Category: Dream Journal

Categories
Dream Journal

Going Through the Box of Records

I’m digging in my old bin of records.

One, the sleeve of Carmena Burana, is falling apart and empty. I can’t recall where I got it but it’s time to throw away.

Another is a record asking for privacy, which I put at the front — it’s name actually does spell out some request for privacy.

Then there’s my Intonation record, probably my all-time most played, which I find enclosed with a recording of it. Amazingly, the recording is from pre-2014, before I started listening to it quite frequently. Tucked in with and attached to the recording is an old temporary driver’s license of mine, it’s embossed letters on heavy black plastic looking nicer than my real one.
**”
I didn’t think I remembered any other dreams, but writing those down I remembered fragments of others.

It’s the day after family event, a wedding of my Aunt Therese (who isn’t older than me?). Now I don’t know where to go to join the day-after events, which I was told we’d have. I seem to remember there was to be a reception, on a long cold beach like in Eureka or perhaps the North Sea.

Eating out my wife. Can’t figure where she put her head, though I realize now it’s cuz I had her upside down… and it’s not where her head is supposed to be anyway.

Categories
Dream Journal

Big Art District Failuretown

My wife and I are holed up in something like hotel, or a guest house, waiting excitedly for an planned experience. Our bed is in a room with only three walls, one side open to a shared courtyard or parking lot. On a ledge high in this courtyard a TV is mounted. It shows a roster of custom TV spots, made as lore and instructions for our event, which I eagerly try to absorb. We stay in the guest house overnight, during which time a food truck shows up — then another food truck, which upsets the staff of the first.

The next day we pass through a gift shop before boarding special transit to the actual big cool thing. The glass counter is laid with bright custom-made floral miniatures. I ask if they have natural fennel growing in field (I heard about these specific miniatures somewhere long ago). They show me a mini vase holding cut fennel stems, which somehow sloshes raw water over the edge and also has grainy gel creeping up the stalks. A short rocket ride takes us to what is called Carlas’s Place, supposedly hidden in the center of pointy mountain. This is an attraction and experience somewhat like Meow Wolf, yet also an exclusive gathering space and elite artist venue. Here there are plans plotted; showpieces shown; careers made.

I arrive and I head straight forward down a long massive ramp of scree into a yawning neon underground. I can only make out a little of it as the image of it seem scrawled, broken. Instead my wife pulls me aside and tells me I’m supposed to use the map on the back of the computer mouse visitors are each given. I can then exchange it at the location for a travelling vehicle. Although I somehow missed this tip in all my preparation, I take it as my first task.

The imprinted map shows the district. It is large, while the map small. The place swarms with people and activity, and I figure it must actually be somewhere like a neighborhood (with a normal entrance I just never knew about).

I try to find the indicated dot on my computer mouse map, and come into a giant video arcade with rows and rows of vintage machines. The place is crammed with people actually playing them, all lights and noise and crazy carpet like a casino. There are even big overhead displays which cycle though game screens, showing action happening somewhere on the vast arcade floor.

I leave the arcade far from where I entered. The arched and collonaded high-atrium mall is elegant, rectilinear, easily navigable. So it seems. I pass through the a central plaza (I don’t even look to the side, though the windows — why?) and into a cozier passage of stores and jauntily angled hallways. Some stores are recently set up for Christmas here. Dining outside on a barstool of a cafe, I pass a man I strongly recognize. He notices me noticing him and quickly names a news program, tucking his chin down in acknowledgement; as a new anchor he must get this a lot. So, I take it to this place is a place celebrities sometimes hang out.

I am left wandering the streets, which feel like a city all their own. It is like nowhere quite familiar, exactly. Alaska? Denver? 1940s movie set? There are steep mountains in the near distance. I happen to walk by a building-sized prop, a vast art deco hotel with a detailed façade. Closely inspecting the green tiles of the sweeping rounded corner, I find statues of exquisite alien dancers, their appearance like skinny insectoid bears. The style itself is Pacific Northwest native blended with Balinese temple deities, exaggerated poses and dramatically cut forms. I take pictures of this work from many angles. It is clear, at least, that this place has had a lot of effort put into it.

