Category: Dream Journal

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Dream Journal

Too Much Waiting, Not Enough Double Dream Cartoons

While the video game WarCraft 2 used flat 2-D sprites, the years-older “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans” (WarCraft 1) used a grab-bag of early 3-D tricks. I’m finally playing it and oddly, though the game is very basic, it’s more intriguing to discern the clever workarounds they came up with long ago. Pleasingly retro, as well. (Standing in front of my fridge yesterday I randomly appreciated the deep lore they were able to produce in those games, simply by creating the series for so long.)

When my Uncle John is frustrated about having to move, I’m able to share an anecdote about how, when the show wrapped, the sets for “Seinfeld” were almost immediately converted for use on the show “Friends” (I learned this yesterday; it was actually Full House)

Waiting on my motorcycle at a left turn signal. I leave, crossing to the sidewalk when I realize how long I’ve waited. Suddenly I realize it’s essentially just abandoned in a traffic lane now. Going back, I see I even left the key in the ignition. The back compartment must be repacked now (of course it does). I rejigger the back case’s mounting plate and straps, all while standing in front of a line of unusually patient cars also still waiting to turn left.

I’ve been fiddling with nose ring intermittently for most of the dream. It finally splits near the tip, coming off in my fingers just as I realize how long I’ve been fiddling. Still, it seems like it should be able to fit again, but the gauge at the break is inconveniently flat instead of round. It won’t fit in the piercing hole, and repairing something that stays in my skin seems like a non-starter.

In a jaunty Nickelodeon-style kids cartoon, one friend has fallen asleep in the shower. As his friend, and sensing an opportunity for mischief, I hide in the shower drain. Since my friend doesn’t wake up I start saying odd things in an affected strange voice, which reverberates through the drain pipe. Zooming into his dream I appear there as a semi-distorted subway announcer — ignored, as most subway train announcements usually are. I notice other characters from our cartoon have been animated in his dream as more realistic adult humans — stylized and shapely enough to evoke sexual lust, innocently but not incidentally. Rule 34 on hot double-dreamt cartoons.

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Dream Journal

Nightmare Picking Out Clothes

My wife is in the cab of our semitruck parked on 24th Street in our neighborhood, trying to start it up. It’s cargo is filled with furniture and things, could be a resale company or perhaps a home. As I watch from a distance safe to give directions, it quickly spins out of control, circling into stuff nearby and jumping the sidewalk.

Visiting a docked boat restaurant when I discover it’s owned by someone I know and watch on YouTube. His first name is Eduardo. In the adjoining walled sideyard, he raises livestock fowl. I count and observe groups of birds of various ages before I realize how many there are. The number I recall is 2000! He sets up to broadcast a YouTube video of eight hours of ducks marching in a huge circle — at which point I sneak out, to avoid explaining why I myself am not going to watch ducks marching that long.

On my way off the boat I encounter Chicken John, who is located behind me while I wait for the bathroom. I take the initiative and, in such a way that we don’t have to acknowledge how we know each other, I give him a hug. This cleverly avoids any possible awkwardness.

Some time later I’m in a long group cabin. Two rows of squares are taped on the floor to mark out individual sleeping areas. There’s a vibe similar to in the movie “Midsommar”, kind of culty, and the sun barely sets. Before bed my wife asks for me to fetch the teardrop-shaped blue shoes from the window ledge. Exasperated, I eventually find what she meant, though they’re neither shaped like teardrops or blue.

I awake feeling as if I’ve barely slept. A group gathering is about to begin up the hill from cabin, visible beyond an open wall. Everyone else has already left. There are vague instructions to “dress comfortably and nice” but they pointedly don’t tell us what the event will actually entail. Quickly, I feel overwhelmed –by the number of decisions so early, and the knowledge that everyone is already waiting for me to show up. It’s a feeling that I’ve failed before I’ve begun. Why would anyone force you into a situation like this as soon as you woke up? I wake up myself then, convulsing and dry-crying against one of the pillows in bed.

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Dream Journal

3 of 6 Dreamcards

Waking up hours earlier than I should, with only 5 hours sleep. I remember having six distinct dreams, but I know from past experience if I wake up to write them down I won’t be able to fall back asleep. But if I fall asleep, I almost certainly won’t remember them. On returning to sleep I envision the dreams as a row of cards, each with a title and the single most powerful image from it. I managed to remember half of them, though strangely they are not in any order or sequence. Typically, I can remember one part of a dream and reconstruct the narrative.

