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Dream Journal

Two Events at the Whybrary, Directions to Lizard Milk Lab

Remembering the occasion when I signed up for a fundraiser of pesto dinner during the pandemic (pesto spaghetti is still one of my favorite meals and has been since I discovered it at she 4). It was served at the Whybrary — perhaps even my first time there. A folding wall separated it into an audience area and backstage.

What reminded me is that I’m at a Dr. Hal Show at the same space, current era. I’m getting to hang out on couches with my friend Laurie O. who happened to also come to the show also; we were friends together in 8th grade. The couches face each other and we each spread out lengthwise, heads to feet. I lean my arm over onto her couch when it gets tippy in order to balance it. The host, Chicken John, notices me do this and immediately ends the show. It’s as if he can tolerate no more of me enjoying my life and being helpful in his presence. Or existing perhaps.

Looking through the front window of a house like Mickey’s to observe a person using a computer with their back to the window. The computer and all the accessories are color themed purple. Sounds like the 90s which is when I meet Mickey. I ring the doorbell there and soon realize (before they arrive at the door) that I have the wrong address here — 3068, when the cream carton i found it on shows 4068. I quickly have to explain my mistake, keeping up a momentary charade of letting them explain the directions to 4068 when I do already know.

When I get to address it’s inside a development organized like a ring. Businesses and labs face the inside. In the center of what looks like a corral, its wooden posts wiggling in the ground. The address is some sort of lab, making a kind of experimental milk. Curved terrariums line the front. Maybe it’s lizard milk? If there was more, I don’t remember.

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Dream Journal

Favorite Tchotchke Store

Checking in on my favorite Japanese tchotchke store which has been shut for the duration of the pandemic. It seems like it’s appeared in previous dreams as a place where I stored my clothes sometimes. Among the tall wooden columns of its business complex, I feel like I’m sneaking around. The windows are dusty and the door is locked, but I’m relieved to see there’s still stuff inside. It’s obvious they’ve moved a lot of merchandise out, perhaps long ago when the pandemic started. I’m worried they still might go out of business as it’s been so long they were closed.

In my home I’m carrying a “Omicron and Delta” handheld COVID temperature sensor device. It’s a smooth bubble-form electronic, a little fancier than I’d typically buy. Reflecting how it can’t be that old as the branding of it for detecting Omicron could’ve only happened recently.

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Dream Journal

Criss-Cross Causeway, 777-11-21

I encounter my crush topless in my backyard. She has no nipples though, a smooth flat chest. From context it’s completely unclear if this is a normal state of affairs. It does tend toward disconcerting for us though. Over the course of our conversation they manage to grow, though not returning quite to normal — more like odd unpainful welts in their place. Meanwhile, a party three backyards over continues to rage on (a strange detail is this exact thing was happening as I went to sleep).


After travelling along a causeway, in a car with my male family members, we pull into a gas station. My turn to drive and I immediately pull around and run over the curb at the corner of the pump. Nearby there is a famous but struggling restaurant, Jalisco Taco. They’re known for the great human contact of the restaurant setting. Not so great during the pandemic, obviously.

Young Patrick leaves the little coupe, and inside we examine a map marking out where we’ve been today. There and back again across the causeway, also showing what sections I’ve driven. A feeling of being young and uncertain about what I was supposed to accomplish.

I receive a call from a relative on my dad’s side. The caller ID has changed from a very expected 18626 to the mysteriously intentional-looking 777-11-21. (I feel like I never used to dream of specific numbers, but this was very distinct. I have no impression of its importance, but it was certainly a number tied to an emotional reaction.)

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Dream Journal

An Instrument Case Full of Instruments

I carry around a huge case shaped like an upright base, but it’s filled with all manner of instruments in different compartments. For whatever reason right now, the only one I want to play is banjo.

I merge onto a pandemic-stricken 24th Street, the commercial corridor near my home here in the Mission District. Empty businesses line the far side. Posters advertising kratom have taken place of the storefronts.

Gazing at the face of an old acquaintance, Katie Petro, and remembering we dated once. Her identity was later lost and rediscovered.

