Tag: cleaning

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Dream Journal

Couple Cleaning, Shortwave De-propertization

In a dimly-lit space, there are wooden shelves and tables and open cabinets. An elaborate gardening bench perhaps. Rows and rows of items necessary for cottage life. I’m cleaning these rows while couple shares their story, and advice on how they clean. I dig out one specific plant from the wooden under-shelves.

I get to visit a friendly outsider artist type while I’m on vacation. This man famous for his shortwave radio broadcasts. Too famous for the comfort of some, as it turns out. I watch a replay of how he had his five rustic country/western properties sold out from under him by sneaky business dealings. All of it was illegal but I know he’d never be able to prove it — he’d need the money from the properties to do that. And he lost them so the bad actors could silence his broadcasts.

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Dream Journal

Finch Finch? Nope, just Finch

I navigate up a river flowing over large rocks. People walking up it. Find refuge at a covered patio belonging to a women who set it up as a rescue facility. She’s a traveler like myself and I’m not currently in need of a rescue. I see myself as more of an ornamental garden hermit.

Playing a card game to pass the time on a bus — where the cards are made of cash money. Digging in the compost bin, I rediscovery modified dollar bills with cute names written on them: Ankylosaurus, Potato, Peanut

Doing a cleaning job. A martini glass holding, instead of ice cubes, a single huge ice cube is being sold.

A woman introduces herself as named Finch. “Finch Finch?” (first and last), I ask. “Nope, just Finch.”

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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.

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Dream Journal

Cleaning Up After Burning Man

I volunteer to clean up after Burning Man. It’s a camp I used to belong to, people I used to be friends with who I haven’t seen in years. Now I’m idly cataloging the junk left behind — piecing together the stories of what happened at the week-long party. Specifically I recall searching under flip-up style Murphy beds that are semi-permanent and remain in desert for the year (an unusual change since everything used to be completely leave-no-trace). Sponsorship in the camp is by Ritual Coffee, naturally. I still drink Ritual to this day.

Perhaps an object I find, perhaps a different dream: a golden metal orb with triangular holes lining its surface. Thin tetrahedral slices which fit exactly through the holes, as if it were a 3D puzzle to be assembled through the tiny gates. But it seems too elegant and precious to be a toy.

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Dream Journal

Vacuuming as a Distraction

I’m on my way to vacuum our multi-story rat cage. On the way I get distracted by vacuuming the subway. A good deed for sure, but also a way to avoid cleaning the rat cage for now. Across the wide open tile floor near a set of frozen cement stairs, an official walks toward me. I think I’m about to get a talking to but he just walks past me. He picks up a suction attachment I unknowingly dropped when I switched to my weed whacking attachment, handing it back to me.

Occasionally I find thick squarish mussels with meat still inside. Recently someone received them as a scavenging reward, but didn’t/couldn’t open them.

The hobbit, Frodo, is excited to visit his favorite bar, The Green Dragon.

Kristin McConnell is helpfully demonstrating an exercise for strippers, flipping gymnastically off of a corner countertop.

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Dream Journal

Animation of the Corner of a Painting

I remember where our truck is parked here in San Francisco and it’s gotten a ticket by now. No need to have kept it there, but instructions led me to believe that it was necessary for that time.

I watch the corner of a painting like the Garden of Earthly Delights, a recently assembled animation which shows animals morphing. The action skips around a bit with sections that have been lost over hundreds of years.

I vacuum a fence to where there are no more dead leaves in the backyard, but it starts to feel so clean it’s not our backyard anymore. This unusually parallels actual cleaning I’ve recently done in our own backyard.

Queen Elizabeth, a law passed to make her decrees about family easier to enforce. Learning about this in the gutters of a miniature golf course.

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Dream Journal

Bubble Defense Exercise (some Starships too)

I’m Captain Pike sleeping on a bolster pillow all night. Very comfortable, more under blankets cool above, great sleep.

Perhaps I’m a mature responsible student, perhaps I’m sucking up to teacher. Cleaning up after a lecture class in a hall longer than it is wide, gathering all the spent materials together on a bed. The bed is the front rightmost in a row of semi-private anterooms that face the main science desk, a plain slab of rectangular black rock. Stephen Colbert could have been the instructor. On the far side, floor-to-ceiling windows reveal a gauzy view of lush sunlit valleys in the far distance.

We have a big training exercise in a mega-gymnasium using tennis rackets. The class is directed to hit back any bubbles that fly over from the other team. Fog misters are turned on (this gym is fancy) and the lights are dimmed so the far side is totally hidden. Quickly, it appears being fast enough to hit even a majority of bubbles is a near impossible task.

Then we form a line across one end of the large room to the other. This soon proves, as befits an actual school lesson, much easier. With only a certain small territory to defend, students can focus better on the projectiles they can hit. By chance I end up stationed almost behind a column. I speak with the short blonde girl who is posted directly behind it, joking about her readiness to perform her duty.

