Tag: boat

Categories
Dream Journal

Ferry Boat Findings

Just got back from a long journey home. After a while, I realize I forgot my bags on the multi-level ferry that dropped me off. Unexpectedly, I have to swim all over the delta looking for it… lots of houseboats and channels to get lost in, and weirdly, Israeli spies.

Following up on leads, I’m getting closer and I know it. I’m the neighborhood of Chicken’s boat (Chicken did actually have a boat in a Delta that I worked on, but this isn’t it). The boat is a scrappy mastless pirate-ship-looking thing sloppily painted light blue. A young man approaches in a barrel-craft and I negotiate with him for information. The ferry is hard to find for good reason, so it seems. It’s been parked for some time on a disused secondary level of a channel. Once I have that hint, I can find the local address and bootstrap my way into going there.

When I finally find it, it’s suspiciously gone downhill, fewer passengers, maintenance neglected. The crew seems nervous, too. I discover what’s been going on: trapped onboard is an unkillable giant cell, a non-sentient entity like the astral spikes in Control. They’ve been keeping it in the boat’s hold, or basement as I think of it, for some time. When I encounter it, it’s recently drugged by the crew. I help by wrapping it with duct tape. It’s immortal, so this is only a temporary fix, but I think it might actually work.

I’m given surgery to help my heart. Confusingly, it was placed a little too high. Maybe I have two now? My heart is excited to wake up, so I do. It’s an odd feeling, and I’m not sure whether to be worried… but I wonder what it means.

Categories
Dream Journal

A Whole Community Summer

Woke up from dreams… a dream of a whole summer of community…

My wife surprised me with a gift. I walk up to the open car door cuz there’s a whole crowd there, marching band even. They’re gathered around the car, and presented on the couch is an elaborately embroidered pair of pants — Chinese or maybe Tibetan patterns, zippers on both sides of the legs and snaps at the bottom so you can take them off quickly.. I found out later there’s snaps at the top so they can be taken off completely like that. There’s a tag reading $1,000… I can’t accept a pair of pants for $1,000, that’s too much responsibility for an item that I’ll actually wear. Looking closer, it seems to have been overwritten with a little orange sticker at… 64 cents!? I actually think this is a bit of joke-y marketing, and the real tag says $40 (which is an incredible price for a pair of pants like this). I don’t think I can stress enough: they’re simply gorgeous.

My cousin Kelly is begging me to tell him how to convince me to let him play a new PS2 game I have, some popular zeitgeist video game moment. But I explained the only thing I want is for him to not play it because I played it and I can tell it wouldn’t be good for him. I had to explain that, since my only goal was for him *not* to play it, there wasn’t any argument he could make to change my mind.

I have a big bag of metal cut-out letters, vintage cookie cutters I think. It’s my personal collection. I’m using it it an project, making text art on an inset wall of shelves. It’s several lines I can’t recall, but the message ends with “luv you cuz”. I end up having to monitor it because it’s super tempting for people to steal the little die cuts. I follow a shrugging gangster-looking guy who I see slip a little heart symbol in his back pocket, stomping his ass when I get him alone, crushing the little stolen heart in his back pocket and bruising his poor thieving ass. Reckon it left a heart-print that wouldn’t seem to jibe with the story of how he got it. I ask him why he would steal something like that… though oddly, I’m not mad, I just want to teach him a lesson.

Walking down a long slope to a beach like some place in Southern California, I see that Nautilus here are able to walk on their thin little tentacles like dogs, cavorting with people’s leashed dogs along the sandy sloped pathway down. I backtrack after I reach the beach wanting to get photo or video of these things, realizing they’re basically only found on that one path for now. They’re very playful, like little dogs, much more fascinating to watch than I can describe.

I’m going to hitch a ride with an expert Captain who pilots her own houseboat, getting to somewhere further away than where I want to go and backtracking closer to where I want to be. She has dramatic trouble turning out of the narrow waterway that is the port, having to perform hard turns a couple times. Something in the boat’s shaky mechanics, or maybe her captaining, is causing the massive and unwieldy houseboat to move unpredictably. After a few hard turns and close calls close (enough to get heckled by a group of vacationing Canadians drinking in lawn chairs) the boat grounds on a tiny gap of sand beach right next to the dock where it started.

