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Dream Journal

Hawaiian Accidental Theft, Groundskeeper Accomplice

Stealing stuff from Hawaii by accident because I’m think I’m going to come back. Bored with dates for November and student activities.

A mafioso guido-type guy significantly under ranks me… by several bosses. To teach him a lesson I pawn him off on the old groundskeeper. He rambles on a tour all day long, finally grasping the importance of the orange liquid on display in its original vial. This is the actual vial of stuff that helped discover something way back in the ’50s. The old groundskeeper passes by and I throw a small hex nut pliers at him to assist in something. At sunset he allows a Thanos-looking guy to touch it. Who promptly goes mad and has visions of his brain dissolving into orbs.

Talking on the street, I admit to my dad that I have to pay to mail back the Hawaiian stuff I accidentally stole, lamenting that I wasn’t thinking when I packed and really thought I’d be coming back sooner.

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Dream Journal

New Home from Drawing, Same View

Measuring the dimensions of a house by drawing on paper using a pencil, which then becomes the house.

Play a little minigame of hacking the door on the side of the garage to pass the time. Angry that I’ve created a new backyard that — quite unintentionally — matches a plain, unadorned version of my childhood home, with the exact same view of the mountains. In the distance too, I see an abandoned Sears Tower.

A weird snippet of the future: Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott’s child turning 18 and getting 8 billion dollars.

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Dream Journal

Dream on the Last Night Spent in New York

Making our way to a tiled subway station in Brooklyn. We arrive, and one can choose an exceptional person (matched with a color) on a pendant to be placed on the entrance of the station. The entire rectangle is covered in a single small portrait, the reddish color of bentonite clay.

I think perhaps the entire subway station changes to the portrait you pick. But I don’t know, I only visited just the once.

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Dream Journal

Three Doors Down, and Autumn in New York

Parents finally trying to get themselves together to move into their new house, which they’ve owned for awhile. It stands on a corner — tall, narrow, empty, and pristinely white on every surface. Inconveniently, the squat modern apartment my parents rented for me to stay near them is three plots down. Not having adjacent backyards means we can’t spend time together but be in our own spaces. Going through the charming sideyard, with loungers and decorations of flickering tiny pumpkins, I understand better that we’re really using it as an Airbnb.

A streak of trees and sky filtered through some distortion, like glass, but treated by my mind’s eye as a real object. A striking impression of autumn in New York.

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Dream Journal

Dinosaur Footprints and Thrift Store Gift

Viewed from above, I can see that my childhood friend Robbie T.’s house on Desert Inn road is only a few hundred feet, by air, from a dinosaur excavation exhibit/museum. The several blocks in between are separated by a main thoroughfare but it’s still surprising that we never realized when we were kids.

My wife and I take the subway there (a short trip) and while exiting the station on a short connecting dirt path, with scrubby but pretty green nature on the side, I momentarily think we’ve angered a guy walking behind us. He’s muttering something loudly and it takes an anxious second to realize he’s talking to his directions via headset.

The museum is outdoors, the ground muddy under a sky of brisk blue. There’s preserved dinosaur footprints and maybe puddles. I prod downward with a stick as to measure depth. A detectable but unidentifiable smell is then on the stick, a nearby elder volunteers the information that they smell like The Devil (like the tarot card, not anything recognizably satanic or evil).

A sizable chunk of my back molar comes out and I sigh, looking at it in my hand. It’s been going on awhile without being addressed, falling away in pieces so it’s down to nub. No one around me seems to care or notice.

We set our pet rats to free roam loose in our home, halfway hoping they can find some wild ones. (Yesterday I saw a whole group of rats in the New York subway.)

In a thrift store I run, I prevent an old friend from buying my warm comfy German army jacket for $4. I actually chase her off, hoping she isn’t too upset despite appearances. The friend is either Meg from college (who played Columbia in Rocky Horror) or Amy Pollard from middle school (whose birthday was on Christmas). Soon I reveal a surprise gift for her — the jacket, which had a hole in the lining around the armpit, I completely repaired. Now I can give a perfectly functional jacket to her for free! Which might even make up for how I treated her in the store before. (The large atrium room reminds me of the Temple of Dendur in The Met, which I didn’t visit until today. And hadn’t even planned on seeing today.)

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Dream Journal

A Nice Victorian Space to Fix Things and Learn

I’m being shown around a pale yellow Victorian house, with a complicated and extensive layout that is home for many. I’m considering moving in or helping folks who live there. I peer out a window in the upper floor and am confused for a moment by the jarring blank modern walls, but realize it’s the building next door. Shame… would be a beautiful view of the curved glowing sky above (is this Victorian housing complex in space?). While inspecting a niche and one of the rooms, examining how a tiny hand wash sink has been built into the alcove, I realized there’s a small gap in the baseboard that I can reach through. Probably no person has realized the space exists in many decades.

A map of the island of Hispaniola shows an exaggerated elevation relief, showing the stark vertical east-west border line. The obvious inconvenience really shows how Haiti and the Dominican Republic have been harmed by such an artificial imposed border, even one from hundreds of years ago.

