Month: June 2021

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Dream Journal

Distract for the Cause, All the Way to Celebration Point

Excited to soon be flying back to Australia after so many years, for a school trip. Compared to last time there’s much more structure but many more people to do things with. A long gap follows this part of the dream, yet though forgotten seems connected to later parts.

My assigned male activity partner sits on the corner wall of a lot where the school group has gathered. He’s hefty, and the loose dirt crumbles. He falls into rushing water — the one thing that was stressed about him was that he’s (really, actually) allergic to water. Immediately this feels like some sort of test. I swim frantically after him though I don’t hold much hope. Yet I’m able to catch up, then heave his immobile body onto the inside curve of a sandbar to hopefully dry and recover. I pull myself onto the shore further down the bend. By then he’s recovered — more like been revealed — to be a powerful muscular young Zeus-like figure.

We expropriate a neglected academic area, a bit like single story underground dorms. Surveying the cramped little warren of rooms I spot an Austrian flag hanging on a darkened wall. Satisfied, we begin planning a takeover. Our small group of like-minded rebels improvises a space, repurposing walls and making a few rows of chairs. We view and discuss ideas presented from a stage.

One such dramatization of an idea is like a subdream featuring stop-motion bundles of sticks: a Subaru hatchback driven by a pair of 50-somethings backs into a barn near a lakeshore; the barn catches fire and explodes inexplicably. In the chair next to me sits an old man I don’t know very well. I’m sitting at the end of a row, having thought I’d be further from people. I’m now uncomfortably aware that I’m naked from the waist down, and adjust my posture and shirt in a futile effort to compensate.

Events take a twist when a college girl wearing a Lakers cheerleader uniform returns from a bender. It’s her space in which we’ve been squatting, and she has many pointed questions. We’d prepared for this eventuality; quickly I snap into the role of distracting and misdirecting her. (Especially from a disturbed patch of wood at the foot of my seat — a relic from before our takeover, uninvestigated and best forgotten). I talk and play friendly with her, giving a tour which surreptitiously avoids the group’s more sensitive aspects. It’s tricky, but I lean toward providing truthful explanations wherever possible — without any group plan it seems likely we could easily be caught in a lie. This would be a greater risk than tiring out her questions and slowly earning her trust, though I worry if my compatriots might think I’ve betrayed them. Thankfully during my ramblings on our tour I spot one of my conspirators and, while her back is turned, signal with my hand to give the companion opportunity to take action. It’s acknowledged with a subtle head shake, showing me that while they’re not ready to move forward they also recognize the part I’m playing.

Soon she asks to go into an especially sensitive five-story building, to the top floor. There’s a library located in the center of that floor which would be disastrous if our interests in it were revealed. There are also two balcony rooms flanking it where students often congregate, known as “Celebration Point”. As the library comes into view I deploy a powerful strategem: I act bashful and say “The thing is… and I’m not sure you knew this… Celebration Point is where a lot of students traditionally go for a first date.” I managed to say this twice in different ways, proud of my brilliant acting, while realizing if any companion were witness to it I’d appear highly suspect. The stakes are increasing but I’ve pulled it off so far.

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Dream Journal

Singular Standing Dream, Dad’s Casserole

A marathon of a first dream that seems to last most of the night. Yet little of it is remembered… as so little seemed to happen. My crush and I stand next to a program guide — this is the main image. We simply stand there, still, static.

As the dream deteriorates into wakefulness, I ride a bike around a specific blind corner in my neighborhood (the crosswalk at Potrero and Cesar Chavez). In the instant I round the corner I imagine threading my trajectory between a former crush and new crush, one oncoming and one outgoing. I wake up and realize I’ve had the strange experience of sleeping nearly 8 hours dreaming basically a single scene.

I go back to sleep wishing to gather more dreams. Not the worst excuse, I suppose.

Visiting my childhood home after a long hiatus, where my dad still lives. I notice the house’s original CRT TVs are mostly gone. When I ask about this my dad says they tended to get cracked from falling forward onto the ground, since their design was off-balance. Eating some of my dad’s
hastily prepared food at the kitchen bar (maybe Cheez-It casserole?) I find a hair embedded through it. I make a conscious effort not to worry about it. My dad puts on an 8tracks playlist he made through tinny computer speakers. I help by casting it to the living room speakers too — they coincidentally sync together on the first try, no trouble. My wife mentions she’s hungry so I offer her the casserole. She tries it but finds the hair right away and can’t eat it. Because of the hair. Guess I can’t blame her.

It dawns on me that the amount of males and females living in our apartment building has always remained constant. Whether this is intentional or not I couldn’t guess. But I do note this was true until a pair of kids move next door not long ago. They are, curiously enough, a boy and a girl.

