Tag: island

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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.

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Dream Journal

A Traveler of Oz, Brotherly Advice, Eyehole Game

A legendary early Australian traveler, mucking about in an island chain that seems familiar from other dreams. Palm trees and native islanders, but not where you’d expect them to be — somewhere north of Australia, but without Papua; somewhere east, but without New Zealand. The fella is a big name but I get to watch him before he’s known. Has a funny way of sitting; I get an x-ray view of his hip bones balancing oddly as he sits leans back on an upturned suitcase while working. The map shows speckles of islets in a lake, a lake that’s the ocean, but a lake like some dusty suburban southern California reservoir (maybe Moreno Valley, Lake Perris, etc). Not like the Pacific — one with loud motorboats and kegs of beer and trashy fun watersports on every summer weekend.

Talking with my younger brother Patrick as we climb into attic in my childhood home garage, though in this dream he’s significantly younger and smaller than me. I tell him I know he’s going to ask about doing things the shortest possible path, yet that’s not the most efficient. As we climb down the attic ladder, my dad asks what we were saying on our way up about Grenada. Fittingly, this situation is somehow exactly the example problem I’d been giving to Patrick.

We’re having a nerf fight in the backyard. It’s a beautiful day and the lawn is green. No fences between us and the neighbor, so I see all their kids playing a game where they take half the pulp of an orange, cut out an eye hole, and stick them in their eye sockets — running around with these weird faces that look like eyehole monsters from Rick and Morty.

Texting my dad as I were my mom as a prank, but I can’t figure out how she’d spell “jare bear” (“gare bear?” “gerre bear”?). I release a scraggly pet parrot into the enclosed tile patio of my parents room, as I follow my dad.

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Dream Journal

My Own Island, Faraway in the Ocean

An artificial island in the South Pacific called Rularilalani island a.k.a John Connel island (the name is breaking up, as is the island). I bought it with Bitcoin and last visited in 2014. It feels like a celebration when I finally recover enough to go back. It’s tiny, perhaps the size of a street corner, covered in lush decorative bushes on two sides and browning salvia plants on one side that doesn’t get the correct sun. Almost like a tiny 18th-century square in New Orleans, dropped here far from civilization. Underwater I see the island is shaped like an upturned sand castle bucket, dropping away into the deep. As tiny as it is, by using solar energy and an (hopefully reliable) internet connection, this place can be a real home now. I swim in the sea around it, and I repeat a warning louder and louder as a coral snake swims toward me — us? Not sure if someone else was there. This dream persona doesn’t feel quite like me.

Gazing at a hamster in a birdcage. Though now I consider, it looked more like one of my pet rats.

An Airbnb underground, multiple levels built into dug-out ground over a long time. On the wall is a joke diagram showing it going all the way down to the water table, and Earth’s outer mantle. One house is on the corner, the place the owner first lived here, a small home with a real door and shelves and plumbing etc. Another place, more recent, is a more industrial-looking vertical shaft situated on a thin strip of lawn between the street and a faceless building. This is the auxiliary AirBnB, somewhere only guests would stay.

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Dream Journal

Volcanic Old Crush Sex

My third grade crush sits right on my face! See her hips move slowly down without seeing her face. Hairless. She’s rewarding me for something, my expertise and skilled performance. We’re glad to see each other again after so many years. I don’t think she has kids in this lifetime.

Two Danish tourists are swingers. Not important to the story, but they were there. I have an appointment to keep and need to climb the lines of a long diagonal tramway upwards to meet our Atlas Obscura tour boat. I get there with just a bit of time to spare, overlooking a small dainty Greek island I’ve been to before. So small, almost a carved model.

The volcano explodes, but I know what to do. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been close enough to feel the shockwave.

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Dream Journal

Isla Wnifu, Island in a Darkening Ocean

dark water

Isla Wnifu (Waifu + Knife) is an island zoo full of genetically-engineered creatures. They’re kept within terrariums stacked in the walls of tall, overgrown, roofless rooms. The island has a trashed-out feel and I get the impression it’s regarded as dangerous or forgotten. But it’s somehow mine (or at least within my purview) — I am, unusually, allowed in this unusual place.

I’m swimming just offshore in rocky shallow water with a girl I mostly know from Twitter, KC Crowell. As afternoon turns into evening we start making out, and I’m trying to balance on the sharp sea rocks while she floats above me — it’s difficult, awkward, and uncomfortable, but c’mon… makeouts.

Dusk is fading, and I peer out into the darkening ocean, past concrete arches that look like freeway ramps, to the distant lights of the small boat that must take us home. We’re nearly set when I realize there’s a laptop that needs to be taken, and many more clothes (jeans, jackets) that should also come. The prospect of swimming across a long stretch of dark ocean begins to seem frighteningly risky. I start to scavenge from the crumbling anterooms of the bizarre creepy-crawlies, thinking maybe KC and I can seal the pants and make a floatation device.

Just as I’m heading outside again though a splintering wood doorframe, crewmen from the boat round the corner — I’m deeply relieved we won’t have to swim for it. The leader is a short Asian guy, the one who I’d previously made a deal with to transport us. I’d forgotten the other half of our deal… the men are carrying a massive whale tusk, as thick as a human being, long enough for six men to hold it aloft. It’s the second of a pair… and the extent of our deal. It dawn on me that that boat, these men, who I was so grateful to see a moment ago, could’ve left us behind without much fuss at all.

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Dream Journal

Rusty Oil Truck Island

Array of plastic tables indoors on first floor, light streaming in through the windows. Lynae is there, many others, Dara V. too. We’re all waiting for something in enforced silence while outside a dense, tall city bustles.

Lynae and I are looking for a suitable oil truck to make deliveries on a small island in the central valley delta. In a steep, small dirt harbor we check out out a poorly maintained rustbucket with catwalks, the tanker alone costing our total $1500 budget. Chicken steams in on the Relentless and tells us we need to buy it and get started already. I expect we’ll get stuck working on the island, but consider that we’ll be the first to settle the area — we’ll be pushing the edge of civilization.

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Dream Journal

Rickety Island

Small hill island in a lake, with a large gathering of artsy/resourceful people I know. Scenic, dry, recreational. There are telescopes mounted inside a wooden tower to see the people on the mainland.

I’m there helping with responsibility for the flagpole, used for signaling. By using principles of counterweight, girls ride up and down the pole like aerialists. The hillside has a series of old buildings with an old hydraulic tram system that used to require hundreds of men to operate.

More scattered notes from this night:

  • Billionaire shindig dance upon delivery, messy collage cup tradition, wish them well
  • Zuck has a personality!
  • Going off a green curb in New York, near what would be San Francisco’s ferry building

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Dream Journal

University on a Small Island

A university on a small inhabited island, dry and brown and hilly, off the coast of California. The school specializes in drawing and hand-drawn traditional animation. One day, they have us label our materials kits and fill out a multi-page form. There’s a checkbox to support “56% Magazine” at $8.33 monthly. The school subsidizes students, and half of a large duplex (on the low end) is as low as $80 and $9. At some point I’m staying in Lorie Ohlemann’s house and snooping around her bedroom, finding cards and notes. One place is apportioned with a 4-person guest shower with a hosting bar. This keeps the island a lot more lively than one would expect, and I almost don’t miss city life. I ride my scooter around most everywhere and do deliveries. One day, I ditch work without calling in and spend the day carefully hiding out in different buildings. The next day I sneak out during the long afternoon doldrums with the idea to plant a luscious olive I’ve eaten. I find someone I know, Tiff von Biff, sitting on my scooter handlebars. I impressively veer left and right with her still on there, then manage to pop my first wheelie, making her scream.