Tag: friend

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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…

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Dream Journal

First La Paz Dream

Dream of La Paz, Mexico. I’m looking into the night sky which has a purple cast. Appears to be overlaid on a camouflage pattern, representing war or conflict, which gives the light a strong and unusual green/purple filtered effect, like a photographic cross-process.

An old childhood friend whose family immigrated from Cambodia enters the dream. He contextualizes the representation of war, humanizing it but also bringing in an actual worst case scenario context. Seems not so bad, given how bad it could get.

This is the first dream I’ve had of La Paz…

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Dream Journal

Plarvolia’s Drop

I’m visiting a friend’s house, Andi. She lives in a converted Victorian shop with tall frame windows located on a corner somewhere in San Francisco, possibly SOMA. Her roommates aren’t home but one of them is Plarvolia. I’m not terribly worried about when she gets home; I’m here to see my friend and not to have anything to do with her. I’m relaxing on a couch that has a textural quality like dried noodles, enjoying the many plants and moss that grow in the excellent indoor sunlight. Plarvolia gets home and makes an offended noise for her own companions to hear, but otherwise doesn’t bother me. Then while I’m laying on the couch looking up I see her poke her head out of a square interior window upstairs holding a few full beer bottles. She drops them on me, aiming for my face. One lands on my neck which quite hurts. I bolt upright coughing and immediately lay into her demanding to know what the fuck, lady. This appears to be exactly what she wanted. With friends behind her she plays accusatorial, accusing me of all sorts of malice just being here. I know legally I’d be totally in the right (I could’ve been seriously injured if her aim was better) but with her loyalists barking behind her I’m chased out of the building.

The look on her face when she dropped those bottles. I don’t know. It wasn’t frightening or malicious, not particularly. There was an element of enjoyment that she knew exactly what to do. But it was something else, too. I put off writing about this all day despite taking some basic notes when I woke up. She’s become something so different to me in my dreams than where she started. I still only barely know this girl, really — mostly through old tweets way back when. What am I supposed to do with this character, this representation, who is so willing to harm me for a moment of her inconvenience? Is avoiding her at all costs really the best I can hope? I don’t *want* to hope for anything else. I certainly didn’t in this dream. Her face was the face of someone who I thought I could love, now become the face of someone who clearly hates me. Wtf, lady… who are you anyways?

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Dream Journal

Velociraptor CEO, Star Wars Bumper Cars, Matthew in Charlottesville

The actress Jessica Barden is a velociraptor, locked in a room with a CEO. This is set to happen over 3 days but he’s clawed to death by the second day. A whole day’s headstart to go on the run. I peek inside the chamber early and get to see my old friend Kelly G. naked, in profile, silhouetted against the background. I always did think she had a great body.

I’m rewatching bumper boat scene in Star Wars and it looks startlingly cheap; they should let George Lucas remake it. Certainly looked like a lot of fun they had making it in the 70s. I love the space they filmed in, a massive dusty off-white room with ceilings so high in the middle you can’t see them, but dim areas beyond the colonnades where old machines rust into bits. Maybe it was bumper cars, but then again maybe it changed.

Taking apart RAM from a computer to put back together, but it looks as though it’s been hollowed out. A big chunk in the middle had been removed underneath where the heat dissipator would be. I think this can’t be repaired; don’t know how it could’ve worked in the first place. Maybe it didn’t.

An extended visit to our friend Matthew S. at his home in Charlottesville. Or perhaps at least a place near the Charles River, a long low bridge we cross together with him driving. Is it named after King Charles, that one who the English beheaded? The right colonial time period. Maybe this city is near Baltimore, somewhere on the East Coast at least. I’ve hardly ever been on the East Coast so I can’t really intuit. Driving around I get a strange impression of more noticable cultural differences. Even the stores, the street corners, the taxis give a more conservative impression than I expected — just not in the way I expected. Beyond the car windows things have a grey/brown cast, but bright, like they never had color they could have lost.

Later I’m seated at a lecture next to my wife somewhere during our visit. She asks the first question to the presenter which is uncomfortably something like “what is your position on gay?” I tug her shirt hem, frantically trying to reel her in, recognizing that our “California-ness” is utterly the wrong tone to move any hearts and minds here, knowing how we must look to these dingy generic townsfolk. No effect, but perhaps someone saw me and at least saw that I realized this.

