I’m exploring a house for sale with my Homepie friend Mickey. The attic is large and has multiple nestled little sleeping areas, a place the current residents call Monticello for reasons not known to us.
I’m having some of my old stuff shipped back from Australia, left behind from when I was there. This must happen before the river islet the Monticello house is on floods. We travel the small circular waterway via canoe. To haul the boat out of the water they’ve rigged up a garage door opener near the riverbank — clever little contraption, useful for rural living.
I pick out my stuff from the many cupboards and cabinets of the newly abandoned home. Most of this stuff I’ve forgotten (it’s been more than a decade). I can’t help but steal one thing: an iridescent plastic bowl from the 1970s, easily missed by the family and easily excused as an accident. It’s unique and oddly beautiful, and obviously unappreciated judging by where I found it.
Having everything gathered it appears that shipping is going to cost $60. I hadn’t thought about that cost and second-guess whether I want any of this stuff at all anymore.
My cousin Miriam volunteers to pose for nude for an art class’ sketching project. I never look (she’s my cousin; it’d be weird) but I do stay in the room on a couch, hanging out with my friends, facing away and enjoying the atmosphere.
My friend Mickey is making a picture (the only one?) and eventually I peek — he’s using some digital program and it looks much more impressionistic / less related to Miriam’s posing than I’d expect. It’s worrisome, actually, enough that I decide to take him aside and voice my concern — that Miriam won’t take it well, will think it’s some strange commentary on her appearance.
In this dream, Mickey used to be in the Army. He responds thoughtfully, rooted in this experience, about how he gradually learned how to complete tasks and get them actually off his plate. I relate of a few times when I was able to finally push things off my plate — only for them to end up on even more plates.
Invited back to Burning Man, with the camp my sister stays at. They last stayed in 2015 — it doesn’t seem so long ago.
When I first get into camp I find a few emblems lying on the ground at he entrance. My old rabbit fur bag of elfstones (that I carried in middle school) appears to be there, as well as some important books from my past.
The camp is indoor and outdoor. There’s a book counter in our camp, and the bookseller asks me if I know that a photo of mine is currently first place in a competition. He seems to be clued in to the unusualness of the situation, and I can’t fully recall if it’s a photo I did take, but I definitely can’t remember submitting it. He reminds me of my wife’s dad’s friend, Loren.
Nice slow conversation with friends in our camp about bringing a good smartphone camera to Burning Man. Mickey is there, my sister Alia too, I even notice my dad sitting at the end of a table — had hung out with him without even realizing he was my dad.
The photo from the competition comes out: a very clear photo of statuary in a twisting wood, the lighting a deep velvety eerie calm midnight. Studying it closely, the sensation forms of how the angle, framing, color treatment, and more are recognizably my style. It must have been made several years ago now.
I help haul out stuff we’ve brought this year, much of it packed into a rundown old ’70s luxury car (one of those big fat Buicks or Cadillacs) parked on the roadside exactly behind the spot where I parked last time. After that long discussion on phone cameras earlier I happen to uncover an old Motorola flip-phone. Though only here for novelty purposes, it proves worthy of close examination — a true artifact. Somehow I finally appreciate just how many individual technological bits and pieces were sorted out in its making.
The chaos of the festival is just coming into swing, though it’s early yet… and a bit more reserved than I remember. I watch a procession of long mechanical costumes march up a slope toward us. An articulated worm-dragon, I realize, was probably made with help from my friends Don & Tracy.
Mickey is futzing around camp, pensively searching for a special spiritual emblem of his that’s missing. Meanwhile I’m feeling annoyed as the bookseller has closed shop early, and without notice. I could’ve asked him about the emblem — I’m worried a book I traded could’ve contained (or perhaps was) Mickey’s cherished talisman.
We settle down together at a table, playing some emulated old video games. Mickey brings my heavy motorcycle boots over and sets them nearby, which bothers me until I understand he wants them as a cool prop for his fighter jet game. Following that is yet another emotional conversation, both of us worried about different things. It strikes me suddenly that we’re both distraught somehow yet still doing exactly what we want — this is a true vacation, with no genuine adult responsibilities, and we’re both literally playing Nintendo just as we would in our childhood. (Though, odd detail: I have a Steam Controller and he’s still using a keyboard and mouse.) Our mood improves immensely after this observation is made. Ironically but perhaps unsurprisingly, when I unpause my game it crashes to the JavaScript backend. One can only sigh, or laugh, and wonder at the predictability of such things.
