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Dream Journal

Mikl Em, the Hamster

A pleasant exercise with my wife planning for our next trip to Palm Springs, when quarantine is over. Visiting upscale nice art galleries in places like Palm Desert because we’re adults and damn well can now. We wear fancy clothes with my friend Lauren.

Driving up the tramway road, while considering how long it would take to walk. It’s quite steep. There are jackals or more likely coyotes nearby. I challenge my wife to a race up the sandy desert trail, giving her a headstart. She matches me speed for speed, until she makes one error in a turn and I gain on her just barely enough to leap and graze her behind, shouting “monch butt!”

I ponder the question of why we dream of certain people. I observe it’s often not who you first think of when you ask that question. In this case the first person I think of is Meredith Scheff.

I experienced the last moments of a soldier from a defeated army, from their perspective. A burning curved shield is placed over his face and he doesn’t even burn to death as you’d expect, the oxygen is completely sucked away and he suffocates as well as breathes burning hot gases.

My old friend Mikl Em transformed himself into a hamster, or claims to. I leave to get Rick (of Rick and Morty) and return in the middle of a conversation: “average is actually a size 40, everyone should start from 40.” I ask Rick if we can talk to him as a car. He flips some cage controls around, there’s nanotech hidden within the thin bars and the cage corner snaps. Starting from the top, he morphs into a Disney-ish green Cars character. “We don’t really believe you’re Mikl Em” he says.

EDIT: two and a half months later, Mikl Em passed away. R.I.P. you beautiful not-hamster.

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Dream Journal

Little Left-Behind Things at My Old Neighbor’s House

My late friend and neighbor Pete Goldie’s house. Old parking meters have been charmingly repurposed into shelf supports outside. I spot a few stolen telescopes too. An old plant rests on high shelf under the front window, with a hard-to-pronounce scientific name (arbracht-racht perhaps?) It’s big broad succulent leaves look like green Zerg creep, its brown hard woody patches overgrown the pot sides. It’s been there so long, been left to it’s own devices, I’m almost sure it must be forgotten.

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Dream Journal

No-Go Costco

At Costco, it’s taking me a long time to pick out stuff. I only have my wife’s membership card, but I hope to convince the cashier. Before even looking at it he says they can’t accept it. I get uncharacteristically mad at a cashier, cursing the guy out for being such a dick.

Looking for an exit then. Storing stuff in a Spanish-style back hallway. One room is a walk-in freezer that looks like a bank vault. They escort/guide me out a back door, but it exits to a housing development in Florida.

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Dream Journal

Dirty Tortoise, Maral Remix, Cryotherapy

A desert tortoise is nesting in the front yard of my neighbor’s house across the street from my childhood home in Cathedral City. It’s dug quite a dirty, poopy-colored crater gash in the lawn.

I go inside a Middle Eastern music store just where their house was, and ask for Maral Ibragimova. He not only has her, but the guy and I listen to a pretty good remix together. I nod my head as I make eye contact. I then take the first opportunity to leave as he helps another customer, to avoid the intensity or awkwardness (though I feel embarrassed about not buying anything).

Getting ready for school and I think I have 45 minutes to make it… it’s like 6:45 or 7:45. Turns out it’s actually the afternoon, but it’s also not a school day.

While out on the lawn, I notice my faded green striped belt that’s faded significantly over time (and which I incidentally saw a photo of yesterday) has been redyed.I feel like I was having this exact thought in front of my computer only 12 hours ago perhaps.

In the state of Iowa, with a pickup truck. There’s an official state urn or statue memorial, a concrete cup with words ringing it, “Mayor Of City Of Los Angeles”, referencing some historical event (sounds like a ship name to me). Thinking about how California tends to draw in outsiders, how it’s good at it, how there are increasingly two countries now in America.

I visit my brother Chris who is working front desk of a nice wellness office out of state. I try to float through the front desk’s window counter to say hi to him, playfully annoy him a little. The gap is too small though and I don’t fit. I float over the waist high office gate, asking a little girl walking passed why she doesn’t float or fly herself. She claims she’s scared, or not allowed to, or doesn’t have enough practice. Interestingly and curiously evasive.

I slip into a cryotherapy bed, something new in their facility that my brother wants me to test. It is both thrilling and relaxing, oddly so, and I don’t remember much of being in there though I remember being inside for a long while. The angled plastic top has built up a lot of condensation while I’m in there. I find a bogus parking ticket for my truck, despite having parked legally, in the wellness centers parking lot, per instructions and with permission, in a place where they can’t take it unless they’re called. I know I can fight it, but am still annoyed at the gall.

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Dream Journal

Fragment of Music Show/Airliner

A buried airliner under snow, caught in a pipe.

The Pepper’s ghost illusion on stage for half a show, but it’s no illusion. A folk singer starts into a spare song and I idly hope ends it with huge brass band.

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Dream Journal

Twitter Park

A culling of many Ricks (of Rick and Morty) as they transcend a bedroom during a switch between universes. This wasn’t part of the deal, though there’s nothing to be done about it.

A Twitter-owned park, a so-called “free speech zone”, marked in blue on map. Very aesthetic thought-out plants and grass, a color palette matching the site — almost a cartoon, or like the movie Toys. Archival footage of someone named Sabrina Haas (wearing medical eye patch, hugging football player) giving a drop-dead funny speech at the park.

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Dream Journal

Spork the Cat has Kittens in a Traveling Home

My Dad sits under tree. We sit together under a tree and watch a film projected on a portable screen, sharing in sadness.

