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Dream Journal

Big Old American Car

Huge classic American car with rows of comfy seats. The driver’s chair is, conveniently, behind a late night TV talk show hosting desk. But front window is (inconveniently) a small rectangle through another room from that seat. There’s hardly a safe way to drive this behemoth — despite being rated as relatively easy for the time.

I’m driving the beast around, having to pass to the right of stopped car at an intersection. This is only made possible by piloting the massive car via remote cameras.

I noticed that there is a garage sale, a thrift shop on side of road. this makes me think the town is like Virginia City. Memorably, there was an outdoor thrift stop in Virginia City which got snowed on while I was there.

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Dream Journal

Nightmare Picking Out Clothes

My wife is in the cab of our semitruck parked on 24th Street in our neighborhood, trying to start it up. It’s cargo is filled with furniture and things, could be a resale company or perhaps a home. As I watch from a distance safe to give directions, it quickly spins out of control, circling into stuff nearby and jumping the sidewalk.

Visiting a docked boat restaurant when I discover it’s owned by someone I know and watch on YouTube. His first name is Eduardo. In the adjoining walled sideyard, he raises livestock fowl. I count and observe groups of birds of various ages before I realize how many there are. The number I recall is 2000! He sets up to broadcast a YouTube video of eight hours of ducks marching in a huge circle — at which point I sneak out, to avoid explaining why I myself am not going to watch ducks marching that long.

On my way off the boat I encounter Chicken John, who is located behind me while I wait for the bathroom. I take the initiative and, in such a way that we don’t have to acknowledge how we know each other, I give him a hug. This cleverly avoids any possible awkwardness.

Some time later I’m in a long group cabin. Two rows of squares are taped on the floor to mark out individual sleeping areas. There’s a vibe similar to in the movie “Midsommar”, kind of culty, and the sun barely sets. Before bed my wife asks for me to fetch the teardrop-shaped blue shoes from the window ledge. Exasperated, I eventually find what she meant, though they’re neither shaped like teardrops or blue.

I awake feeling as if I’ve barely slept. A group gathering is about to begin up the hill from cabin, visible beyond an open wall. Everyone else has already left. There are vague instructions to “dress comfortably and nice” but they pointedly don’t tell us what the event will actually entail. Quickly, I feel overwhelmed –by the number of decisions so early, and the knowledge that everyone is already waiting for me to show up. It’s a feeling that I’ve failed before I’ve begun. Why would anyone force you into a situation like this as soon as you woke up? I wake up myself then, convulsing and dry-crying against one of the pillows in bed.

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Dream Journal

Heromum on the Seashore

A high wall, like a seawall, and behind it people I went to high school, walking. Reminds me of a gigantic pool I’ve been to in many dreams over the years.

Dropped into an alcove/alley with a plaque, a weird little oddly sided polygonal space. Behind a disused door I gain access to the 2nd-story of an RV house. My key fits in the ignition of the complicated control panel. A quick jump in narrative to the aftermath of driving/flying/crashing it into a burned-out tree (which is practically charcoal).

As I awake I have a fantasy of a place called Heromum: on the seashore, a hot spring on the edge of the ocean in the Greek province of Laystatia.

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Dream Journal

Roman Bricks, Zoo Friend Desk

Walking along a seaside path of ancient bricks made in the ancient city of Manchester. The bricks were cast in prehistory, but completely removed, sifted, and replaced in Roman times. As an archaeologist this makes me sad (so much we could’ve learned) but at least the bricks are still there. Grass grows through them, the sky is dark and overcast, and salt spray is in the air, but it’s peaceful and quiet.

A Volkswagen drives up to a sphere at a turn-off of the brick road. It dumps bricks on the family car parked there. This is some family trip with my mom and dad, I delay us by having to stow my cases of cherry soda under the table in the RV.


To enter Cleveland zoo — or Columbus? — you pass through a short-walled entrance into an enclosure with loose animals that might attack you, leopards, gorillas. The next area for guests is large and open, with tacky safari décor, but everyone immediately gets in a line to wait. We eventually get to the line’s front at the zoo assistant desk. The counter person is our friend Chloe. I don’t think we’ve met her before in this dream, but we can be openly friendly and she shows us a special brochure the attendants keep under the desk. She flips through the pages speedily — some seem to have explicit diagrams comparing animal mating vs. human mating. I comment on how cool this is, but only get a “hey, keep it down” expression in reply. Chloe then pointedly resumes the default assistant-guest script.


Atop a hill or ridge I dig through a trash pile against a short cinderblock corner wall. It’s mostly nice lightly-used furniture since it’s so close to a new upscale development. The impersonal row of buildings looms over the narrow plateau; I head over. It gets very quiet as I approach the hotel. The café’s gimmick is serving a bowl of big beans with a big spoon. A charismatic shyster tries to use NLP on me while I eat, but doesn’t say give me anything I want to open up for. I end up trying to give him an empathy lesson instead.


In a different time, a different dream but a similar hill, I gaze out on a hillside toward a stepped stadium, and the dusty hill leading down to it. I put my motorcycle boots on to leave.

