Tag: bus

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Dream Journal

Well, the Cement Mixer Exploded

Walking down an alley off market street. Threatened by a character calling himself “the Jew with the knife” — not even sure he’s Jewish with his portly full beard, and he seems the type who’d find it a funny in-joke. I back off but don’t run, and my respectful reaction to his threats earns me an invite from him to a throwback hipster bar, Ri-Bread, around the corner on Market.

The folks there are a motley bunch, youngish, but low-key and slow-going. They seem all-too-familiar with knife-guy’s nonsense and welcome me with a quiet drink. I spend time staring through the 1930’s-style wraparound street window, talking with girl at a window barstool next to me.

I ride in the backseat of a truck, taking one of several branching roads to Burning Man (or possibly Camp Tipsy). I’ve never chosen to take the road the driver picks. It’s a 4×4, then a bus/RV. Making out with Robin at back of bus, staying out of the way of Chicken (the driver). My wife, meanwhile, has trouble finding her matching colorful gypsy hoodie.

We arrive and park at broad public campsite, near dusk. Chicken “parks” a stubby cement mixer/backhoe, hanging its front shovel off the now gigantic bus. I try to offer a ladder but he quickly scurries down the superstructure. A bit later I’m in a tree between our campsite and a ravine, on the property of some neighbors in rural house. I watch as the cement mixer dangles off its perch, rolling violently downhill toward the ravine. Its path of destruction passes almost directly below me, through the neighbor’s pool, crashing into the ravine beyond in a violent mess. The mixing drum explodes high into the air — an absurd and amusing sight.

From the horizon zooms an Alpinestars-branded drone, having faraway noticed the large explosion. I speedily catch it in mid-air from the tree, finally catching the interest of the neighbors there. One by one they come out. Nudists, it’s apparent. I see their oldest daughter has some obfuscation or malformation over her crotch, hiding the shape. She’s shy but shows strong interest in me.

In a traditional, king-ruled Southeast Asian country, two heads of national security organizations are imprisoned. One red-faced, one blue-faced, their intricate fully-tattooed faces are meant to intimidate and display status — but now that a revolution has come, they’re a liability for being not the least bit anonymous. The two former security chiefs are brought before a tribunal, near where the cement mixer once hung, and past where the Alpinestars drone zipped in. They speak to a young prince with round glasses, intoning to him with vague gravitas that is his “destiny is to usurp the suzerainty”.

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Dream Journal

Field Trip Rest Stop

Driving for a long time down a freeway backwards. I’m sitting in the back seat of this station wagon, enjoying my half sleep. By the time I spot a freeway exit the driver seems used to reversing, has even somewhat forgot they’re doing it. We take a rest for awhile during which time it becomes more like a sleepover class field trip.

I go to get coffee, considering whether I even want to drink much of it since I’ve been having such a nice sleep. I find a tap placed around a curved wall in rustic, 1940s era hammered enameled metal. Its label reads “Beverly” which I recognize as a generic vintage brand. I sample just a little bit. It’s honestly not bad (reminds me of my Nana), but I notice around the opposite wall, in a darker alcove, a tap for Folgers (I think this was my parents brand). Masochistically, I sample the unappealing dirt-colored liquid, then immediately plunge into a reverie about how you could drink this every morning as a parent — and fuzzily, apathetically, read a new disposable kids book to them every day.

I return to see my classmates/travel companions lined up in library-style booths. The teacher (akin to 11th grade chemistry’s Mr. Brown) has assigned a test sheet he found at the rest stop, one that even has scrawl copied at the top already. I carefully evaluate it, concluding it’s busywork of no value to anyone, and I decide it’d be better for him to have “lost” my paper if it ever matters. While gathering my stuff to leave, I check out the carpet, which will alter color to distinct shades of blue depending on how much water is spilled on it. Looks like carpet mosaic tiles.

I step outside onto a crowded patch of grass at the roadside, where many class friends are already waiting for the bus to pull round. I notice that most of us have coordinated our gear to match, and the colors we chose are mostly a few degrees away from each other. I notice Christy T. (who I went to school with from 3rd to 11th grade), has a surprisingly bright shade of khaki, the same as my big kratom bag.

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Dream Journal

Waited till Bedtime to Write This One Down

I am, after a long hiatus where I was kicked out of the in-group, back on Chicken John’s bus. We’re driving at night, sleeping in shifts, on some mission more serious than the usual Chicken bus trip. It seems he’s chosen to ignore the past between us, but while I’m fussing about with various jobs on the bus I realize that while I’m relieved to be back with my friends, I hardly trust him at all. There’s a soft, eerie glow which under-lights the driver’s seat that accentuates this.