Suddenly my timer runs out. Was I told this was a timed experience? I’m teleportationally kicked back to normaltown, a 20-part survey immediately plonked in front of me. The first inquiry: I am asked to rate the vehicles I found. I start selecting every vehicle, laying heavy red shapes over them, indulging my impulse to rate them all zero. I’m disgusted and furious, not having even gotten past step one. I realize partway that my “feedback” has no chance to be recognized. For real feedback I have to yell at someone directly. If this has become so developed, if the experience cost so much money, yet they don’t even care if people are actually able to *do anything* of what they are meant to do? If the little survey doesn’t even know what you did? If they think they should even ask? Then, I will find someone to yell at.

I wake up mentally listing the things I will say. The many things.

Categories
Dream Journal

New Country and Surprise Splash

There is a joining of two countries, one in Africa one in French-speaking Europe, a new country beginning with B — Besquiod? Bitsiarritz? Bandofou? Bismillahi? Here, countries are different than how I’m familiar. They are more of a choice of affiliation and a decision of what agency you have to interact with other people. Maybe it’s the future.

Inside a confined space (like a lighthouse or a cargo ship in port), someone has sprayed a wall with droplets — maybe as art, maybe as prank. Over a long exchange inside the lighthouse, a woman becomes mad after she realizes she has essentially been tricked into depriving her pastor. This goes against her morals, she claims.

Riding Splash mountain. I have somehow forgotten that this ride has a gigantic drop at the end, only remembering as it happens. I experience it fresh and find it extra exhilarating. (On waking reflection, I wonder what might’ve been happening in the room or my body that might have contributed to the sudden feeling of weightlessness that I dreamt of as this log ride.)

When I get off on Splash Mountain, two women begin to fight about selling. Someone immediately warns me “[Mrs.] Acuna is here” and so I attempt to block the line of sight — no luck. They fight on a lawn and knock down roses, meanwhile I’m trying to separate them and remind them they’re adults. I manage to pull one of them away, urging them to cross a line of railroad tracks before a train comes so she’ll be physically seperated. She doesn’t make it as she’s not even trying; like she’s not even listening.

Categories
Dream Journal

Fantasy of Home Ownership

Sitting alone at home next to a sunny window. I’m drinking a beer and watching sports, unusual for me, but no one is watching, no one sees me. Weirdly affirming to play normal. An isolated snippet of dream, apparently unrelated to the rest of the night’s.

We’ve bought an overly spacious house far in the country from our current landlord. I consider worrying about him, but realize if anything goes wrong I’ll now be dealing with the bank who gave us our loan — an altogether different beast, thankfully. The only landlord foibles I’ll be dealing with now are his shoddy fixes and poor communication / documentation. For instance, I remember spotting a 1950s fridge shoved in the back corner of a tiled shower room.

Often we have multiple rooms of the same kind — four different kitchens! I fantasize about how I can convert them for various specializations. The largest of the kitchens is an extended hexagon with a large central island, already suited for heavy-duty work, a room I’d obviously love to make my workroom and fill with tools (all in their special place).

There’s another thought, though. Now that I’m no longer under as much pressure for space as in the city, will I actually do this? I got the odd sense there are some rooms I’ll probably forget about. Imagine that! We’ve been living here several days already and still haven’t gone back to the upstairs level; the last time was when we did the inspection. Having a real place of our own is different than I might’ve expected.

Categories
Dream Journal

Light Work & Play at Family Home (After Defending from Invasion)

High atop a stadium overlooking a valley, like a 3d model in tones of grey. This is a neighborhood I’ve come to that feels foreign, but where I could imagine living one day. Maybe I’m newly moved there.

Preparing to defend a house in a Jewish neighborhood, laid out on a long curved suburban street. Suddenly the ongoing warnings are quiet and it’s the eerie sounds of just nature and emptiness. The tanks of the invaders are easily defeated before they arrive at the house, self-destructed or -dismantled, then fired on by various unlikely things (like a wolf that can hold a gun). One defender who made a ten foot knife for the battle is walking down a regular street with this giant knife in the aftermath, a sight that might cause me to advise him against it.

My cousin is 18 and fixing a computer in the open hallway of the central living room of his childhood home (this is different than the home they had in Eureka). I tell him “if I had an 18-year-old, I’d want to put him to work fixing the computer” to which he smiles and shushes me.

