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Dream Journal

Apt #99

These dreams all take place at night for no particular reason.

Earliest remembered is playing on a school athletic field where I’m not a student. But I manage to successfully fit in, heading in with the rest of them and peeking over the wall into the locker room to see what I’m getting myself into.

Having friends over in my new place, Apt #99 (the only double digit unit on the second floor). I become more aware that it’s cheap and somewhat sketchy building with weird architecture. The hallways and stairways especially are dark and dingy, but with an unusually intense vibe of human activity. Maybe it’s like a one-building Kowloon Walled City — except I think the second floor is the top. I’m up and down the stairs several times, giving instructions on how to find stuff to one of my visitors.

I’m informed by some Mormon friends of a free trip to China. It’s sponsored by our school, but takes only one day. Feels like far from enough, and mysteriously so. I wonder what the Chinese face recognition would make of my all-too-Western face.

Participating in a survey of the Great Lakes and their borders. My favorite is a smallisg lake located higher up between others called King Lake. The view there is very interesting, as from the vantage of its center one can see a ring of the other lakes below. But on a newly released map it’s been labeled “Piss Lake” because locals don’t like the smell and think it doesn’t have enough bathrooms. Near King Lake there’s a small cabin perched on a hill that’s supposed to have a groundskeeper, but when I visit it just has a cat napping on an armchair. I fondly start thinking of him as the groundskeeper.

The Great Lakes also has an international border, and I visit a liquor store near there on land that should never have been claimed. The man who built this place, the so-called owner, has punted on the issue for ages by avoiding paperwork to clear it up. Because of the legal complexities with the border no one has been motivated enough to sort the situation out, and he continues running his business only semi-legally. I have some idea of what the place was like before and so I’m made a bit sad by learning all this.

Later I’m working as an impromptu messenger. In a thick forest on expansive level terrain adjacent to an outpost, I deliver a message to a hidden group. The member I meet uses a mech to traverse the dense terrain. As soon as my message is delivered however, my government launches a nuclear missile at the location where we met. Luckily the rendezvous is not where the other side’s base is, and actually 20 miles away. But now how am I supposed to get them to trust me/us again now? I’ve been manipulated and there’s no easy way to get that across.

Visiting a restaurant in Wyoming which is full old-timey themed. A photo posted in the review shows diners dressed up in frontier style dresses, oversized frilly things which are more Victorian extravagance than Midwestern demure. The cloth patterns remain very much Little House on the Prairie or Potato Sack Dress though, a pleasant combination. The photo’s poster has chosen to recolor their original wide angle image and overlaid a pastel rainbow coloration across it. Another interesting detail is that each table has its own container of dry ice which spills fog across the diners and food — something I would expect more for Halloween than the old west, but this is essentially a cosplay restaurant and the effect is fun. Reecy fits in well among the crowd. She told me about the place (she may have taken me, actually). But since I’m currently traveling all I have with me appropriate to wear is a colorful squarish-patterned shirt with black lapels, which feels underdressed. I find a rainbow bowtie to go with it and feel just a smidge finer.

Somewhere in here, I wake up from dental surgery, having had my chipped premolar that’s been bothering me for years finally removed — wake up in the dream, that is. I’m kind of surprised that it finally worked.

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Dream Journal

Moving Bits and Pieces

Taking down the living room wall mural at our old house. It’s assembled from big pieces of vinyl, some in smaller squares as if it were tiles. As I peel off a square, I hold it in my hand and think about how the mural is certainly big art, but only big enough the fit the space. I think about how we would need a new one for the new place because the living room wall is even bigger. Originally, this mural was just found art, but after these years looking at it I have a subtle understanding of the shades of meaning it gives, how it affects you. I realize I have insight into the message it gives when you slowly absorb it. It affects you a certain way.

Underneath the mural is the “radio cabinet” with a sliding door, which used to house a radio station transmitter many years ago. I deal with it separately out on the lawn or elsewhere. In the dream, it’s exactly the furniture piece we’ve had in the living room for many years, but in this incarnation there are circular beams which would block part of the TV — if you kept a TV in there, like they might’ve in the 60s. These support arms are worn from years of minute bouncing, as if the small motions from the rat cage above gradually wore it to splintering bits.

