Tag: island

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Dream Journal

Across Hand Island

Traversing an island shaped like a hand, an island choked in dense jungle and enclosed by steep rocky cliffs and lengthy white-sand beaches, an island which feels isolated on a vast and rarely-traveled ocean. This isn’t the Caribbean or anywhere of the Pacific which I’ve known so well (I’ve never touched any ocean except the Pacific, as I discussed only yesterday — relevant because my wife recently returned from a trip to Florida). I wonder if this unfamiliar hand-shaped dot on a map is somewhere southeast Asian, or even out in the Indian Ocean, somewhere I’ve never dreamt of before. Perhaps I had this impression because my sprightly companion was a Vietnamese woman. I’m glad to have her as the terrain is dense and confusing, and I’ve unthinkingly chosen a needlessly convoluted route. We opt instead for her suggested shortcut through one of the creases between what would be the palm and the ring finger — a piece of human anatomy that I’m sure has a name, but a name which apparently I’ve never learned and so can’t use. It’s hand-shaped, down to the lines.

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Dream Journal

Camping on an Island, Rescued

Camping on a private beach on the south shore of an island when an alien invasion is announced.

I don’t know the private landowner who I’m staying with, but he has a floating camper with hidden food stores, on a big swampy plot to the southwest. The land is basically only being held until it’s valuable enough to sell for home development, which I find regrettable.

I watch a childlike version of myself be rescued from under a table. After I recover, and can walk along the offramps of the freeway out of town, the same area is searched again. I then help the person who helped me, to now get a small kid who has a leg injury out from under the table. I feel warmly about this.

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Dream Journal

Away & Again, Round th’ Healing Isles of Coumbernauld

It was more than 27 hours since I slept last. And bad sleep at that. My wife helpfully let me sleep on our couch, in our living room, in the center of our home. There were many dreams — I seem to remember more than usual given my slow luxurious wakeup in the wee hours of the morning.

A clubhouse place. Like a giant orange mushroom formed of plastic, something very 70s in design, but made as a skill-building project by one of a close group of friends who all live nearby. Their social atmosphere is perfect: intimate, congenial, familiar yet inviting, a shifting and easy mix of people. I think it was like a commune of folks who all shared a single professional background expertise but many different disciplines. Perhaps botany. My friends P & S could be among them.

An end of season or end of semester party with the clan of Ms. Fitz., my high school creative writing teacher. From out of a long metal block container in a semi-covered building, I scoop mint chocolate chip ice cream and share with street kids and refugee Indian women. Quickly  knocking it out of the container though I am, they grab it grabbily.

Sent to recover in the Coumbernauld isles of Scotland. Round little bumps of land, with a characteristic flat divot off the side. That might be the shape of the islands or even a symbol they’ve gained over the years. They’re quite small and clustered together in a narrow channel near the town of Coumbernauld (or Cumbernald). You could row between them all with just a dingy. But the round grass covered domes with comfortable well-made and reassuringly traditional structures give off almost a generic olde British isles vibe. It comforts me through all the dreams. This is the frame dream: it is here in the middle, but rests behind the others.

Encountering a small girl, maybe 5 or 6, at an outdoor bookstore. She’s looking for Euripides, which I thoughtlessly pronounce the proper Greek way. That doesn’t confuse her at all though, and I locate on the rough-hewn shelves the scratched and dirty name from ancient Greek. It’s clear The Bacchae ought to be here, but maybe it’s sold out, or… I try to see if the little kid would like to search more, or is interested in something else, but while we’re talking it seems like the precocious bookworm wanders off elsewhere.

There’s more store to look though. It might even be cited around the hill at the base of the Parthenon. Unfamiliar but sight, but famed. The windows behind the shelves (which are really just frames, as it’s all outside) look out on a mysterious creek. I find the store has a good collection of scented items: incense sticks, candles, etc. They’ve set up a display particularly for Christmas smells, since that’s a very distinct and large category of smells that people might be interested in buying. They’ve used it as an excuse really to set up all their Christmas stuff. Without realizing, everyone seems to have slipping into acting as though it’s almost Christmas, that the year is almost over, and we must spend and stress for the season like always. But I’m confused. I could swear I never had a September, or fall, the year has skipped to the end. I start a protest chant against Christmas, “it’s still June!”

