One I realized I was cooking eggs (way too high), reheating pizza, and trying to read about Indonesian divorce, I admitted that it was time to wake up. I wasn’t even leaving room for the fully intact choc-o-nutty-poke cake on the counter.
Separately, but around the same time, I’m reflecting on my little metal smoke jar and how much I like it. It’s a recent creation and very handmade, for burning hand-rolled Tibetan-style rope incense.
I eagerly — avariciously — head to a sale on MiniDiscs when it becomes known that they’re discontinuing all the players. I get to an electronics store and I find their advertised prices different than what’s in the store. One in particular, a curvy off-white device with highlighter yellow trim (very ’90s) that also plays CDs, seems even more expensive than before. I know it’ll be a collectible. Some are actually cheaper than advertised, but I start negotiating anyway. Downstairs, people are trying them out, and I hope I’m not wasting my time while they all get bought up.
I walk around an odd object, making sure I’m seeing it correctly: a snapping turtle is prefectly still, frozen in an-open mouthed pose, poised in an abstract statue in the high crook of a crescent arch. Is this image from before the store? After? Is this what distracted me?
I write down “scanning counter” here when I write my dream down. This often happens, and sometimes I delete it. Not today.
Walking in my neighborhood several blocks away along the same street, I have a flashback to 2007 where I would do things like move poorly parked motorcycles into half parking spots behind buses. I would think “he should be thankful”
A poster of four ships in port, all facing out. Isometric view and close-in cityscape. It feels familiar, though I can’t specify how. Analogized as a model for all posters with any four things receding into the distance, regarded as saccharine.
I’m inspecting merchandise in a small dead-end town, the end of a long road, during their annual event — a Bay Area tradition (like Port Costa’s town-wide yard sale). I inspect a standing fan and carefully consider it for our apartment. I take off its head from the bulky base stem and consider how to pack it on my motorcycle. I reconsider and try to put it back, though it’s fussy and I give up, chagrined.
I pick up a pair of binoculars laying on the table. They’re better and clearer than my pair at home. I can see across the narrow bay channel to Russia (it must be Russia — but where?) at the many people playing in the water. There’s one tough guy I can see walking toward me, wearing a fur hat, stomping around the waters with the many other Russians and Russian children. Because of the binoculars I get the impression he’s much closer, along with the feeling he could see me. I have to consciously overcome this sensation. I put the binoculars back.
At another table I notice some very distinctive drinking gourds, the kind you drink yerba mate out of. I recognize them from a quirky little stand in San Francisco that sits in a private park outside a fancy mall (maybe in SOMA). I recall, not long ago, walking through an under construction passageway under the awnings of that mall. I had made my way toward the side entrance, construction workers having put up another temporary fence corridor between the entrance and the stand — absent-mindedly blocking access from my passageway. I had righteously knocked over the fence, for its disregard of proper safety and egress practices. That was the last time I was near there.
Along with the Yerba Monte gourds from that stand, I see a distinctive collection of cheapo pocket pussies, also sold there and quite distinctive. I deduce (with a degree of certainty) that the shop must be closed now, and the locals selling at the yard sale must’ve been employed there. Hmm… vaguely disappointed and would appreciate more information on why and when the store closed.
I want to take a picture, check against some references, but there’s an update on my phone. The new interface is poorly designed, with sections labeled “not ok”… which I have to work out is actually a button, not a notification, and it’s meant to light up if something was indeed not ok. Terrible design. I have to restart my phone, and it’s a fucky process that takes much too long. By the time the phone is restarted, the table has been cleared off. There’s a musical performance happening after the yard sale, as is traditional. Typically I prefer to have left by then, what with the massive influx of cars parking for it. One of the locals is nearby setting up for the performance, and I ask him about the gourds and pocket pussies. He goes inside a building to see if he can holler at the guys and get them to help with my questions. But he also agrees that he wouldn’t want to be parked here still, with the coming onslaught.
Checking in my recordings archive, I rediscover an occasion my friend Matthew and I went out all night. It appears to be from March 8th 2024, before we hung out often. I recorded several MiniDiscs worth (which of course would’ve been necessary to capture the whole night). They’re all the same color of neon ’90s green. One has a chunk cut out of it that I don’t remember but could fix with cardboard if I wanted.
Mostly we were hanging out under the moonlight at a park, swinging on swings. We do a bunch of other stuff across the nighttime Coachella valley, but mostly the recordings are just labeled “Park”, as though I meant to get around to labeling them later. We had ridden the bus there, getting out of the neighborhood due to loud construction near both our places. I had remembered the occasion, but didn’t think often of the MiniDiscs saved from it.
I note that I’ve been carrying these MiniDiscs around in rows of foam slots folded into the bottom of a folio — several sequential folios in fact. I suppose I don’t need to be carrying them around with me all the time, though.