Tag: America

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Dream Journal

The White Stoat

Sylvester Stallone has been working with my wife at a gallery show. I’m sitting across the way, splayed on the floor looking not unlike a hobo. Sly, out of the goodness of his heart, brings me chocolate chips. I’m genuinely thankful and tell him how he’s my favorite, 1984 was the best year, etc. (If I’m perfectly honest, I’d bet this is referencing a story about when someone was a kid and they met Joe Pesci in an airport. He goes “Who’s your favorite actor?” Kid says, “You of course!” Pesci say’s “That’s the right answer, kid”, and hands him a crisp $100 bill.)

After Satllone is outside I walk over to my wife and chat. Somehow the topic comes up: I share my opinion that the MidJourney prompt she used for the show is problematically basic. She might not have realized it, but the source prompts have been collected on the gallery’s server are public. So hers something being something like “blue Elmo Sunday morning” next to the many elaborate and tricky prompts used by the other artists in the show gives a bad impression. I know she worked harder than that. To make my point I give her the analogy: “An expert can do what a novice can do. But the novice can’t do what the expert can”.

An acquaintance, Andi, is working nearby also, wearing a mechanic’s suit onesie. I chat with her too and express how I feel like her outfit is great, but if the name tag said “Becky” that’d be perfect. Still working, she reveals her large back tattoo that says “Cantram Parts”, a family business that’s been around 100 years. Guess she’ll have some job security — probably not gonna fire her walking around with one of those on her. Maybe it’ll even put her in charge one day.

There’s a website we look at as a group, described as “a kind of Akira.com website”. There’s a clever columnar interface, you simply slide a full column over and there’s an entirely different dating selection to explore. I note that the men are blue-themed and the women red-themed. Yellow… I didn’t get to yellow.

There’s ruckus outside. The quality of light indicates either a quiet evening or (unusually for me) an early morning. Leaning out a window I observe what seems like the local army base having a local defense drill. As I gawk from above, a gangly, almost gigantic recruit performs a side-stomping maneuver — straight through the trunk of a young tree in the green sidewalk margin adjacent the residence I’m in. Must have been trained on it. Or… oh, this IS the training. Only last night I walked by that very tree with a group, playfully jumping and swatting a dangling branch. There ought to be a different policy for base defense drills, I think, at least when it’s civilian property. I’m not grumpy about it though, just resigned. I say not a word to the recruits; nothing I could say. Military people are extra “just doing their job”, which feels like an understatement when it’s actually even “following direct orders”. But soon, I am able to holler out and warn them about the elephant that’s appeared from around a nearby corner, and is approaching them from behind. They take it in good humor. There is really an elephant though — a little pink baby with goofy eyes and ears that looks like it can’t even see anyone.

I can overhear the spirited conversation of a couple from where I sit in the backseat of a car. The woman has a pronounced English accent. I lean my head out, inserting myself into their conversation, and make an opportunistic joke related to what the boyfriend just said. Something about never trusting them? The English I mean. Because we’re Americans, you see. It’s a cheap joke and a few hundred years out of date but I knew it’d get a laugh. Later, driving along in the car, the conversation picks up on my joke. I realize that since it’s 2024 now, 1776 to 2024 would mean it’s 300 years of America! Wait, that’s not right… 250! That’s even worse from a cultural perspective. The media will most certainly be deluging us with the phrase “a quarter millennium of America” as often as they can. (I know the math is wrong here — this is a dream in case you’d forgotten.)

I’m taken around with a special kid, someone folks seem to think I have an unexplained connection with. Maybe I just have a similar vibe. Maybe my personality at that age was similar to whatever unusual thing this kid’s got going on. I attend his visit to a therapist’s office. It’s ringed halfway round with stone benches and has a peaceful zen garden feel, and they keep the office lights off. I spot a stuffed white stoat. It seems obviously symbolic, a canny and subdued symbolism — as if I’m not expected to know it. I carry over an indented tray, like a cupcake pan, randomly loaded with a personal rock collection in its rows of concavities. I perform the offering gesture to the special kid with exaggerated kindness and good humor. I don’t know why I’m being put together with this kid, but at least we’re enjoying each other.

