Stand up comic at a zoo telling jokes standing on a deep pool. Underneath is a moose covered in dirty algae, which she also then tells jokes to. She doesn’t see the bear behind her, though.
A stack of frogs.
Kindergarten is selling mattresses. Well, the school is.
While playing as a Garak character, I trigger his drop-down menu choice early.
Flying and landing in Brazil, in a big chaotic city with confusing multi-grid streets. It’s strange hearing all this Portuguese now when I studied Spanish (oops).
I go with someone else to the other end of town to listen to a bespectacled old man give a public speech. He’s at the peak of his experience though at his age it’s known his faciluties will soon decline. It seems hard to find a place to listen to him; I take it that I’m supposed to head down some sloping side streets. I notice here that many houses with flat rooves are painted with big Christmas murals. I deduce they leave them decorated like that year round because they only go up there on Christmas.
I end up in the ground floor of a courtyard building, looking up. People looking down from windows inside… I lost the thread of the dream because I got out of bed without finishing my notes… oops again.
Back in San Francisco, riding my bike not far from my home. A new little place named The Pinocchio Cafe has opened on the corner of an odd triangular block. Usually I might wait to try somewhere so close, but I’m probably moving soon. When I decide to go in I run into my New York cousins seated at a table in a niche by the window. They’re just leaving, so we say hi then trade spots. The space is somehow even cozier inside as the tables wrap around a big tree trunk in the middle.
I notice a blue striped shirt laid over the back of a chair near the cafe entrance. It’s maybe more preppy than my usual style, but I turn it inside-out and it looks much better that way. The clothing tag is covered by the collar which makes it more comfortable than normal, even. I make an effort to notify staff that I found the shirt. An admittedly small effort, making no presumptions that I don’t intend to keep it.
A girl from high school, former classmate of mine with tall with bright orange hair and freckles, Samantha P. How we encounter each other I can’t recall. But here she’s even taller than usual — much taller than me. I vividly remember looking up at her, her looking down at me and smirking, more than a foot above my upturned face. I propose having a tall contest fully expecting no one can beat her. I do put in an honest effort though and I finally remember/come across an old SF friend Sherilyn C. It’s amazing, but she’s just about able to see eye-to-eye with Sam. Amusing, too, since there’s an obvious understanding that it doesn’t particularly matter which of them is actually taller; it’s incredible great to find someone else even in the same category. This whole dream has the same aire of friendly competition bordering on flirtation.
In a hammock on my birthday in my old hometown backyard, thinking of writing some younger girl I know around there. Might be advice, romance, inquiry, I can’t recall.
I find a mummified rat while cleaning one of our tents there on the backyard lawn. I recognize him from some wildies that we almost, but quite adopted a few years back — they bred too fast. Parts of his fur are perfectly intact. I accidentally drop his body in a glass of water (during my wakeup phase actually) and I’m a bit sad and frustrated to think that his nice smooth fur, even when dried, will never look sleek again.
Tonantzin is a word stuck in my head from somewhere in the dream. Could even be the little rat fella’s name, for all I know…
Accidentally bought the Jacques Cousteau tarot. It has a cool book!
After I climb a mountain, and hang out for awhile, a guy paramotors onto it right at sunset. Maybe this should disappoint me (since he cheated and I worked hard to climb it) but it does just seem like it’d be really cool. I’d rather do it myself someday.
A rival who likes to put me down works a job in a booth that I used to work. The boss there doesn’t trust me though (maybe I used to work there?), and I use this to my advantage. Whenever my rival tries to denigrate me by showing stuff on the computer I repeatedly show up behind the counter. Eventually I get my rival fired this way. Fuck that guy. Neat trick, innit.
Middle school classroom at end of building wing, probably where Ms. Snowden’s classroom was. We’re venturing and exploring from there as a base, but my memories are now blurred. There’s a different warmth and familiarity to the room though, as if I’ve spent so long there it’s like a home. The whiteboard has kinder lighting, the chairs aren’t uncomfortable, we all face forward not for lessons but for shared enjoyment.
As part of the chores I am mucking out the cardboard box where discards are kept. I find tight stacks of index cards there, as if just deposited fresh from a box. Many of them appear made just for cassette tapes with tear-off perforations. Some even have typewriter-written labels, as if they came directly from someone’s collection.
Trying to remember where Tarzania is, a country I haven’t checked in on in awhile. Seems to be buried in Siberia east of Belarus, but maybe it has disappeared… they were having trouble staying together as a country for awhile.
Considering moving to Canary Islands in middle of Atlantic. What do you know about them? I know they have only one large city, the capitol. It doesn’t feel that small though I don’t know how I’ll feel years from now.
While practicing for Canary Islands in staying in a small brick lower floor unit. Actually my whole family, while I plan to stay in a tent just behind there — for practice, and to show I’m already independent enough to live on my own. I jump down from the end of a brick wall down to the courtyard… I realize this is just like a traditional sport/pastime of the Canaries: shepherds used to traverse the rough rocky landscape using long poles. The connection, once obvious, is auspicious.
Run across a drinking contest hosted from a street corner. Maybe still in the big city of the Canary Islands? The host informs four male volunteers that each drink is based on a recipe from their grandfather. This proves to be an obvious joke by guy #3, with the real point of the game being up quickly get these guys drunk and ask them ridiculous questions.
At an outdoor sale, the vendor reluctantly points out that I might want the sound-recording selfie stick. I remember the cards for cassette tapes I find in the garbage earlier. I awake, having been reminded that I wanted to record the sounds of the dawn chorus where I’m staying.
