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Dream Journal

Stolen Cyberpunk Timelines of Plarvolia

I come across Plarvolia who is sitting in a clear box for her art project. I can see her getting mildly harassed by children tapping on the glass among other things. Though I feel moved to intervene, I understand that I shouldn’t be the one to try. After her shift inside is up, I inspect café baked goods where she had been stationed. She was promoting/selling a new line of rainbow spectrum lights from General Electric — one of which, interestingly, is a strong bright black. Also notable is that I now know she actually does make money from her art (at least sometimes).

There is a unique cyberpunk setting that feels somehow European, old world. Inside a building are haphazard beds in a place seemingly used as a squat. I break through multiple walls of the interior in what feels like a sequence puzzle. Beyond, a darkened (but daytime) town square is buzzing with various activities.

I steal an invisible scooter-skateboard from a man riding it in the square. It’s broken in the process and gluing it back together proves problematic. Not only is this invisible kind a special color, the connections are finicky. It’s a specific brand that others feel is reputable called “Eaver” or “Matric” or something. I later go with someone who encourages me to try to buy one. The store has the feel of a cyber-renovated luxury 19th-century “Robber Baron” era place — dark wood columns and sophisticated electronic monitoring. I find a new board for $35 up on a shelf inside a bag, but decide it’s too expensive and I don’t want to try stealing it.

At the checkout area for this town square zone, I encounter my Homepie friends Juicy and Coco lounging having drinks. They’ve already paid for theirs, and when I look to pay they’ve already paid for mine too — though confusingly I don’t see them on the check. Perhaps they were omitted, which is all the same. Juicy notices he has to have a charge corrected before he goes, as the pipe he picked out was supposed to be on sale. He went to that same Robber Baron store as I did earlier.

There is a complex sorting-out of the timeline of interactions with Plarvolia. Time travel seems at play, nonlinearity, acausality. I put on a colorful fur-trimmed vest before I talk to her. I’m preparing for her timeline which is about to finish, and finally her timeline happens to line up with my own.

I revisit these narratives of Plarvolia for two hours. Retelling the story out of order; I can’t play out the events. I perceive parts where I saw perfectly from her perspective. But when did we talk? Wasn’t there more scenes with her? At some point I was explicitly instructed (or conclude?) that I need to write this one down. But now it hardly seems profound or important. But this dream feels different than other Plarvolia ones… I admit I even have a hard time thinking of her as Plarvolia, but instead think of her as her real self, as something outside her relation to me and what happened. I think of her with her real name and her real life.

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Dream Journal

Roof Cable

A cable penetrates the roof of the world, melting either side of its path and leaving an indentation. Has the feel of a whispered legend.

Interrupted by alarm.

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Dream Journal

Events Rewritten before they’re Written

My wife has an older sister and she’s going out of her way to try to make out with me. I think she’s doing it to annoy my wife but I’m not actually sure it would, little does she know. It feels like I’m being dragged along with the whole thing so I don’t have much of a choice either way. Suppose there are worse things to dream.

There’s a boxy white drumline practice space above a workshop. They do machining or carpentry maybe, and I’m only one who’s worked there before. It was a temp job years ago but I can still vividly imagine my day there working in a line of men. After the workers have gone home, we members of the drumline enter the space. It’s not an invasion or a break-in, but something else still dangerous. I’m with my female partner who I care for a lot, in a basement office decorated with plants. It turns out none of us noticed a single stormtrooper who stayed behind in the bathroom. He endangers us all.

The next sequence is unusual, as I get the strong sense that this is a *second* run through of the dream and I’m forcibly modifying it. I get revenge and rewrite the events, absolutely destroying the trooper and protecting my lady companion. An intense sequence but confusing too.

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Dream Journal

A Night of Clear Dreams

James T Kirk’s house in remote Wyoming log cabin. A hot tub out back with a grand wide view of mountains and nature. I’ve been better before, but I don’t remember from last time the new tenements where the front yard used to be, now facing a more busy road. Maybe this locale will be more of a town now, I could thrift at a little store here. I’m trying to work through how to do laundry there, moving the washer and dryer setup from my dad’s old Kemper Court home. Finally I work out there’s a room on the far side of the Wyoming cabin that already has a washer/dryer.