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Dream Journal

Lap-Straddle in a Castle

Being dropped off on the prim green lawn in front of a stately stone boarding school, one topped with turrets and full crenellations. Certainly looks like it was originally built as a castle.

I explore the curiously spaced interior with a group of friends. Seems the castle will once again change hands as it’s for sale (why we are able to check it out). The semi-underground basement has a messy unfinished feel, splotchy white-on-white paint. Attached in the middle of the ceiling is a narrow, multi-sided cabinet which I open and amusedly inspect. There are so many different types of soap in there — and only soap — we have a good laugh speculating on reasons why you’d need such an extensive hoard.

While I’m in a kitchen-y corner of the basement near some sunny windows, I receive a phone call updating me of some new people arriving soon. Soon I find myself lazing on a long rumpled couch in a slightly sunken living space. I lounge together with my crush and a friend of hers, hanging out and chatting for a long pleasant spell. She informs me they used to date but are still good friends and that certainly seems true. At some point without preamble my crush rolls over to straddle my lap facing me. This is clearly playful but also experimental; I mirror her playfulness by grabbing her hips. The joy at each of our reactions shows the experiment was a success. It’s a happy moment and a relief, us both taking initiative like that.

Conversation flows amiably along until I realize the topic has veered into something to do with mourning. My crush shares a story of something she lost. As my absence goes on a bit longer than it should (after I’ve finally figured this out), I become pressured by an incongruous and ill-advised urge to say something “important”. This lands with a predictable flop — from which my companions must afterward fumblingly recover the conversation.

I awake and recall the lap-straddle incident frequently during the day, with understandable fondness. I write not a word of the last paragraph until everything else in this dream journal entry is done. This should give some idea of my mixed feelings for it.

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Dream Journal

Too Much Waiting, Not Enough Double Dream Cartoons

While the video game WarCraft 2 used flat 2-D sprites, the years-older “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans” (WarCraft 1) used a grab-bag of early 3-D tricks. I’m finally playing it and oddly, though the game is very basic, it’s more intriguing to discern the clever workarounds they came up with long ago. Pleasingly retro, as well. (Standing in front of my fridge yesterday I randomly appreciated the deep lore they were able to produce in those games, simply by creating the series for so long.)

When my Uncle John is frustrated about having to move, I’m able to share an anecdote about how, when the show wrapped, the sets for “Seinfeld” were almost immediately converted for use on the show “Friends” (I learned this yesterday; it was actually Full House)

Waiting on my motorcycle at a left turn signal. I leave, crossing to the sidewalk when I realize how long I’ve waited. Suddenly I realize it’s essentially just abandoned in a traffic lane now. Going back, I see I even left the key in the ignition. The back compartment must be repacked now (of course it does). I rejigger the back case’s mounting plate and straps, all while standing in front of a line of unusually patient cars also still waiting to turn left.

I’ve been fiddling with nose ring intermittently for most of the dream. It finally splits near the tip, coming off in my fingers just as I realize how long I’ve been fiddling. Still, it seems like it should be able to fit again, but the gauge at the break is inconveniently flat instead of round. It won’t fit in the piercing hole, and repairing something that stays in my skin seems like a non-starter.

In a jaunty Nickelodeon-style kids cartoon, one friend has fallen asleep in the shower. As his friend, and sensing an opportunity for mischief, I hide in the shower drain. Since my friend doesn’t wake up I start saying odd things in an affected strange voice, which reverberates through the drain pipe. Zooming into his dream I appear there as a semi-distorted subway announcer — ignored, as most subway train announcements usually are. I notice other characters from our cartoon have been animated in his dream as more realistic adult humans — stylized and shapely enough to evoke sexual lust, innocently but not incidentally. Rule 34 on hot double-dreamt cartoons.

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Dream Journal

Nightmare Picking Out Clothes

My wife is in the cab of our semitruck parked on 24th Street in our neighborhood, trying to start it up. It’s cargo is filled with furniture and things, could be a resale company or perhaps a home. As I watch from a distance safe to give directions, it quickly spins out of control, circling into stuff nearby and jumping the sidewalk.

Visiting a docked boat restaurant when I discover it’s owned by someone I know and watch on YouTube. His first name is Eduardo. In the adjoining walled sideyard, he raises livestock fowl. I count and observe groups of birds of various ages before I realize how many there are. The number I recall is 2000! He sets up to broadcast a YouTube video of eight hours of ducks marching in a huge circle — at which point I sneak out, to avoid explaining why I myself am not going to watch ducks marching that long.

On my way off the boat I encounter Chicken John, who is located behind me while I wait for the bathroom. I take the initiative and, in such a way that we don’t have to acknowledge how we know each other, I give him a hug. This cleverly avoids any possible awkwardness.

