Tag: desert

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Dream Journal

Rearranging the Formal Garden

Picking out from a line of available cars from grandma, who has passed on her collection. I realize after I’ve made my pick that I was only considering between the cars in a certain category that felt like the one that was supposed to be mine, neglecting to evaluate if there were better options in other categories.

Watching Dune 2 in a very long oversized movie theater, the rows separated by big distances so those in front or behind don’t disturb each other. I feel as though I am a powerful or dangerous entity here, as though I am hiding my power level. But others could be too.

On screen, the movie is more reminiscent of the setting of Dune 2 than the story. We pan over an extended slope of sandy hill with dunes, a helicopter (or more likely a ‘thopter) plunging into them. A friend, Andi, is a character there in the film setting.

A few of my rats have a deep tangerine tinge to them. Concerned, I search around and discover they’ve gotten into a container of cranberries. My wife soon notices them lying on their sides together covering in the almost-red goo and I’m able to quickly explain that they only ate a bunch of the cranberries and destroyed the box.

Moving benches in a formal garden, split into quarters. Place one bench diagonally in the center of a raised grass square which is girded with brick. I move the other benches together on the opposite side to make a denser gathering space there. In order to push them against the far wall, I have to move a long pair of risers stacked one on the other. Those turn out to be mirrored L-shaped equipment movers, with heavy duty wheels on one end. They might prove very useful in the future.

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Dream Journal

Fleeing in Mexico Resort, New Lover at the Piss Tent

Mexico, possibly Oaxaca, but a place which appears more like the Sonoran desert south of New Mexico. Temporarily my wife and I are staying at a complex of buildings (a resort I believe) with many areas: stone gazebo, collonade, buttress balustade wall… One very distinctive moment was when I floated over a pool whose bottom appeared painted, but actually the striped layers of natural sediment giving the appearance of a topographical map — I understood that it was a very rare environment miraculously conserved here, like some kind of placid natural geyser, and I spot wriggling aquatic coral snakes very close as I pass by (I should note this to someone, as these snakes in terrestrial waters are both rare and dangerous).

There’s a smaller property tucked between larger plots which has itself set up as a single attraction theme park, a line of tropical canopied boats on a flume track which performs a circuit underground, similar to Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean. With somewhat marvelous luck, they’ve managed to compete with the much bigger properties around them in staying relevant.

My wife and I have been storing a trailer full of our stuff here for as long as we can, left in a sandy side area where it ought to go ignored. But it happens that we discover that my wife has to hide for a little bit from government agents looking for her. The plan is for her to immediately flee for a small labyrinth tucked away in an obscure corner of the complex and marked by mean on the map — I will meet her later after casually being found by the agents while lounging amongst a balustrade wall and stalling the agents. The plan becomes less and less viable as my wife continues watching engrossing video with me instead of leaving.

I practically sneak up to an infrequently visited door I at the end of hallway, sometimes regarded as employee-only, but I’m in on the secret today. The setting seems to be a venerable San Francisco institution, a store like Paxton Gate or 826 Valencia or perhaps the Audium. In fact I’m just trying to get to the bathroom.

I find one — but oddly it feels like a bit of the dream is missing here — the scene and setting have changed. I have no entered a tent made into an ersatz public restroom, one set up for so long people almost treated like it’s perfectly normal. Inside I find a folded-over kiddie pool full of old pee, but also gloves? Not as gross as it sounds… no smell simply jarring. Earlier I had seen and interacted with a woman outside just before entering the tent. An slightly older woman, attractive and self-determined, I’m glad to meet with her approval — she pees on my exposed leg over the cesspool of gloves and things get sexy refreshingly fast. It’s nice to be with a woman who knows what she wants, and who happens to want me at the moment. I’m eating her out with lots of enjoyment when I must interrupt the adventure to take a phone call (from my dad, of all people). I have enough reserve and I’m in a good enough mood to listen fairly well… and for a long time. The woman is so patient and appreciative of my patience also. While I listen I gaze at one of my tiny rats there in the room with us, perched in the open (after having been tracked down by me in an earlier dream which I can’t quite place). By the time the proceedings resume my wife has arrived and she too eats out the women, while I move up to suck her nipples. This is a spontaneous and welcome episode of joy.

