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Dream Journal

Stalker’s Ridge, Tabernacle Airship

Driving in a rented sleeper van southward from San Francisco with my family group, a brother and sister. We pull off at twilight onto a barren peninsula jutting into ocean. While the campfire we make is pleasant enough, the van becomes trapped and our dark environs become distinctly spooky. We clamber up the side of a sharp rocky ridge. From the chipped line of its knife-edge peak, I spot the shadowed outlines of enemies stalking us, nearly surrounding us. I don’t have an end for this dream… sorry.


As a kid I famously broke into the Mormon Tabernacle Airship. Now, as circumstance would have it, I’m being asked to do so once again. I make my way through a side entrance, timing events so I blend into a large crowd just filing in for a special occasion. For a short while I wait in a winding line, then matter-of-factly jump the square barricade into a reliquary with the appearance of a backgammon arrangement. I deftly pluck a hollow pin hidden in a scepter which grants me the power to skip around short distances. Mischievously I hop from alcove to alcove in the labyrinthine line, confounding the sleepy crowds attending for flat religious duty.

Categories
Dream Journal

Fan Dads! at The Old Western Zoo

Fan Dads!Somewhere on vacation with Lynae, a specialty zoo with a quirky-healthy-family vibe, uniquely Mormon/Utah. We decide to go back a second day — something we’ve never done before. Get there late in the afternoon, so late I wonder if it’s still worth it. Paying admission is a long chore… exchanging coins for a donation slot, Lynae finally making change herself from the cash register, leaving notes on slips of paper for the individual drawers. There are some obvious indications of a seedy underbelly: repeated graffiti pieces and tags on the Old West log cabin facade (a consequence of being so far out on a country road), a hollowed-out warehouse across the street, where local teenagers congregate. I witness a bizarre and memorable instance of albino giraffes galloping through a dilapidated Fort Ord-like building of broken glass, rusty support columns, and families with young children.

We climb aboard a personal paddleboat-steamer-themed mini train and go through a set of swinging saloon doors. I immediately spot a few large folding knives in a water feature. I retrieve one (hey, free knives!) and it’s comically huge, the size of a sword, branded as ‘Bowie’ — not a Bowie knife, though. Turns out people have a habit of discarding their knives in this particular ride after they stab someone. Like I said: seedy underbelly.

I make my way out of the visitor areas of the park and access a back room with rows of rickety shelves, like a rural garden nursery, stacked with curious merchandise. They’re aging avocado water here for instance. Here I find what is certainly a unique marketing demographic: Fan Dads! That is, men of a certain age who enjoy working with all manner of circulation systems, professionally or as a hobby, who nurture a passion for controlling flow of hot/cold, water/air/oil, or rotational propulsion! I see a beautiful silhouette of myself testing one of these boy-toys, plumes of air or water billowing from my face. Of course I manage to tip over a weathered old shelf and just catch it before disaster strikes. Gah, the maintenance with this place! To be fair, I wasn’t supposed to be there.

I don’t know why I find Fan Dads inordinately hilarious, but… Fan Dads! I’ve been saying it in my head for like 2 hours. Fan Dads!