Categories
Dream Journal

Scorpion Fright

Landlord showing apartment next door to one little black kid, representing his family. Landlord elected not to finish the bathroom in the middle, which is huge, and has at least two working toilets for every person who could live there. One in particular sits in the middle of the room near the courtyard window and has had it’s stall walls removed. You could use it as a chair now.

At beginning of night, I’m watching a video while sitting back straight upright in a chair. The video is of two rust-colored puppies playing amongst matching red rocks, while it rains. Val lies on couch. I’m half-lucid and think I’m actually asleep on the living room couch (I’m in bed).

I get up to go to the kitchen. At the bottom corner of the kitchen table a tiny cute spider emerges — followed by a tiny scorpion. As soon as I notice it, thinking I should warn others, it incredibly quickly scrambles across the floor, up my body, and to the left side of my neck.

I wake up, my heart pounding, and remember to set my sleep tracker.

Categories
Dream Journal

Spaceship Aquarium Competition No-go

Soon after I go to sleep, I realize I’m still looking at memes… but am dreaming. I become lucid and remain that way for some time, without any effort to charge the experience.

A three-fold joke, a tweet in 3 parts with three images. The most important section of the nights dream’s — which my rat Roscoe woke me up and got me to remember — but which were lost to forgetfulness long before waking in the morning.

Carrying a book with a black and white cover over a coastal region, a giant lake or seaside with an edge like a swimming pool. While trying to show it to my dad, I find another book with a similar cover. Along the wide paved shoreline is a curvy section where I explore a sloping sand beach. Getting back on shore from the other side proves difficult, holding the book(s) aloft as waves crash over me, the sand eroding in great thick layers ahead of me. Finally back on land, someone points out the many squid temporarily stranded, though the appear exactly like small octopuses in large snail shells.

I return to my personally programmed spaceship, which some disbelieve I truly have. In this sterile, futuristic, yet homey space I proceed to fill my complex aquarium setup: interlocking glass, rectangular brushed metal. I plant my “fish seeds” I’ve been saving and in only a moment they re-grow; I have a healthy and filled tank. However, someone inadvertently reminds me that I forget about the fish tank competition happening soon — I won’t be able to dismantle this setup to move it, I can’t disassemble it without ending the life of the fish early, and I won’t have any new fish seeds if I do. I’ve taken myself out of the competition without realizing.

Categories
Dream Journal

Hovering Presence and Menacing Cow

Skin writing is used as apunishment on someone suspected of human trafficking, marking them for later.

A dog-sized cow is acting menacingly at the property line of my childhood home, just at the edge of the neighbor’s lawn. I walk all the way down the street trying to read its dog tag, with no real plan how to make it go away.

Discover I’ve moved in together in the same ground floor apartment as some people I know in real life, but mainly from Twitter — KC Crowell, Feral, all Oakland peeps. I myself am an observer, but unusually, one with an identity — a hovering presence dwelling mostly in the rafters, where a glowing horizontal level divides my space from the everyday living space. The easily discerned border of the ceiling has curved buttresses, marking its construction in the early 1900s. On one section of old wood paneling, I spot a poster advertising old-timey glassware, lab glass perhaps. My roommates begin reinstalling some authentic hand-blown stained glass fixtures, decorative colored filigrees that have been in storage for almost a century. The landlord likes the residents so much he was convinced to let them haul it out from storage. The square ends of the curvy abstract forms fit perfectly flush against the buttresses.

Categories
Dream Journal

A Stadium like a Nation

A big rectangular stadium has been repurposed, serving to represent something much larger — a polity of some kind, a country or region. For a gateway it has a car boom gate, something I simply walk around. I search out my friend Autumn and meaningfully gesture at her to point out the gate’s existence.

I walk the circumference of the vast semi-enclosed space. At one corner, a convoluted passage leads to a locker room hallway. As I exit this corner, under some decorative wooden slats adjacent to the wooden walkway, I hide a soda can. The can may be a container for something else more risqué entirely.

As I complete my circumnavigation the search for a certain person is finally concluded. Seeing him, he seems very generic, someone so boring he’s almost a threat in his inoffensive blandness. He’s a relatively young father, overweight, maybe midwestern, a blond white guy. He’s to be designated as the “remainder” of the nation, someone outside the normal political moieties which cancel each other out, who should ultimately decide many issues. Not coincidentally, he lives in the same corner where the can was hidden. I’m left wondering if its contents will factor into future handling of this unassuming, yet discernably perilous individual.

