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Dream Journal

Christmas Night Dining, Christmas Morning Sunrise

Former crush is asleep in our spare room next to our bedroom. She’s partially hidden by a wall and there’s a feed on the opposite far wall showing a corrected perspective of what would be my point of view of her back, showing her as deep in slumber. I find this comforting despite that we’re in the middle of a move; I wasn’t sure if letting her stay here was a good idea, afraid she might be nervous. I’m reassured that it’s a good sign at least if she’s deep asleep.

I’m in a large enclosed industrial space, maybe a warehouse sized catering facility. There’s a small semi-independent kitchen/bar space in a corner. Has a bit of character to it, hasn’t been used for a bit but seems everyone who uses it leaves their own little token. Someone observes that maybe it can serve as a metaphor for the US Constitution. As I’m packing up this open-sided room inside a room, I’m talking with another former crush, Dara. We’re coworkers and I relate my recent experiences with the complicated new problems of my more recent former crush. She’s fairly sympathetic, and it’s a nice bonding moment.

My high school creative writing teacher Miss Fitz is drunk in the hallway of her apartment building. I help retrieve her and carry her back to her apartment. Later, My wife and I are having dinner with her father-in-law over Christmas night –something like 3:00 a.m. in a fancy restaurant. The slightly frazzled inattentive staff give us a table that hasn’t been cleaned yet. Bowls left out for previous diners cigars, special smoking implements. My father-in-law comments “good for clipping beagle” (a kind of cigar I take it). Finally dawn has arrived. Having waited for it outside near lake, it seems I just missed the sunrise on Christmas morning. It’s still beautiful and crisp and quiet so I don’t regret it too much as I navigate a path between parked cars filled with reverent vacationers, headed toward the shores of a cold fresh mountain lake.

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Dream Journal

First Visit to Russia, Photographing Derelict City from Peninsula

Journeying in Russia for the first time. Exploring a little on my own, taking lots of pictures of signs and beautiful worn-out stuff. It’s strange to get around as I can’t read the street signs, but I memorize locations (I think about this as I take photos, which I will later geotag). It’s bright out and there’s a lot to explore. I can remember being on the airplane earlier, perhaps this is still on the first day.

I lead the rest of our large family group out on a flat rocky peninsula to see this cool derelict industrial city on the horizon, hyping them up telling them it reminds me of ancient ruins. On the way there I even realize it’s translated as “Stonehenge” on one map. The sun is starting to get low in the sky and although we’re walking slow (because it’s a group) I reckon we’ll be able to catch the sunset over the city, which means some cool pictures.

I’m having to carry the cage with my rats Spork and Puff, though luckily I can use magic to teleport it. I set it between rocks near the end of our trek… but continue to worry about it. I encounter the strange realization that we have both a rat named Puff and a newer rat that we named Puffy, quite unintentionally.

We’ve reached the end of the peninsula and are gazing at the beautiful dusk skyline. As I’m taking picture after picture I notice the curve of a Russian freeway nearby on what must be a causeway. A motorcycle buzzes past and it seems like there should be many chances to photograph it, but I just can’t get my focus correct in try after try.

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Dream Journal

Yuban Coffee Ballet McBrand

Riding a train across an expansive strip mall, long and oversize. So long there are multiple stops of a subway that pass through. I get out at one of them into a huge enclosed rectangular gym used for prestigious ballet training. I’ve heard of it, a famous training space sponsored by the coffee company Yuban. I imagine it as a model, trying to understand how the tracks run through it at an oblique angle. I wait in the part of the large room where I think the train platform is, not knowing what side I need to be on. The train of course arrives and I have to scramble over it when it stopped to reach the correct side.

Lately it seems I’ve spent a lot of effort in between dreams trying to remember. Too much time passes and the interesting details fade, but oddly my impressions of them don’t. Having rehearsed the words I will put down, even dreaming as though I am writing, I lose the important and unique vibe. Which may be impossible to capture anyway, but the gap has started to be more noticeable and disappointing.

Later I realize I can buy the destination I’m trying to reach on the subway as it’s a chain store. It’s easy to come across, easy to replace. The brand is so generic I think of it as “McBrand”.

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Dream Journal

The Amazing Spider-Man (1930)

This movie has been remade several times over the decades. The first one remains controversial, not for it’s content, but for the revelation that its main actress contracted syphilis. The film was funded by Catholics and (in order to deflect blame from themselves) producers claimed she caught it in a different film from 1922, that it had been incubating this entire time. I figure out by checking and corroborating different sources that she did in fact get it from doing a stunt on set.