The three of us are naked in the backyard on picnic benches when our landlord, newly clean shaven, and his wife arrive. He looks like Shepard Book from Firefly or Blameless Marad from Horizon Zero Dawn. The pair of them leave but actually come back in a minute, which I find a worthwhile breach of expectation. He begins to speak, starting with something like “nine years ago you paid the foundation of…” I accidentally interrupt him by complimenting his new look, a bit embarrassing but we have such a mood today it’s hard to break out of. The interruptions happen a few times in this way. I don’t recall exactly how it may have ended, as the tensions recently with our landlord have been high, but there may have been a sour node with his wife specifically, who’s never much talked before.

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Dream Journal

June means Bright Desert

While watching an old video from my collection, I notice it appears to have new weird AI-based compression. Letters on signs in a Palm Springs parking lot in are hard to discern. Makes me sad, because I realize this is probably how companies will be encoding our stuff now (whether we like it or not) and I can no longer use it as a reference. The names are squashed down so much they turn out as gibberish.

Across the street from the parking lot is a line of brushy sand dunes. Like the bare desert across from my old middle school when I was a student, once upon a time. Looking at them is almost painful as everything has an * * extra bright * * overexposed look, which I recognize as the look of June. Today, not uncoincidentally, marks June 1st.

As I’m staring into space, down a hallway at a slight angle, an unpleasantly familiar face appears. Plarvolia peeks forward from a booth at a table. She now fully embodies my avatar of rejection and loneliness. Who knows why she’s here. It’s not important, except that now I have to deal with this reminder of her. (My wife is leaving for a trip today, and I tell her how seeing old Plarvolia made me feel.)

Because of Plarvolia I find out about a new rising artist named Margaret Gerulo in Indianapolis. Her schtick is that she cries as performance art, giving ritual catharsis to the entire community that witnesses the act. She’s become a very successful streamer (it works over the internet, apparently). But there are a few curious conditions: the day before, she needs to visit a haunted place of some kind. And the day after, she needs to receive presents from people. Those presents, and the haunted house, determine what trauma and catharsis she can process for her community of viewers.

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Dream Journal

Found and Lost, The Old House that was Ours

Revisiting the old house I sort of co-own, where I stored a lot of my stuff sometime in the last few years. Uncovering newspapers reveal records carefully arranged on the table, laying out a pattern of which ones I’ve already recorded. A big book, like a newspaper log, has something to do with Dr. Hal. The speaker cables running up the walls are thick and I remember they’re painted the color orange from their previous room.

Outside, I unlock several latches of a wooden truck cabin — the topmost is the only locked. My wife helps, sitting on top of it, but I ask her not to make fun of me as I’m worried about my pets inside: a little arrangement carefully made of light bulbs, moss, and sticks, with a little spider sealed up in each one. It’s been so long that all the moss that which lived is dark green, and all that died is bleached white. One of the spiders comes out and waves, which warms my heart (but actually only proves the seal wasn’t good enough and this might not even be the same spider). I look inside a nearby bag and discover it’s full of my stuff I’d forgotten about, junk drawer items and the like. It’s been so long, I might use this stuff again.

I decide I’m going to find and buy this place. After this decision, what happens may be time travel, or it could be searching to repeat the luck of finding the place but with a similar house.

I get a hint to search near “Cold Key” creek, in southern California or Arizona. The climate isn’t what I’d want to settle down, but maybe the community I find will be a bit cooler. Peeking in through a window in the rocky canyonside, I spot my first girlfriend. I pause time by snapping my fingers; everything remains still except her — her head looks like my pet naked rat Nüdl, or an Afghan hound, although I don’t note her different appearance at the time.

