Category: Dream Journal

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Dream Journal

A Day at our New Home in the Country

A country house just off a main road somewhere small, rural California, where we’ve moved. My wife and I still have a landlord but are overall happy finally settled into the new place.

It’s bright midday and I seal up our younger rats, Pierre & Roscoe, making sure to stretch the three wire cage doors so the locks are tight.

Outside it’s so much quieter than the city. I ponder the neighborhood as I gaze down the dusty street where ours is the corner house. I haven’t fully explored the area yet. Feels like a hot day, summer. I observe a distinction with the city I never thought of before: here, people are spread out enough that you kind of miss them, back in the city it was so packed that you often like people less because there’s already too many of them.

All our old stuff made it there but most things still need arranging. A few items are out on the grassy brown lawn, or under a covered porch with built-in brick planting beds. Our building is old, and has a name on a vertical sign with green letters — something that sounds like a Chinese restaurant. There’s a smaller sign underneath for wayward out-of-towners, clarifying that it’s just an old name, this is a house, and they can find an actual restaurant a couple lanes down.

Back inside, I see Roscoe is out of his cage. I’m sure I locked it securely, and sure enough I see he’s managed to bend several wire metal bars at the side of the cage! I tell my wife and we’re not sure what to do. There’s a square patch of grass on the lawn where the cage would fit, and be blocked off securely, but the ratties might easily get overheated in the sun.

Someone reveals something about my parents I didn’t know (this part is confusing in retrospect as it’s a persona shift, perspective remains continuous, but the backstory isn’t from my l life). When I was first adopted, my parents kept me in this very house. They were inept, and couldn’t keep things up, to the point where they couldn’t keep me either. They only got me back much later, though I was too young to remember any of this.

Inside a few of us (guests and I) are playing around, searching through storage areas in the house. We’re also in part of a lobby for some unnamed organization, a nexus accessible from many locations. There’s a dried mud sculpture, arched and abstract, looking like the letter Π hunkering in the near distance. Old refrigerators containing long-term food stocks hold many curious root vegetables. Some are still viable, and I take one from the drawer with a 3-foot long taproot and swallow it down to the base as a trick.

Danny Glover is there among us, and soon after I’m beside him at a stone sink (I can think of no connection I have with Danny Glover, his presence is puzzling upon consideration). When I pull the long root out of my throat, the thin length ending in a tangled clump, I realize that it could still be planted in the dirt outside. Whether it’s the worse for wear being in contact with my stomach acid for an extended time, I simply won’t know until I bury it in a garden bed.

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Dream Journal

Down and Up Again, a Group Celebration

The dream is a narrative following the linear story of a celebration at the end of a year. Some group effort, a school year or perhaps a big work project. We’re all retracing the year-long path together.

First we walk single file downstairs to the lower level, a rocky coastline where our cohort frolics in the ocean. There are flashes of a Monty Python scene: cutlass vs. rapier. A man dressed in an ancient Semitic priest costume bonks someone over the head with the flat side of the cutlass. Not long after, I have the cutlass strapped to my back, climbing over a small crag as a wave crashes over.

After the coastal area we collectively filter up to the windows of a doctor’s office. There we are informed that while there is an elevator, we are supposedly to pay the fee here at the window of $159.

Obviously this is a non-starter. There’s a line of my classmate/workmate friends waiting to ascend the stairs back up for our final 4/6 of the schedule program

I remember in particular one of my classmates is Stephanie Sukhram. She is unique in this case as I went to school with her between 4th to 11th grade. She became a doctor herself but died of ovarian cancer soon after graduating (which I learned much later trying to research her online).

One of the last images is of a dusty keyboard, which I pick clean of spiderwebs and other debris and cruft. Later in the day I’d be typing something important, though I didn’t know it when I had the dream.

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Dream Journal

Left Behind by Workers

A store across the street, where JCX should be, sells big bags of Perlite. I decide I want to get a second bag, as the first one squishes down a little. Standing there next to the tall multi-level floor-to-ceiling shelves I wait for one of the workers to get it and check me out. Is takes so long after I squish the first that it’s compressed fully 1/5 its start size. My cousin Betty is possibly working there — all the employees all very cool but apparently overworked and super slow.

Later I’m in a different retail store, small, reminds me of a place I visited in North San Juan called Peterson’s Corner. Not an employee in sight, I carry a spool while searching about for a place to put it. There could be a walk-in fridge which might do. I spot several workplace posters of my friend Oz, and I want to tell her they need to pay her more for if they use her for modeling work.

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Dream Journal

Werewolf Decal, Didn’t Expect School

Traveling via train. Someone is surprised I paid to sleep inside; they thought I’d just sleep on the roof. But I figured I wouldn’t get good rest, since I would worry about having to wake up to duck tunnels.