On the other side of her I observe a frisky lesbian girl working herself up to something. She briefly hits on the blonde then begins making out aggressively. There’s a moment of shock before anyone decides to do anything about it, separating the girls and holding back the unexpected aggressor.

After the exercise is concluded the expansive chamber is flooded. The water causes time to pass quickly. I zoom in on a view of an underwater spaceship, the Enterprise, left behind by a crew not unlike my class. The view pulls back and I notice an odd humorous little detail: a metal necktie carefully encircles the ships bridge, aging into deep time with the rest of it all.

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Dream Journal

Early Morning, Up to Clean the Tanks

Living in my old room at my parents house in my hometown. It’s been awhile now, the once bright turquoise carpet is starting to grey with my walking patterns. I spend a lot of time here, in this 10’x10′ room. I’m thinking about taking the closet doors off so there’s more space to move my mostly bare work desk into. Maybe my clothes racks could take up the far wall, I’d stare at them while half asleep instead of the desk and its neglected aquarium. The desk itself is bare unfinished wood, and a chair from my grandfather with a bullet hole in it (this references a real chair, with family lore). The room’s drywall is partially stripped open and I can read the builder’s notes, examine how they made the house. Yet despite the circumstances I’m thankful.

It’s early morning, maybe 7:15, and I’m up after a fitful night. I’ve been awake intermittently, idly staring at my fish tanks opposite my bed. The one across from me has been set up a long time, and I realize I’ve not done a water change. The betta inside bobs at the surface, breath
ing through its mouth. Amazing that it’s still alive, really. I look up the proportions of water to peroxide to salt that I need to use, filling my arms with the supplies, hobbling back to my room in the dim interior of the pre-dawn house. I hear my wife laughing behind the door of the next room over and talking to our pet rats (I can’t recall why we’re separate, but this arrangement has also lasted a while). I realize it’s only been maybe three hours of interrupted sleep I’ve had. But I’m happy I’m finally taking care of the aquariums again, now that I noticed and had the energy. A humbling dream. Humbling, but grateful. I wake up with a smaller ego.

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Dream Journal

A Mess of a House, Yet Still Fancy

Palatial house owned by my family but poorly maintained. Notable is that the layout on the first and second level are the same, both with very tall ceilings. Refrigerators happen to be in the same locations above and below. I notice this after I must deal with the one on the lower level being dark. My dad has put some bulk food on the edge of spoiling in there, and there are few shelves to work with. This isn’t much different from the state of the rest of the house, though I’m not bothered so much as coming to recognize and accept it.

In an alcove of an all-white, blank-walled mall space (still perhaps within the large poorly-kept house), while animatedly chatting on a couch with my partner, we invite a friendly stranger to talk with us. They accept and futz around with the jumble of white upholstery on the couch. All of us simultaneously realize we’ve neglected to tell them about a roommate asleep underneath us, laying still on his side in the blanket pile. Somehow, the prospect of having to explain it seems more inconvenient than the odd situation itself. Across from us is a sunglasses store, seemingly highlighting the uncoolness of the situation.

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Dream Journal

Christmas Night Dining, Christmas Morning Sunrise

Former crush is asleep in our spare room next to our bedroom. She’s partially hidden by a wall and there’s a feed on the opposite far wall showing a corrected perspective of what would be my point of view of her back, showing her as deep in slumber. I find this comforting despite that we’re in the middle of a move; I wasn’t sure if letting her stay here was a good idea, afraid she might be nervous. I’m reassured that it’s a good sign at least if she’s deep asleep.

I’m in a large enclosed industrial space, maybe a warehouse sized catering facility. There’s a small semi-independent kitchen/bar space in a corner. Has a bit of character to it, hasn’t been used for a bit but seems everyone who uses it leaves their own little token. Someone observes that maybe it can serve as a metaphor for the US Constitution. As I’m packing up this open-sided room inside a room, I’m talking with another former crush, Dara. We’re coworkers and I relate my recent experiences with the complicated new problems of my more recent former crush. She’s fairly sympathetic, and it’s a nice bonding moment.

My high school creative writing teacher Miss Fitz is drunk in the hallway of her apartment building. I help retrieve her and carry her back to her apartment. Later, My wife and I are having dinner with her father-in-law over Christmas night –something like 3:00 a.m. in a fancy restaurant. The slightly frazzled inattentive staff give us a table that hasn’t been cleaned yet. Bowls left out for previous diners cigars, special smoking implements. My father-in-law comments “good for clipping beagle” (a kind of cigar I take it). Finally dawn has arrived. Having waited for it outside near lake, it seems I just missed the sunrise on Christmas morning. It’s still beautiful and crisp and quiet so I don’t regret it too much as I navigate a path between parked cars filled with reverent vacationers, headed toward the shores of a cold fresh mountain lake.