Change | Tracks In The Dust

Archive for the tag “Change”

21 Aug 2012

Dreaming of Magic Again

Some times it seems almost hard to believe. I am not really good at remembering dreams. I wake up and I can recall a dream for about 5 seconds, and then it starts to fade. But there are a few that keep coming back, like a late nite movie that keeps showing up every week and you can’t stop watching it.

There are a few things that are in black and white, and a few that are in color. I noticed that they seem to incorporate a lot of things in “real” life, but things that are not really connected that way. They are associated somehow in my sub conscious I guess, and so they get thrown into the soup of the dream.

What dreams do you have that keep coming back?

Okay so there is a huge psychological process to interpreting them and having them end up determining what kind of person you are. Not so into that, I think there is some merit to it, but really. Some of my dreams just come up because I have weird food before I go to sleep (like Frito-Lay products with spicy flavors-can you say “Doritos”?) or because I saw a strange movie (anything by Stanley Kubrick) or listened to some music (like Explosions In The Skyincredible music). Some are just there for whatever reason. But like I said they disappear in the morning fog of the first cup of coffee.

So this one dream. It has a soundtrack and a mysterious lady. The song (perhaps the inspiration after all) is Magic by Ben Folds Five written by Darren Jessee [see below]. It seems like a mysterious song on its own, perhaps about someone who has passed on, or who has lost their life or perhaps their life’s memory (through Alzheimer’s perhaps)… but it is always the sound track. I am watching it from above and it plays out with a lady dancing by the light of this huge moon (some times it looks like it is my wife, sometimes someone I don’t actually know). Along the way I the whole thing becomes distant, and then again really close. I am sad but happy at the same time. In the end it makes me calm that the world will continue and this person is in it somehow.

That’s it. All you dream interpreters can have a hey day on what that all means, and I guess I could spend a lot of time in analysis to discover my mom or something was at the root of all of it. But no matter what I do, it just pops up.

What dreams do you have that keep coming back? How do you deal with them? Where do they take you?

Magic by Ben Folds Five

From the back of your big brown eyes
I knew you’d be gone as soon as you could
And I hoped you would
We could see that you weren’t yourself
And the lines on your face did tell
It’s just as well
You’d never be yourself again

Saw you last night
Dance by the light of the moon
Stars in your eyes
Free from the life that you knew

You’re the magic that holds the sky up from the ground
You’re the breath that blows these cool winds ’round
Trading places with an angel now
Saw you last night
Dance by the light of the moon
Stars in your eyes
Free from the life that you knew
Saw you last night
Stars in your eyes
Smiled in my room

Posted in Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged being remembered, Ben Folds, Change, Dreams, Explosions In The Sky, Faith, life is precious, Music, Psychology, Social Sciences, Sprituality, Who Are You

10 Aug 2012

When You Are Angry

It’s very likely that everyone reacts to things differently when it come to being happy or angry. There are some so genuine universal things that seem to be so great when it comes to sharing emotions. Those are the things that make us human no matter where you live on this big spinning globe I guess.

But what makes you angry? I mean so angry that you are not focused on anything else but that anger? Does start with hate or frustration or end with it? Is it derived from fear? Is it founded in truth, or built on ignorance?

When you get angry, what do you do with that? How do you manage it? Do you ask yourself later: why did I end up getting angry? which in turn may make you angry again (ha)!

If you can answer these questions then, I would guess that you are more in-tune with your inner-self than others may be. When I look at the recent violence that has happened in the US, I know that I cannot imagine someone being that angry and distant from the human race as to wake up one day and intentionally kill people because of anger. That tragedy is beyond me. Yet there are probably scores of thousands of more angry people out there, who are living with themselves with no spiritual or moral guideposts to examine their emotional state.

Also it would seem that fear has just fueled that anger more. Fear of people who are different in some way, fear of the unknown. The Internet has let loose a firestorm of opportunity for people to share their fears and their ignorance, but not in a productive way, rather in a destructive one. And it adds more fuel when those ramblings become so massive that even our politicians, celebrities, and leaders in the world just help to further reinforce what some of these very angry people believe to be true.

So angry people run to the Internet or some other place to find their false sense of need to gain the confidence, in turn it leads them to take out a gun and go to a public place and kill their fellow human beings. They cannot reason with themselves, and they have not allowed themselves to reach to the Words that would provide the answers they need. They are willing to even build their anger on untruth’s.

Finding your inner peace and not letting anger consume you can be found simply in the Spiritual things that God can provide. I say a prayer for these lonely souls who have let anger consume them, and have in directed that anger through their fear to innocent people who have been in the way of their wrath.

I have asked my family to pause when they get angry, and ask themselves “what am I angry about?” “How does it control me?” Life here on Earth is short in the scene of things, spending it in anger is such a sad way to spend it.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. Ephesians 4:26

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Anger, Change, Emotion, Faith, Fear, Forgiveness, God, life is precious, People, Self-Awareness, spirituality

07 Aug 2012

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Looking for Life’s GPS

The other day I was driving to some places I had never been before and taking some guests around our huge metro area. So I brought out the GPS device. Global satellite positioning means that this little screen can always tell where you are on the face of the Earth, and help you by providing the directions needed to reach your final destination. It’s amazing that so many years ago that concept would have been some sort of “space age” future miracle you would see in sci-fi movies.

