Tag: map

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Dream Journal

Long Bus to Coachella

Based on someone’s explicit advice, I’m standing in the street watching a video billboard. It’s an announcement, made by a public broadcaster like PBS. There’s a certain part I’m watching for — perhaps a part someone I know is in, or that I’m in. It’s weird watching a billboard on purpose though… and watching its video all the way through.

I get to visit the home of my old friend and roommate Emily W. It’s a long single-wide trailer sitting diagonally in the middle of the block, without any other homes nearby. She owns it outright (I feel an upwelling of pride even though we haven’t seen each other in a long time and didn’t part on great terms). I seem to remember dropping by at a pretty time of day with the sun low in the sky.

I arrive at an Indian council meeting. I sit at my spot at the long table fiddling with a promotional sticker left there near the placemat, trying to discreetly signal to my wife. I immediately interrupt the meeting doing this. The elder speaker/chairman is assertively aware and asks politely but directly if we need to go. I’m embarrassed but we actually do, of course. While leaving, I gather my clothes off the floor and stuff them in my large backpack. It’s my wife’s tall rucksack and well-accustomed to being forcibly stuffed with large volumes.

My wife has signed us up to do a delivery far south in the long desert valley where I grew up, all the way to Coachella near the shores of the Salton Sea. On the frigging bus. I have no illusions — I already know how bad an idea this is before we set off, but it’s just what we have to do. It’s a long, boring ride.

At some point I lose time. One moment it was a bit after 1pm; then I look and nighttime stars are outside.

But, my favorite part: there’s a girl seated next to me on bus seat who keeps bumping my hand. To my surprise I realize that it’s Alexx S., who I thought a lot about in Italy on account of her being half Italian. I’m unsure if my wife, seated on the other side of me on the seat, planned this somehow. I smirk and ask Alexx, “you think just because you’re my longtime childhood friend you can ignore customary boundaries?” We make out for a long time on the bus seat together, gently communicating through our tongues, learning about each other. I haven’t done that for the first time with someone in a long time. I’m uncharacteristically hesitant sometimes, perhaps second-guessing what I’m sharing about myself, or if I’m sharing it to my best ability. We’ve waited so long… I was friends with this girl and attracted to her in like 8th grade.

Watching on the map as bus passes down the coast of the Salton Sea, past where we were supposed to get off in Coachella. The bus comes back around, but now if we get off it might be going onward which means waiting on another bus (hopefully) in an hour. Several of us get off in the dusty isolated bus stop and beg the driver to stay there an hour, take his lunch earlier. Relying on the other bus is someone no once wants to do. I set off down a sparse desert town road trying to see if I can work something out.

The dream ends just like that, still in the middle of a story. A very active and bothered moment, a moment of annoyance and possible peril. We still have to deliver the package, after all. It’s a lot easier to remember the dream and piece everything together though, on account of all the sweet kissing.

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Dream Journal

Mostly Alone, and Muddled Maps

Rubbing the house of Peter Thiel — twice. It’s a long building laid out like a lodge and I find it easy to come and go. The location feels like it could be the old Pacific Supermarket in SF, but if it is, the neighborhood is barren and empty now. I don’t remember even taking anything. I just fuck around with his rich people stuff in between his infrequent visits. I’m never caught despite noticing overhead cameras pointed right at eye level. I end up hiding near the elevators around back which are used by workers. This transitions to an outdoor sequence.

The curved patio-like area outside the large house is on a vast plain. I think of it as Burning Man, despite that the vastness itself is a color. I’m awake during the day at the unlikely hour of 10:00 am, when no one else is up either — this is one reason I’ve been able to sneak around so well. My sleep schedule is difficult to alter, so for the moment I know I’m stuck with the strange feeling of being awake when no one is around.

I seem to wake up a bit, a hypnogogic interstitial, and imagine a soundproof and insulated large tent at Burning Man which is kept cold. It appears exactly like a snowy landscape, offering camping as well. The tents at the tree line give it an immersive look and it really does feel like being somewhere it snows. It’s still empty in here too.

