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Dream Journal

Rocks, Parks, Plants, and Avatars

Driving down what seems like a miniature Hot Wheels freeway in San Francisco, through a rocky little cactus and succulent park. I take what must be a wrong turn and continue driving over the road, but it’s now invisible. It’s disconcertingly like flying between the channel of rocks.

I come out the other end at a corner, noticing a small sedan parked just to the side of the intersection, practically in the crosswalk under a tree and sticking out into the lane. It appears to have been there a while as there are pieces of broken-off succulent plant growing on the street around their car. I consider rescuing some to take home.

Instead, I enter uninvited into the condo-like apartment building, in the tall flat block adjacent the intersection. There’s no lights on inside, and it has a “Miami retiree” vibe. I get lost in the maze of bathrooms, trying to leave feels like going through one after another, in the dim interior twilight.

Once I’m outside, I start writing a note to explain how the invisible road in the park must be fixed, and in the process one of the rent-by-hour bikes that’s always parked on the sidewalk in San Francisco gets knocked down. An older, gray-haired motorcycle-type guy with a goatee, his outfit covered in motorsports logos, reflexively tells me it’s knocked over and I should leave a note. He’s just passing by and doesn’t even seem to have any investment. I gather myself and rush after him and ask him pointedly “why did you feel you had to say that?” He immediately understands it was unnecessarily bossy and apologizes, yet I agree I will leave a note and say I’m sorry.

Afterwards, I use a personal gliding machine to fly directly above the rocky triangle-shaped park. There are huge spherical floating balloons holding up art projects, the work of one artist not long ago. I fly low enough to graze them. In a fit of enjoyment, I fly low over the street, wobbling to and fro between the lanes as I idly ply the neighborhood.


Walking between two fancy houses on the seaside. Modernist concrete right angled things, floor to ceiling windows overlooking long patios which double as piers, covered in tasteful potted plants. I walk between two of them (neither of which I have permission to be on) and observe how their roofs hold up a flat trellis between the homes. (The orientation switches at some point, as if I’d been looking toward the sea, or looking toward the street.) I imagine hanging a certain pitcher plant perfectly in between the two homes, such that it overhangs the walkway.

I am, by this point, also an Avatar Aang type character. A younger girl, resident of one of the fancy homes, lays down on the concrete, bereft of energy. In what I understand to be a friendly gesture, I dip my nose into her exposed armpit. I must’ve been invisible to her before, as she startles and knocks me backwards. In penance I turn myself into a potted plant with tall pointy leaves, called a snake plant. I watch the clock fast forward by a factor of 36, while in the background my unknowing allies search for the Avatar.

Categories
Dream Journal

Body Snatching, a Tricky Family Role

It’s a big budget music video parody shoot, on the caliber of Saturday Night Live. The gag is that there’s too many words to fit, lots of nonsense scatting and repetition of catchphrases. It has to be cut early because the singer’s pun of “pear of genes” has been ruined by colored pineapples in the background instead of pears.


I’m a speedboat valet, participating in a training program which shows how to correctly give up your life battoning down doors during a hurricane. I’m with another bro-type dude, and we later sink together into a tumultuous sea giving each other fistbumps.


In Asian-feeling apartment quarters, taking possession of bodies, and playing different roles. An Uncle Iroh-like character from Avatar: Last Airbender. Taking a body and talking to my real-life aunt, but though I need to accomplish a task, I suspect I’m failing to play the role well enough — she may begin to believe I’m not her sister, my mom.

A load of cookies on the stove, the recipe includes letting them float in water to seal in flavor. I have an internal argument with the mom-spirit, where she keeps insisting how I’m doing it wrong. In faux anger I pretend I’m about to slap a stylish black girl with silvery metallic bangs, but she reacts somehow the right way. So I ask her why she reacted that way, and she answers, sensibly “because I thought you were going to slap me”. I say, “if that’s the way you reacted to me about to slap you, you reacted correctly, because I didn’t slap you.” Hmm.