Sword swinging event. I get all my practice in beforehand and I’m home of the best dancers. At the last minute though I find a scimitar and curved dagger on a shelf and switch to those. I possess a lot of knives, it turns out. During the actual event I just need to pee, and I spend most of my time in a corner trying to get my underwear on. Before I know it, it’s over and they’re doing the ceremonial awards. I know I failed and never actually did the mock combat dance, but everyone watched me enthusiastically swinging around beforehand — I was the best one, before it counted. So I don’t get an award. Instead the host passive-aggressively tries to get me to sing along to a famous song I did by playing it without the lyrics (not sure if matters, but this was a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan song). I refuse to song along for free and hover haughtily above a fence.
Category: Dream Journal
I’ve been traveling in New York. I have a flight today with some time and I realize while I’m packing up that I have more bags than I even expected. I didn’t offload enough and the flight is soon. How soon? I can’t find the email, but I think it’s today. I’ll have to stop by a storage place or ship then or someone, there’s more than I could possibly take on the flight without getting massively reamed. I asked for money to get home from the family I worked for, I still have fresh the image in my head of the check the dad wrote me, thick-scrawled capital letters reading ‘home’. I had asked for money from as many sources as I could, and I still don’t think it’d be enough to cover the shipping. But when is the flight anyway?
Dream on the First of May
Stand up comic at a zoo telling jokes standing on a deep pool. Underneath is a moose covered in dirty algae, which she also then tells jokes to. She doesn’t see the bear behind her, though.
A stack of frogs.
Kindergarten is selling mattresses. Well, the school is.
While playing as a Garak character, I trigger his drop-down menu choice early.
Went to Brazil, Oops
Flying and landing in Brazil, in a big chaotic city with confusing multi-grid streets. It’s strange hearing all this Portuguese now when I studied Spanish (oops).
I go with someone else to the other end of town to listen to a bespectacled old man give a public speech. He’s at the peak of his experience though at his age it’s known his faciluties will soon decline. It seems hard to find a place to listen to him; I take it that I’m supposed to head down some sloping side streets. I notice here that many houses with flat rooves are painted with big Christmas murals. I deduce they leave them decorated like that year round because they only go up there on Christmas.
I end up in the ground floor of a courtyard building, looking up. People looking down from windows inside… I lost the thread of the dream because I got out of bed without finishing my notes… oops again.
Tall Girl’s Contest
Back in San Francisco, riding my bike not far from my home. A new little place named The Pinocchio Cafe has opened on the corner of an odd triangular block. Usually I might wait to try somewhere so close, but I’m probably moving soon. When I decide to go in I run into my New York cousins seated at a table in a niche by the window. They’re just leaving, so we say hi then trade spots. The space is somehow even cozier inside as the tables wrap around a big tree trunk in the middle.
I notice a blue striped shirt laid over the back of a chair near the cafe entrance. It’s maybe more preppy than my usual style, but I turn it inside-out and it looks much better that way. The clothing tag is covered by the collar which makes it more comfortable than normal, even. I make an effort to notify staff that I found the shirt. An admittedly small effort, making no presumptions that I don’t intend to keep it.
A girl from high school, former classmate of mine with tall with bright orange hair and freckles, Samantha P. How we encounter each other I can’t recall. But here she’s even taller than usual — much taller than me. I vividly remember looking up at her, her looking down at me and smirking, more than a foot above my upturned face. I propose having a tall contest fully expecting no one can beat her. I do put in an honest effort though and I finally remember/come across an old SF friend Sherilyn C. It’s amazing, but she’s just about able to see eye-to-eye with Sam. Amusing, too, since there’s an obvious understanding that it doesn’t particularly matter which of them is actually taller; it’s incredible great to find someone else even in the same category. This whole dream has the same aire of friendly competition bordering on flirtation.
Tonantzin
In a hammock on my birthday in my old hometown backyard, thinking of writing some younger girl I know around there. Might be advice, romance, inquiry, I can’t recall.
I find a mummified rat while cleaning one of our tents there on the backyard lawn. I recognize him from some wildies that we almost, but quite adopted a few years back — they bred too fast. Parts of his fur are perfectly intact. I accidentally drop his body in a glass of water (during my wakeup phase actually) and I’m a bit sad and frustrated to think that his nice smooth fur, even when dried, will never look sleek again.