Sitting in a crowd. Dara V. is about to depart, but before she does the medical guy she had hired to serve nitrous via a plastic tube (it’s tip covered with a snipped-off condom for improvised protection). He kind of beckons her, gesturing as if to say “I mean you already paid for it”. She kind of goes “ehhhh I mean… I could”. As she’s standing there I have time to study her face, and unexpectedly notice some of the subtle hints of how it’s aging, trying to imagine what it might look like when she’s even older. There’s weirdly nothing as specific as lines around the eyes or something… but I can kind of see it? There’s some distortion too, as I consider how Mar-a-Lago Face impacts visual expectations of age. I’ve been surprised before that she looked older at all — there’s always been a kind of an immortal or ethereal quality to her. Also… I didn’t even know she was into nitrous.

The tube get passed around and, comically, one of the brash younger gay guys in the crowd has a moment choking trying to deep-throat the tube. It’s unclear if this is a prank involving an actual dildo, or whether he intentionally used part of the apparatus *as a dildo* as a reference to not being able to deep-throat.

Two people have been in competition with each other all summer: a portly hip Black guy with a thick beard, and an effusive heavy-set blonde girl barfly-type. They’re dramatically playful, but still honestly trying to beat each other. He’s been trouncing her though, by a long way. He’s regularly working on stuff and has basically been making projects all summer, while she keeps dropping the ball either unluckily or sheer misjudgment. Sitting in a crowd he jokingly confronts her to do a final evaluation of their mutual efforts, which of course she laughs heartily about. He’s the winner and he seems to be bragging, but it’s the nicest way to go about winning for such a situation. She’s failed even on her own terms regardless of luck or anything else.

How does the dream end? I can’t remember. I heard a snippet of landlord outside. Nevertheless, I wrote it down. Tried a new journal app on my phone because the Oneirographer PWA was broken, again. I know these are the kind of life details that you, my dear reader, appreciate so you have proper context for all these. You’re welcome. You’re… you’re me in the future, aren’t you?

Categories
Dream Journal

Rocking the Boat (in the boat’s attic)

On a big art boat built by a community overtime. I’m on the second story in a communal attic, being shown the work still needs doing, when chicken John comes up all blustery. He’s not visibly upset to see me, reassuringly. But as he’s talking he does start exaggeratedly thumping himself against the sides of the bus-like space to emphasize some point he’s making. As this attic is well above the center of gravity, the whole thing starts rocking side-to-side rather alarmingly. Obviously it doesn’t tilt over but as this is my first time visiting that’s certainly not apparent to me. Causing me to appear startled seems to be Chicken’s modus operandi.

His bite’s still not gone.

Categories
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…

Categories
Dream Journal

The Old Hostel, a New Boat

Early in the morning I have two thematically-linked dreams that I think I’ll remember — but they’re missing now, overwritten. They were from first light perhaps 6AM (when I put on my eye mask that helps provide darkness. They feel like fruit which has been torn from the branch and had the scars crust over.

A visit the the Financial District of our town with it’s smooth asphalt roads for fancy expensive electric cars. I don’t go here often but my wife and I met here, at the old hostel. Strange to visit now. It hasn’t changed, really, but I have. Though it does have a different name — “Desert Inn ” — but the vibe of everyone there is so startlingly familiar. There’s such a strong nostalgic pain as I look over the young people socializing around the pool and courtyard. The same types of people; the kind of person I was once, in my early twenties. It’s the openness and energy, a kind of power without knowing you have power. I notice my old mentor Chicken John leaning against a wall nearby the entrance, waiting on some of his boat crew.

I haven’t seen his new boat, a big sailing ship he’s been aggressively working on for months (if social media is to be believed). I follow him onto the tall ship. This has been his new project since after we separated. He likes to keep busy. Though feigning for a moment to treat with respect, he quickly finds an excuse to demand something from his crew of lackeys — the kind of person I used to be — and leaves me as if I’m not there. The status quo. Fine for me, as I go about investigating the more interesting nooks and crannies. I end up on the lower deck of the white-painted hull, and then in an outer room that could be a sunlit dining hall with a roof of gauzy plastic sheeting. I realize the ship isn’t on water, or even docked, but set into the center of a grassy disused common. I recognized his cleverness, managing to convince some functionaries to have it permanently parked as if it were the town’s, when it’s really his private property. It looks like just any other strange vintage ship turned into a building, if you can believe it.

I head away and find a jumble of rocks artfully rolled up against what acts like a gate at the end of the common. Mossy and landscaped, I jump from tip to tip on each rock’s point… upon recollection, not unlike how I visited Point Emery in the East Bay for sunset yesterday. Although in the dream, I also do this on a bicycle.

There’s an extended sequence where I care for Chris Farley (or a very Farley-like figure). He’s a great guy but a terrible mess of a life, drugs but also personal choices, and it’s an intense job. I do this perhaps twice. I realize I won’t know how to relate this to someone who’s not done something similar. Here, writing now, I suppose I really don’t. Seemed important to remember at the time.