I overhear my fourth grade teacher Mr. Suggett out a window talking about a sponsorship for his class. I repeat something he says at the right moment to humorous effect, “you’re going to be playing volleyball for weeks!”, which gets a good laugh.

Problem with several world maps. I examine at least two, both lacking detail in countries, with blurry boundaries or poor print quality. It’s as if the borders weren’t finalized in the maps themselves. My fourth grade teacher was very important for my understanding of maps.

Problem with GPS directions, causing me to take a god-awful long time to turn across an intersection on my motorcycle. Finally I get to a destination marked as Busch Gardens (I’ve never been to the actual Busch Gardens, I don’t think this location had anything to do with it). It’s a ramshackle toilet paper stall at the end of a dead end street. There’s a sign at the empty end, “no obtuse cancers here”, which I guess is intended as funny. I take a picture, or try to, unable to confirm if my phone actually took it.

I negotiate with the stall attendant and understand I have to pick out which toilet paper I will choose. Arbitrarily, I feel a roll with teapots on, which is very soft. Yet I don’t understand whether I have to buy it in bulk (by length) or if she sells rolls of it. Peeking around the corner of her stall assembled of wooden sticks, I see that it’s a bustling flea market day. I try to ask her if it would be better for me to go around to shop on the other side, accessing her stall walking through the flea market. She answers me in a broken Russian accent and I can’t understand her, and don’t know how to get around to the other street.

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Dream Journal

Strip Mall Waystation, Rat Deaths, Map Anomalies

I find myself sleeping in an odd, interstitial liminal space — a kind of waystation for world travelers. It feels like a forgotten space within a strip mall, perhaps a former party supply store. A solidly-built, boxy metal grid forms the internal structure of this place.

A rat dies. This is the second rat to die, unfortunately. I have to tell my wife before she gets back. But then I remember the first rat died a long time ago. Does that make this news a little easier to share?

I’m allowed to sleep there. I’ll be sleeping just outside the big metal grid, but still inside the store. It’s a privilege to be here for a few days, but feels strange too.

When turning the perspective of a 3D map, all the buildings change too. They’re very detailed, but wrong — a bad guess by the 3D analysis algorithm. It’s too bad, since they look so crisp and good. But there’s no way now to tell what they really look like.

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Dream Journal

A Nice Victorian Space to Fix Things and Learn

I’m being shown around a pale yellow Victorian house, with a complicated and extensive layout that is home for many. I’m considering moving in or helping folks who live there. I peer out a window in the upper floor and am confused for a moment by the jarring blank modern walls, but realize it’s the building next door. Shame… would be a beautiful view of the curved glowing sky above (is this Victorian housing complex in space?). While inspecting a niche and one of the rooms, examining how a tiny hand wash sink has been built into the alcove, I realized there’s a small gap in the baseboard that I can reach through. Probably no person has realized the space exists in many decades.

A map of the island of Hispaniola shows an exaggerated elevation relief, showing the stark vertical east-west border line. The obvious inconvenience really shows how Haiti and the Dominican Republic have been harmed by such an artificial imposed border, even one from hundreds of years ago.

In a wide-open top floor attic lounge space I take it upon myself to repair three stylish pianos. They’re arranged elegantly back-to-back in a triangle, the base ends tilted to be slightly larger. Guests of the lounge are starting to come in for the evening. I’m pleased to find that each piano has a different sound, one has a delightful 1960s electric organ tone.

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Dream Journal

Map-Parachuting, Lawyer-Attacking, Megaphone-Speakering

An interesting exercise in Physical Education class. In tall grass, a huge area is flattened in the shape of the lower 48 states of America. This shape is repeated identically in a line. The class then performs parachuting practice and we land all over the maps (mostly at random, as we don’t have excellent control). The multiple maps “cancel out” and then, as it’s PE of course, we all jog back into the first field and stand at our newly-determined spots.

