Tag: kid

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Dream Journal

The White Stoat

Sylvester Stallone has been working with my wife at a gallery show. I’m sitting across the way, splayed on the floor looking not unlike a hobo. Sly, out of the goodness of his heart, brings me chocolate chips. I’m genuinely thankful and tell him how he’s my favorite, 1984 was the best year, etc. (If I’m perfectly honest, I’d bet this is referencing a story about when someone was a kid and they met Joe Pesci in an airport. He goes “Who’s your favorite actor?” Kid says, “You of course!” Pesci say’s “That’s the right answer, kid”, and hands him a crisp $100 bill.)

After Satllone is outside I walk over to my wife and chat. Somehow the topic comes up: I share my opinion that the MidJourney prompt she used for the show is problematically basic. She might not have realized it, but the source prompts have been collected on the gallery’s server are public. So hers something being something like “blue Elmo Sunday morning” next to the many elaborate and tricky prompts used by the other artists in the show gives a bad impression. I know she worked harder than that. To make my point I give her the analogy: “An expert can do what a novice can do. But the novice can’t do what the expert can”.

An acquaintance, Andi, is working nearby also, wearing a mechanic’s suit onesie. I chat with her too and express how I feel like her outfit is great, but if the name tag said “Becky” that’d be perfect. Still working, she reveals her large back tattoo that says “Cantram Parts”, a family business that’s been around 100 years. Guess she’ll have some job security — probably not gonna fire her walking around with one of those on her. Maybe it’ll even put her in charge one day.

There’s a website we look at as a group, described as “a kind of Akira.com website”. There’s a clever columnar interface, you simply slide a full column over and there’s an entirely different dating selection to explore. I note that the men are blue-themed and the women red-themed. Yellow… I didn’t get to yellow.

There’s ruckus outside. The quality of light indicates either a quiet evening or (unusually for me) an early morning. Leaning out a window I observe what seems like the local army base having a local defense drill. As I gawk from above, a gangly, almost gigantic recruit performs a side-stomping maneuver — straight through the trunk of a young tree in the green sidewalk margin adjacent the residence I’m in. Must have been trained on it. Or… oh, this IS the training. Only last night I walked by that very tree with a group, playfully jumping and swatting a dangling branch. There ought to be a different policy for base defense drills, I think, at least when it’s civilian property. I’m not grumpy about it though, just resigned. I say not a word to the recruits; nothing I could say. Military people are extra “just doing their job”, which feels like an understatement when it’s actually even “following direct orders”. But soon, I am able to holler out and warn them about the elephant that’s appeared from around a nearby corner, and is approaching them from behind. They take it in good humor. There is really an elephant though — a little pink baby with goofy eyes and ears that looks like it can’t even see anyone.

I can overhear the spirited conversation of a couple from where I sit in the backseat of a car. The woman has a pronounced English accent. I lean my head out, inserting myself into their conversation, and make an opportunistic joke related to what the boyfriend just said. Something about never trusting them? The English I mean. Because we’re Americans, you see. It’s a cheap joke and a few hundred years out of date but I knew it’d get a laugh. Later, driving along in the car, the conversation picks up on my joke. I realize that since it’s 2024 now, 1776 to 2024 would mean it’s 300 years of America! Wait, that’s not right… 250! That’s even worse from a cultural perspective. The media will most certainly be deluging us with the phrase “a quarter millennium of America” as often as they can. (I know the math is wrong here — this is a dream in case you’d forgotten.)

I’m taken around with a special kid, someone folks seem to think I have an unexplained connection with. Maybe I just have a similar vibe. Maybe my personality at that age was similar to whatever unusual thing this kid’s got going on. I attend his visit to a therapist’s office. It’s ringed halfway round with stone benches and has a peaceful zen garden feel, and they keep the office lights off. I spot a stuffed white stoat. It seems obviously symbolic, a canny and subdued symbolism — as if I’m not expected to know it. I carry over an indented tray, like a cupcake pan, randomly loaded with a personal rock collection in its rows of concavities. I perform the offering gesture to the special kid with exaggerated kindness and good humor. I don’t know why I’m being put together with this kid, but at least we’re enjoying each other.

Rats are easy to lose. For instance, apparently I just lost Bertie when I set down a tray a moment ago… fuck!

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Dream Journal

Alien Sarcophagus in Space Smells like Mulberries

A puzzle occuring at the end of a story, the long story which took up most of the night. The trick is how to trap a malicious woman (the villain, like Debbie in Addams Family Values perhaps, perhaps one of the Fox News blondes). There’s an extra-dimensional storeroom, with bars on the windows triggered by levers. And within is the prize we are both after: a replacement kid. So trap the woman, get the kid. We have set up many layers of causailty and physics-bending to get to this point — the kid is a version a purple-haired enby kid in my neighborhood that I help out with, extracted from a different universe. Something happened to ours; maybe they died, or gell into a black hole, maybe were abducted by some yet another universe.

