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Dream Journal

Creepy Emptied Home, Corridor with Vacuums

In the back of my apartment, my studio has partially cleaned out. I can see into the kitchen where the walls are similarly blank, a creepy and almost eerie emptiness compared to how I normally exist in that space. Plywood panels are exposed on some of the walls, and I keep looking down at my feet when I notice rugs missing.

Searching throughout the house for a mysterious electrical issue, perhaps a circuit with vacuums running. I go into is a long hexagonal corridor, shorter vertically than wide, a place I was before. It feels like a 70s sci-fi inspired space, perhaps themed a similar aesthetic as Disneyland’s Space Mountain. Nothing like it can be found in my waking home. My dad and I together open a door at one end of the corridor which goes beyond to another, where there are in fact **three** vacuums running. This further corridor has the feeling of a dusused old European aristocratic space, some forgotten fad from hundreds of years ago. There are no lights, and the darkness stretches into the unseen distance. Back in the first corridor there are video screens and I settle down to rest. The one in front of me is playing The Last Starfighter, thinking to myself “I’ll sit here until I can be useful again”.

Trying to convince a young couple (maybe some new people I met, Yune and Brook) to vote in favor of a new bridge. Specifically a proposed thin pedestrian path in SF that would join alongside a large existing car bridge, allowing passage when traffic is bad. I don’t recall why I was in favor, but this part of the dream is more vague than the rest. Less imagery perhaps.

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Dream Journal

Hidden in the Cantina

Street scenes. Navigating blind sidewalk corners of New York’s rectangular grid while attempting to retrieve or deliver a suitcase. Tall, colorful, narrow buildings. Autumnal.

Another street. This is literally Hollywood Boulevard and its crowds of tourists. Many themed experiences with their lines of ticket gates outside, bustling excited people.

I find a quiet cantina that was mentioned by a friend. No cover charge. I make my way directly to the back room, an enclosed patio that looks carved from sandstone. It’s based on the same design as another bar I’ve been to, the exact layout. With my existing knowledge I gain access to the upper level, the mezzanine ringing the patio space. Usually this would just be decorative but I take the opportunity to lounge in a corner, savoring the assurance of privacy in a public space. Eventually a group of people enter the space and begin chatting, unaware of me. I make my way down and exit the wall closest the front of the building instead of the far back wall. I inspect what looks like a small piece of art, an incomplete outline of a five-pointed star formed by a living plant vine. I have the chance but for some reason intentionally don’t try take a picture — perhaps I am already waking up, perhaps I know I won’t be able to keep it, perhaps it would be too frustrating with dream logic rules.

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Dream Journal

Two Punk Queers with Magic

Two girls have developed their own magic, subversive punk queer magic which they do with their bare hands. Their hairstyles reminds me of the girls in tATu. They roam the school as they please and perform mischief.

My perspective is as one of the girls, but I’m also in the dream for certain parts — though I couldn’t tell if I was Orin (but I don’t think so).

On the second day of the month the pair are involved with putting up a giant unauthorized pride flag. Quite difficult to remove, logistically and politically.

In an empty student dorm one of them invents a new spell on the fly called “repair zipper” to alter a backpack. Upon finding it, the student will have no idea why it’s fixed. That’s the kind of chaotic faerie motivation that is their modus operandi. It also has the edge of an absurd perversion, using magic on something so base and technological/manufactured.

Idly, the other girl recalls wistfully when they used to actually touch each other sexually, when they first developed their queer magic, when they felt they had to prove they were “real” lesbians. By now, they’re totally preoccupied with using the powers they created then. No one would even question them.

They sneak up on the outside windows of the lowest-most student apartments. These coveted residences are high above the ground, the best views of this giant 4 level tree-like school building. One corner I see even has a toilet with that great view. Mostly the residents are seniors, meaning their friends here have known them the longest. Experienced enough to not welcome such antics, but resigned to accept them when they do. The girls have no trouble wiling their way inside. There’s a hypercolor file cabinet in a dorm, guitar and amp, other things you would expect.

