Tag: moving

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Dream Journal

Heard the Noon Siren, Many Years Later

Without much input, I’ve been reassigned to a previously occupied 2nd-story corner apartment. It’s not bad actually, though adjusting is a little odd. It’s so unlike anywhere I’ve lived, yet oddly so close — just a building over and a floor down.

I explore how it feels by walking around the chain of rooms, as the place is laid out on a loop. Some of the rooms are still set up with generic prop housewares as if for a real estate listing. I get a strong feeling of fondness here, unexpected acceptence of the new situation. It’s in things like discovering the single long, high bookshelf running across the series of front rooms, already stocked (by whoever lived here last) with good and interesting bond. I feel the same way when I gaze up to the highest part of the ceiling, a peaked triangular glass double window showing gauzy windows to an upper floor mezzanine and abundant houseplants.

The front door is inset from the 90° wraparound walkway outside, so people frequently cut through my little doorway alcove — I sometimes open the door and startle someone walking past. The view is just different enough to be mildly disorienting, almost refreshing at the same time.

Yet, while I look, I see workers from the city chopping parts of a tall tree in the street. There’s some new ordinance or decision, and public lighting can no longer use natural supports — either a lawsuit or some natural preservation thing. So the tree on the sidewalk just outside, the one that the community rigged up themselves, is now having many branches cut out because it’s the fastest way to meet the ordinance. It’s regrettable.

I hear the San Francisco noon siren for the first time in many years. It’s instantly recognizable, but there’s some kind of muffled announcement afterwards. I take it there’s some kind of provocative race angle in it? Something about “the Chinese”? So I’m a bit disappointed, obviously. But I should mention, for the record, that today actually is Tuesday, and I actually was asleep around noon when this would’ve happened.

I find out about a term Google has for a category of tool, from a “lake of hammers”, a colorful metaphor. The manager I’m talking to claims it isn’t fun to say, which I happen to disagree with. Lake of Hammers.

I am surprised to see that the Amanitas mushrooms I forgot about have actually ripened over time. They’re a pleasantly shiny smooth purple on each end, both cap and root.

My wife and I are walking down Market St, and as we cross the crosswalk aggressive sports cars cut close around us. Later we’re riding scooter together up Market when the bike falls over at an intersection. I take a shortcut through a college campus. Only halfway down, where I thought there were ramps, instead there are concrete stairs. Bullshit non accessible bullshit. Instead I exit out through a side door, passing by a plaque memorializing and praising an Italian design course or academy.

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Dream Journal

Orange Bike, Moving Mess, Missed Workshop

Cleaning the orange parts of an orange-accented bike with hydrogen peroxide. It’s very orange, with lovely yellow really grips, and I’m surprised how many scuffs actually come off well. I’m reminded of all the orange Nickelodeon bumpers I watched as a kid.

I ride the bike as I prepare to take a trip to the University Center, parking it outside the garage real quick to run upstairs. It’s like four flights up, unlike the childhood bedroom I had when I was seven, which it resembles.It only feels dangerous to leave the bike outside like that while I’m briefly delayed moving things around on top of a mini-fridge — which is silly of course. The way I’ve lived, I’m constantly on courts and cul-de-sacs and other safe places. That’s what I think in the dream anyway. Before I go, I ask my brother Patrick if he wants anything from the school cafeteria.

I moved into a new, smaller place with my family weeks ago, but all the appliances and boxes are still stacked everywhere. It’s strange looking into the kitchen and seeing the blank, high white walls, knowing that’s where the stuff should really go.The space should be full with shelves and organizers, but instead all that stuff is stacked high in front of it, blocking pathways. Eventually, we forced the unpacking issue a little, asking about a specific oven box. That guy isn’t going to be here for months still, so we just moved it.

I’m sad that I won’t get to see the house with a big basement again. I realized that since it belongs to my landlord, he won’t allow me to buy or rent it at this point. We don’t get along. This was actually another dream that I had, one with a house that had lots of kitchens — there was one specific one with a big island in the center, a few fridges, which I fantasized about turning into my workshop.

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Dream Journal

Light Work & Play at Family Home (After Defending from Invasion)

High atop a stadium overlooking a valley, like a 3d model in tones of grey. This is a neighborhood I’ve come to that feels foreign, but where I could imagine living one day. Maybe I’m newly moved there.

