Category: Dream Journal

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Dream Journal

Double Dream Sequence

A long set of story beats, repeated — the same dreams twice. If this was intentional or not, I don’t recall. I do remember waking up afterwards and wondering if I should write the story down, thinking it might be important, but they’re effectively evaporated.

Burning Man spent mostly scavenging. A sand quarry adjacent to the site. A small plane made of plastic you climb inside, used by the crew, with a single front facing plastic window — seems terrifying but I can imagine myself flying it. In a trash can, I discover two discarded pet slugs which are still alive. In the long canal of sand on the ridge, I leave as soon as I realize there are still workmen (who have yet to see me). Red jelly beans chewed up and dried in a jar into pebbles, then dumped out on the ground by my cousin Betty.

On a pair of stilts, I run after a departing train with a sackful of quarters in my pocket. It speeds up rapidly, but I’m not worried I won’t catch it was the stilts carry me at great speed. There’s a section missing, like a film that skipped, which those of us watching realize having seen it before.

During a theater performance, the Spanish royal couple have their view blocked by a large hexagonal cracker — ostensibly for security purposes, though deliberate provocation seems also likely.

A valet service has a wall of red ribbons and white ribbons, coded to mark self service. Too expensive for me to get myself.

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Dream Journal

Hitting it Off with Art Girl, bit of a Pokémon

Twilight in a round mid-sized stone cathedral, an art show of one girl’s work is displayed in every direction at eye-level height. I find it enthralling, wanting to know more.

Back in my own building, the grubby ground floor apartment of the girl includes a living room half open to the outside, cute little plants on the exposed basement walls. Her sideboards in the disused interior still have the landlord’s old stuff such as 80s radio scattered about. Next door (in apartment #306?) where the landlord’s family has just moved in recently, it’s a lot less grubby than expected, like an 80s nightclub in a mall — colored plexiglass panels, plush diner booths, knocked out walls — a multi-level living space big enough for the family not to have to see each other.

My wife introduces me to the girl who made the art, repeating her name like a Pokémon. We really hit it off; before I know it I’ve been pimped out and the girl is making out with me.

A twisty beige ground-floor office in the process of being decommissioned. As a stop-gap measure we often lock things in place so they don’t move — for example, a log in the hallway, or a heavy military-style desk made of enameled metal (like something I’d see on old Fort Ord during college). We’re setting little plants out on the exposed retaining walls outside, going back and forth down the unlit hallways even as someone pulls up in a red sports car outside, looking for someone I don’t know.

In a rolling almost artificial landscape, unfinished-looking, grid-like. Myself and a few associates are trying to get to a power plant I now own. In our way is a locked gate and barbed wire-topped wall abutting a rocky outcrop of a hill. Trading property here is like trading cards, and I only recently acquired the power plant (sight unseen) from a Mr. Burns-type character.

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Dream Journal

Scorpion Fright

Landlord showing apartment next door to one little black kid, representing his family. Landlord elected not to finish the bathroom in the middle, which is huge, and has at least two working toilets for every person who could live there. One in particular sits in the middle of the room near the courtyard window and has had it’s stall walls removed. You could use it as a chair now.

At beginning of night, I’m watching a video while sitting back straight upright in a chair. The video is of two rust-colored puppies playing amongst matching red rocks, while it rains. Val lies on couch. I’m half-lucid and think I’m actually asleep on the living room couch (I’m in bed).

I get up to go to the kitchen. At the bottom corner of the kitchen table a tiny cute spider emerges — followed by a tiny scorpion. As soon as I notice it, thinking I should warn others, it incredibly quickly scrambles across the floor, up my body, and to the left side of my neck.

I wake up, my heart pounding, and remember to set my sleep tracker.

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Dream Journal

Spaceship Aquarium Competition No-go

Soon after I go to sleep, I realize I’m still looking at memes… but am dreaming. I become lucid and remain that way for some time, without any effort to charge the experience.

A three-fold joke, a tweet in 3 parts with three images. The most important section of the nights dream’s — which my rat Roscoe woke me up and got me to remember — but which were lost to forgetfulness long before waking in the morning.

Carrying a book with a black and white cover over a coastal region, a giant lake or seaside with an edge like a swimming pool. While trying to show it to my dad, I find another book with a similar cover. Along the wide paved shoreline is a curvy section where I explore a sloping sand beach. Getting back on shore from the other side proves difficult, holding the book(s) aloft as waves crash over me, the sand eroding in great thick layers ahead of me. Finally back on land, someone points out the many squid temporarily stranded, though the appear exactly like small octopuses in large snail shells.

I return to my personally programmed spaceship, which some disbelieve I truly have. In this sterile, futuristic, yet homey space I proceed to fill my complex aquarium setup: interlocking glass, rectangular brushed metal. I plant my “fish seeds” I’ve been saving and in only a moment they re-grow; I have a healthy and filled tank. However, someone inadvertently reminds me that I forget about the fish tank competition happening soon — I won’t be able to dismantle this setup to move it, I can’t disassemble it without ending the life of the fish early, and I won’t have any new fish seeds if I do. I’ve taken myself out of the competition without realizing.