Spork the cat (normally my male rat, mind you) has had kittens. She’s young and this is her first litter, and in a weird space. It’s shared with a number of people (all of whom I know in waking life), a large travelling quarantine structure. Perhaps it’s a bit like a hostel, but of people who all know each other. The gate is tall double doors like a church door, in the far corner of an open high-ceiling room, with sloping edges near the walls in a flattened “V”. The next room is an light airy bunk bed sleeping/lounging area, billowy drapes and a grid of rafters. I find a conch shell similar to my own under the blankets of an middle-aged Asian acquaintance, Dav. It has a narrower stem/tip and blows easier and louder. Childhood friend Robby T. is also in this dream, chatting lazily from his bunk with me during sunny midday.

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Dream Journal

Misadventure Locating a Locomotive

I’m driving the Chevy Nova car out around the streets of Palm Desert, California, during a time of day I’m possibly not supposed to. On the right, I drive past a rusted old hulk of a steam locomotive just a little ways off the road. I drive back around and park on the shoulder, leaving the car running for my passenger (either Josh or Naomi, Calvin Chaos’s parents).

There’s a small little community of maybe 8 to 10 houses on a dusty little hill. A gate blocks my way in the middle, close to the road. And there is a bar inside at the top called Adrianople that’s been flouting the law, hosting gatherings and selling weapons. In the course of trying to get to the locomotive I end up in a dead end parking lot overlooking the car, realizing my passenger might want to turn it off and trying to get their attention to throw the keys.

There’s an alarming disturbance and a red-headed, naked feminine monster appears from beyond the rooftops, quickly gaining ground. It’s like a banshee, breasts thrust forward and teeth ragged and mocking in aggression. As it advances I keep my camera pointed at it videotaping, somehow knowing this may be the only way to hold it back or to be one day be believed. It corners me at the edge then morphs / disappears.

I’m chased by a stalker / murderer.
It’s appearance is like my wife, and I save myself by slitting its throat with the black-bladed Winchester knife.

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Dream Journal

Dreamy Cool Plant-land

I’m underwater. On bus stops, the first presidential debate is advertised, being hosted by BuzzFeed (of all hosts!). The snappy slogans have to be altered though, a new first line added — after conservatives complain about anti-conservative bias (mostly the result of them not-getting-the-meme). Floating just over the edge of an underwater cliff, holding a half-full bottle in each hand, I release one of them and it unexpectedly goes sinking into the oceanic abyss. With surprising skill I bolt down to retrieve it and, with controlled movement, grab it and bring it back to safety.

Later I’m in a plant nursery, part open-air part 2-story building. The vibe is stylish and calm. I’m bottomless between the rows of waist-high tables, not thinking I would need pants, and only become embarrassed when someone asks how to find the bathroom. It would be the back bathroom of Paxton Gate. I remember thinking this is like something that would be in a dream.

In the dust-lit gloom of the upper nursery space, the garden is decorated with retired equipment. I count 2 or 3 mailboxes, numbered with 4 digit identifiers overgrown (or decorated?) with moss. It takes me a moment to inspect and recognize the rusted and repainted post of a lift gate, like you’d see in a gated parking lot. The room has a post-industrial Easter basket feel.

For a bit I seem to recall talking to Dara in this same room. She receives me as if I’m a visitor, facing me directly, and I look up to her standing on a dais. She wears an armored apron of brass scales. She is brief but not unfriendly.

I am looking for a private room to masturbate. I carefully peek in one of the conference rooms around the central space, but it’s occupied by Spy, Rachel W., and Anya talking animatedly. I consider the unusual meeting of three girls I know from different parts of my life years ago. I’m not even sure who I’d be willing to talk to.

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Dream Journal

Waited till Bedtime to Write This One Down

I am, after a long hiatus where I was kicked out of the in-group, back on Chicken John’s bus. We’re driving at night, sleeping in shifts, on some mission more serious than the usual Chicken bus trip. It seems he’s chosen to ignore the past between us, but while I’m fussing about with various jobs on the bus I realize that while I’m relieved to be back with my friends, I hardly trust him at all. There’s a soft, eerie glow which under-lights the driver’s seat that accentuates this.

After a wake cycle in the early morning, perhaps 7 am, the dream is echoed, reflected, continued. A group of me, my wife, Rich, perhaps others are trying to cross the Bay Bridge in Rich’s RV. There’s a closure, or a slowdown, or shutdown, and I end up re-routing us on a residential road through Marin, which is located about where Treasure Island would be on a normal map. The road turns triangular along a marina where homeowners have semi-privatized the road, and eventually we run into a yellow house which has an addition built blocking the road itself. I can tantalizingly peek between the corners to where the road beyond, but on examining the map zoomed-in I see only more privatized, road-blocking, rich-people nonsense.

I’m now sneaking about, avoiding some kind of mindless hunter-police. I’m breaking into my own home, a sandstone-colored villa. I parkour over a corner wall into the backyard, similar to the narrow gap from the yellow house earlier. I bypass a few armed guards by wending around their sight-lines. Now I’m in the long backroom, a wine cellar with sunlit arched pane windows. I crawl gecko-like along the stone wall, avoiding the searching guards, and find the alcove of the hidden room. The stray thought occurs to me, “I should really change this code, it’s too easy” before I tap the top left stone and it recedes, opening the false wall into my sanctuary/safe room. It’s a chill dark movie lounge with little colored lights and popcorn and a home theater. Like a cozy fabric-lined cave. I was really happy to spend time there.