Tag: car

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Dream Journal

Bathtub, Petting Pet Rats, Cracked Windshield

Long time in the bathtub together with my wife. Soaking at opposite ends, both on our phones. Searching for a song I’m trying to remember, something relevant to our conversation. I step out of the bath for a second to go to the bathroom door, noticing that I have a boot and sock on my right foot, which I’ve been hanging out the bathtub this whole time without thinking about it.

Petting my rats in their cage, petting all of them by name. Swapping between old ones and new ones. Xolito gets pets. I notice how much slower my older rats are, much easier and accepting of affection. I’m trying to remember something about one of our newer rats, where I got it, or maybe what its name was — something like Lapassan Confederacy? This is mixed up with the other drain or I was trying to remember.

I need to get the car key back from my former friend Sarah G., who lives in the East Bay instead of the Mission (like she really does). As I arrive at the parked car I remember I need to let her know I’m coming in case she’s not home — but I realize I still have the other key to drive right now so it doesn’t matter as much. I find the car’s windshield cracked open in a very specific way on the driver’s side. I’d kind of been expecting this what with the age of the car. It’s always some damn thing. I immediately take some pictures as evidence, but realize my tarp is still partially laying over the car — insurance might blame me for that, despite how silly that theory is. I pull it off and lay over a nearby electrical wire under a tree over the sidewalk.

Fragments:

  • Wandering the streets of New York (or maybe the Mission District in earlier days) looking for Zorhan Mamdani.
  • Burning Man — what about Burning Man? Seems like a setting from much earlier in the dream sequence, but no idea its relation to anything else.
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Dream Journal

Coming Storm, a Gift

There’s going to be a big lightning storm soon. Inside the converted big box store where I live in a community of fringe hangers-on, preparations are being made. So much so that things can go under the radar…

The image of a thunderbolt striking the power substation dominates the attention of many — it’s easy to imagine. Meanwhile, I’m concentrated on the carriage-like antique atop one of the aisle shelves, that’s been there long enough it no longer even has an owner.

Things happen after, but are forgotten. Maybe I steal the carriage. Maybe I ride away in it. Do I cause the thunderbolt? My waking self remembered, but was calm. Many times, I’ve struggled with the responsibility of capturing these dreams. This one just flowed. My morning felt grounded, imperturbable. I hesitate to interpret precisely why. A gift, unquestioned.

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Dream Journal

Pick Up and Drop Off

I watch letters change on paper, morphing/fading from “will” to “was”. This seems a parallel to the Wikipedia phenomenon of people altering a person’s page to past tense when they die. I can’t be sure how, but this has to do with a boyfriend of Dara V.

Along the back fence of my childhood home I walk along the top of the narrow brick wall. There didn’t used to be buildings there when I was growing up, but now some neighbors have put their chairs on the balcony as close as they can to our yard, so they directly see everything. I find myself not only annoyed, but feeling this is unjust somehow.

Near the corner of the back fence I stand with a goth girl waiting for her ride. A car speeds past us at the stop and swerves head-on into a tree. It’s shocking to see this happen in person. I actually wonder now if I somehow slept through a traffic accident outside my window and integrated that into the narrative…

Later I’m dropping off a women at a grand yet modern palace, many stories tall with underground car access. This place exists in many timelines, yet it’s a good place in any timeline to be a woman. It’s agreed that her name here will be “Christina”. On the map this place is marked as… I can’t recall; it seems this detail was overwritten. But it’s something to do with deadly subterfuge or sabotage. Not that she herself will do any killing, but she may be the cause of their death.

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Dream Journal

SoCal and Canada, Onto Remote Paths

It’s been a few months since I moved back to my hometown. I’m travelling by night around the square grid of streets, chasing a car somewhere in the sprawl of hotels and country clubs. I unintentionally drop some utensils out the car window a few blocks before I take a hard left turn trying to catch the fleeing car of my middle school friend Stephen Colson.

Outside a fancy apartment building where I’m staying, or perhaps considering renting, I watch a billboard collapse. From the outdoor wraparound communal balcony I watch the face of Will Smith fall into pieces, the billboard’s gimmicky mechanical baubles scattering across the Los Angeles street below.

At a location across from Disneyland is a store which I remember I’ve been before. It’s austere on the outside, the humbleness of the shopkeeper’s simple living a contrast to it’s famous neighbor. The only thing I can remember of it’s features are that the building had an address, and a little black girl sometimes stood outside.

