Tag: parking

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Dream Journal

Hang Gliding in the Dark

Someone has stolen the truckbed, the entire back half of my pickup, from where it was parked on the street outside my apartment. I set up a rainbow umbrella while I’m attempting to deal with it but it partially blocks the sidewalk.

I’m part of a kink community event. Rich takes on a dog persona. Parked nearby is a car with two vanity plates, but in reversed order, should read something like PSU-DO 640,000.

I’m sitting on a large flat rock, outside a compound built into massive stone. Perhaps this is where the event is. I’m under this big rock overhang, kind of has a feel like the forest from a cartoon (like the Smurfs or David the Gnome).

Hang gliding in the dark from the perch of a promontory, despite that I’ve been told I shouldn’t because it’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s dangerous for me. The silhouetted treelines are gorgeous. While flying overhead avoiding it’s dark streets, I think about the problem of a town which is in this beautiful natural area, but which was allowed to be built crowded and ugly. I make a certain bird sound as I fly up toward a ridge. Learning of an old growth giant sequoia which was cut down here, then tracing it through history from the late 1800s. It seems it was never fully processed and was allowed to rot in place. The tree possibly grew back from that remnant, which I’ve never encountered before. A woman talks about the appearance of the tree from behind newsdesk cut out in the base of another tree, comparing the regrown tree to “cum, a kind of spirit”.

Records of what happened to it are very scant though.

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Dream Journal

Last Zipline with Mom

I have a saved memory with my late Mom that I didn’t know I had, that I’ve never seen. It’s comparable to a voicemail one has never reviewed. It’s a zipline experience (something I’ve never done), over an old gold mining area with hand-hewn wooden posts, and pines; looks something like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. It’s long, with the cable suspended across several pillars, big circular pulleys, looping back in places. There are tasks to complete sometimes. It plays through and at the end my mom disappears — the file auto-deletes and that was the only time I’ll get to see it.

I have a moderately intense good cathartic cry then wake up. It’s still early. Usually I have a dilemma at this point, since this seemed like a unique and important dream, yet writing it down will probably wake me up for the day. But when asking myself if I would forget it completely should I fall back to sleep, the answer was… no, no I won’t. And so I didn’t.

I’m one of a privileged few able to attend a new archeological attraction in Afghanistan. The ground is dusty and broken out of shape. There’s a special feeling crisping the air, a feeling like this could be the same as it was thousands of years ago when the artifacts were buried.

While in Arizona for unrelated reasons, I rediscover a railroad museum I visited as a kid. I use the opportunity to pull around the narrow side road and into their back parking lot, which has quite a view. It’s on a gentle clear slope overlooking a valley. The lot itself is a rounded square which I have repeated difficulty pulling into with my big class field trip van. The museum is having an outdoor thrift sale day. Alone among the liminal grassy area of the museum’s backside I peruse stacks of colorful boxes on shelves. Occasionally I find one worthy of carrying around like a talisman, maybe to buy. There’s one odd steam engine which I locate in two pieces separately, clicking into place the oversized cabin. I’m rewarded for this with much interest from museum staff and other shoppers. Yet I find myself most comfortable around the shallow pond, with the distant view. I’m there when it begins to snow.

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Dream Journal

Animation of the Corner of a Painting

I remember where our truck is parked here in San Francisco and it’s gotten a ticket by now. No need to have kept it there, but instructions led me to believe that it was necessary for that time.

I watch the corner of a painting like the Garden of Earthly Delights, a recently assembled animation which shows animals morphing. The action skips around a bit with sections that have been lost over hundreds of years.

I vacuum a fence to where there are no more dead leaves in the backyard, but it starts to feel so clean it’s not our backyard anymore. This unusually parallels actual cleaning I’ve recently done in our own backyard.

Queen Elizabeth, a law passed to make her decrees about family easier to enforce. Learning about this in the gutters of a miniature golf course.

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Dream Journal

Three Wines: Hard, Mineral, Spicy

At the end of an unpaved road in the desert, dunes on either side. Searching for a spot to park and sleep in the overland SUV. Up a short side road is a private campground, but they’re full of long term RVs after recent redevelopment. I get the impression people aren’t even staying there.

Viewed from above, I survey another hilltop location once a vantage for scenic stark beauty, recently built up with houses. A bit of the outback lost to civilization. Overpriced houses, packed tight, the parking all in the center of a cul-de-sac. They cite new houses right up against fences built the year before, knowing the residents only work in offices nearby and couldn’t care less.

We leave the end of the dusty unpaved road, passing through a rough-hewn log gateway — something you might see built by the orcs of Warcraft, yet having the semblance of an old English gallows gaol. We’re waved on; everyone here knows us. Past this point the car accelerates, as if on a track, rocketing toward a towering city. Sooner then expected we pass under vine-laden bridges and all manner of infrastructure. It’s so sudden that while I’m zoning out looking at an apartment building I’m struck by the baffling thought of just how many human lives are now within my eyeline.

