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Dream Journal

Secret Party Villa, Finding Freedom in the River

In an unfamiliar city, I’m part of a group trying to make it to a secret party. You see, at the moment it’s not the right time for parties — maybe it’s the pandemic, maybe it’s just illegal, so we’re operating on old-school I-know-a-guy wink-wink-nudge rules — ring the right doorbell, know the right password, that sort of thing.

The city is like New Orleans but located where Seattle should be. In full costume, I end up in a villa newly purchased by a cool girl I know IRL (we’ll call her Plarvolia). All the lights are off to keep things on the down-low. For a bit we’re the only two people inside the building (she’s working on her laptop), and alone I explore a graceful courtyard, and admire a plaster wall hand-painted with sunflowers — real sunflowers growing just outside the window in the drizzly charm of what looks like the French Quarter.

I try to bid farewell to her several times, each time not quite getting it right. I screw up enough that it’s starting to weird her out, but I… can’t… quite… get there.


I wake up about 2 am, knowing I’ve gotten enough sleep and could in fact start my day. I decide against it and continue the rest of the night, but successfully encode the previous dream in memory.


The noble coast of Greece, transposed to be the same as the California coast but facing an ocean to the east. Broken into fiefdoms of varied size and population, equivalent to counties of California, with history and legends stretching into deep antiquity. Beyond a large promontory on the map, I view the lined topography as far as Zephyrr county — its steep forested cliffs set along a low-lying sea shelf, so wide it’s almost a lake made of ocean.

In the persona of a college-age young adult, I explore the lively historic rectangular valley which is an inverted Parthenon. I discern it’s evolution by visiting every corner, seeing the specific purpose it’s grown into. This activity itself is academic, and there are often structures of learning too. It is an elegant, civilized, manicured, but undersized space.

I eventually leave via my teacher (Mr. Suggett from 4th grade) challenging some of us to escape through a maze of militarized/fortified utility pipes. I am the first to make it outside, observing structures for flood control; another sluice beyond this exit doubles the water-shedding capacity. I see a broad swath of green valley and mountain range in the far distance below the slope on which I stand, larger than Yosemite — a greater vista than any I’ve seen in a long time. It’s obvious how the Parthenon Valley has been hidden, as now that I have left I can understand how it sits flush with the slope of rock leading down. On the rock perches an unassuming Orthodox church, American flags hung outside of it. Perhaps it is a monastery; perhaps it’s abandoned.


I sit in class in the middle of a row of four desks between my childhood friends Vince Saunders and Khalil Amin. I have let my long hair fully down and it feels a little greasy; I keep my hand grasped in it most of the time and feel more at ease knowing there are students behind. Yet I sit in class idly dejected, ignoring the lesson. I search through my binder for an old assignment, one I decided not to do at the time. As I pore over the photocopied chapters it’s obvious it would have been useless to complete anyway; I would have learned nothing.

Outside the school, in the wide desert in my childhood home of the Coachella Valley, I view the central river (where there is usually a freeway). Adjacent to the river my school district has set up a tall, boxy, sandstone-colored water treatment facility along a long stretch of mucky marshland. I make my way, with a group of friends, to explore with the hope that we can escape the pointlessness of school for a time. Luckily it turns out the treatment/harvest facility can be run with a bare bones staff — and they’re not even there right now.

Having now gained access to the length of the river, we wade along the bottom moving down the current. Soon it gets very wide, and we can walk. The day is hot, bright; the river red, rocky. We walk mostly in contemplative silence, Vince, Kahlil, Lauren, perhaps others. I wear a watch which, if I double-click it, starts recording audio — I usually don’t remember until it’s a little too late though. The river narrows around a curve, the dry desert hillside sheltering someone’s garage under a little overhang in which I hunt bats with my Homepie friend Lauren. Just a little further down river from that we venture up into a little canyon, discovering public bathrooms marked with red/green lights for occupancy. Lauren, a bit like Patsy on Absolutely Fabulous, panics that I won’t be able to get out, though I do by backing out. As usual I’ve forgotten to start recording.

Our group has become larger as we gather in a large hanger set into a precipitous cliffside along the river. Inside is an abandoned Ferris Wheel which we begin to incrementally repair. The thing has the feel of long-neglected military hardware; it shouldn’t surprise us (though it does) when it explodes. Several important characters are destroyed, but then perfunctorily a saved game is reloaded. The progress of the story then depends on deciding which of the collected characters should be sacrificed — the Jules Verne, the Swede, or perhaps Patroclus — anyone with a mechanical aptitude rating can activate the machine while the rest of us, conveniently, stand back this time. But it is known that it will explode no matter what.