The bookseller returns unexpectedly soon afterward, having only taken an evening break.
The music playing in my head, as I woke up and tried to remember as much as I could: N.O.H.A. – Do You Know
After a ritualized intellectual struggle, my Grand Wizard-King makes me the new king of a nation — a miniature, room-sized nation. It’s one of many, their near-microscopic humans living along various sub-scales, together in a quiet, darkened school building. My former gathered rivals don’t quite yet realize I’m the victor of our contest, but my first act is to free a rival agent (who looks like Odo from Deep Space 9). Walking away from this act, I deem that I will remember this all better if I can remember my full official title — yet I don’t know if ever got one, or the name of the place, which I find odd.
A group of similarly-sized Asian girls outside a Walmart in my hometown, part of some formal gathering. All with sharply cut dresses and fancy hairstyles. Their backs are turned to me and I try to locate my middle-school friend Jimil by her ponytail. The girl I find turns out to be an assassin and duelist, one from a rival tiny nation I’ve never heard of (down a set of stairs, called something like “the Lowlands Suzerainty”). I’m able to defeat her by luring her up a puzzle-like jungle gym climbing sculpture. A worthy opponent.
In the broader expanse of the nighttime school building, I explore what I suspect is the top floor. It houses a school admin office, the window overlooking to a flat dark roof. The space, even at normal scale, is smaller than I expect.
In a classroom nearby, rows of us sit in plastic chairs while a guest presenter lectures with slides on the nefarious points of being evil. I sit next to my homepie friend Mickey, and together we make excellent snark. Finally Mickey breaks in on the drone with a critical observation critiquing the talk’s contents. When he finishes I’m ready to put in my own take, reframing and reiterating his points. To my satisfaction and surprise my friend Chloe, sitting in another row, jumps in with a full accusation.
“Science in Action” is Chloe’s stated theory about this year (I at first incorrectly think she means 2016, but no, definitely 2020). From prior experience she’s familiar with how cults sometimes take over a classroom and perform fucked up experiments to prove their faith — ostensibly to prove it outsiders. She carries on, homing in on how the evil badassery this cult/school espouses is negated with their actions, epitomized by us being there to even listen to them. She absolutely nails it.
Music in my head on waking: Death Waltz, U.N. Owen Was Her, a midi version
My third grade crush and her kids run into me selling wares at a craft fair. It’s the pandemic so I can’t touch anything to help them pick something out, but her small kid manages to find a very special item. I take the opportunity to sell it to her at a discount and I’m overjoyed to have reconnected and, somehow, closed the circle from when I bought her chocolates on Valentine’s day — back in third grade.
Amusement park is closing soon. They don’t kick you out, they just close all the exhibits one by one. Left almost alone in a vast fortress-like space, wooden piles driven into the ground separating rare bird enclosures and such. Like a zoo, but oddly not centered on the animals.
I conspire with Mickey in a small bathroom, but it takes a long time to convince each other of our plan. We leave across a wooden drawbridge, hanging out with shady night-time mob characters in a room like a movie-theater lobby across the way. The theater seats are often moved back and forth, front to back, per the command of an authoritative fit woman at the front (reminds me of a muscular yoga teacher I had in college).
Constructing an ersatz set of wings, I launch off the side of a tall, steep, rocky cliff. The kids I’m with think I can’t do it, but I know I can, my arms are just skinny and I’m nerdy (I’m like Billy the blue Power Ranger). Soon, I fly away from the all-too-3D cliff and over wooden bridge — possibly the same drawbridge I crossed with Mickey earlier.
Woke up in bed at my wife’s dad’s house. I didn’t think I remembered any dreams, then I remembered there was a good significant one in the middle of the night. That was the one with my third grade crush, and everything flowed naturally after letting go while focusing on them.
While traveling between San Diego and San Francisco, I get stuck outside when service stops, at a warmly-lit pub, somewhere near a dark ocean. I have to figure out a second-fastest way to get back; it seems to be air travel. Unfortunately the airline books me with a 5-day stopover (!). I end up staying with my college girlfriend Jenna, and spend my time doing things like organizing colored markers in a cabinet.