Categories
Dream Journal

Surviving Zombie Apocalypse / Revisiting Grandma’s House

I’m proudly surviving the zombie apocalypse. I can zap around, I’m vigilant and quick. These zombies aren’t mindless but seem to hunt together as if controlled by an overlord somewhere. Despite my cocksure attitude I’m keenly aware of being constantly in danger. The world is changed and though I’m getting on, I know this isn’t what it should be. There’s a moment where I (or someone controlling the teleporter) accidentally teleport into a classic officer’s club/New Orleans style place called the G.A.&G — which happens now to be a zombie headquarters.

Staying up the night before on a writing spree of five stories, completing an assignment from 8th grade. Could be the same year; could be decades later. I’ve cobbled together two complete stories so far, maybe three. I consider for a moment how the teacher should’ve made the deadlines spaced out. But something clicks and I realize it’s my teacher from 9th grade, while the classroom is from sixth. An idea begins to form of why it was silly to re-do the assignment. Could be the beginnings of lucidity.

I’ve collected my pet rats together in a box. These are a new set of hybrids made from recombined pieces of earlier pets (giving reality to a metaphor I’ve been using lately for when all our older rats died off last year). I carry their box as far as inside a massive building and against a partially destroyed wall of the zombie-haunted zone. The gesture is carefree, but I’m also tired. My wife points out that they can now get loose, and there are many other rats roaming here. This is exactly the idea though — they have their little gang group, a home base in the form of the box, they won’t have a better chance than this. They need to survive in the world just like us.

In the basement bowels of this apocalyptic interior I find myself nostalgically watching a TV program from the 80s. I’m lounging in a disguise. Someone next to me is apparently in a new bodysuit. I say “you must be Chris then” assuming it’s my brother. I never am sure, though.

Revisiting the neighborhood of my maternal grandma’s house. It used to be exactly 10 minutes drive from my home when I was small, maybe 4 years old. I gradually piece together how it was on Fritz street, itself a branch off Glenn street where we lived in Santa Rosa (note: we did live there but these places aren’t real). It’s been redeveloped, that much I knew — but I never guessed how I wouldn’t even recognize it. It was once an overgrown single lane like you might find in the English countryside. Due to its convenience just off transit routes now it’s a thoroughly chopped up suburban neighborhood. There’s a poorly selling development of built-out treehouses. My Nana’s house back then was a compact little warm wooden space, like the inside of a boat. It was perched on the ridge of a hill overlooking the foggy pine forests of a wide valley beyond. Even that shows scattered signs of human colonization now.

I recall the flooded channel between two ridges as I saw it as a child in the 1980s. Smoking men used to paddle across in dinghies. I witness one instance where a wheelchair was transported off the back of the boat, dragging in the water, using its electric motor as an improvised outboard. I think then, certainly not all the regulatory changes since my youth haven’t been improvements.

Categories
Dream Journal

Nightmare Picking Out Clothes

My wife is in the cab of our semitruck parked on 24th Street in our neighborhood, trying to start it up. It’s cargo is filled with furniture and things, could be a resale company or perhaps a home. As I watch from a distance safe to give directions, it quickly spins out of control, circling into stuff nearby and jumping the sidewalk.

Visiting a docked boat restaurant when I discover it’s owned by someone I know and watch on YouTube. His first name is Eduardo. In the adjoining walled sideyard, he raises livestock fowl. I count and observe groups of birds of various ages before I realize how many there are. The number I recall is 2000! He sets up to broadcast a YouTube video of eight hours of ducks marching in a huge circle — at which point I sneak out, to avoid explaining why I myself am not going to watch ducks marching that long.

On my way off the boat I encounter Chicken John, who is located behind me while I wait for the bathroom. I take the initiative and, in such a way that we don’t have to acknowledge how we know each other, I give him a hug. This cleverly avoids any possible awkwardness.

Some time later I’m in a long group cabin. Two rows of squares are taped on the floor to mark out individual sleeping areas. There’s a vibe similar to in the movie “Midsommar”, kind of culty, and the sun barely sets. Before bed my wife asks for me to fetch the teardrop-shaped blue shoes from the window ledge. Exasperated, I eventually find what she meant, though they’re neither shaped like teardrops or blue.

I awake feeling as if I’ve barely slept. A group gathering is about to begin up the hill from cabin, visible beyond an open wall. Everyone else has already left. There are vague instructions to “dress comfortably and nice” but they pointedly don’t tell us what the event will actually entail. Quickly, I feel overwhelmed –by the number of decisions so early, and the knowledge that everyone is already waiting for me to show up. It’s a feeling that I’ve failed before I’ve begun. Why would anyone force you into a situation like this as soon as you woke up? I wake up myself then, convulsing and dry-crying against one of the pillows in bed.

