Tag: family

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Dream Journal

Wooden Art Time Machine(s)

Sitting in my dad’s handmade palm-covered Kish structure in my childhood home’s backyard in Cathedral City. Neighbor has situated their patio structure with loud music just over the fence. No saguaro cactus like there used to be.

A wooden bamboo theater, very exclusive. Ticket stand out front and snack bar just inside, barely manned as the movie already started. Dark, stylish, yet still homemade-looking.

My Uncle Mike, Aunt Terry and cousin Spencer come to visit — in a time machine. I ride along with them on their way back, travelling on train tracks laid into the city streets. A car gets in our way during a left turn and this odd jalopy-looking time machine honks and honks — which I remember as both funny and stressful.

Perhaps the same vehicle but shifted pulls up with a large mobile art project newly-made, by an entirely new Chicken John crew. A giant redwood-sized log has been made into a vehicle. There’s a girl I sorta know, light brown skin and dark hair, wearing a revealing onesie with the crotch and breasts sewn to be open. I take some pictures of her, ostensibly of the vehicle though. She’s very friendly and seems pleased I’m interested. Unrelated to this, Chicken comes up and starts spouting some characteristic spiel. I lightly spit in his face (almost missing), he and the whole crew get the message. Hell of a way to get someone’s respect.

An aquarium of worms is being worked on, on the kitchen table. I pull one worm out but there’s actually hundreds stuck together. This is an otherwise barren tank with just a single small fish surviving, the last of several remaindered animals.

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Dream Journal

Cymbal Sounds and Buried Glass

Watching TV in master bedroom of old family house, I’m aged as I am presently but with my family relationships as they were when I was in high school, maybe. I’m watching TV, a refreshing change as it’s been so long. I note that it’s like scrying, you don’t know what you’re going to get when you flip channels. I add 100 to whatever’s on and end up seeing part of an interview by someone named Leon Turkas, or Leone Turkes, some older funk-era black musician I remember to have one song by (note: no such artist was found upon waking).

From a viewpoint floating above San Francisco, I see that there are many more repurposed or semi-abandoned military buildings than I realized before. I spot one in particular, cracked wood and partially overgrown with spiky vines, lying between a major road and a parking lot for two other buildings — just out there, waiting to be explored.

Hanging out with my family, my little brother Chris (who is maybe 7-10 in this dream?) asks if I will let him practice massage. Lying on my back, he works on something he calls “windowpanes”, which are my upper pectorals. This goes on a while; he stops, someone says something to the effect “you should be good”, “you’ve gotten enough”, etc.

Now at an outdoor pool near the ocean, I rant at my brothers about the kind of people who make palindromes. They’re the kind of people who need something to occupy their minds, holding and manipulating multiple simultaneous variables, running an excessively complicated algorithm just to burn CPU cycles on their head-computer. Fucking untrustworthy mentats who don’t want to be alone with themselves. Well, I thought the rant was funny.

One of us brothers makes the sound of a cymbal with his mouth, a clean shhhhhhimm-m-m sound, as a comment during conversation. Chris follows it with a sound like sh-sh-sh-sh-sh, which my Dad says doesn’t sound like a cymbal at all. I come to his defense, saying it’s a cymbal with a lot of shimmer on it, which I feel somehow proud to understand and point out.

I wander away from them for a bit to explore. The pool and the beach are a bit like the ruins of Sutro Baths. In the middle distance I see what looks like smoke rising from a low, rocky outcrop. A few others notice it too. On the way to investigate I notice a dead whale on the beach, upside down, with spotty fur and ears. It has fuzzy white tufts over it, and I realize the smoke in the distance is actually steam, and it’s so cold outside frost has begun to form.

Satisfied there is no danger, I practically trip over an odd-shaped item half-buried in the grey-ish/brown-ish beach sand. I pull it out and it’s an elaborate sealed glass container, radially symmetric with alternate bulges and necks and ridges, inexplicably filled with what looks like a mixture of seawater and beach sand. There are a few intact ones I pull out before reaching some broken pieces underneath, which (since I’m already wearing gloves) I set aside to be disposed of properly. A family with small kids pass by as I’m working on this and the little girl in pigtails (maybe 5-6 years old) reaches out to feel the glass objects, though I warn her not to touch the broken ones. She defiantly rubs her hand on them anyway, and I look up and realize it’s a black family. They pointedly don’t react. I’m left wondering whether there must’ve been some black/white dynamic even from a kid that age, some “no white man gonna tell me what to do” aspect.

Woke up with “Mr. Blue Sky” as covered by Pomplamoose in my head. Surprised my wife by playing it in the living room remotely before I joined her in the living room. Ha!

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Dream Journal

Protest at a Water Park, Saved

I’ve been dropped off at a water park with a group of friends. I spend most of my time by myself, but I see my handsome childhood classmate Zane Flynn walking around and I walk beside him twice.

There is a water slide being used by a giant girl near the edge of the sea. The slide cuts through a low straight ridge, water fed to it by two channels behind the ridge, the water sloshed in by two manatee-shark creatures from either side.

I’m involved in a dramatic incident where the coast is drained for an approaching tram. A lone protester walks up to the track and places his foot on it, forcing the tram to stop. Two armed guards approach to arrest him. Moving as one, myself and a large crowd surround both guards and protester, like white blood cells isolating an infection. We sweep back to the shore in a wave and break apart, saving the protester. Angela Merkel (who is in charge here) begins a retribution campaign, which I immediately notice by the presence of a creepy guy recording video directly in front of me as I walk back.

Some things in the park are already closed even by 3:00 pm, like the gift shop/president’s hall located on a mezzanine at the edge of the park. Headed back down long twisting perpendicular concrete stairs, I jump and surf on a series of long sloping metal handrails. Finally, on the way out, I consider how the musician Weird Al always seems to be on top of knowing about these protests. Then, I just happen to see him on the way out, playing an accordion cover of “We Don’t Need No Education”. I thank him. I’ve heard that he remembers all his fans names, and he yells back at me “thanks Amy!” Hm. Leaping up the stairs in bounds, I see two hip-hop kids having an argument about the protest. My answer to them is that it doesn’t matter what happened in the past, what happened today is always more relevant. And the protest happened today.

On my way back out to the communal bus, around the corner from the exit, I run into my family, which is the family from Malcolm in the Middle. In the cozy second story living room/kitchen, they’ve written a single name on a big board, “Artemisia”. I start saying “don’t even tell me, I know you’re up to something,” but they explain anyway (of course they do) it’s their list of names for people that would both wear cutoffs and who could be male or female. Of course it is.

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Dream Journal

Dirt Bike Somersaults & Stamp Art

dark motorcycle

I get my dirt bike working on a family trip to Death Valley. In celebration I do multiple wheelies while rounding a low hill, then motorbike somersaults in the air, finally floating off on a rock. Willam Shatner is there? Or is it me?

An older, liberal stamp artist for the US Postal Service is doing a series on Bob Ross. I’m already sure this predictable pap won’t sell well in the red states, but at least the prototype drawings are good. One has him in an earthworm-like armor helmet, dressed as Trogdor (Trogdor the Burninator?) which I learn is actually pronounced tro-dor.

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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.