Tag: architecture

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Dream Journal

’36, Night Crashers 2

“Night Crasher” was a famous storm (perhaps even hurricane) which — you might be surprised to learn — was actually promoted by Hollywood and its movie stars in 1936. There are posters and other artifacts which I find fascinating and puzzling. Why promote a storm, and how did they know it was coming? Was it a real storm? I’m fairly certain it was a real film, as was alive to remember its decades-late sequel “Night Crasher 2”, released in the early ’90s.

A quaint, yellowed old-timey map shows a staggered row of island groups between the latitude above Australia and south of the equator. Never before have I seen these islands so presented (either grouped, or as a timeline) showing the odd order they were discovered, claimed, and settled. The map is even illustrated with cute icons to be helpful and memorable. Once again, this map was actually promoted by Hollywood media types at the time (so perhaps also from the 1930s).

I’m a small spry man of indeterminate age riding as a passenger in a car’s backseat. My companions and I travel at night in drizzly rain through an unfamiliar neighborhood. I’m not too familiar with my companions either, but they’ve also never been here. There’s an unacknowledged tension — as if we are all on a mission none of us signed up for. I weigh the balance of providing directions versus disturbing the group dynamic.

Soon it must be tested anyway; we arrive at our first destination. I tromp up a steep hillside of industrial scree to the curved wall of a concrete bunker. I’m the only one to have dealt with these people before, at some village-scale trade negotiations. With the vantage from climbing I now can see into their unobscured control room — no ceiling, disorderly but oft-used, a place of daily work for the overworked. We are summarily buzzed in and I must hop quickly after my taller male companion, as the timed doors close promptly after me.

An insouciant gray-haired lady greets us by suggesting we wait and go play table tennis. My companion is young and likes tasks requiring only brawn. He needs handholding, so I try to assure him that he simply doesn’t understand their ways here: they mean no disrespect, neither is it some kind of test. We really do only have to kill time. And pleasantly there is an actual pool table (or close enough).

After a while I leave through a different door within this compound, wanting to go outside to break up the time. Unexpectedly I encounter what must be the concert of the season going on… many people I know in wider social circles are seated across loads of metal balconies in this half stadium, all reveling. I’m glad I’m there: a few friends start hanging off the balcony rails; by chance I know the structure’s particular weaknesses. Once again I weigh the prudence of sharing advice. I’m glad I do share it this time, though.

Returning to the main room of the place, this industrial business compound, I meet up with my occasional friend Chloe. A great song starts playing and we spontaneously dance around the pool table. Turned away, with our butts pressed together, she offers a friendly warning: “don’t think this means any more than what it really does”. While playfully bumping/humping her from behind I respond in kind by quoting Rick Astley, “you know the game, and so do I.” This response lands well and I’m glad we’re on the level.

In my wallet I save keepsake political art made to look like dollar bills. These are even valid currency in some odd cases. I am only reminded when I go to pay for something (maybe the jukebox?) and I notice a $39 bill. It’s collectible, a feminist pro-union message as I recall, supporting daycare access for working women. Another one is an otherwise normal boring $10 bill. It’s design is so incredibly plain and modern that the overall effect strangely exotic. A sleeper hit, I guess we’d call it.

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Dream Journal

Flowerpot Micturator, Property Lines from Above

I get a sneaking suspicion, a strange feeling to check the backyard. I just catch someone who looks like the landlord’s soon peeing in a potted plant downstairs in the corner. Though I race down, whoever he is has gone into one of the disorganized downstairs storage rooms. Even though I have access to them, I’ve already lost the trail.

From a view high above what might be the English countryside, studying the distribution of settlement. Perceive the compounding of development, long stretches encompassing multiple human lifetimes. Switching to a view the property lines, I notice a spot where the markings are smaller and crowded together, a little lake in the middle distance. The architecture is a bit strange, fitting on to misshapen hexagonal plots, catering to the whims of the wealthy who could build at such location. A modernist concrete barn with few windows cited close to a low point near the lake.

Recently, I was closely examining satellite photos of a sheltered neighborhood in my city whose streets I never knew existed.

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Dream Journal

Frozen Offices, Freezing Time

Ambling along a boring straight street of an office park. Boring isn’t the right word — faceless, eerie, liminal are better. With my every step the foam façade exteriors creak, with age, even with just the wind. Like the entire place has been ignored since the 1980s. Starting to feel like I’m sneaking around. I stop to read the plaque next to a door; it’s a video game company that hasn’t made anything since 1989 yet claims to be releasing a new game in a week. And there it is, on a plaque of all things.

In their offices I start zooming around, teleporting and phasing through rooms. I use an ability to freeze or slow down time. People really do work in these identical offices, and there are many of them. Cheerier than I’d expect. Unexplainably like New Orleans in the winter. Bland, predictable, the same old conference rooms, but in good condition. I inspect the structure from inside the walls and it’s sound.