My wife and I are alone in a home that is like a sparsely furnished version of my teenage home. It’s sometimes second home (mostly vacation home) of one of our family. But this is a different time we aren’t husband and wife. Or the same name, appearance. Only are insides are the same. I make sure to grab towels and place them near the bed for afterwards. But the bed sits in full view of the front door. No one but us is home. We don’t know if or when anyone else may come. The afternoon is what it is, and it’s for us. The dream ends here.

Closing note at 12:02 am, 20 hrs later: a full day. I looked and listened and stayed in motion. Flow like water. Flow like a rapper. Today’s tarot: the emperor. So worn out. Soothing myself to sleep by hitting publish at the bottom of this form.

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Dream Journal

Sledding Island, Broth Bucket, Video Beginnings

Dream is uniquely cohesive. All scenes give the feeling that they happen in the same place, and might take place in any order.

My wife asks me to get a big bucket of “lean bone meal broth” from above the top shelf of a grocery store’s refrigerated aisle. To do that I have to move another bone broth that’s in front of it. My wife interrupts the heavy lifting to say how we could settle for that one, an annoying habit she has. I get mildly irritated but manage to retrieve the bucket and leave the store.

I make a YouTube video complaining about a restaurant I’ve been to once. I’m not even that invested in it but I’m quite animated. Seems like it already might take off and become popular — it’s only been up a few hours and is already eligible for a $65 monetization tier.

I’m thinking about this as we are sledding in pairs on a snowy island with big, steep slopes, like an iceberg skate park. We test by pulling the sled with a string to see if it goes over and falls into the icy sea. A highly uncontrolled playtime.

Before a date with a blonde girl, unfamiliar to me even recollecting her now, we masturbate together as a way to build energy. I catch a glimpse of a clock and see that it’s already 8:06 — we were going to leave at 8:00. I immediately mention this; it’s all very mundane.

Watching the intro of a video which gives a shout-out to the part of Australia where host from. It’s a compact crescent archipelago hugging just offshore the southeast corner, somewhere I never went. The view zooms further east to a cluster of oceanic islands, each individually labeled, with a token image to represent each. I’ve never heard of these either but they seem quaint. Then even further out, tiny dinky islands so small and so far out they’re not labeled. Instead they have ideas for fun things you could do there if people ever went… like slide down steep icy slopes on a sled with a string.

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Dream Journal

Empty Family Home on an Island, In Australia

I’m exploring a house for sale with my Homepie friend Mickey. The attic is large and has multiple nestled little sleeping areas, a place the current residents call Monticello for reasons not known to us.

I’m having some of my old stuff shipped back from Australia, left behind from when I was there. This must happen before the river islet the Monticello house is on floods. We travel the small circular waterway via canoe. To haul the boat out of the water they’ve rigged up a garage door opener near the riverbank — clever little contraption, useful for rural living.

I pick out my stuff from the many cupboards and cabinets of the newly abandoned home. Most of this stuff I’ve forgotten (it’s been more than a decade). I can’t help but steal one thing: an iridescent plastic bowl from the 1970s, easily missed by the family and easily excused as an accident. It’s unique and oddly beautiful, and obviously unappreciated judging by where I found it.

Having everything gathered it appears that shipping is going to cost $60. I hadn’t thought about that cost and second-guess whether I want any of this stuff at all anymore.

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Dream Journal

Which Witch Was It?

My wife and I are considering moving to Hawaii. I see a map with a border marking the cutoff, where one island close to the others technically is in the French Frigate Shoals.

