Tag: hidden

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Dream Journal

Decaying Mansion, Full of Falls

I’m staying over at the big fancy house of my friend Tracy in Richmond. This isn’t her real house, but a cavernous, fading, historic mansion with at least six stories. I find myself sleeping on a bed at the edge of one of the high atria. I catch myself at the edge of the bed one night, about to fall over the edge (luckily I put my travel bag next to me).

I learn of the forgotten story of a three-year-old boy who once fell from a height in that same atrium. The kid had become trapped in a decorative curved alcove, something looking like a luxurious conch shell ornament from the 1920s. This oddly dangerous decision was built along the smooth, carpeted ramp on the floor just below where I had been sleeping. He was saved by many firefighters who held a very wide sheet across the entire floor. The boy did fall, finally, into the rescue sheet, still asleep. Of course he wouldn’t remember it — despite the high drama. Yet one reason it was forgotten.

I like to explore the structure since I can’t move back to San Francisco, where I actually have stuff to do. I sometimes find little wooden square vents high on the walls and climb through them, just to have something interesting to do. Certainly no one else is bothering to explore the structure.

One day I find a gold mine. I discover a large unused space, dreaming of what I can do with it: a cafe, a clubhouse, a performance venue. Tucked away in the back corner, I discover a deliberately manufactured scary animated doll puppet, specifically designed to artificially frighten others into avoiding the space. It’s immediately obvious to me that this is a deliberate act of deception, and I quickly realize that I’ll need to persuade others to understand that the situation isn’t what it appears to be. However, it’s also the reason why the space remains freely available. Despite this, it’s also just another forgotten thing in the mansion.

When I first woke up, I remembered different dreams, the dreams I had just before waking. But when I found this one again, I stayed stuck on it. It was more enjoyable and interesting, I suppose. The others were totally forgotten in the process.

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Dream Journal

Mayan Blue & Capitol Hallways

Studying Maya/Aztec culture with a local family almost by accident while staying near them. We’re surrounded by catwalks and mineral pools — residues of green and blue oxidation stained beneath an awning, like the pigment: Mayan blue.

Discovering a concrete corner box that reveals layers of concealed government fuck-ups, covering up bad planning with further construction. One can easily see the fourth level sits perfectly flush while the third recesses unevenly. This feels distinctly Mexican from what I’ve seen of authorities build, though this place is new to me.

Being awake the longest on what might be a class trip (I did in fact take a class trip to Washington DC once). Met a girl inside the Capitol building; we clean up together. Trying to reach a sink while draining an ice chest (to save the ice), I stretch a long kayak across the wide stairs as makeshift scaffolding. My friends and I argue about what time if day it is, so I tiptoe above heavy green institutional curtains and I’m hit with golden afternoon sunshine.

Making efforts to play with this girl, who likes me — going down the Capitol hallways together, I let her crawl atop me while patting her hips. Our sizes aren’t quite right, she’s either a big girl or notably tall.

Exiting through the rotunda, narrow double doors with steep descending stairs. I’ve been here before, but suddenly the design feels significant: it was built in the 1800s for defense against possible riots. Yet it was hard for them to imagine ones so far removed from their own time. Today there’s the unsettling relevance, when such threats to the Capitol feel imminent again.

Drumming along absentmindedly… Marley and Elvis stations playing somewhere.

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Dream Journal

Hidden in the Cantina

Street scenes. Navigating blind sidewalk corners of New York’s rectangular grid while attempting to retrieve or deliver a suitcase. Tall, colorful, narrow buildings. Autumnal.

Another street. This is literally Hollywood Boulevard and its crowds of tourists. Many themed experiences with their lines of ticket gates outside, bustling excited people.

I find a quiet cantina that was mentioned by a friend. No cover charge. I make my way directly to the back room, an enclosed patio that looks carved from sandstone. It’s based on the same design as another bar I’ve been to, the exact layout. With my existing knowledge I gain access to the upper level, the mezzanine ringing the patio space. Usually this would just be decorative but I take the opportunity to lounge in a corner, savoring the assurance of privacy in a public space. Eventually a group of people enter the space and begin chatting, unaware of me. I make my way down and exit the wall closest the front of the building instead of the far back wall. I inspect what looks like a small piece of art, an incomplete outline of a five-pointed star formed by a living plant vine. I have the chance but for some reason intentionally don’t try take a picture — perhaps I am already waking up, perhaps I know I won’t be able to keep it, perhaps it would be too frustrating with dream logic rules.

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Dream Journal

Family of Church-Neighbors, Destroyed

An abandoned pioneer-era church at edge of the freeway in my hometown, a place I’ve explored in a dream at least once before, in the form of a small kid. My wife and I are able to explore it a bit — but some family has built their home right against it, with big windows facing the rustic interior. They threaten us, accusing us of trespassing, and in impulsive righteousness I use special powers to electrocute them. My wife does the same, wiping out this entitled family who constructed their modern ritzy hellhole against sacred ground. As we leave, my wife points out a security camera DVR — I fry it to hell, too. I note the time I wake up from this dream as exactly 4:44 am.

In Disneyland, I sneak up a narrow obscure trench up the side of a hill. From my vantage, I can see broad open walking areas where people mill about, fairytale mountains seeming more like Middle-Earth than The Matterhorn. I reach the top and can see through a triangular gap into an exhibit of animals — gorillas, flamingoes, perfectly sculpted fake natural surrounds. As I lie prone in the small area where I can peek, I realize the park staff must somehow know I’m here — so many security cams, so much well-preened presentation. But they let me gaze secretively nonetheless, enjoying a view someone, sometime must’ve made on purpose.