In the middle of the office space I begin operating on pair of dogs (or maybe donkeys), male and female.

Brushing my friend Tracy’s arm with a smooth flat hair brush. Her husband Don watches me carefully but with calm apathy.

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Dream Journal

Mayan Revival Mall in Berlin

In a six-story mall in Berlin. Exotic, asymmetrical, grand Mayan revival architecture, with tall vertical metal pylons repeated in a semicircle over an open courtyard. Comfortable walking spaces outside stores with benches and landscape detailing — almost a zen garden feel. The bottom-most floor has a moat-like pool environment with fantastical fossils embedded in the wall, giving an impression of the underworld. A restaurant with glass windows sits at that level, affording views both above and below water. Watching a promotional 3D documentary that zooms through the space excitingly as if from the perspective of a quadcopter, lurching so dramatically it’s regarded as an accomplishment to finish watching. It would’ve been so much simpler to see a human dive instead.

I’m wandering by myself on the ground floor of the atrium courtyard, trying to navigate by learning about the place in the past. I’m able to spot escalators that are closed, blocked off and partially demolished, with a meager sign at the top. I travel some distance riding a smooth-bottomed sledge across an almost too quiet expanse of open mall, at one point skidding noisily over the grating around a single tree planter. The Germans around me politely pretend not to notice.

Just up a single fight of stairs, I come across an isolated second floor balcony where I can appreciate the gauzy indoor sunlight illuminating the large space. Available there is a specialty video service which I peruse, almost all documentaries. I scroll through the acting credits, looking to confirm someone’s claim from an earlier conversation — that even in an ego-centric milieu like Hollywood there’s always going to be one ego that sticks out for every project. On this list I find an elaborate headshot of William Shatner posed with his dogs, which seems to prove the adage.

There’s also an organized section with global syndicated newspapers, even one from Sacramento in fact. I open up the interface and the very first story is about North San Juan (a small town I visited in June to look at a house). The District Attorney’s office is being refurbished in anticipation of a new DA, and someone is writing to complain. Apparently, although the office is the size of a shack, it has a large flat yard where someone has been scraping out valuable ashes for agriculture. Tragedy of the commons type thing, but with the twist that the DA that would prosecute isn’t there yet. It kind of blows my mind that I immediately find such a local story in such a faraway place.

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Dream Journal

Bait Locker, Alien Repellent, Rustbucket RV-land

In a locker room, lots of stuff I need to gather. I head out once my time is over, my two friends waiting outside the heavy glass door, before realizing I still left a bunch of stuff. In the bottom half of the locker, the compartment is open so I can reach in and find other people things. There’s at least a few pieces of funny money left as a trap, I assume. The steam room hot tub adventure cost at least a couple hundred bucks.

I am a scientist like Rick Sanchez and I’m inside my house during the course of an insectoid invasion. I am one of the only people with an alien-repellent sound barrier. The insect forces go to great links with transparently fake news reporter interviews trying to discover how it works and to overcome it. I see a diagram of the architectural plan of the house with the bedroom just outside the laboratory and the clean room.

I’m in the small kitchen of my family’s old Cathedral City house. About twice as many people live with us now, and I think of them as in my family. There are two refrigerators and an upright freezer next to each other and we’re even thinking of putting another refrigerator blocking off the counter corner. I’m using a glass tray to keep a group of aquarium feeder worms alive. I have to use the same tray to store macaroni and cheese above the worms. Meanwhile, two younger kids are bothering me, throwing food and interrupting my project. I ask my dad, who is staring into space eating cereal, to tell them throwing food wasn’t okay. He responds apathetically, and in frustration I fling a spoonful of grits at him, spraying the entire kitchen corner. He still doesn’t react.

I move into a community of rustbucket houses. Old RVs and trailers are pushed together into a complex warren-like structure — everyone seems to have built a private hobby space so they can sneak off by themselves to do work, camp chairs inside old shipping containers stocked with rebar. One green RV from the ’40s has a particularly unpleasant individual in it, but a beautiful slide-off stove in the kitchen, converted to be an outdoor courtyard. It’s a very welcoming community, but also “is this how poor people really are?” is a question that comes up. At some point I try to see if I can build a large house on one of the unfilled plots of land. The small house just downhill from the main road was one of the first built.

We go off and drive on an adventure in an old VW van. We stop at a large gate down the road, waiting with an invisibility power-up activated. When a train comes behind us the gate opens and we can use a speed boost to drive overland far away from where we’ve driven before. What would take 20 minutes only takes about 3, but we still don’t reach our destination — a place called Challengeburg.