In a wide-open top floor attic lounge space I take it upon myself to repair three stylish pianos. They’re arranged elegantly back-to-back in a triangle, the base ends tilted to be slightly larger. Guests of the lounge are starting to come in for the evening. I’m pleased to find that each piano has a different sound, one has a delightful 1960s electric organ tone.

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Dream Journal

Congressional Envelopes, Long & Gold

After learning some purported factoid about Congressional envelopes, I actually get my hands on one. It’s hugely overlong, with a vertical gold band and a tasteful border for the address. A surprising design feature:  if you hold it a certain way, the flap closes itself! I get my wife to try it; it’s tricky and it takes a while to get her to correctly press the pads of her thumb and forefinger over the gold corners. Why would they spend money to develop this technology? Who is this for?

I’m riding a personal cart on a single-track railway line that serves as public transit for a small rural community. It feels empty and follows a long highway along the convoluted recesses of the town. The trackway is obscured down the slope of a hill or levee, so you can’t even see it, and the routes seem to follow a river that’s out of sight. It’s a strange gray autumn day. I can’t recall why I’m riding the train, but I may be transporting garbage — a railway just for trash disposal.

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Dream Journal

A Bit of Gold, But No Wealth

Tiny chunks of gold that I’ve kept since a robbery I performed at my workspace a long time ago. I have to deposit it in the bank little by little so as to to avoid suspicion — or giving away enough to be detected. Which basically means I’m only maintaining my current financial level, and will never be able to live as “wealthy” despite possessing this glittering material wealth.

From the top of a bunk bed, I reach down to the floor to release my pet rat Tipple (short for Tipperarius, a combo of Ozma Tippetarius and Country Tipperary). As a joke, I move a carved rectangular sign that reads says “International Border” adjacent to the door of the next room.

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Dream Journal

My Old Camera-on-the-Curb Project

Setting is some low-slung community living/art space that feels like a janky maze — almost a stock location for me. I notice there’s some high-ranking politician here on an official visit, along with his security. I don’t even think about it; I immediately navigate a back route. There room he’s in was made from a shipping container box, with a wall of various switches near the unguarded rear door where I emerge. I walk directly past a secret service guard without him even having time to get off his phone call.

I take an Orc-lord up on a standing offer. Given a nominal fee, I am allowed to eat any orc from the Orc-band I choose. Several distinct and varied orcs line up for me by height. The catch is that the orc I choose won’t just sacrifice itself, it will fight me — but if I win, eating it’s fair game. The trick then is to choose the right size orc. I stand in front of them one-by-one.

Finally, I successfully download a rare Russian track I’ve been searching for forever. It’s album art — or maybe it’s actual shape? — is a bulbous grey game controller.

Walking through my neighborhood here in the Mission, the streets near Cesar Chavez are like a calm colorful French Quarter. Despite having passed by it many times over the years today I stumble upon one of my projects from long ago: a point-and-shoot camera mounted on curb. It’s remarkable that it’s still there considering I installed it in… 2013? People can take whatever photos they want, then retreive them or give them to others. Some are given a surf background — now faded to a dingy grey.

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Dream Journal

Cafes and Street Crossings, A Queen, Sexy Teens

In a recent tabloid news cycle, the question arises of whether teen stars Alia Shawkat and Michael Cera slept together while filming on location for Arrested Development. I happen to know they did — because one of my earlist jobs was as their adult minder on set. Obviously this makes me reticent to confirm it to anyone, but I’m excited to know something relevant.

In fact, I’m inspired to try to find the beautiful valley where we filmed, just inland from the Bay Area in California. It had a unique self-contained ecology. I have intense memories of clambering through dense acacia-like trees not far from the dusty road. Their branches and trunks were covered in short leaves. Everything had an impossibly sunny cast, like the ideal of a summer day.

There’s a cafe in Portland I frequent, a place with tall glass windows and wood banisters seperating the booths. After getting the attention of one of the baristas (who know me) I suggest that I might set up a little mini-golf installation. This would be mutually beneficial, as the cafe needs regular changes of its decor to keep things fresh, and I would get a bit of income from renting equipment. I think they’re going to agree to the deal — I don’t tell them I don’t have any of the materials yet.

Leaving the cafe I cross the street outside, noticing halfway across there’s a throng of people and unusual hubbub ahead. Unknown to me, Queen Elizabeth is making a visit in town and just passed this way. I cross a sidewalk (and a little hedgerow maze entrance) that was quite recently occupied by royalty.

Another sidewalk cafe, this one a touristy cafe in downtown San Francisco. Normally it has computers for travelers to use but it’s been under renovation. One day I start pretending I work there — I just keep showing up and no one questions it. I’m fond of the place, but I also want to keep an eye out and surreptitiously learn anything I can.

After working (for free) one day, I get tired and decide to take off for the evening. I ask my new work friend if they fancy a bit of the Irish Castle, a 102 year old entertainment venue across the street. They’re game, but instead of crossing directly they lead me the longer way around the block. We arrive through the entrance of a quaint 80s mall (still much postdating the Irish Castle, though) and I notice our flat fancy shoes are slidey on the tile floor. We can use them almost like roller skates. My friend and I race and they’re in first the whole time. I couldn’t tell if I’m letting them win or they’re simply very talented at this.