Category: Dream Journal

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Dream Journal

Boat, Bus, (Another Bus), and a Pretty Good Date

On a boat, minding my own business reading. Three lavatory cabins sit on the left of the boat, bobbing widely up and down in the spray. I’m friendly with the boatman, and we take a 15 minute break on a shoreline so I can get up and stretch my legs, and take a pee break outside those challenging lavatories. I watch as a water pressure rocket shoots into the sky.

Asking a girl I know out on a date. (As it happens, this girl will later become my crush.) We’re at a college, riding around on student buses, among huge institutional buildings with wide lawns laid out on a grid. I point out to her the many little groups of animal sculptures placed on balconies of an incomplete building, supposedly a tradition in Arabia and the Emirates. One group of wolves, though, is alive, and we watch enthralled as they stalk across the empty road outside our bus windows.

We go somewhere inside a big university building, a place with high-ceilinged two-story elevators. A maintenance man actually points out how they’ve recently made them nicer. There’s somewhere I think would be nice to take her for a date, but when we get there it’s a student mental health clinic (maybe we mis-navigated, maybe they moved the location). I figure this out looking through forms over the light of a desk lamp, politely decline their services, and take her somewhere nicer.

We find a plain rectangular room with a bed. I ask her directly if she’d like to have sex. Her reaction is everything: she ponders with her finger pressed to her lips, eyes cast upwards, gently scratching her now bald head. It’s a subtly amusing overacted display of thoughtfulness, and I take the time to evaluate her unique beauty. Finally she turns to me and pronounces a simple, conclusive “yes”. I smile, but realizing we haven’t actually had any regular fun yet I change tack. We snuggle up back-to-front and proceed through a card I have, a written series of jokes and responses, and she quickly picks up on it. We start to form a bond.

Again I’m a young kid, reading on a bus this time. Keep my tiny fuzzy rat Pierre under my fuzzy sweater, with the waist tucked in. My reading is interrupted by a bus guard (seem like a lot of rules on this bus) who scans me with handheld detector. But I feel uncharacteristically fine about it, and don’t worry about Pierre. My dad sits in the seat next to me. While I’m reading, the left lens of my glasses comes loose and blows out the window. I quickly try to remember the street, 45th I think, so we can go back and get it. However, the next street is 11th and the street after that is labelled 11:11.

I attempt to improvise, putting a grid of various colored glitter-water into a cat-eye-shaped lens and frame. Remarkably, the lens is the correct size, yet has a crunchy ice texture that makes it useless for reading through — but fascinating to look at. I study it intently and wonder what I could use it for, my reading forgotten.

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Dream Journal

Family of Church-Neighbors, Destroyed

An abandoned pioneer-era church at edge of the freeway in my hometown, a place I’ve explored in a dream at least once before, in the form of a small kid. My wife and I are able to explore it a bit — but some family has built their home right against it, with big windows facing the rustic interior. They threaten us, accusing us of trespassing, and in impulsive righteousness I use special powers to electrocute them. My wife does the same, wiping out this entitled family who constructed their modern ritzy hellhole against sacred ground. As we leave, my wife points out a security camera DVR — I fry it to hell, too. I note the time I wake up from this dream as exactly 4:44 am.

In Disneyland, I sneak up a narrow obscure trench up the side of a hill. From my vantage, I can see broad open walking areas where people mill about, fairytale mountains seeming more like Middle-Earth than The Matterhorn. I reach the top and can see through a triangular gap into an exhibit of animals — gorillas, flamingoes, perfectly sculpted fake natural surrounds. As I lie prone in the small area where I can peek, I realize the park staff must somehow know I’m here — so many security cams, so much well-preened presentation. But they let me gaze secretively nonetheless, enjoying a view someone, sometime must’ve made on purpose.

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Dream Journal

Midnight Menagerie, Starfish Swansong

extracted cut-out collage artwork from album cover

Donald Trump’s existence suggests an axiom: the higher the getting, the bigger the dark side.

Being hosted at some guy’s elaborately-decorated stylish apartment, white walls and expensive décor, a congenial upper-middle class bougie gay dude. He gives up his bedroom per my request. In the middle of the night I’m awoken and think I’m being visited by a group of raccoons, but it turns out to just be a few of his cats.

Later, I think it’s happening again so I stay asleep. Yet slowly I realize that in the bedroom with me are a whole menagerie of apes, macaques, zebra, even a giraffe maybe. This is his personal zoo, something he acts like I should be impressed with, while he himself acts nonchalant. It is (I admit) bizarre and impressive. Doubly so with the apartment’s trendy Instagrammable Pinterest-y surroundings.

