Tag: cleaning

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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, breathing 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.

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Dream Journal

That Hot Pokémon Girl

A stone bird submerged just below the surface of a pond. Jumping on the stone and seeing the profile. Meant to be a cue for a longer dream, now forgotten.

Last day of school. The ebullient kids from Mrs. Plescia’s 5th grade, with the boxy confined aesthetic of middle school. After hours of games and getting up/sitting down from a desk, we have quiet time at end. My childhood friend Robby T. and I are part of the group who cleans up during it, stuff from microwaves to chipped commemorative mugs. I peek over the wooden-post fence to the road beyond, as in another dream set in a mountain prison where I planted mushrooms in a garden bed. I see boxes a boxes of supplies I’ve brought during the year, all of which I need to bring home. There is, in fact, what Robbie (it’s spelled Robbie for some reason) points out what he calls a mushroom tray, but which looks to me like a colonized mushroom tray.

An art event sponsored by Cameo W., a darkened central room with grand, open rooms branching from it. Avoidant of typical San Francisco tech themes, despite that she made most of her money from cashing out in tech. There’s a girl I don’t know, Erin Collins, who gives out loads of her self-made business cards to everyone at the event. I’m not interested in calling her on account of seeming desperate for… whatever it is she wants.

Later, though, I’m back within the setting of the last day of class. There’s a jumping contest to leap from the last railing of a stairway leading to the beach. I make impressive distance, but realize I may have not followed the rules by stepping further beyond my sandy landing imprints. The girl, Erin, makes a similar impressive showing and I realize she’s a Pokémon (!). And she looks, very, very good naked. We make out and then begin to fuck. Her vulva does this weird thing where it bulges forward, almost as if her vagina was just below her skin. When I’m fully inside, a small bump appears at her pubis. I realize that although it’s amazing to fuck someone this pretty (and a Pokémon!) I won’t be getting off as she’s missing something, somehow. She’s not getting as much pleasure as she’s giving and we can’t fix it for now. We gaze at a sick battleship docked nearby, being eroded by the waves.

Riding my motorcycle, turning onto a street like Mission in SF. Behind a group of riders on what look like scooter versions of my motorcycle, the Honda CTX. I pull off and park near Willows, labelled on the awning as “A CTX Bar”. I remember thinking how I have to be on my best behavior so as to give a good impression to the young ones.

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Dream Journal

it simply isn’t understood

In a wide upstairs apartment, I find myself in bed, suddenly noticing the remarkable beauty of a girl I know. (Perhaps out of superstition, I’m not saying who it was — but she wouldn’t be surprised to know I found her beautiful). Perfectly proportioned, and simply fascinating. I’m somehow allowed to just keep looking….

But when I touch her it’s frustrating. Trying to massage her, I can’t hear her feedback or instructions. Instead I end up cleaning a congealed mass of sweet potato/quinoa/smoothie.

My wife kisses me (to wake me up perhaps?) and I don’t recognize its a person. Like, it happens, but that there’s a person who does it simply isn’t understood.

Seems unrelated, but also: there was an escaped convict guy crossing a bridge across a bay, careening off the bridge onto New York’s shoreline. He and I shoot buzzsaws out our hands (as you do).

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Dream Journal

Double Vacations

On double-vacation in San Francisco. Pass the Nihil Cafe, might be nice to go before we leave (to return to our first vacation, eventually to return home to SF). Slick marble streets of many colors, on some the water has been blocked off so you have to scramble over them. Mixing cum with radio magnetides to turn it electrically active, andand  last step creates rusty blobs (these blobs result from lack of enough reagent resources, I imagine). Beautiful bathrooms in these SF houses, I wished I had pictures. We shampoo the fancy white carpet in our rental. Maybe I did this in an earlier dream? Then vacuum it up with a toddler’s ball bobble walker.

Seventh grade science classroom home video. Halfway up the walls are ringed with panels of handprinted student messages (MC CHRIS HAHAHA). Big Bird trying to go up on stage wearing someone else’s t-shirt of single yellow feather, is warned then tackled off by tankgirl character. This is when I wet-vacuum. It’s so effective it reveals holes in the wood flooring where planks join at odd angles.

Opening up a chain-link gate to a coastal area for workmate Manny (Manxioc on chat) and hopping in the white interior of his car, they’re probably gonna smoke weed but I’m fast enough I think I can ditch if that happens.

Tall skyscraper in the distance has a loose symbol atop it (glittery purple teeth?); I see it wobble and wonder what kind of job it is to fix.

Frozen forest riverbank, I find my spot under a tree with hardly any ice. But the branches are more brittle from exposure. Looking up, one by one they fall (at an oddly uniform speed, no acceleration) and
the biggest nearly impales my head.

Immediately afterwards, Sir Paul McCartneyis escorted though a toy store having just dodged the tree branches. He’s shaken and a bit angry. The store is packed with shoppers and it’s quite dark, I use the button built into a toy box to see a Millennium Falcon playset, though it’s still too dim. There’s an exhibit off to the side in a 3-room alcove, some singing animatronics. Some cool, trippy florescent stuff in there. I bump into one of the bands (they remind me of Tusken Raiders) and a nice old lady helps me to remember the area by showing me archival “before” pictures from her booth — including a dinner attended by my Uncle John and Uncle Bob. Maybe a week ago, maybe 40 years.