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Dream Journal

A Cozy Compound in the Woods, and Famous Guests

Lazing around in some open vacation courtyard, an asymmetric rhomboid. Tired, I order Carl’s Jr., instead of pizza which my wife later reminds me she asked me to. I switch on the Weather Channel for light background noise… but apparently now it has ads?

I catch sight of a man I know, his balls exposed, but it’s just another fashion choice somehow. For a moment it strikes me how oddly it’s much less obscene than showing just a dick or the whole package, but I’m surprised to admit, it totally is.

I find myself idly wondering: when do surgeons learn how to bring someone back from the dead? Is there a day where they talk about the rules, the records, joke about being necromancers? Strange job.

I’m soon walking around a swimming pool while my friends and I are all skinny dipping, but then it seems a new group of grungy beer-drinking hipsters has showed up to the compound/courtyard — private party over. My wife and I start packing clothes and arguing about how long it will take, how much exactly we still have to pack.

Take a break briefly to shop at a grocery store, but I’m sad from the arguing and the mis-ordering and the leaving. On the ground I find a strangely-shaped oblong orange fruit (mango? squash?). I discover among the produce its other half, the banality of the explanation causing me to sigh and set it back on the ground instead.

While visiting my high school creative writing teacher Ms. Fitz’ classroom, I perch on the edge of a blackboard. But Lauren joins me, and us both sitting on it causes it to crash off the wall. Taking responsibility, I construct a replacement of a homemade paper version covered in art selections. The piece on the back, which I think clever (and which won’t normally be seen), is of a hand-drawn skeleton: an oblique downward view of the spine, scapula, and pelvic ridge. This is apparently a too-creative stretch for Lauren, who pans it and has me explain what she’s looking at.

On a creaky wooden staircase out the back, becoming woods, I encounter a weird deer with moss growing over the side of one eye. It’s friendly — almost spirit-guide friendly — so I go to get it carrots. I bring out an ice chest with two bags. As I re-emerge outside I gaze down the neighborhood hill, a single puff of steam popping out the rustic chimney of a tall squarish cabin house down the hill. The morning silence and fog is impressive, encompassing. I have a brief chat with a random neighbor guy and tell him what I’m doing. He asks for one of the bags. A bit selfish, but I offer to give him as much as will fit in his hands. A few animals immediately show up, at least one anteater (which I don’t think eat carrots, “but oh well” I say as I offer some) and a deer with teeth that look like it should definitely be carnivorous. I hand-feed that angular animal with great caution, but it seems not so much dangerous as derpy.

Up in our personal quarters, the musician Amanda Palmer is visiting. Hanging out with friends and band-mates, mostly naked. She’s very easy to host, quite self-possessed. and independent. Hangs out with her crew and chats/chills, taking breaks to talk with me or other family.

Meanwhile my wife tells me Kevin McAllister (Macaulay Culkin) a.k.a Kevin Pill is staying in another room in the complex. I want to thank him for his recent funny tweet and say how glad I am to have him, but I peek in and he’s doing some private conference. I don’t mind, but it could’ve been a sex thing? Masturbating? I don’t know.

I ask Amanda Palmer if they’d like to meet. I’m like “oh wait you already know each other”, and we together recall a time where they got into a debate and she surprised him with a detailed rebuttal, concluding at his shock “that’s right, I went to formal school too”. Listening to her voice is mesmerizing… deep and gravelly and calming. I remember that I should be recording it, and regret not doing so already.

A group of jock-ish “Lost Boys”-looking kids fly onto the room’s balcony. I block the view of my naked celebrity guests while he asks some random probing question, hoping to see them. Gauging my guests’ reaction, I deflect and gently let them down with whatever it is they wanted to ask. Part of being a good host, I guess.


Writing this all down, I realize we never finally departed to courtyard complex after all.

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Dream Journal

Lauren Buys SF Real Estate

I help my hometown friend Lauren buy a building in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. It’s an old six-floor walk-up building housing older Burners, with a soon painted-over mural in the backyard called “Burning Times”: a fire symbol and a series of clocks. I’m glad to have Lauren in San Francisco, and I hope to maybe one day live cheaply in this big building with her, but I’m not sure she understands how precious and sought-after a place like it is. I peek into her first floor room there’s barely anything in there except vintage curtains and sex toys on the bed.