I reflect how this is one of my favorite movies, but like Lifeforce it’s critically hated and mostly forgotten. And just as I’m beginning to wake I discover the order of latching, and locking, and I successfully get the kid. Leaving, back for my world.

Alien sarcophagus found in deep space smells like mulberries, bears inscription stating it has no idea who Kelly Kardashian is. This clearly sounds like an AI art prompt, and if I’m honest that’s probably why I thought of it in my hypnopompic ascent.

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Dream Journal

New Ladders Up to the Roof

Wait in line to climb a new ladder landlord has installed. To watch brand new episode of Voyager on the roof. Finally I spot the new ladder below and to the side from where I expected. A kid lays down near the edge of the roof, getting fit for an eye mask. The mask glue is crunchy around their eyes and they smile. Not everything on the roof is fully done yet. There’s an area of edging of two 45° bends where I try to glue trim, fussing for a long while with a piece that is a little too short and is hard to center.

On the roof I find bag while walking and check it for free stuff. Always check these things, in case there’s something useful.

An unfamiliar homeless guy in front of my wife and I in line. He drops a quarter. Pick it up for him but he doesn’t want to take it back. I set it on the table.

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Dream Journal

Pet Store Rattie Daycare Thievery

Cozy inside during a bright summer day. Watching pleasant projector slides (letters with cool patterns punched within) hanging out with a kid just to pass the time. It could be babysitting, but we’re chill enough it doesn’t feel that way. Elsewhere, other adults fret and work preparing for something while we have an idyll.

On the the kitchen counter (like my childhood home) I find the last crab claw left out. I clean it out and wonder if I should ask if it was left there for a reason.

At a pet store, I’ve dropped off
my rats Martin and his same-age buddies in a high wooden display cage. We successfully bet no one would try to buy them. I break them out despite being directly across from the young clerk, essentially treating the store like rattie day care. I walk right out — stealing my own rats back from where I didn’t even ask to stash them.

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Dream Journal

Time Travel Gift, Footrace with Borrowed Kid

Meeting my late twenties friend Jimmy near an empty triangular lot. A lone fancy metal fence is all that remains of whatever was here before. Almost like a neighborhood in my town of San Francisco I don’t go to very often, maybe North Beach. Worn in, familiar, yet strange and novel. Jimmy proceeds to explain an unusual offer — him volunteering to travel back in time to when I was in college in 2004, leaving a very specific object for me to find. It’s a set of skinny and colorful tarot cards (that I didn’t consider much at the time but that proved important over the years since). This is an exciting possibility and explains so much — I gave those cards to myself! I relive my younger experience on a back road, taking an officially closed rural roadway, livestock paddocks on both sides, unfolding a beat-up cardboard box and scavenging the stuff inside. Holding up one of the special holographic cards in the pack. This act will pass it on to my past self, forming a causal loop.

In the dream this is a real history and I feel it is prophetic… perhaps prophetic in reverse, in that it reveals the past. I bolt awake at 6 am, knowing the details are important and this is a valuable dream to remember. But I managed to get back to sleep and continue some of the narrative, the feeling, the aesthetic.

In a partially outdoor auditorium walking amidst a large audience. Talking with my wife about Star wars in a quiet way but I still get shushed by a single person. Chagrined that anyone thinks it’s inappropriate, but also angry at the single complainer, I loudly announce I’ll be quiet if whoever shushed me shows themselves. A slightly older man on the balcony (perhaps a long-ago punk in his, reminds me of a few Gen Xers I know) seems to acknowledge me by being extra grumpy. I rise up to his balcony level seat and confront his crossed arms with a challenging look. It ends in a stalemate; the rest of the auditorium seems to ignore us.

While seated in the auditorium watching whatever performance or presentation is happening, someone’s young toddler sits decides (unannounced) to sit just below my knees. There’s a feeling of being in the 1980s, though it’s difficult to pin down why, perhaps the moment reminding me inexplicably of my own childhood — as if I could have done the same thing. Though at first I’m hesitant on account of whatever the parents could think, once I make known that I don’t mind, the kid turns out to be pretty fun. The parents seem happy to have her off their hands for a bit, but none of us have an idea why she picked me to hang out with. I end up participating with her (on behalf of a parent) in a footrace/obstacle course down a mountainside. Sometimes I carry her on my shoulders but I also manage the tight rocky turns with a stroller.