After a wake cycle in the early morning, perhaps 7 am, the dream is echoed, reflected, continued. A group of me, my wife, Rich, perhaps others are trying to cross the Bay Bridge in Rich’s RV. There’s a closure, or a slowdown, or shutdown, and I end up re-routing us on a residential road through Marin, which is located about where Treasure Island would be on a normal map. The road turns triangular along a marina where homeowners have semi-privatized the road, and eventually we run into a yellow house which has an addition built blocking the road itself. I can tantalizingly peek between the corners to where the road beyond, but on examining the map zoomed-in I see only more privatized, road-blocking, rich-people nonsense.

I’m now sneaking about, avoiding some kind of mindless hunter-police. I’m breaking into my own home, a sandstone-colored villa. I parkour over a corner wall into the backyard, similar to the narrow gap from the yellow house earlier. I bypass a few armed guards by wending around their sight-lines. Now I’m in the long backroom, a wine cellar with sunlit arched pane windows. I crawl gecko-like along the stone wall, avoiding the searching guards, and find the alcove of the hidden room. The stray thought occurs to me, “I should really change this code, it’s too easy” before I tap the top left stone and it recedes, opening the false wall into my sanctuary/safe room. It’s a chill dark movie lounge with little colored lights and popcorn and a home theater. Like a cozy fabric-lined cave. I was really happy to spend time there.

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Dream Journal

A Dream with a Lotta Stuff

[Stefon meme] This dream has everything: spearfishing Ewoks, the greater city of Baltimore, urban renewal, a passport control office, class trips to a death spire, a mental ward with random small animals, and Lil Nas X performing a cover of a version of a David Bowie song with his dick out.

Ewoks hunting with spears by the shore of a straight, marshy river, perhaps a canal. Secretive. Traditional. Trying to return to my Ewok brethren, but floating somewhere in the greater Baltimore region — called Mellopotron (pronounced in a Greek manner). City is having a blue-collar revolution, replacing ugly cheap infrastructure (for example chain-link fencing with signs zip-tied on) with permanent works of concrete, making it look less mean but somehow more irredeemably urban, decided.

I go through a passport control office during a school field trip, a group with a field trip vibe anyway, even knowing my passport is missing. Somehow, maybe I get rapport with the guards, I get through and begin the climb with the rest of the class up a bony, jagged “death spire” at nighttime. When it’s time to go down, I break out my wings (a wingsuit? appendages?) and glide over the heads of my companions — even knowing I’d probably pay a price for the experience.

And I do. I’m interned in a mental ward, one that I’ve been in once before. Comparatively this time is a breeze, since I knew in advance what I was choosing. Still, I hide the fact from my companions. Every now and again I’ll throw out the odd mention of, for instance, how weird it was when the nurse’s station used to have its counter open to the patient’s room when no nurse was there. A small scurrying animal, maybe a rat or a lizard, creeps from one room to another undetected — perhaps a transmogrified companion? We are assembled for a special guest. Much to our surprise, rapper Lil Nas X drops from the ceiling and performs an amazing cover of Major Tom (Coming Home), in a long flowing trench-coat… with his dick out.

Flying up to what was supposed to be our lodging, a dilapidated but beautiful hand-restored floating bus house in someone’s backyard. 30 feet above the ground — which I don’t even look at — it rocks back and forth, left abandoned for what I discern is some lamentable procedural reason. I note how even in its aged state, it could still drive around the side of the multi-story house, where cargo containers are stacked up nearly to the roof.

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Dream Journal

Three Guys Troll the Bus Driver

Three guys are sitting on a bus, just behind the driver. They start reading from a binder with a script, half-pretending to be practicing for an upcoming production. But the real goal is to act out a believable conversation three people could actually have on a bus that’s so absurd, so disturbing, so weird, that the bus driver can’t ignore it. That didn’t take long, and the driver stops the bus and thoroughly chew them out, saying it doesn’t even matter whether it’s real or whatever, where would someone even get this weird-ass shit? The whole thing is hilarious to the utmost.

A school band is demoing some of their unique instruments. The one I remember has trumpet valves and horn bottom half, with a clarinet’s mouthpiece top. It ends up sounding a bit like a saxophone, actually.

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Dream Journal

Left Behind at Omura Station

Travelling by train in Japan, stop momentarily at a station called Omura. The train leaves without me and my wife is on it with both our tickets. I have to walk along the line in a foreign country, or ride the train and hope they don’t check my ticket.

The back wall of my dad’s house in Cathedral City has been stolen. I suspect it might be a construction site somewhere in the lots behind it. The city recently has only sold cheap plots, ones in the middle of blocks without good road access. Exploring this area, I pass a lane of farm trees, not knowing the neighborhood anymore. I see Fifth’s Grocery store, and a Marie Callender’s inside it. I orient myself with the mountains but it’s harder than usual. I sit and wait underneath a shady tree out of eyeline, eat a couple coconuts and scope out the area.