Rats are easy to lose. For instance, apparently I just lost Bertie when I set down a tray a moment ago… fuck!

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Dream Journal

Map-Parachuting, Lawyer-Attacking, Megaphone-Speakering

An interesting exercise in Physical Education class. In tall grass, a huge area is flattened in the shape of the lower 48 states of America. This shape is repeated identically in a line. The class then performs parachuting practice and we land all over the maps (mostly at random, as we don’t have excellent control). The multiple maps “cancel out” and then, as it’s PE of course, we all jog back into the first field and stand at our newly-determined spots.

I landed north of San Diego. I expect I’ll be so close to the border with Mexico that I’ll be standing right next to it. However, the map is of great scale and I’m impressed when I end up outside throwing distance. While my back is turned and I’m listening to instructions from the stage to the north (i.e. Canada) a smooth-haired guy that looks like a lawyer sneaks up on me from somewhere south unseen.

I have to take cover among the big crown in the front row of the America-auditorium, a the section categorized “Express” for reasons I don’t understand. Panicked, I seize an empty theater chair in the middle of the row. It feels like he won’t mess with me with this many people and I calm down. But soon I’m requested to move to the outside of the row, on the more empty left side. I psych myself into being ok with it. My flank feels exposed and it’s still too much; I move around among the audience to assuage my worries.

On the far edge of the big USA room is a park-like setting. People chilling, listening to music. A Scottish guy with a thick accent yells something pretty clever, and I realize I’m the only one that understands his voice and slang. I happen to have a Bluetooth speaker that I can use as a megaphone so I translate. As it turns out though, my translation is treated as equally informal and idiosyncratic. Only the Scottish guy and me get the meaning, but at least I get his humor. Might’ve made a friend.

By now the coast is clear and I’ve stopped worrying about aggro lawyer guy. The event ends and I stay for clean-up. I’m asked by a younger black girl if I can help find her speaker — once again I use mine to address a wider crowd. I but manage, surprisingly, to find an identical speaker also broadcasting my signal. She says that one’s not hers, though. Hers has four funnels, kind of like rectangular air horns, arranged in a spiral. I manage to find something fitting that description but no, she says that one is for use amplifying timbales (the Latin percussion instrument).

The space is emptying out, and I’m in the wooden rafters still searching. I come across a brown extension cord strung deliberately through the beams, with an odd note attached. It’s a copy of something the judge (and DoJ head) Merrick Garland said about a bill, recently written, that restricts many people’s freedoms. While it’s not his bill he’s plainly complacent enough to just explain it without also saying how it can be fought.

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Dream Journal

NazEe, NaziE, NazEE? We’re Unsure

A small town newspaper runs the headline “Local Nazi Group Unsure Whether or Not to Capitalize ‘E’ at End of Nazi”. It’s a tellingly funny headline, but I make a mental note that I should advise my friend at the paper that I would’ve struck the ‘or not’.

I’m waiting around at an airport in America. I’ve recently been to Australia and happen to be particularly sensitive to differences in culture. I find a sign display that seems to obviously exploit and encourage American religious stupidity. Perfectly legal forever on a count of our constitution, of course. Yet I remember how Australia honors Charles Darwin on its money (this is actually England but whatever), in its culture, even the big city named after him on the north coast. I impulsively tear up the stupid American religion sign, folding its cardboard and smashing it up to fit in the trash. I don’t even care if I get in trouble, I’d argue my case that it was simply a trap for the unwary or desperate.

I’m in charge of driving a bus and the undercarriage is filled with the luggage of various acquaintances. I need to catch my flight soon but I’m being overly nice and cautious — even though taking care of their bags for them shouldn’t be my responsibility. With exactly an hour till my flight takes off, I park the bus and sigh knowing I did the best I could. Or at least that I can plausibly explain that I tried to.

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Dream Journal

Glitchy Game of American Colonization

Conquest of the New World, Deluxe edition. There’s an error where if one of the computer’s units runs out of automatic moves, I can see where it is and what it’s discovered. This includes a couple French naval academies and some Japanese units that look like big canoes. The Native Americans appear to be colonizing the glaciers somehow.