Tag: snow

Categories
Dream Journal

Last Zipline with Mom

I have a saved memory with my late Mom that I didn’t know I had, that I’ve never seen. It’s comparable to a voicemail one has never reviewed. It’s a zipline experience (something I’ve never done), over an old gold mining area with hand-hewn wooden posts, and pines; looks something like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. It’s long, with the cable suspended across several pillars, big circular pulleys, looping back in places. There are tasks to complete sometimes. It plays through and at the end my mom disappears — the file auto-deletes and that was the only time I’ll get to see it.

I have a moderately intense good cathartic cry then wake up. It’s still early. Usually I have a dilemma at this point, since this seemed like a unique and important dream, yet writing it down will probably wake me up for the day. But when asking myself if I would forget it completely should I fall back to sleep, the answer was… no, no I won’t. And so I didn’t.

I’m one of a privileged few able to attend a new archeological attraction in Afghanistan. The ground is dusty and broken out of shape. There’s a special feeling crisping the air, a feeling like this could be the same as it was thousands of years ago when the artifacts were buried.

While in Arizona for unrelated reasons, I rediscover a railroad museum I visited as a kid. I use the opportunity to pull around the narrow side road and into their back parking lot, which has quite a view. It’s on a gentle clear slope overlooking a valley. The lot itself is a rounded square which I have repeated difficulty pulling into with my big class field trip van. The museum is having an outdoor thrift sale day. Alone among the liminal grassy area of the museum’s backside I peruse stacks of colorful boxes on shelves. Occasionally I find one worthy of carrying around like a talisman, maybe to buy. There’s one odd steam engine which I locate in two pieces separately, clicking into place the oversized cabin. I’m rewarded for this with much interest from museum staff and other shoppers. Yet I find myself most comfortable around the shallow pond, with the distant view. I’m there when it begins to snow.

Categories
Dream Journal

Rancho Chalupa x3, QOs

My wife gives specific but confusing food request for Rancho Chalupa x3, QOs, no ranchito. QOs is her weird abbreviation for queso.

This dream is from earlier in the night and I was pleased I could remember it when I woke up, but there was so much more story originally of course. It seemed an important anchor at the time and it’s a weird title, so I kept it.

I’m building an antenna in flat land not far from the Arctic using an incredibly tall tube. It’s powered with metal that bounces at bottom. Through careful observation I’m concerned that that the bounce is inconsistent, the first bounce loses too much energy and is similar to a pendulum winding down; I think I have to re-engineer it or detection will fail. The tower is possibly part of a covert CIA network, but I don’t know who I’m building it for. The device is named after Queen Elizabeth, in the same tradition as someone might name something after Queen Victoria a century ago.

Takling with my dad about the sequence of events in 2014, why I don’t go public; how there’s no chance of correction or revenge. Playing with a string that serves as a graph line that’s joins two discrete sections of paper which effectively shows how unrelated the before and after time periods are.

My wife and I walk from offramp to offramp in snow country looking for a place to hitchhike. One after the other has nothing, no services not even a place to wait. We crest a last berm and there is a well-stocked service station that even has a bus terminal. But immediately as we see this the bus leaves and we must wait for the next one.

Swimming along a rock wall to find a pickup spot, we spot the islands of Malta sheltered in the distance of a bay. Like a cluster of glittering pirate isles, with a gloriously restored sailing ship slowly blowing our way. I warn my wife as we approach what appears to be a waterfall at the edge of the seawall. But if there were a waterfall then the ship wouldn’t be heading this way would it?

Peeking over the wall, perhaps it is a waterfall, but not like you’d think. Mist rises in bright golden afternoon light and beyond, stretching into distant canyons, are arrayed the houses of mainland Europe (reminiscent of an afternoon in the ritzy canyons of the Hollywood hills).

There’s a cool rectangular structure down near a flat beach. It’s enameled metal almost like a café made of refrigerator material. A local film shoot about to happen, and a teenage girl in a bikini standing outside is asking whether the zip code will change here. She’s referencing the ’90s TV show 90210, it would seem, which would make this Beverly Hills. I answer that no one much remembers that show anyway.

Supposedly now on the island of Malta, but with some offshore banking and casino facets like Monaco. One popular meeting room I’m recommended sounds loud and crowded from the outside, more like a nightclub. When I peek inside it just looks like a long, poorly-lit tile-floored hall filled with vacationing older Russians — the audience uncomfortably far from a karaoke stage at the far end of the room. I go downstairs as according to the map there’s a secondary club directly underneath. I notice an unpleasant acquaintance, David Kaye, sitting on a bench nearby and fat as Baron Harkonnen. As it happens, the second club is currently hosting an exercise class where they fly in the air.

There’s a large casino here in Malta. I consider how there’s a rule that never will a more lenient jurisdiction be far away from centers of wealth — by design (the CIA again, perhaps). I go to the counter and explain, explicitly, that I’m exchanging money for chips then those chips back to money, to test if the place is scammy or honest. I hand over the grand sum of $9, receiving back a sheaf of white on black paperwork. Each is printed with a tiny cash value, cents each, and a redeemable (slightly higher) value at a pizza chain. I look incredulously at the guy, as if to say “I just told you I was checking for honesty, are you really going to make me ask for my cash back?” Yet I wonder if I won’t immediately be escorted by security who are close by.