A few rats get loose (or I let them loose). Three scramble away immediately onto a nighttime sidewalk yet I can easily grab their tails so they don’t get away. I notice two rats performing a “leg up” maneuver to climb up a wall — though they’re far too small to get all the way over. Very cute escape artists. I help by grabbing them in my hand and placing them atop the wall. They don’t seem to know what to do!

A few fragments:

Sitting at a desk in class, my rat Porkpie climbs onto a desk of the student behind me. I grab him so he doesn’t bother them.

I joke with my friend Nancy Kleppe acting as though her name was Norma (obviously I know it’s not her name.I’m talking with her about moving.

Remember being in Punjab Chinese food while it was closed. I discover three RAM sticks (that I once pilfered from there) have since been taken out of my computer, but I think the one stick that’s left isn’t in the correct slot.

(the custom font I chose to write in today, which I may implement someday, was called “Lambrada”)

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Dream Journal

Integument Overalls, Wind-up Guinea Pigs

Setting: our apartment but different, and without that much stuff in it anymore. Oh, and we’re trying to give away what’s still there.

Reaching down between my the integument of my skin, like overalls. This fold in human biology is so easy to forget about — we don’t use it for anything and it just collects crumbs (so that’s something different in this dream.

Wind-up guinea pigs. Consider looking up how they connect inside, but I’m not sure I want to and forget to anyway. Worried I might overtighten, or that it just annoys them without actually giving energy like I’d expect it to.

Wife asking if we need to mix some creatine before Glenn gets here. It takes 20 min to set, and she thinks he’ll be here in 12. I think he’ll cancel like everyone else who comes over.

Learn about sale on sushi in Saudi Arabia. Getting dressed as if to go, which includes a sharp blue suit with low lapels. I could be known for my fashion; why not. I’m trying to tie the tie around the lower set of lapels while my wife explains how it’s actually too far to drive. It’s the same speech I’ve given myself earlier, but I don’t care. I want to see how I could look if anyone showed up or I had anywhere to be.

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Dream Journal

Empty Apartment Rooms & Old Hostel

My dad has a very late in life baby who’s still small named Rubor. Sometimes it’s spelled with an eñe over the b, a highly unusual accent.

The two front rooms of our apartment have been emptied and I can spread out stuff on the floors, reusing the space for something totally new. The rooms seem much bigger — they *are* much bigger I think. But it’s still creepy to have everything gone, though.

I’m back to my original paid-job hostel, a flat-fronted shack (possibly made from shipping containers and roll-up doors) with graffiti covering the windows. Being here finally reminds me of a girl who loved me, who I simply forgot about. Somehow my time with her just never was revisited, her story never came up again.

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Dream Journal

No Vinyl on a Boat Home

Testing out new apartment. My wife has set the glass barrier of the outside window too close, giving us not enough room. We place a “door hole” door in the wall, a device that allows you to compare the size to any residence you might be more familiar with.

But the building is on a ship and rocks at sea. One of the many sacrifices of this lifestyle, I’d say. I realize: I need to inform my wife we won’t be playing any vinyl records if we live here… a joke, but a true one…

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Dream Journal

My Building’s Social Scene

My friends (P+S) who moved away from our neighborhood are called out for still wanting to live nearby. I walk back from somewhere and get called out myself, someone greeting me by saying “it wasn’t the first time I could hear you coming by how loud your shoes are”, referencing the color (not the sound) of my bright yellow crocs.

I choose to go into my apartment a different way than usual, through the set of glass double-doors. I have to actually sneak past the small triangle-shaped convenience shop that my landlord’s family runs; it’s a bit of an afterthought and not something I’ve really seen anyone use. I’ve been in there maybe twice in the 16 years I’ve lived in the building. As I head up the half-spiral stairs I look down toward a basement entrance I’ve never used and something drops down, causing a sound. I perfunctorily call out that it “was just me” and hope the landlord’s kid in the shop doesn’t think anything further of it.

So I go in what I’d consider the back way. But the space is very different than what I remember. Instead of the liminal blank corridors that always felt empty, there are dozens of people simply hanging out. I peek into the garage space, too. There’s a Jeep being parked on a steep carpeted surface there and it seems people are socializing there too. I’d forgotten there even was an elevator, as I haven’t used it since I moved furniture in. This is a thriving social community which I’m only noticing now — more people live in my building than I realized. Perhaps this happened since the pandemic, if I’d guess. My mind is opened to the possibilities. It’s like a public library workshop, or a university student union. I wonder if my landlord even knows how many people talk to each other now.

