Category: Dream Journal

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Dream Journal

From Sleep on Brian’s Portland Futon

A therapist ends up detained because she refuses to admit whether a client has been to Bremen, or is Bremen — this WWI story is known as BremenX. I find myself surprised and grateful that a therapist would selflessly protect a client like that.

In a communal sitting room with beige-walled booths, I look in the mirror mounted on the righthand side and catch the friendly eye of two ladies also waiting there. Perhaps we are using the ovens, baking pie. It’s clear to me the mirror was installed at the angle it was for just this purpose. I’ve been hanging about for a long time, and I’ve noticed an abundance of redheads with elaborate spirally hair-does that remind me of this bug:

https://twitter.com/cassiegrimaldi/status/912796613575364609

There’s some (red?) minivan a friend of mine is driving, and it’s creeping slowly toward the freeway on-ramp adjacent to the community bakery. If I can catch it, I pull off a great sex joke. But, having to cross a barrier and get across a few lanes, I ju-u-u-u-u-ust miss it. Then I’m first in line for the on-ramp, though, and I get low to the gravelly road and turn on rocket boosters (not something I’ve really used before) to catch up. They’re shite for hill-climbing, though, and when I encounter a sudden left curve after a steep hill with zero banking, my SR-71 Blackbird (which is where I kept the rockets, apparently) goes careening off the ribbon of dirt into the galactic space through which it wends.

A demonstration: the dynamically resized livery of a train, attractive top-to-bottom color gradients (splendidly coordinated along the length of the train, with occasional repeats). It’s a coal-fired steam train, even. As one reduces the number of cars it collapses into only a single cowboy-soldier pumping a handcar bearing a square American flag.

My family has re-acquired our Kemper Court house where I grew up. In the wall between the stained-glass entryway and the kitchen nook there’s now a rectangular hole just big enough to slip through on one’s back. As I peek through, I note how strange it feels to live there again after it belonged to someone else for so long.

Standing on a hilltop gazing reverently at a snow-covered mountain, kin to Mount San Jacinto in the Coachella Valley. A mirror on a long handle held at arm’s length, revealing another mountain far behind me — holy mountains at opposing ends of the valley where I stand.

I relate this dream to Brian when he, apropos of nothing, called me up to his balcony to view Mt. St. Helens on this clear autumn day. When the view isn’t blocked, one can see Mt. Hood, also.

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Dream Journal

About Mithing

Woke up from dreams literally thinking “this is useless, you need to find something better to think about.” But screw that, amirite?

Well, in particular, the useless dream was about mithing, which likely is just a bad missspeling of nothing—although for the most part it centered on a box of rescued baby turtles that I turned into a vet and discovered still in a plastic box, even more dried out, and possibly cannibalizing one another. Clearly inspired by this article I linked (which doesn’t actually give a good reason for anything) but does contain some adorbz capybara pics…

Then there was the dream where I was 2-3 teenagers who’d camped out in someone’s house. The owners came home at the end of the… month? day? and we went to hide behind a redwood fence. Despite only having cleaned and made improvements a police officer was called and peeked over the too-small hiding place. I don’t know how things ended for him, but I remember those teenagers arranging exquisitely detailed Dungeons & Dragons pewter miniatures from a glass case.

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Dream Journal

Thriving African Village

An African village has traded part of its water rights to a group of foreign investors. I dip a hand in murky light brown water off the side of a canoe as I come upon a hut at the edge of their traditional lakeside fishing grounds. The lake contains petroleum that no one has figured out how to extract, but I gather this partially explains the investors interest. Beyond the hut, I’m shown a beautifully restored, wide, gurgling river, bountiful with wildlife including hippos and cranes. In the distance, I see the narrow cliffside dirt road that is the only access in or out for travelers.

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Dream Journal

Two Different Political Dreams

I am an incorporeal presence floating above the crowds of the Republican National Convention. Loud and angry is the clamor, wretched partisans yelling for blood, dressed in white and reddish-orange. I despise the vicious and violent desires of these people. All gathered, I want them all blown up. Instead (by my intervention, perhaps?) the crowd is suddenly turned against their hotheaded petty potty-mouthed loser of a champion… they yell for his blood now, “Kill Trump! Kill Trump! Kill Trump!”