Our class is learning from a science teacher (in the vein of Mr. Suggett or Mr. Lonborg) when class is interrupted by a long phone call about Nick Howell’s mom getting arrested in Connecticut. Nick Howell was a real kid I knew in middle school. The teacher gives a long compassionate speech afterwards, going into the merits of whether or not we should share these things. I find it hard to follow along, despite him being my favorite teacher.

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Dream Journal

An Avantgarde Apartment

The new prime minister of the United Kingdom travels to the place where St Patrick chose to be sacrificed. He has his long hair ritualistically cut off within a sloping rock ring named something like “Kilmarnock”.

Nearby, I’m living in a curiously-designed apartment complex recently converted from a well-loved local Mexican restaurant. The playful chili pepper mascot signs and statues still can be found around the building, including the end of my living room/yard. I erect a splendidly clear goldfish tank near to my neighbors window. The aquarium overflows into a plexiglass water channel that flows between apartments. I catch the neighbors cat fishing out the goldfish, from their upstairs window which overlooks my space. They’re very friendly with introductions, so it’s hard to be mad — plus I put the goldfish, like, right there.

There are body segments of preserved large animals scattered around the apartment complex, in the lobby, the halls, an effective avantgarde decoration and anatomical curiosity. I’d rather tired today and nearly step on a few. Bizarrely homely for such an unusual and futuristic contemporary space.

I follow my friend Lauren through a digital portal in a different area of my apartment, and we watch together a strange reenactment of my past. My other friend, Mickey, is checking out the powdered weed bin I’ve saved for years (its appearance is similar to kratom). Unfortunately, I don’t warn him early enough that it can’t be eaten straight — he starts coughing, the powder having the same effect as the cinnamon challenge.

Concluding, and distinct from the rest of the dream, is a final shootout in a darkened room. Most of us in that rooms die, including members of Run The Jewels.

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Dream Journal

Sleeping in Backseat of Borrowed Car

I’m outside my childhood home on Kemper court, trying to get my scooter over the fence. This is behind the family room, the narrow walkway. My green vintage Vespa ends up just a foot or two into the neighbor’s yard, and I unlatch the side gate and wheel it over the front path. I notice a garage freezer among the gravel landscaping near the house, door hanging open, chugging hard to keep cold — so hard that I smell melting plastic. So, it’s the first dream where I realize the house belongs to someone else now.

The neighbor’s house on the other side has a Starbucks running out of it now. I note this curiosity to my homepie friend Lauren, since the road construct “court” or “cul-de-sac” is more formally termed a “starbuck” (at least in the dream).


A big gym or theater, an enclosed space, flooded at end of year for cleaning. People can now float around in three dimensions. Varieties of ocean life shows up, one is a species of fish that leaves a trail of blue pigment. I share this info with the crowd, as a vast school swims through, turning the water almost black in places. I also half-speak/half-chatter nearby my third-grade crush Christy T. about my secret and considerable knowledge of drugs and/or sex. I slyly offer her a giant pretzel from a jar as I snag one myself… she takes it, and we’re both rather pleased with ourselves.

The performance stage club at one end is flooded for first time too. Lauren had worked there before — at one point she doesn’t recognize me and so I respectfully abstain from pursuing sex within the club (no surprises for anyone). Go there again with Lauren on a waveskimmer, dipping a paddle ahead of us, cutting water to steer. Lauren unlocks a crypt off to stage left, a heavy metal door. The way it latches, she must squeeze through a smaller secondary hatch. As she’s getting out I read an unnoticed sign above instructing to smell for lisp gas (?) first, as there could be decomposition. Geez, it’s actually a crypt!

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Dream Journal

Dark Artist Space

A basement artist space, narrow, underlit and unkempt. I can see through the floorboards to the trash that’s fallen into the sub-basement storage, peek through the walls to make eye contact with the guys running a record store. The first night I stay there — I may be moving in — there are big fluffy bathrobes and towels on pegs. I keep my backpack outside with my bike and leave my laptop in there; someone takes it before I realize.

Lauren has been mailed (or needs to be mailed?) a little ground covering net to protect sea turtle hatchlings. It’s kept in a turtle-shell-shaped keepsake container.

This whole dream world feels very nocturnal, dark, dirty.