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Dream Journal

Boban Vervinsky

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)

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Dream Journal

Suit of Armor of Precious Nacre

Heavily secretive exclusive museum of pandemics, owned by the Catholic Church (or somebody associated with it). I’m one of a pair of journalists granted brief precious access. It’s a little storefront-like space inside a larger building, perhaps a European-style pedestrian mall. The walls are covered with tiny writing (data) paired with genuine artifacts — floor to ceiling. In the forefront of our minds is trying to remember as much as possible in our short time inside. To me, the most beautiful object is articulated shell nacre armor, a full cowl top.

After: in the last century rich people built trendy castle houses — regarded for their ostentatious aesthetics, but lacking any credentials as a fortification. The one I spot, displayed off to the left side on a table like a school diorama, was called “the height of progress in castle tower building.” I notice angular zigzagging stairways between the indefensible stone towers. Curiously, the stairs leading up to them have occasional big vertical rises. Up to the top of the hill, secluded from public scrutiny, I visit the village of lower-class workers who mind the castle grounds. Descended from the first minders, they strike me as amiable and humble people, who I could imagine happily spending a great deal of time with.

On a 1940s-ish city street I pop into a heavily-frequented doorway atrium. I’ve been waiting to see when it’ll open, checking often. It’s been graffitied and painted over so many dozens of times… a place with an everyman vibe. But a place where I never realized (until it’s pointed out to me) I shouldn’t store my electronics, two of which have been incautiously stored under flimsy cardboard for some time. Despite this, they’re still there and I understand the likelihood of people finding it, thinking of stealing it, but giving me the grace of my ignorance — almost as an act of charity. I just never put together how rough and tumble this fondly-regarded neighborhood actually is.

In a small upstairs apartment where I’m staying, while my friend group is gone, I discover a small furry animal (perhaps a baby rat). I present it to them when they return, including, for some humorous reason, a small rock for comparison. I put the tiny rat into a hamster cage next to the big rat cages, which are stacked precariously five terrariums tall. At the small vibration of shutting the small “hamster cage” door, those glass terraria fall down and I immediately recognized their center of balance is far higher than their middle. I resolved to fix it next time, cursing.

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Dream Journal

From Forest, to Warehouse, to Casino

(Dreamt in the cabin in Weed, California, before I was woken up from tooth pain)

A line of houses at the edge of a sloping mountain forest, separated by a field, or golf course, recently redeveloped with simple white windmills. In the course of trying to navigate past, I come to a stony circular outdoor temple which is shaped from the trees themselves. There I encounter a bro dude (probably a golfer) who directs me further into the city.

I re-enter a dusty large warehouse space, somewhere I’ve stayed not long ago. Gazing on aged timbers, gauzy light, and empty wooden alcoves, I consider how this would be a bad place to get sick. Outside I come across a kid, a nerdy boy who I recognize as having some sort of eye disability. No one has taken the time to get him to a safer place, this one obviously being abandoned. I gather a group of such disabled children — thick cute eyeglasses on their tiny young heads — and make for the most difficult passage. A group of at least two other caring adults joins me; we cross a tight gap with a folding trap bridge, inside a small tricky mechanical gate. I remember my friend Sarah Bliss there using a bicycle to hold down a rotating semicircular apparatus. We safely get the kids across, thanking each other for a job well done. One girl has her name listed as “[personal attribute] one”, which when asked about she smiles and dismisses congenially.

(Right now, writing this, I feel as though she’s dismissing and accepting my attempts to remember her name, in fact.)

I’m then within what must be a casino complex, a large enclosed circular courtyard somewhere like Nevada or Florida. This is quite different from the peaceful sparsely-populated forest. Trying to get around there, I bump into a bar in the middle of the road/path, the name is a pun on Peyton Place, somehow incorporating “payday” and also being released from “parole”. I’m baffled there are so many people out during the Corona pandemic. I duck into an employee area, a curved restaurant kitchen similar to a rail car. I tactfully ask someone working intently inside how we normally get out, as if I were a recent hire. I managed to exit out that back door, only to soon step onto a multi-car people-mover, some airport tram thing that ferries guests around this circular temple of gambling. I get caught with a ton of Florida types, none of whom seem to know about wearing a mask, and I burst out after only one stop. I try to get far away from anyone else, and end up gravitating to the middle with rows of benches around me. This place is insane. Far more likely to kill me than the dusty warehouse. Where did I bring these kids?