Month: February 2017

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Blog

Attending to that Collection of Old Writing

Is it a good idea to post a bunch of rambling old freewritings that I wrote last year? Or even further back?

Why do I keep remembering “l’enfer, c’est les autres” (Sartre: Hell is other people)?

Lately, had thoughts about the respect for attention — what it means to intentionally call attention to something negative, perhaps something painful but unchangeable, some old scar or another. Lord, how I find my experience of Facebook to be increasingly terrible and confusing. Why do I keep coming back, then? It fills small gaps of time where I’d not otherwise be doing something productive with my life — caring about the lives of others and keeping up with them is the selling point, sure. But lordy, how little I can help, the problems I see there, the focus and training I’ve had to resolve those conflicted feelings, yet I know they come back. Longing for greater affection, but necessity of only stepping in where it seems wise. Perhaps my social network is too wide for my life now. Perhaps being physically separated for too long unmoors me from what I liked about them in the first place. Maybe they changed, or were never like that to begin with. Maybe Facebook weirds human relationships.

The problem, too, is that I think posting old stuff with unclear expectations is a problem. This project is an ongoing one, and the point is it’ll never be “complete”. But it’s also worthwhile to think about you, dear reader — hi future Orin! As you’re probably aware, the writer always reads their words most. And I hope reading these brings you a certain delight, and commiseration, a recognition, although I’m honestly not sure why… except perhaps you remember/imagine being chilly, sitting on the Munchery parking lot stairs, wanting to organize your thoughts, to see them click together with the click of the keys, wondering if you successfully shoehorned enough evocative descriptions of your setting to ground in that “real world” we’re always hearing about.

Is it a good idea to post a rambling new freewriting that I wrote… just now?

(Sure! Fuck it, dude. The privacy setting that matters most is “hope you should know”.)

Categories
Dream Journal

Collected Dreams from the Past Week

In the dream I’m blogging — here, on ori.nz — and see that the URL permalink reads 10-2. I have an intense come-up feeling as I become something like lucid.

Pax Imperia, little cute solar systems. I see my homeslice Mickey B. I’d later realize this dream was very close to a ninth-grade fantasy I’d had while first starting to lucid dream, that we’d be able to play realistic space games together while we slept.

Dressed in a pair of tiny cute skivvies, I’m hopping from boat to boat in a crowded harbor marina. I get inside a spacious empty ferryboat filled with rows of low-slung benches, the windows and walls are clear plastic. Jumping from public bathroom to plain basic houseboat, battening the hatches. Off in the distance there’s a massive wave, a wave the size of a mountain. Later, I’d recall another dream of being in that massive wave — no sign of a harbor in that dream. Also, another dream many years ago where I scubaed alongside a whale.

J’aime Andrade, a member of color guard in my high school marching band, showed up in cool convertible with a few of her friends. Post-gothy aesthetic. They were having a blast and lifted my spirits.

(this night I meditated in bed before sleep for an hour…)

  • I’m on the phone, giving my friend Reecy directions while she’s in Germany
  • Lorelei is having a second baby, I’m very happy for her but unfortunately it wasn’t her life plan. Later I’m walking along the outside of a rounded fence near an abandoned area, I accidentally re-dial her and am embarrassed.
  • A biplane crashes just outside the Fartpartment, it’s an excuse for me to leave and wander the streets, and become lucid.
  • I stare at the beautiful horizon, receding infinitely into the distance, lucid but unimpressed with reality and the dream. It’s unimportant to me.

In a darkened apartment I’m with an elegant Greco-Roman topless statue of Sabrina W. Who should wander in, but Sabrina! She makes a show of approving of the work, and I find myself speechless (once again) in her presence.

Last day: I run into my nana under my apartment stairs, she finds me hiding a water bottle. Somehow that bottle is evidence of murder, but not one I had anything to do with — I just don’t want the creepy water bottle anymore. My nana gets me to put it someplace it could be found later, in the basement.

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Dream Journal

Dream of Stephan Colbert’s House

Stephan Colbert is a teacher, has a golf course house on a hill. The house has streetcar tracks leading up to it. Then old tracks are buried due to the very steep slope. His neighbors, who live on opposite hills like in the Palm Springs mountains, shoot golf balls at him. But the golf balls are actually small fighter jets that get shot down by his fighter jets. If you think normal aviation is expensive, try repairing ridiculously tiny planes that have been shot at, in mid-air.

