Category: Dream Journal

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Dream Journal

Double Houses of the CIA

CIA has built a pair of identical houses, one in Chile, one a block away in my neighborhood. There’s a link between them, like a portal. I had accidentally visited mine before it’s renovation, when it used to have a green tile lobby. Now the stairway has been cut off in the renovations and it’s not clear how one would even get upstairs. There’s not even any windows on one side.

I indulge in a thought experiment with my friend Anthony, who has a government job himself. What secretive jobs do they pull in there? Drone operations? Covert assassinations? Paperwork?

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Dream Journal

Cleaning Up After Burning Man

I volunteer to clean up after Burning Man. It’s a camp I used to belong to, people I used to be friends with who I haven’t seen in years. Now I’m idly cataloging the junk left behind — piecing together the stories of what happened at the week-long party. Specifically I recall searching under flip-up style Murphy beds that are semi-permanent and remain in desert for the year (an unusual change since everything used to be completely leave-no-trace). Sponsorship in the camp is by Ritual Coffee, naturally. I still drink Ritual to this day.

Perhaps an object I find, perhaps a different dream: a golden metal orb with triangular holes lining its surface. Thin tetrahedral slices which fit exactly through the holes, as if it were a 3D puzzle to be assembled through the tiny gates. But it seems too elegant and precious to be a toy.

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Dream Journal

Kokomo River, Red Circle Island

“Kokomo Slow” is both a lifestyle as well as a decent descriptor of the Kokomo River somewhere down in Florida. After kayaking part of it, we try to follow our granny guide’s boat upriver. But it’s too swift (comically so, almost a waterfall) which is exactly what I predicated as soon as I saw it. The old lady’s nice, just a bit of a hippie who hasn’t faced how much nature has changed in her lifetime.

A YouTuber I’m watching has camped out in a spot marked by a red circle, a concrete slab at the end of a row of buildings near New Orleans. I can find the place on Google Maps’ Street View (still with the conspicuous red circle) and show several friends — especially my brother Chris who’s wearing VR goggles. On the map I can tell that he’s on an island, though it used to be something you could walk to. So much of the swampland on the map has moved around quickly; big swathes of it to the south are underwater.

I consider if I should play Chris a song by the rapper Mike Ladd as it might show him a bit of his future.

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Dream Journal

Treehouse Neighborhood, Grandma’s Backyard

Exploring a classy in a spread-out plot of cleared forest. Rounding a corner, out the window I see identical treehouses oriented in a ring. Turns out this is an expensive neighborhood developed by a couple I know. My enchantment is instantly dulled. They named their development the vaguely evocative “Crested Walnut” and haven’t even had much luck with people interested. Makes it less special and all.

In the backyard of my grandmother-in-law I take letters nailed into backyard fence. They moved to that house in the sixties and the notes have never been cleaned up or looked through. Grams mentions that they weren’t the first buyers; another owner lived here before them. While hollering at folks further in the yard there’s an odd moment where I notice the color of the walls. They aren’t all a single color as I remembered, but painted wild strokes of faded blue and orange, crosshatched in a surprisingly sophisticated artistic gradient.

Next door, a compact Victorian house is sometimes covered in a tarp, hiding its secrets. On TV, two celebrities (re)enact a skit they improvised. The host is rich and famous, well-regarded like Oprah. I’m suspicious of their motives, but everything seems innocuous.

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Dream Journal

Triangle Frame Task

Assigned to deliver a triangular wooden picture frame with writing inscribed on it. Actually a duplicate, though I’m uncertain whether it’s the copy or an original.

Walking down a hillside on a set of stairs through people’s private apartments. Gardens, cottages, wooden gates and fences, open bedrooms. One cozy-looking bedside belongs to Betty White, with whom I briefly converse.

I notice that after carrying it, the long sides of the triangle frame have been bent into the opposite directions — as if they were broken and reattached.

