Tag: garden

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Dream Journal

Rearranging the Formal Garden

Picking out from a line of available cars from grandma, who has passed on her collection. I realize after I’ve made my pick that I was only considering between the cars in a certain category that felt like the one that was supposed to be mine, neglecting to evaluate if there were better options in other categories.

Watching Dune 2 in a very long oversized movie theater, the rows separated by big distances so those in front or behind don’t disturb each other. I feel as though I am a powerful or dangerous entity here, as though I am hiding my power level. But others could be too.

On screen, the movie is more reminiscent of the setting of Dune 2 than the story. We pan over an extended slope of sandy hill with dunes, a helicopter (or more likely a ‘thopter) plunging into them. A friend, Andi, is a character there in the film setting.

A few of my rats have a deep tangerine tinge to them. Concerned, I search around and discover they’ve gotten into a container of cranberries. My wife soon notices them lying on their sides together covering in the almost-red goo and I’m able to quickly explain that they only ate a bunch of the cranberries and destroyed the box.

Moving benches in a formal garden, split into quarters. Place one bench diagonally in the center of a raised grass square which is girded with brick. I move the other benches together on the opposite side to make a denser gathering space there. In order to push them against the far wall, I have to move a long pair of risers stacked one on the other. Those turn out to be mirrored L-shaped equipment movers, with heavy duty wheels on one end. They might prove very useful in the future.

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Dream Journal

A Day at our New Home in the Country

A country house just off a main road somewhere small, rural California, where we’ve moved. My wife and I still have a landlord but are overall happy finally settled into the new place.

It’s bright midday and I seal up our younger rats, Pierre & Roscoe, making sure to stretch the three wire cage doors so the locks are tight.

Outside it’s so much quieter than the city. I ponder the neighborhood as I gaze down the dusty street where ours is the corner house. I haven’t fully explored the area yet. Feels like a hot day, summer. I observe a distinction with the city I never thought of before: here, people are spread out enough that you kind of miss them, back in the city it was so packed that you often like people less because there’s already too many of them.

All our old stuff made it there but most things still need arranging. A few items are out on the grassy brown lawn, or under a covered porch with built-in brick planting beds. Our building is old, and has a name on a vertical sign with green letters — something that sounds like a Chinese restaurant. There’s a smaller sign underneath for wayward out-of-towners, clarifying that it’s just an old name, this is a house, and they can find an actual restaurant a couple lanes down.

Back inside, I see Roscoe is out of his cage. I’m sure I locked it securely, and sure enough I see he’s managed to bend several wire metal bars at the side of the cage! I tell my wife and we’re not sure what to do. There’s a square patch of grass on the lawn where the cage would fit, and be blocked off securely, but the ratties might easily get overheated in the sun.

Someone reveals something about my parents I didn’t know (this part is confusing in retrospect as it’s a persona shift, perspective remains continuous, but the backstory isn’t from my l life). When I was first adopted, my parents kept me in this very house. They were inept, and couldn’t keep things up, to the point where they couldn’t keep me either. They only got me back much later, though I was too young to remember any of this.

Inside a few of us (guests and I) are playing around, searching through storage areas in the house. We’re also in part of a lobby for some unnamed organization, a nexus accessible from many locations. There’s a dried mud sculpture, arched and abstract, looking like the letter Π hunkering in the near distance. Old refrigerators containing long-term food stocks hold many curious root vegetables. Some are still viable, and I take one from the drawer with a 3-foot long taproot and swallow it down to the base as a trick.

Danny Glover is there among us, and soon after I’m beside him at a stone sink (I can think of no connection I have with Danny Glover, his presence is puzzling upon consideration). When I pull the long root out of my throat, the thin length ending in a tangled clump, I realize that it could still be planted in the dirt outside. Whether it’s the worse for wear being in contact with my stomach acid for an extended time, I simply won’t know until I bury it in a garden bed.

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Dream Journal

No Privacy for Sexytime at Cozy Hostel

I’m staying for a while in a hostel, a very long narrow two-story building that’s like a lodge. It’s not swanky, but it’s scenic and has lovely aged wooden construction and friendly common areas, where strangers gather and sit around chatting and drinking. I have a cozy spare private room there I’m sharing with my brother Patrick. It’s a special place, a beautiful relic — viewed from above, I see a version where a fan artfully redid it in a magical cartoony Warcraft style.

At some point I run into a friend of my cousin, a skinny blonde girl, someone who’s stayed at my house before. We hit it off enjoying the outdoors near the hostel, some flower garden or botanical hall for guests. We decide to head up to the main lodge, waiting in a grubby loading dock for the oddly cited elevator.

We start to make out on a couch once upstairs. I’m hoping to move things to my room — where at least we’d only have to keep out my brother — but she’s insistent and we start to have sex there in one of the common areas. Inevitably someone interrupts us and we hurriedly stop. I’m a bit frustrated with her at this predictable outcome.

A bit later and we’re socializing in a room decorated with curiosities, curved couches along the wall, and a big picture window. And she starts going at it again (though I can’t even remember if it with was me or another guy across from where we sat before). I remember the reactions of the group being mixed, from conflicted fascination to willful ignorance. It’s not uncomfortable for me, but I do have a feeling of exasperation; it seems this is just how she is. She had no specific interest in me, and I passingly consider whether we should’ve used a condom. But in the end, the situation does come out rather well — it seems once the ice has been broken those assembled are pretty ok with an friendly. impromptu, afternoon orgy. Though whether she could’ve expected this or not is another thing entirely.

Visiting an oddly mom-n-pop country Apple store (to be clear: Apple the company, not the fruit). There, on a display of shoeboxes, is a display model for the new iPhone mini. It looks much like an iPod mini, the one from 2004, with the chunky last-century grey buttons of an old Nokia phone. An unexpectedly easy pass.

Awake in the pre-dawn light of my workroom. Building a campfire, carefully piecing out kindling into a blackened metal ring right there on the rug. As the fire burns down and the sun comes up, I fiercely whip the edge of carpet, making that edge briefly glow with every strike. When I’m done and put out the fire, I find that the rug is barely warm underneath.

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Dream Journal

Dream of Dossie’s Neighborhood, and Musing on Deficiencies

I’m in the backyard of a house owned by Dossie with a group of friends. There are lovely winding brick pathways between flowerbeds and the yard is open to the neighbors, no fences. The neighborhood is wealthy and her next-door neighbor is amicable, letting cars park in front of some of his many garage doors. He has a cottage house built into the base of a sequoia-like tree, cozy and rustic. But the main house is an L-shaped A-frame ranch home, very wide. In the attic I imagine a collection of taxidermied polar bears, rusting Model T’s, massive ship propellers, and the like.

Later in the day I’m free-writing…

The problem of other people, of severe attention. Conflict within self, of not being able to un-perceive deficiencies. People aren’t like other things, they’re something almost equal to this mysterious “self” but not quite. At Pranayama practice this morning I found myself consistently aware of my own skepticism. An unpleasant feeling, but perhaps only because it belied my own lack of one-pointed awareness. That is, awareness of the deficiencies of others was only difficult because I therefore knew that I wasn’t “on”, that I was less than aware.

The most odd part, I’d say, was the moment the teacher mentioned the point of the exercise as to become aware of ourself as the entire universe. Hearing it come out of someone else’s mouth disturbed my previous perspective on those type of statements. It reminds me of an idea for a book I had yesterday: “How to Realize Your Spiritual Self and Still Get Respect as a Rational Being”.