I decide near the end of the race to give up. Jenn Alex, an artist friend I know, nearest the finish line of this skating/skiing race, soon wins. Reflecting on how the race has changed things, my home seems emptier now; I can imagine leaving and not minding much. I idly discuss a certain brand of hardware store and how it’s different at every location, stocked with different items at different locations for a personal touch. I like it but the person I’m talking to is frustrated they can’t just go anywhere and find what they expect. No one is around as I return back through a window in standalone wall, this part of obstacle course having been passed already and now empty of other competitors.

I’m proceeding in reverse through the course as if to undo the entire thread. It’s now treated more like a video game, with levels and challenges I’m supposed to complete. I peek from underneath a table to examine a distinct checkered cap, at this point expecting and wishing to avoid another challenge. Sure enough there are new enemies to defeat, ones I recognize as the palette-swapped game assets from an earlier class of undead enemies. Now
they are supposedly flying Hogwarts wizards, with the unique trait of being named individuals. They disappear as they’re defeated just the same. The name that sticks with me: Peter Tarn.

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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

Scorpion Fright

Landlord showing apartment next door to one little black kid, representing his family. Landlord elected not to finish the bathroom in the middle, which is huge, and has at least two working toilets for every person who could live there. One in particular sits in the middle of the room near the courtyard window and has had it’s stall walls removed. You could use it as a chair now.

At beginning of night, I’m watching a video while sitting back straight upright in a chair. The video is of two rust-colored puppies playing amongst matching red rocks, while it rains. Val lies on couch. I’m half-lucid and think I’m actually asleep on the living room couch (I’m in bed).

I get up to go to the kitchen. At the bottom corner of the kitchen table a tiny cute spider emerges — followed by a tiny scorpion. As soon as I notice it, thinking I should warn others, it incredibly quickly scrambles across the floor, up my body, and to the left side of my neck.

I wake up, my heart pounding, and remember to set my sleep tracker.

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Dream Journal

The Kid in the Apartment

Escorted inside an elevator to be shown it’s “particular” controls. The up button causes it to just keep going up until someone presses the down button. But, you also must time it such that you hit it on the floor above where you wish to land, and it will then descend one floor.

A Mormon family lives on the floor I shakily arrive at. They have a younger boy, shaved bald head, playing alone. I’ve been called to help this family with this child, as I possess a certain way of talking with them, a way of perceiving their true motives. He tries to manipulate me, a technique he’s practiced on all his family.
His powers I consider extraordinary. This is rare, but also dangerous for everyone around him.

I smash his toy as a gesture, a test, but though he clearly understandz, he shows hardly any reaction. This child (if it truly is a child) is preternaturally self-controlled. Beyond many adults. I think I recognize it, and so name it: a Psychopath.

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Dream Journal

Seattle, QLD

Hummingbird babies in their nest inside a Tupperware, I’m surprised to see when I turn it over. This is the reason we’re walking toward the tropical forest gorge. It’s my female friend and I walking along a sidewalk near where she met her husband, and we’re rolling along a big concrete pipe section. Nearby there are oddly narrow buildings made of the same stuff. Our pipe rolls over a stop sign and it produces the humorous message “Windows has encountered an error”.

There’s a town called Seattle in a rainy spot on the north coast of Queensland, on a little isthmus of a peninsula. It’s hard for me to find by zooming in, as other town names pop up instead such as Williamsonia.

Staying as guests in a house, my suitcase stuff scattered around some oldsters couch. Their cute but fussy young son or grandson doesn’t want to wear pants, and is dressed in my dashiki suit. He’s happy to stay that way even though they look like pajamas.

My wife and I leave for her makeup fair an hour and a half after it starts, at 1:24 pm. I have difficulty with my phone, setting it to correct timezone, from where I am in Australian East coast time.

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Dream Journal

Bed Rides, Reverse Dine-n-Ditch, Floating Telepathy, City Hall

Riding an oversized bunk bed with a few acquaintances and a cute (but nervous & skeptical) toddler. At the top of a stairway, we all slide down, holding onto the bed railings and play-screaming.

Leaving a low-ceilinged semi-outdoor restaurant without paying… I instead end up across the street and pay the tab that belonged to Mickey and his friends. I pay more, meddling with social order, and the action is both self-evidently ethical and appealingly subversive.

Walking down the median of a busy street in a caftan and sandals, an ethnically Mideastern young kid hops out of his dad’s car to say hi and ask me about myself. I realize it’s because he’s excited to finally see someone else who dresses like his family. I turn the corner and pass a Walmart where I overhear someone flub the word ‘teleport’ — I telepathically correct them as they huff past the painted white brick walls.

Sort of flying, sort of floating. I go very high up, above City Hall, which is cavernous and lavishly renovated, with expansive enclosed spaces of exposed wooden beams. The roof is more utilitarian, simple tarpaper with a steel rod decorated with religious iconography. Peering over the side, I can see it’s twice as tall as Grace Cathedral nearby. Perhaps it has the air of Seattle.