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Dream Journal

Thank You, Ursula

I’m proud of my accomplishment. I’ve set up an observation post overlooking all ten delivery sites in a lake, at the only spot on a ridge above that has such a vantage. Everything is set up for when those happen and I can walk away.

I’m contacted at my unlisted number by a mysterious girl. I figure out that she hacked me, but I put off responding until I can hack info on her, to respond in kind. This is a delicate thing, and she could become a love interest.

In a brick alcove on the side of a street I encounter a “Tweet 3D” training kiosk, with little floating panels on a laminar sheet. I already know this futile attempt at a new feature will fizzle out soon.

Going to attempt retrieval of stuff stored in a USB combination locker, from back before the Ukraine war started. We had all been worried things were going to escalate much worse. I’m then waylaid by a (very) former friend Kate W. who traps me with accusations. But it’s relatively easy to parry these accusations and discern that she’s stalling, waiting for my long-ago roommate Emily W. (no relation) to get here, as they are in fact now roommates. While I’m arguing I notice their many pet fish, kept in Tupperware containers on the shelf below a big CRT TV. Normally I’d love to ask about these fish.

Instead I see Ursula K. Le Guin sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. I pointedly change my attention to her, and take the opportunity to give personal thanks for her works. I mention “Always Coming Home” especially, and say that it counts as one of my favorites — even though I’m not through with it. Ursula congenially answers that that’s fine and appropriate even, as she never felt like she was done with it either.

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Dream Journal

Spider-Man and the Body Snatchers

In a theatre watching a new Spider-Man movie. My seat is round and spins, a beige leather “fashion” chair like my Nana might’ve had in the 1980s. It’s difficult to get the angle where I can look comfortably at the screen and also get my feet up. Not to mention I won’t block anyone’s view.

There’s an important character scene in the movie which occurs at the lip of a waterfall at night; the setting reminds me of one that could be in Jurassic Park game. Two group members (who resemble my friends Ani N. and Safire) go off for a minute to exchange info. Only Ani comes back. I’m the only one — watching the movie, but also now in the movie as teenage Spider-Man — who immediately realizes that it wasn’t Safire, but a body snatcher. And that isn’t Ani either. I grab a trusted friend and attempt to inform them of the danger, pulling them aside into a pitch black garage (note: only in rewriting do I notice the similarity to the previous situation).

But before that, in the ’70s paneled wood living room of our shared house, I encounter a housemate bottle-feeding her baby. She shares an appearance with my childhood friend Christy T. Someone (perhaps her, perhaps not her) has left on a very unpleasant overhead fluorescent light. I feel this light should never be on, and say so to the mother. I don’t think I came across as nice.

An old tape recorder with a Bluetooth app. When I install it, my phone spits an error and starts installing every app I ever downloaded. All the ones I’ve deleted, too. There are whole series of them, as I can spot several donut icons among the many screens-worth of unwanted apps. In addition, a bunch of books I didn’t know I still owned are taking up entire pages. The phone has now become a square book. Many of the pages will now need to be ripped out or blanked out. It’s a strange difference to actually see how much physical space these wasted apps can take up… not that it makes it any easier to get rid of them

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Dream Journal

Discover a Secret About Former Roommate

Reading in a magazine by the side of my bed when I accidentally stumble on a bit in an article about someone I know. My old roommate, long after she had moved out, met someone for sex every Tuesday. Incidentally their fathers met and became professional friends. It was then revealed: the two of them were secret siblings.

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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

A Mess of a House, Yet Still Fancy

Palatial house owned by my family but poorly maintained. Notable is that the layout on the first and second level are the same, both with very tall ceilings. Refrigerators happen to be in the same locations above and below. I notice this after I must deal with the one on the lower level being dark. My dad has put some bulk food on the edge of spoiling in there, and there are few shelves to work with. This isn’t much different from the state of the rest of the house, though I’m not bothered so much as coming to recognize and accept it.

In an alcove of an all-white, blank-walled mall space (still perhaps within the large poorly-kept house), while animatedly chatting on a couch with my partner, we invite a friendly stranger to talk with us. They accept and futz around with the jumble of white upholstery on the couch. All of us simultaneously realize we’ve neglected to tell them about a roommate asleep underneath us, laying still on his side in the blanket pile. Somehow, the prospect of having to explain it seems more inconvenient than the odd situation itself. Across from us is a sunglasses store, seemingly highlighting the uncoolness of the situation.

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Dream Journal

Art Burned into the Wall

In a hallway of a home I share, someone has left a piece of art pinned to the wall with a burning stick of incense. Left unattended, the art’s image has been burned into the wall paint. It has the feel of a traditional East Asian woodcut, the impression of elegant architecture clinging to a foggy mountainside. I’m annoyed that I seem to be the only one responsible enough to avoid this kind of damage, annoyed that I’ll have to clean it up to get our security deposit back. Yet it’s a unique print, a unique story, and the image can remain as something contemplative until we do move out. Who knows when that might be…


I awake in the night and realize I’ve just had some dream with Dara. Though not remembered, I’m pleased to realize it — their mere presence being a good sign.

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Dream Journal

Hovering Presence and Menacing Cow

Skin writing is used as apunishment on someone suspected of human trafficking, marking them for later.

A dog-sized cow is acting menacingly at the property line of my childhood home, just at the edge of the neighbor’s lawn. I walk all the way down the street trying to read its dog tag, with no real plan how to make it go away.

