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Dream Journal

Australia, What Might’ve Been

I go return to Australia now, as myself, a middle-aged man. I end up spending much time reading in a dark pub and saving really good memes. The room where I’m staying is compact and oddly shaped, on the corner between two long rural streets. The whole thing is very much a nostalgia tour but it’s made more difficult on account I didn’t have Google Maps in Australia back then. I remember one thing on my to-do list: “ivywalk”… though I admit I don’t even know what that was. It’s relaxing — yet nostalgia itself is a kind of pain, the bittersweet pain of a place you cannot truly go back to.

At some point near the end of this trip I consider revisiting the town I spent the last days of my younger trip in, Shepparton, where I was humbled as a salesperson and walked up and down the sheep inhabited main street. This is… somewhat close to my real-life waking memories. I try to think of even one person I could visit there, and the one who comes to mind is the charming old lady Josephine, the only customer I feel I actually helped, getting her new bill put under the name she’d always chosen to use: Jo. And yet she was fairly old then, and that was 14 years ago.

Curiously enough — and this is the waking truth — last November I had a brief lucky few hours when I could’ve bought deep discount plane tickets for Qantas 100-year anniversary. I had a three week trip for two all queued up (for $1400!) yet ultimately we decided that even that wasn’t quite low enough for us, what with food and lodging too. I’d quite forgotten about that untaken chance… today would’ve been about when we flew back.

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Dream Journal

Grand Canyon Birth, Creepy Mannequin

Lynae gives birth to our daughter earlier than planned while visiting the Grand Canyon. This is inconvenient, obviously, but I note to myself how unique her birth certificate will be.

Transported via flat-bottomed boat behind an experimental wakeless speedboat, which is mostly underwater and creates an odd rippling divot in the water. We pass conifer-lined shores and disused “water basketball” courts, part of an out-of-season summer camp.

I’m moving a creepy “live” mannequin that has become a problem. I don’t want to touch the thing more than absolutely necessary and so, dragging it along, I can see it blink and look around. Propping the torso up on a ladder, I examine its inhumanly long eyelashes — the thing seems to lunge at me for an instant. I’m instantly awake.

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Dream Journal

The Slow Plane to Russia

Travelling to Moscow, Russia, with my wife for an extended vacation. The airliner is laid out as rows of seats on risers, sideways to the direction of travel. We’re the last people to be able to order at the grotty little on-board cafe — they’re closing and also almost out of food. I move seats to get more room, but still can’t get much privacy. I turn my huge CRT monitor in the seat next to me but there’s seemingly no direction I can point it where a stranger can’t see it. The space isn’t much like an airplane, a crowd of people moving around in what sometimes feels like a filthy abandoned stadium. At some point I have to prep and clean a poorly-maintained old toilet.

The dream after this is what came before. We’re in the planning stages for this east-of-eastern Europe vacation. I fantasize about the routes we could take, passing through places like Crimea, Turkey, the Balkans, maybe even the Greek Isles. No firm itinerary has been made, as is typical for us. I realize I need to worry whether Russia, and all the countries we may go to, still consider kratom legal.

We have a small fight while driving down to Palm Springs, on the way to Las Vegas, where our deep-discount direct-to-Moscow flight leaves from. I tell my wife I left my luggage at home and we need to go back. She angrily asks why I didn’t take it, and I say it’s because when we left, I asked her if we were just going out to run an errand and would have a chance to come home before we left. I insist she answered yes, but she insists on having no memory of that. But I know we make the flight, because I’ve experienced it already.

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Dream Journal

Oops, Giant Flute

Walking back from somewhere, I stop in at a store on 24th street (near my home) that sells music equipment. It has a spare layout, isolated displays in little clumps, floor models on display. With help from the staff I pick out a curious modern version of a traditional flute, with big playful colored buttons instead of finger holes. Taking it out of the bag to play on the way home, I discover that I’ve been given what is actually an absurd 11 foot long pipe — the one I picked out being most likely 11 inches. How did they not notice?! Rather amused, I know I’ll soon go back and exchange it, but play this more expensive monstrosity for fun in the meantime.

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Dream Journal

Summer Camp School Reunion

School reunion at a place like a summer camp. I run into my friend Robby T. and gloss into an explanation of everything I’ve done since high school. I look down and realize at some point I put on the white-and-blue shirt with my high school logo, split down the middle like a button-up.

I’m myself but shrunk to the size of a mouse. Maybe I am a mouse. I’m on an artificial high cliffside ledge, maybe steep stadium seating.

I wake up and go back to sleep and dream about having written some notes in my dream journal. I open the app in my dream and there’s a short mathematical formula. I know that I wrote it and it’s meaningful, but I defer trying to figure it out.

In a room killing time. Waiting to occasionally sexually service Dara. She’s leaning on a table with a knit shawl or lace draped over her backside, playing on her phone. Every once in a while she gestures over and I go at it from behind.

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Dream Journal

Left Behind at Omura Station

Travelling by train in Japan, stop momentarily at a station called Omura. The train leaves without me and my wife is on it with both our tickets. I have to walk along the line in a foreign country, or ride the train and hope they don’t check my ticket.

The back wall of my dad’s house in Cathedral City has been stolen. I suspect it might be a construction site somewhere in the lots behind it. The city recently has only sold cheap plots, ones in the middle of blocks without good road access. Exploring this area, I pass a lane of farm trees, not knowing the neighborhood anymore. I see Fifth’s Grocery store, and a Marie Callender’s inside it. I orient myself with the mountains but it’s harder than usual. I sit and wait underneath a shady tree out of eyeline, eat a couple coconuts and scope out the area.