Categories
Dream Journal

Queen Elizabeth’s Garage, Rally to Speech Grounds

A fridge outside on the street, needing to be moved inside. But I must ask permission from the garage owner: Queen Elizabeth II. One spot inside is next to a small fridge and sink, one spot across is behind a couch. This garage is having a hot dog feast with family — I have to search for the last dogs, bringing a plate to my family’s table (mom, dad, grandparents) who are eating only a few plain dogs. I don’t have a plate; the queen then suggests I not sit and instead go back for my plate, not understanding these are the last few dogs and I might not get any. Yet in the end I do manage to get two, their cheese all melted and congealed.

While many of us are waiting for a rally, with me squatting leaned against a pillar in the garage, my former lover Dara shows up. I spot just her black-heeled foot at first. But she’s made up to the nines and looks fly as hell, a femme fatale, long bare legs and a short black skirt. I’m overjoyed, throwing my hand on her foot and running it up the whole length. I make a joke for the sake of anyone who might be watching, how “I suppose I should’ve introduced myself first ma’am”. Dara’s a candidate in some sort of competition, which we’re all about to begin.

Me and my friends start on a group walk along a planned route. I’m in the lead at first, chatting side by side with a dude friend. A small girl I haven’t known for years, Quetzal, swaps into the lead. I yell encouragement behind her back saying “Quetzal will know where to go” but she doesn’t turn around to acknowledge it. I find myself wishing I’d double-checked her face as she passed to make sure it was really her.

The path takes us over a wooden walkway, one that a grumpy adjacent homeowner claims he owns. The extended line of us has to find different ways of going around. I swing underneath the wooden support beams of the cliffside house, sneaking around acrobatically like a ninja or rogue. I take a shortcut through the lower level of the house, what looks like a messy neglected in-law unit. I succeed making it to the double door exit, but my curiosity gets the better of me and I turn back to investigate the darkened octagonal space. As my eyes adjust I suddenly recognize there’s a dark man sitting upright and perfectly still nearly in front of me — I nope the hell outta there right quick.

Finally arrive at a gathering ground with an upward slope of steps where politicians sometimes give speeches. It appears Joe Biden is claiming he is the victor of the competition/walk. I learned from talking to people that in fact Dara has fulfilled her promise and arrived here first, giving a speech earlier before I arrived, making her the actual winner.

Categories
Dream Journal

Motorbikes, and the Bays of Australia

Have to retrieve my motorcycle from a public classroom (or small compound) where my old nemesis — well, former friend/boss — Chicken John is in charge. Red dusty walls, open entryways, stalls where kids learn. I try to be as quick and discreet as possible but we still exchange an unfriendly glance. Outside I have a bit of difficulty getting the kickstand down, and balanced, but leave the motorbike in a good location against a short retaining wall with line of shrubbery.

The compound is on on high ground above distant water. I survey the different bays of Australia, noting how their unique shapes have affected the developing character of their cities. Canter Bay is the one where I now am, the smallest, hanging out on a chunky narrow little peninsula near the water in Melbourne. From here my friends and I can view the ocean and the harbor going around, chatting and having a lovely time together. One of the people with me is a female singer of some fame; perhaps it might’ve even been the great opera diva Nelly Melba.

From out of the foggy ocean horizon I spot a stubby battered-looking orange military transport plane heading north to the compound visited earlier. I declare “oh that’d be our ride, time to get back.” A pallet of two motorcycles arrive delivered by tow truck, but there’s been a miscommunication: my wife can only ride a bicycle. This makes our time to get back quite tight. I offer to haul her on the bike on the trailer but my bike’s folding safety-yellow hitch extender just barely doesn’t reach. Instead, I kindly offer to go get her helmet and protective gear from outside the compound. I really out of view as I speed off to fetch them.

Categories
Dream Journal

Just Great, I’m a Passenger on a Bus with Politicians

I’m on a bus, full of other candidates for job. In a previous dream I’ve helped Russian President Vladimir Putin defend the country of Greenland from something related to homophilia, homophobia, or both.

An image of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, and a wall of human bodies made of Legos.

Vice President Mike Pence is near the back of the bus. I point out to the interviewer/autority figure that he’s asleep, he admits jokingly that he was in fact asleep (happening, of course, while I’m actually asleep in this dream). The authority, acting like a teacher, gives him a C for that day despite that I’ve been given an F before for the same thing. Right there I decide to quit this nonsense job, which might mean suicide, but as a protest I can come up with nothing else.

Categories
Dream Journal

X-ARDOS

I don’t know why the dream must be named what it is, but it was the strongest word in my head upon waking. Perhaps it has some relation to bardo, the Tibetan spiritual state in between death and rebirth.