I ask her about what it is she sleeps in, trying to get a read on whether it’s a good idea for me to sleep naked as usual. At some point (which I don’t notice until after waking), Jenna becomes my friend Mickey.
I stay with Mickey at a university. It’s getting on midnight and I want to sleep, but his bed is configured to be the size of a couch (this is similar to an actual story I just re-told yesterday). I navigate my way through stacks of books in this long hall full of students — surrounded by a focused studying energy only found in the early month of September in a school year — to an open triangular little storage room with a mirror screwed on the wall and the final 3/4 of a box spring, which will finally allow me to sleep on a full bed.
Having just re-watched “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”, it should come as no surprise that I just dreamt of Ramona Flowers. I almost forgot that’s basically her whole thing for awhile there; skating through people’s dreams on subspace highways running though their heads. What’s maybe a bit unexpected is was my errant though that I would see her in my dreams tonight, and then actually seeing her. I can’t remember much else.
A huge flat wall of an image, a drawing of yellow red and purple swirls. I used an image like this recently in a project to illustrate stage 3 of Salvia divinorum ingestion.
Distinct imagery with eyes closed: fractal patterns, geometric or vine-like motifs, stable impressions of objects and designs, mostly all 2-dimensional. If visual effects are seen with eyes open, these are often vague and fleeting. Comparable to hypnagogic phenomena sometimes experienced at sleep onset. Open or closed eyes, visions are perceived as “eye candy”, not confused with reality.
Sitting round a table. My Homepie friend Mickey is there, and though I call him Mickey it’s been just so long since I’ve seen him. I obliquely mention cocaine in terms of it being “someone’s favorite”, and he brings out some (or at least what appears to be) on a beautiful hand-carved driftwood table.
Searching the garage in my childhood home, cleaning up my dad’s workbench with my mom — but it’s against the adjacent wall, where the books were. A tiny CFL bulbs roll off the table as we work. I’m exhausted and lay down on a couch on my stomach. A classmate of mine from elementary and middle school, Emily McIntosh, uses a tele-robotically-controlled rat to explore while I then rest peacefully on my back.
While hanging and swinging from a bar out the door to the backyard, I have a creative idea for my website: using vector outlines of patterns to fill with dynamic colors customized to the individual posts.
Fragments of dreams:
A table on a stage
Saving some friends for a demonstration
An object rising though the air and into the realm of gods
On the far wall, an inscribed poster
A StarCraft video game level of criss-crossing lines, where you start out as a character on the edge, and your objective is to lure the enemy into the lines away from safety
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.
Out in a wintry, grey, spread-out urban environment. Spot three vixens (female foxes) of gigantic size, perhaps 6 feet tall. My companion — a woman who’s not quite my partner, but certainly a good friend — takes aim with her hunting rifle and makes a clean shot at the lead fox. It’s then I realize the other two are a detailed mural, trompe l’oeil. Writing this now, I realize it could’ve been painted there as a decoy for exactly this purpose.
Afterwards, my wife’s grandmother shows up and folds herself neatly into a bag for transport.
Aboard a submarine, the captain from Seaquest (Nathan Bridger) and the young tech guy (Lucas Wolenczak) are together in a gym shower having sex. Within the dream I find this surprisingly boring, though I’m not sure who/what my dream persona is. A bit later the submarine is evading capture through rough water and can be seen darting in between the peaks of two waves. This image is particularly memorable as, in a later dream inside a classroom with Mickey and Robby T., I actually take care to draw it in pen.
Cartoon Ian Malcolm (who’s also an alien incarnation) giving mathematics talk and accidentally reveals that 910 goes into 977, thus setting off an academic stampede to discern their number base.
DMT, Arizona — picnic partying with Mickey and conserving a bag of white powder. Somehow this is also Germany. We cross a small river of juice and I thank him for helping me catch my wireless earbud before it falls in the substance. It’s a fun and celebratory mood. Could be a combination of Mickey and Lauren, come to think.
Earlier: Lynae going down on me. I realize at some point it’s a dream and am impressed I feel it, although I know it isn’t very intense.
