Under summery outdoor awnings in a backyard, I wait at a bench examining a pair of eyeglasses on the table there. They remind me of Plarvolia’s. Sure enough, I see her return with a group and I immediately get up to leave, assuming I must be near her chair. I expect neither of us want to see each other. I briefly make eye contact and nod in acknowledgement though, which feels assertive.
In a video game level, while escaping while chased by a gargantuan monster, I under a huge turning waterwheel. It has a strange double mechanism which rotates the wheel at the same time an arm sways the against/away the wall of the pool it’s in. Good to see the monster frustrated while I simply sit and chill.
The video game proceeds. An underwater level of a brightly colored colored mall where I discover an exploit of passing through the sunroof. This adds more time on the breath meter than it should, much more. I can gather pile of trinket loot, handfuls of rings. I go back a second time and find a room with a white abstract sculptural mechanism which activates a boss fight; with the breathing bonus it’s actually quite easy.
In our solarium I discover that my wife and I own a “paper wasp” tree which is quite large. It’s in a huge pot and obviously been there quite awhile. Probably quite valuable considering it’s rarity and development. Beautiful thing too, with delicate papery-textured bark and exotic foliage. I notice while I’m watering it that over time the trunk has curled spiral-like at the base, continually reaching for the nearest lighted window. I gaze out from the glass balcony at the evening skyline of a big city (New York I think) and chuckle, realizing that perhaps the tree isn’t so perfectly valuable as first thought.
Later, my wife is selling an old electronic toy of mine. To our surprise it’s neither a PlayStation 2 or 3, but a famed PlayStation 2.5. This is rare find and should be quite a rewarding sell.
I stand atop a tall square brick tower in a public pool in NYC with a few other people. It topples with us on it, cascading into the wave pool and shoreline. There was previously a different option we chose not to take. It turns out that, instead of being on the tower, we would’ve had to turn a spigot or something. I remember looking across the street at urban multistory residences, sparser than one might hope. Those unlucky enough have to put up with this noise every day. Not that it inspires me to be quieter.
I drag myself up to the beach and notice my wife (who is very young in this instance) masturbating on the seashore facing away from the water, toward some men. She stops as I approach. The men walk away up a ramp. I have to gather my hat, sandals, etc before I leave up the same slope. Near the base of the ramp entrance, my parents are standing — my parents in this dream anyway. They’re unhelpful and neglect to tell me that my stuff is right at the base near them.
I’m in the final levels of an urban maze: interior courtyards, themed shops with neon signs (back from the video game setting earlier perhaps) hidden back areas. I’m tracing my steps back from earlier levels I played here (near where the big monster chased me onto the waterwheel). I flip through dense layers of arranged material making up a packed sewing & fabric store which spans two floors. The courtyard it’s in is highly angular, irregular overhanging floors with empty residential windows lining it. The exit of the courtyard it’s so out of scale it feels like a corner drain. Along the next progression towards back where I started, I take a side track up old-timey wooden stairs to an unassuming door. Somehow reminds me of one that might bring to a psychic reader. But this one goes to more back rooms.
Within, past a small valley and up a hill there (bit like a Appalachian holler), I visit a community that played an interesting role in the Yugoslav war. The single small venue in town was a cafe with a split part of the building open to the street. The front window became a performance stage, with people gathering on the street outside for what became rock festivals. This may have been a loophole for some law against public rock music performances. The cafe now is a popular “quiet cafe”. I watch a commercial for it where a scruffy looking guy puts on a headset and starts blathering on a work call. The entire cafe unanimously shushes him, going around the room as he tries to turn a different direction.
One last image, which I didn’t properly jot down but which was my hypnopompic cue: an unfinished structure built of colored columns, open to the elements, set amid parkland, jauntily angled to the street. I meet someone there as arranged.