I landed north of San Diego. I expect I’ll be so close to the border with Mexico that I’ll be standing right next to it. However, the map is of great scale and I’m impressed when I end up outside throwing distance. While my back is turned and I’m listening to instructions from the stage to the north (i.e. Canada) a smooth-haired guy that looks like a lawyer sneaks up on me from somewhere south unseen.

I have to take cover among the big crown in the front row of the America-auditorium, a the section categorized “Express” for reasons I don’t understand. Panicked, I seize an empty theater chair in the middle of the row. It feels like he won’t mess with me with this many people and I calm down. But soon I’m requested to move to the outside of the row, on the more empty left side. I psych myself into being ok with it. My flank feels exposed and it’s still too much; I move around among the audience to assuage my worries.

On the far edge of the big USA room is a park-like setting. People chilling, listening to music. A Scottish guy with a thick accent yells something pretty clever, and I realize I’m the only one that understands his voice and slang. I happen to have a Bluetooth speaker that I can use as a megaphone so I translate. As it turns out though, my translation is treated as equally informal and idiosyncratic. Only the Scottish guy and me get the meaning, but at least I get his humor. Might’ve made a friend.

By now the coast is clear and I’ve stopped worrying about aggro lawyer guy. The event ends and I stay for clean-up. I’m asked by a younger black girl if I can help find her speaker — once again I use mine to address a wider crowd. I but manage, surprisingly, to find an identical speaker also broadcasting my signal. She says that one’s not hers, though. Hers has four funnels, kind of like rectangular air horns, arranged in a spiral. I manage to find something fitting that description but no, she says that one is for use amplifying timbales (the Latin percussion instrument).

The space is emptying out, and I’m in the wooden rafters still searching. I come across a brown extension cord strung deliberately through the beams, with an odd note attached. It’s a copy of something the judge (and DoJ head) Merrick Garland said about a bill, recently written, that restricts many people’s freedoms. While it’s not his bill he’s plainly complacent enough to just explain it without also saying how it can be fought.

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Dream Journal

Doing Nothing, Variations

In a shared closet passing in-between rooms I discover a few very cute baby rats. It’s in a house that resembles my childhood home, making this my parent’s master bedroom closet.

I go to search for my buzz razor. My sister Alia is using it to cut her hair in the hallway using a mirror. I know better than to interrupt something like that. Still the same house.

Leaving a hotel, while our arms are full of travel gear, my wife decides she wants to check out the inside of a specific hotel room. She jimmies open the lock and saunters around, proceeding to lie down on a bed. We’re spending a little too long and I start to get worried that she’ll fall asleep, and begin complaining to her. I’m starting to suspect that there’s more to her motives than mere idle curiosity.

Map-based naval video game where the strategy to advance is unclear. A long featureless coast with a small inland lagoon. Beach waves endlessly repeating. Patiently, I expend a disgraceful time not doing much in the game. Not particularly minding, either. I don’t notice the blocks of cash at southeast corner until after I exit the map, immediately realizing that was probably the way to win.

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Dream Journal

’36, Night Crashers 2

“Night Crasher” was a famous storm (perhaps even hurricane) which — you might be surprised to learn — was actually promoted by Hollywood and its movie stars in 1936. There are posters and other artifacts which I find fascinating and puzzling. Why promote a storm, and how did they know it was coming? Was it a real storm? I’m fairly certain it was a real film, as was alive to remember its decades-late sequel “Night Crasher 2”, released in the early ’90s.

A quaint, yellowed old-timey map shows a staggered row of island groups between the latitude above Australia and south of the equator. Never before have I seen these islands so presented (either grouped, or as a timeline) showing the odd order they were discovered, claimed, and settled. The map is even illustrated with cute icons to be helpful and memorable. Once again, this map was actually promoted by Hollywood media types at the time (so perhaps also from the 1930s).

