Categories
Dream Journal

Rocks, Parks, Plants, and Avatars

Driving down what seems like a miniature Hot Wheels freeway in San Francisco, through a rocky little cactus and succulent park. I take what must be a wrong turn and continue driving over the road, but it’s now invisible. It’s disconcertingly like flying between the channel of rocks.

I come out the other end at a corner, noticing a small sedan parked just to the side of the intersection, practically in the crosswalk under a tree and sticking out into the lane. It appears to have been there a while as there are pieces of broken-off succulent plant growing on the street around their car. I consider rescuing some to take home.

Instead, I enter uninvited into the condo-like apartment building, in the tall flat block adjacent the intersection. There’s no lights on inside, and it has a “Miami retiree” vibe. I get lost in the maze of bathrooms, trying to leave feels like going through one after another, in the dim interior twilight.

Once I’m outside, I start writing a note to explain how the invisible road in the park must be fixed, and in the process one of the rent-by-hour bikes that’s always parked on the sidewalk in San Francisco gets knocked down. An older, gray-haired motorcycle-type guy with a goatee, his outfit covered in motorsports logos, reflexively tells me it’s knocked over and I should leave a note. He’s just passing by and doesn’t even seem to have any investment. I gather myself and rush after him and ask him pointedly “why did you feel you had to say that?” He immediately understands it was unnecessarily bossy and apologizes, yet I agree I will leave a note and say I’m sorry.

Afterwards, I use a personal gliding machine to fly directly above the rocky triangle-shaped park. There are huge spherical floating balloons holding up art projects, the work of one artist not long ago. I fly low enough to graze them. In a fit of enjoyment, I fly low over the street, wobbling to and fro between the lanes as I idly ply the neighborhood.


Walking between two fancy houses on the seaside. Modernist concrete right angled things, floor to ceiling windows overlooking long patios which double as piers, covered in tasteful potted plants. I walk between two of them (neither of which I have permission to be on) and observe how their roofs hold up a flat trellis between the homes. (The orientation switches at some point, as if I’d been looking toward the sea, or looking toward the street.) I imagine hanging a certain pitcher plant perfectly in between the two homes, such that it overhangs the walkway.

I am, by this point, also an Avatar Aang type character. A younger girl, resident of one of the fancy homes, lays down on the concrete, bereft of energy. In what I understand to be a friendly gesture, I dip my nose into her exposed armpit. I must’ve been invisible to her before, as she startles and knocks me backwards. In penance I turn myself into a potted plant with tall pointy leaves, called a snake plant. I watch the clock fast forward by a factor of 36, while in the background my unknowing allies search for the Avatar.

Categories
Dream Journal

From Forest, to Warehouse, to Casino

(Dreamt in the cabin in Weed, California, before I was woken up from tooth pain)

A line of houses at the edge of a sloping mountain forest, separated by a field, or golf course, recently redeveloped with simple white windmills. In the course of trying to navigate past, I come to a stony circular outdoor temple which is shaped from the trees themselves. There I encounter a bro dude (probably a golfer) who directs me further into the city.

I re-enter a dusty large warehouse space, somewhere I’ve stayed not long ago. Gazing on aged timbers, gauzy light, and empty wooden alcoves, I consider how this would be a bad place to get sick. Outside I come across a kid, a nerdy boy who I recognize as having some sort of eye disability. No one has taken the time to get him to a safer place, this one obviously being abandoned. I gather a group of such disabled children — thick cute eyeglasses on their tiny young heads — and make for the most difficult passage. A group of at least two other caring adults joins me; we cross a tight gap with a folding trap bridge, inside a small tricky mechanical gate. I remember my friend Sarah Bliss there using a bicycle to hold down a rotating semicircular apparatus. We safely get the kids across, thanking each other for a job well done. One girl has her name listed as “[personal attribute] one”, which when asked about she smiles and dismisses congenially.

(Right now, writing this, I feel as though she’s dismissing and accepting my attempts to remember her name, in fact.)

I’m then within what must be a casino complex, a large enclosed circular courtyard somewhere like Nevada or Florida. This is quite different from the peaceful sparsely-populated forest. Trying to get around there, I bump into a bar in the middle of the road/path, the name is a pun on Peyton Place, somehow incorporating “payday” and also being released from “parole”. I’m baffled there are so many people out during the Corona pandemic. I duck into an employee area, a curved restaurant kitchen similar to a rail car. I tactfully ask someone working intently inside how we normally get out, as if I were a recent hire. I managed to exit out that back door, only to soon step onto a multi-car people-mover, some airport tram thing that ferries guests around this circular temple of gambling. I get caught with a ton of Florida types, none of whom seem to know about wearing a mask, and I burst out after only one stop. I try to get far away from anyone else, and end up gravitating to the middle with rows of benches around me. This place is insane. Far more likely to kill me than the dusty warehouse. Where did I bring these kids?