I wish there were a firmer ending; I don’t remember what they did! Perhaps that was more of the mischief.

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Dream Journal

New Society of Yet-Learned Secrets

I ride on an open railcar through inhabited forest land. It’s like a terraced Santa Cruz mountains full of houses. Once I arrive, I sense that I’ve “woken up” in an unfamiliar post-scarcity society with very different social rules. I must take my time to learn their ways. There’s artifacts from when I was alive previously (hundreds of years ago perhaps) which I get to explain. One is a jade stone green surface with matching sticker, partially torn off and covered in illegible handwriting. I offer to finally clean it off since I’ve explained that it was quite mundane, and it’s treated as a joke. This is their ancient history, after all.

There’s something hidden though — not quite sinister, but a secret aspect I’ve yet to uncover. My pet rat Porkpie (of all people) finds a ways to get away, escaping on a raft across a dark sea/lake. Little guy is cleverer than I expected.

I’m seated at a communal table with my friend Phoenix and her toddler Moxie. Above the table is an angled bar of color-coded lights which resembles the floating plastic lanes of a swimming pool. The linear code represents people at the table I think; Phoenix is white, Moxie green because she’s a baby, several others. Someone jokes to our waiter that they should put up searchlights.

At that suggestion I partially jolt into different consciousness, my view is a spreading fan pattern of messengers being released from a fortress under siege. Through the hostile rocky desert scramble hundreds of little Chinese figures in traditional costume (with conical hats) looking like a golden age Disney cartoon. One by one they’re shot in various ways as the roaming searchlight of the enemy finds them — all but one figure that, by brute luck, escapes the exposed killzone and delves into bafflingly rocky terrain. They must then follow a circuitous route to stay out of sight to reach a second fortress… the searchlights must never discover it as the destination.

Before the saving rendezvous takes place, I’m startled awake but my wife (gently, I’m told) telling me it might be time to wake up, Orin.

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Dream Journal

Flinging Skittles as a Flourish

An outdoor complex with pathways along water, wooden verandas, locker rooms, and pools. Part of the story seems to be that my side has returned victorious from some conflict. As part of that I’m at an outdoor pool party and overhear a 20-something girl talking about how she finally wants to try coke for the first time. I go to retrieve some from a locker room. In the dream, at in waking like sometimes, I get distracted and I never find out what her reaction would’ve been.

I’m about to talk to my friend Matthew and as a dramatic gesture of flourish, I throw a handful of Skittles over my shoulder in a wide arc. Maybe a single prescription drug bottle, too. I don’t get a chance to get his attention though, so I suppose it was just for me.

I’m walking along through an indoor space — kind of an endless “backrooms” vibe to it — and I’m being Wolverine, from the X-Men. As I’m passing by an automated Sabretooth machine (Sabretooth was Wolverine’s traditional enemy in the X-Men if memory serves). The flung projectiles scathe my arm and it’s the first time I’ve taken any damage in this body/character, which I find much more upsetting than the actual injury.

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Dream Journal

British Hooky & Backwards Mountain Climb

Atop Mt. San Jacinto (or a place like it), a group of people reveal that they’ve been walking down a mountain backwards and filming it. They film one bit at a time and intend to eventually play the footage in reverse as a kind of gag, so in their words “to look athletic instead of batshit”. Who walks down a mountain backwards indeed.

Attending a screening premiere with Noel Gallagher (or was it Noel Fielding?) when I go play hooky instead, slipping out a side door. Noel stays and isn’t happy about the idea, but will probably cover for me to prevent himself the embarassment of me leaving.

From the shared parking lot of the complex there, I enter a British store which is a long corridor presented as different merchants. Actually in Britain proper, I’d say. At the very end there is a table of affable Australians keen to sell their used motocross-style helmets. The brand name is just “Australia” — or possibly “Victoria”, with the comment made “does any other Australian state make as good a brand name?” I do notice that the design has a slit down the front, something I reckon wouldn’t be good for road dust… especially in a place like the outback.