In the same communal family space, a girl from elementary school, Amy Naud, and my hostel friend Dave V., are the best performing two people at growing up. They complete a series of tasks that mature you along the way and they do it fastest. This hallway has long been a gathering spot — I look at pictures from years past, parties with banners, random family albums.

After carrying unwieldy stuff down a set of stairs, I miss my subway car because a clueless younger guy (supposedly on my team/group/side) doesn’t think to hold the doors for me. Of course the large raised red button outside the doors doesn’t work either.

Playing a game with different shaped cards in a single deck, like a highly-adapted Magic the Gathering. One of the older kids on my team is Amy Naud, from before, who needs to draw a certain oval card. I offer to shuffle the cards in a big pile behind my back, since then she would be able to fairly draw the card. I’m on her team and the expectation is that I might subtly help her with this. She doesn’t expect my true motive, which is to do a bit of mischief by placing all the oval cards which *aren’t* the one she needs closer to the top.

While trying to hand over D batteries to someone, I have to lean far over while doing the handoff, holding onto smaller AA batteries in my other hand to maintain balance. This leads to awkwardness as it confuses the person I’m handing them to, as they don’t understand I’m handing over each D battery separately. They try to get the AA’s and I frustratedly fall to explain my intent, as I manage to finally swap my primary hand back to give the other D.

Categories
Dream Journal

Stolen Cyberpunk Timelines of Plarvolia

I come across Plarvolia who is sitting in a clear box for her art project. I can see her getting mildly harassed by children tapping on the glass among other things. Though I feel moved to intervene, I understand that I shouldn’t be the one to try. After her shift inside is up, I inspect café baked goods where she had been stationed. She was promoting/selling a new line of rainbow spectrum lights from General Electric — one of which, interestingly, is a strong bright black. Also notable is that I now know she actually does make money from her art (at least sometimes).

There is a unique cyberpunk setting that feels somehow European, old world. Inside a building are haphazard beds in a place seemingly used as a squat. I break through multiple walls of the interior in what feels like a sequence puzzle. Beyond, a darkened (but daytime) town square is buzzing with various activities.

I steal an invisible scooter-skateboard from a man riding it in the square. It’s broken in the process and gluing it back together proves problematic. Not only is this invisible kind a special color, the connections are finicky. It’s a specific brand that others feel is reputable called “Eaver” or “Matric” or something. I later go with someone who encourages me to try to buy one. The store has the feel of a cyber-renovated luxury 19th-century “Robber Baron” era place — dark wood columns and sophisticated electronic monitoring. I find a new board for $35 up on a shelf inside a bag, but decide it’s too expensive and I don’t want to try stealing it.

At the checkout area for this town square zone, I encounter my Homepie friends Juicy and Coco lounging having drinks. They’ve already paid for theirs, and when I look to pay they’ve already paid for mine too — though confusingly I don’t see them on the check. Perhaps they were omitted, which is all the same. Juicy notices he has to have a charge corrected before he goes, as the pipe he picked out was supposed to be on sale. He went to that same Robber Baron store as I did earlier.

There is a complex sorting-out of the timeline of interactions with Plarvolia. Time travel seems at play, nonlinearity, acausality. I put on a colorful fur-trimmed vest before I talk to her. I’m preparing for her timeline which is about to finish, and finally her timeline happens to line up with my own.

I revisit these narratives of Plarvolia for two hours. Retelling the story out of order; I can’t play out the events. I perceive parts where I saw perfectly from her perspective. But when did we talk? Wasn’t there more scenes with her? At some point I was explicitly instructed (or conclude?) that I need to write this one down. But now it hardly seems profound or important. But this dream feels different than other Plarvolia ones… I admit I even have a hard time thinking of her as Plarvolia, but instead think of her as her real self, as something outside her relation to me and what happened. I think of her with her real name and her real life.

Categories
Dream Journal

Roof Cable

A cable penetrates the roof of the world, melting either side of its path and leaving an indentation. Has the feel of a whispered legend.

Interrupted by alarm.

Categories
Dream Journal

Events Rewritten before they’re Written

My wife has an older sister and she’s going out of her way to try to make out with me. I think she’s doing it to annoy my wife but I’m not actually sure it would, little does she know. It feels like I’m being dragged along with the whole thing so I don’t have much of a choice either way. Suppose there are worse things to dream.