Trying to drive out of Palm Springs to a place my homeslice Lauren booked called Ibiza Hotel. The map insists we might not be able to get there with the route we’d planned, there’s so much red traffic. It says to turn around and go back the way we came, but there is a road called 982nd Way that cuts down through the rural Coachella Valley that I’ve not seen before. It’s red with traffic too but me and the homepie have to take one route or another.

A little 3-year-old who could talk is with a group of us adults, almost a mini adult. Reminds me of two kids in my life, but also Baby Yoda or Yosemite Sam. It gives me a strong recollection of what I got to experience talking with adults at age 4 (which I evaluate as the minimum age to have explicit memories). I imagine myself again being that small, entertaining adults who I realize now were specifically 1980s adults. There won’t be another time like that.

Being taken to my childhood home in Eureka — though I realize now it was actually completely different from my waking life. I experience powerful waves of nostalgia when I recognize the rain-aged backyard table and seating, the back fence to the neighbors where raccoons played, the trough of a muddy ditch near a creek where I would found animals. Leaning into the ditch, I pull out what looks like my velociraptor puppet, a real childhood artifact I haven’t remembered in many years. Peering from the plant-heavy backyard, there’s an angle of trees I see framing the path to the road which sparks overwhelming recognition, even from other dreams, without me knowing if this is the original location or not.

Proceeding through a long multi-room store, it ends with a collection of vintage sewing machines all in stylish colors, some I’ve never seen before like army green. At some point in the night’s dreams, I find a little vintage fridge on its side flooded with water. I empty it and set upright. It still works but is loud while running. It seems to be from the same era as the sewing machines, and I find myself having affection for it.

I don’t think I lost many dreams writing them down today. But I don’t know how I could express the particular feeling of having visited the places I did… as though this was both overdue, necessary prep work, and indulgent distractions. Such clarity of vision I usually don’t have outside of lucid dreams, either. I don’t have a good guess as to what triggered them.

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Dream Journal

Spaces of Hong Kong

Never been to Hong Kong before but it’s everything I imagined. I finally came here after years of thinking about it. I’m having a leisurely time, reflecting on the foreignness and how it feels.

The colors of everything man-made is distinct from what I’m familiar with. As I stare up at local palm trees in a courtyard I reflect how the manufactured goods here are all from different factories. So it’s not merely that designs might vary; the actual available supply of something as simple as pigment is slightly different.

I am residing in some big formerly abandoned space that’s mine to play around with. I spend time in various rooms, imagining what I might do in them. I explain to my companions that I’ve determined the largest blank wall space, an arch shape above a long built-in table. I detail a possible technique of using single printed sheets of larger AI-assisted picture, something like the tiled printing mosaic my former roommate used to have. I continue talking to them while hanging over the edge of a doorframe, leaning into the room they’re sitting in. I’m trying to close out the conversation and get drawn into describing the finicky techniques of getting a good photo.

Outside, I see sunset — or something like a sunset without the valence of being the end of a day. It looks like three overlapping gears or prisms, radiating over a curved landscape. I find it difficult to photograph, much less describe. It’s quite a powerful image, but I waited too long in the day to write it down properly… though I still hope not to forget it entirely.

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Dream Journal

Pick Up and Drop Off

I watch letters change on paper, morphing/fading from “will” to “was”. This seems a parallel to the Wikipedia phenomenon of people altering a person’s page to past tense when they die. I can’t be sure how, but this has to do with a boyfriend of Dara V.

Along the back fence of my childhood home I walk along the top of the narrow brick wall. There didn’t used to be buildings there when I was growing up, but now some neighbors have put their chairs on the balcony as close as they can to our yard, so they directly see everything. I find myself not only annoyed, but feeling this is unjust somehow.

