A long day of work in an enclosed tent area, where I’m left in charge after. A couple that had been working on a car were idly painting a chair purple. The work is patchy, only grazing the surface of the woven fabric, the threads giving a textured grid appearance. Given my broader skillsket I’m able to more easily imbue the upholstery with an even saturation of dark rich dye, which comes to a nice burgundy — while I’m completing other projects after others have gone home, mind you. I hope the couple appreciates my job, but it occurs to me that I’ve completely overpainted their work.
I leave once my tasks in that area of the tent/garage are finished and go up to a white office with a receptionist window. I still need to replicate a car key for an old roadster, and the materials we’re using are a stack of glued-together plastic cards. This is going to be tricky and I don’t know how I can properly delegate it.
As representative for Trump, I take out an orange coat of his and set it out like a scarecrow in the front yard of my childhood home. And then, the singing of the song “Wimoweh” begins. Thus begins the celebration of him finally going to prison.
I’m suddenly awoken by my wife barging into the bedroom, asking if I’m asleep. My fight-or-flight is triggered and as I lay in bed calming down again I can recall much, but I fall back asleep and what I recall is: wooden pegs partially painted blue clatter noisily from a row of horizonal posts where they were attached. (I fall asleep around 10pm and this happens around midnight.)
Serving a crowd of fancy folks out on a balcony overlooking Las Vegas, maybe in the Luxor pyramid. Speaking slowly up to it then ingratiating myself as a servant; meeting people like Trump and Boris Johnson.
After talking with Trump he leaves via my living room. I come out afterwards and see the shocked faces of my unexpected guests, my old roommate Emily W. and her friend I don’t recognize, waiting on my couch. I briefly confer with a series of representatives from tribes of widely different people, including the a male/female pair of Rust people who pursue a specific variety of magic. The discussion concluded, the slightly scaled-down duo flip sideways down into the couch and vanish through a portal.
I spot a dedication sign at the entrance to a random town in Florida simply saying “books & my wife”. I infer this as a clear if esoteric reference to supporting Trump, something fake-ish he said in response to being asked what he’d want on a desert island. A little ways on there’s a homey sign on a cabin with a charming curse of “by Meatloaf’s Mother and the Queen Of Sheba”.
Right before I wake up I’m playing a GTA-like game with simple accelerate/brake controls. Driving as a little old black lady, I just try to round corners as normally as possible.
It’s shortly after the election, and the Cult of the Dead Cow has hacked Whitehouse.gov. A documentary now posted there with a French-language title exposes exactly how Trump has stolen the election. I swim in a deep natural pool at the road’s end of my childhood home on Kemper court. Beto O’Rourke (a.k.a. Psychedelic Warlord) is sworn in as president by Mike Pence. I see the military on a double-decker bus, unsure who to take orders from.
Spot my old blue truck parked down the street, make sure it’s mine (yup, dents are the same), and I worry about moving it for street sweeping. Soon I realize my neighbor now owns it by some coincidence. Narrow windy sand-bottomed channels are the unique pool outside this home, my father-in-law’s old home, evocative of hot springs. The neighbor volunteers how police officers often get deeper, sandier waterworks as they can skirt regulations.
I watch more of the documentary and it’s actually rather daring, exposing all manner of American government corruption — no matter what side wins I figure a lot of people are going to jail. Wasn’t aware any libs still had this much bravery.
At the end of the court I swim past a driveway hosting an Avenue Q-style Broadway play. A fat Alex Jones puppet dressed as a king heckles Trump and his crony walking up the steps of the White House, as they slam the door. I manage to get in a quip of appreciation, telling him I didn’t expect some puppet guy would do such a good job.
The documentary continues. The movie is being streamed from dsicu.net or dsico.net — I marvel at the incredible amount of pressure their servers must be under right now. Watching more I realize there’s a call to action at the end and I’m actually behind most people, which explains the largely empty street.