I notice next door is a new store with no external indicators of what it sells. It’s even narrower and plainer, almost liminal in the sense that I don’t know if I’m supposed to be in there. Inside, the merchandise is sparse and I proceed down the hallway-like space. Instead of a back room, it leads into a hippie-bohemian styled space with a glass frontage to an indoor mall. There’s a piece in the front window that I inspect. The place smells of good leather.

I’m marching across a creek in what feels like the Canadian wilderness. Attractive female strangers pass by, having just crossed the creek as well, as I wait for my female companion to catch up. I lean one-legged with my walking stick and reflect on promiscuity. Chattering on to my companion (my wife probably) it feels as though I’m deliberately ignoring the cute girls, which almost seems rude. We proceed down the hiking trail. I keep unusually good notes along the way. We pass by a series of lakes, getting more and more remote. I put on several circle stickers in sequence on my foam shoe, their handwritten messages spelling out a story. When it seems finished I take a photo.

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Dream Journal

Rearranging the Formal Garden

Picking out from a line of available cars from grandma, who has passed on her collection. I realize after I’ve made my pick that I was only considering between the cars in a certain category that felt like the one that was supposed to be mine, neglecting to evaluate if there were better options in other categories.

Watching Dune 2 in a very long oversized movie theater, the rows separated by big distances so those in front or behind don’t disturb each other. I feel as though I am a powerful or dangerous entity here, as though I am hiding my power level. But others could be too.

On screen, the movie is more reminiscent of the setting of Dune 2 than the story. We pan over an extended slope of sandy hill with dunes, a helicopter (or more likely a ‘thopter) plunging into them. A friend, Andi, is a character there in the film setting.

A few of my rats have a deep tangerine tinge to them. Concerned, I search around and discover they’ve gotten into a container of cranberries. My wife soon notices them lying on their sides together covering in the almost-red goo and I’m able to quickly explain that they only ate a bunch of the cranberries and destroyed the box.

Moving benches in a formal garden, split into quarters. Place one bench diagonally in the center of a raised grass square which is girded with brick. I move the other benches together on the opposite side to make a denser gathering space there. In order to push them against the far wall, I have to move a long pair of risers stacked one on the other. Those turn out to be mirrored L-shaped equipment movers, with heavy duty wheels on one end. They might prove very useful in the future.

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Dream Journal

Skilled Work in a Work Tent

A long day of work in an enclosed tent area, where I’m left in charge after. A couple that had been working on a car were idly painting a chair purple. The work is patchy, only grazing the surface of the woven fabric, the threads giving a textured grid appearance. Given my broader skillsket I’m able to more easily imbue the upholstery with an even saturation of dark rich dye, which comes to a nice burgundy — while I’m completing other projects after others have gone home, mind you. I hope the couple appreciates my job, but it occurs to me that I’ve completely overpainted their work.

I leave once my tasks in that area of the tent/garage are finished and go up to a white office with a receptionist window. I still need to replicate a car key for an old roadster, and the materials we’re using are a stack of glued-together plastic cards. This is going to be tricky and I don’t know how I can properly delegate it.

As representative for Trump, I take out an orange coat of his and set it out like a scarecrow in the front yard of my childhood home. And then, the singing of the song “Wimoweh” begins. Thus begins the celebration of him finally going to prison.

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Dream Journal

Hang Gliding in the Dark

Someone has stolen the truckbed, the entire back half of my pickup, from where it was parked on the street outside my apartment. I set up a rainbow umbrella while I’m attempting to deal with it but it partially blocks the sidewalk.

I’m part of a kink community event. Rich takes on a dog persona. Parked nearby is a car with two vanity plates, but in reversed order, should read something like PSU-DO 640,000.

I’m sitting on a large flat rock, outside a compound built into massive stone. Perhaps this is where the event is. I’m under this big rock overhang, kind of has a feel like the forest from a cartoon (like the Smurfs or David the Gnome).

Hang gliding in the dark from the perch of a promontory, despite that I’ve been told I shouldn’t because it’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s dangerous for me. The silhouetted treelines are gorgeous. While flying overhead avoiding it’s dark streets, I think about the problem of a town which is in this beautiful natural area, but which was allowed to be built crowded and ugly. I make a certain bird sound as I fly up toward a ridge. Learning of an old growth giant sequoia which was cut down here, then tracing it through history from the late 1800s. It seems it was never fully processed and was allowed to rot in place. The tree possibly grew back from that remnant, which I’ve never encountered before. A woman talks about the appearance of the tree from behind newsdesk cut out in the base of another tree, comparing the regrown tree to “cum, a kind of spirit”.