Near the corner of the back fence I stand with a goth girl waiting for her ride. A car speeds past us at the stop and swerves head-on into a tree. It’s shocking to see this happen in person. I actually wonder now if I somehow slept through a traffic accident outside my window and integrated that into the narrative…

Later I’m dropping off a women at a grand yet modern palace, many stories tall with underground car access. This place exists in many timelines, yet it’s a good place in any timeline to be a woman. It’s agreed that her name here will be “Christina”. On the map this place is marked as… I can’t recall; it seems this detail was overwritten. But it’s something to do with deadly subterfuge or sabotage. Not that she herself will do any killing, but she may be the cause of their death.

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Dream Journal

Building Inspection Plarvolia Friendliness

Visiting London. Picking random stop, to check out how average people live. Walking around the block wearing a bright blue poncho, which happens to be the exact uniform of a school nearby. Someone mistakes me for one of the schoolkids and I have to point out the logo on the side of my hood. London is in a much steeper valley than I expected, with parts that had to be leveled flat and interstitial slopes left unbuilt — this gives a terraced appearance.

Inside a neglected industrial building, I inspect the many floors one by one. While in the dim former stairwell or elevator, I encounter Plarvolia by chance, not really realizing it’s her at first. While carefully examining the dappled moldy walls, newly decorated with art, she mentions working on something to help with a virus. I immediately but subtly pick up on it, responding by mentioning the exact name (which could’ve been Epstein-Barr or Tay-Sachs) — as it’s something I’ve been working on too.

Soon, we are in shared company in an open communal lounge on one of the floors. The furniture looks scavenged, cozy, the room layout open and welcoming. We don’t talk directly but seem to mix together pointedly in conversation. While I’m sitting low at a coffee table, I remember one question topic involving proper form of a word combining “themselves” and “threesome”, which someone poses as possibly “threeselfs”, but which I jump in to say should grammatically be “threeselves”.

It is difficult to describe what happens next. Plarvolia and I are scattered amongst the group as it devolves into affectionate touching and partner play. I lean against a couch with my leg stretched out. She is moving around under a blanket with her companion, possibly a boyfriend or something equivalent. My foot comes in contact with her hand while she sits on the floor in front of him. It isn’t rejected. She seems to touch it purposefully over some time, perhaps even absent-mindedly. It’s not clear she knows it’s mine, but I can see where she is and know it’s her touching it. It is pleasant to be here in this room, with this camaraderie.

Eventually she moves my foot under her butt. This is an escalation, and well-considered. I know it’s intentional. I know she wants it there; this isn’t merely the mere absence of rejection. I can tell now she knows it’s me. Her butt is smooth and warm. I am here, with her, having made up, enjoying having bodies together — with no words or even eye contact exchanged.

I wake up peacefully 15 minutes before my alarm, reminiscing. I get most of the dreams down… minus the last paragraph. That takes me about 3 hours of stalling on my phone late at night. Even though the dream felt good, felt meaningful, it’s still challenging to feel so vulnerable about her. I’ve often wondered if she reads these, or what she would think if she did. Rationally I doubt it, but I don’t know how to feel about it anymore. I’ve lost sleep over it.

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Dream Journal

SoCal and Canada, Onto Remote Paths

It’s been a few months since I moved back to my hometown. I’m travelling by night around the square grid of streets, chasing a car somewhere in the sprawl of hotels and country clubs. I unintentionally drop some utensils out the car window a few blocks before I take a hard left turn trying to catch the fleeing car of my middle school friend Stephen Colson.

Outside a fancy apartment building where I’m staying, or perhaps considering renting, I watch a billboard collapse. From the outdoor wraparound communal balcony I watch the face of Will Smith fall into pieces, the billboard’s gimmicky mechanical baubles scattering across the Los Angeles street below.

At a location across from Disneyland is a store which I remember I’ve been before. It’s austere on the outside, the humbleness of the shopkeeper’s simple living a contrast to it’s famous neighbor. The only thing I can remember of it’s features are that the building had an address, and a little black girl sometimes stood outside.