I’m attending a stage reading event where my Nana is one of the presenters. We have a pleasant conversation across the table from each other under the big tent. We depart together at the end.

Sitting backwards on a bus, a kid has a hand over his face. Kids are keeping other kids in strict lines this way. There’s a social order aspect I don’t fully understand, but find troublesome.

RFC. 43.0.0.13 is a “request for comments” and an in-joke. Among internet engineering nerds, it alludes to the idea of elderly people’s life stories being absorbed into a universal hive mind (or Akashic records) at the end of their lives. It’s an old trope creatively and bizarrely mapped onto a modern interface. Lives, in this sense, are additional “comments”.

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Dream Journal

Criss-Cross Causeway, 777-11-21

I encounter my crush topless in my backyard. She has no nipples though, a smooth flat chest. From context it’s completely unclear if this is a normal state of affairs. It does tend toward disconcerting for us though. Over the course of our conversation they manage to grow, though not returning quite to normal — more like odd unpainful welts in their place. Meanwhile, a party three backyards over continues to rage on (a strange detail is this exact thing was happening as I went to sleep).

After travelling along a causeway, in a car with my male family members, we pull into a gas station. My turn to drive and I immediately pull around and run over the curb at the corner of the pump. Nearby there is a famous but struggling restaurant, Jalisco Taco. They’re known for the great human contact of the restaurant setting. Not so great during the pandemic, obviously.

Young Patrick leaves the little coupe, and inside we examine a map marking out where we’ve been today. There and back again across the causeway, also showing what sections I’ve driven. A feeling of being young and uncertain about what I was supposed to accomplish.

I receive a call from a relative on my dad’s side. The caller ID has changed from a very expected 18626 to the mysteriously intentional-looking 777-11-21. (I feel like I never used to dream of specific numbers, but this was very distinct. I have no impression of its importance, but it was certainly a number tied to an emotional reaction.)

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Dream Journal

Empty Family Home on an Island, In Australia

I’m exploring a house for sale with my Homepie friend Mickey. The attic is large and has multiple nestled little sleeping areas, a place the current residents call Monticello for reasons not known to us.

I’m having some of my old stuff shipped back from Australia, left behind from when I was there. This must happen before the river islet the Monticello house is on floods. We travel the small circular waterway via canoe. To haul the boat out of the water they’ve rigged up a garage door opener near the riverbank — clever little contraption, useful for rural living.

I pick out my stuff from the many cupboards and cabinets of the newly abandoned home. Most of this stuff I’ve forgotten (it’s been more than a decade). I can’t help but steal one thing: an iridescent plastic bowl from the 1970s, easily missed by the family and easily excused as an accident. It’s unique and oddly beautiful, and obviously unappreciated judging by where I found it.

Having everything gathered it appears that shipping is going to cost $60. I hadn’t thought about that cost and second-guess whether I want any of this stuff at all anymore.

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Dream Journal

Dad’s Converted Drawbridge Cottage

I possess a gigantic condom as big as an arm, though it’s almost completely dried out. While trying to demonstrate to my little brother how to use it, the ring at the base chips off immediately. It’d be a waste of a unique object to simply throw it away… but this is difficult. It’s so large it’s useless for anything but a demonstration anyway.

A cottage my dad worked on when he was young, in his twenties. Situated at the left edge of a canal gate, it’s a former industrial drawbridge operator’s cabin, narrow as as a subway line, somewhere in Los Angeles near a museum. Dad was a “2sq/fter”: someone who could take two square feet of soil from their home (in this case Illinois, though my Dad is actually from LA) and transform all the ground on their farm with it. Dad didn’t do that though, he’s just taken care of the native soil and built a charming and solid little shack just above the water level.

I kick off 4 of the 6 teammates on my canoe. The only ones left are one Finnish guy (looks like Willem Dafoe plus angry/sad Moe from the Simpsons) plus my dad. A theme song plays while we watch a betrayal.

Replacing the stove in my house after finding a more matching 1970s stove. The back control panel slides off separately, with my normal spice rack on top of it. I set up a hanging fluorescent click light at the back, near the vent (like the one above my kitchen table in waking life).

I discover RobertBLalonde.com, a web domain of my grandfather’s name, still registered by my dad. I make a phone call to the associated number but hang up when someone answers who’s obviously waking up from sleep.

A character named Jean Auern (an alias of Jean Grey from Marvel) has been alive for 14 billion years. She’s been involved in US politics for 300 million, non-linearly. I learn in depth of these events while traveling through a box of charcoal.