Now it is a reality that is entirely possible and can show up on your handheld smartphone or sit neatly on your dashboard wherever you go. And announce what turns and lanes you should be in. Wow.

It would be nice if our lives had a device for reaching our goals and destinations in life. We could just type in where we wanted to end up, and let the life-GPS just program it. It would talk to you, just like the GPS’s do today. Part of the features of the GPS lets you know when you get “off course” by announcing “recalculating your route” adjusting your course and helping you get turned around the right way.

Often in life we get off course, and there just isn’t that convenient GPS in our pocket to turn our lives back on course. The course corrections are ours to make, sometimes with guidance from others around us. The people we trust, the people we admire or sometimes from those who have alternative motivations that may not be the best course. We may get lost because we get distracted. In my GPS for the car, you can program “attractions” along the way, but in our lives some of those are more interesting than others, and in other cases they are indeed “distractions” rather than attractions, although we may be drawn to them.

So what course do we program into our life’s GPS? How well would we listen to the instructions it would speak out to us. Would we ignore it? It could sit on our dashboard and tell us when we made a wrong turn to our final goal. Of course we could end up with detours, and construction or accidents that may slow our lives course down. But the GPS would just recalculate. Funny.

But we don’t have a GPS for our lives here on Earth. There is nothing we can program. We have to rely on our family and friends and importantly our spiritual leaders that will provide us the feedback we need to make corrections when things go astray. Sure we can just wander like nomads on the map, in hope of getting where we think we want to be, but in the end we have to keep our eyes and ears open to where we are going and who we are listening to.

But we also have to keep our hearts and minds open to God and his plan. Without it we may be recalcuating in circles that eventually get us lost. For many of us, we so much want to stay “on the map” and headed in the proper direction. In the end it will lead to the best destination we could all want. It starts by programming it in… go ahead. You can do it.

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Change, Doubt, Eternity, Faith, God, GPS, Life, Reality Check, Self-Awareness, Sprituality

23 Jul 2012

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The Foundation of Lies

It is said that “A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

Whether Mark Twain said it or some preacher in a sermon long,long ago… it seems to be more true that ever before. Today’s world-wide web can help make even the ugliest lies seem like truth. People read them and then pass them on to tens of thousands of others because they want to believe in their version of the truth, however unreal it may be. If it fits the perception of what someone thinks it should be, then it goes on and out to more. If something t was said by someone you believe also thinks like you, “it must be the truth“. Right?

So we maybe people are building “their” reality on lies. For others they could be building their friendships on half-truths or fabrications, which sadly pass on things like hate and prejudice. Very often I have seen relationships between couples of many years that have gone into a spin because of simple things that have blossomed into lies and flared up into full-fledged fires. All because of one person’s version of the truth that gets created to fulfill personal need.

Lies can hurt, lies can also motivate others to do things that are right or wrong. Sometimes lies are justified, maybe bolster our own confidence to do things that are seemed to protect others from hurt. But we cannot let them control our sense of right and wrong. We need to make sure that we understand that our truths are what needs to guide us in our love and our life. We have to clear the way to not listen for what we think we need to hear, but we listen to our hearts and heads without the noise. Be mindful that we can be motivated to even lie to ourselves. And those lies can perpetuate in the worse way to effect our future.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Change, hearts and heads, Lies, life is precious, Love, Postive Thinking, relationships, Truth

18 Jul 2012

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The Music and the Album Experience

I have always loved music. From as far back as I can remember I had something in my life that would play music. A portable radio (they called them “transistor” radios for a while), a record player, a boombox, a Walkman, a CD Walkman, an I Pod and a smartphone. I always loved my stereo system ( because at one time they had mono systems I guess). There was always music playing around me. In the background, in the foreground 🙂 in the car, at the beach near our house, at friends houses, parties, late night on the back porch.

There was one thing that really changed how I listened to music and made the difference on what I listen to today. I will show my age by saying this but for a while in time the “record album” was part of a renaissance of modern music that made listening to an artist or group different from before. It wasn’t just about one song (although that may be one of the reasons to listen to the album), it was about the complete experience of understanding the artists and their music and the atmosphere it brought when you would play several songs in a row by the same artists. Sort of why they called it an “LP” – long play record.

Since it was hard to skip through/scan through songs on a record without picking up the needle (amazing a sharp little thing that scraped along a groove in plastic), it was easier just to let the “side” play. One half of the album would play out its 4 or 5 selections and you would listen. And somewhere along that time you would get to know the artist better, and actually appreciate the songs that weren’t likely the hit-single playing on the radio. In some cases they all folded together into something that felt more like a drawing or painting of a mood.

And even now, as I scan through songs on the Internet or program selections or shuffle a playlist I still stop to wonder about those “other” songs. The one or two I missed because they were part of a more complete picture in sound. I could even get nostalgic about how the album cover and art were part of the experience. Don’t get me started about those albums that would include the words to the songs, or “liner” notes from fellow musicians who wanted to speak to the listener about their heroes and peers.

I am too much in a hurry now to sit through a whole album (or at least one side). Sometimes when a song doesn’t grab me in the first 10 seconds I hit the forward button and go on. Letting songs pass by without a passing thought.

Don’t get me wrong. Theres something to be said for technology allowing us to experience new and different artists online, streaming or downloading musicians you may never have heard before – when record companies had to pick and choose for you. But that album from the artist that fought their way to the label had character as a “physical thing” to be collected, and replayed and shared with friends as an experience.