Month: December 2020

Categories
Dream Journal

Hovering Presence and Menacing Cow

Skin writing is used as apunishment on someone suspected of human trafficking, marking them for later.

A dog-sized cow is acting menacingly at the property line of my childhood home, just at the edge of the neighbor’s lawn. I walk all the way down the street trying to read its dog tag, with no real plan how to make it go away.

Discover I’ve moved in together in the same ground floor apartment as some people I know in real life, but mainly from Twitter — KC Crowell, Feral, all Oakland peeps. I myself am an observer, but unusually, one with an identity — a hovering presence dwelling mostly in the rafters, where a glowing horizontal level divides my space from the everyday living space. The easily discerned border of the ceiling has curved buttresses, marking its construction in the early 1900s. On one section of old wood paneling, I spot a poster advertising old-timey glassware, lab glass perhaps. My roommates begin reinstalling some authentic hand-blown stained glass fixtures, decorative colored filigrees that have been in storage for almost a century. The landlord likes the residents so much he was convinced to let them haul it out from storage. The square ends of the curvy abstract forms fit perfectly flush against the buttresses.

Categories
Dream Journal

A Stadium like a Nation

A big rectangular stadium has been repurposed, serving to represent something much larger — a polity of some kind, a country or region. For a gateway it has a car boom gate, something I simply walk around. I search out my friend Autumn and meaningfully gesture at her to point out the gate’s existence.

I walk the circumference of the vast semi-enclosed space. At one corner, a convoluted passage leads to a locker room hallway. As I exit this corner, under some decorative wooden slats adjacent to the wooden walkway, I hide a soda can. The can may be a container for something else more risqué entirely.

As I complete my circumnavigation the search for a certain person is finally concluded. Seeing him, he seems very generic, someone so boring he’s almost a threat in his inoffensive blandness. He’s a relatively young father, overweight, maybe midwestern, a blond white guy. He’s to be designated as the “remainder” of the nation, someone outside the normal political moieties which cancel each other out, who should ultimately decide many issues. Not coincidentally, he lives in the same corner where the can was hidden. I’m left wondering if its contents will factor into future handling of this unassuming, yet discernably perilous individual.

Categories
Dream Journal

Queen Elizabeth’s Garage, Rally to Speech Grounds

A fridge outside on the street, needing to be moved inside. But I must ask permission from the garage owner: Queen Elizabeth II. One spot inside is next to a small fridge and sink, one spot across is behind a couch. This garage is having a hot dog feast with family — I have to search for the last dogs, bringing a plate to my family’s table (mom, dad, grandparents) who are eating only a few plain dogs. I don’t have a plate; the queen then suggests I not sit and instead go back for my plate, not understanding these are the last few dogs and I might not get any. Yet in the end I do manage to get two, their cheese all melted and congealed.

While many of us are waiting for a rally, with me squatting leaned against a pillar in the garage, my former lover Dara shows up. I spot just her black-heeled foot at first. But she’s made up to the nines and looks fly as hell, a femme fatale, long bare legs and a short black skirt. I’m overjoyed, throwing my hand on her foot and running it up the whole length. I make a joke for the sake of anyone who might be watching, how “I suppose I should’ve introduced myself first ma’am”. Dara’s a candidate in some sort of competition, which we’re all about to begin.

Me and my friends start on a group walk along a planned route. I’m in the lead at first, chatting side by side with a dude friend. A small girl I haven’t known for years, Quetzal, swaps into the lead. I yell encouragement behind her back saying “Quetzal will know where to go” but she doesn’t turn around to acknowledge it. I find myself wishing I’d double-checked her face as she passed to make sure it was really her.

The path takes us over a wooden walkway, one that a grumpy adjacent homeowner claims he owns. The extended line of us has to find different ways of going around. I swing underneath the wooden support beams of the cliffside house, sneaking around acrobatically like a ninja or rogue. I take a shortcut through the lower level of the house, what looks like a messy neglected in-law unit. I succeed making it to the double door exit, but my curiosity gets the better of me and I turn back to investigate the darkened octagonal space. As my eyes adjust I suddenly recognize there’s a dark man sitting upright and perfectly still nearly in front of me — I nope the hell outta there right quick.

Finally arrive at a gathering ground with an upward slope of steps where politicians sometimes give speeches. It appears Joe Biden is claiming he is the victor of the competition/walk. I learned from talking to people that in fact Dara has fulfilled her promise and arrived here first, giving a speech earlier before I arrived, making her the actual winner.