Categories
Dream Journal

Mad at the Sunset at Mustard Truck Ranch

Throughout these dreams there’s an indescribable water park vibe. No theories why, just imagine there’s a waterpark involved. And: a certain man’s wife features in every scene.


Staying as a guest at a ranch. On an outdoor table with benches I notice that the pepper I planted has grown wildly, sucking all the goodness out of its soil. At its base it’s produced a big wrinkly pepper fruit. An unruly stem of 50 cloned plantlets hangs so long it droops over the table’s edge.

Holed up at the semi-remote ranch I defer going to school all day. Counting the hours, missing one class after another, bargaining with myself the whole time. Step outside and look between the gateposts — just in time to catch the sunset framed between them, just touching the horizon. I yell at the sun in frustration, “I wanted to have a day! Fuck you!” It’s like a picture I saw of a sunset in an old vinyl album — evocative in its plainness somehow.

From behind me, I hear the main front door to the ranch open. I don’t wish to interact with anyone at the moment; there’s a baseball hat dude and his wife that I’m not fond of either. They’ve not done anything actually rude yet but I don’t want to give them the chance to.

Along one of the side streets bordering the big compound a group and I encounter a charming little food truck. It’s an old woody station wagon, green and yellow, called The Mustard Truck. They serve warm pretzels and beer and English bar snacks. Surprised, I observe that it wouldn’t actually be that bad living here if there’s things like this to be found.

From the winding sidewalk of small park near a courthouse, I step into the street. I pass a woman I recognize, the wife of Sam Gamgee from Lord of the Rings. This would be Rosie Cotton as per the books — then again but I might instead be thinking of the actor who played Sam Gamgee. A little down the road I watch a car struggling to pass a lady dragging a cart as they’re all in a tunnel. She shouts “passenger!” as it overtakes her. A roundabout way of claiming her rights to use the road (just as a car) but avoiding shouting “car” because that’d only reinforce a second-class ideology. Car, apparently, being the traditional shout.

I’m sitting across the table with some female YouTuber, someone whose stuff I watch (can’t recall who though). We discover we both know this cart lady. I relate this story of her shouting in the tunnel and we share a good laugh. I list a bunch of other YouTubers who might know her (this is why I can’t pin down who I’m talking to: I mention everyone I might be talking to).

Categories
Dream Journal

Cheap but Familiar Dreams

Kid is happy to eat replicated (irradiated) mammoth meat. There’s a feather in a shotgun, the kid mistakes it to mean it’s for him to control and change things. It’s just a gift! Next stage in this game is little stars or circles in a form that get bubbled in.

In an unfinished wood building, I live with four other adults in a 20 x 20 room split four ways lengthwise. Aislinn is there. We mostly pretend we have our own spaces, but one day I blurt out how absurd and frustrating it is that the landlord has split it like this. Outside in the hall there’s a poster framed in plastic mounted to the floor. I’m usually complaining about it because I think it’s dumb since it routinely gets slippery when it rains.

A hotel / food counter up a winding hill. Strangely Victorian and Modern. Go there with friends (Ais, Reecy) but I remember it from long in my past. I order a big plate of various fried food served in styrofoam to-go container. Before I leave I return a distinctive flat clock I took from a stairway when I was very small — back then I didn’t understand it probably broke off from something. But I immediately recognize things when I came up the grand entry stairway which, Victorian/Modern again, had an odd ’70s green shag carpet paired with Golden Age woodwork. This is an odd reason, but I think this dream happened because I smelled a bizarrely familiar apple body cleanser at a Korean beauty store — like something I played with when I was very small.

(Messy remembrance, I got woken up a few times.)

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Dream Journal

it simply isn’t understood

In a wide upstairs apartment, I find myself in bed, suddenly noticing the remarkable beauty of a girl I know. (Perhaps out of superstition, I’m not saying who it was — but she wouldn’t be surprised to know I found her beautiful). Perfectly proportioned, and simply fascinating. I’m somehow allowed to just keep looking….

But when I touch her it’s frustrating. Trying to massage her, I can’t hear her feedback or instructions. Instead I end up cleaning a congealed mass of sweet potato/quinoa/smoothie.

My wife kisses me (to wake me up perhaps?) and I don’t recognize its a person. Like, it happens, but that there’s a person who does it simply isn’t understood.

Seems unrelated, but also: there was an escaped convict guy crossing a bridge across a bay, careening off the bridge onto New York’s shoreline. He and I shoot buzzsaws out our hands (as you do).

Categories
Glot

The Nature of Frustration

It’s kind of a tangled ball of string that you have to pluck delicately painstakingly apart; a string that unravels your favorite shirt; a string that trips you in the dark; a string stretched taut between the limits of your patience; the same string scraped by the 10 year-old violinist torturing their parents; it’s a string that makes no sense; a string that defies the reality of the universe.

Much as I’d like to be speaking at length on the failures of string theory in the past 20 years—which I can’t—I’m not. I think instead another list is called for.

Callouts:

  • Planned Parenthood: If you’re gonna try to bill me for things that you said were free, have the balls to call me back. We can have a discussion like civilized people/organizations. Just because you misrepresented information and didn’t ever contact me after my appointment, like the bad one-night stand that I never had, doesn’t mean we can’t be civil. Step off.
  • CSUMB Administration & Records: Please mail my transcripts to me. Please do it now, not when you feel like it. This is important, cause otherwise I don’t go to SF State on the 24th. And you don’t get to continue not stepping off. Step off.
  • S.F.P.D. Meter Maid Task Force: You need to call me back too. And then we can discuss under what circumstances, exactly, free parking isn’t free. Steppoff.
  • My Computer: Houda, you heard me, that was totally uncalled for the other day. Getting unplugged and losing all my work was out of line. You made the list, nowsssstephoff.
  • Email Spammer Using my Domain: I’m just gonna tell you up front, and we’ll keep this simple: you need to DIE. Step off da face of da Urf.