Discover I’ve moved in together in the same ground floor apartment as some people I know in real life, but mainly from Twitter — KC Crowell, Feral, all Oakland peeps. I myself am an observer, but unusually, one with an identity — a hovering presence dwelling mostly in the rafters, where a glowing horizontal level divides my space from the everyday living space. The easily discerned border of the ceiling has curved buttresses, marking its construction in the early 1900s. On one section of old wood paneling, I spot a poster advertising old-timey glassware, lab glass perhaps. My roommates begin reinstalling some authentic hand-blown stained glass fixtures, decorative colored filigrees that have been in storage for almost a century. The landlord likes the residents so much he was convinced to let them haul it out from storage. The square ends of the curvy abstract forms fit perfectly flush against the buttresses.

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Dream Journal

Walrus Girlfriend, Walrus Skull

Departing from a short flight between San Francisco and Oakland. Other passengers are paranoid about a bad weather landing, but I’m not worried as its just a short hop.

Then, a lengthy wait for my baggage at baggage claim. I’m able to go back directly to my apartment, living with roommates where I have a single room crowded with many years of collected cool stuff; ephemera, curiosities, art. The walkway of my room has taxidermy mounted on the walls around the door — so much you have to duck around it. I keep a key hanging from a nail on the back of my door, but I realize that in all the years living here none of my roommates have even asked for it.

I see my walrus girlfriend, too. During a conversation with her I go down the hall, admiring some items in a glass-fronted curio cabinet, noticing the small tusk-less walrus skull I own locked inside. I pause and consider her reaction to learning about it, but honestly don’t have a clue.

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Dream Journal

The Idle Comforts of Being Well-off, I Suppose

I’m suddenly rich, no longer apprehensive about money. But still mourning something… lost youth, maybe? I buy a place with a wide, flat aquarium in one room, whose low sides allow you to step in and see the rare, strange sea pens clustered around the central filter. I chat about the two aquarium walls I will build in the next room, to fill out the space now that I have nothing better to do.

A bit later I’m knitting in the open courtyard of an aerospace museum. A vehicle like a cross between a Huey helicopter and an A10 Warthog lands briefly right beside me, then lifts-off nose up and parks at nearby cylindrical tower reminiscent of the SF Museum of Modern Art. For the record, I don’t knit.

In my new leisure-enabled life I get to make a special visit to the ADA Baths, an artificial hot springs built for the grand public good of accommodating those who wouldn’t be accommodated anywhere else. It feels like a spacious concrete temple somewhere in San Francisco’s Western addition. Yet also, I experience memories of it’s founding as a campaign which convinced the country of Gabon to construct it. The once bustling entrance there is now little more that a small stone pathway off from the main road, disused but for occasional field trips.


Attending a disability seminar at a grandiose white-surfaced union hall, a wall-sized window with a view downslope to an elegant smooth grassy hill. Feels like a palace. I miss most of the honored speakers talk — perhaps I ought to feel bad — but I actually am trying to accomplish something while I’m going in and out during the talk. I’m also furtively vaping during most of this, and I have the pleasant discovery that I’m not the only one when I walk through an unseen stranger’s vape cloud. First I’ve dreamt of vaping, that I recall.


We’ve moved out of the Fartpartment but still keep the empty space. We’re in the midst of moving into a new ground-level commercial-like home just three blocks away — I can’t tell which direction though, and oddly it was at some point also Australia.

In the alcove there several feet off the ground, up in my hammock, I’m both lounging and tele-transporting our moving goods, dropping care packages onto the tile floor. A new roommate shows up, thick eyebrows and appearance much like Caitlin M.’s partner, and adjusts the curtain in front of the hammock. Another roommate is Victoria from Hedonisia, excited to report there’s a Dynamo donuts nearby. Someone else, perhaps just stopping by to wish us well, inquires if I know that the location (in Australia, mind you) was once quite near the terminus of the old steamer cruise ship route between Buenos Aires and (1930s Rodger Rabbit Toontown) Los Angeles… as seen on Deep Space 9? Of course this makes only vague sense but I’d an interesting historical tidbit, and I thank them.

From the ground-floor window I then witness an odd scene sex on the sidewalk across, an enthusiastic young woman with a strapon penetrating a guy just below the base of his dick. Wow. Later on, I’m returning back toward the new place and notice them casually walking different directions as if to throw off suspicion that they even know one another.

I’m pleased to find out the neighborhood has its own dedicated web service to meet people. I spend lots of time on it in order to make new friends but sadly, I soon enough realize the only people still hanging around are individuals who, by some personal flaw, weren’t able to make friends with anyone else.

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Dream Journal

Osmosis versus… what was the other one’s name?

I find my former roommate Emily’s dating profile. Her first pic is from our apartment hall, which tells me that she’s still nostalgic for our time together but also doesn’t share what she looks like now.


In a store’s lost and found, I discover about 30 mini discs in a CD case which I, realizing their rarity, covertly steal in my hoodie. As it happens the attendant saw me and wryly confronts me, but after I tell him what they are and what I’m going to do with them — transfer them to archival digital — he gives a mysterious little nod of passing. Despite what I’d usually do I go right to work on them but there’s something amiss and none of them read correctly.


Sitting in a middle row of a classroom, Robby in the row ahead of me, Michael (Mickey before he was Mickey) in the row behind. Unusual as it’s the second night in a row I’ve dreamt of both of them.


I creep quietly toward the door of Aislinn’s North Beach apartment where there’s a bright glowing fishtank in window, but the rest of her lights are off so I leave without knocking.