Author: Orin Zebest

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.

Categories
Dream Journal

Cassette Cards, Big City of the Canary Islands

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.

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Dream Journal

Chemistry Conference Reunion

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…

Categories
Dream Journal

First La Paz Dream

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…

Categories
Dream Journal

Apt #99

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.

Categories
Dream Journal

Two Episodes of Deep Space 9:

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.

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Dream Journal

Quick Failure in Virtual War

Recruited into a confliction (virtual war). I debark from an old time train traveling a straight railroad and I’m pulled into the shelving of a large warehouse, the bottom level shielded from the light. For survival skills I’m taught by my team how to drink from a hollow tooth hung from the rack above; I defensively report that I already know that. The tooth is totally silent, only water drips, and is low tech. It’s much like the slice of deer antler we used to keep the big rat cage closed with at home in SF. Machines are hunting our group and are about to pass by on patrol. It seems like they will pass by, but instead we are eliminated all die in a reverse ambush (they suddenly attack while we are hiding). I feel disappointed as a newbie but am comforted by my host, who confirms that is was another member of our team who screwed up.

Due to being dead there now, we’re taken out of that environment. Now I’m on the outside of a long straight wall, all white with a single panel of black. This panel represents my host’s favorite, the kitchen. The rest of the dream is forgotten, if it ever occurred.

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Dream Journal

Moving Bits and Pieces

Taking down the living room wall mural at our old house. It’s assembled from big pieces of vinyl, some in smaller squares as if it were tiles. As I peel off a square, I hold it in my hand and think about how the mural is certainly big art, but only big enough the fit the space. I think about how we would need a new one for the new place because the living room wall is even bigger. Originally, this mural was just found art, but after these years looking at it I have a subtle understanding of the shades of meaning it gives, how it affects you. I realize I have insight into the message it gives when you slowly absorb it. It affects you a certain way.

Underneath the mural is the “radio cabinet” with a sliding door, which used to house a radio station transmitter many years ago. I deal with it separately out on the lawn or elsewhere. In the dream, it’s exactly the furniture piece we’ve had in the living room for many years, but in this incarnation there are circular beams which would block part of the TV — if you kept a TV in there, like they might’ve in the 60s. These support arms are worn from years of minute bouncing, as if the small motions from the rat cage above gradually wore it to splintering bits.

A few rats get loose (or I let them loose). Three scramble away immediately onto a nighttime sidewalk yet I can easily grab their tails so they don’t get away. I notice two rats performing a “leg up” maneuver to climb up a wall — though they’re far too small to get all the way over. Very cute escape artists. I help by grabbing them in my hand and placing them atop the wall. They don’t seem to know what to do!

A few fragments:

Sitting at a desk in class, my rat Porkpie climbs onto a desk of the student behind me. I grab him so he doesn’t bother them.

I joke with my friend Nancy Kleppe acting as though her name was Norma (obviously I know it’s not her name.I’m talking with her about moving.

Remember being in Punjab Chinese food while it was closed. I discover three RAM sticks (that I once pilfered from there) have since been taken out of my computer, but I think the one stick that’s left isn’t in the correct slot.

(the custom font I chose to write in today, which I may implement someday, was called “Lambrada”)

Categories
Dream Journal

Plarvolia’s Drop

I’m visiting a friend’s house, Andi. She lives in a converted Victorian shop with tall frame windows located on a corner somewhere in San Francisco, possibly SOMA. Her roommates aren’t home but one of them is Plarvolia. I’m not terribly worried about when she gets home; I’m here to see my friend and not to have anything to do with her. I’m relaxing on a couch that has a textural quality like dried noodles, enjoying the many plants and moss that grow in the excellent indoor sunlight. Plarvolia gets home and makes an offended noise for her own companions to hear, but otherwise doesn’t bother me. Then while I’m laying on the couch looking up I see her poke her head out of a square interior window upstairs holding a few full beer bottles. She drops them on me, aiming for my face. One lands on my neck which quite hurts. I bolt upright coughing and immediately lay into her demanding to know what the fuck, lady. This appears to be exactly what she wanted. With friends behind her she plays accusatorial, accusing me of all sorts of malice just being here. I know legally I’d be totally in the right (I could’ve been seriously injured if her aim was better) but with her loyalists barking behind her I’m chased out of the building.

