Tag: cleaning

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Dream Journal

A Time Diamond and A Thief

A particular strange lucidity early in the night with my phone in my hand, as I voluntarily clean my house and enjoy doing it. Despite not realizing for a long time that I’m still holding my phone

Living or visiting in a large mansion-like space, maybe a bit like Isis Oasis. Old 70s stylings, so many various dining tables that we’ve never eaten at some of them. Feels like we haven’t been here in a while too, semi-abandoned even though I understand that others still visit infrequently.

Outside, my wife and I can hear someone rummaging around in a study, the study belonging to a hallowed old professor. I recognize it as a test I’ve encountered before involving a thief. I’m appearance he’s oddly like the character from The Thief and The Cobbler, but his size is variable. It’s difficult to coordinate with my wife to plan how we’ll catch him in the act without him popping away. The whole thing is just a narrative game that has been played before — apparently it randomly respawns from time to time. Now this scenario has happened enough times that I’m starting to grasp the steps needed to resolve it.

The thief is after a small diamond. I know from playing through things before that, actually, he can never find it, because no one can find it. Not alone. Plotwise, all parties including the thief have to coordinate, whether they do so intentionally or not. It’s the only way to avoid the multiple layers of gotchas whereby the diamond gets lost forever, and the scenario resets. Could be a time diamond for all I know. But here, back on the first step of the loop, girded by the wisdom of experience, I still can’t seem to coordinate with my wife. Hm.

Objects. Four important folders to swap between, that must by applied to the project I’m working on. I can clearly visualize them as clunky plastic office documents which I can swap between. Oddly enough I read something before bed and I think maybe these leaked in from there, which are from the instructions for how to set up a tool I need:

– Active Context: Contains information about the current task
– Project Context: Contains high-level project information
– Progress: Documents completed work and upcoming tasks
– Decision Log: Records choices and their rationale

They read like things I should very much know and have around to reference, don’t they? Double hm.

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Dream Journal

Mayan Blue & Capitol Hallways

Studying Maya/Aztec culture with a local family almost by accident while staying near them. We’re surrounded by catwalks and mineral pools — residues of green and blue oxidation stained beneath an awning, like the pigment: Mayan blue.

Discovering a concrete corner box that reveals layers of concealed government fuck-ups, covering up bad planning with further construction. One can easily see the fourth level sits perfectly flush while the third recesses unevenly. This feels distinctly Mexican from what I’ve seen of authorities build, though this place is new to me.

Being awake the longest on what might be a class trip (I did in fact take a class trip to Washington DC once). Met a girl inside the Capitol building; we clean up together. Trying to reach a sink while draining an ice chest (to save the ice), I stretch a long kayak across the wide stairs as makeshift scaffolding. My friends and I argue about what time if day it is, so I tiptoe above heavy green institutional curtains and I’m hit with golden afternoon sunshine.

Making efforts to play with this girl, who likes me — going down the Capitol hallways together, I let her crawl atop me while patting her hips. Our sizes aren’t quite right, she’s either a big girl or notably tall.

Exiting through the rotunda, narrow double doors with steep descending stairs. I’ve been here before, but suddenly the design feels significant: it was built in the 1800s for defense against possible riots. Yet it was hard for them to imagine ones so far removed from their own time. Today there’s the unsettling relevance, when such threats to the Capitol feel imminent again.

Drumming along absentmindedly… Marley and Elvis stations playing somewhere.

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Dream Journal

Integument Overalls, Wind-up Guinea Pigs

Setting: our apartment but different, and without that much stuff in it anymore. Oh, and we’re trying to give away what’s still there.

Reaching down between my the integument of my skin, like overalls. This fold in human biology is so easy to forget about — we don’t use it for anything and it just collects crumbs (so that’s something different in this dream.

Wind-up guinea pigs. Consider looking up how they connect inside, but I’m not sure I want to and forget to anyway. Worried I might overtighten, or that it just annoys them without actually giving energy like I’d expect it to.

Wife asking if we need to mix some creatine before Glenn gets here. It takes 20 min to set, and she thinks he’ll be here in 12. I think he’ll cancel like everyone else who comes over.

Learn about sale on sushi in Saudi Arabia. Getting dressed as if to go, which includes a sharp blue suit with low lapels. I could be known for my fashion; why not. I’m trying to tie the tie around the lower set of lapels while my wife explains how it’s actually too far to drive. It’s the same speech I’ve given myself earlier, but I don’t care. I want to see how I could look if anyone showed up or I had anywhere to be.

