Tag: class

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Dream Journal

Dord: Abbreviation of Density

An unusually intimate experience with density, by melding inside layers of a substance. Understanding the thickness of a substrate, then coming up a less dense surface layer. Watching how a new member of SNL is playing a person good at darts, or temperature. Understanding how this can replicate the circumstances from a famous murder mystery case.

Dord, a notable accidental word added to the dictionary during the 20th century, is my odd gateway to finding this experience. It was meant to be a reference to an abbreviation for density, D or d.

A camping trip up a hill. A tram takes you up in a loop, with the station dropping you off along the length of a tree-dotted ridgetop in a long cycle — if you miss your timing you could be waiting for it to come back for a long while. It’s scenic and sparse up there, reminding me of some places in Arizona. I’ve just completed an outdoor class I was assigned as part of my work (this isn’t entirely a vacation) and now have the unforeseen opportunity to take the next class. The professor, who I know, is going to share an in-depth presentation on love. I have a short time to decide and I’m very tempted…

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Dream Journal

Down and Up Again, a Group Celebration

The dream is a narrative following the linear story of a celebration at the end of a year. Some group effort, a school year or perhaps a big work project. We’re all retracing the year-long path together.

First we walk single file downstairs to the lower level, a rocky coastline where our cohort frolics in the ocean. There are flashes of a Monty Python scene: cutlass vs. rapier. A man dressed in an ancient Semitic priest costume bonks someone over the head with the flat side of the cutlass. Not long after, I have the cutlass strapped to my back, climbing over a small crag as a wave crashes over.

After the coastal area we collectively filter up to the windows of a doctor’s office. There we are informed that while there is an elevator, we are supposedly to pay the fee here at the window of $159.

Obviously this is a non-starter. There’s a line of my classmate/workmate friends waiting to ascend the stairs back up for our final 4/6 of the schedule program

I remember in particular one of my classmates is Stephanie Sukhram. She is unique in this case as I went to school with her between 4th to 11th grade. She became a doctor herself but died of ovarian cancer soon after graduating (which I learned much later trying to research her online).

One of the last images is of a dusty keyboard, which I pick clean of spiderwebs and other debris and cruft. Later in the day I’d be typing something important, though I didn’t know it when I had the dream.

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Dream Journal

Werewolf Decal, Didn’t Expect School

Traveling via train. Someone is surprised I paid to sleep inside; they thought I’d just sleep on the roof. But I figured I wouldn’t get good rest, since I would worry about having to wake up to duck tunnels.

I attach a large werewolf decal to several corner desks while a classroom is empty. This is a mascot for me, maybe a video game companion or player class. Unexpectedly, the class fills up in a short time (when it should’ve been empty, for the summer or something).

An instructor asks for my ticket. For any of multiple tickets I’m supposed to have. I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, I wasn’t planning on attending a class, just wanted the space of the classroom. I expect they’ll send me to the office to get it, at which point I’ll ditch and have to go without my cool werewolf art.

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Dream Journal

Disrupting Sponsored Classroom Propaganda (plus, a Girl’s Fence-Butt)

Three times during the night’s dreams I find myself in a situation where a young girl expresses her attraction to me: one Scottish, one Japanese, and one American. Though hypothetically sketchy, I don’t sense any impropriety. I’ve been acting like my usual self (perhaps in a slightly better mood) and me being a target of infatuation seems like harmless fun all round. It’s also odd and sort of a running joke that it keeps happening; not sure what else I should do but take it in good humor.

One girl, memorably, sees we’re alone then smushes her undie-clad butt against the diamonds of a chain-link fence. Looks a little like the pillowy pattern on a sewn duvet? Maybe an elaborate pie crust? Ridiculous.

As a candidate, President Biden famously enjoyed traveling on the campaign tour bus. Now, a new All-American Travel Bus is made based on that design. One even meets presidential limo standards set by the Secret Service.

I show up to one of my regular classrooms as usual, though I quickly discover it’s officially an “optional” day — I didn’t need to show up but now I’m already here. The unfortunate reason (though unacknowledged) is obvious: there’s an Xfinity company rep sitting in the middle of the classroom joylessly disgorging some scripted promotional presentation. The class is mostly locked into a semi-trance in the projector-lit darkness. This ill-conceived sponsored pitch on its own is boring, mildly offensive even, but as the dowdy sad-sack shill drones on I begin to detect creepy undertones of propaganda. Militaristic, imperialist narratives seemingly weave through the dullest possible fabric — hypnotic, odious, uncontested.

I completely disengage, deeming it more effective than causing a scene. Since there’s nothing more important in class today, I set about searching high and low for my missing spice jar. It feels like part of the problem is I can’t remember the name, almost like I could simply call for it. Tactically, I interrupt the creepy droning corporate lump to ask if anyone can closer recall the name. The drone, in reflexive boorish overconfidence, wrongly declares it as “Erizetti”, then pairs it with an incorrect and simultaneously insulting definition. Seizing my opportunity (and also just fed up) I attack them on everything I can think of, with as much conciseness and authority I can summon. When I’m done Ms. Xfinity ignores me again and plows ahead exactly the same, but I can tell her incantation isn’t really working anymore. She can only run out the clock.

While I’m distracted still searching for the jar, class gradually empties out. My fifth grade teacher (Mrs. Plescia) returns, emerging from a back room now that the sponsored nonsense is over. We have a friendly relationship and can joke about it a bit. Behind the projector screen, I find a curious set of nesting jars with parts that interlock on both top and bottom. Not the jar I’m looking for, certainly close enough to evoke it though.