There’s a boxy white drumline practice space above a workshop. They do machining or carpentry maybe, and I’m only one who’s worked there before. It was a temp job years ago but I can still vividly imagine my day there working in a line of men. After the workers have gone home, we members of the drumline enter the space. It’s not an invasion or a break-in, but something else still dangerous. I’m with my female partner who I care for a lot, in a basement office decorated with plants. It turns out none of us noticed a single stormtrooper who stayed behind in the bathroom. He endangers us all.

The next sequence is unusual, as I get the strong sense that this is a *second* run through of the dream and I’m forcibly modifying it. I get revenge and rewrite the events, absolutely destroying the trooper and protecting my lady companion. An intense sequence but confusing too.

Categories
Dream Journal

A Night of Clear Dreams

James T Kirk’s house in remote Wyoming log cabin. A hot tub out back with a grand wide view of mountains and nature. I’ve been better before, but I don’t remember from last time the new tenements where the front yard used to be, now facing a more busy road. Maybe this locale will be more of a town now, I could thrift at a little store here. I’m trying to work through how to do laundry there, moving the washer and dryer setup from my dad’s old Kemper Court home. Finally I work out there’s a room on the far side of the Wyoming cabin that already has a washer/dryer.

Trying to drive out of Palm Springs to a place my homeslice Lauren booked called Ibiza Hotel. The map insists we might not be able to get there with the route we’d planned, there’s so much red traffic. It says to turn around and go back the way we came, but there is a road called 982nd Way that cuts down through the rural Coachella Valley that I’ve not seen before. It’s red with traffic too but me and the homepie have to take one route or another.

A little 3-year-old who could talk is with a group of us adults, almost a mini adult. Reminds me of two kids in my life, but also Baby Yoda or Yosemite Sam. It gives me a strong recollection of what I got to experience talking with adults at age 4 (which I evaluate as the minimum age to have explicit memories). I imagine myself again being that small, entertaining adults who I realize now were specifically 1980s adults. There won’t be another time like that.

Being taken to my childhood home in Eureka — though I realize now it was actually completely different from my waking life. I experience powerful waves of nostalgia when I recognize the rain-aged backyard table and seating, the back fence to the neighbors where raccoons played, the trough of a muddy ditch near a creek where I would found animals. Leaning into the ditch, I pull out what looks like my velociraptor puppet, a real childhood artifact I haven’t remembered in many years. Peering from the plant-heavy backyard, there’s an angle of trees I see framing the path to the road which sparks overwhelming recognition, even from other dreams, without me knowing if this is the original location or not.

Proceeding through a long multi-room store, it ends with a collection of vintage sewing machines all in stylish colors, some I’ve never seen before like army green. At some point in the night’s dreams, I find a little vintage fridge on its side flooded with water. I empty it and set upright. It still works but is loud while running. It seems to be from the same era as the sewing machines, and I find myself having affection for it.

I don’t think I lost many dreams writing them down today. But I don’t know how I could express the particular feeling of having visited the places I did… as though this was both overdue, necessary prep work, and indulgent distractions. Such clarity of vision I usually don’t have outside of lucid dreams, either. I don’t have a good guess as to what triggered them.

Categories
Dream Journal

Spaces of Hong Kong

Never been to Hong Kong before but it’s everything I imagined. I finally came here after years of thinking about it. I’m having a leisurely time, reflecting on the foreignness and how it feels.

The colors of everything man-made is distinct from what I’m familiar with. As I stare up at local palm trees in a courtyard I reflect how the manufactured goods here are all from different factories. So it’s not merely that designs might vary; the actual available supply of something as simple as pigment is slightly different.

I am residing in some big formerly abandoned space that’s mine to play around with. I spend time in various rooms, imagining what I might do in them. I explain to my companions that I’ve determined the largest blank wall space, an arch shape above a long built-in table. I detail a possible technique of using single printed sheets of larger AI-assisted picture, something like the tiled printing mosaic my former roommate used to have. I continue talking to them while hanging over the edge of a doorframe, leaning into the room they’re sitting in. I’m trying to close out the conversation and get drawn into describing the finicky techniques of getting a good photo.

Outside, I see sunset — or something like a sunset without the valence of being the end of a day. It looks like three overlapping gears or prisms, radiating over a curved landscape. I find it difficult to photograph, much less describe. It’s quite a powerful image, but I waited too long in the day to write it down properly… though I still hope not to forget it entirely.