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Dream Journal

Waited till Bedtime to Write This One Down

I am, after a long hiatus where I was kicked out of the in-group, back on Chicken John’s bus. We’re driving at night, sleeping in shifts, on some mission more serious than the usual Chicken bus trip. It seems he’s chosen to ignore the past between us, but while I’m fussing about with various jobs on the bus I realize that while I’m relieved to be back with my friends, I hardly trust him at all. There’s a soft, eerie glow which under-lights the driver’s seat that accentuates this.

After a wake cycle in the early morning, perhaps 7 am, the dream is echoed, reflected, continued. A group of me, my wife, Rich, perhaps others are trying to cross the Bay Bridge in Rich’s RV. There’s a closure, or a slowdown, or shutdown, and I end up re-routing us on a residential road through Marin, which is located about where Treasure Island would be on a normal map. The road turns triangular along a marina where homeowners have semi-privatized the road, and eventually we run into a yellow house which has an addition built blocking the road itself. I can tantalizingly peek between the corners to where the road beyond, but on examining the map zoomed-in I see only more privatized, road-blocking, rich-people nonsense.

I’m now sneaking about, avoiding some kind of mindless hunter-police. I’m breaking into my own home, a sandstone-colored villa. I parkour over a corner wall into the backyard, similar to the narrow gap from the yellow house earlier. I bypass a few armed guards by wending around their sight-lines. Now I’m in the long backroom, a wine cellar with sunlit arched pane windows. I crawl gecko-like along the stone wall, avoiding the searching guards, and find the alcove of the hidden room. The stray thought occurs to me, “I should really change this code, it’s too easy” before I tap the top left stone and it recedes, opening the false wall into my sanctuary/safe room. It’s a chill dark movie lounge with little colored lights and popcorn and a home theater. Like a cozy fabric-lined cave. I was really happy to spend time there.

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Dream Journal

Bait Locker, Alien Repellent, Rustbucket RV-land

In a locker room, lots of stuff I need to gather. I head out once my time is over, my two friends waiting outside the heavy glass door, before realizing I still left a bunch of stuff. In the bottom half of the locker, the compartment is open so I can reach in and find other people things. There’s at least a few pieces of funny money left as a trap, I assume. The steam room hot tub adventure cost at least a couple hundred bucks.


I am a scientist like Rick Sanchez and I’m inside my house during the course of an insectoid invasion. I am one of the only people with an alien-repellent sound barrier. The insect forces go to great links with transparently fake news reporter interviews trying to discover how it works and to overcome it. I see a diagram of the architectural plan of the house with the bedroom just outside the laboratory and the clean room.


I’m in the small kitchen of my family’s old Cathedral City house. About twice as many people live with us now, and I think of them as in my family. There are two refrigerators and an upright freezer next to each other and we’re even thinking of putting another refrigerator blocking off the counter corner. I’m using a glass tray to keep a group of aquarium feeder worms alive. I have to use the same tray to store macaroni and cheese above the worms. Meanwhile, two younger kids are bothering me, throwing food and interrupting my project. I ask my dad, who is staring into space eating cereal, to tell them throwing food wasn’t okay. He responds apathetically, and in frustration I fling a spoonful of grits at him, spraying the entire kitchen corner. He still doesn’t react.


I move into a community of rustbucket houses. Old RVs and trailers are pushed together into a complex warren-like structure — everyone seems to have built a private hobby space so they can sneak off by themselves to do work, camp chairs inside old shipping containers stocked with rebar. One green RV from the ’40s has a particularly unpleasant individual in it, but a beautiful slide-off stove in the kitchen, converted to be an outdoor courtyard. It’s a very welcoming community, but also “is this how poor people really are?” is a question that comes up. At some point I try to see if I can build a large house on one of the unfilled plots of land. The small house just downhill from the main road was one of the first built.

We go off and drive on an adventure in an old VW van. We stop at a large gate down the road, waiting with an invisibility power-up activated. When a train comes behind us the gate opens and we can use a speed boost to drive overland far away from where we’ve driven before. What would take 20 minutes only takes about 3, but we still don’t reach our destination — a place called Challengeburg.

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Dream Journal

Class Nominee, Spinny RV, Mom’s Fuzzy

In a big crowd of people, perhaps a college class, I am picked as the designated something. Despite not understanding the job, I’m a very good sport about it, and proceed to give the thumbs up gesture spinning around in all directions, to great cheers.

Sitting upslope a large lake. Perhaps facing east. I watch as I shift the view… the lake rotates. I watch a three-story RV drive energetically through the crowd. It changes to a moving van and drives down the slope into the lake. I think it might be amphibious, but instead it tips forward and sinks into the water. The driver escapes and we have a moment of commiseration.

I see my mom as she was in her last days. We have a chance to say goodbye. There are specific instructions as to what blankets she wants when she passes. I look through a closet and there it is, a wide thick cream-colored fuzzy traditional top cover. It’s a rental and so can be used by others and we won’t have to hang onto it forever.

In the closet there’s also a sheepskin (that may have been mine) that is reddish-bronze colored, and mostly armor anyways. There is fur on the flanks and flaps that would cover the sheep’s eyes. It’s small, perhaps for a lamb.