I bust my way through a set of double doors, a backstage area that feels like New York, during some performance. They won’t let me through between the audience bleachers. So to get through this big donut-shaped arena building, at knifepoint I make them open the rear doors so I can go around outside. I avoid a murderous knife-wielding Donald Duck (could I have been the Donald Duck?) and reach a hospital emergency ward that’s been hit hard with the recent public revelation/call to action and the righteous chaos that has followed. There’s Mickey Mouse graffiti written in blood. Inside, the documentary plays on whiteboards, with handwritten explainer notes jotted next to it.
Just such an amazing job overall, the whole story and especially the documentary central to it. I awoke suddenly pre-dawn with a fascinated “huuuuuh”, wrote down pretty much all of it, then managed several more hours sleep.
extracted cut-out collage artwork from album cover
Donald Trump’s existence suggests an axiom: the higher the getting, the bigger the dark side.
Being hosted at some guy’s elaborately-decorated stylish apartment, white walls and expensive décor, a congenial upper-middle class bougie gay dude. He gives up his bedroom per my request. In the middle of the night I’m awoken and think I’m being visited by a group of raccoons, but it turns out to just be a few of his cats.
Later, I think it’s happening again so I stay asleep. Yet slowly I realize that in the bedroom with me are a whole menagerie of apes, macaques, zebra, even a giraffe maybe. This is his personal zoo, something he acts like I should be impressed with, while he himself acts nonchalant. It is (I admit) bizarre and impressive. Doubly so with the apartment’s trendy Instagrammable Pinterest-y surroundings.
(This is midpoint of my night’s dreams, which I remember when I wake up earlier in the night — for real — with some insight into my own progressed technique into the writing of dreams. Yet I still don’t wake up to take notes on it, worried I might not get back to sleep…)
In the classroom of a middle school, which feels near the coastal location of my University. I’m my current age, hanging out in bookshelves behind the rows of desks observing class, but I pop in occasionally, keeping tabs on the teacher and mingling with students.
A class lesson: “what’s wrong with this cream cheese recipe?” I personally think they added lemon juice, or didn’t use real cheese. Moving past, the teacher calls on me, somewhat jokingly. Nose in a textbook, I respond mispronouncing ‘book’ like ‘boooook’. She responds in the same joking tone that we’ll name our next lesson’s monster “Orin”.
I abruptly notice that a green starfish kid in the front row has suddenly developed injuries consistent with exposure to a contagion we studied in class. Teacher has also noticed but is playing it off so as not to alarm the students; I don’t do so well hiding it. We help get the student out. Afterwards I take time reflecting on it in the bookshelves.
I return just a bit later, but class appears to be over for that year. Instead, the room is occupied by a choral group of young kids, 4-6 years old, in flowing robes with hoods, singing what could be a Buddhist funeral dirge. Their parents wait behind them to take them home, some breaking down crying. It’s obvious the starfish kid didn’t make it.
Jolted, reminded of life’s brevity, I set aside time to enjoy hanging out with one particular girl I like who reminds me of a fun redhead I knew in high school — Sam Promenchenkel. She’s quite taller than me; my head reaches just under her armpit. With a group we stroll along a stepped boardwalk away from the school. On the way I’m goaded into doing a scooter trick up some stairs, and manage to leap all the way to the second-to-last step, where I do a little bounce and make it all the way up.
My cousin Betty is with our group, skipping away ahead of us toward her wife. She seems so happy and excited, I’m very happy for her, though I watch her get further and further away.
We get to the ocean and do tricks leaping into the surf on scooters. Someone brings up how left-brain-focused people will typically veer to the left and miss their mark on the waves. We practice crossing our eyes, water streams squirting from our pupils, trying to get the streams to meet where we want.
Small home aquarium containing a viable ecosystem of anemones, dark brown/red jellyfish, and colorful nudibranches. I revisit it several times in the course of walking around, and at some point my wife has us remove the jellyfish. The nudibranches have grown since we got them and can lift the anemones and reposition them as they like — smart little critters. But I see that they’ve gotten hungry and so start a quest to replace the jellyfish.
I’m in a neighborhood of lakes and high-rises. Across the water I see an aging building and recall bitterly a deal done with Trump many years back, I get mad enough to lock myself in a nearby public restroom stall and vent my anger by yelling. I emerge only to find an older black dude friend of mine nearby. He says that I should work on myself; he knows I had “psychological problems” in the past but being angry all the time about stuff is harmful.
