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Dream Journal

Missing Jawbone (Aging is Annoying)

In a movie theater for my 43rd birthday. It’s a large, well-regarded old theater loved by the community — a massive room I feel I’ve been to in other dreams. After a show, I return to look for the missing bottom half of my collectible Lego pachycephalosaurus skull (it was only produced once for a natural History museum diorama set). It’s troublingly small to have to search for, and having just the one half would be quite a sad reminder. I manage to find the missing jawbone though, and try to arrange it on the surface of my record player for a delightful aesthetic to share. But the movie starts up just as I’m about to get the shot, and it’s too dark; I miss the picture.

I’m woken up, rudely, by my rat Carl scrabbling at the door to be let out. He found some wrinkly paper, to boot. Ugh. But while I’m awake, I have the annoying realization that I don’t really want to turn 43. Being 42 sounds cool, feels cool. Ugh. I try and succeed at putting the thought out of my head.

Hiking in Russia includes carrying a large machine on one’s back, which reminds me of one of those giant overhead projectors from school. I notice eventually that it’s easy to heft it over ledges and such in the beginning of the day, but I’m surprised to discover how much older I feel by the end of the day.

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Dream Journal

Revisit to Australia

Visiting Australia, I never thought I’d see it again. I’m traveling deep inland and the green hills and my feelings for the land are very specific, nostalgic, touching. There’s been a series of contaminations lately, and quantities of high-quality cow fat has to be dumped. I dig a shallow hole to pour out what someone calls “beautiful 90s fat” into the dirt while the wizard Gandalf comforts me.

Renting a place in Mexico. We’ve still not acclimated and made friends, partly because it would mostly be expats, so we mostly stay in our room. This isn’t so much an issue since there’s sometimes a beautiful golden light in the evenings in the corners of our room (which is like my childhood bedroom in Kemper court). The house where the room is has a private road veering off to one side, though I don’t realize that’s what it is at first. I see a Mexican man sleeping on the road surface in the shade near the first curve. He would be hard to see in the shadow there, which seems intentionally dangerous, even suicidal. I take stock and realize I’m being imperceptive of the cultural environs, after all how many cars are really going to pass this bumpy road passing by the front of this dinky house.

In what must be a different dream, we discover the room our landlord has rented to us is still being used as a commercial kitchen. It was reasonable enough when we assumed it had been converted for residential use, but we don’t even have any private area… it’s literally a working kitchen using rolling industrial fridges.

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Dream Journal

Dreams from The Long List

It seems in the dream I have a list of hundreds of short dreams. I’ve been saving them up, many on the bottom are from nights past. These are ones that happened last night, the ones that I remember at least, and I think they could probably be boiled down to bullet points.

Munich, I’m told by my wife, has the interesting quality of having no tennis courts, because none of the ground is level enough. It started out as a mining town in the Middle Ages. I retrace old trade routes through long and narrow mountain valleys. I go in and out of modernist buildings and long canals or ruts in the ground. I’m there for what feels like an entire night’s dreams, but I think I just fell back asleep after waking.

In another one, I’m entering Sarah G’s house, leaving four pennies outside the gate. Coming to apologize and make up. She had me try on a fancy blue tuxedo coat, which didn’t quite fit. But I did arrive in my nice, fancy blue velvet jacket. Charlie mentioned they didn’t know about a big TV. There’s actually two big TVs inside their house, but the one I came to see is an ancient, fuzzy CRT from the ’40s or ’50s in the garage.

Hanging out in what might be a big hotel with Angelica’s girls loafing around. One is idling, reading a magazine, looking at a plaque on the wall. Have a brief chat with her, saying how I had great times reading magazines as a kid, playfully asking if she’s come up with anything vulgar to scratch into the plaque, which endears her to me. I realize I’m playing the role of the playful adult, scoring points, even though that’s not the greatest idea to give them these ideas. The reaction is fun though. It’s my role here.

Watching two surfer/stoner dudes on LSD get on a Ferris wheel, attacked by turn-of-the-century style old Chinese men, one of them unexpectedly rises to the occasion and bites deep into his nose, possibly biting it off. I remember from some other factoid the surprising thing about the blood tasting salty, that’s why the Chinese man falls off, he spits it at his face.

Oops. Forgot to do the bullet points.

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Dream Journal

Port-a-Potty Stabbing Samurai

Entering an abandoned hospital in the future where there are much fewer people. We’re here to scavenge parts, including an alarm clock block of wood. In the bathroom, I have a strange feeling of understanding: I’ll be one of the last people to know what a place like this was before the fall. In the bathroom, I imagine finding a hidden wall panel to go through a secret corridor, a way to escape the ward — the kind of fantasy someone I would have been trapped here would have, the kind that one day won’t be understood anymore.

