Month: September 2016

I have been told that I should write a post about some of the silly dreams I have.  Quite often I wake up laughing in the middle of the night about something crazy I have dreamt.  Other times I do odd things while I’m alseep.  One time I crawled along the bed and quickly snatched the pillow out from under my partner’s head.  She just told me calmly to give it back, at which point I woke up.  Another night I had a dream I was tossing a football around the backyard, and in reality I had my partner’s elbow in my hand and I threw it like a football which woke both of us up.  In a dream not long ago, I got to laughing when someone in my dream said something was as impossible as “farting oneself to the moon.”  A couple nights ago in a dream I watched a boyishly dressed woman go into a store called “Western Lesbian Outfitters” to go buy some more butchy clothes.  Mostly vulgar, usually dumb.

This post is going to deal with three dreams which are pretty similar in some ways.  They all involve female singers who are not exactly attractive.  Why?  Who knows?  If Dr. Freud was still alive, maybe I could get a little insight into what the connection is, but for now I’ll just have to guess.

Dream One:  Mama Cass Elliot

In this dream I met Cass Elliot on a bus.  We got to talking and we were getting along really well.  I could tell she was interested in having things go a little further, and I was looking for a graceful way out without doing anything to hurt her feelings.  My great line to get out of an awkward situation?  “It’ll never work out, you’ve been dead for 40 years.”

Dream Two:  Rita MacNeil

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This dream was similar to the Cass Elliot dream in that we were chatting and the singer in question was becoming interested in me.  Here I never got a chance to escape the situation.  Rita was getting pretty worked up, so she unbuttoned her blouse and showed me a boob.  Trouble is, the boob had four nipples like an udder.

Dream Three:  Adele

Well that’s about it for romance.  In this dream I was moving along a buffet smorgasbord in a restaurant.  I was plopping dollops of this and that on my plate, getting together a nice dinner.  I came up to the lasagna tray, and there in the steaming metal table under the hot lights was the very last square of lasagna.  I put it on my plate and started to head to my table, when all of a sudden there was a snorting commotion as Adele rushed me with nostrils flaring, in a frenzy about that final piece of lasagna.  She full on tackled me, and my dinner went flying.   I have been traumatized, as I bring this up every time I see lasagna.

I think the Rita dream was sort of sexist and vulgar, comparing poor old Ms MacNeil to a cow.  Likewise, the Adele dream was cruel as it depicts the ‘big boned’ Adele as a food-crazed eating maniac.  Do I really think these things?  I don’t think so, but those ideas are lurking in my sleeping mind, ready to become crazy little movies when I least expect it.

Ok, I’ve been putting this blog off for a long time, mostly because it’s bound to be a dull topic for most people.  I can see that it needs to be written to get it out of the way so my life can continue without its presence, so bear with me.

For most of my life I have loved chess.  I was fascinated as a kid by the shapes of the pieces and the unique properties they all had.  I read a book or two on the subject and I became an adequate player.  On rainy days, me and my little neighbourhood buddies would play each other for hours.  Aside from my family – among whom I am the only player – I really grew up believing most people could play chess.  As a teen I came 2nd in a tournament held in my high school, and I won a prize playing a master who was travelling around shopping malls playing simultaneous games with 20+ opponents at a time.  In my early 20’s I joined the Langley Chess Club, and over the years I have represented it in club matches many times, have been its secretary, treasurer, tournament director and seven time champion.  I have travelled far and wide in this country, playing in the national championships, usually finishing right around the middle of the pack.  In the past half a decade or so I have been directing larger tournaments with 50 or 60 players, and I’ve even been written to by the national chess federation to be thanked for my “contribution to chess in Canada.”

Meanwhile, my feelings for the game have been changing.

I used to be excited to play other players.  It was my version of the gun slinger’s showdown, and I know my opponents felt the same way.   There was respect and comradery and occaisonally hard feelings, but nothing that lasted long.  In the same way that many kids I had fistfights with became my friends, so did many of my toughest opponents become friends.  Once you’ve taken a measure of your adversary, fought against his strength whether in the school yard or over a chess board, respect came naturally.  That’s how it was.
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Now, I play against opponents who are prepared with computer analysis of my games, who know exactly where my dark squared bishop is going on move 6 of the Trompovski Attack, who know how to exploit the subtle weakness it creates, whose coaches have shown them the best long range plan in that position.  They are usually kids with their parents watching intently, armed with granola bars and juice boxes.  It isn’t a battle of gun slingers in the dusty streets any more.  It has turned into an impersonal battle of computer preparation and coaches.  Rarely do we sit afterward and talk through the games, and even rarer do we leave feeling any respect or warmth toward the human being we just tangled with.  The families are often involved heavily in the chess careers of the children who play, but they seem only to learn moves and positions, not the good stuff about giving and gaining respect or friendships.  Or maybe I’m a cranky old man who imagines things were better years ago?

Maybe among the kids who have taken over the tournaments and their hovering families there is respect and personal feelings.  I’m not in a position to know.  Another thing that bruises my ego is that after some kid, his family, his coach and his computer have beaten me, I get the I’m-smarter-than-you look.  I have to remind myself that being classy is another lesson they will hopefully learn one day, but it isn’t the first step they take.  Of course, I mentally float away to an alternate reality in which I am kicking the kid over a fence into a yard full of hungry dogs, and it helps a little.

If I quit playing, and I might, it will be a sad end to one of my favourite things.