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Dream Journal

Inside the Rock, Aboard Airship, On the Holodeck

In a volcanic hot springs zone, there is a hollowed-out rock that is special access handled by the Finnish Prime Minister. I’m inside on what I realize is a very exclusive visit. It’s very orderly inside, typical high-class Scandinavian clean-line interior with many alcoves for different purposes. It’s delightfully homey, warm. Wish I could come and stay here sometime.

A different setting, though I didn’t leave. I’m flying on a Victorian-era airship, same elegant styling as the Titanic (but nothing to do with sinking). There are many spindly metal catwalks providing grand outdoor views, though I concentrate on getting where I want to go without dallying in the more tourist parts of the craft. There was a special metal sauna-type place that was important — that I had to get back to, or go to an event in, or work at perhaps. But it recurred. Maybe it was the transposed location of the Finnish rock cavity from before.

On the ship, at some point my friend and I are parting. I consciously give him a very long hug, trying to imbue it with meaning by summoning my feelings and putting them in to the hug. While the hug lasts a long time it’s weird difficult to bring forth the imagery of how I feel, making the duration seem somehow awkward — almost a feeling of “am I doing it? how about now? now?” Upon reflection, I’d guess this eyes-closed dream was a lull in my sleep cycle.

Attending a solo musical performance in an oddly-shaped locker room. Still on the airship, though you wouldn’t really know it except for the persistent sensation of eye-level clouds stretching in the distance, whenever you look beyond the edge of a walkway. Someone I knew a long time ago as a kid is here, Dayle Zimmer. I don’t know why I might be remembering her.

Testing out a Mohawk in the mirror using just my already fully-grown hair (patting it down into a shape). Looks surprisingly good! The amount leftover on the sides makes it tempting to do more, but then it wouldn’t be a Mohawk. When my hair comes loose, I’m already teetering on the edge of wild madman hair.


Pulling out into a different context, breaking the narrative, I watch as it’s revealed that Captain Kirk is fixing a holodeck panel. It’s quite dissembled and he’s been at it awhile, you can tell. The holodeck is memorably red, white, and chroma-key green, and the reflections off many surfaces give it a confusing surreal perception.

Can’t help myself breaking out giggling because someone said this holodeck would be too big in this new movie… and it totally is.

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Dream Journal

Borrowed Lambo, Twin Mistake, Prime Distraction

My wife is on the phone. While I happen to be listening in, I hear a family member on the other side say very specifically “hey, your dad has lost his life”. I have an instantaneous reaction of FUCK, followed by (embarrassingly) a feeling that at least now things are closed. Maybe we can inherit something now, even. I bolt awake at 3:21 am.


I park a borrowed Lamborghini on the street outside a hotel on the waterfront of the bay. Perhaps I used to work there. It’s fancy and expensive, but the neighborhood next to it isn’t. I spend a good long time exploring inside during the uncrowded early morning golden hour — traversing interior suspended walkways, decorating for Christmas, and discovering a second-floor gender-neutral bathroom labeled “Theirs”. One curiosity I come across in this mall-like atrium-like space is a very amusing bird sculpture/toy, finding one cleverly hidden mechanism after another to press with my fingers.

In the back row of a wedding, in an upstairs conference room overlooking the bay, I run into my friend Meredith. I show her the nifty bird sculpture (now transformed into an owl) and offer it to her. I also mention that someone trusted me with the Lamborghini out front. But when I go outside again it’s not there. I orient with the nearby landmarks and the saved location on my phone, inspect around and find a note in hard-to-read scrawl — something about average monthly insurance for it being $1200, about “only 12 inches of cocaine” — the obvious implication being that the car will be returned if I pay them what they erroneously believe I actually pay.


Walking up an indeterminate slope, behind my college girlfriend Jenna & my actual wife, others, but for a moment I can’t remember who it was I married. Finally I do remember, and am thankful. I lay down next to my sleeping wife (now more like a long-ago redhead classmate of mine Lauren Wycoff, or the cartoon redhead hottie Jessica Rabbit) and as fond surprise snuggle behind her in bed, and we have sex. The dream actually proceeds through the whole experience: I lube up, it’s quiet and intimate, I finish inside. But for some reason my wife has never told me before that she has a twin! This is very embarrassing (for all of us) yet no one seems upset. Just a never-talk-about-it thing I suppose, although the twin seems… less upset than you’d expect. Perhaps a happy mistake.


A former British prime minister (like Theresa May), exchanging questions with a circle of Americans about things we’ve done. Tangential to her question — something she almost certainly didn’t bargain for — I tell a bizarre rambling story both fascinating and true (within the dream) of a town I visited in Oregon. Not finding our way in despite detailed instructions; driving past a graveyard to get in; discovering the winding dirt roadway between two other roads along a grassy and forested flat area. Picturesque clouds, children’s book sun, mountains in the distance; a rustic cabin near a pixie-haunted broadleaf tree; the wilderness beyond like a dewy lawn.