A samurai race: one samurai leaves the starting line early, chasing the quarry into a port-a-potty. He stabs his samurai sword strongly right through the middle at first, then seems to have a moment of reflection and genre-savviness, realizing his victim would probably kneel to avoid the strike. So he then thrusts the blade diagonally down into the porta potty, likely killing the victim (who was seen to enter). It is never confirmed, though. The race was scheduled to start at dawn, but the other samurai remains asleep at the starting line. The winner hopes his opponent will not notice his cheating.

A magazine from January 2005 features a light green background. It’s eye-catching, seemingly an intentional misuse of chroma key. More to do with it that is now forgotten (I used to be better at leaving myself hints… hmm).

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Dream Journal

Three Fragments

In the classroom of an enthusiastic teacher before school ends, then I leave right after.

The crew of the Serenity from Firefly are meeting to sign their original flight agreement using melted wax.

Rebooting a computer system on loop. The command “egg” does a job I haven’t heard before, and is essential for use on Discord (with which I’m not super-familiar).

I’m trying to be better with actually publishing these even when I’ve largely forgotten the details. That’s what practice is about I suppose.

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Dream Journal

Suddenly Iced Coffee (dream of LA)

An odd Wikipedia entry of a female author’s biography. It’s odd because it’s the size of a neighborhood, displayed laid out in a giant index like blocks of a city. And if I were to guess the city, I would guess Los Angeles — it’s certainly dry and sunny and industrial enough.

Park the car in a parking spot at a long, convoluted, angular strip mall. Find out there’s a store that has paid to make the spot available, the Panax Ginseng Store. Decide to walk there to check it out. Partway, I realize just how long a walk away it is. It’s shorter to walk back to my car and drive there. That’s LA.

The store itself is small, mostly novelties stored in plastic boxes in front. Plastic tarps cover most areas as though this is all temporary. Honestly, it’s not what I expected. It’s more intriguing, really, as I want to know what the deal with the place is. There’s a certain kind of benign neglect that elderly Asian immigrant shop owners have in their businesses. The very specific type of dirty-but-interesting corners I happen to find quite appealing.

Passing by, someone invites me to Costco with them. The entrance has very tall nursery plants and the same smooth cement floors I remember. We shop separately once inside. I worry whether the person who invited me actually can share their membership, as they said. As I pass by a free sample table, iced coffee is snuck into my hand, or mysteriously appears. For whatever reason, this seems to be the strongest image from the dream (and seemed a funny-enough title — well, why not?)

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Dream Journal

Metal Action Movie Bullshit

I’m in an enclosed all-metal structure, reminiscent of a labyrinth. As I proceed through, around the corner some Marvel movie bullshit starts happening in the next room — lasers firing, superhuman karate, epic scale fighting (way above my pay grade). Reasonably, I’m skeptical that a normal human like me should be anywhere at all nearby. I take a left and crawl down a long sloped metal corridor, a blind curve down a ramp. I start to get scared/worried, actually. For awhile there it’s pretty uncertain whether I’ll be able to make myself go all the way down the ramp. It doesn’t help that I see flashing blue and red lights from the end of the tunnel, indicating there’s some heavy police presence outside for whatever nonsense is going down inside.

I manage to make it out, playing it cool for the gaggle of bored-looking cops standing around at the tunnel exit, on a pleasant terrace adjacent to the structure. Quite soon after me a female friend emerges from the tunnel — she must’ve been right behind me. She asks what the holdup was, if I got frightened or something. Ummm… I try to play it off once again, but consider going on a rant about whatever the fuck superhero garbage we had to deal with. The person I’m speaking to is one of my friends, Reecy or Jessica from La Paz, maybe both in one form. I don’t know the significance of either.

It’s time to take it easy for the moment. I sit at a bench with my father-in-law at the edge of an unused race track, chilling in the sun on a slow afternoon in Sacramento. I’m waiting for something , so now we’re waiting together. As we sit, I watch a massive metal bird made of spare parts loft a monster truck into the air in it’s janky mechanical claws. Oh, right, there’s a destruction derby going on in the stadium next to the track. We both glance at each other, sharing the same thought — it’s highly entertaining to watch, but since my wife is away it would only disappoint her to describe the cool shit she missed. But it’s here for us to enjoy, now, and we might as well.

