Month: June 2023

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Dream Journal

Couple Cleaning, Shortwave De-propertization

In a dimly-lit space, there are wooden shelves and tables and open cabinets. An elaborate gardening bench perhaps. Rows and rows of items necessary for cottage life. I’m cleaning these rows while couple shares their story, and advice on how they clean. I dig out one specific plant from the wooden under-shelves.

I get to visit a friendly outsider artist type while I’m on vacation. This man famous for his shortwave radio broadcasts. Too famous for the comfort of some, as it turns out. I watch a replay of how he had his five rustic country/western properties sold out from under him by sneaky business dealings. All of it was illegal but I know he’d never be able to prove it — he’d need the money from the properties to do that. And he lost them so the bad actors could silence his broadcasts.

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Dream Journal

Presidential Escort, Bow Break, Ukraine to USA

The President of Turkmenistan hosts me himself for a bit of an athletic tour. He takes me on the continually-upgraded Walk of Health — here taking the form of a paved white path of several switchbacks up a scenic steep hill. In his matching white shorts and running trainers, he discusses health benefits. He notices, after one of the sharp curves, that I have been issued the old shoes which he insists are no longer the standard, and will set me up with the upgraded shoes they now provide their government workers and a towel. I speak with a frumpy officiant at a white marble desk (naturally) who goes about doing just that. I hope I might speak with her more plainly, to actually get context for what things are like in the country. Perhaps that’s because I’m some kind of reporter or distinguished guest, and the kind of person the success show is intended for. Interacting with the President is a very strange experience, but not unimpressive. And I do get the new shoes, formed of white mesh and white foam.

Aboard a large vessel docked in port, I move deeper inside, closer to the bow, closer to a view of the sea. Along the way I’m dropping pennies from a bag. When I’ve finally reached the open balcony at the front of the vessel I toss a final quarter into ocean near the ship. It’s an interesting gesture, one of willful letting go and freedom, but I also know I felt lucid doing it — that it, I knew the material didn’t matter as I was dreaming. Someone has followed me onto the bare metal balcony, a middle school crush and high school friend, Alexx S. I find myself gazing into her face, and understanding that this person is someone else — perhaps not someone who no longer exists, or someone that I no longer know (we lost touch decades ago) but that I’m keeping alive the memory of who she was when I was someone else, too. She is the echo of me, who I was when I was attracted to her. Later, in remembering this dream, I even think of her name as someone else, some even earlier crush perhaps. As we stand on the bow in the brisk seaside breeze, I reflect on how in San Francisco the ocean makes the weather never too hot (like in Los Angeles), but instead sometimes it makes it too cold. That’s the bargain, one I’d still choose.

She and I watch a large shipping vessel coming into port at unusual speed. I almost don’t believe what I’m seeing. It fails to veer and plows into the front of our ship, not far back from where we stand, with tremendous noise and chaos. Immediately before it struck, I remember thinking that I almost have enough time to record it — but of course I didn’t have enough time.

Walking across war-torn Ukraine. Part fact-finding, part direct-support mission that I’ve taken on by myself. The road is long and curved, the sky forever cast in dark grit. I peer into the ground floor of a residence hall of a university. I see only food aid in the grimy kitchen and a few grateful young people skittering to and from their rooms. Somehow I walk quickly enough that I’m halfway across USA. Looking down the slope of a steep levee, an old guy with long hair, beard, and glasses notices me and gives me a nod. I’m amazed he recognized me from long ago and at such distance, but I can’t place where we know each other. Reminds me of Tom Hanks, or one of the old men who garden in my neighborhood.

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Dream Journal

Third Trip back to Australia

My wife and I manage to cobble together enough money to take a 6-day vacation to Melbourne, Australia. It’s now my third trip to the continent, also the shortest (I must be counting some other dream I’ve had in the past, perhaps I can even remember which one). I relish showing my wife around some of the old places I used to go, but it’s difficult to remember exactly where they are now as it’s been so long — if they’re still there at all. The Friendlies Hostel somewhere in the CBD comes to mind. So does Mt. Helen, which somehow seems like one single pioneer-era street.

In the far back of a long narrow resort, I help myself to the cups in the back storeroom. Service cups for the on-site restaurant, that is. I run into my friend Oz and we do some opportunistic kissing.

Seen from resting position on a couch (but not my couch) I spot my rat Bertie. Also a checkerboard pattern rat, some rattie associate which somehow doesn’t strike me as odd.

I tale bounding leaps across a courtyard up to the grid-pane windows of a Victorian house. In that brief moment, I spot two old cats keeping watch.

In our apartment, I have to distract my wife to keep her from looking in our bathroom. I just saw that her girlfriend has left an N64 cartridge which is supposed to be a surprise present.