I return to the end of the corridor later when no one is around. I take the obvious shortcut of jumping over the fence and out the back window. I do try to be polite about it by ensuring it’s closed after I go. Slowly I float down from my high egress, aiming and landing on top of a fat rat out in the parking lot. I playfully pat it to tease the little critter.

Soon I steal a tow truck or something. Can’t remember everything, can I?

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Dream Journal

Transferring Recordings

Had to transfer recordings. This one is Swiss, and I’ve recorded it at higher quality. I’m checking multiple times to see if I’ve transferred it correctly now.

The locale feels like the landscape verge of the old youth center in Palm Desert, but it’s a long plain strip of green grass with palm trees against the fence — the kind of liminal space which looks good to wealthy idiots but feels weird to be in.

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Dream Journal

Strobble Noople-Poopin

Alexx Sanchez is in my dream somewhere, I remember thinking “wow, it’s been so long! I don’t know if I’ve even dreamed about her before.” I’m sure I have, but no earlier than a few decades ago, she’s someone I last knew in high school.

Sharing a sizeable horde of money with Angelica R. We have to hide the burner phone after it’s brought up by third party friend, suspicious someone had taken the money, who doesn’t realize we have and are keeping the secret. We need to erase their memory… problem is such a technology doesn’t exist. do we just disappear on them and pretend?

A water dispenser on a top cabinet leaks. While I’m up there, I grab a plastic diner-style coffee pot — my dad (or someone related to me somehow) throws it away because don’t want those hot microplastics in his body.

From atop a structure, I spot a beautiful baby tapir in shades of blue and pink wander into our camp. Gorgeous creature. I remember too late to try and get a photo and it’s a little too far away. I get one distant photo and a bit of shaky video. I go to prepare a grain snack for the critter. But the grain shelf has a forgotten jar of prepared oatmeal which is now a science experiment. I forgot to eat it. Best left alone perhaps.

Regarding the Title: it was just a lot of fun, some phrase definitely within — yet assuredly unlocated — within the night’s stories.

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Dream Journal

Prepping to Present an Upside-Down Australia Story

I’m preparing to give a talk presenting a story of mine from when I visited Australia. Adding a surprise twist even the organizers aren’t expecting by giving it standing on my hands. The story itself dates from 2006 — a period of heightened right-wing bullshit during the Iraq war, the Abu Graib prison scandal (I was, incidentally, in Australia at this time). The story is basically that I’m in a cafe and ask for eggs upside-down. This plays off a familiar meme with a highway warning sign, “WARNING: Australia”, which is humorously upside down… land down under, and all that. Or at least this is the story I make up to tell. The actual events involve me fussing with my website and asking the cafe runner about a location on the web design she made. Later on I’ll reflect that the whole thing reminds me of the Odd Salon matter last summer.

As it’s getting late in the afternoon today, I wander across a near empty school playground. I reflexively think that it’s too hot out, but upon reflection I realize it’s actually perfect outside. Under a tall metal play structure I begin collecting a pile of my stuff left there, but under that I uncover a pile of stolen Australian props — street signs and peeled-off tarmac crosswalks — which would clearly be useful for my upcoming performance. I don’t remember putting them there, and it does feel as though I’m being framed. Perhaps instead I’ve actually gaslit myself by simply not remembering. Very, very difficult to say…

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Dream Journal

Tiny European Country

Visiting one of the tiniest countries in Europe, GaiMiTn or something. It’s an unusual place for people to take a vacation as there’s not much there, but I’m content — resolved that it will be special for me. I roll downhill along a suburban road, houses on one side. The border is a few streets away. It feels novel, knowing so few have been here. When I traipse through some mud, I know most people will never have the dirt of this country on their skin. I envision a brief walkthrough of a primeval European forest, foliage I’ve never been near before, but which strikes me as immediately familiar, archetypal. The plants my ancestors survived by knowing well.