Tag: mansion

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Dream Journal

Decaying Mansion, Full of Falls

I’m staying over at the big fancy house of my friend Tracy in Richmond. This isn’t her real house, but a cavernous, fading, historic mansion with at least six stories. I find myself sleeping on a bed at the edge of one of the high atria. I catch myself at the edge of the bed one night, about to fall over the edge (luckily I put my travel bag next to me).

I learn of the forgotten story of a three-year-old boy who once fell from a height in that same atrium. The kid had become trapped in a decorative curved alcove, something looking like a luxurious conch shell ornament from the 1920s. This oddly dangerous decision was built along the smooth, carpeted ramp on the floor just below where I had been sleeping. He was saved by many firefighters who held a very wide sheet across the entire floor. The boy did fall, finally, into the rescue sheet, still asleep. Of course he wouldn’t remember it — despite the high drama. Yet one reason it was forgotten.

I like to explore the structure since I can’t move back to San Francisco, where I actually have stuff to do. I sometimes find little wooden square vents high on the walls and climb through them, just to have something interesting to do. Certainly no one else is bothering to explore the structure.

One day I find a gold mine. I discover a large unused space, dreaming of what I can do with it: a cafe, a clubhouse, a performance venue. Tucked away in the back corner, I discover a deliberately manufactured scary animated doll puppet, specifically designed to artificially frighten others into avoiding the space. It’s immediately obvious to me that this is a deliberate act of deception, and I quickly realize that I’ll need to persuade others to understand that the situation isn’t what it appears to be. However, it’s also the reason why the space remains freely available. Despite this, it’s also just another forgotten thing in the mansion.

When I first woke up, I remembered different dreams, the dreams I had just before waking. But when I found this one again, I stayed stuck on it. It was more enjoyable and interesting, I suppose. The others were totally forgotten in the process.

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Dream Journal

A Time Diamond and A Thief

A particular strange lucidity early in the night with my phone in my hand, as I voluntarily clean my house and enjoy doing it. Despite not realizing for a long time that I’m still holding my phone

Living or visiting in a large mansion-like space, maybe a bit like Isis Oasis. Old 70s stylings, so many various dining tables that we’ve never eaten at some of them. Feels like we haven’t been here in a while too, semi-abandoned even though I understand that others still visit infrequently.

Outside, my wife and I can hear someone rummaging around in a study, the study belonging to a hallowed old professor. I recognize it as a test I’ve encountered before involving a thief. I’m appearance he’s oddly like the character from The Thief and The Cobbler, but his size is variable. It’s difficult to coordinate with my wife to plan how we’ll catch him in the act without him popping away. The whole thing is just a narrative game that has been played before — apparently it randomly respawns from time to time. Now this scenario has happened enough times that I’m starting to grasp the steps needed to resolve it.

The thief is after a small diamond. I know from playing through things before that, actually, he can never find it, because no one can find it. Not alone. Plotwise, all parties including the thief have to coordinate, whether they do so intentionally or not. It’s the only way to avoid the multiple layers of gotchas whereby the diamond gets lost forever, and the scenario resets. Could be a time diamond for all I know. But here, back on the first step of the loop, girded by the wisdom of experience, I still can’t seem to coordinate with my wife. Hm.

Objects. Four important folders to swap between, that must by applied to the project I’m working on. I can clearly visualize them as clunky plastic office documents which I can swap between. Oddly enough I read something before bed and I think maybe these leaked in from there, which are from the instructions for how to set up a tool I need:

– Active Context: Contains information about the current task
– Project Context: Contains high-level project information
– Progress: Documents completed work and upcoming tasks
– Decision Log: Records choices and their rationale

They read like things I should very much know and have around to reference, don’t they? Double hm.

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Dream Journal

Roads of San Francisco

I’ve taken charge on handling an absurdly tall Victorian mirror (measuring over 8 meters) which I gently lay on a long sheet. I’m in what appears to be my parents old bedroom in the house I grew up in. While I’m very careful and never break it, it’s so long that it flops about end-to-end like a giant semi-stiff ribbon. I imagine the kind of Great Hall where such a mirror might even fit; a grand old San Francisco mansion on a hill perhaps. Echoes of another dream: a house of tall rooms curving along the outside, a slight hill, flowerbeds and iron fencing, perhaps converted to a hostel.