Scavenging just down the street in my neighborhood, I come across an inflatable armchair. The dirty mismatched arms have come off. I have to fiddle with them for awhile to get them inflated and finally decide it’s comfy enough to drag back. Perplexingly, I don’t even think I want it — there’s already so much furniture in my apartment.

Down another street in the perpendicular direction there’s an art store with a notable elevator tower in front, which some neighbors have started slurring as the “hatelift”. In some recent incident they were accused of bigotry, but personally I believe it was misrepresented and they were slandered.

I enter a rival small art space/shop on the other side of the street, diagonally opposite from our apartment. It’s a low-ceiling place with white walls and a vaguely Spanish feel. One of the people there is like Ted Danson’s character Michael from The Good Place, but he’s drunk and chaotic. He offers me some delicacy from a fancy hexagonal box, which opens with elaborate unfolding rose wrapping paper inside — though actually plastic, not paper. This is what got him drunk, apparently. Another odd gadget he rakishly offers is a tiny non-functional crossbow with a rounded pin at the draw end, easily workable if the pin were removed.

There’s a plan hatched to trap him into being alone with a young 17 year-old girl in the group (there are ten people in the store now), then accuse him of taking advantage of her. In the end he actually doesn’t; I’m then asked, as the story’s observer, to decide who was indeed the ultimate schemer among the diverse motives of the assembled cast. Like a game of Clue. This is phrased in terms of all of them being artist/magicians, and with the question “which witch was it?”

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Dream Journal

Canal Islands of the Geode Gate

A rocky natural canal dotted with crystal islands. The canal has recently been updated, slightly moved over to the side at great expense by a wife — to the frustration of the French house-husband whose daughter’s perspective I see through. Every island has its own little story and shop.

A quiz, centered around a long acronym (printed in neat capital letters), taught to a class while I was gone. Talking to a Mongolian princess in some position of authority (perhaps the instructor) as I step through a gate made of geodes on one of the islands, putting the acronym backward and actually applying it.

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Dream Journal

Departure Prep, Rejected Arrival, Fabulous? Absolutely

Prepping for a departure to another year of an event I attended previously (which my wife organized), Reverie. My friend Reecy is there, near a craft booth like at one of the many craft fairs I’ve been to. Her pose is perhaps like in a photo from the year past.

There’s a moody infotainment style-ride in this complex where we’re prepping; feels like something from the video game “Control” set in a blue atmosphere. I do a run in the water feature circling a dark rocky island, spotting three out-of-place witticisms inscribed on the tank floor — which I realize must be Easter Eggs I can now post on the game/ride’s subreddit. During some seasons I know this watercourse is drained so I wonder why they haven’t been posted before, as they’re specific and easily searchable. Still floating around the ride circuit I try to remember the other things I want to take to the Reverie event this year, particularly my phone’s waterproof case. How can I use my Bluetooth earbuds in the water though? (note: lately I’ve been using my Bluetooth earbuds more often.)

Later a friend’s non-binary kid, Charlie, appears at the edge of a tiled area behind where we’ve been prepping to depart, dimly-lit in preparation for leaving. They ask me timidly to use one of the two bathrooms. I respond “sure!” then offer them a chocolate from a tin I’m carrying, which they awkwardly accept. A nosy woman soon attempts to chastise me for this, saying “it’s hard enough for a kid working on their gender identity to ask for anything related to public bathroom use… they certainly shouldn’t also be offered candy by strange men”. In fact I’ve known Charlie since they were a baby, but I try to good-naturedly engage her opinion without seeming outright skeptical or dismissive. But the few listeners nearby make it known they find this woman’s remark ludicrous.

I read of  an account of an Australian Aboriginal reservation turning away a shipload of refugee Americans. The ship’s crew goes to the trouble of digging out a blockage in the channel leading to the reservation called Rhode Island Sandbank. The aboriginal leadership announces they’ve changed their minds at the last minute, a loss to all sides — the refugees needing a new home, the country of Australia which would benefit from their presence, the mother countries America and Britain which suffer brain drain too. Though after learning of it, I can’t be entirely sure if it’s true to the history or if it’s a biased, racially-motivated screed.