Preparing to defend a house in a Jewish neighborhood, laid out on a long curved suburban street. Suddenly the ongoing warnings are quiet and it’s the eerie sounds of just nature and emptiness. The tanks of the invaders are easily defeated before they arrive at the house, self-destructed or -dismantled, then fired on by various unlikely things (like a wolf that can hold a gun). One defender who made a ten foot knife for the battle is walking down a regular street with this giant knife in the aftermath, a sight that might cause me to advise him against it.

My cousin is 18 and fixing a computer in the open hallway of the central living room of his childhood home (this is different than the home they had in Eureka). I tell him “if I had an 18-year-old, I’d want to put him to work fixing the computer” to which he smiles and shushes me.

In the same communal family space, a girl from elementary school, Amy Naud, and my hostel friend Dave V., are the best performing two people at growing up. They complete a series of tasks that mature you along the way and they do it fastest. This hallway has long been a gathering spot — I look at pictures from years past, parties with banners, random family albums.

After carrying unwieldy stuff down a set of stairs, I miss my subway car because a clueless younger guy (supposedly on my team/group/side) doesn’t think to hold the doors for me. Of course the large raised red button outside the doors doesn’t work either.

Playing a game with different shaped cards in a single deck, like a highly-adapted Magic the Gathering. One of the older kids on my team is Amy Naud, from before, who needs to draw a certain oval card. I offer to shuffle the cards in a big pile behind my back, since then she would be able to fairly draw the card. I’m on her team and the expectation is that I might subtly help her with this. She doesn’t expect my true motive, which is to do a bit of mischief by placing all the oval cards which *aren’t* the one she needs closer to the top.

While trying to hand over D batteries to someone, I have to lean far over while doing the handoff, holding onto smaller AA batteries in my other hand to maintain balance. This leads to awkwardness as it confuses the person I’m handing them to, as they don’t understand I’m handing over each D battery separately. They try to get the AA’s and I frustratedly fall to explain my intent, as I manage to finally swap my primary hand back to give the other D.

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Dream Journal

Cassette Cards, Big City of the Canary Islands

Middle school classroom at end of building wing, probably where Ms. Snowden’s classroom was. We’re venturing and exploring from there as a base, but my memories are now blurred. There’s a different warmth and familiarity to the room though, as if I’ve spent so long there it’s like a home. The whiteboard has kinder lighting, the chairs aren’t uncomfortable, we all face forward not for lessons but for shared enjoyment.

As part of the chores I am mucking out the cardboard box where discards are kept. I find tight stacks of index cards there, as if just deposited fresh from a box. Many of them appear made just for cassette tapes with tear-off perforations. Some even have typewriter-written labels, as if they came directly from someone’s collection.

Trying to remember where Tarzania is, a country I haven’t checked in on in awhile. Seems to be buried in Siberia east of Belarus, but maybe it has disappeared… they were having trouble staying together as a country for awhile.

Considering moving to Canary Islands in middle of Atlantic. What do you know about them? I know they have only one large city, the capitol. It doesn’t feel that small though I don’t know how I’ll feel years from now.

While practicing for Canary Islands in staying in a small brick lower floor unit. Actually my whole family, while I plan to stay in a tent just behind there — for practice, and to show I’m already independent enough to live on my own. I jump down from the end of a brick wall down to the courtyard… I realize this is just like a traditional sport/pastime of the Canaries: shepherds used to traverse the rough rocky landscape using long poles. The connection, once obvious, is auspicious.

Run across a drinking contest hosted from a street corner. Maybe still in the big city of the Canary Islands? The host informs four male volunteers that each drink is based on a recipe from their grandfather. This proves to be an obvious joke by guy #3, with the real point of the game being up quickly get these guys drunk and ask them ridiculous questions.

At an outdoor sale, the vendor reluctantly points out that I might want the sound-recording selfie stick. I remember the cards for cassette tapes I find in the garbage earlier. I awake, having been reminded that I wanted to record the sounds of the dawn chorus where I’m staying.

