My chosen name is Orin Robertjohn Zebest. My née name was "Robert John La Londe-Berg" but is no longer my legal name. Use that if you want to. My good friends "the homeslices," otherwise known as The Homepie, call me Billy.
There's a story behind that --- and you can ask them if you want to. They live in Palm Springs, where we all grew up. Well... where we were all bored and self-amusing teenagers. They live there in a big house and I live here in San Francisco, in a much-apportioned-but-not-so-big apartment. I'm the one that has all the internet skills, and I'm the one that has the discipline to blog (sort of).
Incidentally, this is not a blog; it is a Glot. Glot is what it is. Read more if you must. I don't write often, although sometimes I do. I write about a great number of things: some personal, some reflective, some reactive, some rantive, some radioactive, some are really just sort of silly. My topics are of my own choosing. My choice is to discover some topics. In other, more conceptual terms: this site exists as no more than an edification to the intrinsic value of highly individual perceptions, and that individual happens to be myself, Orin. If that sentence makes sense, congratulations, you've won the chance to write me an email.
I’m draining water from our household fishtank. The level has gotten very low — less than half full. In the debris below, miraculously, I spot a familiar eel-like shape curled beneath a patch of gravel: a small kuhli loach, still alive!
Later, I’m drawing a Roman-era cityscape in stark black lines while multitasking for a class. Before this moment, I recall walking across the tin roof of an ancient bathhouse, footsteps echoing underfoot.
A particular strange lucidity early in the night with my phone in my hand, as I voluntarily clean my house and enjoy doing it. Despite not realizing for a long time that I’m still holding my phone
Living or visiting in a large mansion-like space, maybe a bit like Isis Oasis. Old 70s stylings, so many various dining tables that we’ve never eaten at some of them. Feels like we haven’t been here in a while too, semi-abandoned even though I understand that others still visit infrequently.
Outside, my wife and I can hear someone rummaging around in a study, the study belonging to a hallowed old professor. I recognize it as a test I’ve encountered before involving a thief. I’m appearance he’s oddly like the character from The Thief and The Cobbler, but his size is variable. It’s difficult to coordinate with my wife to plan how we’ll catch him in the act without him popping away. The whole thing is just a narrative game that has been played before — apparently it randomly respawns from time to time. Now this scenario has happened enough times that I’m starting to grasp the steps needed to resolve it.
The thief is after a small diamond. I know from playing through things before that, actually, he can never find it, because no one can find it. Not alone. Plotwise, all parties including the thief have to coordinate, whether they do so intentionally or not. It’s the only way to avoid the multiple layers of gotchas whereby the diamond gets lost forever, and the scenario resets. Could be a time diamond for all I know. But here, back on the first step of the loop, girded by the wisdom of experience, I still can’t seem to coordinate with my wife. Hm.
Objects. Four important folders to swap between, that must by applied to the project I’m working on. I can clearly visualize them as clunky plastic office documents which I can swap between. Oddly enough I read something before bed and I think maybe these leaked in from there, which are from the instructions for how to set up a tool I need:
– Active Context: Contains information about the current task
– Project Context: Contains high-level project information
– Progress: Documents completed work and upcoming tasks
– Decision Log: Records choices and their rationale
They read like things I should very much know and have around to reference, don’t they? Double hm.
Studying Maya/Aztec culture with a local family almost by accident while staying near them. We’re surrounded by catwalks and mineral pools — residues of green and blue oxidation stained beneath an awning, like the pigment: Mayan blue.
Discovering a concrete corner box that reveals layers of concealed government fuck-ups, covering up bad planning with further construction. One can easily see the fourth level sits perfectly flush while the third recesses unevenly. This feels distinctly Mexican from what I’ve seen of authorities build, though this place is new to me.
Being awake the longest on what might be a class trip (I did in fact take a class trip to Washington DC once). Met a girl inside the Capitol building; we clean up together. Trying to reach a sink while draining an ice chest (to save the ice), I stretch a long kayak across the wide stairs as makeshift scaffolding. My friends and I argue about what time if day it is, so I tiptoe above heavy green institutional curtains and I’m hit with golden afternoon sunshine.
Making efforts to play with this girl, who likes me — going down the Capitol hallways together, I let her crawl atop me while patting her hips. Our sizes aren’t quite right, she’s either a big girl or notably tall.
Exiting through the rotunda, narrow double doors with steep descending stairs. I’ve been here before, but suddenly the design feels significant: it was built in the 1800s for defense against possible riots. Yet it was hard for them to imagine ones so far removed from their own time. Today there’s the unsettling relevance, when such threats to the Capitol feel imminent again.
Drumming along absentmindedly… Marley and Elvis stations playing somewhere.
Sword swinging event. I get all my practice in beforehand and I’m home of the best dancers. At the last minute though I find a scimitar and curved dagger on a shelf and switch to those. I possess a lot of knives, it turns out. During the actual event I just need to pee, and I spend most of my time in a corner trying to get my underwear on. Before I know it, it’s over and they’re doing the ceremonial awards. I know I failed and never actually did the mock combat dance, but everyone watched me enthusiastically swinging around beforehand — I was the best one, before it counted. So I don’t get an award. Instead the host passive-aggressively tries to get me to sing along to a famous song I did by playing it without the lyrics (not sure if matters, but this was a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan song). I refuse to song along for free and hover haughtily above a fence.
I’ve been traveling in New York. I have a flight today with some time and I realize while I’m packing up that I have more bags than I even expected. I didn’t offload enough and the flight is soon. How soon? I can’t find the email, but I think it’s today. I’ll have to stop by a storage place or ship then or someone, there’s more than I could possibly take on the flight without getting massively reamed. I asked for money to get home from the family I worked for, I still have fresh the image in my head of the check the dad wrote me, thick-scrawled capital letters reading ‘home’. I had asked for money from as many sources as I could, and I still don’t think it’d be enough to cover the shipping. But when is the flight anyway?
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.