Three of us are traveling on a long motorbike, my friend Aislinn, my wife and me. I’m driving from the farthest rear, which proves difficult on the freeway. As I’m about to take an exit, another motorcycle passes me on the right making things just that much more difficult. This exit is somehwere in the state of Iowa. It strikes me how much like every other freeway exit in America it is, yet with subtly apparent differences that make it like Iowa.

Rounding through a parking lot and a few low buildings, I swing around to a gas station (something like a gas station anyway) that’s broken down and is now freezing everything around it. I comment that it’s gonna be some expensive snow, and we decide to park and check it out. That proves somewhat difficult, as I back into a space alongside a cinderblock wall. The car ignition also seems to freely turn with any key I try, which is clearly something else to be concerned with. The vehicle is an SUV now, more like the old Nissan truck I used to drive (and drove from Iowa).

As soon as I park and get out, Aislinn asks if I worry about parking in front of that door, pointing to a barred gate which looks into the courtyard of an African monastery for junior monks. I curse and start to park all over again — though the neighborhood looks shabby, there’s clearly a lot going on. I do more back and forth nudging into a space, now there are even more cars to work around.

When I finally make it out, I’m at a family reunion for my Dad’s side. They’re loud and boisterous, very familiar with each other. The car becomes some white-furred furniture or a stuffed figure. There’s an exchange of gifts, and I must find a place to stack long tentbag-like objects on a similar white-furred bed (not sure if it’s the same, but it’s a different location). I correct my dad and place these objects off the head of the bed, onto the sheet, to minimize dirtiness.

I get invited to follow my uncle Vince on a short tour. I follow him while adjusting a set of recording glasses, falling behind because of them after he exits a set of double doors, then jogging after to keep up. I feel younger and younger in this dream, my role shifting. My uncle and I tour a dark, mostly empty parking garage, a caverous metal warehouse-like space, while he narrates the story of various murals telling stories of our family. (On reflection, this almost sounds like a transplanted version of Aboriginal Australian lore.)

One particular story, high up on a side wall, tells the story of a broken branch hanging high in a pine tree, staying stick even in strong wind (I’m almost certain this story is from another of my dreams a long while ago). Something all my male relations witnessed at the time, some broader story I can’t make out now. I confess how even though I never met my great-grandfather I have a nickname for him.

After a great effort to remember am earlier set of dreams, I can recall being transposed back to Australia in 2006, nostalgic for when I actually visited. I’m physically emobodied in that time again, as I was when I was really there. I stand outside a grand modern airport or mall, manicured fountains outside, the curved steps leading down to a light rail transit line. I carry an iconic backpack I’ve used forever in Australia (not accounted for in waking life) which is like a trailer-like shell which unfolds, revealing pockets within pockets, all labeled with names of politicians or notable Aussie figures.

Categories
Dream Journal

Boban Vervinsky

My wife and I are sitting in our living room when a sudden noise shakes the wall overhead. A 4-in nail has popped through and knocked off one of the top row trading cards, the same like the arrangement in our apartment’s hallway art gallery. My landlord has been renovating the apartment next door for weeks (this is waking-life true, actually). I angrily walk down the hall to give him and his crew working next door a piece of my mind. He opens the door and as soon as I start describing what happened he pretends to act like they did it on purpose — despite one guy down the hall yelling “hey I’m sorry”. In response I act like I’ll helpfully go measure exactly how many inches of nail are sticking through the wall, so they can measure it from their side, possess an accurate perception of wall thickness, and not do it again.

While we stand outside on the balcony, an older sickly-looking interloper shows up who starts stealing the conversation away, acting like they’re trying to empathize but only talking about their own problems. They’re abruptly standing in the apartment next door while my landlord is standing in mine. Normally I suppose I’d be sympathetic, but instead I turn to my landlord and ask “who the heck is this?” He just says “someone annoying” and I’m simply inclined to agree. There’s nothing to do but let this energy vampire drone on and try to avoid them.

I’m standing in a long winding line on the street here in my neighborhood, the Mission District. I went out to buy a case of beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon, for like $23.99. The line moves surprisingly quickly, but it’s split up into a few sections that complexly join into one. The lines’ purpose is labeled only at the penultimate merge, so of course it appears I’ve gotten in the wrong one and should be in the $19.99 and above line. Right about the final merge I look and see the entrance to the store, just another neighborhood corner store that happens to handle particularly high volume right now. The place only allows one or two customers inside at a time, and it’s upstairs through a single doorway — the place I think is called Boban Vervinsky. Exasperated, I realize in this unnecessarily crowded line that I’ve had my mask around my neck the whole time.