Chicken is attending a concert by a Japanese cellist with his wife and daughter. We have a friendly stilted conversation afterwards. He says he could’ve done without the cellist’s political discursions, but found the concert enjoyable.
A lifted pickup truck with a circular rollbar parking on the street. It brakes hard while backing up and flips over — and odd, interesting old feature.
Fixing Autumn’s air conditioning. There’s a purpose-built enclosed orange space just left of the stairs where all the air is pushed through.
Donald Trump is a sad, half-cocked big city real estate investor. He’s leaning against his family, of which I’m one. Simply being there is the most sympathy I can think to have.
Our pet rats have been set free for a long time, and we’re outside calling them. They come quickly, seemingly from nowhere. It’s a teary, warm-hearted reunion. I know they won’t be able to breed (neutered) but they’re living out their lives in freedom, among their rat people.
I am an incorporeal presence floating above the crowds of the Republican National Convention. Loud and angry is the clamor, wretched partisans yelling for blood, dressed in white and reddish-orange. I despise the vicious and violent desires of these people. All gathered, I want them all blown up. Instead (by my intervention, perhaps?) the crowd is suddenly turned against their hotheaded petty potty-mouthed loser of a champion… they yell for his blood now, “Kill Trump! Kill Trump! Kill Trump!”
But that’s not all. In a separate dream, I’m the personal servant/slave of none other than Adolf Hitler himself. Fortunately for me, he’s not thoughtful enough to realize that his Jewish slave being sent on an errand to the railway depot might just escape. I manage to sneak out my wife too, who bafflingly robs the drama from the situation by dryly noting “this is good, I’m glad we do this every year.”
Let’s hope this dream doesn’t get me put on the wrong kind of list… (but if you did read this post under the aegis of law enforcement, I’d be interested to know).
I’m invited to a huge wedding party — the catch is that it’s one of Donald Trump’s kids.
It’s at this expansive palladium/neoclassical sports grounds (not soon after, I witness it being torn up and redeveloped). Decorations are sparse and modern, and Lynae and I play music on these white plastic devices made available… the volume down is hard to control (using shift+F6). I notice someone I once dated, Meredith S., walk in arm-and-arm with another former partner of mine, and realize they’ll eventually realize they have me in common (she turns and glances back at me for just a second). There’s also a bin full of elaborate foreign hats (I have the thought “this is what our wedding would have had). Donald gives a toast and I enjoy it the same way I enjoy my father-in-law, knowing that our politics differ greatly but appreciating him as my family.
The celebration winds down, I head north to explore some tangled dry woods (this dream turns into a city-planning dream, the industrial and residential areas angled diagonal to each other, joined by a single thick link road, arguing in favor of adding more links). I view a flyover of all the thin multi-story houses (the opposite of the bungalow in Ojai that I’m visiting).
Afterward, somewhere near the wedding grounds, Lynae and I are talking and realize we left some important item under the table. Returning, we fruitlessly search. We ask a large hairy bearded guy who seems friendly if he knows where else to look — by way of answer, he and two other guys perform a song-and-dance bit about how reasonably long certain things might be held for lost-and-found. As our item (maybe a bag) is much less important than a dog (48 hours) there’s not much chance for it. At least I got an entertaining soliloquy from my subconscious regarding expiration dates on “lost” things.
Oh yeah, my wife got scared because she thought I was a monster shape-shifter (one with little white ropes for a body) and I decided to play along for a while until she came up with a reason to believe I wasn’t. It was easier that way, but I must admit to a certain sinister enjoyment of a well-received villain act. Maybe that happened because I was still waiting for a response from earlier in the dream, where I was out-of-communication with Dara V., and my wife said she woul resolve the problem one-on-one. That… makes me long for the long-lost girl again (not unusual for me). I suspect her presence is a big reason why the dream felt important enough to write down — here in the summer heat and flies of Ojai valley, sticky and rough.
“There are those that are lost to us forever.”
–message from a dream I had in 8th grade
