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Dream Journal

Scenic Truck Stop Knick-knack Store set on Fire

An odd hybrid landscape, round trees and rolling grassy hills. Gazing into the distance where I know about a trail leading to a waterfall. I’m stationed in a bulky building laid out in a wide intended word meaning for ‘exurban’ truck stop surrounded by parking lots.

A friend and important person (someone on the level of a president) parks a long semi truck with cargo in our lot, inexpertly, and leaves it to hike the trail. They don’t have the skill to get it lined up in the marked diagonal spots, but assume it’ll be good enough on account of their status. It’s not though — legally our site counts as interstate commerce, so it’s regulated by the feds. The lines are there for evacuation safety and the semi is at risk of being towed.

My friend Reecy is opening a shop on one of the outside corners of the grey, industrial concrete structure. Her opening day story is intercut with a Strangers With Candy episode (complete with theme song). Also intercut towards the end is some oddly stylish and classy porn — porn which I can’t remember saving, but the file creation dates show as from February 14 2013.

A small fire is (intentionally or carelessly) set inside the front room of Reecy’s glass-fronted knickknack store, trash dropped from above into a short can. Among the densely-packed low shelves it goes unnoticed for a bit. Mr. Jellineck (an art teacher from Strangers With Candy) pulls the flaming garbage out then cavalierly drops it down a hole in floor, where I can watch it land in a neglected basement understory.

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Dream Journal

Sledding Island, Broth Bucket, Video Beginnings

Dream is uniquely cohesive. All scenes give the feeling that they happen in the same place, and might take place in any order.

My wife asks me to get a big bucket of “lean bone meal broth” from above the top shelf of a grocery store’s refrigerated aisle. To do that I have to move another bone broth that’s in front of it. My wife interrupts the heavy lifting to say how we could settle for that one, an annoying habit she has. I get mildly irritated but manage to retrieve the bucket and leave the store.

I make a YouTube video complaining about a restaurant I’ve been to once. I’m not even that invested in it but I’m quite animated. Seems like it already might take off and become popular — it’s only been up a few hours and is already eligible for a $65 monetization tier.

I’m thinking about this as we are sledding in pairs on a snowy island with big, steep slopes, like an iceberg skate park. We test by pulling the sled with a string to see if it goes over and falls into the icy sea. A highly uncontrolled playtime.

Before a date with a blonde girl, unfamiliar to me even recollecting her now, we masturbate together as a way to build energy. I catch a glimpse of a clock and see that it’s already 8:06 — we were going to leave at 8:00. I immediately mention this; it’s all very mundane.

Watching the intro of a video which gives a shout-out to the part of Australia where host from. It’s a compact crescent archipelago hugging just offshore the southeast corner, somewhere I never went. The view zooms further east to a cluster of oceanic islands, each individually labeled, with a token image to represent each. I’ve never heard of these either but they seem quaint. Then even further out, tiny dinky islands so small and so far out they’re not labeled. Instead they have ideas for fun things you could do there if people ever went… like slide down steep icy slopes on a sled with a string.

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Dream Journal

Documenting Early Space Ecosystem

I have let several rats stay in our house while we’re away. When we return, we collect as many as we can — a cute disorderly pile of all different ages, since they unexpectedly bred. We now have a huge new assortment of genetic diversity, though not all of it good. Some even have exposed parts of their skulls, jawlines sticking through flesh. I spot one youngster in the center who already appears mummified.

Outside I film a bunch of short clips documenting the early 1960s ecosystem of space — all the different planes and support craft, the flight patterns, surprising new noises, ground facilities. Finally I spot an aircraft that has a steep trajectory, going higher than the others, and you can see it break an unseen barrier in the sky. Gauzy ripples spread out as if on the surface of a plastic greenhouse tent.

I’m standing near a gate in a chainlink fence when I suddenly notice my old boss Chicken John approaching. He’s grumbling to himself and basically ignores me. He starts barking instructions to his assistant (maybe Jimmy). There’s something nefarious in the tone of what I overhear and I start to suspect he’s planning to burn down his bar/grocery store, The Odeon. I begin to record audio on my phone, uncertain what I’d want to do with it if I were right.