Tonantzin is a word stuck in my head from somewhere in the dream. Could even be the little rat fella’s name, for all I know…
Accidentally bought the Jacques Cousteau tarot. It has a cool book!
After I climb a mountain, and hang out for awhile, a guy paramotors onto it right at sunset. Maybe this should disappoint me (since he cheated and I worked hard to climb it) but it does just seem like it’d be really cool. I’d rather do it myself someday.
A rival who likes to put me down works a job in a booth that I used to work. The boss there doesn’t trust me though (maybe I used to work there?), and I use this to my advantage. Whenever my rival tries to denigrate me by showing stuff on the computer I repeatedly show up behind the counter. Eventually I get my rival fired this way. Fuck that guy. Neat trick, innit.
Middle school classroom at end of building wing, probably where Ms. Snowden’s classroom was. We’re venturing and exploring from there as a base, but my memories are now blurred. There’s a different warmth and familiarity to the room though, as if I’ve spent so long there it’s like a home. The whiteboard has kinder lighting, the chairs aren’t uncomfortable, we all face forward not for lessons but for shared enjoyment.
As part of the chores I am mucking out the cardboard box where discards are kept. I find tight stacks of index cards there, as if just deposited fresh from a box. Many of them appear made just for cassette tapes with tear-off perforations. Some even have typewriter-written labels, as if they came directly from someone’s collection.
Trying to remember where Tarzania is, a country I haven’t checked in on in awhile. Seems to be buried in Siberia east of Belarus, but maybe it has disappeared… they were having trouble staying together as a country for awhile.
Considering moving to Canary Islands in middle of Atlantic. What do you know about them? I know they have only one large city, the capitol. It doesn’t feel that small though I don’t know how I’ll feel years from now.
While practicing for Canary Islands in staying in a small brick lower floor unit. Actually my whole family, while I plan to stay in a tent just behind there — for practice, and to show I’m already independent enough to live on my own. I jump down from the end of a brick wall down to the courtyard… I realize this is just like a traditional sport/pastime of the Canaries: shepherds used to traverse the rough rocky landscape using long poles. The connection, once obvious, is auspicious.
Run across a drinking contest hosted from a street corner. Maybe still in the big city of the Canary Islands? The host informs four male volunteers that each drink is based on a recipe from their grandfather. This proves to be an obvious joke by guy #3, with the real point of the game being up quickly get these guys drunk and ask them ridiculous questions.
At an outdoor sale, the vendor reluctantly points out that I might want the sound-recording selfie stick. I remember the cards for cassette tapes I find in the garbage earlier. I awake, having been reminded that I wanted to record the sounds of the dawn chorus where I’m staying.
Chemistry Conference Reunion
I’m attending a reunion of people who attended a now-legendary chemistry conference many years ago. There are only two age groups: very chatty nostalgic 30-somethings (maybe my age or younger) and venerable yet out-of-it elder statesmen types. From conversations and context I work out that what made the event so successful was bringing together old and young chemists to collaborate. Specifically, chemists planning to retire in the next year and chemists going to graduate in the next year. I observed that the younger group was obviously much more excited to recall those experiences, as it was (for many of them) projects which launched their careers. For the older ones, it may have been merely a final-ish achievement after a lifetime of work.
The original organizer is also hosting the reunion. She reminds me of an Odd Salon host, managing a community as well as presenters. Her counterpart from back then makes a show of rehashing some old repartee, and takes the appearance of my elementary school friend Amy Naud. She was just an attendee who chose to publicly play off the organizer and was a big hit. Her clownish efforts created a powerful duo energy between herself and the organizer, and is remembered as one reason for the special feeling of that time. She was young and vivacious, having fiery bleached hair with a reddish tint, looking and acting like Pippi Longstocking.
It’s never clear why the event never happened again…
First La Paz Dream
Dream of La Paz, Mexico. I’m looking into the night sky which has a purple cast. Appears to be overlaid on a camouflage pattern, representing war or conflict, which gives the light a strong and unusual green/purple filtered effect, like a photographic cross-process.
An old childhood friend whose family immigrated from Cambodia enters the dream. He contextualizes the representation of war, humanizing it but also bringing in an actual worst case scenario context. Seems not so bad, given how bad it could get.
This is the first dream I’ve had of La Paz…