I attach a large werewolf decal to several corner desks while a classroom is empty. This is a mascot for me, maybe a video game companion or player class. Unexpectedly, the class fills up in a short time (when it should’ve been empty, for the summer or something).

An instructor asks for my ticket. For any of multiple tickets I’m supposed to have. I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, I wasn’t planning on attending a class, just wanted the space of the classroom. I expect they’ll send me to the office to get it, at which point I’ll ditch and have to go without my cool werewolf art.

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Dream Journal

Pontecruff, a Group Video Server

It’s the end of the day and I’m in the living room of my communal apartment closing up shop for the night. I stand waiting near a fridge in the wall saying goodnight to roommates one by one. I wave the door open and closed as our director (perhaps someone we just call “the director) walks past. He looks like The Dude from The Big Lebowski, and I apologize because I realize I’ve been wafting cold air into the room this whole time.

My crush comes in and asks a question about our group video server, specifically where she can put some nostalgic TV for sharing. She also asks about the name, which is something like “Pontecruff”, derived from pontiff + scruff. I give her friendly instructions and offer to make the name easier to remember. But also I confess that the functioning server was set up on the last router we had and by now the correct config is probably buried.

Waxing poetic, we reflect that the server should give you a feeling like the smell of a box of plastic VHS tapes. Dusty, familiar, a smell from another time, a collection of things you might not remember but know you want to keep.

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Dream Journal

Big Old American Car

Huge classic American car with rows of comfy seats. The driver’s chair is, conveniently, behind a late night TV talk show hosting desk. But front window is (inconveniently) a small rectangle through another room from that seat. There’s hardly a safe way to drive this behemoth — despite being rated as relatively easy for the time.

I’m driving the beast around, having to pass to the right of stopped car at an intersection. This is only made possible by piloting the massive car via remote cameras.

I noticed that there is a garage sale, a thrift shop on side of road. this makes me think the town is like Virginia City. Memorably, there was an outdoor thrift stop in Virginia City which got snowed on while I was there.

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Dream Journal

Wizard Camp & Ephemera

I’m a servant on an expedition somewhere reminiscent of Egypt. I am enlisted as an unplanned mediator between leaders of the expedition when they can’t reach an agreement. It’s my wizard friend Devin Person and some fancy Cleopatra-esque girl. The setting is like a Burning Man camp or an Arab Bedouin tent. We’ve set up a shade structure, the corners piled with throw pillows. There’s difficulty figuring out where to put the camp’s garbage can full of nitrous chargers. When they do their nitrous ritual, there’s a special mantra people are supposed to say; it’s inscribed on a plaque on the wall. I’m not really looking forward to hosting people.

In my hometown family room. A foil musical record is kept in a locked metal closet. There’s a love note from an acquaintance, Lydia, to her husband Paul da Plumber discovered in outer sleeve cover of photo album.

Review for Flora Grubb, perhaps Flora Grubb’s relative with the same last name.

Sailor Moon’s design, or redesign, focused around big boobs.

Practicing my long synthesizer keyboard in the garage, the keys can be early lifted off. That’s how I discover that they are for some reason wider, as I lift one up, turn it around, and compare its size directly to the beautiful antique piano with gold autumnal inlaid keys.

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Dream Journal

Distract for the Cause, All the Way to Celebration Point

Excited to soon be flying back to Australia after so many years, for a school trip. Compared to last time there’s much more structure but many more people to do things with. A long gap follows this part of the dream, yet though forgotten seems connected to later parts.

My assigned male activity partner sits on the corner wall of a lot where the school group has gathered. He’s hefty, and the loose dirt crumbles. He falls into rushing water — the one thing that was stressed about him was that he’s (really, actually) allergic to water. Immediately this feels like some sort of test. I swim frantically after him though I don’t hold much hope. Yet I’m able to catch up, then heave his immobile body onto the inside curve of a sandbar to hopefully dry and recover. I pull myself onto the shore further down the bend. By then he’s recovered — more like been revealed — to be a powerful muscular young Zeus-like figure.

We expropriate a neglected academic area, a bit like single story underground dorms. Surveying the cramped little warren of rooms I spot an Austrian flag hanging on a darkened wall. Satisfied, we begin planning a takeover. Our small group of like-minded rebels improvises a space, repurposing walls and making a few rows of chairs. We view and discuss ideas presented from a stage.

One such dramatization of an idea is like a subdream featuring stop-motion bundles of sticks: a Subaru hatchback driven by a pair of 50-somethings backs into a barn near a lakeshore; the barn catches fire and explodes inexplicably. In the chair next to me sits an old man I don’t know very well. I’m sitting at the end of a row, having thought I’d be further from people. I’m now uncomfortably aware that I’m naked from the waist down, and adjust my posture and shirt in a futile effort to compensate.

