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Dream Journal

Freeing Pets of Many Sizes

A friendly stubby pet caterpillar, the last of my edible caterpillars. I release him in the rosebushes on the side of the Cathedral City house, near my parent’s bedroom, hoping that he reproduces someday. Later I find him in a planter in the very moist ground (so moist it’s nearly half-full with water). Nearby the hole, in the hedgerow, I find a pet parrot and hamsters that were also released some time ago.

I check on the status of a mouse cage, with very tiny mice — about the size of a pill capsule. The original two have indeed started breeding, with minuscule little mice crawlers lodged in the corners of their cotton-stuffed plexiglas half-shoebox cage.

A beluga whale in a backyard pool? Something like a Christmas wish I made as a child, which my parents had to convince me wasn’t a good idea.

Tracking a feral neighborhood horse outside the Cathedral City house. Driving with my dad in a Mercedes, his Mercedes, we finally find it upon reaching the end of our court, across from a wide lake on the other side of the main road. I say “Great! You know what you can do now? Leave it alone.” Dad leaves car idling at end of the street, takes off for work via different method. Patrick drives car back slowly along the narrow, overgrown court. The neighbor’s tree branches hang low enough that they block their house lights from reaching across the street. A neighbor woman has poor personal boundaries and tries to demonstrate where the light would be going, by entering into the house on the other side of the street.

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Dream Journal

The New Apartment

On a public street near a riverbank somewhere downtown, things appear neglected and abandoned. Around the corner there’s a grand old white-columned courthouse that has seen better days. Old cars rust outside industrial-sized garages — no people can be seen. I’m there to move into the neighborhood. Eventually, with time, the residents show themselves. It’s a bit of an initiation they do.

In the living space I settle into there’s a rat cage, not much bigger than a 10-gallon terrarium, but which is decorated beautifully with plant clippings and dry moss. Around the corner in this strangely welcoming squat group-style apartment is a leopard in small cage. It’s at first unfriendly, even hostile. Then one day it asks to be handled and is so friendly I almost let it escape by rolling through a crunchy plastic carry-out box.

Working on a student project of some kind, I take figurines of the evil Mongol leader from Mulan and add a jet-pack. Mostly, this doesn’t result in its limbs being melted off — mostly. Heph, my partner, does a much more diligent job and regales us with a moving story (which I watch through a gap underneath the rat cage). Blake is also living here, and I recall it being her birthday. The dream ends outside in a oddly-shaped triangular parcel, cars parked tight, with stalagmites of rust rising out of the ground.

Categories
Dream Journal

5 Scenes from Varied Dreams

Chicken is attending a concert by a Japanese cellist with his wife and daughter. We have a friendly stilted conversation afterwards. He says he could’ve done without the cellist’s political discursions, but found the concert enjoyable.


A lifted pickup truck with a circular rollbar parking on the street. It brakes hard while backing up and flips over — and odd, interesting old feature.


Fixing Autumn’s air conditioning. There’s a purpose-built enclosed orange space just left of the stairs where all the air is pushed through.


Donald Trump is a sad, half-cocked big city real estate investor. He’s leaning against his family, of which I’m one. Simply being there is the most sympathy I can think to have.


Our pet rats have been set free for a long time, and we’re outside calling them. They come quickly, seemingly from nowhere. It’s a teary, warm-hearted reunion. I know they won’t be able to breed (neutered) but they’re living out their lives in freedom, among their rat people.