The casino counter becomes an SNL broadcast of Weekend Update with Colin Jost and Michael Che. A line is missing from a cue card and it is fumbling lane skipped. The next host goes into a long poetry recitation, which now acts context. The other host then (unusually) interrupts to try to salvage what’s left of the bit. This proves to be a joke in itself.

Categories
Dream Journal

X-ARDOS

I don’t know why the dream must be named what it is, but it was the strongest word in my head upon waking. Perhaps it has some relation to bardo, the Tibetan spiritual state in between death and rebirth.

Three of us are traveling on a long motorbike, my friend Aislinn, my wife and me. I’m driving from the farthest rear, which proves difficult on the freeway. As I’m about to take an exit, another motorcycle passes me on the right making things just that much more difficult. This exit is somehwere in the state of Iowa. It strikes me how much like every other freeway exit in America it is, yet with subtly apparent differences that make it like Iowa.

Rounding through a parking lot and a few low buildings, I swing around to a gas station (something like a gas station anyway) that’s broken down and is now freezing everything around it. I comment that it’s gonna be some expensive snow, and we decide to park and check it out. That proves somewhat difficult, as I back into a space alongside a cinderblock wall. The car ignition also seems to freely turn with any key I try, which is clearly something else to be concerned with. The vehicle is an SUV now, more like the old Nissan truck I used to drive (and drove from Iowa).

As soon as I park and get out, Aislinn asks if I worry about parking in front of that door, pointing to a barred gate which looks into the courtyard of an African monastery for junior monks. I curse and start to park all over again — though the neighborhood looks shabby, there’s clearly a lot going on. I do more back and forth nudging into a space, now there are even more cars to work around.

When I finally make it out, I’m at a family reunion for my Dad’s side. They’re loud and boisterous, very familiar with each other. The car becomes some white-furred furniture or a stuffed figure. There’s an exchange of gifts, and I must find a place to stack long tentbag-like objects on a similar white-furred bed (not sure if it’s the same, but it’s a different location). I correct my dad and place these objects off the head of the bed, onto the sheet, to minimize dirtiness.

I get invited to follow my uncle Vince on a short tour. I follow him while adjusting a set of recording glasses, falling behind because of them after he exits a set of double doors, then jogging after to keep up. I feel younger and younger in this dream, my role shifting. My uncle and I tour a dark, mostly empty parking garage, a caverous metal warehouse-like space, while he narrates the story of various murals telling stories of our family. (On reflection, this almost sounds like a transplanted version of Aboriginal Australian lore.)

One particular story, high up on a side wall, tells the story of a broken branch hanging high in a pine tree, staying stick even in strong wind (I’m almost certain this story is from another of my dreams a long while ago). Something all my male relations witnessed at the time, some broader story I can’t make out now. I confess how even though I never met my great-grandfather I have a nickname for him.

After a great effort to remember am earlier set of dreams, I can recall being transposed back to Australia in 2006, nostalgic for when I actually visited. I’m physically emobodied in that time again, as I was when I was really there. I stand outside a grand modern airport or mall, manicured fountains outside, the curved steps leading down to a light rail transit line. I carry an iconic backpack I’ve used forever in Australia (not accounted for in waking life) which is like a trailer-like shell which unfolds, revealing pockets within pockets, all labeled with names of politicians or notable Aussie figures.

Categories
Dream Journal

Logs in a Tree, Hip Ground Floor Squat

Tree logs stored high up across two trees. A ladder is up there too, blocking access. I look up and point out to my companion that there’s a hawk sitting on a branch directly above us.

The self-appointed minder of this open plot of land is a creepy psychiatrist, a young man who is clueless enough to stand staring at you from behind a couch to “observe” you. I point this out to Lynae, or whoever is with me. Someone escapes out the front door and into the music store across the other side of the mall (they don’t get far).

Behind the tree with the logs is a water chute leading back to a mill pond with a lovely population of loons (ha!). There are inscriptions in concrete, familiar yet written in some Southeast Asian language,

I sign up for a documentary show with Ricky Gervais, and as part of the contract we have to record banter to be played over the footage for at least 9½ minutes. We record it in the back of a car and then I’m told, jokingly, that the rental lasts another 120 minutes. My old friends Chicken and Kelly are in the front seat, smoking, and making out with the smoke.

Driving with my dad, early morning around 4 am, on the streets of our desert home that looks covered in a sheen of smooth white snow. I have a stapled-together packet of printed papers that’s about fighting others’ belief in mental illness, something I’d planned to read on the drive. Dad gets me to close it with a frustrated “really?”

Weird cheap flat on the first floor of a dirty yet hip ghetto. A side street near the heart of the city, clumped-up forgotten backyards and trash gathered in the dead-ends. My friends are thinking of buying this place — or maybe they already have? But that could just be a cover story for a squat, I think. They’ve converted a windowless room in the middle into an “orgy space”, which I guess means stuffing in a ton of pillows and chairs. Bafflingly, there’s only a heavy sheet separating it from a front patio area packed with couches. Ghetto but very cozy.