Later, a single scene dream. My wife walks in the room and informs me with apparent gravitas and regret, yeah, “Fox and Mongreen closed last week”. Sounds like the kind of hipster restaurant place in the neighborhood that we’d typically be sad to see close. But wait… Mondegreen? Did I hear that right? Weirdly clever, upon reflection. This is the dream that woke me up — I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

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Dream Journal

Ferry Boat Findings

Just got back from a long journey home. After a while, I realize I forgot my bags on the multi-level ferry that dropped me off. Unexpectedly, I have to swim all over the delta looking for it… lots of houseboats and channels to get lost in, and weirdly, Israeli spies.

Following up on leads, I’m getting closer and I know it. I’m the neighborhood of Chicken’s boat (Chicken did actually have a boat in a Delta that I worked on, but this isn’t it). The boat is a scrappy mastless pirate-ship-looking thing sloppily painted light blue. A young man approaches in a barrel-craft and I negotiate with him for information. The ferry is hard to find for good reason, so it seems. It’s been parked for some time on a disused secondary level of a channel. Once I have that hint, I can find the local address and bootstrap my way into going there.

When I finally find it, it’s suspiciously gone downhill, fewer passengers, maintenance neglected. The crew seems nervous, too. I discover what’s been going on: trapped onboard is an unkillable giant cell, a non-sentient entity like the astral spikes in Control. They’ve been keeping it in the boat’s hold, or basement as I think of it, for some time. When I encounter it, it’s recently drugged by the crew. I help by wrapping it with duct tape. It’s immortal, so this is only a temporary fix, but I think it might actually work.

I’m given surgery to help my heart. Confusingly, it was placed a little too high. Maybe I have two now? My heart is excited to wake up, so I do. It’s an odd feeling, and I’m not sure whether to be worried… but I wonder what it means.

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Dream Journal

Moto Journeys Meeting People, Helping a Runner

On some epic journey on my motorcycle, somewhere in central California headed north. While riding uphill out of town, I see that my phone at 1%. I try to quickly memorize the squiggly rural highway route up into the dry grassy hills, following the freeway just a few streets away down the hill. Maybe this is somewhere near Grapevine.

Along the way, I happen to meet three different important members of the extended highway community by chance. I often stop at nice places along the road, and it just happens. I’m usually busy packing or unpacking my motorcycle case, or tinkering with my tent, and this gives curious older people living nearby time to take an interest in me.

I help a endurance runner cross south toward Central America. I’m his route escort and encouragement, his spotter. At some point it’s interrupted when he’s arrested for something — I never figure out what. Later on, he and I are preparing for another leg. He’s relaxing, sitting with his girlfriend (my cousin Betty) on my living room couch in the Fartpartment. I’m leafing through records looking for stuff to play for him on the route; his only feedback is that he “jogs better when he doesn’t have to listen to music in French”. I give a good-natured tease about revisiting some records I already listened to, ones he missed because he was in jail. He’s teases right back when he points out that most of my box is upside-down, except the records I’ve been putting back in. Boooo. Oh well, I deserved the dumb luck.

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Dream Journal

Decaying Mansion, Full of Falls

I’m staying over at the big fancy house of my friend Tracy in Richmond. This isn’t her real house, but a cavernous, fading, historic mansion with at least six stories. I find myself sleeping on a bed at the edge of one of the high atria. I catch myself at the edge of the bed one night, about to fall over the edge (luckily I put my travel bag next to me).

I learn of the forgotten story of a three-year-old boy who once fell from a height in that same atrium. The kid had become trapped in a decorative curved alcove, something looking like a luxurious conch shell ornament from the 1920s. This oddly dangerous decision was built along the smooth, carpeted ramp on the floor just below where I had been sleeping. He was saved by many firefighters who held a very wide sheet across the entire floor. The boy did fall, finally, into the rescue sheet, still asleep. Of course he wouldn’t remember it — despite the high drama. Yet one reason it was forgotten.

I like to explore the structure since I can’t move back to San Francisco, where I actually have stuff to do. I sometimes find little wooden square vents high on the walls and climb through them, just to have something interesting to do. Certainly no one else is bothering to explore the structure.

One day I find a gold mine. I discover a large unused space, dreaming of what I can do with it: a cafe, a clubhouse, a performance venue. Tucked away in the back corner, I discover a deliberately manufactured scary animated doll puppet, specifically designed to artificially frighten others into avoiding the space. It’s immediately obvious to me that this is a deliberate act of deception, and I quickly realize that I’ll need to persuade others to understand that the situation isn’t what it appears to be. However, it’s also the reason why the space remains freely available. Despite this, it’s also just another forgotten thing in the mansion.

When I first woke up, I remembered different dreams, the dreams I had just before waking. But when I found this one again, I stayed stuck on it. It was more enjoyable and interesting, I suppose. The others were totally forgotten in the process.