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Blog

Your Drugs are Too Legal, Snowflake

Lynae: Oh no one of the Kratom capsules was incense kratom
Lynae: The last one I took
Lynae: I can feel it writhing inside
Lynae: Torturing me with its evil

Orin: You need to take them with like 8oz of water

Lynae: I am
Lynae: But this tea is so cooooooold brrrrrrr

Orin: That has nothing to do with it being infected with incense smell, and has everything to do with it being a extremely flavorful substance inside a very sticky capsule

Lynae: Hypothermia is setting in

Orin: That happens to me every time I don’t drink it with enough liquid

Lynae: No I smelled it my body is rejecting it
Lynae: It says DO NOT WANT

Orin: Can you just skip to acceptance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kübler-Ross model of grief
Orin: Or you could just skip to stage five, barfing
Orin: jeezus this is why there’s no ayahuasca for you
Orin: the shaman is all “maybe just some nice homemade apple cider for this little muffin”
Orin: fucking liberal snowflakes, no tolerance for the kind of drugs taken by real men
Orin: in my day, drug tolerance was something we avoided with titration to get ourselves at the minimum viable feelgood vibes quotient, because drugs were expensive, and we wanted to save enough for later. we took the drugs home in a little doggie box. that’s what we called it too. and you know what? $0.06/capsule, no wonder you’re having trouble. you can’t appreciate how much the damn things costs to smuggle on a high-powered speedboat up someone’s ass (just to be extra safe), because your drugs are too legal.
Orin: fucking communist dirtbag poloshirt-wearing rubbing-broken-glass-on-you-genitals newswanker
Orin: you probably read on Facebook that it was bad for you and now you’re going to go vegan because hot dogs are made from discarded pig vaginas
Orin: well I got news for you, bra-burner, the pigs aren’t using them anymore and it’s not gonna bring them back if you stop wrapping those luscious lips around America’s juiciest footlongs
Orin: Amyway, duck Trunp

Categories
Dream Journal

Dream of a Spanish-style Chez Poulet

Back in my parents old bathroom. Sitting in a long, empty bathtub. I’ve found an old grooming toolkit (self-care) package of mine in the cupboard, birch or cedar-scented, but the important applicator tool is missing. I’m disappointed. A family member says we can order it online but when I scan it reads off as bipolar something-or-other. Lynae, who hasn’t been paying attention, suddenly asks what she can do.

Roaming through a nostalgia-scape, reviewing the past… November 2013 if I recall. It’s like the streets are numbered years. Looking to find (buy) a replacement for the lost part of the toolkit. Death Valley-like place, great view, fresh dry smell, isolated but well-tended semi-open-air store. Guy rides in on cow (or bull). Retracing his entrance, driving or walking along, I see the narrow strip of fenced natural desert he would’ve taken. There’s an expansive view of the valley floor. Drippy watered roads flow into rivulets and, further downhill, that water shoots from the mountainside in a powerful spout.

Going to artsy movie theater, think it’s not the movie I’m there to see but instead Lake Placid. In the opening scene (still looking for a seat and I’m standing near the right wall) people turn themselves into “pets”. Epic girl hero riding a dragon through a videogame-y fantastical castlescape. Boast that they have three Golden Gate Bridges. Screen is too high up, beyond it is an under-screen room, but there the main stage picture is off (while a live show is trying to get ready) and even that room’s secondary screens are relatively small. A Mortal Combat fight is playing. One fighter (the “good guy”) is just a badass tattooed-and-pierced arm, but his superpower is slowing time and taking 8 hours to finally hit the ground — his opponents usually become exhausted.

I leave the theater but am still watching a movie somehow, and I’m sitting next to big girl. I’m leaning on her we’re packed so close. As long as I don’t think that intimacy with a stranger is weird, she doesn’t either. We introduce ourselves; her name is Monica. She’s still on good terms with Chicken, which I discover by reading a handwritten mail over her shoulder. We get to talking, about a 14-year-old on Mission Street who’s just starting to experiment with makeup, and has garish outlined black lips. I like Monica and (though there is some attraction) we’re friends all of a sudden.