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Dream Journal

Integument Overalls, Wind-up Guinea Pigs

Setting: our apartment but different, and without that much stuff in it anymore. Oh, and we’re trying to give away what’s still there.

Reaching down between my the integument of my skin, like overalls. This fold in human biology is so easy to forget about — we don’t use it for anything and it just collects crumbs (so that’s something different in this dream.

Wind-up guinea pigs. Consider looking up how they connect inside, but I’m not sure I want to and forget to anyway. Worried I might overtighten, or that it just annoys them without actually giving energy like I’d expect it to.

Wife asking if we need to mix some creatine before Glenn gets here. It takes 20 min to set, and she thinks he’ll be here in 12. I think he’ll cancel like everyone else who comes over.

Learn about sale on sushi in Saudi Arabia. Getting dressed as if to go, which includes a sharp blue suit with low lapels. I could be known for my fashion; why not. I’m trying to tie the tie around the lower set of lapels while my wife explains how it’s actually too far to drive. It’s the same speech I’ve given myself earlier, but I don’t care. I want to see how I could look if anyone showed up or I had anywhere to be.

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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

My Childhood Home is Ours Again, but Changed

My family has bought back my childhood home. I’m puzzled to discover that several small things that I left behind are still in place. For the entire time they lived here, the former owners took care of my plant wall (which is actually the back window of my current home). Everything has been kept in place, and the plants are still healthy. It’s been 16 years!

Other things are sadly missing. Much of the backyard has been cleared down because of the sale. There’s no sign of the cactus garden, the row of agaves by the side-yard, anything near the sheltered window of my teenage bedroom. All over, there’s a lingering tinge of The Other, those unseen people who lived here for years. The property feels hollowed-out, barren, despite all the uncannily familiar landscaping and fences and everything else.

I run along the top edge of the back brick wall as fast as I can. The wall isn’t as narrow as it felt when I was a kid — there’s an odd mixture of delight and melancholy, as I consider how I never thought I’d be able to do this again. How I can do it as many times as I want now.

Near the furthest corner of the wall I survey the horizon of the desert valley. In the distance there’s an area I can clearly make out a strange red cloud. I indicate it to one of my companions, wondering if it’s a concern — I’m told it’s just a high amount of large particulates, suspended dust from desert winds.

As I’m going through inspecting rooms I come to the garage. I’m sure it only used to hold three cars, but the darkened empty space appears to have at least four spaces. Little bits of random ephemera can be found across seemingly every surface; I wonder what else changed. Near the water heater I find a funnel attached to a tube. It’s attached to a small device making a high-pitched noise — I guess it must be for controlling roaches. (I’ve never lived in a place that had roaches, that I know of.)

Outside, the air is clear and oppressive. Although I grew up around here, I sense that I’ll need a period of adjustment where I can get used to these environs again. Everything has changed and grown different than what it was, but I still remember how it used to be. Myself, too — my adult senses perceive the world differently than I once did. I know I have to get to work soon. At high noon, I feel like an alien on a strange planet.

An isolated snippet, perhaps from a separate dream: soft plush shelving at the base of a stairway in a little room at the bottom of the stairwell. In it are kept pet rodents, or perhaps more likely material for their keeping. All stacked within. Very reminiscent of a weird meme I saw recently, of plush shelving.

Departing much later, I locate a three-piece visor — curved plastic semi-circles joined together at the temples. It takes some adjusting but I figure out how to wear it below my chin and above the crown of my head, with a light-up box close over my eyes. This obscures them like some cyborg ninja from a video game, one I can’t place correctly.

A mysterious final sentence, left over from notes and not reviewed in time to make sense of it: “Discovering receipt inside book which proves it was the same guy.”

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Dream Journal

Vacated House, Last School Day, Old Floppy Disks

Big empty house that I can move into with a group. The house is recently vacant — so recent there’s still laundry on a bathroom island, a teacup with Earl Gray mixed with gin & tonic made on a big pullout bed. The bed has a big frame headboard like my Nana’s bedroom.

It’s the final class on the last day of school. My history teacher Mr. Conklin is in the classroom of my English teacher Mrs. Snowden at my middle school. The room is rotated so it’s facing what would be the back wall. Students are excited and animated, gradually catching on that we have to stop participating in whatever activity there is before we get to go home. A kid at the end of the front row throws around a pistol carelessly, causing it to land on the ground.