Climbing up a set of colorful ersatz stairs, through a vertically-tilted bus where a giant girl is sleeping in one of the bunks. I pass by her and she seems interested in me but I’m kind of on a date. My date (a younger girl with dark fluffy short hair) and I make it for a wedding on this long plateau walkway at the top, something like the Alden Royal Skyway… very underwhelming for the title. No one else seems to be there yet, but I know this is where it is.

I’m shopping for a blue vest in a small department store, even though I already have a few blue vests. The department store is in some kind of college, concrete archways and corridors.

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Dream Journal

Small Apartment in Tower above Asian Grocery

A very small Japanese-style apartment on its own floor at the top of a tower. So tiny when I sweep rat poo with my feet, it flies over the balcony. Every surface is covered with all my possessions.

At the base of the tower is an Asian grocery. They have great prices on packs of beer, specifically Kirin — a big label advertising it above the glass door in a refrigerated aisle. The catch is: the beer is dehydrated and a pack comes in a single can. I remember this only when I realize I still have a can-pack at home in the (tiny) fridge drawer.

The grocery also sells antiques in an aisle behind the beer. One such curiosity is an elaborate frame drum in the abstract shape of a lizard, paint-daubed with black spots. Made with different striking surfaces for different sounds (including part that looks like a cheese grater). I play contentedly for a bit. While sitting there I watch a tiny dinosaur, a miniature Triceratops perhaps, be chased over some hills by a rabbit or other small mammal. Filming it on my phone, I bemusedly note that no one is likely to believe it’s not even CGI.

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Dream Journal

Laudable Conceit

My family had just moved in to a top floor rental in New York. hardwood floors we have to do ourselves, which leads to some deep chips due to not understanding how to install it. We host a party after we’re moved in, running a budget generator on the roof, hosting ping pong matches. Patrick runs the cord through an open window, forgets which one and how to close it afterwards — I discovered this when I find Henry rat sleeping under a sweater nearby this open window at the top of a skyscraper.

There’s a Google laptop lying on the floor, mine, I realize my new phone is the third Google hardware product I’ve bought (it isn’t, actually).

You go up one enclosed flight of stairs, then another, then there is a covered patio roof with a charming rustic aesthetic. I rearrange the decorations on the unfinished worn-out wood table, glowing mushroom lights, abalone shell dishes, potted plants in handmade jars.

There’s a theater set piece made to look like a cheap old western bar. It’s comparing the different college time travel movies that have come out lately, joking about college professors once having sex and the like. I pass an Asian girl goofing off, licking a printed transparency of a doll size person. She says “what, it would be fine if it were female, wouldn’t it?” Which of course, no, it makes no difference how goofy that is. I go behind the counter of the old West bar and grab an odd-shapef hook off it, but the guy sitting behind it says he’s still using it. I say okay and go in the back room, which is very unfinished and unusual. There are a few little alcoves built one to another, one looks like a coat room for Harley bikers, another has handmade wall panels that don’t quite fit and fall down revealing a shaft down into the building.

”Laudable conceit” is a phrase leftover from the rest of the night’s dreams… which were mostly too boring to remember. Everything above took place over the span of 2 hours, after my wife woke me up in the morning.

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Dream Journal

Story in Both Forward and Reverse

Someone designed a movie or video game that plays a story in both forward and reverse. Inspired, likely, by the game The Stanley Parable which I just learned about. Even the dialogue is somehow transposed. It’s a series of vignettes, and fascinating in how the story lines up different in either direction.

One I remember was a person in a room full of tortilla chip bags. They’re very quiet and anxious until they establish they have enough money to pay a water bill. Probably worried about how thirsty they’d get eating that many tortilla chips!

Another is a hosted retrospective of a little handheld pixel art game from the mid-2000s, something like Habbo Hotel (which I never played), being a pregnant teenager is an option. One window shows the close-up view in an anime style. The clip I saw was a series of teens stealing vegetables off a grill cooked by the rapper Drake. That video was presented by two people I know, people I did a favor for at some point — a hairy, pregnant, bearded trans-man and his husband.

One is in a plain, hilly little area by the sea where you fly around in a body, but like a spaceship. It’s artful and immersive but quite boring, feels unfinished as there’s not much to do except grind on the few animal units there are. Sort of like the game Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, which I just watched a preview of.

My mom has been inconveniently revived after several years of death. But she is just as old as she would be, and has a different set of problems now. My dad has a different house and a different girlfriend. She’s also having health problems, and relates her visits to a female prostate doctor. She’s altogether sad and not particularly happy to be back.

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Dream Journal

Face-to-Sexy-Face with Friend Spy

I’m dropped off directly across from my first elementary school in my hometown (possibly by plane), and find an important but broken piece of… something in the gutter. I round the corner and spot a half-empty vape juice bottle, grape — there’s a store nearby and I spot these a lot. I consider whether it’s a good idea to pick it up. Walking up to my childhood home at the end of the street. My phone helps me walk by showing the rear camera feed behind the text I’m reading. I only notice this once I start earning points by passing over certain objects.

A badass Bruce Willis-type guy is driving/walking down a concrete bridge. My friend Spy and I appear together there. There’s some unusual sexual tension between us, perhaps due to the guy being there too. In typical fashion for us our sexual tension is diffused by amping it up, as I hold my face close to hers — actually touching cheek to cheek. Somehow that usually works.