I’m attending a reunion of people who attended a now-legendary chemistry conference many years ago. There are only two age groups: very chatty nostalgic 30-somethings (maybe my age or younger) and venerable yet out-of-it elder statesmen types. From conversations and context I work out that what made the event so successful was bringing together old and young chemists to collaborate. Specifically, chemists planning to retire in the next year and chemists going to graduate in the next year. I observed that the younger group was obviously much more excited to recall those experiences, as it was (for many of them) projects which launched their careers. For the older ones, it may have been merely a final-ish achievement after a lifetime of work.
The original organizer is also hosting the reunion. She reminds me of an Odd Salon host, managing a community as well as presenters. Her counterpart from back then makes a show of rehashing some old repartee, and takes the appearance of my elementary school friend Amy Naud. She was just an attendee who chose to publicly play off the organizer and was a big hit. Her clownish efforts created a powerful duo energy between herself and the organizer, and is remembered as one reason for the special feeling of that time. She was young and vivacious, having fiery bleached hair with a reddish tint, looking and acting like Pippi Longstocking.
It’s never clear why the event never happened again…
Dream of La Paz, Mexico. I’m looking into the night sky which has a purple cast. Appears to be overlaid on a camouflage pattern, representing war or conflict, which gives the light a strong and unusual green/purple filtered effect, like a photographic cross-process.
An old childhood friend whose family immigrated from Cambodia enters the dream. He contextualizes the representation of war, humanizing it but also bringing in an actual worst case scenario context. Seems not so bad, given how bad it could get.
This is the first dream I’ve had of La Paz…
These dreams all take place at night for no particular reason.
Earliest remembered is playing on a school athletic field where I’m not a student. But I manage to successfully fit in, heading in with the rest of them and peeking over the wall into the locker room to see what I’m getting myself into.
Having friends over in my new place, Apt #99 (the only double digit unit on the second floor). I become more aware that it’s cheap and somewhat sketchy building with weird architecture. The hallways and stairways especially are dark and dingy, but with an unusually intense vibe of human activity. Maybe it’s like a one-building Kowloon Walled City — except I think the second floor is the top. I’m up and down the stairs several times, giving instructions on how to find stuff to one of my visitors.
I’m informed by some Mormon friends of a free trip to China. It’s sponsored by our school, but takes only one day. Feels like far from enough, and mysteriously so. I wonder what the Chinese face recognition would make of my all-too-Western face.
Participating in a survey of the Great Lakes and their borders. My favorite is a smallisg lake located higher up between others called King Lake. The view there is very interesting, as from the vantage of its center one can see a ring of the other lakes below. But on a newly released map it’s been labeled “Piss Lake” because locals don’t like the smell and think it doesn’t have enough bathrooms. Near King Lake there’s a small cabin perched on a hill that’s supposed to have a groundskeeper, but when I visit it just has a cat napping on an armchair. I fondly start thinking of him as the groundskeeper.
The Great Lakes also has an international border, and I visit a liquor store near there on land that should never have been claimed. The man who built this place, the so-called owner, has punted on the issue for ages by avoiding paperwork to clear it up. Because of the legal complexities with the border no one has been motivated enough to sort the situation out, and he continues running his business only semi-legally. I have some idea of what the place was like before and so I’m made a bit sad by learning all this.
Later I’m working as an impromptu messenger. In a thick forest on expansive level terrain adjacent to an outpost, I deliver a message to a hidden group. The member I meet uses a mech to traverse the dense terrain. As soon as my message is delivered however, my government launches a nuclear missile at the location where we met. Luckily the rendezvous is not where the other side’s base is, and actually 20 miles away. But now how am I supposed to get them to trust me/us again now? I’ve been manipulated and there’s no easy way to get that across.
Visiting a restaurant in Wyoming which is full old-timey themed. A photo posted in the review shows diners dressed up in frontier style dresses, oversized frilly things which are more Victorian extravagance than Midwestern demure. The cloth patterns remain very much Little House on the Prairie or Potato Sack Dress though, a pleasant combination. The photo’s poster has chosen to recolor their original wide angle image and overlaid a pastel rainbow coloration across it. Another interesting detail is that each table has its own container of dry ice which spills fog across the diners and food — something I would expect more for Halloween than the old west, but this is essentially a cosplay restaurant and the effect is fun. Reecy fits in well among the crowd. She told me about the place (she may have taken me, actually). But since I’m currently traveling all I have with me appropriate to wear is a colorful squarish-patterned shirt with black lapels, which feels underdressed. I find a rainbow bowtie to go with it and feel just a smidge finer.
Somewhere in here, I wake up from dental surgery, having had my chipped premolar that’s been bothering me for years finally removed — wake up in the dream, that is. I’m kind of surprised that it finally worked.
All across the station, there have been strange appearances of orbs. They appear apparently at random, arranged in small clusters in orderly 9×9 cubic lattices. Worries increase as it becomes apparent they are some form of hive intelligence… and do not seem to be of this universe. The incursions increase in magnitude and frequency, until a ciritical point where most of the structure inside the station is occupied by orbs. It’s at this point that it’s realized the orbs have been actively working to stabilize the structure against a wave of reality warping. The orbs are the far future inhabitants of the station, come to their relative past to preserve it from a dangerous time.
There’s another story featuring an interesting twist plot. I am able to watch the episode in the order of its events, but it was originally told from the characters POV — beginning with when they wake up with no memory of how they got in their current situation. The episode as aired discusses at length the problems of taking action when no basis of understanding exists. Garak is a particular star of this one, referred to by fans as “the memory hole episode”. It’s actual title is the more obscure (hope I’m spelling this correctly) GWANTIS.