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Dream Journal

Paris Hilton’s One-Way Ticket To Space

A very curious title, the last thing I remember before I wake up (and not much to do with the dream I’m afraid). Which is later changed / fixed / revealed to be “Perez Hilton’s one way ticket to space.”

Each student at my college gets a handset for the semester. They’re big chunky things, ones like used to hang on a wall — reminding me of the ones appearing on a shirt I made for my crush. The phone system is a local node run by each Resident Advisor. You can’t use them very far from the node, so they’re not very useful. This is outside on the edge of a concrete courtyard, in a planter. It’s a bit janky and I soon volunteer to fix it.

A cathedral at the end of a corner, barren, where nothing else has been built up. Behind that on the unpaved road is a shrine that looks like a New Orleans crypt — which my dad is planning to rob. Beyond that is a slight hill in a pine tree forest (I notice the thick layer of pine needles) and an older fellow student, perhaps a masters candidate, carefully assembling a shrine where people can do magic.

Near the forest floor I rediscover a toy bulldozer. I clip in treads of different colors, gradually remembering from my childhood. The tread rotates in an oval facing the ground, a strange way off locomotion. It takes me awhile but I recall that I improvised parts of the tread from scraps and discarded the originals. There are small sections made of grainy black tape. The clip end itself is an odd but clever shape, like a spiked hook that clips into a trough.

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Dream Journal

A Day at our New Home in the Country

A country house just off a main road somewhere small, rural California, where we’ve moved. My wife and I still have a landlord but are overall happy finally settled into the new place.

It’s bright midday and I seal up our younger rats, Pierre & Roscoe, making sure to stretch the three wire cage doors so the locks are tight.

Outside it’s so much quieter than the city. I ponder the neighborhood as I gaze down the dusty street where ours is the corner house. I haven’t fully explored the area yet. Feels like a hot day, summer. I observe a distinction with the city I never thought of before: here, people are spread out enough that you kind of miss them, back in the city it was so packed that you often like people less because there’s already too many of them.

All our old stuff made it there but most things still need arranging. A few items are out on the grassy brown lawn, or under a covered porch with built-in brick planting beds. Our building is old, and has a name on a vertical sign with green letters — something that sounds like a Chinese restaurant. There’s a smaller sign underneath for wayward out-of-towners, clarifying that it’s just an old name, this is a house, and they can find an actual restaurant a couple lanes down.

Back inside, I see Roscoe is out of his cage. I’m sure I locked it securely, and sure enough I see he’s managed to bend several wire metal bars at the side of the cage! I tell my wife and we’re not sure what to do. There’s a square patch of grass on the lawn where the cage would fit, and be blocked off securely, but the ratties might easily get overheated in the sun.

Someone reveals something about my parents I didn’t know (this part is confusing in retrospect as it’s a persona shift, perspective remains continuous, but the backstory isn’t from my l life). When I was first adopted, my parents kept me in this very house. They were inept, and couldn’t keep things up, to the point where they couldn’t keep me either. They only got me back much later, though I was too young to remember any of this.

Inside a few of us (guests and I) are playing around, searching through storage areas in the house. We’re also in part of a lobby for some unnamed organization, a nexus accessible from many locations. There’s a dried mud sculpture, arched and abstract, looking like the letter Π hunkering in the near distance. Old refrigerators containing long-term food stocks hold many curious root vegetables. Some are still viable, and I take one from the drawer with a 3-foot long taproot and swallow it down to the base as a trick.

Danny Glover is there among us, and soon after I’m beside him at a stone sink (I can think of no connection I have with Danny Glover, his presence is puzzling upon consideration). When I pull the long root out of my throat, the thin length ending in a tangled clump, I realize that it could still be planted in the dirt outside. Whether it’s the worse for wear being in contact with my stomach acid for an extended time, I simply won’t know until I bury it in a garden bed.

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Dream Journal

Down and Up Again, a Group Celebration

The dream is a narrative following the linear story of a celebration at the end of a year. Some group effort, a school year or perhaps a big work project. We’re all retracing the year-long path together.