Some time later I’m in a long group cabin. Two rows of squares are taped on the floor to mark out individual sleeping areas. There’s a vibe similar to in the movie “Midsommar”, kind of culty, and the sun barely sets. Before bed my wife asks for me to fetch the teardrop-shaped blue shoes from the window ledge. Exasperated, I eventually find what she meant, though they’re neither shaped like teardrops or blue.

I awake feeling as if I’ve barely slept. A group gathering is about to begin up the hill from cabin, visible beyond an open wall. Everyone else has already left. There are vague instructions to “dress comfortably and nice” but they pointedly don’t tell us what the event will actually entail. Quickly, I feel overwhelmed –by the number of decisions so early, and the knowledge that everyone is already waiting for me to show up. It’s a feeling that I’ve failed before I’ve begun. Why would anyone force you into a situation like this as soon as you woke up? I wake up myself then, convulsing and dry-crying against one of the pillows in bed.

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Dream Journal

3 of 6 Dreamcards

Waking up hours earlier than I should, with only 5 hours sleep. I remember having six distinct dreams, but I know from past experience if I wake up to write them down I won’t be able to fall back asleep. But if I fall asleep, I almost certainly won’t remember them. On returning to sleep I envision the dreams as a row of cards, each with a title and the single most powerful image from it. I managed to remember half of them, though strangely they are not in any order or sequence. Typically, I can remember one part of a dream and reconstruct the narrative.

I’m attending a stage reading event where my Nana is one of the presenters. We have a pleasant conversation across the table from each other under the big tent. We depart together at the end.

Sitting backwards on a bus, a kid has a hand over his face. Kids are keeping other kids in strict lines this way. There’s a social order aspect I don’t fully understand, but find troublesome.

RFC. 43.0.0.13 is a “request for comments” and an in-joke. Among internet engineering nerds, it alludes to the idea of elderly people’s life stories being absorbed into a universal hive mind (or Akashic records) at the end of their lives. It’s an old trope creatively and bizarrely mapped onto a modern interface. Lives, in this sense, are additional “comments”.

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Dream Journal

Criss-Cross Causeway, 777-11-21

I encounter my crush topless in my backyard. She has no nipples though, a smooth flat chest. From context it’s completely unclear if this is a normal state of affairs. It does tend toward disconcerting for us though. Over the course of our conversation they manage to grow, though not returning quite to normal — more like odd unpainful welts in their place. Meanwhile, a party three backyards over continues to rage on (a strange detail is this exact thing was happening as I went to sleep).

After travelling along a causeway, in a car with my male family members, we pull into a gas station. My turn to drive and I immediately pull around and run over the curb at the corner of the pump. Nearby there is a famous but struggling restaurant, Jalisco Taco. They’re known for the great human contact of the restaurant setting. Not so great during the pandemic, obviously.

Young Patrick leaves the little coupe, and inside we examine a map marking out where we’ve been today. There and back again across the causeway, also showing what sections I’ve driven. A feeling of being young and uncertain about what I was supposed to accomplish.

I receive a call from a relative on my dad’s side. The caller ID has changed from a very expected 18626 to the mysteriously intentional-looking 777-11-21. (I feel like I never used to dream of specific numbers, but this was very distinct. I have no impression of its importance, but it was certainly a number tied to an emotional reaction.)

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Dream Journal

Empty Family Home on an Island, In Australia

I’m exploring a house for sale with my Homepie friend Mickey. The attic is large and has multiple nestled little sleeping areas, a place the current residents call Monticello for reasons not known to us.

I’m having some of my old stuff shipped back from Australia, left behind from when I was there. This must happen before the river islet the Monticello house is on floods. We travel the small circular waterway via canoe. To haul the boat out of the water they’ve rigged up a garage door opener near the riverbank — clever little contraption, useful for rural living.

I pick out my stuff from the many cupboards and cabinets of the newly abandoned home. Most of this stuff I’ve forgotten (it’s been more than a decade). I can’t help but steal one thing: an iridescent plastic bowl from the 1970s, easily missed by the family and easily excused as an accident. It’s unique and oddly beautiful, and obviously unappreciated judging by where I found it.

Having everything gathered it appears that shipping is going to cost $60. I hadn’t thought about that cost and second-guess whether I want any of this stuff at all anymore.

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Dream Journal

Dad’s Converted Drawbridge Cottage

I possess a gigantic condom as big as an arm, though it’s almost completely dried out. While trying to demonstrate to my little brother how to use it, the ring at the base chips off immediately. It’d be a waste of a unique object to simply throw it away… but this is difficult. It’s so large it’s useless for anything but a demonstration anyway.