(This is midpoint of my night’s dreams, which I remember when I wake up earlier in the night — for real — with some insight into my own progressed technique into the writing of dreams. Yet I still don’t wake up to take notes on it, worried I might not get back to sleep…)

In the classroom of a middle school, which feels near the coastal location of my University. I’m my current age, hanging out in bookshelves behind the rows of desks observing class, but I pop in occasionally, keeping tabs on the teacher and mingling with students.

A class lesson: “what’s wrong with this cream cheese recipe?” I personally think they added lemon juice, or didn’t use real cheese. Moving past, the teacher calls on me, somewhat jokingly. Nose in a textbook, I respond mispronouncing ‘book’ like ‘boooook’. She responds in the same joking tone that we’ll name our next lesson’s monster “Orin”.

I abruptly notice that a green starfish kid in the front row has suddenly developed injuries consistent with exposure to a contagion we studied in class. Teacher has also noticed but is playing it off so as not to alarm the students; I don’t do so well hiding it. We help get the student out. Afterwards I take time reflecting on it in the bookshelves.

I return just a bit later, but class appears to be over for that year. Instead, the room is occupied by a choral group of young kids, 4-6 years old, in flowing robes with hoods, singing what could be a Buddhist funeral dirge. Their parents wait behind them to take them home, some breaking down crying. It’s obvious the starfish kid didn’t make it.

Jolted, reminded of life’s brevity, I set aside time to enjoy hanging out with one particular girl I like who reminds me of a fun redhead I knew in high school — Sam Promenchenkel. She’s quite taller than me; my head reaches just under her armpit. With a group we stroll along a stepped boardwalk away from the school. On the way I’m goaded into doing a scooter trick up some stairs, and manage to leap all the way to the second-to-last step, where I do a little bounce and make it all the way up.

My cousin Betty is with our group, skipping away ahead of us toward her wife. She seems so happy and excited, I’m very happy for her, though I watch her get further and further away.

We get to the ocean and do tricks leaping into the surf on scooters. Someone brings up how left-brain-focused people will typically veer to the left and miss their mark on the waves. We practice crossing our eyes, water streams squirting from our pupils, trying to get the streams to meet where we want.

Music in my head upon waking:

Heartsrevolution – Heart vs The Machine
Architecture in Helsinki – Heart It Races
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Dream Journal

Good Old Burning Man, I Suppose

Invited back to Burning Man, with the camp my sister stays at. They last stayed in 2015 — it doesn’t seem so long ago.

When I first get into camp I find a few emblems lying on the ground at he entrance. My old rabbit fur bag of elfstones (that I carried in middle school) appears to be there, as well as some important books from my past.

The camp is indoor and outdoor. There’s a book counter in our camp, and the bookseller asks me if I know that a photo of mine is currently first place in a competition. He seems to be clued in to the unusualness of the situation, and I can’t fully recall if it’s a photo I did take, but I definitely can’t remember submitting it. He reminds me of my wife’s dad’s friend, Loren.

Nice slow conversation with friends in our camp about bringing a good smartphone camera to Burning Man. Mickey is there, my sister Alia too, I even notice my dad sitting at the end of a table — had hung out with him without even realizing he was my dad.

The photo from the competition comes out: a very clear photo of statuary in a twisting wood, the lighting a deep velvety eerie calm midnight. Studying it closely, the sensation forms of how the angle, framing, color treatment, and more are recognizably my style. It must have been made several years ago now.

I help haul out stuff we’ve brought this year, much of it packed into a rundown old ’70s luxury car (one of those big fat Buicks or Cadillacs) parked on the roadside exactly behind the spot where I parked last time. After that long discussion on phone cameras earlier I happen to uncover an old Motorola flip-phone. Though only here for novelty purposes, it proves worthy of close examination — a true artifact. Somehow I finally appreciate just how many individual technological bits and pieces were sorted out in its making.

The chaos of the festival is just coming into swing, though it’s early yet… and a bit more reserved than I remember. I watch a procession of long mechanical costumes march up a slope toward us. An articulated worm-dragon, I realize, was probably made with help from my friends Don & Tracy.

Mickey is futzing around camp, pensively searching for a special spiritual emblem of his that’s missing. Meanwhile I’m feeling annoyed as the bookseller has closed shop early, and without notice. I could’ve asked him about the emblem — I’m worried a book I traded could’ve contained (or perhaps was) Mickey’s cherished talisman.

