on asking the wrong questions. If not wrong, then perhaps the questions science and religion ask are irrelevant.
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A bizarre dream, to say the least, inhabited my head last night and this morning. In it, I went out the back door of my house (a place I’ve never lived…nor been) very early one morning. I noticed standing water and freshly-overturned earth from a trench which had been dug near the hose bib protruding from the wall. Concerned about the source of the water, I approached the faucet, which I discovered was leaking profusely. Just then, I saw two children, who lived next door, in the back yard of the adjacent house. I asked whether they had seen or heard anyone who might be responsible for digging the trench. They responded that some men had come during the previous to begin installing a swimming pool. Their parents, who were away on vacation, the children said, had forgotten to tell me about the project; but they had asked the kids to ask me to deal with the pool installation in their absence. As the lunacy of the request sunk in, four men appeared, carrying stacks of paperwork they said contained details of the project.
Somehow, the scope of the project had changed, though. The men said they had given my neighbors an extremely low-priced bid, but only if a contract for the project was signed and the required down-payment was paid in full immediately. Additional conversation revealed the scope of the job had changed again; the pool was to be installed in my backyard, not my neighbors’. I went back inside my house, where my late wife was waiting, to get my phone; I wanted to call my vacationing neighbors. My next memory of the dream involved the arrival of several members of the board of a local association chapter client. The client was willing to supply the funds for the project, but I was concerned the entire story was a scam. Even the four men representing the pool company warned me to conduct due diligence…just for my protection. But I was suspicious the men’s advice/warning was part of the scam.
The dream was much more involved, but I do not recall enough detail to make any sense of it. Even the parts I can recall were non-sequential and irrational. Somewhere in the dream I was furious with my late wife for her actions or inactions…I do not know which. And I got into an argument with my sister, who took my wife’s side on the matter of action or inaction. The rest of the dream is just as confusing and nonsensical. Whatever took place is beyond my ability to remember, but it must have been extremely tense and disturbing. I woke cold and drenched in sweat.
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