A cottage my dad worked on when he was young, in his twenties. Situated at the left edge of a canal gate, it’s a former industrial drawbridge operator’s cabin, narrow as as a subway line, somewhere in Los Angeles near a museum. Dad was a “2sq/fter”: someone who could take two square feet of soil from their home (in this case Illinois, though my Dad is actually from LA) and transform all the ground on their farm with it. Dad didn’t do that though, he’s just taken care of the native soil and built a charming and solid little shack just above the water level.

I kick off 4 of the 6 teammates on my canoe. The only ones left are one Finnish guy (looks like Willem Dafoe plus angry/sad Moe from the Simpsons) plus my dad. A theme song plays while we watch a betrayal.

Replacing the stove in my house after finding a more matching 1970s stove. The back control panel slides off separately, with my normal spice rack on top of it. I set up a hanging fluorescent click light at the back, near the vent (like the one above my kitchen table in waking life).

I discover RobertBLalonde.com, a web domain of my grandfather’s name, still registered by my dad. I make a phone call to the associated number but hang up when someone answers who’s obviously waking up from sleep.

A character named Jean Auern (an alias of Jean Grey from Marvel) has been alive for 14 billion years. She’s been involved in US politics for 300 million, non-linearly. I learn in depth of these events while traveling through a box of charcoal.

The person I called when investigating RobertBLalonde.com calls back. Jean confesses the truth of shutting down his home, punishing him. She then restores power to the narrow tube apartment, the same one my dad built, just like flipping a switch. I watch as he throws a few stray items out of the way in the narrow kitchen, before a train comes through at a T junction near the end. So he didn’t have to move the things out of the way — he’s been here since before the trains stopped running, before the place’s powers were cut off. So whose was it before him?

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Dream Journal

Disrupting Sponsored Classroom Propaganda (plus, a Girl’s Fence-Butt)

Three times during the night’s dreams I find myself in a situation where a young girl expresses her attraction to me: one Scottish, one Japanese, and one American. Though hypothetically sketchy, I don’t sense any impropriety. I’ve been acting like my usual self (perhaps in a slightly better mood) and me being a target of infatuation seems like harmless fun all round. It’s also odd and sort of a running joke that it keeps happening; not sure what else I should do but take it in good humor.

One girl, memorably, sees we’re alone then smushes her undie-clad butt against the diamonds of a chain-link fence. Looks a little like the pillowy pattern on a sewn duvet? Maybe an elaborate pie crust? Ridiculous.

As a candidate, President Biden famously enjoyed traveling on the campaign tour bus. Now, a new All-American Travel Bus is made based on that design. One even meets presidential limo standards set by the Secret Service.

I show up to one of my regular classrooms as usual, though I quickly discover it’s officially an “optional” day — I didn’t need to show up but now I’m already here. The unfortunate reason (though unacknowledged) is obvious: there’s an Xfinity company rep sitting in the middle of the classroom joylessly disgorging some scripted promotional presentation. The class is mostly locked into a semi-trance in the projector-lit darkness. This ill-conceived sponsored pitch on its own is boring, mildly offensive even, but as the dowdy sad-sack shill drones on I begin to detect creepy undertones of propaganda. Militaristic, imperialist narratives seemingly weave through the dullest possible fabric — hypnotic, odious, uncontested.

I completely disengage, deeming it more effective than causing a scene. Since there’s nothing more important in class today, I set about searching high and low for my missing spice jar. It feels like part of the problem is I can’t remember the name, almost like I could simply call for it. Tactically, I interrupt the creepy droning corporate lump to ask if anyone can closer recall the name. The drone, in reflexive boorish overconfidence, wrongly declares it as “Erizetti”, then pairs it with an incorrect and simultaneously insulting definition. Seizing my opportunity (and also just fed up) I attack them on everything I can think of, with as much conciseness and authority I can summon. When I’m done Ms. Xfinity ignores me again and plows ahead exactly the same, but I can tell her incantation isn’t really working anymore. She can only run out the clock.

While I’m distracted still searching for the jar, class gradually empties out. My fifth grade teacher (Mrs. Plescia) returns, emerging from a back room now that the sponsored nonsense is over. We have a friendly relationship and can joke about it a bit. Behind the projector screen, I find a curious set of nesting jars with parts that interlock on both top and bottom. Not the jar I’m looking for, certainly close enough to evoke it though.

There’s a ledge above the screen that I can examine, barely, if I scoot along the counter on tippy-toes of one foot. No jar here either, though for some reason there is a little toy alligator. I realize, standing extended as I am, that the blue snowflake-patterned boxers I wore this morning (it is in fact June) are longer than the shorts I’m wearing. They’ve likely been peeking out all day — when I greeted Mrs. Plescia, while I ranted to the corporate drone, perhaps even earlier. Exasperation. Resignation.

Looking back at Mrs. Plescia I’m tempted to ask, on account of how class went today, where I would’ve found out that today’s class was optional. I half know, half dread that she’d probably just say “the syllabus”.