Hanging around former crush in a space that’s hers. Been long enough since she was a jerk to me that I realize she should I’ve already trusted me by now. I consider asking to take one of the floppy disks she has sitting in a pile, the ones she was saving for an art project. Despite that, it occurs to me that if it’s a floppy disk it most likely contains ancient financial documents from her parents or something equally benal yet private.

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Dream Journal

Christmas Night Dining, Christmas Morning Sunrise

Former crush is asleep in our spare room next to our bedroom. She’s partially hidden by a wall and there’s a feed on the opposite far wall showing a corrected perspective of what would be my point of view of her back, showing her as deep in slumber. I find this comforting despite that we’re in the middle of a move; I wasn’t sure if letting her stay here was a good idea, afraid she might be nervous. I’m reassured that it’s a good sign at least if she’s deep asleep.

I’m in a large enclosed industrial space, maybe a warehouse sized catering facility. There’s a small semi-independent kitchen/bar space in a corner. Has a bit of character to it, hasn’t been used for a bit but seems everyone who uses it leaves their own little token. Someone observes that maybe it can serve as a metaphor for the US Constitution. As I’m packing up this open-sided room inside a room, I’m talking with another former crush, Dara. We’re coworkers and I relate my recent experiences with the complicated new problems of my more recent former crush. She’s fairly sympathetic, and it’s a nice bonding moment.

My high school creative writing teacher Miss Fitz is drunk in the hallway of her apartment building. I help retrieve her and carry her back to her apartment. Later, My wife and I are having dinner with her father-in-law over Christmas night –something like 3:00 a.m. in a fancy restaurant. The slightly frazzled inattentive staff give us a table that hasn’t been cleaned yet. Bowls left out for previous diners cigars, special smoking implements. My father-in-law comments “good for clipping beagle” (a kind of cigar I take it). Finally dawn has arrived. Having waited for it outside near lake, it seems I just missed the sunrise on Christmas morning. It’s still beautiful and crisp and quiet so I don’t regret it too much as I navigate a path between parked cars filled with reverent vacationers, headed toward the shores of a cold fresh mountain lake.

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Dream Journal

Too Much Waiting, Not Enough Double Dream Cartoons

While the video game WarCraft 2 used flat 2-D sprites, the years-older “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans” (WarCraft 1) used a grab-bag of early 3-D tricks. I’m finally playing it and oddly, though the game is very basic, it’s more intriguing to discern the clever workarounds they came up with long ago. Pleasingly retro, as well. (Standing in front of my fridge yesterday I randomly appreciated the deep lore they were able to produce in those games, simply by creating the series for so long.)

When my Uncle John is frustrated about having to move, I’m able to share an anecdote about how, when the show wrapped, the sets for “Seinfeld” were almost immediately converted for use on the show “Friends” (I learned this yesterday; it was actually Full House)

Waiting on my motorcycle at a left turn signal. I leave, crossing to the sidewalk when I realize how long I’ve waited. Suddenly I realize it’s essentially just abandoned in a traffic lane now. Going back, I see I even left the key in the ignition. The back compartment must be repacked now (of course it does). I rejigger the back case’s mounting plate and straps, all while standing in front of a line of unusually patient cars also still waiting to turn left.

I’ve been fiddling with nose ring intermittently for most of the dream. It finally splits near the tip, coming off in my fingers just as I realize how long I’ve been fiddling. Still, it seems like it should be able to fit again, but the gauge at the break is inconveniently flat instead of round. It won’t fit in the piercing hole, and repairing something that stays in my skin seems like a non-starter.

In a jaunty Nickelodeon-style kids cartoon, one friend has fallen asleep in the shower. As his friend, and sensing an opportunity for mischief, I hide in the shower drain. Since my friend doesn’t wake up I start saying odd things in an affected strange voice, which reverberates through the drain pipe. Zooming into his dream I appear there as a semi-distorted subway announcer — ignored, as most subway train announcements usually are. I notice other characters from our cartoon have been animated in his dream as more realistic adult humans — stylized and shapely enough to evoke sexual lust, innocently but not incidentally. Rule 34 on hot double-dreamt cartoons.