Tag: scooter

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Dream Journal

Stolen Cyberpunk Timelines of Plarvolia

I come across Plarvolia who is sitting in a clear box for her art project. I can see her getting mildly harassed by children tapping on the glass among other things. Though I feel moved to intervene, I understand that I shouldn’t be the one to try. After her shift inside is up, I inspect café baked goods where she had been stationed. She was promoting/selling a new line of rainbow spectrum lights from General Electric — one of which, interestingly, is a strong bright black. Also notable is that I now know she actually does make money from her art (at least sometimes).

There is a unique cyberpunk setting that feels somehow European, old world. Inside a building are haphazard beds in a place seemingly used as a squat. I break through multiple walls of the interior in what feels like a sequence puzzle. Beyond, a darkened (but daytime) town square is buzzing with various activities.

I steal an invisible scooter-skateboard from a man riding it in the square. It’s broken in the process and gluing it back together proves problematic. Not only is this invisible kind a special color, the connections are finicky. It’s a specific brand that others feel is reputable called “Eaver” or “Matric” or something. I later go with someone who encourages me to try to buy one. The store has the feel of a cyber-renovated luxury 19th-century “Robber Baron” era place — dark wood columns and sophisticated electronic monitoring. I find a new board for $35 up on a shelf inside a bag, but decide it’s too expensive and I don’t want to try stealing it.

At the checkout area for this town square zone, I encounter my Homepie friends Juicy and Coco lounging having drinks. They’ve already paid for theirs, and when I look to pay they’ve already paid for mine too — though confusingly I don’t see them on the check. Perhaps they were omitted, which is all the same. Juicy notices he has to have a charge corrected before he goes, as the pipe he picked out was supposed to be on sale. He went to that same Robber Baron store as I did earlier.

There is a complex sorting-out of the timeline of interactions with Plarvolia. Time travel seems at play, nonlinearity, acausality. I put on a colorful fur-trimmed vest before I talk to her. I’m preparing for her timeline which is about to finish, and finally her timeline happens to line up with my own.

I revisit these narratives of Plarvolia for two hours. Retelling the story out of order; I can’t play out the events. I perceive parts where I saw perfectly from her perspective. But when did we talk? Wasn’t there more scenes with her? At some point I was explicitly instructed (or conclude?) that I need to write this one down. But now it hardly seems profound or important. But this dream feels different than other Plarvolia ones… I admit I even have a hard time thinking of her as Plarvolia, but instead think of her as her real self, as something outside her relation to me and what happened. I think of her with her real name and her real life.

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Dream Journal

Band Hotel Storage, Free Nowheresville Home, Movietime Interruption

I’m tracing the early crimes of Phil Spector, before the kidnappings. I’m with one of his bands at a hotel and he’s abandoned them. The realization of this is slow. Eventually I’m begging the hotel staff to help us find a place to store a piano. A staff member disappears through a reinforced metal service door, leaving me anxious as I wait next to it. Another staff member warns me to step back, and I assure him I didn’t plan to follow. Hours pass, and I sit outside at a temporary plastic table, surrounded by fancy guests, with my cheap water bottles. I’m far less dressed up, just waiting for an update on storing the piano.

In a vast industrial area, there’s a secluded courtyard with two apartment blocks, feeling like a tight-knit community, possibly in Anaheim or even Antarctica. I live in a home there for free. The layout eerily mirrors my childhood home, making me uneasy. I sleep in the room that would have been my parents’, and I try to describe to my wife how it feels to be surrounded by these familiar yet disorienting surroundings. Outside, the narrow backyard has pathways and large trees, and I spend time planning how to adjust their positions to modify the shade, having nothing else to do.

I’m watching a movie in a theater, discarding the tiny bones from my chicken snack on the floor. A greyhound dog starts bothering me as I sit in a single chair ahead of the other rows. Eventually, I move closer to the screen and concession bar. A young girl sits across from me at a cheap temporary table, chattering nonstop, even annoying her friends. I drag her by her hair across the slick floor and dump her outside, which her friends seem to enjoy, but I continue talking to her afterwards. She’s now naked, complaining yet acknowledging how she’s being a pain. She finds a scooter on the street with my old blue leather motorcycle jacket draped over it. The similarity is striking – it looks identical, and the scooter is the same color as mine, with a brown battery that doesn’t quite fit under the seat. The memories it stirs up make me emotional. The scooter appears to have a loose security chain, and its back wheel is missing.

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Dream Journal

Midnight Menagerie, Starfish Swansong

extracted cut-out collage artwork from album cover

Donald Trump’s existence suggests an axiom: the higher the getting, the bigger the dark side.