Records of what happened to it are very scant though.

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Dream Journal

Nice Town to Get Your Car Towed

A straight street in the grid of an unfamiliar tourist town. I park underneath the eucalyptus, with a view to the sandy ocean beach further. Maybe somewhere in central California. There’s some stalling — young lovers saying goodbye in their own car parked in the right lane. When I step out I discover the charming miniatures set up on the asphalt road, placed by local art grant no doubt. I warn the young lovers of them. I go back shortly thereafter and  find that the tiny tourist town has already towed both of my rental cars. My immediate thought — perhaps maturely, or even fatalistically — is that I need to make it to the impound lot as fast as I can to save money on added fees.

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Dream Journal

Mad at the Sunset at Mustard Truck Ranch

Throughout these dreams there’s an indescribable water park vibe. No theories why, just imagine there’s a waterpark involved. And: a certain man’s wife features in every scene.

Staying as a guest at a ranch. On an outdoor table with benches I notice that the pepper I planted has grown wildly, sucking all the goodness out of its soil. At its base it’s produced a big wrinkly pepper fruit. An unruly stem of 50 cloned plantlets hangs so long it droops over the table’s edge.

Holed up at the semi-remote ranch I defer going to school all day. Counting the hours, missing one class after another, bargaining with myself the whole time. Step outside and look between the gateposts — just in time to catch the sunset framed between them, just touching the horizon. I yell at the sun in frustration, “I wanted to have a day! Fuck you!” It’s like a picture I saw of a sunset in an old vinyl album — evocative in its plainness somehow.

From behind me, I hear the main front door to the ranch open. I don’t wish to interact with anyone at the moment; there’s a baseball hat dude and his wife that I’m not fond of either. They’ve not done anything actually rude yet but I don’t want to give them the chance to.

Along one of the side streets bordering the big compound a group and I encounter a charming little food truck. It’s an old woody station wagon, green and yellow, called The Mustard Truck. They serve warm pretzels and beer and English bar snacks. Surprised, I observe that it wouldn’t actually be that bad living here if there’s things like this to be found.

From the winding sidewalk of small park near a courthouse, I step into the street. I pass a woman I recognize, the wife of Sam Gamgee from Lord of the Rings. This would be Rosie Cotton as per the books — then again but I might instead be thinking of the actor who played Sam Gamgee. A little down the road I watch a car struggling to pass a lady dragging a cart as they’re all in a tunnel. She shouts “passenger!” as it overtakes her. A roundabout way of claiming her rights to use the road (just as a car) but avoiding shouting “car” because that’d only reinforce a second-class ideology. Car, apparently, being the traditional shout.

I’m sitting across the table with some female YouTuber, someone whose stuff I watch (can’t recall who though). We discover we both know this cart lady. I relate this story of her shouting in the tunnel and we share a good laugh. I list a bunch of other YouTubers who might know her (this is why I can’t pin down who I’m talking to: I mention everyone I might be talking to).

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Dream Journal

Fossil Comes to Life

Finally invited over to home of acquaintance Colin F. and put to work draining oil from classic 1950s car. Not great at it, and I’ve attempted this job in the past. It’s cool checking out his space though. A plastic 3/4 profile relief head of my friend Autumn T. is attached high on a wall. It occurs to me that this angle, while unusual for a relief, looks better than the dead-on one of her I previously have seen.

In a shallow riverbed I stumble across a perfectly intact fossil skeleton of a raptor (or primitive human) embedded just under the water. I know I’m either very lucky or someone must’ve found this before and left it here. Ritualistically, my partner and I light a tall candle and the fossil comes to life, darting all over and wreaking havoc. I start filming on my phone as this terrifying moment has become a cautionary tale, for young people perhaps. I perform a secret move by cutting off the video to abruptly stop the experience.

While leaning against an L-shaped fence with a middle-school classmate, Amy Pollard, I impulsively tell her she’s pretty. But she calls my bluff and asks me to repeat it. I mangle and abstract my rephrasing into something barely relatable along a formula like “___ is she; ___ is he”. I then openly chide myself for phrasing both people as objects — objects of a sentence, thus objectifying them.

Artistic sequence of a herd of animals, the animal models doubling then all morphing into a different bigger animals. So a rat is stacked on rat which then blends into cat, those cats are then doubled and form dogs etc. I get excited to see what larger animal will be chosen next; the sequence gets to doubles of cows but the next animal is a bizarre model of a cow with two independent heads one on top of another.