An unexpected bit of FOMO while camping at an event that occurs during Burning Man. Cited on a hill with acres of underground bunker to be explored, dirty, dangerous, and wild. A total of ten levels. I’m warned that the lowermost has toxic mud that can get tracked up when trod by the unwary.

Sharing a house with longtime roommates. The suggestion of renovating the walls comes up while I’m off nearby playing on the floor, and I notice that behind each of the wall panels — and I deliberately check them one by one — is pressure treated wood. We couldn’t replace them if we wanted. I’ve been quiet for a while and wait for the opportunity to speak up, hoping I needn’t wait too long.

A man is hoping for a new income stream by advertising his well-trained dog as a performer. The dog is loyal and easily performs for the scheduled entertainment industry boffs who’ve come to scout for talent. I’m pleased to watch him do so well, but understand there’s only so many roles one dog can get; he will always still look like himself. I can already imagine the man (who reminds me of my cousin Ricky) pushing his dog into more absurd and dangerous stunts with the goal of getting more business. I can imagine it getting bad enough to border on animal abuse.

Ensign Tilly fakes her death at an airlock. She lands underneath in a metal rack.

Three wines: hard, mineral, spicy. No explanation left of this detail, a curiously distinct detail nonetheless.

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Dream Journal

NazEe, NaziE, NazEE? We’re Unsure

A small town newspaper runs the headline “Local Nazi Group Unsure Whether or Not to Capitalize ‘E’ at End of Nazi”. It’s a tellingly funny headline, but I make a mental note that I should advise my friend at the paper that I would’ve struck the ‘or not’.

I’m waiting around at an airport in America. I’ve recently been to Australia and happen to be particularly sensitive to differences in culture. I find a sign display that seems to obviously exploit and encourage American religious stupidity. Perfectly legal forever on a count of our constitution, of course. Yet I remember how Australia honors Charles Darwin on its money (this is actually England but whatever), in its culture, even the big city named after him on the north coast. I impulsively tear up the stupid American religion sign, folding its cardboard and smashing it up to fit in the trash. I don’t even care if I get in trouble, I’d argue my case that it was simply a trap for the unwary or desperate.

I’m in charge of driving a bus and the undercarriage is filled with the luggage of various acquaintances. I need to catch my flight soon but I’m being overly nice and cautious — even though taking care of their bags for them shouldn’t be my responsibility. With exactly an hour till my flight takes off, I park the bus and sigh knowing I did the best I could. Or at least that I can plausibly explain that I tried to.

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Dream Journal

Scenic Truck Stop Knick-knack Store set on Fire

An odd hybrid landscape, round trees and rolling grassy hills. Gazing into the distance where I know about a trail leading to a waterfall. I’m stationed in a bulky building laid out in a wide intended word meaning for ‘exurban’ truck stop surrounded by parking lots.

A friend and important person (someone on the level of a president) parks a long semi truck with cargo in our lot, inexpertly, and leaves it to hike the trail. They don’t have the skill to get it lined up in the marked diagonal spots, but assume it’ll be good enough on account of their status. It’s not though — legally our site counts as interstate commerce, so it’s regulated by the feds. The lines are there for evacuation safety and the semi is at risk of being towed.

My friend Reecy is opening a shop on one of the outside corners of the grey, industrial concrete structure. Her opening day story is intercut with a Strangers With Candy episode (complete with theme song). Also intercut towards the end is some oddly stylish and classy porn — porn which I can’t remember saving, but the file creation dates show as from February 14 2013.

A small fire is (intentionally or carelessly) set inside the front room of Reecy’s glass-fronted knickknack store, trash dropped from above into a short can. Among the densely-packed low shelves it goes unnoticed for a bit. Mr. Jellineck (an art teacher from Strangers With Candy) pulls the flaming garbage out then cavalierly drops it down a hole in floor, where I can watch it land in a neglected basement understory.

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Dream Journal

Called my Nana “Mom”, A Lack of Unaccomplishment

I called my nana “Mom”. It’s the second time in the dream, and we make a little joke out of it.

Leaving motorcycle across the street in my neighbors driveway temporarily. Dad’s white car is parked across the street.

Feeling like a loser, living in my parents new apartment, trying to decide my life. Only so many places I could go, maybe Palm Springs, maybe a traveling job like a trucker, build a small place in the woods. Also, my parents don’t know I vape — one more thing I guess. I wear an elaborate creased-shoulder shirt, one with a small triangle hole cut out of it. It’s an odd detail, but I know I couldn’t replicate that myself if I tried.

