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Dream Journal

Chemistry Conference Reunion

I’m attending a reunion of people who attended a now-legendary chemistry conference many years ago. There are only two age groups: very chatty nostalgic 30-somethings (maybe my age or younger) and venerable yet out-of-it elder statesmen types. From conversations and context I work out that what made the event so successful was bringing together old and young chemists to collaborate. Specifically, chemists planning to retire in the next year and chemists going to graduate in the next year. I observed that the younger group was obviously much more excited to recall those experiences, as it was (for many of them) projects which launched their careers. For the older ones, it may have been merely a final-ish achievement after a lifetime of work.

The original organizer is also hosting the reunion. She reminds me of an Odd Salon host, managing a community as well as presenters. Her counterpart from back then makes a show of rehashing some old repartee, and takes the appearance of my elementary school friend Amy Naud. She was just an attendee who chose to publicly play off the organizer and was a big hit. Her clownish efforts created a powerful duo energy between herself and the organizer, and is remembered as one reason for the special feeling of that time. She was young and vivacious, having fiery bleached hair with a reddish tint, looking and acting like Pippi Longstocking.

It’s never clear why the event never happened again…

Categories
Dream Journal

The Idle Comforts of Being Well-off, I Suppose

I’m suddenly rich, no longer apprehensive about money. But still mourning something… lost youth, maybe? I buy a place with a wide, flat aquarium in one room, whose low sides allow you to step in and see the rare, strange sea pens clustered around the central filter. I chat about the two aquarium walls I will build in the next room, to fill out the space now that I have nothing better to do.

A bit later I’m knitting in the open courtyard of an aerospace museum. A vehicle like a cross between a Huey helicopter and an A10 Warthog lands briefly right beside me, then lifts-off nose up and parks at nearby cylindrical tower reminiscent of the SF Museum of Modern Art. For the record, I don’t knit.

In my new leisure-enabled life I get to make a special visit to the ADA Baths, an artificial hot springs built for the grand public good of accommodating those who wouldn’t be accommodated anywhere else. It feels like a spacious concrete temple somewhere in San Francisco’s Western addition. Yet also, I experience memories of it’s founding as a campaign which convinced the country of Gabon to construct it. The once bustling entrance there is now little more that a small stone pathway off from the main road, disused but for occasional field trips.


Attending a disability seminar at a grandiose white-surfaced union hall, a wall-sized window with a view downslope to an elegant smooth grassy hill. Feels like a palace. I miss most of the honored speakers talk — perhaps I ought to feel bad — but I actually am trying to accomplish something while I’m going in and out during the talk. I’m also furtively vaping during most of this, and I have the pleasant discovery that I’m not the only one when I walk through an unseen stranger’s vape cloud. First I’ve dreamt of vaping, that I recall.


We’ve moved out of the Fartpartment but still keep the empty space. We’re in the midst of moving into a new ground-level commercial-like home just three blocks away — I can’t tell which direction though, and oddly it was at some point also Australia.

In the alcove there several feet off the ground, up in my hammock, I’m both lounging and tele-transporting our moving goods, dropping care packages onto the tile floor. A new roommate shows up, thick eyebrows and appearance much like Caitlin M.’s partner, and adjusts the curtain in front of the hammock. Another roommate is Victoria from Hedonisia, excited to report there’s a Dynamo donuts nearby. Someone else, perhaps just stopping by to wish us well, inquires if I know that the location (in Australia, mind you) was once quite near the terminus of the old steamer cruise ship route between Buenos Aires and (1930s Rodger Rabbit Toontown) Los Angeles… as seen on Deep Space 9? Of course this makes only vague sense but I’d an interesting historical tidbit, and I thank them.

From the ground-floor window I then witness an odd scene sex on the sidewalk across, an enthusiastic young woman with a strapon penetrating a guy just below the base of his dick. Wow. Later on, I’m returning back toward the new place and notice them casually walking different directions as if to throw off suspicion that they even know one another.

I’m pleased to find out the neighborhood has its own dedicated web service to meet people. I spend lots of time on it in order to make new friends but sadly, I soon enough realize the only people still hanging around are individuals who, by some personal flaw, weren’t able to make friends with anyone else.