Some unannounced blonde attendant (who’d otherwise be pretty cute) starts blithely giving me instructions from behind my back, that I can’t hear, don’t understand, and don’t want. The stress and crowding involved are too much and I give up, throwing my items on the ground toward to store, flipping off the clueless unhelpful attendant on the way out.

This leads to a short back and forth where I’ll see someone I know on the sidewalk giving the middle finger, like Courtney K., and I have the great timing to give them the middle finger back. I’m getting in flipoff doubles, at some point I feel like I’m physically throwing flipoffs… all in a cinematic-quality slow motion montage with scenes bouncing one to another to another. (It reminds me of another dream, where I first learned to double-middle-finger the whole world around me like Rick Sanchez on Rick and Morty.) But the chain is broken when there’s a girl, Morgan or Megan, with long dark hair over her eyes who doesn’t see me gesture to her.

Not about to stop acting free, I set off running down the cracked asphalt streets of my neighborhood. I run like a big cat, galloping on all fours. While doing this it’s like I’m narrating my method to some unseen flirting female observer riding along with me. I start running on just my hands, floating my legs up for more speed and maneuverability. It’s at this point the observation strikes me that this is the kind of locomotion I’d choose to do if I were dreaming. The dream rapidly breaks down; I wake up with a sharp inhalation and a beating heart.

A search of the name “Boban Vervinsky” has no results at time of writing.

Music in my head upon waking up, Eydie Gormé, “Blame It on the Bossa Nova” (1963)

Categories
Dream Journal

On the Origin of Terminators

An incident on November 18. 1970: an unpaved side road in Japan. Gritty, tan, a little downhill and out of sight from the main road. A few joggers, maybe military, going one direction, while a vehicle travels another. The nature of that vehicle is unclear; could be a forklift, some military specialty unit, utility/construction equipment. It’s driven by a single driver who sits not quite in front… with not quite a clear view. What happens next is the subject of years of investigation and litigation. The vehicle and the joggers collide head-on, full speed, in the middle of a clear day, on a straight stretch of road, with adequate signage, no intoxicants involved… the list goes on.

I’m there to watch it in some abstract form. I don’t get the impression that I’m viewing a re-enactment or simulation, rather I feel like the scene I view is in fact better than any from the years of inquiry — that is, better than what those present saw. And I feel like I know what caused it, because in my time it’s been fixed: human inattention. My purpose in viewing these records is to write an unobtrusive message to send back in time via the obscurity of the early internet, yet an obvious warning for those looking for it. It can’t be too specific, though it might change events; this may or may not be paradoxical. But the reason I can send things back in time (and the reason this incident is so important) is that I live in a world with Terminators, a superior general artificial intelligence. In their exponentially sophisticated causal analysis, this is the inflection point where they determined AI became a priority for humanity. This is their own origin story.

I’m now in the present day or near future, going with my wife to a gathering at our old stomping ground The Dark Room on Mission street, here in San Francisco. I’ve rarely been here during daylight. I notice a curious architectural detail: atop the Spanish-style façade is a short half-cylinder crowned with a short half dome. Adorned with a mosaic tile pattern, it turns to reflect light from any angle into the shaft of a skylight. A number of people show up about the same time as us, several old SF and Chicken John friends all with large bulk food boxes. I open one that my friend Abbie brought, a heavy flat of granola bars, and snack on some tasty loose grains that got compressed inside the box. My wife reminds me (in question form) if I know why we’re here — because our downstairs neighbor Rhiannon’s mom (Mable) has moved back to the country and wanted to go in on a bunch of bulk items. Rhiannon, who worked at the Dark Room with me once upon a time, puts on one of the Terminator movies on the Dark Room’s big screen for background ambiance. This is one I haven’t seen before, Terminator 5 or 6. I find it much much more ambling and philosophical than its predecessors.

Watching the film more intently, it shows how a Terminator always was a Terminator, and as an example shows two in their previous form: an alien’s massive tendril-like ribs vibrating in a museum, and a running almost toy-like tyrannosaur robot.

In my hypnogogic awakening state I piece together the logic and importance of the story, how the mass human suffering — the all the lengthy legal wrangling, the senselessness, from this and countless other cases — focused humanity’s intentions into the creation of intelligent machines. It strikes me also that the first Terminator movies were full of fear, but the later ones I saw were musing and exploring what it would mean if the idea were made real.