We settle down together at a table, playing some emulated old video games. Mickey brings my heavy motorcycle boots over and sets them nearby, which bothers me until I understand he wants them as a cool prop for his fighter jet game. Following that is yet another emotional conversation, both of us worried about different things. It strikes me suddenly that we’re both distraught somehow yet still doing exactly what we want — this is a true vacation, with no genuine adult responsibilities, and we’re both literally playing Nintendo just as we would in our childhood. (Though, odd detail: I have a Steam Controller and he’s still using a keyboard and mouse.) Our mood improves immensely after this observation is made. Ironically but perhaps unsurprisingly, when I unpause my game it crashes to the JavaScript backend. One can only sigh, or laugh, and wonder at the predictability of such things.

The bookseller returns unexpectedly soon afterward, having only taken an evening break.

The music playing in my head, as I woke up and tried to remember as much as I could: N.O.H.A. – Do You Know

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Dream Journal

Mini-Nations, School of Darkness

After a ritualized intellectual struggle, my Grand Wizard-King makes me the new king of a nation — a miniature, room-sized nation. It’s one of many, their near-microscopic humans living along various sub-scales, together in a quiet, darkened school building. My former gathered rivals don’t quite yet realize I’m the victor of our contest, but my first act is to free a rival agent (who looks like Odo from Deep Space 9). Walking away from this act, I deem that I will remember this all better if I can remember my full official title — yet I don’t know if ever got one, or the name of the place, which I find odd.

A group of similarly-sized Asian girls outside a Walmart in my hometown, part of some formal gathering. All with sharply cut dresses and fancy hairstyles. Their backs are turned to me and I try to locate my middle-school friend Jimil by her ponytail. The girl I find turns out to be an assassin and duelist, one from a rival tiny nation I’ve never heard of (down a set of stairs, called something like “the Lowlands Suzerainty”). I’m able to defeat her by luring her up a puzzle-like jungle gym climbing sculpture. A worthy opponent.

In the broader expanse of the nighttime school building, I explore what I suspect is the top floor. It houses a school admin office, the window overlooking to a flat dark roof. The space, even at normal scale, is smaller than I expect.

In a classroom nearby, rows of us sit in plastic chairs while a guest presenter lectures with slides on the nefarious points of being evil. I sit next to my homepie friend Mickey, and together we make excellent snark. Finally Mickey breaks in on the drone with a critical observation critiquing the talk’s contents. When he finishes I’m ready to put in my own take, reframing and reiterating his points. To my satisfaction and surprise my friend Chloe, sitting in another row, jumps in with a full accusation.

“Science in Action” is Chloe’s stated theory about this year (I at first incorrectly think she means 2016, but no, definitely 2020). From prior experience she’s familiar with how cults sometimes take over a classroom and perform fucked up experiments to prove their faith — ostensibly to prove it outsiders. She carries on, homing in on how the evil badassery this cult/school espouses is negated with their actions, epitomized by us being there to even listen to them. She absolutely nails it.

Music in my head on waking: Death Waltz, U.N. Owen Was Her, a midi version

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Dream Journal

Walrus Girlfriend, Walrus Skull

Departing from a short flight between San Francisco and Oakland. Other passengers are paranoid about a bad weather landing, but I’m not worried as its just a short hop.

Then, a lengthy wait for my baggage at baggage claim. I’m able to go back directly to my apartment, living with roommates where I have a single room crowded with many years of collected cool stuff; ephemera, curiosities, art. The walkway of my room has taxidermy mounted on the walls around the door — so much you have to duck around it. I keep a key hanging from a nail on the back of my door, but I realize that in all the years living here none of my roommates have even asked for it.

I see my walrus girlfriend, too. During a conversation with her I go down the hall, admiring some items in a glass-fronted curio cabinet, noticing the small tusk-less walrus skull I own locked inside. I pause and consider her reaction to learning about it, but honestly don’t have a clue.

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Dream Journal

Inside, Unusual Light & Color

A ground floor restaurant in the hostel where I’ve been staying long-term. I ask the Chinese-speaking waitress what the best food is nearby, but she only names several of their own dishes. One’s I’ve had many times before, as I practically live here.

I peek outdoors briefly, not long enough to see much besides the smoky yellow-gray of the urban street outside. Even during the day the color inside seems murky, unnatural — though few besides me seem to notice. To demonstrate I turn on a light which doesn’t color correct for the altered hue, and the tables, food, everything looks bizarre and unreal, intensely yellow like a poorly edited photo. I turn on the light correction to show difference, and things now appear “normal”.