OHthatFEELSgood—out, damned string.

Categories
Glot

Hellacious Night

Certain times in your life your life makes you wanna take lives. That’s the nicest way I can put my feelings about today.

You know the kinda day I’m talking about. Mamma told you about them. Swear to God, somebody pushed the asshole button. When that button gets pushed — it’s usually hidden somewhere near the furnace by the old mason jars — look the f*uck out. The effect is not selective. We’re all assholes. Yes, you. You are an asshole, sir or madam. That asshole in the other room. Assholes on the phone. I didn’t have one spare second from you people today. Me. I am an asshole.

Let me ask you something: you ever turn into another lane without signaling? Of course you have, ya’ damned liar. We all do. Just cut it out for tomorrow, ok?

Categories
Glot

A Walk in the Night

I’ll be damned.
That did solve something.

You never think of walking as being a real prouctive activity. A to B.
Maybe that’s culture. But… allow me to explain.

I’d been dicking around on this damnable website for at least 5 hours. Not doing anything, really, but reading and researching the life out of me. And so I got up. Tried to trim my stache but the razor was dead. Remembered that I needed to move my car from the closer lot to the faaar lot because I’d get another ticket otherwise. So I got my brown blazer on, the one that used to be Emily’s Dad’s, and headed out.

As I started walking I start listening. The first thing I heard is this clack-clack-clack as some kid rides his skateboard across the cracks in the wet pavement behind me. Then my own shoes on the concrete stairs. My car beeping as I unlock it. The engine turning on and the jazz station. Wheels backing over a curb as I, dumbass, went over it. Then the softer sound of tires on wet road. Between the barricades I run over a large metal ring lying there in the crosswalk, which has a sound I enjoy but cannot describe. Then back to the parking lot the new way, the new road they just made way, as I realize there might be available paking spaces. No such luck. As I was about to go back the way I came I heard voices, people walking up the parking entrance whom I didn’t even see. I waited but didn’t want them to hear the silly Santa Cruz reggae that had come on. So, I drove to the BBC parking lot and on the way I HONKed my horn at the police station for a good solid second because I was pissed at the stupid cops for giving me stupid tickets.

This is important,

I think.

So I get out of my car and I’m all kinda mope-y cause I have to park here so faaaar away and I pull out this rope to see if I can rip down that fucking parking sign with my car frame. Verdict: probably, but I’m not that hardcore and/or an anarchist. I walk back. The rain starts again, even though it’s been dripping from the trees all along. I start talking to myself. A monologue of alternating bile and self-chastisement. Mostly about cops, how much I hate them and then me rationalizing why I really don’t. As I get back to the quad what did I see, of course, but an officer doing nightwalk. Nightwalk is this thing where any girl student that calls can get a fully armed polizia to walk them to and from their dorm. I power-walked ahead of these two, the cop and his escortee the Resident Director, trying to get into the elevator before them. Sooo close. They come in just as the door opens and I run inside jamming the close button and as I do, the officer says and I quote,

“I smell pasta.”

I’m sorry. Really. But if one is pissed pisssssed at cops in general and one of them comes into where you live and says something so retort-worthy and inane as “I smell pasta,” or “I smell anything,” for that matter well…

I’m sure you can’t blame one for uttering “I smell bacon.”

Thought I got away with it too. Damn. I didn’t. He stuck his flashlight/beatstick in the door and asked what I said. I don’t even remember what the hell I answered at that point. What did I not do? Make some shit up. Get in his face. Stonewall him. I think I probably apologized. Kept his stick in there till the ellelater was buzzing something nasty. Then he let me go up to my room.

I’m beyond irked, at this point. I’m making bestial sounds and my spit is frothing at my lips. I’m not really making words anymore. People used to say you had a sharp tongue if you could curse viciously enough. My tongue was blunt and spiky, like a mace. I didn’t stay long in my dorm.

I took out the trash. Pfft, why not. Was I looking for a fight when I went out? Kinda sorta. Walked by his cruiser. Didn’t spit on it, though I was tempted very tempted. Called myself a pussy a few dozen times. Finally I settled on going back to my dorm and being angry.

When who … do I see … again … but Officer Brown.

Officer Brown was his name. Young guy. Probably on University Police till he gets enough experience. Brown hair efficiently cut, kinda short-ish. I run into him and the RD on the second floor. My first instinct surprisingly enough is not to shout and curse and be pissed off. I say sorry again this time I’m sure. I invite him up to my room. But I was on the wrong floor of course and said it was one of those days. He said he’d had a few of those. Once inside I offered him water and a seat but he said he was fine. I explained where I was coming from and the tickets I’d gotten and why I was so frustrated and he tried to sympathize. I think even he was a little taken aback by some of the tickets I’ve gotten. We had an okay conversation. I kind of unloaded on him, which was alright. He told me he didn’t write the dumb overnight parking tickets and that, yes, there were some ticket-happy guys on the force.

We had a human mutual respect moment. He’s from CSU Fresno. His name’s Matt. He knows now that sometimes I follow foxes on my bike, even after midnight. He had to go and we said goodbye. I accomplished clearing my head. I felt better.

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And I finally had something to write about, thank god.