Tag: playground

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Dream Journal

Forgotten “Park” MiniDiscs

Checking in my recordings archive, I rediscover an occasion my friend Matthew and I went out all night. It appears to be from March 8th 2024, before we hung out often. I recorded several MiniDiscs worth (which of course would’ve been necessary to capture the whole night). They’re all the same color of neon ’90s green. One has a chunk cut out of it that I don’t remember but could fix with cardboard if I wanted.

Mostly we were hanging out under the moonlight at a park, swinging on swings. We do a bunch of other stuff across the nighttime Coachella valley, but mostly the recordings are just labeled “Park”, as though I meant to get around to labeling them later. We had ridden the bus there, getting out of the neighborhood due to loud construction near both our places. I had remembered the occasion, but didn’t think often of the MiniDiscs saved from it.

I note that I’ve been carrying these MiniDiscs around in rows of foam slots folded into the bottom of a folio — several sequential folios in fact. I suppose I don’t need to be carrying them around with me all the time, though.

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Dream Journal

Prepping to Present an Upside-Down Australia Story

I’m preparing to give a talk presenting a story of mine from when I visited Australia. Adding a surprise twist even the organizers aren’t expecting by giving it standing on my hands. The story itself dates from 2006 — a period of heightened right-wing bullshit during the Iraq war, the Abu Graib prison scandal (I was, incidentally, in Australia at this time). The story is basically that I’m in a cafe and ask for eggs upside-down. This plays off a familiar meme with a highway warning sign, “WARNING: Australia”, which is humorously upside down… land down under, and all that. Or at least this is the story I make up to tell. The actual events involve me fussing with my website and asking the cafe runner about a location on the web design she made. Later on I’ll reflect that the whole thing reminds me of the Odd Salon matter last summer.

As it’s getting late in the afternoon today, I wander across a near empty school playground. I reflexively think that it’s too hot out, but upon reflection I realize it’s actually perfect outside. Under a tall metal play structure I begin collecting a pile of my stuff left there, but under that I uncover a pile of stolen Australian props — street signs and peeled-off tarmac crosswalks — which would clearly be useful for my upcoming performance. I don’t remember putting them there, and it does feel as though I’m being framed. Perhaps instead I’ve actually gaslit myself by simply not remembering. Very, very difficult to say…

Categories
Dream Journal

Cacophony Fair Complications

A Cacophony Society event, tents covertly set up in an elementary school playground — my elementary school, as it happens (the side parking lot where I fell on my ass rollerskating). I’m there helping John Law, Mikl Em, and others break down from the event, but there’s soo much stuff, taking soo long. All while remaining undetected.

A search ensues to find a place to safely leave 3 pet guinea pigs. Eventually I settle on a small, almost cubby-size room in a sheltered school hallway, room 17D, while I return to pack up the rest.

Sitting on a stairway watching a show as the event continues during our breakdown, a lethargically drunk Robin Williams slumps directly ahead of me. He lurches awake and insists he has to get his friend water, knocking down and shattering a glass water pitcher that happened to be in front of him. I start cleaning up the broken glass, and a very diligent 5-year-old joins me to help. Their parent then asks me to help put them to bed. The parent mentions “the sandman” needing to put sand in their eye, and I quite unstrategically ask if the kid if they know about sandman… a.k.a. boogeyman. Immediately I cringe at my mistake, but manage to still get the kid to bed.

For awhile I’m sitting watching another show (maybe put on by my friend Spy) and a guy sitting next to me informs me that my palm is covered in blood. I’ve known the whole time of course, ignoring the injury as I just don’t care, but thank him by saying “oh yeah mate” — somehow being Australian makes it both funny and apropos. But i still make to go clean it up, while dropping my blood in big wet patches on the ground.

Later, I’m positioned in front of a tall row of lockers. I’m confronted by a pair of blonde, white supremacist twins (akin to the racist teen musical duo Prussian Blue perhaps) who are trying to make me jealous. This is almost certainly on account of my rejecting them for their regressive ideology. Two guys I know they recently met brag with bluster of their heavy makeouts with the twins. With a keen eye though, I can tell that the red on the twin’s cheeks isn’t flushing, only rouge. Not makeouts, but makeup. They seem crestfallen.

I finally go to retrieve the guinea pigs from the petsitter in 17D. When I get there, though, he’s not disposed to have us open the door. It seems he just got the three guinea pigs down for a nap together in a cute little shopping bag. Smiling, I say I’m fine to come back.