There’s a ledge above the screen that I can examine, barely, if I scoot along the counter on tippy-toes of one foot. No jar here either, though for some reason there is a little toy alligator. I realize, standing extended as I am, that the blue snowflake-patterned boxers I wore this morning (it is in fact June) are longer than the shorts I’m wearing. They’ve likely been peeking out all day — when I greeted Mrs. Plescia, while I ranted to the corporate drone, perhaps even earlier. Exasperation. Resignation.

Looking back at Mrs. Plescia I’m tempted to ask, on account of how class went today, where I would’ve found out that today’s class was optional. I half know, half dread that she’d probably just say “the syllabus”.

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Dream Journal

No Such Thing As Free Brunch (Again)

In a class, viewing the Bay Area from above, but east to west. Much drier than before now that I can identify the isolated patches of tree life — much different than it’s Gold Rush era settlement. Along the California coast there’s a strip of Greek ruins, from another dream I’ve had (also with a theme of education).

During a long break in class, I’m playing music. Someone enamored of the strange patterns asks me what it is, and I answer that it’s a track I found called (approximately) “1912 Palm Desert Housewifes”. It’s like an updated waltz, related somehow to Rimsky-Korsakov or Stravinsky.

A topless older girl, perhaps early 40s, announces that class is about to resume and she’ll begin. I watch her as she walks over to a metal cabinet, like the one for my wife’s clothes in our bedroom, and I learn that it was free brunch this whole break. I lament how I wish they’d announce these things as I can never keep track.

Meanwhile, a fellow classmate sits on the lounging bed next to me facing away. Her skirt, more of a tiny belly-dancing wrap, has ridden up. She starts making out (or something even more intense), and I get to sit right behind her — even smell her. This seems prurient, as I’m really enjoying the proximity, but no one else seems to be aware that it’s something that could be sexual (or vicariously enjoyed).

Miami from above, underwater. Turquoise blue water. People swimming in warm ocean just off main road, near submerged palm tree and beach house.

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Dream Journal

Canal Islands of the Geode Gate

A rocky natural canal dotted with crystal islands. The canal has recently been updated, slightly moved over to the side at great expense by a wife — to the frustration of the French house-husband whose daughter’s perspective I see through. Every island has its own little story and shop.

A quiz, centered around a long acronym (printed in neat capital letters), taught to a class while I was gone. Talking to a Mongolian princess in some position of authority (perhaps the instructor) as I step through a gate made of geodes on one of the islands, putting the acronym backward and actually applying it.

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Dream Journal

Bay of Biscoyne (Nude Sketch Class)

My cousin Miriam volunteers to pose for nude for an art class’ sketching project. I never look (she’s my cousin; it’d be weird) but I do stay in the room on a couch, hanging out with my friends, facing away and enjoying the atmosphere.

My friend Mickey is making a picture (the only one?) and eventually I peek — he’s using some digital program and it looks much more impressionistic / less related to Miriam’s posing than I’d expect. It’s worrisome, actually, enough that I decide to take him aside and voice my concern — that Miriam won’t take it well, will think it’s some strange commentary on her appearance.

In this dream, Mickey used to be in the Army. He responds thoughtfully, rooted in this experience, about how he gradually learned how to complete tasks and get them actually off his plate. I relate  of a few times when I was able to finally push things off my plate — only for them to end up on even more plates.

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Dream Journal

Mini-Nations, School of Darkness

After a ritualized intellectual struggle, my Grand Wizard-King makes me the new king of a nation — a miniature, room-sized nation. It’s one of many, their near-microscopic humans living along various sub-scales, together in a quiet, darkened school building. My former gathered rivals don’t quite yet realize I’m the victor of our contest, but my first act is to free a rival agent (who looks like Odo from Deep Space 9). Walking away from this act, I deem that I will remember this all better if I can remember my full official title — yet I don’t know if ever got one, or the name of the place, which I find odd.

A group of similarly-sized Asian girls outside a Walmart in my hometown, part of some formal gathering. All with sharply cut dresses and fancy hairstyles. Their backs are turned to me and I try to locate my middle-school friend Jimil by her ponytail. The girl I find turns out to be an assassin and duelist, one from a rival tiny nation I’ve never heard of (down a set of stairs, called something like “the Lowlands Suzerainty”). I’m able to defeat her by luring her up a puzzle-like jungle gym climbing sculpture. A worthy opponent.

In the broader expanse of the nighttime school building, I explore what I suspect is the top floor. It houses a school admin office, the window overlooking to a flat dark roof. The space, even at normal scale, is smaller than I expect.

In a classroom nearby, rows of us sit in plastic chairs while a guest presenter lectures with slides on the nefarious points of being evil. I sit next to my homepie friend Mickey, and together we make excellent snark. Finally Mickey breaks in on the drone with a critical observation critiquing the talk’s contents. When he finishes I’m ready to put in my own take, reframing and reiterating his points. To my satisfaction and surprise my friend Chloe, sitting in another row, jumps in with a full accusation.

“Science in Action” is Chloe’s stated theory about this year (I at first incorrectly think she means 2016, but no, definitely 2020). From prior experience she’s familiar with how cults sometimes take over a classroom and perform fucked up experiments to prove their faith — ostensibly to prove it outsiders. She carries on, homing in on how the evil badassery this cult/school espouses is negated with their actions, epitomized by us being there to even listen to them. She absolutely nails it.

Music in my head on waking: Death Waltz, U.N. Owen Was Her, a midi version

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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

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.