I go into Chez Poulet with her. It’s bigger, a converted funeral home that used to be for the many Mexican families here. Saltillo tile and arched stucco ceilings. Big room in the back where a community market is happening. She’s friends with one seller, we talk at a booth with them, making fun of another seller next to them we don’t know as well. That person is selling intricate carved wooden bowls, placed on shiny woven Asian mats. Monica and her Chicken friends decide to smoke pot in a back room, one with a Christmas tree. I start snooping around and discover that many of the signs I’d last left around the place were still in the same spot. At the far end of the right-hand wing, near the next-door radio station, I discover a neglected door and follow a secret passage. I can see through narrow high windows onto the tiled roof. The hallway passage leads to the Christmas tree room and I surprise the gathered friends.

The Chez Poulet has three bedrooms on the top floor, former accommodations for staff. As third person perspective, in the corner one I locate Chicken John. Instead of being angry because it’s me back in his place, time stops and I gaze at his true face. It’s both softer and younger than I noticed before, and also more old and damaged. His left eyebrow is janky, his forehead wrinkled, his hair is gray and sparse. No mustache. It’s like looking at an old kid. I realize the only way to get such a face is by doing art projects with people you choose to care about for years and years. I admire it and see in it the innocence that it really has. I float away, he turns into pissy mustachioed and porkpie-hatted Chicken again, yelling at me to go away, Orin. The other bedroom residents seem to be yelling it, too. This is when I wake up.

Slowly realize that I’m in bed and just had an interesting complex dream that I can remember, but feeling wary of the laptop beside me that’s there for writing it down. Gradual boot-up process. Distraction from writing the dreams details, though they don’t seem to fade… sometimes the remembrance is like that. Wariness of posting publicly. Allowance to let it be cast.

Categories
Dream Journal

Dream of Cats in a Cafe, Car Out-of-Control

Visiting cafe with Lynae, have the two cats Katie and Aloysius with us. Lynae humorously insults how liberal the cafe is, a little too loudly for my taste. The barista is having a conversation with an older bald guy near the far wall about him taking LSD. Katie is climbing the brochure board behind the barista. When it’s time to go, I herd Katie into a cat carrier inside a larger cat carrier, then Aloysius goes inside on top of that one. Departing the cafe, making my trip to get the truck, I also end up carrying Patrick wrapped around my leg. He seems younger, but distraught and disheveled. I heft them all in the backseat (the cats are immediately all over the place). While I’m leaning into the driver’s seat area the truck begins moving forward uncontrollably. I have to steer away from the cafe where Lynae still waits, into the parking lot, and hoist myself into the seat with the car lurching forward.

The car is stuck in forward, and the the streets of San Francisco are mostly arranged hexagonally. I’m diverted away from my path back up to the cafe and instead keep going down (the area is reminiscent of Diamond Heights). Beautiful trees and houses, and some steep, sharp, unguarded cliff turns. I’m able, near the bottom of a canyon, to swerve the truck into a fishtail and get pointed back toward the cafe.

In another dream, Lynae’s laptop is a silvery flat rectangle that looks like mine, but is thicker. It’s our way of keeping them apart.

In a much earlier dream, I’m driving for Munchery and have to pause my deliveries in their garage. My sparkplugs are overheated. The brand name is Reese’s, like the candy, and they are similarly colored orange. This seems sensible cross-marketing in the dream, if something I’d never heard of before.

Categories
Dream Journal

Dream of a Friend’s New Place

Aislinn is moving into a new place and asks me to help. It’s a former stripper or sex worker’s house and they played Magic cards. On the table are sealed little plastic tubs with the Magic creatures in them.

The room I’m in, probably the living room, is heavily sloped so that it’s only about 4 feet at the far side. I’m painting that wall purple. I open the front door for some reason and practically bump into a standoffish male neighbor. There’s confusion for me about whether I’m supposed to lie and say I’ll be living there, then later have to pretend we broke up or something. As I’m trying to congenially chat him up I attempt to grab the front doorknob only to find that there isn’t one on the inside. The neighbor became gruff, I looked and I’d simply missed grabbing the knob.

Walking around a swimming pool I watch as someone’s kid seems to be struggling. They’re on the bottom of the pool and their parent is right there, so I hesitate to rescue them. I preemptively take my shirt off anyways.