I do a double-take at a drinking fountain after I notice that someone (maybe me) put a discarded penis in the drainage hole up top. You can just make out the glans. Shortly after, I meet a cute femme enby named MidJourney who is riding bike. Reminds me of a very put-together clean new Tilde Ann (someone I knew and shared a hot tub with long ago. I ride along behind her. She’s notably meaner than most people I’d consider being around, but we converse and make fun repartee. An unusually caustic friendship but it seems we do like each other.

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Dream Journal

Malageist

A couple of guys dressed as old ladies at a rooftop party are fleeing in disguise. Repaired broken electrical in the street.

Driving back to a hotel that I’m staying at, as a young woman. A room with free snacks, Cheetos.

Sharing ownership of a car with a lover.

A song based on a report about love: Malageist. I’ve been keeping the report upside down on a filing cabinet and only reveal it to my family when I share the song.

I don’t remember these dreams very well, even at the end of the day. Need to start filling in more details after I leave bed.

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Dream Journal

Nice Town to Get Your Car Towed

A straight street in the grid of an unfamiliar tourist town. I park underneath the eucalyptus, with a view to the sandy ocean beach further. Maybe somewhere in central California. There’s some stalling — young lovers saying goodbye in their own car parked in the right lane. When I step out I discover the charming miniatures set up on the asphalt road, placed by local art grant no doubt. I warn the young lovers of them. I go back shortly thereafter and  find that the tiny tourist town has already towed both of my rental cars. My immediate thought — perhaps maturely, or even fatalistically — is that I need to make it to the impound lot as fast as I can to save money on added fees.

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Dream Journal

Too Long at the Library

As I’m about to wake up, I get my nipple piercing caught on the blanket while rolling over in bed. Though it’s quite painful I don’t call out. I don’t even know how I suppressed it — but perhaps a decent amount of dreams were lost due to that accident.

I’ve spent days or weeks at a library. Spacious oblique concrete-walled rooms, though the order of the shelves never makes sense. I remember in particular three shelves contained in a box of rectangle, lined up diagonal. There’s a stage show put on where the stage is level with the audience floor. As I’m finally hoping to leave I locate several Deep Space Nine station model kits that you can check out and build. Fair to expect my wife to be thrilled by this discovery.

Not long after I finally leave the library I set up a booth on the sidewalk. I pour myself a beer and start drinking, because that’s what I set up this booth for. On a wintry sandy curved road, I sit at the booth, and I drink beer. Anyone who wants to come can join me.

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Dream Journal

from Words of Russian Sympathy, an Alarm

On a post, two lone words commemorate a very sad Russian situation. I don’t know more about it. But I come across these words on a walk around my neighborhood, maybe walking my dog.

I leave sympathetic comments below, maybe on paper or maybe as part of a website. I feel a buzzing which comes across as an alert responding the comments I’ve left. Perhaps a portal which opens to defend the viewing of whoever that Russian tragedy happened to, that misunderstood my sentiment. But it’s actually my phone alarm. I need to wake up for yoga.

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Dream Journal

Spelunk into Demo Space

Wandering at the terminus of a rainy street, the edge of a neighborhood I don’t visit often anymore. Looking to see a movie there, unusual for me at this hour. There’s a premiere or re-release of some culturally important film (y’know, Jurassic Park just had it’s 30th). I’m leaning toward choosing the chain cinema, nestled in a dark alley with its line of pinpoint bulbs glaring in the night. I don’t want to choose the wrong place for the sake of the kids around here — this movie seems to be having a moment in youth culture. I want to avoid disappointing them, and also avoid getting shivved.

A naked pet rat (one I can’t recognize in retrospect) the next in our lineage after Xolito. A chubby cute older little bugger, with a port wine stain on the side of his stomach. Went by the cute name of Spool.

Old Man So-and-So has a horse pasture next to the town river. Flat little idyllic island, it was. The old farmer has worked skillfully to get the flowing nearby water still enough, but it happens that there’s a certain stillness that horses find provocative. They’ll horses try to flatten it with their hooves and jump in, maybe thinking it’s a puddle. This time the horses swim to a rocky outcrop with waves cresting just over it.

Falling into an elaborate funeral structure (I think of it like a palace tomb) that is accessible by falling through from a graveyard. Reminds me of a creepy spelunking cave I heard about in Australia called The Shaft — where divers are easily disoriented. Come to think of it, it’s also located in some farmer’s horse paddock. But this strangely expansive and elaborate artificial cavern is a demonstration space left by the developers. Developers of whatever video game is the reality I’m inside. I remember a long curved Wall with unique frames, each of which holds a preserved doll that was once alive. Inside a cubic hollow I observe renderings of 3D shapes which change their shading logic as a move my viewpoint side-to-side. I seem to remember a redwood Grand Hall that I step outside, looking up through openings at its immense spiral stairway.