But that’s not all. In a separate dream, I’m the personal servant/slave of none other than Adolf Hitler himself. Fortunately for me, he’s not thoughtful enough to realize that his Jewish slave being sent on an errand to the railway depot might just escape. I manage to sneak out my wife too, who bafflingly robs the drama from the situation by dryly noting “this is good, I’m glad we do this every year.”

Let’s hope this dream doesn’t get me put on the wrong kind of list… (but if you did read this post under the aegis of law enforcement, I’d be interested to know).

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Dream Journal

Fearsome Giants, an Educational Experience

A house where special kids are sent to learn. A narrow plot on a high hill of San Francisco, up a long, rocky and steep driveway. Deceptively large. Its two-story atrium is built into the trees of its own courtyard. There is a platform whose purpose is not obvious at first, wooden branch railings overlooking a large pit, like an animal enclosure at a zoo. Then appear several selves of the viewing subject, larger and larger — future selves? — and then the last and largest of them all, the fearsome giant, with red and battered single eye socket, furious, powerful, malevolent. I interpret it might be a bit of the ol’ ego-archetype, come to scare some kids straight… not that it doesn’t also inspire them, too.

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Dream Journal

Invasion of Ghost Cat

Awoken suddenly by an unusual growl… unusual because it was clearly one cat warning another, but the only cats supposedly in the house are total BFFs Aloysius and Katie. Jumping from the living room couch, I catch a glimpse of a gray furry mass speeding out the back door like a ghost. In the bright sun of the dawn, I manage to visually confirm a well-built cat with dust-bunny appearance escaping the backyard, into the neighborhood garden (just like a raccoon, too). It’s at this moment of passing danger that I realize I must have been surrounded by cats all through the night… not just Wishus and Katie, but up on the shelf, inside a wooden box, by my dear departed Flop as well. And that for a long while I’d been dreaming of him — playing youthfully and with vigor, tumbling in the pile of blankets behind that couch, watching me with curious attention. There are mere coincidences, and then there are uncannily meaningful and timely coincidences. Come visit again soon, little buddy.

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Dream Journal

A Timeless Dream, Rotating Like a Clock

Non-linear, a dream in many parts yet all the same part. A place that could be called a wonderland.

A walk up a long ramp, a balding Bartolomeo de Las Casas or Samuel Tonsure is there among rough-hewn and brightly painted railings, tables, chairs, like being in cuckoo clock made in Mexico. He is St. Jerome, as far as I know, but his bald head and toga remind me of Aeschylus. Though he is an old teacher, because of the strange non-linear nature of this dream (all is happening at once, or can be re-ordered) I’m able to provide learning to him. It is settled at some point that we are something like the same person, if time-dislocated… I am to become him, or him me.

South Park kids are in this dream too. Perhaps they are leading a philosophical insurrection, or turning the hands of a clock that does not itself move, but moves all the time around it. This is the pivot, and the story returns to St. Jerome, who through further work is now a glossy porcelain dinner tray. His venerable cranium emerges from a moat, a bit like a well-heeled origami boat.

It was a late night and I slept between my wife and a friend. Something like a distillation of beliefs, some out-of-bounds experience, a timeless time travel, suffused this dream. When I awoke I knew exactly what it meant (I still do) but not any words to describe or reflect its true structure. I had to wait for the opportunity to write it down, which was after I’d slipped unexpectedly into a fitful, hot nap in a replica Arctic hermit’s hut. On the undersized fur-covered bed, my foot jerked and kicked over a glass kerosene lamp, which shattered on the dusty floor. I cleaned it though, had the will to pay for it too. I’m suspicious enough to wonder about a subconscious motive for such an action…

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Dream Journal

Attending Trump’s Kids Wedding (A Dream)

I’m invited to a huge wedding party — the catch is that it’s one of Donald Trump’s kids.