“Boboomba!” is a memorable idiosyncratic onomatopoeia from the movie, written on screen in the style of a comic book just like later movies and TV shows. Only on waking do I realize Spider-Man wasn’t invented until the sixties.

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Dream Journal

Not That Crush

I’m sitting in the middle front seat of a car, my former crush about to drive. I use the seatbelt of the passenger seat to strap down a glass quart jar full of salty saline, quite content with the result (the jar is possibly related to some nice homemade drug that the group of us were working on and enjoying earlier). The girl gets weird about it and I gesture upwards to large round pods hanging from a nearby tree, which she picked today along with the rest us — for just this purpose. I ask her rhetorically what she thought we were going to do with them.

While we converse the car starts subtly, unnervingly rolling backwards. Suddenly it’s over the edge of a cliff,! We’re in full freefall watching the cliff recede! After several seconds of watching the overhead gap of pine boughs grow smaller and smaller, I realize there’s no bottom — we can just fall backwards forever. The view of the gap overhead will recede infinitely, and we can simply enjoy the sensation of falling. Essentially it’s just a ride, a fun ride.

Dining in a white hexagonal room separated from the main building with Mickey. Sleeping in an armchair in the common area of a house rental. There I remember a dream I supposedly had earlier, about my college girlfriend transforming, disguising herself as this wizard girl I know… Plarvolia.

It’s early light in the dawn hours now, and I hear Plarvolia puttering in her room’s closet. Through my narrowed eyes I watch her going about her morning-time business, inspecting scattered evidence from the night before. She draws near to me laying half-asleep in the chair; I close my eyes completely and still clearly perceive her moving about the rooms. Only when she leans over me in the chair (mockingly, I perceive) can I discard my pretense of sleep. At this point some heavily playful flirting happens, near kissing and the like, I’m still undressed partially from sleep. Now I can’t remember the room assignments.

It takes a long time before I remember that I was simply recalling a dream from earlier. On reflection, I don’t think this is Plarvolia — I think she’s still asleep.

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Dream Journal

Not the Nicest Parts of Britain

I arrived from a long overseas flight in London with my wife. We set out on the next leg of our journey, having to catch a tube train closer into town. A series of mishaps ensues: misplacing luggage, catching the wrong train, getting on the right train only to get off as it leaves. One train is made of narrow little linked platforms just big enough for a person, each shaped like beige pyramids that one must balance to ride on. My wife finds it difficult to stay on and dismounts just as this small short train leaves. Finally I get mad and yell at her, harrumphing down the stairs to see if I can find someone to talk sense into her.

(There is a linking dream at this point in the night — forming a cohesive three-part story — but it’s been forgotten.)

I view a map of Scotland, highlighting a major province disconnected into three parts (similar to these dreams, I suppose). One might think this province was the nice part, given its reputation, but locals would rather you visit anywhere else. On the map, it’s almost camouflaged with a plaid pattern coloration shifting into a saturated pink, revealing how ungainly the thing is printed on the map. I notice that it’s shape seems to form the negative space on a Union Jack flag.

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Dream Journal

Encouraging A Young Girl’s Campground Waterfall Recitation

I’m in a house with my brother Patrick. The house is built with half walls, quarter walls. It’s modernist but neglected, and we are guests without a host. Reminds me of darkened apartments from other dreams, places I’ve lived where I’ve discovered unused rooms. Patrick takes up the task of picking a new animal to represent the Inca Empire, to replace the llama.

I’m later flying around the neighborhood, skipping along a narrow brick wall at the edge of a religious building’s property. Idly I fantasize of visiting each and all of the different denominations nearby. Reminds me of my childhood street in Eureka, California between ages 4 and 8.

I fly back to a campsite where we recently stayed, just off the road. I have to retrieve three items my group left behind because they “couldn’t pack it all” without my help. I have a view through pillars at the edge of the camp, and spot my mentor and his young daughter approaching. Unseen, I wait behind a waterfall window between pillars. The daughter begins a classical poetic recitation to an audience. I’m able to crouch/slide onto the floor in front of her mid-performance, giving her a reassuring nod and encouragement that steers her performance toward success. I can’t tell if her dad was withholding this kind of approval until the end, but I’m able to swoop in and give guidance she was lacking.

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Dream Journal

Suzie the Mechanical Brass Goat

I’m playing tuba in a marching band. Have to haul it back from the field in pieces. When I get to the enclosed, beige, semi-circular practice room I have lengthy difficulties assembling it — the band has already started playing. The pieces for a brand new percussion drum the size of a person are laid out on the floor. Since those are clearly present, I consider playing that instead.