Harder to finish these as there wasn’t as strong a story as some dreams from past week. But focusing on them as I go to bed brought strange feelings of familiarity, other dreams I know I’ve written but that weren’t “finished” with publication. Those are harder to search through.

There was one, where I may have been living in a trailer somewhere tropical, behind a picket fence, defending my home and community…

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Dream Journal

Drafting Letter to Old Man

Older man, sitting in an office filled with memorabilia, showing a patch which says "Cult Leader". The man is John Waters (or at least it was, before someone replaced his face with Walt Disney's).
photo credit to Tom Atwood: original photo of John Waters, from the book "Kings and Queens in Their Castles".

Writing a letter to an old man regarding a recent experience. Maybe our trip to Mexico. As I’m editing I’m figuring out what I want and should be saying. There’s an opener which references the controversial incident obliquely — possibly rather too clever — and I try to dance around insulting the other actors involved, the greater context, or really spelling things out. I need to avoid giving the impression of a promise, or an admission of guilt. But I want to seem like the good guy. This is a creative way of cleaning up from overly-complicated events.

This is becoming a bit meta to me, the person who dreamt it and the person who’s writing it. Perhaps it seems that way to you too, dear reader. That may be because the way it’s being written appears to be auto-descriptive. Best I can give my own analysis. Take it with a grain of salt, though.

The old man was kind of a Walt Disney or John Waters type. But his moustache was not important.

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Dream Journal

HONK. HONKHONKHONK.

Driving a semi truck: the first time I’ve done so. Not as hard as expected. My wife rides beside me as passenger, and it’s fine… mostly. We have a close call while making a left turn when there’s an unexpected red light on the other face of greenlit intersection. I yell at my wife to stop talking, trying to tell her not to go to the cab’s toilet right now, and I manage to stop the semi with zero inches to spare. It’s hard to tell actually. But it looks like my front just barely contacted the black bumper of a large pickup ahead. I suppose it’s up to that driver whether that’s acceptable, but I’m certainly thankful. I realize later that one reason I’ve been having the stressful troubles that I have is that the bulky reverse-forward switch is wedged way under my seat — and that lever unpredictably comes loose and flips! BAD SEMI.

During night I seem to wake up naturally, sometime after this dream. I’ve really been wanting to catch up on normal natural sleep. I’m suspicious of how long I’ve slept — so when I roll over and the dawn sun is directly in my eyes, I know this mere provocation is the reason I’m awake. Pfft, don’t let no morning sun tell me my dreams are finished. So, I grab my sleep mask and make an attempt. When I pull that mask off again and dare to glance at the clock — really I had no idea — the clock reads 10:28 am. This is so much good sleep. Perfect sleep. I immediately ramble off a whole victorious rant without even trying. A moment of pure joy and contentment.

What follow are dreams from that penultimate duration, between the masking and unmasking.

Sleep study program. It’s covered by insurance; that’s nice. I pick out a vintage shirt that a bit stretchy and wear it around the crowded store. When I go to check out, the two volunteers make a big fuss between themselves over how much a book I picked out is. I seem to remember being one that was taught from during my school days, a standard collection of poetry. This copy is very different though. Someone, probably an old lady by the looks of it, performed a ton of scrapbooking on it decades ago. The thing is so thick it can’t be closed. I flip the book open to a poem I remember specifically, a gothic scary-tale about a lone red-eyed coachman who might be a demon, entitled “Croach”. While the two nattering nitwits behind the counter (sorry, chatty volunteers who take their sales responsibility seriously) are going on about the price, I decide I don’t want the poem book that much, anyway. I wander off wearing the colorful stretchy shirt. If they want to confront me about it someday, I’ll be back for more treatment as part of the sleep study.

Another place nearby. A late-night talk show’s long prep-time, where as one of the first there I choose to sit in the back right corner of the audience bleachers. There’s a metal washer wedged under there (couldn’t tell ya why, but I remember it), and this rubber horn that I honk. Did I bring the horn? I dunno. But I’m just sitting there waiting, and I observing the risers, the room, the idling crowd. Periodically I’ll squeeze this horn, make maybe one honk or a dozen as it pleases me. Whatever comes out; just killing time. For me it’s nearly absentminded. The horn is doing it. So this is my improvised pastime. And while it continues solely for my own purposes, of that I assure you — (I always like having something to do with my hands) — it’s easy to notice a weird approval grow and grow among the audience. The horn always feigns disinterest when people react to its song, but it sure knows how to play along with what I happen to observe — which is the whole room. Sure, it is annoying. Who wouldn’t inevitably think: WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE HONKING THOUGH? But it’s also been going on the whole time; no one here wants to be the asshole to yell at horn guy. It’s also just like, fascinating? Funny but why? No one even turns to look for someone with a horn. No one breaks the spell. So that sound is the uninvited goofy little mascot for the whole lot of us, for Team People-Waiting-a-Show, for our shared evening. Everyone starts a bit confused, and most people try to not acknowledge it for awhile, but everyone sooner or later is having feelings about my longform improv horn performance. Some people crack up with laughter and a few (very few) leave… I wasn’t carefully monitoring though. For everyone still there, they’re just sharing an unusual experience and chatting, excited for the show. Maybe wondering if this is supposed to be part of it? Me, I’m still just waiting. I don’t have a plan for where this is going. We’re all just hanging out with the strange squeaky stylings… of The Honk.