Events take a twist when a college girl wearing a Lakers cheerleader uniform returns from a bender. It’s her space in which we’ve been squatting, and she has many pointed questions. We’d prepared for this eventuality; quickly I snap into the role of distracting and misdirecting her. (Especially from a disturbed patch of wood at the foot of my seat — a relic from before our takeover, uninvestigated and best forgotten). I talk and play friendly with her, giving a tour which surreptitiously avoids the group’s more sensitive aspects. It’s tricky, but I lean toward providing truthful explanations wherever possible — without any group plan it seems likely we could easily be caught in a lie. This would be a greater risk than tiring out her questions and slowly earning her trust, though I worry if my compatriots might think I’ve betrayed them. Thankfully during my ramblings on our tour I spot one of my conspirators and, while her back is turned, signal with my hand to give the companion opportunity to take action. It’s acknowledged with a subtle head shake, showing me that while they’re not ready to move forward they also recognize the part I’m playing.

Soon she asks to go into an especially sensitive five-story building, to the top floor. There’s a library located in the center of that floor which would be disastrous if our interests in it were revealed. There are also two balcony rooms flanking it where students often congregate, known as “Celebration Point”. As the library comes into view I deploy a powerful strategem: I act bashful and say “The thing is… and I’m not sure you knew this… Celebration Point is where a lot of students traditionally go for a first date.” I managed to say this twice in different ways, proud of my brilliant acting, while realizing if any companion were witness to it I’d appear highly suspect. The stakes are increasing but I’ve pulled it off so far.

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Dream Journal

Singular Standing Dream, Dad’s Casserole

A marathon of a first dream that seems to last most of the night. Yet little of it is remembered… as so little seemed to happen. My crush and I stand next to a program guide — this is the main image. We simply stand there, still, static.

As the dream deteriorates into wakefulness, I ride a bike around a specific blind corner in my neighborhood (the crosswalk at Potrero and Cesar Chavez). In the instant I round the corner I imagine threading my trajectory between a former crush and new crush, one oncoming and one outgoing. I wake up and realize I’ve had the strange experience of sleeping nearly 8 hours dreaming basically a single scene.

I go back to sleep wishing to gather more dreams. Not the worst excuse, I suppose.

Visiting my childhood home after a long hiatus, where my dad still lives. I notice the house’s original CRT TVs are mostly gone. When I ask about this my dad says they tended to get cracked from falling forward onto the ground, since their design was off-balance. Eating some of my dad’s
hastily prepared food at the kitchen bar (maybe Cheez-It casserole?) I find a hair embedded through it. I make a conscious effort not to worry about it. My dad puts on an 8tracks playlist he made through tinny computer speakers. I help by casting it to the living room speakers too — they coincidentally sync together on the first try, no trouble. My wife mentions she’s hungry so I offer her the casserole. She tries it but finds the hair right away and can’t eat it. Because of the hair. Guess I can’t blame her.

It dawns on me that the amount of males and females living in our apartment building has always remained constant. Whether this is intentional or not I couldn’t guess. But I do note this was true until a pair of kids move next door not long ago. They are, curiously enough, a boy and a girl.

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Dream Journal

Lap-Straddle in a Castle

Being dropped off on the prim green lawn in front of a stately stone boarding school, one topped with turrets and full crenellations. Certainly looks like it was originally built as a castle.

I explore the curiously spaced interior with a group of friends. Seems the castle will once again change hands as it’s for sale (why we are able to check it out). The semi-underground basement has a messy unfinished feel, splotchy white-on-white paint. Attached in the middle of the ceiling is a narrow, multi-sided cabinet which I open and amusedly inspect. There are so many different types of soap in there — and only soap — we have a good laugh speculating on reasons why you’d need such an extensive hoard.

While I’m in a kitchen-y corner of the basement near some sunny windows, I receive a phone call updating me of some new people arriving soon. Soon I find myself lazing on a long rumpled couch in a slightly sunken living space. I lounge together with my crush and a friend of hers, hanging out and chatting for a long pleasant spell. She informs me they used to date but are still good friends and that certainly seems true. At some point without preamble my crush rolls over to straddle my lap facing me. This is clearly playful but also experimental; I mirror her playfulness by grabbing her hips. The joy at each of our reactions shows the experiment was a success. It’s a happy moment and a relief, us both taking initiative like that.

Conversation flows amiably along until I realize the topic has veered into something to do with mourning. My crush shares a story of something she lost. As my absence goes on a bit longer than it should (after I’ve finally figured this out), I become pressured by an incongruous and ill-advised urge to say something “important”. This lands with a predictable flop — from which my companions must afterward fumblingly recover the conversation.

I awake and recall the lap-straddle incident frequently during the day, with understandable fondness. I write not a word of the last paragraph until everything else in this dream journal entry is done. This should give some idea of my mixed feelings for it.