Using an unfamiliar route through a posh neighborhood of large homes, I notice two particular large buildings. My eyes are lead upward as I appreciate their distinct old timey theme and quaint names carved on the outside. Though one is clearly meant British one Frenc, they fly opposite flags. Perhaps what were once embassies have become private homes and the eccentricities of wealth. The street becomes more crowded just a little ways on, with tourists. I realize I’ve become turned around and am headed north toward the bay and I’m near Fisherman’s Wharf. I conclude that the buildings are now explicitly to service the hordes of visitors, though in what way I don’t know.

When driving down a roadway I become trapped in a line of cars which must turn around due to an unlabeled street closure. Very useless and frustrating. When I finally make my way out I find an official riding a horse and inquire/complain. The portly bald private contractor (I remember looking at his face) says the city allowed them many more horses than signs, which is why he’s riding a horse. There is no further explanation.

I have to take a road through a poor neighborhood where we once considered getting an apartment. I spot the place, with its janky plywood hillbilly door still exactly as it was, a scraggly old punk character smoking a cigarette outside. The neighborhood is just like this. It’s what they’ve allowed to be built here. The only thing you can get to across the street is a cheap FoodsCo market — which has very similar plywood scaffolding draped over it’s entrance. The place feels crowded and neglected at the same time. The most efficient way to leave this part of town is actually with a shortcut through a private parking lot. And, as you’d expect, they can decide to close the gate or restrict access whenever they like. Truly, what a shitshow this place is.

I’m diverted down a rural route through the hilly and less developed middle of SF. I pass a row of square little slope-roofed cabins which are rented out by the zoo like Airbnbs. Beyond a frail chainlink fence they sit on stilts above a slow marshy creek under eucalyptus. This is the first time I’ve actually seen them, and I immediately decide I would one day like to rent one out, maybe have a trip weekend there.

Riding in the backseat of the family SUV with my dad and brother in the front, we park in a dirt lot in a little isolated development on a side road in the boonies. I’m consulting my map hoping we can get a brief walkthrough, but I declare that I’m not sure there is a path through the private property fence… just as a girl in black sunglasses and dark hoodie strolls past, rather demonstrating I’m wrong (and that my research is ineffectual). Shortly after, while clambering over rocks I realize that I’ll need shoes. My legs are so dirty though from some mud earlier, I figure I’ll have to find a place to rinse if I have any hope of keeping my shoes clean. I’m afraid now it’ll be a whole thing.

[[Unexplained note: wife 4 guys, Corey B. 6 guys, but when is there time for me?]]

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Dream Journal

Two Masks, an Empty Simpsons-Inhabited Mansion

Standing in a place where recently a pregnant Marge Simpson stood, waiting to see someone. Now 3 grey chairs are lined up in a row outside that door, on gray carpet, among empty halls. They leave the impression of a scene very recently abandoned. I observe the vibrating cartoon outline of The Simpsons’ Monty Burns standing sideways against the column of my backyard stairway — events unfolding without him, inaccessible yet seen, as if inhabiting a windowed universe. He remains throughout the dream.

Taking the elevator to the rooftop, and the 38th story of this Addams-Family-like mansion. I get the hint that there might not exactly be 37 stories below it… it’s some sort of status thing. Whoever I am in this dream, I recognize I’ve lived a privileged life, and so recognize while gazing out among other high skyscrapers the calculated prestige of this place.

This whole time, we’ve been searching for two masks. One of them is real, of old Judaic provenance, and quite important. My younger sibling brings me one that their crew has found, flattened and rubbery and empty-eyed, a crude (though not cruel) caricature of a Jew. When asked how we will know which is which, I tell them with big-brother certainly, “to really to know which one is real, we can take samples and do composition analysis at a lab — I bet one of these will come up as being made some time in the last 50 years, somewhere in the vicinity of Southern California, while the other will have a vague 1000-ish year estimate, somewhere from Eastern Europe to the Levant… and which one would you bet on?”