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Dream Journal

Bad Sleep: Sutra of BigBlueBirds

Repeatedly throughout the night, I startle myself into wakefulness. I seem to unerringly repeat a cycle of soothing myself and finding at the end of that process that I’ve now fully pieced together an abstract but alarming self-truth — a truth which worries me enough to rouse myself. Perhaps in fewer words, I keep just getting to sleep but then thinking I’m probably just a big loser. Even fewer words: the sleep? Real bad.

But with diligence, once my “morning-like” arising becomes inevitable and imminent, I manage to establish: well, I must’ve slept a little, because I can remember at least a few different scraps from my dream. Or was it two dreams? Note: how long have I been writing these, and I never worried myself about dream plurals? I captured a little dreamtime, from the other side, and here that just means I really went there.


The ledge of a steep, scenic, tropical vista. I’m on a bus, riding up a road to a zoo. Bit like the road up to the Oakland Zoo, where I went not long ago with a few friends and their babies. The bus is moving toward the left (relative to my view out the window). Finally, I spot what I came here to see: giant birds nesting on the edge of the cliff, the same cliff on whose ledge our bus is driving up, with the cliff’s face behind us. It sounds silly but these birds look like… like giant puffy bluebirds. I’ll never get this across to anyone but myself (no one else has seen this, unless I’m mistaken) so this part is only for future me: dude those fuckers were fucking majestic.

I had a brief moment of surprise at how impressive they were. I mean, I came all this way for them but I couldn’t know till I was really there. And I called out impulsively like a kid, “It’s Marahute! Just like Marahute in the movie!” It immediately occurred to me that the other passengers on the bus, mostly young kids under ten, probably had no idea what I meant. It’s from when I was a kid. So for those kids: Marahute was the name of a gigantic eagle who was in a cartoon movie called Rescuers Down Under. I liked it as a kid. I mean, I still like it, but I liked it then too. Marahute had this great nest on a steep cliff that seemed surprisingly cozy (well, cozy for a giant eagle). So she really was kinda like these birds. Giant bluebirds nesting right in front of me, and me riding comfortably past so many different ones all in a long row. Man, that still sounds so cool. It kinda was.

The other dream parts were less spectacular. Once off the bus, someone took my hammock (or chair?) and put it as part of an exclusive luxury area of parked buses. I wasn’t supposed to go there necessarily; everything about the situation was confusing. So I’m processing this annoying tiny dilemma instead of seeing stuff at this cool zoo. Well I assume it’s cool; those BigBlueBirds were all I saw of it as far as I remember. Hey, does anyone know if the people in charge of this bus area, this area, that people know that hammock there is just being borrowed? Would it be possible for someone, preferably with authority to — sorry I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t, I’m having a hard time sorting out my understanding here, I didn’t mean… just, do you think someone could please make sure the private renters know I should get that hammock back? I can come back later if I know when.


This transitions somehow. If I’m guessing, I went back on a bus and the interior of the bus became the interior of a narrow apartment living room. A new apartment, my apartment, an apartment which specifically is not the one I’m living in now in non-dreamtime. But it had the same name. And we got it through some kind of arrangement, a swap or deal or something, giving up the old one. That old one is where I’m currently writing this dream down in bed. And I’m crying. Big pitiful tears, crying in my own living room, sad because I feel like this place is so, so much worse. Worse for me. Because I had the old one, once. The room here has smaller windows that nevertheless look out from every corner. A robust table, some generic vases. I think of it not as a living room, my living room, but the room with the mural. The bottom half of every wall is painted with a repeating design, of tropical leaves with each leaf a different color — but it just strikes me as amateurish, or incomplete, maybe abandoned. I feel like it should spark joy but it doesn’t. Coincidentally the mural was painted by this Jewish musician here in SF, somebody cool who I used to think I could be friends with, but our lives have since drifted so far apart I simply know: “friends” isn’t in the cards.