Categories
Dream Journal

Empty Family Home on an Island, In Australia

I’m exploring a house for sale with my Homepie friend Mickey. The attic is large and has multiple nestled little sleeping areas, a place the current residents call Monticello for reasons not known to us.

I’m having some of my old stuff shipped back from Australia, left behind from when I was there. This must happen before the river islet the Monticello house is on floods. We travel the small circular waterway via canoe. To haul the boat out of the water they’ve rigged up a garage door opener near the riverbank — clever little contraption, useful for rural living.

I pick out my stuff from the many cupboards and cabinets of the newly abandoned home. Most of this stuff I’ve forgotten (it’s been more than a decade). I can’t help but steal one thing: an iridescent plastic bowl from the 1970s, easily missed by the family and easily excused as an accident. It’s unique and oddly beautiful, and obviously unappreciated judging by where I found it.

Having everything gathered it appears that shipping is going to cost $60. I hadn’t thought about that cost and second-guess whether I want any of this stuff at all anymore.

Categories
Dream Journal

Boat, Bus, (Another Bus), and a Pretty Good Date

On a boat, minding my own business reading. Three lavatory cabins sit on the left of the boat, bobbing widely up and down in the spray. I’m friendly with the boatman, and we take a 15 minute break on a shoreline so I can get up and stretch my legs, and take a pee break outside those challenging lavatories. I watch as a water pressure rocket shoots into the sky.

Asking a girl I know out on a date. (As it happens, this girl will later become my crush.) We’re at a college, riding around on student buses, among huge institutional buildings with wide lawns laid out on a grid. I point out to her the many little groups of animal sculptures placed on balconies of an incomplete building, supposedly a tradition in Arabia and the Emirates. One group of wolves, though, is alive, and we watch enthralled as they stalk across the empty road outside our bus windows.

We go somewhere inside a big university building, a place with high-ceilinged two-story elevators. A maintenance man actually points out how they’ve recently made them nicer. There’s somewhere I think would be nice to take her for a date, but when we get there it’s a student mental health clinic (maybe we mis-navigated, maybe they moved the location). I figure this out looking through forms over the light of a desk lamp, politely decline their services, and take her somewhere nicer.

We find a plain rectangular room with a bed. I ask her directly if she’d like to have sex. Her reaction is everything: she ponders with her finger pressed to her lips, eyes cast upwards, gently scratching her now bald head. It’s a subtly amusing overacted display of thoughtfulness, and I take the time to evaluate her unique beauty. Finally she turns to me and pronounces a simple, conclusive “yes”. I smile, but realizing we haven’t actually had any regular fun yet I change tack. We snuggle up back-to-front and proceed through a card I have, a written series of jokes and responses, and she quickly picks up on it. We start to form a bond.

Again I’m a young kid, reading on a bus this time. Keep my tiny fuzzy rat Pierre under my fuzzy sweater, with the waist tucked in. My reading is interrupted by a bus guard (seem like a lot of rules on this bus) who scans me with handheld detector. But I feel uncharacteristically fine about it, and don’t worry about Pierre. My dad sits in the seat next to me. While I’m reading, the left lens of my glasses comes loose and blows out the window. I quickly try to remember the street, 45th I think, so we can go back and get it. However, the next street is 11th and the street after that is labelled 11:11.

I attempt to improvise, putting a grid of various colored glitter-water into a cat-eye-shaped lens and frame. Remarkably, the lens is the correct size, yet has a crunchy ice texture that makes it useless for reading through — but fascinating to look at. I study it intently and wonder what I could use it for, my reading forgotten.

Categories
Dream Journal

Racing the F1 Key

A third person perspective of some rival of mine, someone trying to beat my racing record. He’s hired a whole training and pit crew to help, the setting an incongruous “Anne of Green Gables” wide summer-y enclosed lawn.

I watch, knowingly, as his (boat?) craft ungraciously cuts across the rippled edge of a deceptively smooth frozen chrome path/course. He fails on his attempt with a muttered “huh”, and thereafter his many crew have to be deported back to New Zealand because their work has run out.

I remember thinking how unimaginably annoyed I’d be if I had to move back across the globe because my boss couldn’t perform. They seem to take it mostly in stride, though.

In the dream, the F1 is a floating keyboard value that can be filled (similar to yesterday’s dream), but also a reference to the race. The race itself may be called a “key”, as in the Florida keys.