Being hosted at some guy’s elaborately-decorated stylish apartment, white walls and expensive décor, a congenial upper-middle class bougie gay dude. He gives up his bedroom per my request. In the middle of the night I’m awoken and think I’m being visited by a group of raccoons, but it turns out to just be a few of his cats.

Later, I think it’s happening again so I stay asleep. Yet slowly I realize that in the bedroom with me are a whole menagerie of apes, macaques, zebra, even a giraffe maybe. This is his personal zoo, something he acts like I should be impressed with, while he himself acts nonchalant. It is (I admit) bizarre and impressive. Doubly so with the apartment’s trendy Instagrammable Pinterest-y surroundings.

(This is midpoint of my night’s dreams, which I remember when I wake up earlier in the night — for real — with some insight into my own progressed technique into the writing of dreams. Yet I still don’t wake up to take notes on it, worried I might not get back to sleep…)

In the classroom of a middle school, which feels near the coastal location of my University. I’m my current age, hanging out in bookshelves behind the rows of desks observing class, but I pop in occasionally, keeping tabs on the teacher and mingling with students.

A class lesson: “what’s wrong with this cream cheese recipe?” I personally think they added lemon juice, or didn’t use real cheese. Moving past, the teacher calls on me, somewhat jokingly. Nose in a textbook, I respond mispronouncing ‘book’ like ‘boooook’. She responds in the same joking tone that we’ll name our next lesson’s monster “Orin”.

I abruptly notice that a green starfish kid in the front row has suddenly developed injuries consistent with exposure to a contagion we studied in class. Teacher has also noticed but is playing it off so as not to alarm the students; I don’t do so well hiding it. We help get the student out. Afterwards I take time reflecting on it in the bookshelves.

I return just a bit later, but class appears to be over for that year. Instead, the room is occupied by a choral group of young kids, 4-6 years old, in flowing robes with hoods, singing what could be a Buddhist funeral dirge. Their parents wait behind them to take them home, some breaking down crying. It’s obvious the starfish kid didn’t make it.

Jolted, reminded of life’s brevity, I set aside time to enjoy hanging out with one particular girl I like who reminds me of a fun redhead I knew in high school — Sam Promenchenkel. She’s quite taller than me; my head reaches just under her armpit. With a group we stroll along a stepped boardwalk away from the school. On the way I’m goaded into doing a scooter trick up some stairs, and manage to leap all the way to the second-to-last step, where I do a little bounce and make it all the way up.

My cousin Betty is with our group, skipping away ahead of us toward her wife. She seems so happy and excited, I’m very happy for her, though I watch her get further and further away.

We get to the ocean and do tricks leaping into the surf on scooters. Someone brings up how left-brain-focused people will typically veer to the left and miss their mark on the waves. We practice crossing our eyes, water streams squirting from our pupils, trying to get the streams to meet where we want.

Music in my head upon waking:

Heartsrevolution – Heart vs The Machine
Architecture in Helsinki – Heart It Races
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Dream Journal

Getting Around Thai Temple & Restaurant

I scoot over to the abandoned old Thai Temple brunch on south Valencia st. I learn the story of the five bear-men who were executed by hanging there, huge brutish men all murderers by the dozens. Their ghosts/projections give chase when I speed away on my black scooter.

To get out of this compound part of San Francisco, I need to walk through a Thai restaurant. It’s the third day in a row I’ve been there, but I don’t eat this time so I sneak past the staff, avoiding eye contact –like I’m just around there.

I locate my dad’s overgrown pickup in his workshop, new-ish but already rusted on the inside doorframe, and plants growing through the hard rubber hood. He has an active project he’s working on under lights nearby, but there’s sawdust everywhere. I consider whether I can clean it up.

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Dream Journal

University on a Small Island

A university on a small inhabited island, dry and brown and hilly, off the coast of California. The school specializes in drawing and hand-drawn traditional animation. One day, they have us label our materials kits and fill out a multi-page form. There’s a checkbox to support “56% Magazine” at $8.33 monthly. The school subsidizes students, and half of a large duplex (on the low end) is as low as $80 and $9. At some point I’m staying in Lorie Ohlemann’s house and snooping around her bedroom, finding cards and notes. One place is apportioned with a 4-person guest shower with a hosting bar. This keeps the island a lot more lively than one would expect, and I almost don’t miss city life. I ride my scooter around most everywhere and do deliveries. One day, I ditch work without calling in and spend the day carefully hiding out in different buildings. The next day I sneak out during the long afternoon doldrums with the idea to plant a luscious olive I’ve eaten. I find someone I know, Tiff von Biff, sitting on my scooter handlebars. I impressively veer left and right with her still on there, then manage to pop my first wheelie, making her scream.