Jascha, that guy was you. I think you’re still in the city. Is this weird? I’m sorry if I made it weird, Jascha. I suddenly got too intimate with myself so pivoted by talking to you for a bit if that’s all good. To my knowledge you’ve never even done any murals. “Jascha needs mural-painting like a fish needs a bicycle”, that’s what I always say. Which is a terrible thing to say if you’re a full-time muralist instead of a musician now, eep. I’m sorry I never got the chance to perform my due diligence before I used your actual name this way. I hope that never causes you an issue; it’s just that I took an intentional detour as I wanted to avoid wallowing again just now exactly as I did in that dream. Maybe I said that before; I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself here. This just feels important so thank you for understanding. This conversation wasn’t your idea and I’m trying not to repeat myself — I’m sorry again — (keep it together, man) — it seems obvious that your involvement in this narrative was always rather incidental until I needed a, a, aaaaa device that’s the word and your name was right there, ready, when I reached for one. I hope that’s a decent way to treat a real person.

I really do remember such a dude (if anyone besides him is reading this).

A curiosity then, that since I happen to know he painted that boring mural (in my dream, this is about my dream last night remember?), that I also know that Jascha had once been in that same room, in that new place, painting what became a plant mural that some acquaintance would later find merely mediocre, while this (this to you, Jascha) rando indulgently wracked the depths of his self-contemptible despair. It’s not even a coincidence, your involvement in this story Jascha, as our times in that place didn’t co-incide. We both merely existed in that less-good place with its mere similarities, that place which reminded us of better places. The tropics, maybe, but that stretches belief doesn’t it. That “new” living room and that “new” apartment. Probably, it wasn’t even all that worse for you or for me. Maybe it was almost not bad. But I wouldn’t know, because the truth is I just missed the old place and was powerless to do anything about it — except go ahead and miss it, miss it so %#&{@!!! much, in privacy, alone. Alone but willfully haunted. So many ghosts yet feeling never enough.

And that was when I was sitting crying in that (tinier) living room; sad, but also sad about being sad. Because that’s something I could do. Centered among all those household things with which I was newly familiar, that I had no want to ever touch, all that innocent garbage, I simply sat with and experienced that feeling of missing my old things which were gone, which I could never again see or smell or hold or be inside, but which I still wanted with me as however I imagined. Such a terrible power. I lied to myself to make it feel worse on purpose. I wanted to intensify everything and thereby use it all up. Maybe I only hoped I was lying, that it was just such wallowing, not real at all, and I instinctively circled around actual release because I knew it would mean I’d lose one more thing. The last thing, maybe keeping me alive, because here I am.

I was piteous then, and all this is piteous now tbh, yet how incredible and how startling, that even my own pity I never wanted. I never did accept it. My pity.

I think we can be correct when we do that. Some people don’t do that. People are able to take in every other misfortune and regret and pile of shit they’ve trodden upon in their lives and say, it’s ok for me to be sad about this, and oh btw all those once-happy things. But the sadness itself, accepting our own regrets for who we were all along: it’s possible to just nope out at the last second and say “don’t give me my own pity — I’m not giving up hope — I’m not writing that down — I’m not interested in making a dream journal about this one.” What is that, some cheat code? What’s it supposed to do, keep the pity you don’t want? We do the wrong thing, the wrongest wrong thing in some situation, but weirdly because it could be the best right thing to do? Right and wrong aren’t opposites. Wait they’re not? When we define them as only opposites we miss the edge cases like this, which says to me: right and wrong aren’t opposites. You don’t always have to choose one. Maybe they’re irrelevant, or maybe you get both (which is more unusual). So maybe do what you fucking want and want what you do. Or some other confusing justification that only I seem to view as valid. None of this makes sense anymore to you dear Jascha, I sure do hope. Language is limiting, and it’s-ain’t-no-fault-a-mined.

So Jascha you’re are a musician, huh. Do you remember that song “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and how it goes? It’s an old one, yeah. Do you still like singing it?

Here I’ll add the little nugget of wisdom which has helped so much of my own insight over previous years: you are the room you’re in. Whatever that means. If it seems important, try to remember it. Repeat it if you have to.

You are the room you’re in.

Fuck this. Fuck him. That poor fucker… sorry, not you Jascha. I refer to whatever fellow might feel like he still needs to be in that private misery room. Get your fucking shit together or keep crying: those are some options my guy. Really have my sympathies dude, but I’m also not sure what to do about this situation and so I think it’s best for us both if we just stop here.

Yikes. Um, that’s sounds like the end. Well then. The dream did not have a proper ending anyway, as I recall.