The look on her face when she dropped those bottles. I don’t know. It wasn’t frightening or malicious, not particularly. There was an element of enjoyment that she knew exactly what to do. But it was something else, too. I put off writing about this all day despite taking some basic notes when I woke up. She’s become something so different to me in my dreams than where she started. I still only barely know this girl, really — mostly through old tweets way back when. What am I supposed to do with this character, this representation, who is so willing to harm me for a moment of her inconvenience? Is avoiding her at all costs really the best I can hope? I don’t *want* to hope for anything else. I certainly didn’t in this dream. Her face was the face of someone who I thought I could love, now become the face of someone who clearly hates me. Wtf, lady… who are you anyways?

Categories
Dream Journal

Mail then Train, Old Movie, New Kitchen

Waiting at a curb with tickets to board a mail truck. Down the block are two more spots with a few people besides us who are taking this route. I decide at the last moment to walk to the earlier stop, thinking it’ll be more convenient for the postal driver.

Once we board, inside is a quote of a few paragraphs praising our friends Don and Tracy. I don’t notice the transition at all but we’re then riding a train. The train makes a stop and stays stopped. I then need to wake up my friend Mickey on the bunk above. Don’t know how long the transfer is, but it feels long.

Sorting petals of different shapes and colors while Tracy charismatically makes an announcement over the train’s intercom. The petals relate to a remake of a movie that is happening soon, where everyone on the train gets to pick a petal and that’s their assigned section of the movie. The original was regarded as boring and unrealistic when it was first released. I observe a close-up logo of a screen showing a still image of a stock camcorder in someone’s pocket, which was once the default image on product packaging — this somehow illustrates how little effort the movie went to. It became a classic in time though, and everyone on this train has come here for this process. This certainly makes it more stressful for me when I keep dropping petals on the floor. Thankfully Tracy has done a good job of stalling and managing expectations.

Unpacking in our new kitchen, many boxes to sort. My wife thinks she can’t help. She finds a task talking with our neighbors and spends her time that way.

Categories
Dream Journal

Inside A Toy Megastructure

An area for therapy goats up an indoor slope. I’d love to have my own goat. I spend awhile on this dim disused space of low ceilings then eventually continue. Odd that I can’t tell if it’s familiar or my first time exploring. I peer out from a high window from within this megastructure I’m inside, a highly decorated windowframe that feels like a toy, between metal bars and through open shutters.

Down in a flat area, a courtyard or entrance of grayish square-paneled floor and walls. Overly modernist, open architecture with no right angles. New dog brought back, Charlie. The name feels like a take on Henry (our first pet rat).

Helping Grandma to use a strange socket with her oddly shaped flat fork-like plug. Shes using a Amtrak navigation module connected with it, something I simultaneously don’t want to deal with but which I’m also curious about.

Cache of papers — don’t know what they were about. They were there. (Later this day, I’ll find a folder of important documents for something I’ve been meaning to sell which got soaked, and I’ll have to dry all of them.)

Near a big house, a complex really, I’m walking through winding garden paths of rosemary. I want to use the kitchen I know of which is attached to the main building. I have cum on my right hand so I only touch anything with my left — like the doorknob. The kitchen is large but cozy, in a French style, laid out so that you can browse book titles on the shelf across from the built-in toilet. The raised bathroom annex is there as a convenience for chefs’ long cooking sessions. The bathroom is really why I came. For a good while I somehow don’t notice a short, older French woman whom I know standing near the middle of the kitchen, naked and almost prepped to step into the shower. I make apologetic to her and resign myself to not using the bathroom here.

While working near it’s aquarium, I hear one of the two new tropical fish flop out the back of the tank. I immediately have to start moving things under the bookshelf with the goal of retrieving it. I don’t know if I manage it…

The night’s dreams were saved by casual and repeated reviewing, less arduous than I’ve had to work at in times past. I know I missed parts though, and I know I took too long to finalize. Nevertheless I managed to actually save them, which has been difficult to pull together recently. The technique is always a practice.