Tag: hike

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Dream Journal

Missing Jawbone (Aging is Annoying)

In a movie theater for my 43rd birthday. It’s a large, well-regarded old theater loved by the community — a massive room I feel I’ve been to in other dreams. After a show, I return to look for the missing bottom half of my collectible Lego pachycephalosaurus skull (it was only produced once for a natural History museum diorama set). It’s troublingly small to have to search for, and having just the one half would be quite a sad reminder. I manage to find the missing jawbone though, and try to arrange it on the surface of my record player for a delightful aesthetic to share. But the movie starts up just as I’m about to get the shot, and it’s too dark; I miss the picture.

I’m woken up, rudely, by my rat Carl scrabbling at the door to be let out. He found some wrinkly paper, to boot. Ugh. But while I’m awake, I have the annoying realization that I don’t really want to turn 43. Being 42 sounds cool, feels cool. Ugh. I try and succeed at putting the thought out of my head.

Hiking in Russia includes carrying a large machine on one’s back, which reminds me of one of those giant overhead projectors from school. I notice eventually that it’s easy to heft it over ledges and such in the beginning of the day, but I’m surprised to discover how much older I feel by the end of the day.

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Dream Journal

SoCal and Canada, Onto Remote Paths

It’s been a few months since I moved back to my hometown. I’m travelling by night around the square grid of streets, chasing a car somewhere in the sprawl of hotels and country clubs. I unintentionally drop some utensils out the car window a few blocks before I take a hard left turn trying to catch the fleeing car of my middle school friend Stephen Colson.

Outside a fancy apartment building where I’m staying, or perhaps considering renting, I watch a billboard collapse. From the outdoor wraparound communal balcony I watch the face of Will Smith fall into pieces, the billboard’s gimmicky mechanical baubles scattering across the Los Angeles street below.

At a location across from Disneyland is a store which I remember I’ve been before. It’s austere on the outside, the humbleness of the shopkeeper’s simple living a contrast to it’s famous neighbor. The only thing I can remember of it’s features are that the building had an address, and a little black girl sometimes stood outside.

I notice next door is a new store with no external indicators of what it sells. It’s even narrower and plainer, almost liminal in the sense that I don’t know if I’m supposed to be in there. Inside, the merchandise is sparse and I proceed down the hallway-like space. Instead of a back room, it leads into a hippie-bohemian styled space with a glass frontage to an indoor mall. There’s a piece in the front window that I inspect. The place smells of good leather.

I’m marching across a creek in what feels like the Canadian wilderness. Attractive female strangers pass by, having just crossed the creek as well, as I wait for my female companion to catch up. I lean one-legged with my walking stick and reflect on promiscuity. Chattering on to my companion (my wife probably) it feels as though I’m deliberately ignoring the cute girls, which almost seems rude. We proceed down the hiking trail. I keep unusually good notes along the way. We pass by a series of lakes, getting more and more remote. I put on several circle stickers in sequence on my foam shoe, their handwritten messages spelling out a story. When it seems finished I take a photo.

Categories
Dream Journal

Keanu’s Midnight Movie Favor

On the top floor of an abandoned school, the walkways are completely inundated with trash. You can see even more of it layering the ground in hills from this high vantage, and this is enough of a novelty that people visit and it becomes an attraction. The waist-high concrete walls of the round corner balcony have been given elaborate murals, inspirational remnants from it’s time as a (elementary?) school. There’s a post-apocalyptic teen movie vibe.

I’m approached by a middle-age bearded guy asking me to do him a personal favor. Surprised, I realize it’s Keanu Reeves. I manage to do the favor, which involves closing the doors to (his?) movie theater near the mural, at the start of the Rocky Horror midnight showing. Makes sense, as I can imagine what the reaction of a packed midnight movie would be to spotting Keanu at the door. He thanks me and gives me some sort of token.

Similar to how right now, during quarantine, one doesn’t make outings as much, in this dream only cashless order-online places are open. I visit two such stores near the far end of a long mall, somewhere I feel I’ve dreamed of before — although I didn’t even think of it as a mall this time. The stores are clean and novel, merchandise displayed on floor-to-ceiling shelves, but for the moment they mostly only have shampoos and other bath stuff in stock. I remember there’s an Amazon store somewhere in the center, and make my way there while carrying a rolling barstool on my back. I lean on this occasionally during on the walk there, and no one seems to mind although I sometimes reckon I’m too young for it.

Skip ahead and I’m with a redheaded friend, headed somewhere together through twisty, rugged dirt paths. We pass a group of women talking about a place called the Fergiles, a group of islands I deduce. I walk ahead a little ways while she remains behind in a small hollow. My sibling Patrick is now with me, and we notice the end of a log has had its end made into a fairy cottage, a gnome home, in the shape of an Ewok’s face. I start to open it but he warns that if it’s anything like the others he’s seen, it probably has a lizard hiding in it (a Betta lizard? like a Betta fish).