First we walk single file downstairs to the lower level, a rocky coastline where our cohort frolics in the ocean. There are flashes of a Monty Python scene: cutlass vs. rapier. A man dressed in an ancient Semitic priest costume bonks someone over the head with the flat side of the cutlass. Not long after, I have the cutlass strapped to my back, climbing over a small crag as a wave crashes over.

After the coastal area we collectively filter up to the windows of a doctor’s office. There we are informed that while there is an elevator, we are supposedly to pay the fee here at the window of $159.

Obviously this is a non-starter. There’s a line of my classmate/workmate friends waiting to ascend the stairs back up for our final 4/6 of the schedule program

I remember in particular one of my classmates is Stephanie Sukhram. She is unique in this case as I went to school with her between 4th to 11th grade. She became a doctor herself but died of ovarian cancer soon after graduating (which I learned much later trying to research her online).

One of the last images is of a dusty keyboard, which I pick clean of spiderwebs and other debris and cruft. Later in the day I’d be typing something important, though I didn’t know it when I had the dream.

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Dream Journal

Left Behind by Workers

A store across the street, where JCX should be, sells big bags of Perlite. I decide I want to get a second bag, as the first one squishes down a little. Standing there next to the tall multi-level floor-to-ceiling shelves I wait for one of the workers to get it and check me out. Is takes so long after I squish the first that it’s compressed fully 1/5 its start size. My cousin Betty is possibly working there — all the employees all very cool but apparently overworked and super slow.

Later I’m in a different retail store, small, reminds me of a place I visited in North San Juan called Peterson’s Corner. Not an employee in sight, I carry a spool while searching about for a place to put it. There could be a walk-in fridge which might do. I spot several workplace posters of my friend Oz, and I want to tell her they need to pay her more for if they use her for modeling work.

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Dream Journal

Werewolf Decal, Didn’t Expect School

Traveling via train. Someone is surprised I paid to sleep inside; they thought I’d just sleep on the roof. But I figured I wouldn’t get good rest, since I would worry about having to wake up to duck tunnels.

I attach a large werewolf decal to several corner desks while a classroom is empty. This is a mascot for me, maybe a video game companion or player class. Unexpectedly, the class fills up in a short time (when it should’ve been empty, for the summer or something).

An instructor asks for my ticket. For any of multiple tickets I’m supposed to have. I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, I wasn’t planning on attending a class, just wanted the space of the classroom. I expect they’ll send me to the office to get it, at which point I’ll ditch and have to go without my cool werewolf art.

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Dream Journal

Pontecruff, a Group Video Server

It’s the end of the day and I’m in the living room of my communal apartment closing up shop for the night. I stand waiting near a fridge in the wall saying goodnight to roommates one by one. I wave the door open and closed as our director (perhaps someone we just call “the director) walks past. He looks like The Dude from The Big Lebowski, and I apologize because I realize I’ve been wafting cold air into the room this whole time.

My crush comes in and asks a question about our group video server, specifically where she can put some nostalgic TV for sharing. She also asks about the name, which is something like “Pontecruff”, derived from pontiff + scruff. I give her friendly instructions and offer to make the name easier to remember. But also I confess that the functioning server was set up on the last router we had and by now the correct config is probably buried.

Waxing poetic, we reflect that the server should give you a feeling like the smell of a box of plastic VHS tapes. Dusty, familiar, a smell from another time, a collection of things you might not remember but know you want to keep.

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Dream Journal

Big Old American Car

Huge classic American car with rows of comfy seats. The driver’s chair is, conveniently, behind a late night TV talk show hosting desk. But front window is (inconveniently) a small rectangle through another room from that seat. There’s hardly a safe way to drive this behemoth — despite being rated as relatively easy for the time.

I’m driving the beast around, having to pass to the right of stopped car at an intersection. This is only made possible by piloting the massive car via remote cameras.

I noticed that there is a garage sale, a thrift shop on side of road. this makes me think the town is like Virginia City. Memorably, there was an outdoor thrift stop in Virginia City which got snowed on while I was there.