“So then we’re talking about a tribe of primitive vegans?” Just a glimpse of an earlier dream. That dream reminded me of one from another night a long while ago, walking around in a dessicated swamp in the outback, having been dropped off by a bush plane.

Categories
Dream Journal

Dream of Dossie’s Neighborhood, and Musing on Deficiencies

I’m in the backyard of a house owned by Dossie with a group of friends. There are lovely winding brick pathways between flowerbeds and the yard is open to the neighbors, no fences. The neighborhood is wealthy and her next-door neighbor is amicable, letting cars park in front of some of his many garage doors. He has a cottage house built into the base of a sequoia-like tree, cozy and rustic. But the main house is an L-shaped A-frame ranch home, very wide. In the attic I imagine a collection of taxidermied polar bears, rusting Model T’s, massive ship propellers, and the like.

Later in the day I’m free-writing…

The problem of other people, of severe attention. Conflict within self, of not being able to un-perceive deficiencies. People aren’t like other things, they’re something almost equal to this mysterious “self” but not quite. At Pranayama practice this morning I found myself consistently aware of my own skepticism. An unpleasant feeling, but perhaps only because it belied my own lack of one-pointed awareness. That is, awareness of the deficiencies of others was only difficult because I therefore knew that I wasn’t “on”, that I was less than aware.

The most odd part, I’d say, was the moment the teacher mentioned the point of the exercise as to become aware of ourself as the entire universe. Hearing it come out of someone else’s mouth disturbed my previous perspective on those type of statements. It reminds me of an idea for a book I had yesterday: “How to Realize Your Spiritual Self and Still Get Respect as a Rational Being”.

Categories
Dream Journal

Climbing a Telephone Pole

I was climbing up a telephone pole (or maybe just hanging out on it), a dirty old rusty one. A group of people passed underneath me on the sidewalk, including a woman who was the voice an animated rabbit when she was a girl. I couldn’t tell if they were aware of me or not. In retrospect, I might have been some sort of animal.

Meanwhile, in “another window” of awareness, I was watching a tutorial on road construction in SimCity. There was a hack where you could draw a 9×9 road grid, with diagonal extensions, connect grids together, then erase the parts you didn’t want — this would create a road in any shape. As the tutorial finished I heard the commentary of a landscape architect, saying this would help with playground design for years to come, and a saw a circle bisected by a path, with an even number of termini on top and odd on bottom. The conversing group, by this point, had passed. I didn’t notice the layers of experience operating at the time.

The voice actress had been a part of another dream where I was inside a trailer of sorts, actually a rail carriage. Smooth glossy white surfaces, cabinets on three walls with an unused shelf-ledge above each. The railway made a 90-degree left turn at some point. It was my family’s space (in some sense). Earlier, at the station, I had just barely made the train. I was the last on.

Categories
Dream Journal

Four Dreams out of Winter

I’m something like a pre-teen kid, practicing in a small, hard-walled room with a mentor. There’s a fat cat on the top shelf of an empty bookcase struggling to climb up. It looks like Katie with Aloysius’ coloration. Seeing this, someone mentions nostalgia for when Lynae’s dad used to call her “his little hamster”. The mentor and I begin a fisticuffs match, and they have become invisible. I can still feel my punches land, but they are softer now, as if the mentor was made of foam.

First-person perspective, paddling down a wide, muddy river on a rainy day. It’s like the rest of the world isn’t there, just a gray wall. I’m getting advice from a compatriot walking along the shore’s path and move to the middle of the wider and wider river. Now in third-person perspective, I watch the single-person boat struggle on the outside of the flow, and go faster in the center. So fast, in fact, that it’s propelled out to sea — or at least out-of-sight of land.

I’m outside in the dark of winter with a few others, near a door back to our shared facility. There’s a strange woman who finishes her thing — a cigarette, talking to herself, digging in the mud, something — and goes back inside. I ask about her, can’t now remember the response, but a large replica of a hand-weight is then lifted into the air and gently placed on top of an old angled window, a window that’s pouring light from within the warm building.

Someone mentions that I should get in touch with Marc Fincham from Berlin. Soon thereafter, I look to my left and there sitting at an outdoor bench is Marc! No idea if it means much, but very surprising.