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Dream Journal

Sharing Space (at a Party) with Plarvolia, and It’s OK

I show up to a big art party bash, one of those semi-regular community-wide fun Bay Area events, where I quite soon run into Plarvolia. It’s too late; there’s no pretending; we both have seen that we have seen one another. We share the same reaction: while niether of us likes being in the same space, ignoring each other might be tolerable. She is wearing a pair of obliquely-angled blinders over the edge of her glasses — I spot them as we perform our mutual heel-turn about-face. The blinders give her exasperated/embarrassed expression a heightened cartoonish quality.

The party is rather lively as there’s lots to do. Vibe is creative and friendly. The event is laid out on a wide unsteep staircase, more of a single-sided ziggurat I suppose, such that one can see the swath of the revelry both up and down. The mood is light enough that she and I end up nearby on a few couches. Without discomfort, we can idly observe and even eavesdrop thus finally getting a genuine read on the other person — perhaps the root of our earlier failure to connect. Eventually we even flow into shared conversation. It comes as a striking relief for us both, this passive lifting of the unresolved tension and harshness we carried these years. I observe her former warniness replaced by a sort of wan disappointment at her own misjudgment of me (or simply unlucky judgement). She realizes I could’ve made a nice friend — still could be — and who knows what else — in the end all the mistake cost was wasted time. None of this is acknowledged verbally. By the end as the party is emptying out, she invites me to meet outside, or later, something like that. I say “we’ll see, I’m gonna help clean things up here for a bit.”

And that’s exactly what I do. I don’t think much about it for a bit, as I quite enjoy having a bit of camaraderie with the party organizers (and I usually do). I do take a moment though to reflect how I’ve managed to leave her to herself, to let her invitation to furtherance sit and rest. She may choose to either wait for me or to go off for her next thing, as she pleases. I didn’t overthink it.

I wake up quite early. I recognize the significance of a Plarvolia dream like this. I write only a brief description, nudging myself to remember it the rest of the day (one such trick I’ve learned over years of writing down dreams).

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Dream Journal

Martin is a Good Boy

Pine needles in a glass box, a terrarium actually, marinating in some kind of food juice pickling solution to make them tasty. Being cleaned, as part of job training for some 22-year-old Latino kid with a bald head (and a bad attitude). Not that I blame him when this is the only productive thing your society allows you to do.

Examining the phenomenon of the BART station spreading out into neighborhood; discussing the perspective of the wealthy (and perhaps parasitic) suburbs. I think I was talking with was my old neighbor friend Richard H. As we walked down the sidewalk on 24th. Their unquestioned attitude is treating the lower classes who take public transit like an infection which spreads. Trying to establish local lore about where the “poor part” starts, supposedly the consensus is an alley halfway through the block — “Inception” or “Industrial” alley.

Asking Perplexity.ai about an empty cage on a ceramic counter, countertops like the work surfaces in a science classroom. This rat cage is almost the same size and shape as the marinating box from before. Could be the same box, for all I know.

Something triggers me to say “Martin is a good boy”. I still miss my pet rat Martin-Martin. He *was* a good boy.

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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

Prince Andrew’s Art Class

My third grade crush is swearing and idly playing with her junk, talking about “cunt cunt cunt”.

Prince Andrew (or George W. Bush) is teaching an art class. Has some hapless young students, some journalists fishing for stories. Hard to learn anything as he actually doesn’t have ability to communicate his aesthetic sense, if his royal one is worth communicating.

I pack up to leave early on my motorcycle, as  this class is on a Friday. The Prince is rambling about his mistress/lover not showing up. I clean around the sink during my many attempts to get out of there, and leave a bin of pancakes with a lid for the next folks who will use that space. On the way out I take an old bag someone has left behind so it doesn’t rot there, but it has an Apple Watch clipped to it — now I wonder if this good deed is essentially stealing the expensive watch.

“Patrick library” written on a sign with a photo of a forest fire. Trying to figure out what that means, and show someone else, but the words become more faded and harder to find the more I look around. I end up in a back room, with a few parking spots for rented electric trikes behind a hospital’s ER. I give my parking spot up voluntarily for a frazzled mom.

Planting trees in a backyard which represents America, possibly. Two of the pines will grow oddly where they’re sited, I reckon, but I’ll wait till they grow in and harvest them. The credits roll with soft music (which is an unusually on-the-nose ending for a dream).

But interestingly, what actually ends the dream is me repeatedly rehearsing what notes I will take upon waking. So, here we are then.

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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.