Tag: friends

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Dream Journal

Bookended Startling Rat Dreams

As I lay on the living room couch, I hear an odd rat-like noise from our back room — but not identifiable as one of our pets. I’m a bit playful when I go to investigate but creeped out by a bunch of our pillows that’ve been slashed almost in half. In an instant I realize no rat or other pet could’ve done this, and a malicious someone in likely still in the house.

I bolt awake, heart pounding, from sleep on the couch… remembering that I couldn’t fall asleep there; I had to give one of our rattie boys his medication.

I’ve been tricked into “checking out” some sort of vacation retreat with a very culty vibe. I try to leave but quickly find myself mobbed by a crush of people who aren’t allowing me to go. I think one even delivers the “it’s for my own good” line; bone-chilling in these circumstances. One bespectacled man grabs my keys and puts them in his pocket. Struggling against the huddle of bodies I manage to retrieve the keys — though I’m almost alarmed they let me have them back. They’re reluctant to do anything resembling an unambiguous assault. I escape climbing through a bathroom window when I think no one’s watching, though at this point… I wonder if they are.

I’m assigned a new group at Burning Man while it’s halfway through (not much like Burning Man — more like a week-long summer camp in an elaborate multi-story wooden atrium). I’m paired with three affable Asian kids younger than me. We’re moved to a different bunk room (a frequent occurrence) and shortly afterwards my first group, of which I’m still kind of a part, gets assigned a room that’s closer. I sleep there as it’s a bit easier, especially moving all my stuff, but I feel disappointed and conflicted for abandoning my cool new friends.

While lying asleep in bed, I hear one of our pet rats crawl up onto my wife’s side. It makes its way across our pillows, feeling oddly familiar. It crawls under the blankets right in front of me and I peek one eye open. It’s a grey rat, but we haven’t had any grey rats since… I bolt awake, realizing that one of our babies that went missing two months ago, Silveroo, has returned.

But he’s not there. There’s no rat at all. I was, for the second time in a night, having dreams of rats, set in the very place I was actually sleeping.

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Dream Journal

Dive Camp with Friends

A summer camp for diver’s training in underwater oil recovery. Mixed co-ed group of youngish people, high sexual tension but everyone is working too hard to do anything about it. A girl I know from the PacTrades hostel, Adrienne F., is climbing the rope ladder to our next task area but stops to masturbate. Supposedly, I remember her doing this in the past.

Karma Raya  is the name for the communal ranch house some of us stay in. A low wall separates our small sleeping rooms from a main activity area. The place looks like an architectural cutaway model that someone actually made a building of.

There, my school friend Vince Saunders is playing piano. Well there’s a piano in the same room anyways. I slide down the wall, over the edge, and land on the piano bench facing away from him. It’s a silly yet simultaneously classy move.

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Dream Journal

Logs in a Tree, Hip Ground Floor Squat

Tree logs stored high up across two trees. A ladder is up there too, blocking access. I look up and point out to my companion that there’s a hawk sitting on a branch directly above us.

The self-appointed minder of this open plot of land is a creepy psychiatrist, a young man who is clueless enough to stand staring at you from behind a couch to “observe” you. I point this out to Lynae, or whoever is with me. Someone escapes out the front door and into the music store across the other side of the mall (they don’t get far).

Behind the tree with the logs is a water chute leading back to a mill pond with a lovely population of loons (ha!). There are inscriptions in concrete, familiar yet written in some Southeast Asian language,

I sign up for a documentary show with Ricky Gervais, and as part of the contract we have to record banter to be played over the footage for at least 9½ minutes. We record it in the back of a car and then I’m told, jokingly, that the rental lasts another 120 minutes. My old friends Chicken and Kelly are in the front seat, smoking, and making out with the smoke.

Driving with my dad, early morning around 4 am, on the streets of our desert home that looks covered in a sheen of smooth white snow. I have a stapled-together packet of printed papers that’s about fighting others’ belief in mental illness, something I’d planned to read on the drive. Dad gets me to close it with a frustrated “really?”

Weird cheap flat on the first floor of a dirty yet hip ghetto. A side street near the heart of the city, clumped-up forgotten backyards and trash gathered in the dead-ends. My friends are thinking of buying this place — or maybe they already have? But that could just be a cover story for a squat, I think. They’ve converted a windowless room in the middle into an “orgy space”, which I guess means stuffing in a ton of pillows and chairs. Bafflingly, there’s only a heavy sheet separating it from a front patio area packed with couches. Ghetto but very cozy.

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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.

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Dream Journal

Old Friends, Covering Up Accidental Terrorism

In the city, walking along the sidewalk to a favorite Mexican place of mine when a light but colorful rain starts falling. Waiting in line alone, I’m concentrating on what my order will be, rock-a-pulco and some kind of snack ball. People keep cutting in front of me though I try to ignore it, when I finally reach the counter I go to the right hand side, I’m told only the left hand side has what I want. I knew this already but I suppose I’m stressed by all the people cutting. I place my order with the smaller, narrow family-run side, round the corner benches, and run into an old childhood friend, Robby T. There’s some tension as we haven’t seen each other in so long, but eventually we make friendly and I move the big wooden tables around.

I leave headed around the back way, down a dirt trail between clusters of buildings. Riding a bike, I pull over in a clump of bushes as I suspect my GPS is misleading me. Decide I need to pee anyway, but reconsider when I spot a group of women I know standing gathered under a tree nearby. Among these is Robin, but also… Emily Wentz. Somehow we begin a friendly conversation, we even smack butts, climbing into a wooden wall alcove for a longer chat. She’s herself, but older, with the reserved energy of most middle-aged adults.