“Fabulous? Absolutely” is an American TV movie recut from the British show Absolutely Fabulous. This version has an older pair of main characters Eddy and Pats. Typical of National Geographic vs. BBC Attenborough documentary. Predictably disappointing but still novel in that strange way that foreign perspectives are.

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Dream Journal

Civic-Minded Unusual Dilemmas

A voting station is located at a sunny plant-lined street corner in my neighborhood, near the Five Markets grocery. A older mom is setting a bad example by parking herself in her camping chair too close to where voting is happening, advocating her causes, believing she’s not breaking the law because as an experienced mom she only has good intentions.

I’m volunteered/recruited to serve in an official capacity on a committee fulfilling the protocols of French justice. We’re brought into a long narrow indoor space with all manner of investigatory equipment stowed away in compartments. One such instrument activates a reenactment of the perpetrator’s statement. It’s a gray-haired Jewish lady, older but not elderly, who appears very evidently happier locked away and isolated in her own boxed-in world. Inconveniently, the transgression she is accused of committing seems both 1) intended to have gotten her locked away, and 2) not serious enough to merit such “punishment”. An ethical conundrum thus results for we judicial volunteers.

Inhabiting an odd communal outdoor space comprised of a large wave pool interspersed with metal tool lockers as tall as a man. Periodically other men and I rummage around in the wire-walled lockers to fetch tools for one job or another. I’m less experienced than most of them and might be doing an apprenticeship. One of the friendlier and artier guys demonstrates his solution to moving audio between distant parts of the wave pool, crossfading between top speakers and bottom speakers, creating an illusion of living sound.

I’m assigned a certain one of the locker-tops close to the wave machine, where sea creatures like starfish and barnacles crust heaviest. I am to use the roof for lounging and my home base. A teenage girl named Megan is randomly paired with me to share it. She’s lanky and skimpily dressed, stylishly suntanned, with a breathy unpolished voice. On first meeting she’s immediately suspicious of my maleness, giving a speech about how we’ll never sleep together and don’t get any ideas, et cetera. She says this to me while laying on her stomach in a bikini, sunglasses pushed down her nose, gazing at my shirtless torso. We’ll be sharing this intimate little room-sized island for several months… and this is the first thing she says to me. Whether Megan realizes it or not, the two of us having sex has become an immediately apparent eventuality. I respond to her haughty pronouncements with only a wolfish grin.

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Dream Journal

Private Property: Several Absurd Scenarios

In the hinterlands far out in Nevada, rich citizens build a pair of eccentric mansions right next to each other. These private residences resemble city apartment blocks in their scale, shape, and modernist aesthetic. Yet a lone high-end car is usually all that can be seen on the miles-long public access road that links out to them (essentially just a private drive), crossing a sandy ridge which obscures them from eyeline. The buildings belong to a pair of relatives who still don’t often see each other, a father & son or perhaps an uncle and nephew, yet though the twin properties are huge the structures are built in a small corner practically touching, with the absurd addition of a tall wall between them blocking a direct view.

Zooming in on a map of islands in the Pacific, and it appears that one has been completely bought and taken over, now labelled “twitter.com”. I realize the islands are a bit further north than I though, and the the round bad in the middle of the grayscale topological map is the Hawaiian island of Molokai.

Participating in a reenactment of the Titanic sinking, I remember the 1997 movie and position myself near the middle. When the ship keels into the air, I hope to survive the split by minimizing the distance I drop. I do, but things have gone a bit differently and it’s the forward half that stays afloat. Long enough, as it happens, that its momentum carries it within swimming distance of the shore of a small private island (owned by the musician Sting, in fact). The ship effectively pulls aside it. I spot a few Mexican dudes hanging out playing cards, listening to ranchero music. It’s oddly domestic enough that even on our sinking vessel we passengers hesitate to jump in the water and interrupt their day.