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Dream Journal

New Lights Law in Berlin

Relay race in Berlin, Germany. New law that electricity lights can’t shine like Nazi colors. Trying to keep the music from changing in the lights upstairs before the law changes.

More dreams before, but forgotten despite efforts.

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Dream Journal

Vacuuming as a Distraction

I’m on my way to vacuum our multi-story rat cage. On the way I get distracted by vacuuming the subway. A good deed for sure, but also a way to avoid cleaning the rat cage for now. Across the wide open tile floor near a set of frozen cement stairs, an official walks toward me. I think I’m about to get a talking to but he just walks past me. He picks up a suction attachment I unknowingly dropped when I switched to my weed whacking attachment, handing it back to me.

Occasionally I find thick squarish mussels with meat still inside. Recently someone received them as a scavenging reward, but didn’t/couldn’t open them.

The hobbit, Frodo, is excited to visit his favorite bar, The Green Dragon.

Kristin McConnell is helpfully demonstrating an exercise for strippers, flipping gymnastically off of a corner countertop.

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Dream Journal

No-name Town Stop on a Journey

While on a cross-country journey with a pack, we travel through an unfamiliar rural neighborhood. Though remote it’s packed on a grid like a city — yet I don’t know if it even has a name. It could be somewhere northerly, pine trees and scattered brush. We’re all riding motorcycles and have to find a bathroom for my sibling, Patrick. We come across an unusually empty old Victorian painted all one boring color and sneak through a window. The dream proceeds from there but is forgotten.

A man demands the expensive and decadent early California dish, Hangtown Fry. In fact he orders four at a time. I idly think: well it’s a stupid way to spend your money but I suppose this is how innovation happens.

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Dream Journal

Flying Carpet Travels

Waiting in line to get passport approved. Get my paperwork back, and I try not to be rude as I remain standing at the counter looking for the seal of the Queen of England — which I’ve been told is necessary. Very soon though the office is closed anyway, and they tell me if I have any other business I must go to their Denali office.

Flying carpet above a river. Better at it than I used to be, flying between lamppost and building. A section of an onramp is closed, so I must fly over it instead. Piloting a semi trailer over scrubby plains and spotting occasional scrap below, like an abandoned dirt bike. Scavenging vintage yellow Dr Pepper headphones (with a broken-off microphone) as a gift for my wife.

Traveling across a city, going halfway and meeting myself, going back, in the middle. Passing a squat row of buildings like a rundown amusement park on one side of the road. Arriving at the important intersection, on the corner is a semi-famous long McDonald’s which takes up almost the whole block. Under an overcast sky I see bumper boats in the distance.

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Dream Journal

New House, Bathrooms, Basement, Banana

At night in new unfamiliar family home, still in my neighborhood the mission. With my mom, I spot what looks like a stunt plane outside the window, against the houses and hills of the neighborhood, but it’s too difficult to see in the nighttime. I resolve to check tomorrow.

Eating a banana in the morning as I walk around. Punk rock aspect. As I was instructed earlier, things are solved by eating this banana. I inquire about the airplane.

Crossing freeway at pedestrian street and inspecting garishly plain grass field. Considering that it may be useful to host a blindman’s bluff type game for Sam Francisco art people.

New multi-level house after moving in with several family members. I’m the bathroom, I stare at the wall with the confusing tub, easily mistaken for a near identical bathroom on other level with no tub. I sigh; there’s so much work needed to make it nice and feel like ours. So much decorating especially. I know I’ll be doing it frequently and it’ll get done, it’s in my nature, there are just… so many blank walls.

Living in a house next door to my friend Oz. I walk up the stoop outside the mirror-layout house and check out the basement rooms downstairs. I find a resident, dumpy hat and ruffled hair, one of those Bay Area dudes who looks like he’s used to co-living situations. I ask him if he’s seen my friend Meredith — the kind of person I’d expect to live here. He knows her but she’s not in right now. I didn’t even need to find her, I needed an excuse to be in his house.