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Dream Journal

Hidden Object, Artifact Stash

Yeoman and secret alley. Hands carved from rock. Housing from my former mentor, who may return. Moving to a closet. Trying to put stuff back in drawers like it was, even though we’ve consumed the stuff in them. Old battery in half on counter. Hiding in the top shelf of a back closet. Feels like the place gets evacuated. In a front closet drawer, I act as dull as dead. I become like a kind of intelligent object. Get sent to the artifact stash, where there are cutaway model railroad tracks.

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Dream Journal

12 Elements, 12 Deities, 12 Powers

Heritage church out forgotten in the desert of my hometown. A screen of tamarisk trees hides it between my middle school and the mountains beyond. No one has visited in years. I climb the rafters inside, feeling transported to an earlier time. Perhaps the reason I wasn’t reported to the authorities exploring such a place is because I was just a lone kid. I hope they preserve this place, even though no one seems to love it but me.

An airplane journey, within a strange morphing and expanding fuselage. At the beginning several portal-making objects of power are released to 12 special passengers, forming the side of good. They are hunted by an evil master witch with broods of alien slave dogs, zergling-like. Some good-siders hide behind doors, some in hidden passageways, some in other time periods, some in other realities, all enduring attacks from the witch and her brood.

Each object they are blessed with are aligned with certain elements of the periodic table, and certain deities of the Greek Pantheon, granting them unique powers. They learn to wield them one by one — the dream is broken into chapters and has an unusually sophisticated structure.

Finally in the last chapter it’s revealed that Element № 1, aligned to Zeus king of the gods, has all the while been overseeing events unfold with their sublime omniscience. The left side of the movie theater inside the main fuselage has remained mysteriously empty during the pitched battles. It turns out to be a staging area for those special objects-holders who reach the last step in their training, now hiding in plain sight. They take their seats wordlessly, building anticipation one by one with each assembled conspirator, and finally together open the small sealed chamber to the right of the screen — that the witch and her hunters never even noticed. The supreme holder is revealed, having learned his training instantly, observing all, but withholding his omnipotence until the time was ripe.

The witch is gobsmacked, the energy in the room electric. She is defeated without a battle, finally seeing what has played out.

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Dream Journal

Hidden Temple Stays Hidden

My father-in-law lives in a large aristocratic manor, in one wing he’s built a grand indoor railroad landscape. Parts are clearly medieval with tiny knights and exquisite sailboats behind glass cases. He presents gifts to his daughter, my wife, while they lounge in front of one such display case. His pricey gifts are even on theme.

The house is tall enough that when I come down from an upper floor, walking down a long stone spiral staircase, I can’t tell at all if I’ve reached my floor (counting in a dream is hard too, I suppose). Eventually I emerge in a massive overstocked kitchen abuzz with people moving about, then finally reach the ground floor. Outside in the gravel drive is a squat yet spacious school bus waiting to return students who came to see Beauty and the Beast.

While driving my car out in the country, I stumble upon a pristine pagan temple — a circle of upright stones embedded in lush, thick ground cover. Hidden, disused, but obviously well-kempt, possibly built by Loreon Vigne of Isis Oasis. I forgot my suitcase for this trip so return home, and when I try to find the temple again the location on my maps app is wrong. It leads instead to a graffitied-over stage at some dilapidated Renaissance Fair summer camp along a disused, cracked, conifer-lined highway. Someone has been clever enough to keep it hidden — I wish I’d written it down.

Returning my colorful Mayan hammock because the net body has split from the hook loop. Surprised to discover I still have 11 days to return it. However, it seems Amazon mostly carries a plain white version, and this was a problem before. In fact, on reflection, the white hammock resembles a cheap nylon-and-plastic one I bought at an Army surplus store, the one which once dropped me straight down from a height of six feet.

Testing forensic evidence by having sex — sex with two women, to see how the female body processes semen. I wasn’t going to leave this in, it seems extraneous and explicit, but I reckon I should err on the side of completionism.

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Dream Journal

A Game of Ghost Story

Store/cafe near Disneyland, heavily themed with natural wood for an ol-time-country feel. Space is sunk below street level a bit, bright windows in the back. The whole neighborhood is a shopping district, curved downward becoming more Disneyland the further you go. Near the cafe counter, I see a few people in costumes with masks that look like Will Smith crossed with the “I, Robot” robots, featuring a glowing 20% discount over the mouth area. It’s suggestive of some kind of Black Panther protest.

I’m a successful smuggler and I’m getting out of the business. I know my compatriots will be upset, even panicked at my departure, so I leave a letter hidden under sawdust at my regular drop. It’s a semi-abandonded lot protected from the street by overgrown trees, the same hillside view as the Disneyland cafe earlier.

I drive off in a convertible with Lynae. We’re briefly diverted onto the other side of a divided highway, the broad expanse of a mountainous pastel evening desert before us. I suggest we play a game called Ghost Story — Lynae side-eyes me, knowing I know the edge of night isn’t exactly when she wants to hear ghost stories. I clarify that the objective of the game is to start saying something that seems scary, but that has its scariness vanish (like a ghost) once the sentence is complete. I’ve just played the first round, now it’s her turn.