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Dream Journal

Chamavada & Friends

On am open field or a rooftop, I see all sorts of photos of myself — taken by friends I haven’t seen for a while. My friend Dave is still the manager of our old hostel. He mentions the first manager Mindy, who was before my time. On reflection, he’s been the manager a lot longer than her, which I never considered before.

Talking to a high school friend from sophomore year, Kyle Bashore, in the stairwell of a building.

Soon I retreat to my room (this is my small teenage bedroom from middle school). In the desk drawer which I haven’t opened in awhile I find a soda-cup-shaped fleshlight device. Not that it seems sexual, it’s more just a port of some kind. I wonder if it’s mine.

It is the 10th anniversary of the time my family members threw themselves into the sea. It was ruled a suicide but I can’t remember their motivation. Also, it seems to be that they came back and are alive again? The name sounded Indian, Chamavada or something.

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Dream Journal

Retro Store, Tree Sacredness: Zinka

[ Zinka is a name that pops into my head during the process of remembering and trying to sort though the night’s dreams. I’ve been having difficulty motivating myself to write and publish them, as my own obligations have grown tiresome. I manage to both remember, write them down, and publish them. A noble effort I hope. ]

The landlord next door has cut down a tall tree with a chainsaw, piece by piece. All that’s left is a tuft at top. There must’ve been some city order as my landlord also just chopped down some plant cover.

By chance, I come across a new Amoeba records location. They’ve relocated it into a janky space that used to be Aquarius Records. Hand-painted artfully decaying banners hang over different sections of the store. Bins of music are stacked on retro acrylic shelving. Something about it is like the original GAP store on Ocean avenue in SF (though it was long before my time). They kept the bohemian charm but increased all the prices for the bourgeoisie. Reminds me of New York City in a way. As I’m coming round a corner, over a metal railing, I chance on the beginning of a three-way in hot tub. The two guys never see me, but I almost make eye contact with the girl — which feels intrusive, though I never get a bad vibe. I coolly direct my attention elsewhere, but know that whoever she is, she knows I saw everything.

I’m stand near a steep dirt-sided cliff, in the vicinity of a sacred tree. As it happens, a line of witches is coming back from a ritual and has to make their way up the hill. For a moment I worry I shouldn’t be there, but just as quick I’m able to do a random good deed by helping give a hand up the scrabble-y slope. The witches realize this is passing chance, but I earn their favor nonetheless. Smiles of many women.

In the retro store I find a vintage two-button Tetris game device in a plastic case. It’s quite fun to play around with, though you have to smoosh your fingers hard to actuate it. I write a note in pen for the person it belongs to, thanking them, when they hopefully find it again where I left it as found.

Short stumps of trees skid across long patches of dry grass, among sparse trees of a forest gulch. I realize people are whipping them with some degree of skill, making them seem to jolt across the landscape. The whips are long and it’s difficult to imagine how quick they must move.

Visiting one of my family member’s who’s living in my old college dorm, maybe my dad and/or my brother. He mostly sits at the computer in one room while I’m there. He’s divorced now, and I’m a bit irritated to discover that he’s using up all my candles. Not even enjoying them, just forgetting to put them out. I peek in bathroom mirror (I seem to almost get confused or lucid; can’t remember now why this detail was important). Outside, near the lawn and the parking lot, no one seems to notice the clear tube coming from the dorm’s window — though big enough it’s for multiple people to slide down. I look for a moment into a basement stairwell, which my family person has been down to the first level. I knowing there are actually three floors there. And not used for anything pleasant. I have the fortitude to go all the way down, but I have the sense not to desire to.

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Dream Journal

Hang Gliding in the Dark

Someone has stolen the truckbed, the entire back half of my pickup, from where it was parked on the street outside my apartment. I set up a rainbow umbrella while I’m attempting to deal with it but it partially blocks the sidewalk.

I’m part of a kink community event. Rich takes on a dog persona. Parked nearby is a car with two vanity plates, but in reversed order, should read something like PSU-DO 640,000.

I’m sitting on a large flat rock, outside a compound built into massive stone. Perhaps this is where the event is. I’m under this big rock overhang, kind of has a feel like the forest from a cartoon (like the Smurfs or David the Gnome).

Hang gliding in the dark from the perch of a promontory, despite that I’ve been told I shouldn’t because it’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s dangerous for me. The silhouetted treelines are gorgeous. While flying overhead avoiding it’s dark streets, I think about the problem of a town which is in this beautiful natural area, but which was allowed to be built crowded and ugly. I make a certain bird sound as I fly up toward a ridge. Learning of an old growth giant sequoia which was cut down here, then tracing it through history from the late 1800s. It seems it was never fully processed and was allowed to rot in place. The tree possibly grew back from that remnant, which I’ve never encountered before. A woman talks about the appearance of the tree from behind newsdesk cut out in the base of another tree, comparing the regrown tree to “cum, a kind of spirit”.

Records of what happened to it are very scant though.

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Dream Journal

Apotropaic Tracheism, Tocarianism

Wake up and the clock reads 9:36 am. I’m at my parent’s house, my childhood house when I was school age. Realize it’s a Monday and my parents have let me sleep in. My audio recorder has been going and I stop it, wondering if it recorded my snoring… or my menstrual cycle? Which I don’t have as I’m a cis male.

The dream is called “Apotropaic tracheism, tocarianism”, because these words were an important phrase later/earlier in the night’s dreams. I forget what they meant they were related somehow. Not many people know what ‘apotropaic’ means — which is too bad, as it’s a lovely word.

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Dream Journal

My Building’s Social Scene

My friends (P+S) who moved away from our neighborhood are called out for still wanting to live nearby. I walk back from somewhere and get called out myself, someone greeting me by saying “it wasn’t the first time I could hear you coming by how loud your shoes are”, referencing the color (not the sound) of my bright yellow crocs.

I choose to go into my apartment a different way than usual, through the set of glass double-doors. I have to actually sneak past the small triangle-shaped convenience shop that my landlord’s family runs; it’s a bit of an afterthought and not something I’ve really seen anyone use. I’ve been in there maybe twice in the 16 years I’ve lived in the building. As I head up the half-spiral stairs I look down toward a basement entrance I’ve never used and something drops down, causing a sound. I perfunctorily call out that it “was just me” and hope the landlord’s kid in the shop doesn’t think anything further of it.

So I go in what I’d consider the back way. But the space is very different than what I remember. Instead of the liminal blank corridors that always felt empty, there are dozens of people simply hanging out. I peek into the garage space, too. There’s a Jeep being parked on a steep carpeted surface there and it seems people are socializing there too. I’d forgotten there even was an elevator, as I haven’t used it since I moved furniture in. This is a thriving social community which I’m only noticing now — more people live in my building than I realized. Perhaps this happened since the pandemic, if I’d guess. My mind is opened to the possibilities. It’s like a public library workshop, or a university student union. I wonder if my landlord even knows how many people talk to each other now.

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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.