The brass of the instruments reminds me of a friendly goat, Suzie. She’s mechanical, also brass, and we amble together down a tree-lined sidewalk in a archetypical sunny American suburb (away from the band). I spot some Halloween stuff in the branches of a tree between the sidewalk and the street, forgotten so long ago that the tree is now growing through the plastic decorations. Reminds me of an image I saw recently, of a Barbie doll placed by someone’s granddaughter being engulfed by branches. Even though it’s enjoyably bizarre, I climb the tree to retrieve the spooky plastic junk. Suzie watches (perhaps giving commentary) and it’s a shiny, fresh, sunny experience, abnormally wholesome.

I’m later cruising on my motorbike down a curvy dirt road, fast. Hand-tilled grain fields border it. I narrowly dodge Indian pedestrians carving around corners, following the road’s course between blocky grey utilitarian buildings (like the setting from a fair dream on Feb 19, 2021 at 11:29 am). I get as far as a narrow corridor whose walls are made of train cars. I can’t reverse, and have to navigate back through twice. It feels like I’m towing a trailer or three. Headed back where I came now, I pull off a few wheelies — having the thought that I’ve only ever done that in dreams before (this is true). I soon notice (due to another person’s recent use of it) some pieces have shaken off the bike as I’m riding, importantly 3/4 of the front instrument panel. I manage to see a bit fly off over a fence and decide to hunt it down.

This neglected industrial area is officially off-limits, but also officially abandoned. I suspect it’s still quite inhabited though and used for all sorts of under-the-radar activity. This seems confirmed when I discover rows of diagonal pews inside one decayed warehouse, carefully draped in elegant purple fabric. I hide between these pews as I hear fumbling at the bolted front door. A few furtive-looking priests enter, and I consider announcing myself to avoid a potentially worse situation startling them. Yet I seem to overhear them talking about me without using my name, wishing perhaps to recruit me.

I do volunteer for some project cleaning up a diesel locomotive covered in grass. I scrub it’s side skirt clean of flecks and debris, leaving tall stalks of grass to grow proud and green over the engine’s back/top. It’s taken on an expedition up a marshy stream to study dinosaurs living nearby, blending in with the flora. Back in the yard we hide as a few mafia guys come to inspect the locomotive. A goon tears off the grass in one cohesive layer, saddening me even though I’m still proud of how healthy the greenery I helped grow turned out. We’re trying to trick these mafiosos somehow, and I know all my plants were integral to the plan.

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Dream Journal

The Justice of Salvador Balthazar

Attending a movie night with a big projected screen in a great hall. Without warning, a large heavy object crashes down near the front. It hurts one girl who happened to be in center of aisle, and I’m the first to offer her assistance. She limps away though a side chamber, and it feels good to help, but odd that no one else seemed to think they should try.

On the street, I run into my former mentor dressed as a fireman. Tell him about how I recently saw him as a fireman in a dream (whoa, meta). Interaction goes well and it seems we’re both left with a positive impression. I wonder what he’ll tell his wife.

Salvador Balthazar is a historical character from the days of American revolution. He shows up to collect on justice for a reformed character. Brock Samson (from the show the Venture Bros) has to adjudicate. He’s surreptitiously tied himself to the handle of a giant-sized brown cart, waiting for an opportune moment to cut it off, launching over a high wall. He’s then able to attack Salvador, having made his ruling.

I wait for everyone involved to come through my front door. I have to delete episodes of Star Trek Voyager, worried they are corrupted and won’t obey computer commands, but I’m pleasantly surprised that it’s no trouble. My wife walks in behind everyone else and asks me “what happened here?”

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Dream Journal

Underbed Time Travel Shoes

“Darkside”, a chunky playful goth girl with a repeated color theme of black and red. Posing for a very cool elaborate portrait above a planet, red stars in the background of space.

Shoes are lined up underneath the far edge of a bed in a specially-rented hotel room. The room is open on two sides (perhaps glass walls) overlooking a gorge. The shoes each represent a different person’s important incident in the past, an accident, a drive-by, a threesome, an adoption. Having just discovered them incidentally I’m surprised when my work partner tells me they’re what we came for: they can be used to time travel. Each pair can flip into a specific instance of the far future.

I’m a detective in a long, darkened townhouse belonging to a married Armenian couple named Kevita ( kev-it-uh) & Kevita. Next door, they also run a shop that sells the drink, Kevita. We’re searching the home as part of their arrest, though I don’t consider them criminals and I’m not particularly concerned.

My partner passes through the space between a bed and a wall no problem. But I instinctively feel its too narrow. Crawling underneath the bed I follow a cord, where I notice it glows. Sure enough it leads to something dangerous though I don’t remember anything of its nature.