The next day I text the Prime Minister, having remembered the name of the place: Rasp, Oregon. While it does bear some resemblance to the town of Sisters, Oregon (which I visited this summer), I’m almost sure this was a place I’ve been before. It all may have come from another dream another night, one unwritten, remembered only in other dreams.

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Dream Journal

An Avantgarde Apartment

The new prime minister of the United Kingdom travels to the place where St Patrick chose to be sacrificed. He has his long hair ritualistically cut off within a sloping rock ring named something like “Kilmarnock”.

Nearby, I’m living in a curiously-designed apartment complex recently converted from a well-loved local Mexican restaurant. The playful chili pepper mascot signs and statues still can be found around the building, including the end of my living room/yard. I erect a splendidly clear goldfish tank near to my neighbors window. The aquarium overflows into a plexiglass water channel that flows between apartments. I catch the neighbors cat fishing out the goldfish, from their upstairs window which overlooks my space. They’re very friendly with introductions, so it’s hard to be mad — plus I put the goldfish, like, right there.

There are body segments of preserved large animals scattered around the apartment complex, in the lobby, the halls, an effective avantgarde decoration and anatomical curiosity. I’d rather tired today and nearly step on a few. Bizarrely homely for such an unusual and futuristic contemporary space.

I follow my friend Lauren through a digital portal in a different area of my apartment, and we watch together a strange reenactment of my past. My other friend, Mickey, is checking out the powdered weed bin I’ve saved for years (its appearance is similar to kratom). Unfortunately, I don’t warn him early enough that it can’t be eaten straight — he starts coughing, the powder having the same effect as the cinnamon challenge.

Concluding, and distinct from the rest of the dream, is a final shootout in a darkened room. Most of us in that rooms die, including members of Run The Jewels.

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Dream Journal

Grandma Australian PM tours Medieval Monument Valley

Slept at a couple friends’ home in Oxnard, CA

In a familiar communal velvet plush gathering space, chairs and windows in an oval, I talk with Patrick who is a week out from graduating high school, very bright and proud. The building is long, with conveyor belts in the workshop/basement open to the air, reminiscent of the Acme Bread Co. Unfortunately an old sorceress grandma has recently put herself in charge. I’ve no recollection of why she was evil, but my co-conspirators and I concoct a plan to overthrow and kill her. I shapeshift and sneak over the back fence. My disguise seems to fail on the way down, and I land naked in a puddle. Luckily the enchantment only gives me the illusion of failure, and to others I appear as a football (the most similar object that would make sense coming over a fence and landing in a puddle). I’m thrown by a conspirator to nearby the witch/sorceress/grandma and successfully trap her face in a plastic bag.


My wife’s late grandfather, Pa, sitting peacefully on a chair in the middle of his old living room. Grams sits on his lap, both gazing at something I can’t see. They’re having a fond conversation, and although I watch their lips move, I hear nothing.


Malaysian news crew leaves a 200 ft. folding ladder in our student news studio. Of course, this is a great temptation for my lads and I. Later, on my way somewhere else, I climb a similar fire escape ladder. A bubbly, distressed blonde runs up and hugs me, surprisingly warm, then effusively apologizes for mistaking me for her close friend who regularly climbs that fire escape.

On the city’s jagged, street-level highway there’s a single minivan going the wrong way, but the cars manage to drive around it as though it were an extremely temporary one-way lane. Later the same thing happens while I’m riding a scooter on a one-way street, an entire line of cars that were diverted, with no notice from our direction.


Australian PM has a special rule, 612, where she can reject things based on being a grandmother. A door displaying the news is marked 612. Sitting around a table, Lynae gets up and a made-up but world-weary Asian girl sits in her chair. Despite the possible tension from bringing up politics, I solicit opinions by sharing the analogy of an internet response code, ‘4xx – machine on fire’. The Aussies seem properly amused. A newsstand reports “PM unhurt by nip dip”, and I learn this refers to the particulars of temporarily banning high-priced smart devices. Australia, after all, is the country exporting the raw materials to make them. Unbeknownst, the PM was sitting at the next table over, appreciates my gab, and takes me on a local tour.

The semi-arid town seems generic — there’s a central roundabout, off to the left is the industry, upslope to the right are short flat houses with fenced-in yards. In the distance is a chunky green promontory, much like Monument Valley USA. As we drive closer I see stunning medieval-imitation towers, ramparts, and fortifications. I can’t even fathom such artistic means, or their intent. This is what the area is famous for. I’m so awed by the beauty I begin to doubt its realness, even telling the PM it looks like a Myst game. This only exacerbates it’s majestic quality. Against the golden dusk light, the elegant stone buttresses on the far side of the hill spout waterfalls, the leafless trees clutching spherical mud-daub treehouses. Yet nothing degrades into unreality, it simply remains repentantly beautiful.