On the 3rd and 4th floors, we’re deleting an unused backup copy of a few other floors in the building. The question still remains, what to do with the new space we’ve freed up? (Worth noting I suppose that I just cleaned up the bedroom and the space under the bed.)

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Dream Journal

A Twin with a Tail

Massively sped up time-lapse of one early civilization, a primitive community building itself from raw nature over generations of real time. Just as a thought comes that “they’ve reached the stage where they need walls to protect what can now be destroyed”, and one wall of an enclosure has been built, I watch as a gigantic rhino beast smashes in and tramples all their work into splinters. I realize: this is my ancestry, although not a part which survived.

At Burning Man, I lounge with many friendly acquaintances in a communal camp where we spend most of our time. This day we’re in the midst of a low-key engineering competition. I go on repeated walkthroughs of a semi-outdoor hardware store scrounging for the right supplies. The desert is less dusty than usual, more crunchy.

Dara Vinne introduces me to her twin sister, called Dana Vinne. She appears mostly identical but has lived a distinctly different life — she was born with a clumpy, fleshy, twirled-up tail. I find I’m still just as attracted to her, which is an odd conundrum; I feel like the tail should make a difference, or that my existing intellectual attraction to Dara should instead favor her, but… well, no conclusions there.

I get a good look at the tail while we’re all sitting around naked. In the open space between couches she’s facing away from me, semi-squatting on a mattress. Her tail gives the conflicting impression of both a deformity and a banality. I watch then as she lazily maneuvers her hips to hump down onto a fresh tampon, driving it in no-handedly. Vulgar but bemusing, comfortable with her body and her company, the shocking gesture comes off as bizarrely endearing. Uncommonly feminine, too — a rakish femininity that’s happy with gross-out humor even at one’s own expense.

Later I pass by a camp on the corner where I again spot her (Dana Vinne), and consider backtracking for the chance to hang out with her. But I soon notice several other individual twins from my communal camp all headed that direction. I decide there must be a twins meeting of some sort, and head back to my own camp… still very curious about this new person.

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Dream Journal

Racing the F1 Key

A third person perspective of some rival of mine, someone trying to beat my racing record. He’s hired a whole training and pit crew to help, the setting an incongruous “Anne of Green Gables” wide summer-y enclosed lawn.

I watch, knowingly, as his (boat?) craft ungraciously cuts across the rippled edge of a deceptively smooth frozen chrome path/course. He fails on his attempt with a muttered “huh”, and thereafter his many crew have to be deported back to New Zealand because their work has run out.

I remember thinking how unimaginably annoyed I’d be if I had to move back across the globe because my boss couldn’t perform. They seem to take it mostly in stride, though.

In the dream, the F1 is a floating keyboard value that can be filled (similar to yesterday’s dream), but also a reference to the race. The race itself may be called a “key”, as in the Florida keys.

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Dream Journal

Kiss from a Girl who Found Me

An auto updating input window surrounded by a circle overlays the dream. Soon, if gets updated with info from Madeline Mladich.

I’m lying on the top back bunk of a row of communal bunks one day, reading Wikipedia while everyone else is out. A bald heavyset dude peeks in randomly, making an expression like like I might be in what he feels is an incorrect bunk. So I move down to the lone single level bed, then after he leaves, into a lower bunk next to it where I’m unlikely to be noticed. That’s where a girl finds me… a girl that seems to have specifically sought me out.

After a brief but very good conversation (where I somehow feel compelled to convey the importance of my contributions during the night, when I usually choose to work) she leans over the bed and gives me an absolutely glorious kiss. Our time available together, I realize, is far too short, and I get the idea to have her write down her info. The input window hovering over the dream updates — I feel like our relationship is solidified, saved in the computer memory sense. Madeline Mladich.

I show her some of my work, zooming around a simplified model of the city (still quite complex), overlaid onto the city itself. We’ve recently expanded, and I’m aesthetically placing more structures in the center of map, choosing as much as possible to stay away from downtown and the older well-established parts of the model.

Later on I’m walking up and down the narrow communal hall, knocking on white-painted doors looking for anyone who knows what the pink glitter paint I keep seeing on the doors means.

I’m in a part of the Ukraine. I explore a probably abandoned white building glinting in the weak spring sun. All the walls and ceilings are glass window-frames, like a greenhouse, but I get the impression this was light manufacturing of some kind. There’s a hobo-like character on roof helping me, and he spots a terminator robot outside for me to avoid. I can see it’s dark outline and the bright red blotch of it’s eye.