Working my way down the track of the creek, I come across a run-down desert community with a few empty buildings. One beige chunky run-down Victorian seems exactly like the old place, but for some reason I pass it by (maybe I can’t follow the same timeline precisely?), looking around the rest of the dusty neighborhood. I spot what could be a futuristic mosque, emerging in rendered shapes piece-by-piece from the ground, black ovoids stacking through each other to build up something like a stepped classical colonnade.

Eventually I find a torn-up former restaurant kitchen, a little low-slung 1-story on a concrete lot, that I preternaturally perceive as correct. It’s crowded with people trying to plan things together, my friends and collaborators. I’m bustling in the middle with them, trying to squeeze through what was the kitchen service window and the hole in the structure (to it’s right) where a door was removed. There’s a cardboard box of stuff there which I recognize as mine, my first teapot from CostPlus, the white one, and an oddly shaped pitcher with a flat-top handle and beak-like pour-spout — one that has a name that I don’t recall.

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Dream Journal

12 Elements, 12 Deities, 12 Powers

Heritage church out forgotten in the desert of my hometown. A screen of tamarisk trees hides it between my middle school and the mountains beyond. No one has visited in years. I climb the rafters inside, feeling transported to an earlier time. Perhaps the reason I wasn’t reported to the authorities exploring such a place is because I was just a lone kid. I hope they preserve this place, even though no one seems to love it but me.

An airplane journey, within a strange morphing and expanding fuselage. At the beginning several portal-making objects of power are released to 12 special passengers, forming the side of good. They are hunted by an evil master witch with broods of alien slave dogs, zergling-like. Some good-siders hide behind doors, some in hidden passageways, some in other time periods, some in other realities, all enduring attacks from the witch and her brood.

Each object they are blessed with are aligned with certain elements of the periodic table, and certain deities of the Greek Pantheon, granting them unique powers. They learn to wield them one by one — the dream is broken into chapters and has an unusually sophisticated structure.

Finally in the last chapter it’s revealed that Element № 1, aligned to Zeus king of the gods, has all the while been overseeing events unfold with their sublime omniscience. The left side of the movie theater inside the main fuselage has remained mysteriously empty during the pitched battles. It turns out to be a staging area for those special objects-holders who reach the last step in their training, now hiding in plain sight. They take their seats wordlessly, building anticipation one by one with each assembled conspirator, and finally together open the small sealed chamber to the right of the screen — that the witch and her hunters never even noticed. The supreme holder is revealed, having learned his training instantly, observing all, but withholding his omnipotence until the time was ripe.

The witch is gobsmacked, the energy in the room electric. She is defeated without a battle, finally seeing what has played out.

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Dream Journal

A Game of Ghost Story

Store/cafe near Disneyland, heavily themed with natural wood for an ol-time-country feel. Space is sunk below street level a bit, bright windows in the back. The whole neighborhood is a shopping district, curved downward becoming more Disneyland the further you go. Near the cafe counter, I see a few people in costumes with masks that look like Will Smith crossed with the “I, Robot” robots, featuring a glowing 20% discount over the mouth area. It’s suggestive of some kind of Black Panther protest.

I’m a successful smuggler and I’m getting out of the business. I know my compatriots will be upset, even panicked at my departure, so I leave a letter hidden under sawdust at my regular drop. It’s a semi-abandonded lot protected from the street by overgrown trees, the same hillside view as the Disneyland cafe earlier.

I drive off in a convertible with Lynae. We’re briefly diverted onto the other side of a divided highway, the broad expanse of a mountainous pastel evening desert before us. I suggest we play a game called Ghost Story — Lynae side-eyes me, knowing I know the edge of night isn’t exactly when she wants to hear ghost stories. I clarify that the objective of the game is to start saying something that seems scary, but that has its scariness vanish (like a ghost) once the sentence is complete. I’ve just played the first round, now it’s her turn.