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Dream Journal

Hovering Presence and Menacing Cow

Skin writing is used as apunishment on someone suspected of human trafficking, marking them for later.

A dog-sized cow is acting menacingly at the property line of my childhood home, just at the edge of the neighbor’s lawn. I walk all the way down the street trying to read its dog tag, with no real plan how to make it go away.

Discover I’ve moved in together in the same ground floor apartment as some people I know in real life, but mainly from Twitter — KC Crowell, Feral, all Oakland peeps. I myself am an observer, but unusually, one with an identity — a hovering presence dwelling mostly in the rafters, where a glowing horizontal level divides my space from the everyday living space. The easily discerned border of the ceiling has curved buttresses, marking its construction in the early 1900s. On one section of old wood paneling, I spot a poster advertising old-timey glassware, lab glass perhaps. My roommates begin reinstalling some authentic hand-blown stained glass fixtures, decorative colored filigrees that have been in storage for almost a century. The landlord likes the residents so much he was convinced to let them haul it out from storage. The square ends of the curvy abstract forms fit perfectly flush against the buttresses.

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A Stadium like a Nation

A big rectangular stadium has been repurposed, serving to represent something much larger — a polity of some kind, a country or region. For a gateway it has a car boom gate, something I simply walk around. I search out my friend Autumn and meaningfully gesture at her to point out the gate’s existence.

I walk the circumference of the vast semi-enclosed space. At one corner, a convoluted passage leads to a locker room hallway. As I exit this corner, under some decorative wooden slats adjacent to the wooden walkway, I hide a soda can. The can may be a container for something else more risqué entirely.

As I complete my circumnavigation the search for a certain person is finally concluded. Seeing him, he seems very generic, someone so boring he’s almost a threat in his inoffensive blandness. He’s a relatively young father, overweight, maybe midwestern, a blond white guy. He’s to be designated as the “remainder” of the nation, someone outside the normal political moieties which cancel each other out, who should ultimately decide many issues. Not coincidentally, he lives in the same corner where the can was hidden. I’m left wondering if its contents will factor into future handling of this unassuming, yet discernably perilous individual.

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Dream Journal

Queen Elizabeth’s Garage, Rally to Speech Grounds

A fridge outside on the street, needing to be moved inside. But I must ask permission from the garage owner: Queen Elizabeth II. One spot inside is next to a small fridge and sink, one spot across is behind a couch. This garage is having a hot dog feast with family — I have to search for the last dogs, bringing a plate to my family’s table (mom, dad, grandparents) who are eating only a few plain dogs. I don’t have a plate; the queen then suggests I not sit and instead go back for my plate, not understanding these are the last few dogs and I might not get any. Yet in the end I do manage to get two, their cheese all melted and congealed.

While many of us are waiting for a rally, with me squatting leaned against a pillar in the garage, my former lover Dara shows up. I spot just her black-heeled foot at first. But she’s made up to the nines and looks fly as hell, a femme fatale, long bare legs and a short black skirt. I’m overjoyed, throwing my hand on her foot and running it up the whole length. I make a joke for the sake of anyone who might be watching, how “I suppose I should’ve introduced myself first ma’am”. Dara’s a candidate in some sort of competition, which we’re all about to begin.

Me and my friends start on a group walk along a planned route. I’m in the lead at first, chatting side by side with a dude friend. A small girl I haven’t known for years, Quetzal, swaps into the lead. I yell encouragement behind her back saying “Quetzal will know where to go” but she doesn’t turn around to acknowledge it. I find myself wishing I’d double-checked her face as she passed to make sure it was really her.

The path takes us over a wooden walkway, one that a grumpy adjacent homeowner claims he owns. The extended line of us has to find different ways of going around. I swing underneath the wooden support beams of the cliffside house, sneaking around acrobatically like a ninja or rogue. I take a shortcut through the lower level of the house, what looks like a messy neglected in-law unit. I succeed making it to the double door exit, but my curiosity gets the better of me and I turn back to investigate the darkened octagonal space. As my eyes adjust I suddenly recognize there’s a dark man sitting upright and perfectly still nearly in front of me — I nope the hell outta there right quick.

Finally arrive at a gathering ground with an upward slope of steps where politicians sometimes give speeches. It appears Joe Biden is claiming he is the victor of the competition/walk. I learned from talking to people that in fact Dara has fulfilled her promise and arrived here first, giving a speech earlier before I arrived, making her the actual winner.