Maybe this was Canada actually? Nah, that doesn’t sound right.

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Dream Journal

Crinkle Crinkle Crinkle

Watching movie in theater on date where it abruptly ends. Teams of raptor attack forces controlled remotely via VR, but the enemy team which seems like it had the upper hand, has never trained their raptors to see a jet. So in the transmission when a jet shows up on the battlefield it just looks like a giant raptor head floating.

People in the movie theater clap when my wife is finally able to unsnap the seatbelt above my seat, where I’m lying down sideways across several seats as the row we have is perpendicular to the screen. Through the whole movie, that seat belt has been causing the plastic bag sitting on my belly to crinkle. CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE. It wasn’t even mine! I was just holding it for her. Kind of embarrassing either way. Wish I hadn’t waited till the end of the film (yes, we waited until after the damn thing was over).

Seeing the mouse cursor belonging to the projectionist is always weird, though. There I am sitting in a giant room watching what’s actually just someone else’s computer. It’s even the same basic boring white-with-black outline mouse cursor I have! This distinct human presence up on the screen, where you don’t even think of pixels. You can see another person’s actual hand movements and that’s part of being entertained I suppose.

The floating purple plant in my bathroom looks healthy, water maybe a little low. I can see their roots have grown out with puffy bubble sacks to keep them slightly buoyant. Something interesting to note, since in nature they’d never be soaking that long..

Fridge was moved from out of my bedroom while I wasn’t awake. Big chunky thing, reminds me of the fridge that lives in our dollhouse (bigger, obviously). I like to keep a jar of water in there for feeding that purple plant, because the fridge isn’t terribly cold inside and the air can escape easy enough. Sometimes things that are cheaper are safer. Huh.

While I was gone, a mutual friend (Fekaylius) left his charger here at my place. I slowly realize while sitting next to her struggling that my wife has been wasting her time trying to mail it back to him, going back and forth, and it’s just a dinky little charger. I tell her to blow him off — something I usually never do.

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Dream Journal

Thank You, Ursula

I’m proud of my accomplishment. I’ve set up an observation post overlooking all ten delivery sites in a lake, at the only spot on a ridge above that has such a vantage. Everything is set up for when those happen and I can walk away.

I’m contacted at my unlisted number by a mysterious girl. I figure out that she hacked me, but I put off responding until I can hack info on her, to respond in kind. This is a delicate thing, and she could become a love interest.

In a brick alcove on the side of a street I encounter a “Tweet 3D” training kiosk, with little floating panels on a laminar sheet. I already know this futile attempt at a new feature will fizzle out soon.

Going to attempt retrieval of stuff stored in a USB combination locker, from back before the Ukraine war started. We had all been worried things were going to escalate much worse. I’m then waylaid by a (very) former friend Kate W. who traps me with accusations. But it’s relatively easy to parry these accusations and discern that she’s stalling, waiting for my long-ago roommate Emily W. (no relation) to get here, as they are in fact now roommates. While I’m arguing I notice their many pet fish, kept in Tupperware containers on the shelf below a big CRT TV. Normally I’d love to ask about these fish.

Instead I see Ursula K. Le Guin sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. I pointedly change my attention to her, and take the opportunity to give personal thanks for her works. I mention “Always Coming Home” especially, and say that it counts as one of my favorites — even though I’m not through with it. Ursula congenially answers that that’s fine and appropriate even, as she never felt like she was done with it either.

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Dream Journal

Chamavada & Friends

On am open field or a rooftop, I see all sorts of photos of myself — taken by friends I haven’t seen for a while. My friend Dave is still the manager of our old hostel. He mentions the first manager Mindy, who was before my time. On reflection, he’s been the manager a lot longer than her, which I never considered before.

Talking to a high school friend from sophomore year, Kyle Bashore, in the stairwell of a building.

Soon I retreat to my room (this is my small teenage bedroom from middle school). In the desk drawer which I haven’t opened in awhile I find a soda-cup-shaped fleshlight device. Not that it seems sexual, it’s more just a port of some kind. I wonder if it’s mine.

It is the 10th anniversary of the time my family members threw themselves into the sea. It was ruled a suicide but I can’t remember their motivation. Also, it seems to be that they came back and are alive again? The name sounded Indian, Chamavada or something.