The person I called when investigating RobertBLalonde.com calls back. Jean confesses the truth of shutting down his home, punishing him. She then restores power to the narrow tube apartment, the same one my dad built, just like flipping a switch. I watch as he throws a few stray items out of the way in the narrow kitchen, before a train comes through at a T junction near the end. So he didn’t have to move the things out of the way — he’s been here since before the trains stopped running, before the place’s powers were cut off. So whose was it before him?

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Dream Journal

Disrupting Sponsored Classroom Propaganda (plus, a Girl’s Fence-Butt)

Three times during the night’s dreams I find myself in a situation where a young girl expresses her attraction to me: one Scottish, one Japanese, and one American. Though hypothetically sketchy, I don’t sense any impropriety. I’ve been acting like my usual self (perhaps in a slightly better mood) and me being a target of infatuation seems like harmless fun all round. It’s also odd and sort of a running joke that it keeps happening; not sure what else I should do but take it in good humor.

One girl, memorably, sees we’re alone then smushes her undie-clad butt against the diamonds of a chain-link fence. Looks a little like the pillowy pattern on a sewn duvet? Maybe an elaborate pie crust? Ridiculous.

As a candidate, President Biden famously enjoyed traveling on the campaign tour bus. Now, a new All-American Travel Bus is made based on that design. One even meets presidential limo standards set by the Secret Service.

I show up to one of my regular classrooms as usual, though I quickly discover it’s officially an “optional” day — I didn’t need to show up but now I’m already here. The unfortunate reason (though unacknowledged) is obvious: there’s an Xfinity company rep sitting in the middle of the classroom joylessly disgorging some scripted promotional presentation. The class is mostly locked into a semi-trance in the projector-lit darkness. This ill-conceived sponsored pitch on its own is boring, mildly offensive even, but as the dowdy sad-sack shill drones on I begin to detect creepy undertones of propaganda. Militaristic, imperialist narratives seemingly weave through the dullest possible fabric — hypnotic, odious, uncontested.

I completely disengage, deeming it more effective than causing a scene. Since there’s nothing more important in class today, I set about searching high and low for my missing spice jar. It feels like part of the problem is I can’t remember the name, almost like I could simply call for it. Tactically, I interrupt the creepy droning corporate lump to ask if anyone can closer recall the name. The drone, in reflexive boorish overconfidence, wrongly declares it as “Erizetti”, then pairs it with an incorrect and simultaneously insulting definition. Seizing my opportunity (and also just fed up) I attack them on everything I can think of, with as much conciseness and authority I can summon. When I’m done Ms. Xfinity ignores me again and plows ahead exactly the same, but I can tell her incantation isn’t really working anymore. She can only run out the clock.

While I’m distracted still searching for the jar, class gradually empties out. My fifth grade teacher (Mrs. Plescia) returns, emerging from a back room now that the sponsored nonsense is over. We have a friendly relationship and can joke about it a bit. Behind the projector screen, I find a curious set of nesting jars with parts that interlock on both top and bottom. Not the jar I’m looking for, certainly close enough to evoke it though.

There’s a ledge above the screen that I can examine, barely, if I scoot along the counter on tippy-toes of one foot. No jar here either, though for some reason there is a little toy alligator. I realize, standing extended as I am, that the blue snowflake-patterned boxers I wore this morning (it is in fact June) are longer than the shorts I’m wearing. They’ve likely been peeking out all day — when I greeted Mrs. Plescia, while I ranted to the corporate drone, perhaps even earlier. Exasperation. Resignation.

Looking back at Mrs. Plescia I’m tempted to ask, on account of how class went today, where I would’ve found out that today’s class was optional. I half know, half dread that she’d probably just say “the syllabus”.

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Dream Journal

Interesting TV! Twin or Doppelganger?

We have a few aquariums, arranged in an L shape, and I’m taking care them. The small one (the oldest) is packed with fish and plants, like one currently in our actual kitchen. The other two are big ones savaged from the streets of Chinatown (maybe 55 gallons each) but hold only a single beloved fish each. As I go about their maintenance, I realize we’ve had them a while and at this point they’re probably underutilized. The personable pufferfish living there gets scritches as I consider what company to get him.

A few potted plants have been on automatic watering for a while, and I decide to check on them. At the base of a stem rests a big moss ball that’s somehow been watered only on top and bottom. I take care to soak the entire thing, knowing that I’m still in time to rescue the almost dirt-brown middle.