I’m one of a pair of small companion robots (like PintSize from Questionable Content), and my human/creator/master is worried she’ll be caught for a terrible crime. We revisit what must’ve happened — a fiery explosion at the top of a mountainous roller-coaster, a disaster compared to a lava eruption, crowds fleeing in panic. Although she intended no such destruction, she did miscalculate, and she feels no responsibility for the accident victims. Authorities treat it as a terrorist attack even though there’s no motive.

Moving about hastily among backyard garden ponds, we obscure evidence, knowing we’re running out of time. At this point she knows she will be caught, and is only trying to protect people who helped her. While I scratch red marks into a note-taking board (mounted on the wall, using a broad flat scraper, with feigned-purposeful arcs) one such couple speak in Italian from inside their bus home. Able to robotically translate, I understand they’re trying to decide if they can pin some of their unrelated crimes on my friend/master. Something involving a kid I think. Creepy.

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Dream Journal

Osmosis versus… what was the other one’s name?

I find my former roommate Emily’s dating profile. Her first pic is from our apartment hall, which tells me that she’s still nostalgic for our time together but also doesn’t share what she looks like now.

In a store’s lost and found, I discover about 30 mini discs in a CD case which I, realizing their rarity, covertly steal in my hoodie. As it happens the attendant saw me and wryly confronts me, but after I tell him what they are and what I’m going to do with them — transfer them to archival digital — he gives a mysterious little nod of passing. Despite what I’d usually do I go right to work on them but there’s something amiss and none of them read correctly.

Sitting in a middle row of a classroom, Robby in the row ahead of me, Michael (Mickey before he was Mickey) in the row behind. Unusual as it’s the second night in a row I’ve dreamt of both of them.

I creep quietly toward the door of Aislinn’s North Beach apartment where there’s a bright glowing fishtank in window, but the rest of her lights are off so I leave without knocking.

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Dream Journal

Slept Till Afternoon, Giving Up On School

I’m sitting between Lauren and Mickey in Ms. Fitzgerald’s class (although the room is Ms. Snowden’s).

A test she gives has two sides, one a question on how to make a single page layout in WordPress without access to the file system. I can’t be motivated to write out the answers to these boring questions, and I know it. Still I receive a decent grade, perhaps because the instructor is passing on.

There’s a broken red light sitting in bowl above the dishwasher. Electricity comes on. I notice the bulb is still broken, and I replace it with a pink bulb taken from another light cord.

Snippet of conversation:
“how many in our peloton (pel-o-THON)?”
“¿What is this, Barthelona?”

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Dream Journal

Dream of a Store called Beached

Hanging out for what seemed like hours in this rich/upscale home. It was mine, or a relative’s, or someone who liked me very much. I was at a long, luxurious dinner party, in a charming and tastefully lit loft, with a rack of fur coats on hangers. This dream must have been earlier in the night, as it set the scene for another dream.

Friends of mine — or perhaps I, myself — opened up a new storefront called “Beached”. It was in a hipstery neighborhood blending part of London, San Francisco’s Mission, LA, and Berlin’s Kreuzberg. The store was angled from the storefront, and was structured around a large communal swimming pool, with a bar, changing areas off to the side, and an upper level with a jacuzzi lounge and clothing boutique. Reecy was there as part of an opening day crew. The store proved very trendy, and was a commercial success.

Later during this day’s events I would end up going to LiquidRom, but did not manage to fully write down the dream beforehand.

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Dream Journal

From Sailboats to Planet Sims

Memories of a former dream of a Pacific isle with only a small harbor, sailing a single swimboat into it, as skies grow grayer. It’s near Hawaii? Trapped as some sort of hostage. I see from the first person perspective, but it’s as if I’m reading or writing a story at the same time. Moving around a large white room. My vision is compressing distance, as if I am manipulating the environment by my perception of it. I manage to kill or restrain “Dr. Plenti” — something I may have been judged as psycho for, despite my need to escape. I lured his wife into the room and slipped through the door into another room, with a plastic sheet over the north-facing window. The first-person character, “me”, proceeds to navigate around tall shelves of construction storage, eluding a novice security guard, finding a patch of trees along a winding path which is reminiscent from dreams of several rural graveyards.

I engage Valerie in a fond hug, as I try to understand what she can be helped with romantically. Unsure if I’m helping her as a friend or propositioning her.

Mickey and Robby T. finally find themselves as gay lovers. What?

Video game where you run a planet simulation, but I only manipulate the input resources and let it run. I watch a vast terraced valley develop, farmhouses and townscapes and weather moving across the viewport. There are square edges on the walls of each rounded platform, a notable video game faux pas. To pause, I reach behind my current lily pad-like unit and pull up a badminton racket (they all have these) and notice the tick-tock of time slow to a halt so that I can examine the world’s results. Notable is the poor performance in dental health, indicated by tooth-brushing. This was an actual variable in the game!

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Glot

Networking Card

Oh, hi there. My name’s Orin. This is Lynae. We’re here at this event and so are you. So right there, we already have something in common. We could have more… a lot more, who knows. And you seem pretty cool—Lord knows I feel pretty cool cause I’m here. It’s a big town so we might not run into each other for awhile but, you know, it’d be nice to be in contact. Here. Take this card:

Orin + Lynae = ♥

Well gee, thanks. You know I totally made that earlier today. It was nice talking to you, and we shall meet again. Ha ha, probably.