Climbing up a set of colorful ersatz stairs, through a vertically-tilted bus where a giant girl is sleeping in one of the bunks. I pass by her and she seems interested in me but I’m kind of on a date. My date (a younger girl with dark fluffy short hair) and I make it for a wedding on this long plateau walkway at the top, something like the Alden Royal Skyway… very underwhelming for the title. No one else seems to be there yet, but I know this is where it is.

I’m shopping for a blue vest in a small department store, even though I already have a few blue vests. The department store is in some kind of college, concrete archways and corridors.

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Dream Journal

Alaska by Rental

Renting a custom-made house in Alaska. The deal is that even though it was built just for me but if I return the keys within a week it’s free. I invite all sorts of guests and I’m a little surprised they actually show up. Dara, Autumn, others. It’s summer and I never done anything like this, the novelty is refreshing.

As I’m leaving one of the bunker-like buildings in town, I see a folded wad of cash wrapped on the outside with a $2 bill. I shrug, very much expecting I’m being watched and recorded for some TV. It feels very new for me to simply decide not to take it, but I’m feeling like that’s the point.

I take a bus there and back to return the keys, and along the way play a video game. Called “Jonsi’s Hole”, mostly black and red text, but the it seems the money items don’t save properly. I’m really enjoying the bus trip and remember thinking that I’m oddly suited to it. Perhaps also that I wouldn’t feel that way if I did it all the time.

Watching a snake, Circe, crawl up a sloping street along the midline. Crossing its path and allowing it to pass, watching it speedily make its way up the hill, it’s body moving so powerfully it looks like parts of its curves are little legs.

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Dream Journal

Big School Hallway

Middle School classroom, teacher is having difficulty trying to get us to actually leave our desks in disarray when we’re dismissed. A student teacher answers a phone call. The desk behind me has a roll of foil in it. We could fit all the students in a bus, squeezing double into every seat, but the bus would weigh so much it would drag.

I go on Space Mountain three times. Shoot some video of Ty as the operator, waving the space transports in.

A girl, topless, is crying (could it be Jaime Silva from 8th grade?). I take the opportunity besides all the other guys to actually console her. Go in for a very tactical hug, not holding her anywhere even moderately sexual, light light touch just on the elbows and forearms. She’s relieved and thanks me, and apologizes that her personal censor doesn’t allow me to see anything below her neck. I nod kindly and don’t mention that it does.

The class is then exploring a building which is a very long, wide hallway. I’m the only one to discover a door in the side, with a tiny little inter-door space, and another identical door. There’s even an attic door when I look up. I go inside and it’s a single-occupancy apartment with the TV still on. It makes the lines of the building stick out and should be easy to see from the outside. I get the impression that outside is the Sahara desert though, like something out of Dr. Strange.

I continue walking around the hallway with my classmates, recall the topless girl story and mentally review it, remembering it as important. (This is likely a consequence from my practice of my dream journaling practice.)

I walk down the hall to see my wife. She’s stressed and just as I’m walking down our hall, she mentions the door in the hallway could shut at any point. Of course, right at that moment, a door midway down the hallway — which was never there before — swings shut right in front of me.

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Dream Journal

Parking the Chicken Bus, Like I’m Bonafide

Accepted back into the Chicken community somehow. I help park the big RV/bus even though with its large overhang and narrow windows it should’ve been difficult. I leave it out of park as there’s some finesse Chicken is very finicky about. Next to the driver’s seat is a compartment of fuel tanks that look like molded glass, the long fuel lines permitting the driver to switch them out mid-journey. I’ve seen everyone but Chicken, who finally appears, and I anticipate a quiet, amicably awkward minute… I grab the top half of a crocodile skull to just, you know, casually hold while we sit there. I wake up right then and it’s still half an hour till I have to move the car.

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Dream Journal

Still Helping the Hassnaldis

Project I’m working on for Chicken (or some boss like Chicken) is a large, decorated, blue-tone fishtank. We work with masks on, I think. The last part to be done is add a large, scale-less, small-eyed fish, similar to an electric eel. At that point the tank gets partially obscured by a mattress, and it’s surface moves like a waterbed.

In a storage drawer, in a small anteroom off to the left, I find the huge preserved head of a predatory flightless bird, either a Moa or Elephant Bird or Roc, and playfully bite with it’s detached jaw and cranium.

Doorway with viewing windows at head level and foot, doorbell rings and outside are trick-or-treaters! Somehow everyone inside has forgotten it’s Halloween, and all our lights are still on.

Traveling by a handbuilt wooden bus, connected with a matching wooden trailer, a long and capacious artsy space. Chicken is absorbed driving. I’m at the very back with Eileen.

Helping Eileen in the city of Shenzhen, navigating an inconvenient alleyway obviously not designed for people. She rides a bulky horse named Henry clopping up an oversize stone stairway. At the end of this linear maze of a commercial zone, under an alcove are samples of pre-made snacks. One is decent, the others flavors are unfamailiar and unsuitable to serve in a cafe, and Eileen says as much.