My wife and I have assigned rooms, and I’m visiting and essentially staying in her room. She’s decorated it differently than I would’ve, a layered golden yellow autumnal theme integrating wild-gathered elements. As we talk, I prep for a bath in a large plastic bin (similar to the rat cage I’m making). I wear a reversible skull mask as we talk.
I pass by a partially outdoor class seated and having group discussion. I jump into the air as I go by, floating down slowly. I may have flashed my underwear under these dress robes we all wear here — I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, oops.
Conservatives are trying to elect a high ranking general, thinking that he’s on their side. Meanwhile, the guy is actually an ethical patriot, but he’s of course not going to tell them — they might find somebody else.
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.
Dusk. Crossing a curvy dirt driveway around a one-story ranch home near the end of a rural road. I’m staying in this compound on vacation together with a group of strangers. Thoughts about WordPress, the blogging platform, as the sun sets on the far horizon. I bite off half the tip of a thick plant leaf — a succulent of some kind. This is like biting off a piece of skin on my finger cuticle, and I’m not looking forward to how it will feel as it is healing.
Going scuba diving around the same or similar small ranch house in shallow tropical seas. I got the cheap package though, so I don’t have pressurized oxygen, just a small tank (about the size of a soda bottle — we recently acquired a SodaStream). I get below the waves in this twilight water and take one breath, realizing this is about how much I will get, recalling the image of the man who filled it only blowing a single breath. Wondering what I could do differently to make this trip better.
Man asking for popcorn at every store. People asking him how he expects to find popcorn at so many places that he admits he’s never seen popcorn. He answers that he’s just a man looking for popcorn. He then peels off from his face something that looks like a beauty mask — a sticky round circle covering from his mid-nose to slightly blow his chin. Underneath is revealed a distinct lighter circle of skin, perhaps reminiscent of a scuba mask.
My wife and I are sitting in our living room when a sudden noise shakes the wall overhead. A 4-in nail has popped through and knocked off one of the top row trading cards, the same like the arrangement in our apartment’s hallway art gallery. My landlord has been renovating the apartment next door for weeks (this is waking-life true, actually). I angrily walk down the hall to give him and his crew working next door a piece of my mind. He opens the door and as soon as I start describing what happened he pretends to act like they did it on purpose — despite one guy down the hall yelling “hey I’m sorry”. In response I act like I’ll helpfully go measure exactly how many inches of nail are sticking through the wall, so they can measure it from their side, possess an accurate perception of wall thickness, and not do it again.
While we stand outside on the balcony, an older sickly-looking interloper shows up who starts stealing the conversation away, acting like they’re trying to empathize but only talking about their own problems. They’re abruptly standing in the apartment next door while my landlord is standing in mine. Normally I suppose I’d be sympathetic, but instead I turn to my landlord and ask “who the heck is this?” He just says “someone annoying” and I’m simply inclined to agree. There’s nothing to do but let this energy vampire drone on and try to avoid them.
I’m standing in a long winding line on the street here in my neighborhood, the Mission District. I went out to buy a case of beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon, for like $23.99. The line moves surprisingly quickly, but it’s split up into a few sections that complexly join into one. The lines’ purpose is labeled only at the penultimate merge, so of course it appears I’ve gotten in the wrong one and should be in the $19.99 and above line. Right about the final merge I look and see the entrance to the store, just another neighborhood corner store that happens to handle particularly high volume right now. The place only allows one or two customers inside at a time, and it’s upstairs through a single doorway — the place I think is called Boban Vervinsky. Exasperated, I realize in this unnecessarily crowded line that I’ve had my mask around my neck the whole time.
Some unannounced blonde attendant (who’d otherwise be pretty cute) starts blithely giving me instructions from behind my back, that I can’t hear, don’t understand, and don’t want. The stress and crowding involved are too much and I give up, throwing my items on the ground toward to store, flipping off the clueless unhelpful attendant on the way out.
This leads to a short back and forth where I’ll see someone I know on the sidewalk giving the middle finger, like Courtney K., and I have the great timing to give them the middle finger back. I’m getting in flipoff doubles, at some point I feel like I’m physically throwing flipoffs… all in a cinematic-quality slow motion montage with scenes bouncing one to another to another. (It reminds me of another dream, where I first learned to double-middle-finger the whole world around me like Rick Sanchez on Rick and Morty.) But the chain is broken when there’s a girl, Morgan or Megan, with long dark hair over her eyes who doesn’t see me gesture to her.
Not about to stop acting free, I set off running down the cracked asphalt streets of my neighborhood. I run like a big cat, galloping on all fours. While doing this it’s like I’m narrating my method to some unseen flirting female observer riding along with me. I start running on just my hands, floating my legs up for more speed and maneuverability. It’s at this point the observation strikes me that this is the kind of locomotion I’d choose to do if I were dreaming. The dream rapidly breaks down; I wake up with a sharp inhalation and a beating heart.
A search of the name “Boban Vervinsky” has no results at time of writing.
Music in my head upon waking up, Eydie Gormé, “Blame It on the Bossa Nova” (1963)
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?”