Finally, finally the host appears. Shortly afterwards he begins the show. I don’t want to say it was Jay Leno, but he sure didn’t remind me of Craig Ferguson. During most of this time he’s been backstage and apparently clued into tonight’s audience performance. There’s one honk made with good timing that gets another round of laughs, after one of his intro jokes. His move is to makes a strong passive-aggressive comment, on-air, quick as he can, that “we” should maybe cut back on that joke with the horn for the rest of the night. So, wow, that’s how that ended. An additional complication: I had handed off the honk-horn to a short-haired black woman, some friend I trust (no reference to a waking-person though, she was a pure dream construct). So now my friend has gotten to honk the horn… once. Her first and last honk. I hope she didn’t feel bad as if she ended my performance. Wow, I do not know how I should feel. Not mad at her, and not positive about the host I’d say.

And that brings me to why I was interested in this host and his doings in the first place. I’ve been patient. I’m suspicious of his interest in a young girl-child. So after the show (which I have no memories of, probably skipped over that part of the dream narrative) I follow the trail of where the guy, JayLenoHost, might be alone with the girl. I enter a high-ceilinged brick room with many open flames, unattended and apparently unused. I holler at and chide the person outside the door about it, assuming they are the person who did that… I count off 2 furnaces, 3 crucibles, 3 ovens, 20 candles, etc. So many flames that it ought to be roasting me while I’m in the (strangely dark) room, but my only concern is that they’re using lots of oxygen.

In that room, among those many open flames, I find one of my current pet rats. Rusty nests cozily atop some very warm (perhaps even hot) material, wedged in a metal half-basket. One side of his face is smooth and eyeless — just like my pet rat who’s now gone, Xolito. Maybe Rusty’s eye infection ran its course and it’s closed up, normalized. He seems fine.

A dream of Jada and Will Smith having a married-couple discussion on a small luxurious island. I’m sitting low in the water, and have the perspective of a janky wooden boat or floating platform. The Pinkett-Smiths are discussing some financial problems and their options for them. I assumed they had mounds of celebrity money, even Fuck You money. But I’m here to observe or maybe even film and although I’m like, RIGHT in front of them you’d never know based on how they acted. If this was indeed my job, as I now suspect, I might be getting paid to document Rich People Problems. So that’s fun. Eventually, when a pointed anti-papparazzi comment is made, I take what I can only think of as the cue. The boat powers up it’s concealed outboard motor and zips off noisily. The two movie stars put on a show of acting like they didn’t expect this from my innocent piece of flotsam which has been bobbing in place directly in front of them (with a guy, a camera, or a guy with a camera on it) for the last hour. I’m almost convinced. They are pretty good actors.

The scene pans smoothly to the right. I get to watch a recording of Jada (or at least I think it’s supposed to be Jada P-S) doing a dance. Supposededly it’s pretty popular. It opens with a closeup centered on her hips. Decently high production values, it would appear. So far so good. As the wiggling dance proceeds, the view stays framed on her pelvis. Looking at it the costume, I’m trying to make sense of a design choice. Maybe I’m just visually confused or I’m the only one who would see this. Right at her crotch there are lines as if her labia could be seen through a hole torn in the fabric. The choice is bold but hard to account for. They know what people will thank that is, won’t they? And finally figure out what I’m looking at. I’m looking at a woman’s hips dancing while her labia are in full view through a purpose-made window in her clothing. I’m less shocked than I am confused: where are they gonna broadcast this? TV?

A small, highly efficient snack shop that’s just a sideramp of a major route (i.e. an offramp, a drivethru, then an onramp). This chain has a deal where if you happen to be arriving when their replenishment robot is arriving from the opposite direction, you get a free meal. I find that out the first time I visit one, when it happens to me. These booths strike me as so efficiently automated, yet I can perceive active human labor in all the organization. I pick quickly before a line forms. Actually I go to the checkout counter (I thought it wasn’t separate? Maybe this was just for the meal deal, whenever the robot needs to do it’s work. I am invited to exit the way the human employees do: crawling through the square tunnel behind this secondary worker’s desk. The secretary nods politely and covers the mouthpiece of the phone she’s holding as I hop the counter.