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Motorbikes, and the Bays of Australia

Have to retrieve my motorcycle from a public classroom (or small compound) where my old nemesis — well, former friend/boss — Chicken John is in charge. Red dusty walls, open entryways, stalls where kids learn. I try to be as quick and discreet as possible but we still exchange an unfriendly glance. Outside I have a bit of difficulty getting the kickstand down, and balanced, but leave the motorbike in a good location against a short retaining wall with line of shrubbery.

The compound is on on high ground above distant water. I survey the different bays of Australia, noting how their unique shapes have affected the developing character of their cities. Canter Bay is the one where I now am, the smallest, hanging out on a chunky narrow little peninsula near the water in Melbourne. From here my friends and I can view the ocean and the harbor going around, chatting and having a lovely time together. One of the people with me is a female singer of some fame; perhaps it might’ve even been the great opera diva Nelly Melba.

From out of the foggy ocean horizon I spot a stubby battered-looking orange military transport plane heading north to the compound visited earlier. I declare “oh that’d be our ride, time to get back.” A pallet of two motorcycles arrive delivered by tow truck, but there’s been a miscommunication: my wife can only ride a bicycle. This makes our time to get back quite tight. I offer to haul her on the bike on the trailer but my bike’s folding safety-yellow hitch extender just barely doesn’t reach. Instead, I kindly offer to go get her helmet and protective gear from outside the compound. I really out of view as I speed off to fetch them.

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Dream Journal

Just Great, I’m a Passenger on a Bus with Politicians

I’m on a bus, full of other candidates for job. In a previous dream I’ve helped Russian President Vladimir Putin defend the country of Greenland from something related to homophilia, homophobia, or both.

An image of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, and a wall of human bodies made of Legos.

Vice President Mike Pence is near the back of the bus. I point out to the interviewer/autority figure that he’s asleep, he admits jokingly that he was in fact asleep (happening, of course, while I’m actually asleep in this dream). The authority, acting like a teacher, gives him a C for that day despite that I’ve been given an F before for the same thing. Right there I decide to quit this nonsense job, which might mean suicide, but as a protest I can come up with nothing else.

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X-ARDOS

I don’t know why the dream must be named what it is, but it was the strongest word in my head upon waking. Perhaps it has some relation to bardo, the Tibetan spiritual state in between death and rebirth.

Three of us are traveling on a long motorbike, my friend Aislinn, my wife and me. I’m driving from the farthest rear, which proves difficult on the freeway. As I’m about to take an exit, another motorcycle passes me on the right making things just that much more difficult. This exit is somehwere in the state of Iowa. It strikes me how much like every other freeway exit in America it is, yet with subtly apparent differences that make it like Iowa.

Rounding through a parking lot and a few low buildings, I swing around to a gas station (something like a gas station anyway) that’s broken down and is now freezing everything around it. I comment that it’s gonna be some expensive snow, and we decide to park and check it out. That proves somewhat difficult, as I back into a space alongside a cinderblock wall. The car ignition also seems to freely turn with any key I try, which is clearly something else to be concerned with. The vehicle is an SUV now, more like the old Nissan truck I used to drive (and drove from Iowa).

As soon as I park and get out, Aislinn asks if I worry about parking in front of that door, pointing to a barred gate which looks into the courtyard of an African monastery for junior monks. I curse and start to park all over again — though the neighborhood looks shabby, there’s clearly a lot going on. I do more back and forth nudging into a space, now there are even more cars to work around.

When I finally make it out, I’m at a family reunion for my Dad’s side. They’re loud and boisterous, very familiar with each other. The car becomes some white-furred furniture or a stuffed figure. There’s an exchange of gifts, and I must find a place to stack long tentbag-like objects on a similar white-furred bed (not sure if it’s the same, but it’s a different location). I correct my dad and place these objects off the head of the bed, onto the sheet, to minimize dirtiness.

I get invited to follow my uncle Vince on a short tour. I follow him while adjusting a set of recording glasses, falling behind because of them after he exits a set of double doors, then jogging after to keep up. I feel younger and younger in this dream, my role shifting. My uncle and I tour a dark, mostly empty parking garage, a caverous metal warehouse-like space, while he narrates the story of various murals telling stories of our family. (On reflection, this almost sounds like a transplanted version of Aboriginal Australian lore.)

One particular story, high up on a side wall, tells the story of a broken branch hanging high in a pine tree, staying stick even in strong wind (I’m almost certain this story is from another of my dreams a long while ago). Something all my male relations witnessed at the time, some broader story I can’t make out now. I confess how even though I never met my great-grandfather I have a nickname for him.

After a great effort to remember am earlier set of dreams, I can recall being transposed back to Australia in 2006, nostalgic for when I actually visited. I’m physically emobodied in that time again, as I was when I was really there. I stand outside a grand modern airport or mall, manicured fountains outside, the curved steps leading down to a light rail transit line. I carry an iconic backpack I’ve used forever in Australia (not accounted for in waking life) which is like a trailer-like shell which unfolds, revealing pockets within pockets, all labeled with names of politicians or notable Aussie figures.