It’s at this expansive palladium/neoclassical sports grounds (not soon after, I witness it being torn up and redeveloped). Decorations are sparse and modern, and Lynae and I play music on these white plastic devices made available… the volume down is hard to control (using shift+F6). I notice someone I once dated, Meredith S., walk in arm-and-arm with another former partner of mine, and realize they’ll eventually realize they have me in common (she turns and glances back at me for just a second). There’s also a bin full of elaborate foreign hats (I have the thought “this is what our wedding would have had). Donald gives a toast and I enjoy it the same way I enjoy my father-in-law, knowing that our politics differ greatly but appreciating him as my family.

The celebration winds down, I head north to explore some tangled dry woods (this dream turns into a city-planning dream, the industrial and residential areas angled diagonal to each other, joined by a single thick link road, arguing in favor of adding more links). I view a flyover of all the thin multi-story houses (the opposite of the bungalow in Ojai that I’m visiting).

Afterward, somewhere near the wedding grounds, Lynae and I are talking and realize we left some important item under the table. Returning, we fruitlessly search. We ask a large hairy bearded guy who seems friendly if he knows where else to look — by way of answer, he and two other guys perform a song-and-dance bit about how reasonably long certain things might be held for lost-and-found. As our item (maybe a bag) is much less important than a dog (48 hours) there’s not much chance for it. At least I got an entertaining soliloquy from my subconscious regarding expiration dates on “lost” things.

Oh yeah, my wife got scared because she thought I was a monster shape-shifter (one with little white ropes for a body) and I decided to play along for a while until she came up with a reason to believe I wasn’t. It was easier that way, but I must admit to a certain sinister enjoyment of a well-received villain act. Maybe that happened because I was still waiting for a response from earlier in the dream, where I was out-of-communication with Dara V., and my wife said she woul resolve the problem one-on-one. That… makes me long for the long-lost girl again (not unusual for me). I suspect her presence is a big reason why the dream felt important enough to write down — here in the summer heat and flies of Ojai valley, sticky and rough.

“There are those that are lost to us forever.”
–message from a dream I had in 8th grade

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Dream Journal

Dreaming of Internets Past

Forums info lasts too damn long. Passing opinions from barely passable experts keep around forever, never get updated… some small part of the dream talking about how the internet has changed. Yup, in this dream I had a long discussion with with my wife, topic: when blogs ruled the world. People used to pay for their own sites, their own stores, their own obsessive passions… because there was an ecology of people doing it at the same time. People used to go to a good deal of work to have their own toehold in that vast yet somehow intimate space. We didn’t know then that it united us, made our internet world the warm, snug little home it was. There is mention of tech utopianism and I gaze further down a hill toward a woven bridge of white lace. Spy is there, riding bikes with me, halfway distance to the bridge. She’s meeting a new sweetie of hers.

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Dream Journal

Dream of IN20MN1A

Truck is parked on a curvy road, with it’s bed oriented up the slope to where two men sit in a car. The gate has been brought down and slid off somewhat. I check and, seeing that nothing appears to have been stolen (I have a bunch of typical junk kept back there, like a subwoofer speaker enclosure) I slide the gate off the rails and discover that it *can* be stolen. Obviously this isn’t desirable so I lock the gate closed with my car key. The two men on the hill have been muttering complaints this whole time — I think they disliked having me nearby. One of their aspersions directed so I could hear it was that they should call the police to deal with me, and I shot back with “do you think they’ll arrest me for existing?” I notice the car license plate reads IN20MN1A…

(I’d been kept awake until 6 in the morning feeling weird about money.)

Someone is telling me the story of the first time their partner took the test to be a contractor. It could’ve been Ais, about Reece. There’s a fence made out of foot-diameter PVC pipe ends, and there’s a big open pit filled with toxic, discarded seeds the previous testees have picked and discarded. (For some reason the ‘end-of-the-cul-de-sac’ locational feel reminds me of another, maritime dream, a street-side deep pool with old military ships sunk into it in with a Hawaiian vibe.) Of course, Reece falls headlong into it and contaminates himself and everything around him. This is related as both embarrassing and hilarious. He still has three more tries, though.

In an elegantly-styled modern library, section titles tastefully backlit, there is a flash-mobby conspiracy to hide behind the walls during closing hours. The day is communicated with candy bar wrappers placed in the trash cans. Of course, the hidden couples, eluding detection, still manage to all make out together in the secret compartment.