I’m a small spry man of indeterminate age riding as a passenger in a car’s backseat. My companions and I travel at night in drizzly rain through an unfamiliar neighborhood. I’m not too familiar with my companions either, but they’ve also never been here. There’s an unacknowledged tension — as if we are all on a mission none of us signed up for. I weigh the balance of providing directions versus disturbing the group dynamic.

Soon it must be tested anyway; we arrive at our first destination. I tromp up a steep hillside of industrial scree to the curved wall of a concrete bunker. I’m the only one to have dealt with these people before, at some village-scale trade negotiations. With the vantage from climbing I now can see into their unobscured control room — no ceiling, disorderly but oft-used, a place of daily work for the overworked. We are summarily buzzed in and I must hop quickly after my taller male companion, as the timed doors close promptly after me.

An insouciant gray-haired lady greets us by suggesting we wait and go play table tennis. My companion is young and likes tasks requiring only brawn. He needs handholding, so I try to assure him that he simply doesn’t understand their ways here: they mean no disrespect, neither is it some kind of test. We really do only have to kill time. And pleasantly there is an actual pool table (or close enough).

After a while I leave through a different door within this compound, wanting to go outside to break up the time. Unexpectedly I encounter what must be the concert of the season going on… many people I know in wider social circles are seated across loads of metal balconies in this half stadium, all reveling. I’m glad I’m there: a few friends start hanging off the balcony rails; by chance I know the structure’s particular weaknesses. Once again I weigh the prudence of sharing advice. I’m glad I do share it this time, though.

Returning to the main room of the place, this industrial business compound, I meet up with my occasional friend Chloe. A great song starts playing and we spontaneously dance around the pool table. Turned away, with our butts pressed together, she offers a friendly warning: “don’t think this means any more than what it really does”. While playfully bumping/humping her from behind I respond in kind by quoting Rick Astley, “you know the game, and so do I.” This response lands well and I’m glad we’re on the level.

In my wallet I save keepsake political art made to look like dollar bills. These are even valid currency in some odd cases. I am only reminded when I go to pay for something (maybe the jukebox?) and I notice a $39 bill. It’s collectible, a feminist pro-union message as I recall, supporting daycare access for working women. Another one is an otherwise normal boring $10 bill. It’s design is so incredibly plain and modern that the overall effect strangely exotic. A sleeper hit, I guess we’d call it.

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Dream Journal

Aiae Spotted, Interesting Map

Rocky front walk from my childhood home. A mixed gender band, maybe from the 80s, enthusiastic but outdated. I might have a lip plate stretching on my right side.

I spot Aiae on a map, a modern spelling of the island of Circe. A floating jiggling landscape, I flip the on/off switch to lock it in place. Once the map is done baking/rendering/uplifting it looks like an impressive mashup of video game assets, an intricate road network connecting meso-American pyramids mixed with Middle Eastern. A few disparate cultures jumbled together from files already at hand. A giant Alladin asset pops through the floor of a Greek parthenon temple.

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Dream Journal

Kokomo River, Red Circle Island

“Kokomo Slow” is both a lifestyle as well as a decent descriptor of the Kokomo River somewhere down in Florida. After kayaking part of it, we try to follow our granny guide’s boat upriver. But it’s too swift (comically so, almost a waterfall) which is exactly what I predicated as soon as I saw it. The old lady’s nice, just a bit of a hippie who hasn’t faced how much nature has changed in her lifetime.

A YouTuber I’m watching has camped out in a spot marked by a red circle, a concrete slab at the end of a row of buildings near New Orleans. I can find the place on Google Maps’ Street View (still with the conspicuous red circle) and show several friends — especially my brother Chris who’s wearing VR goggles. On the map I can tell that he’s on an island, though it used to be something you could walk to. So much of the swampland on the map has moved around quickly; big swathes of it to the south are underwater.

I consider if I should play Chris a song by the rapper Mike Ladd as it might show him a bit of his future.

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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.