Ok wait. To the real Jascha: hello again ???? I was inspired to include in the title here the word “Sutra”, both because it just felt so chill and righteous and apropos, and I’m like from California — can you tell? — and because it obviously jibes with what I can guess is (how I’m gonna put this?) your whole Buddhism deal. I’m not usually this weird I don’t think. I dunno. Still feel weird though. Thank you for letting me borrow your name. It was unexpected for me also.


Maybe this is one of those dreams I can remember long afterwards. Honestly though, maybe not. I get flashes and impressions from past dreams a lot, more since I started writing them down. It’s hardly a predictable pattern though. I’m glad this one got inscribed, you know. I’m really surprised I was able to remember it as well as I did — right now it’s 24 hours later as I’m finishing this up. Might’ve even been good writing for once [future Orin will make that evaluation at such-and-such time].

But who cares. Trying to make this exercise for something? I personally haven’t found much success with that. If I do it though, usually something somewhere in my life gets affected in interesting small ways (not so randomly), and I’ve generally liked the way it affects things. There are always exceptions. Just something to do.

Hopefully this motivates me to write down more dreams in future. Those bluebirds were cool.

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Dream Journal

A Nice Victorian Space to Fix Things and Learn

I’m being shown around a pale yellow Victorian house, with a complicated and extensive layout that is home for many. I’m considering moving in or helping folks who live there. I peer out a window in the upper floor and am confused for a moment by the jarring blank modern walls, but realize it’s the building next door. Shame… would be a beautiful view of the curved glowing sky above (is this Victorian housing complex in space?). While inspecting a niche and one of the rooms, examining how a tiny hand wash sink has been built into the alcove, I realized there’s a small gap in the baseboard that I can reach through. Probably no person has realized the space exists in many decades.

A map of the island of Hispaniola shows an exaggerated elevation relief, showing the stark vertical east-west border line. The obvious inconvenience really shows how Haiti and the Dominican Republic have been harmed by such an artificial imposed border, even one from hundreds of years ago.

In a wide-open top floor attic lounge space I take it upon myself to repair three stylish pianos. They’re arranged elegantly back-to-back in a triangle, the base ends tilted to be slightly larger. Guests of the lounge are starting to come in for the evening. I’m pleased to find that each piano has a different sound, one has a delightful 1960s electric organ tone.

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Dream Journal

They’re Painting My Home, Badly

Landlord has started painting our apartment building. I discover this sporadically, noticing the sudden changes, and never see his workers. Ugly strange patterns in garish colors, dappled sponges (like in the ’90s). I have to find him and complain, having this lack of control and this poor taste is unlivable. Usually he doesn’t do much work — and usually we don’t even complain about serious stuff. But before I can get him, I peek out into the entrance hallway and it’s transformed by a second coat into a surprisingly acceptable if bland two-tone blue.

A couple teenagers steal a bag of UK Pound coins. They dash haphazardly out into the street and spill it on the pathway of a public park, inviting everyone to grab one.

An advertisement navigates down a scenic but underdeveloped street in San Francisco, a slight slope with scrubby greenbelt on either side. Though the ad substitutes a silly marketing phrase, I eventually imagine looking to a street sign and recognize it as Jones from my time as delivery man. I picture what a single land plot would be, snug perhaps, but the kind of multi-level house that would be built in SF would accommodate several people. And it’s a few long, long rows.

Inspecting my art aquaintence Colin Fahrion’s collection of old banknotes. Ones from Bolivia, Brazil, others. In their pleasant little folios they have a fine canvas texture, yet seem to feel like tragedy, as if they bare the weight of political events long ago that they could’ve changed. Beautiful, cursed money.

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Dream Journal

Pontecruff, a Group Video Server

It’s the end of the day and I’m in the living room of my communal apartment closing up shop for the night. I stand waiting near a fridge in the wall saying goodnight to roommates one by one. I wave the door open and closed as our director (perhaps someone we just call “the director) walks past. He looks like The Dude from The Big Lebowski, and I apologize because I realize I’ve been wafting cold air into the room this whole time.

My crush comes in and asks a question about our group video server, specifically where she can put some nostalgic TV for sharing. She also asks about the name, which is something like “Pontecruff”, derived from pontiff + scruff. I give her friendly instructions and offer to make the name easier to remember. But also I confess that the functioning server was set up on the last router we had and by now the correct config is probably buried.

Waxing poetic, we reflect that the server should give you a feeling like the smell of a box of plastic VHS tapes. Dusty, familiar, a smell from another time, a collection of things you might not remember but know you want to keep.