On TV, I randomly discover that SNL now has a department making short Public Service Announcements for kids. Tough subject matter, too; the one I catch is on understanding and dealing with horrible traumas from the news like genocide and death. There’s one shot in particular that really sticks out for being so well done: small plastic toy horses filmed from below in black and white. Inexpensive to make, as I also appreciate.

Idly watching a show starring Jon Hamm (as a Don Draper character) who has a twin he didn’t know about. There’s some discussion over whether the twin is a doppelganger. Intrigued, I rewind to before he found out. Karen Gillan is filling a role similar to Peggy on Mad Men, serving also as a judge/mediator. There’s such a strangely amusing dragged-out scene where Don is standing in front of a mirror where his twin is visible, but he keeps looking downward or elsewhere in the room. The tension and entire situation are so oddly surreal, and I watch having no idea if I rewound even close to the pivotal reveal.

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Legend of Gastromo

I’m on a date with my crush (who won’t be named here for now). We eat in a narrow restaurant on a corner, and it’s… ok. We leave, a bit weary, then turn left and find an open garage next door. There’s a bubbly alt-culture girl who tells us about the art collective operating there, the project they’re working on. We barely have energy to engage with what sounds like a cool local thing.

Besides being tired nothing goes particularly wrong, but I remember feeling like it turned out a disaster of a date.

Marissa Tomei is one of my teachers. She’s gets in some unusual positions, backflips and the like, in some half-walled area with a hexagonal backdrop. She (or someone nearby) reminds me of the unopened vape juice bottle I’ve stored here for awhile, that I meant to give as a present to my brother.

Turns out I didn’t read the label properly. I thought it was peanut butter flavored — weird but not outlandish. But the still-sealed playful yellow bottle, sitting near an upturned chair where I left it, is a bizarre flavor I’ve never even conceived: “Clear Onion Butter”. Not something I would necessarily give as a gift. I hesitate to open it though, knowing rules about buying new vape juice have changed and I’m no longer sure how easy it is to get anymore.

Curiosity gets the better of me (only live once and all that) and I crack it open. It’s utterly strange as a flavor, but the uniqueness grows on me: clean, a creamy smoothness like butter, with the oddly transposed delicious light smell of cooking onions thrown in. I give it some time then very much start enjoying it. Who knows about the onion breath; I forgot to even consider it.

Later I’m on a bus made of bricks, or perhaps driving past many brick buildings. I have to start yelling to the driver that two people need to get off, that he needs to flip the bus around so the exit will be on the right side. The bus stops but on the wrong side. I’m about to have to explain this when the two people (my dad and some other adult male, maybe an uncle) thank the driver and descend the exit at the back corner of the bus. Frustration turns to reflexive self-critique — I completely forgot you could use those steps and I don’t know why.

Two girls took my single bus seat a long while ago, and after waiting they finally get off the bus too. My backpack is still piled there, along with a cast iron skillet. I was in the middle of cooking when my seat was stolen — the meat and veggies needed to be flipped long ago. Annoyingly, a youngish guy comes up and seems to think he has a claim to the seat too. Ugh.

Just now, I went to title this entry and realized ”Legend of Gastromo” was one of the first things I wrote. The title was just there when I woke up; a whimsical little evocation. Useful. Sometimes choosing the title can be my least favorite part.

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Mysterious Chess-like Game

Discover a game (what turns out to be a very mysterious and difficult game) called “By Chance” or something similar. Played on a chessboard grid but slightly larger, with three rows of pieces, two teams of blue and red. The first row is short, like pawns. Other pieces have individual traits and names; one piece called Labrador (Akator?) is embedded with a sentient AI named Gaia, but at the wrong level of scope so the piece itself isn’t intelligent.

I’m in an underwater glass-domed space with someone, hyper-focused on the game and explaining some of the curiosities I’ve discovered so far. I ask the person I’m with if they’d like to play, then pick up the blue collection to move closer. I try to carry it all together by grabbing all the blue pieces. I lack the dexterity to pull this off — they tip over and, quite unexpectedly, are replaced with a single small chocolate chip. Another mystery, which to my instincts appears completely by design.

Going down a corridor I enter into a tight capsule-like space. It’s still underwater, but there are fewer windows, more little surface details. A lesbian couple is holed up together in one of the alcoves and greets me sleepily. There’s another presence which I’m unclear about: the god Zeus.