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Dream Journal

Belle Delphine’s Tiny Skull Machine Concert

Belle Delphine invites me to her concert, from a corner balcony at the edge of the venue. She seems really nice and I’m even considering joining her Patreon/Onlyfans for $5. Held inside walled-in park grounds that usually hosts metal shows, once I’m inside I’m not surprised the crowd is mostly guys. It’s a pretty good concert for someone not otherwise known as a singer/musician.

Random piles of cool little toy skulls can be found in stacks, many different shapes & colors. I collect as many kinds as I can. In a confined screened-off space I come across a squat bulky machine totally covered in controls and meters, like Dalek steampunk art or fused-together antique medical devices. But my boating friend Marc Roper comments that to him it “doesn’t look like they’re just kludges” (a.k.a. greeblies, that is to say not just for show). Chicken John does an explanatory bit in the middle of the show for Belle in order to explain the machine: we are to drop the skulls into the top of the device to collect a variety of corresponding prizes. I’m happy that I’m set to collect a lot.

It’s now very crowded with fans behind the machine, among some open-air shelves. Crouched in a small ball near a top shelf, I try to cheer up a sad withdrawn little Triceratops (like Sarah from The Land Before Time).

Part of the show involves an experiment where the crowd is allowed to feel Belle’s outstretched leg. This seems to go well; perhaps something of the peer pressure of not wanting to be the guy that caused the fun to stop. She’s really engaged with her audience and seems to interact on the same level. Soon she is milling among the crowd after the performance and personally thanks me, using my name. I question aloud how she could’ve known my name, and my friends parrot back, perhaps mockingly, “I dunno Orin, how did she know your name?”

Driving a junker car through dusty parts of my hometown. As I drive along, alone, I chuck my signature ping-pong balls with skulls melted into them in the backseat. I’m listening to the radio (AM 1205?) because I don’t have my usual phone transmitter. Only just make a yellow light at a large intersection against a long line of cars going the perpendicular direction — while crossing, I maintain my eyeline on the tall tamarisk trees on the opposite corner.

From memory, I park in the driveway of the address I think I’m headed — 1284 — next to a woman parked in a car there already (it’s a long driveway so there’s room for me to pull right beside her, then back up). If this is the wrong address, I figure she’ll just have a close encounter and nothing will come of it.

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Dream Journal

Save the Pancakes! A Kenny Rogers Motorcycle Adventure

Riding my motorcycle in order to return to the last place I left it. I must ride without a helmet, but it seems like every time I think about this I tend to speed up and ride more dangerously without intending to. Sometimes, as happens when I’m taking one freeway exit, even hanging on by only the handlebars with the rush of acceleration — only remembering then that I’m without a helmet.

A bit later, in the course of getting back to the motorcycle, I have to take a shortcut through a grotty block-wide mental treatment complex. I overhear a few orderlies talking about being starstruck when Kenny Rogers used to walk through the neighborhood. Soon I’m noticed by them and pretend to ask directions. I lumber away toward my purported room, taking a detour around the corner to switch outfits. I sneak out a low window dressed in impeccable Kenny Rogers attire and amble outside, right by the admiring (though foolhardy) group of orderlies.

My wife reveals the first thing my dad ever said to her, supposedly: “Save the pancakes!” No further explanations.

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Dream Journal

Coma Girl, Classroom Laptop, Brand New Train

I explore a tiered arena in an alternate world, where my crush has been in a coma since April 2019. This is a common occurrence and there’s a name for such class of person — basically never coming back, but not technically dead. Alive simply with the momentum of life, in an uncontactable reality. I wish I could remember the term used for it…

I sit in a high school classroom (Mrs. Fitz’s) engaging in a friendly discussion while on a laptop, another classmate next to me on theirs. The teacher mentions that my older hipster friend Marc Roper helped work on a music video, which we check out. I note that I feel more comfortable behind the laptop — I have something to do while in class.

On a brand new red train. The gimmick is that you can store stuff top-to-bottom in your personal traincar compartment “infinitely deep”. Train is renewably powered and spits out water from a hose that runs its entire length. A young man squats leaning out a door at the very rear waving the hose end back and forth to ensure the water diffuses, looking glum and underappreciated. We exchange a glance, hoping this job can be made obsolete once the train is fully tested.

Riding on the train with me are my elementary school friends Robby & Christy T. We make idle conversation while watching the landscape pass by. The train rounds a corner, following tracks parallel to the ocean, traveling on a street bordering a beach. Under the shade of a tree I recognize a particularly nice parking spot somewhere I’d parked my pickup truck many times — logically it should’ve hardly ever been free, but I always got lucky somehow. Robbie makes a sarcastic comment about how hard it is to get a baby, and I counter with a Big Lebowski joke, saying “You want a baby? I could get you a [random] baby today.”