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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.

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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”)

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Dream Journal

The Raven’s Nest Platform

While I’m injured and recovering in a wheelchair, I create many new designs in a sketchbook with fine quality paper. I’ve filled it up almost entirely — something I couldn’t do in the past under normal circumstances. I’m the kind of person who would habitually save the nice paper for something really special.

At the top of a tower which I’ve climbed I set up a raven’s nest, placed with some other charming little objects (plants and the like). I build one then another, as I consider there’s room for two on the little square platform. I don’t recall the view but it surveyed a large area.

I escort my dad to a bathroom I happen to know is open, as I’m knowledgeable like that. It’s located within this big enclosed space, somewhere near the end of the universe, where nothing is ever complete (at one of the ends/corners of the universe at least). Above us is an even larger and grander upper section walled off by a single huge curved panel of tinted glass (that futuristic 1970s houseware aesthetic). Instead of going through the bathroom door I choose to pee in a trough on the two-way path outside. Passersby see me peeing, but I’m obscuring my crotch with an object and bouncing the urine stream off of it.

A bookcase, the bottom shelf of it, broken into three indeterminate book-like items. I determine that one of the smaller blocks of these can be remagnetized. This should restore it to whatever it was. Perhaps this is the reason these were placed here?

It’s been more difficult to remember my dreams lately (I’m going through one of those cycles). I’ve been talking Undlela Ziimlophe a.k.a. Silene capensis to try to reboot a little. It was a long process while waking up trying to remember these, beginning while I was still asleep — I tried to remember key images as words, bookcase, notebook, raven’s nest. Then I would try to get those back as I noticed myself in another stage of wakefulness. I didn’t really know at the time if this had a good chance of success, but self-evidently it did. Nevertheless I might’ve left some behind. This current cycle feels almost like the opposite end of lucidity… at least I’m getting good sleep.

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Dream Journal

Journey from Found Money

Find $15550 (three 5000s, one 500 and two 25s) in official scrip like traveler checks or bonds sitting on sidewalk next to hat. I strongly suspect it’s probably a hidden camera thing, but on way out police are searching cars. There are four of us in on the conspiracy, convinced this will change our lives.

Months later we are on a long spaceship journey. The crew, all claimant’s to the money-treasure, keep it in a special box on a table by itself, like a reliquary. There’s even more of us. During a face grooming session by one of the team, I’m told to pick my face pimple before continuing. Under the head, it excretes a long red waxy tube. Even under that is lots of liquid white pus which dumps directly into a trash can. The medic of the team has to instruct an animalistic crewmember not to eat it, as he normally might.

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Dream Journal

Two Events at the Whybrary, Directions to Lizard Milk Lab

Remembering the occasion when I signed up for a fundraiser of pesto dinner during the pandemic (pesto spaghetti is still one of my favorite meals and has been since I discovered it at she 4). It was served at the Whybrary — perhaps even my first time there. A folding wall separated it into an audience area and backstage.

What reminded me is that I’m at a Dr. Hal Show at the same space, current era. I’m getting to hang out on couches with my friend Laurie O. who happened to also come to the show also; we were friends together in 8th grade. The couches face each other and we each spread out lengthwise, heads to feet. I lean my arm over onto her couch when it gets tippy in order to balance it. The host, Chicken John, notices me do this and immediately ends the show. It’s as if he can tolerate no more of me enjoying my life and being helpful in his presence. Or existing perhaps.

Looking through the front window of a house like Mickey’s to observe a person using a computer with their back to the window. The computer and all the accessories are color themed purple. Sounds like the 90s which is when I meet Mickey. I ring the doorbell there and soon realize (before they arrive at the door) that I have the wrong address here — 3068, when the cream carton i found it on shows 4068. I quickly have to explain my mistake, keeping up a momentary charade of letting them explain the directions to 4068 when I do already know.

When I get to address it’s inside a development organized like a ring. Businesses and labs face the inside. In the center of what looks like a corral, its wooden posts wiggling in the ground. The address is some sort of lab, making a kind of experimental milk. Curved terrariums line the front. Maybe it’s lizard milk? If there was more, I don’t remember.