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Dream Journal

Throwing Knives at Me

Chicken John needs my help to pull a trick in some deal he’s trying to pull off. He’s allowed me back into his circle of trust for this purpose. It’s the friend group I had a decade ago. He doesn’t realize that I don’t care about the social pressure anymore, and that when I’m asked what I think of the deal I’ll just tell the truth. He gets publicly furious at me and starts throwing knives towards me — he’s somehow allowed to do that, since no one will stop him. The knives land point-on, pinging into wood and vibrating with their impact. One lands above my head, another clatters off a low wall. I grab one, not sure what I mean to do (perhaps use it as evidence) but it feels more dangerous to run with it than have something to defend myself with.


This dream wakes me up early and I have to get myself back to sleep. The next few dreams share a similar setting, without any of the plot elements.


Chicken is living at a remote rural compound which is a former hardware store. It’s large and feels like it’s open air, though not having a roof doesn’t seem to matter. It’s down a straight hilled slope and a concrete drive, as if the land was cleared long ago. It’s big enough that various aisles feel abandoned even with the scattered projects and improvements people have done. I sense that there are frequent visitors but few besides Chicken that will commit to living there. It seems like he’s still operating like it’s ten years ago and the transformative power of the art will just carry through on whatever big project he wants to do.

The same area becomes a Mormon church — no Chicken, no rural art colony. I’m part of a team which conspires to steal a ritually important object from the church. This is actually a set-up conspired with the church leadership to boost congregation morale and brief that the object (a book, a breastplate?) actually is mystical. We’re a bunch of urban occult-y weirdoes so we seem perfect for the task. My school friend Robby T. is one of the churchgoers, which makes sense because he was Mormon. The heist does work, but we end up hiding the object within the big church, in one of the windows, facing the non-usual direction. This feels almost like a prank, since the churchgoers don’t recognize it that way.

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Dream Journal

A Time Diamond and A Thief

A particular strange lucidity early in the night with my phone in my hand, as I voluntarily clean my house and enjoy doing it. Despite not realizing for a long time that I’m still holding my phone

Living or visiting in a large mansion-like space, maybe a bit like Isis Oasis. Old 70s stylings, so many various dining tables that we’ve never eaten at some of them. Feels like we haven’t been here in a while too, semi-abandoned even though I understand that others still visit infrequently.

Outside, my wife and I can hear someone rummaging around in a study, the study belonging to a hallowed old professor. I recognize it as a test I’ve encountered before involving a thief. I’m appearance he’s oddly like the character from The Thief and The Cobbler, but his size is variable. It’s difficult to coordinate with my wife to plan how we’ll catch him in the act without him popping away. The whole thing is just a narrative game that has been played before — apparently it randomly respawns from time to time. Now this scenario has happened enough times that I’m starting to grasp the steps needed to resolve it.

The thief is after a small diamond. I know from playing through things before that, actually, he can never find it, because no one can find it. Not alone. Plotwise, all parties including the thief have to coordinate, whether they do so intentionally or not. It’s the only way to avoid the multiple layers of gotchas whereby the diamond gets lost forever, and the scenario resets. Could be a time diamond for all I know. But here, back on the first step of the loop, girded by the wisdom of experience, I still can’t seem to coordinate with my wife. Hm.


Objects. Four important folders to swap between, that must by applied to the project I’m working on. I can clearly visualize them as clunky plastic office documents which I can swap between. Oddly enough I read something before bed and I think maybe these leaked in from there, which are from the instructions for how to set up a tool I need:

– Active Context: Contains information about the current task
– Project Context: Contains high-level project information
– Progress: Documents completed work and upcoming tasks
– Decision Log: Records choices and their rationale

They read like things I should very much know and have around to reference, don’t they? Double hm.

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Dream Journal

Empty Family Home on an Island, In Australia

I’m exploring a house for sale with my Homepie friend Mickey. The attic is large and has multiple nestled little sleeping areas, a place the current residents call Monticello for reasons not known to us.

I’m having some of my old stuff shipped back from Australia, left behind from when I was there. This must happen before the river islet the Monticello house is on floods. We travel the small circular waterway via canoe. To haul the boat out of the water they’ve rigged up a garage door opener near the riverbank — clever little contraption, useful for rural living.

I pick out my stuff from the many cupboards and cabinets of the newly abandoned home. Most of this stuff I’ve forgotten (it’s been more than a decade). I can’t help but steal one thing: an iridescent plastic bowl from the 1970s, easily missed by the family and easily excused as an accident. It’s unique and oddly beautiful, and obviously unappreciated judging by where I found it.

Having everything gathered it appears that shipping is going to cost $60. I hadn’t thought about that cost and second-guess whether I want any of this stuff at all anymore.

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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.