I notice next door is a new store with no external indicators of what it sells. It’s even narrower and plainer, almost liminal in the sense that I don’t know if I’m supposed to be in there. Inside, the merchandise is sparse and I proceed down the hallway-like space. Instead of a back room, it leads into a hippie-bohemian styled space with a glass frontage to an indoor mall. There’s a piece in the front window that I inspect. The place smells of good leather.

I’m marching across a creek in what feels like the Canadian wilderness. Attractive female strangers pass by, having just crossed the creek as well, as I wait for my female companion to catch up. I lean one-legged with my walking stick and reflect on promiscuity. Chattering on to my companion (my wife probably) it feels as though I’m deliberately ignoring the cute girls, which almost seems rude. We proceed down the hiking trail. I keep unusually good notes along the way. We pass by a series of lakes, getting more and more remote. I put on several circle stickers in sequence on my foam shoe, their handwritten messages spelling out a story. When it seems finished I take a photo.

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Dream Journal

LA Cinderalla Phone Sale, Returning a Message

A gambit pays off, and after I leave a comment or invite for Plarvolia she finally responds. I think she messages about being open to meeting. I spend the rest of the dream vaguely excited and anxious how this will turn out

In the Los Angeles area I witness the rich meddle with reshaping hilly land near the coast. I decide to interview for a job available in the oil extraction industry. In the dream I’m in persona as an older black guy, wearing tall black leather boots and a blackleotard outfit. There’s some logic that this minimizes the problems of getting the black-colored oil on one’s skin when you’re a worker, so is kind of part of the job.

Through Criagslist, I visit a decaying neighborhood to but an older candybar-style phone. I look around and recognize many “Cinderella” style details on the underkept houses, fairytale roof awnings and such. The whole neighborhood was once an overly-decorated marketers dream in (perhaps) the 1950s or 60s, though it probably looked overly cookie-cutter back then. It’s obvious there was never any plan to upkeep them, and the natural tides of money and time left buildings that were difficult to distinguish between abandoned and simply poor.

I spend time going up and down neighborhood catwalks trying to conclude the sale. It’s a mess. In the course of negotiations I realize that since this is LA I don’t have an easy way to get back to where I’m staying unless the person who broght me here on the prospect of buying the phone also drives me back. I settle for a much-inflated price of $100, hoping to get back sooner than later at least.

The dream ends with me realizing I’m now the one who has taken a long time to respond to Plarvolia, much different than before. I am worrying that the phone won’t even work and I won’t be able to get back to her in time. I find I can’t get back to sleep and message…

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Dream Journal

Beast Outside Cafe, Beauty of Diner

I’ve been dispatched to check out Beauty and the Beast cafe, in a double decker bus. There’s more story before this but I can’t get myself to recall more. I pass through the entire layout and ponder what I’ve seen in a smaller area behind it, above road level. I’m people-watching, happening to see a small fancy-looking yorkie dog plodding purposefully around the corner, no owner in sight. Hm… I’m not familar enough with this region to understand whether I should be concerned and do something about it. My companion introduces me as Neil, which in this story is my deadname that I didn’t even know they knew.

I go up the hill outside, exploring further into this land I’m visiting (Alaska, I think). It’s a glorious climb. I take my first step onto late-season snow with a satisfying crunch. There’s a geometric dome structure that’s prismatic and pretty, a puzzle of some kind. Summiting the hill I come into view of a famous diner, fully as picturesque as any tourist brochure could hope for, with massive snow capped peaks in the background. It’s a ideal image of classic rugged Americana, with classic cars and station wagons nearby. Turning around, I discover something of interest to me personally, an abandoned building with a plaque outside, reading simply “Train Ruins”. Some relic of railroad infrastructure that, in it’s way, is as beautiful as the postcard-worthy diner and mountains uphill from it.

Unusually, I only got half this dream down after I woke in the morning. I had (as is frequent) intended to write it down completely, having put in the effort to remember it while lying in bed during my typical hypnogogic time. I was still able to recall *enough*of it to be satisfied.