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Dream Journal

Dinosaur Footprints and Thrift Store Gift

Viewed from above, I can see that my childhood friend Robbie T.’s house on Desert Inn road is only a few hundred feet, by air, from a dinosaur excavation exhibit/museum. The several blocks in between are separated by a main thoroughfare but it’s still surprising that we never realized when we were kids.

My wife and I take the subway there (a short trip) and while exiting the station on a short connecting dirt path, with scrubby but pretty green nature on the side, I momentarily think we’ve angered a guy walking behind us. He’s muttering something loudly and it takes an anxious second to realize he’s talking to his directions via headset.

The museum is outdoors, the ground muddy under a sky of brisk blue. There’s preserved dinosaur footprints and maybe puddles. I prod downward with a stick as to measure depth. A detectable but unidentifiable smell is then on the stick, a nearby elder volunteers the information that they smell like The Devil (like the tarot card, not anything recognizably satanic or evil).

A sizable chunk of my back molar comes out and I sigh, looking at it in my hand. It’s been going on awhile without being addressed, falling away in pieces so it’s down to nub. No one around me seems to care or notice.

We set our pet rats to free roam loose in our home, halfway hoping they can find some wild ones. (Yesterday I saw a whole group of rats in the New York subway.)

In a thrift store I run, I prevent an old friend from buying my warm comfy German army jacket for $4. I actually chase her off, hoping she isn’t too upset despite appearances. The friend is either Meg from college (who played Columbia in Rocky Horror) or Amy Pollard from middle school (whose birthday was on Christmas). Soon I reveal a surprise gift for her — the jacket, which had a hole in the lining around the armpit, I completely repaired. Now I can give a perfectly functional jacket to her for free! Which might even make up for how I treated her in the store before. (The large atrium room reminds me of the Temple of Dendur in The Met, which I didn’t visit until today. And hadn’t even planned on seeing today.)

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Dream Journal

Next Door, A Fancy Pool I Treat like my Own

I’ve been living in a dingy apartment that used to be a motel. One nice thing about living here is that I have a view of the large pools at the fancy place next door, and I know how to sneak in whenever I want. However, the fancy place’s new owners have started paying for updates that actually detract from the beauty and usefulness of the pool for me. I’d rather it be old and enjoyable than new-looking and ugly. One day I’m lounging against the side of the pool and realized they’ve installed speakers that play easy-listening garbage. Without waiting I reach up and break off the speaker nearest me — realizing it’s better than planning it out and appearing suspicious.

I’m hanging out near the boundary of the property where there is a waist-high fence; I’m thinking about how it will still be easy to get in whenever I want even if they start locking the tiny gate. Chris P., a Cambodian childhood friend of mine, and two of his entourage arrive through the gate. He’s some important manager or boss of the place, which makes things perhaps more complicated or perhaps easier for me. We have a brief conversation joking about whether I’m hacking the power grid of the pool, like a famous incident in the history of Bermuda. Luckily, of all the liberties I’ve taken with this overly-wealthy next door property, that isn’t one of them.

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Dream Journal

New House, Bathrooms, Basement, Banana

At night in new unfamiliar family home, still in my neighborhood the mission. With my mom, I spot what looks like a stunt plane outside the window, against the houses and hills of the neighborhood, but it’s too difficult to see in the nighttime. I resolve to check tomorrow.

Eating a banana in the morning as I walk around. Punk rock aspect. As I was instructed earlier, things are solved by eating this banana. I inquire about the airplane.

Crossing freeway at pedestrian street and inspecting garishly plain grass field. Considering that it may be useful to host a blindman’s bluff type game for Sam Francisco art people.

New multi-level house after moving in with several family members. I’m the bathroom, I stare at the wall with the confusing tub, easily mistaken for a near identical bathroom on other level with no tub. I sigh; there’s so much work needed to make it nice and feel like ours. So much decorating especially. I know I’ll be doing it frequently and it’ll get done, it’s in my nature, there are just… so many blank walls.

Living in a house next door to my friend Oz. I walk up the stoop outside the mirror-layout house and check out the basement rooms downstairs. I find a resident, dumpy hat and ruffled hair, one of those Bay Area dudes who looks like he’s used to co-living situations. I ask him if he’s seen my friend Meredith — the kind of person I’d expect to live here. He knows her but she’s not in right now. I didn’t even need to find her, I needed an excuse to be in his house.