Tag: store

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Dream Journal

Suddenly Iced Coffee (dream of LA)

An odd Wikipedia entry of a female author’s biography. It’s odd because it’s the size of a neighborhood, displayed laid out in a giant index like blocks of a city. And if I were to guess the city, I would guess Los Angeles — it’s certainly dry and sunny and industrial enough.

Park the car in a parking spot at a long, convoluted, angular strip mall. Find out there’s a store that has paid to make the spot available, the Panax Ginseng Store. Decide to walk there to check it out. Partway, I realize just how long a walk away it is. It’s shorter to walk back to my car and drive there. That’s LA.

The store itself is small, mostly novelties stored in plastic boxes in front. Plastic tarps cover most areas as though this is all temporary. Honestly, it’s not what I expected. It’s more intriguing, really, as I want to know what the deal with the place is. There’s a certain kind of benign neglect that elderly Asian immigrant shop owners have in their businesses. The very specific type of dirty-but-interesting corners I happen to find quite appealing.

Passing by, someone invites me to Costco with them. The entrance has very tall nursery plants and the same smooth cement floors I remember. We shop separately once inside. I worry whether the person who invited me actually can share their membership, as they said. As I pass by a free sample table, iced coffee is snuck into my hand, or mysteriously appears. For whatever reason, this seems to be the strongest image from the dream (and seemed a funny-enough title — well, why not?)

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Dream Journal

Coming Storm, a Gift

There’s going to be a big lightning storm soon. Inside the converted big box store where I live in a community of fringe hangers-on, preparations are being made. So much so that things can go under the radar…

The image of a thunderbolt striking the power substation dominates the attention of many — it’s easy to imagine. Meanwhile, I’m concentrated on the carriage-like antique atop one of the aisle shelves, that’s been there long enough it no longer even has an owner.

Things happen after, but are forgotten. Maybe I steal the carriage. Maybe I ride away in it. Do I cause the thunderbolt? My waking self remembered, but was calm. Many times, I’ve struggled with the responsibility of capturing these dreams. This one just flowed. My morning felt grounded, imperturbable. I hesitate to interpret precisely why. A gift, unquestioned.

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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

SoCal and Canada, Onto Remote Paths

It’s been a few months since I moved back to my hometown. I’m travelling by night around the square grid of streets, chasing a car somewhere in the sprawl of hotels and country clubs. I unintentionally drop some utensils out the car window a few blocks before I take a hard left turn trying to catch the fleeing car of my middle school friend Stephen Colson.

Outside a fancy apartment building where I’m staying, or perhaps considering renting, I watch a billboard collapse. From the outdoor wraparound communal balcony I watch the face of Will Smith fall into pieces, the billboard’s gimmicky mechanical baubles scattering across the Los Angeles street below.

At a location across from Disneyland is a store which I remember I’ve been before. It’s austere on the outside, the humbleness of the shopkeeper’s simple living a contrast to it’s famous neighbor. The only thing I can remember of it’s features are that the building had an address, and a little black girl sometimes stood outside.

I notice next door is a new store with no external indicators of what it sells. It’s even narrower and plainer, almost liminal in the sense that I don’t know if I’m supposed to be in there. Inside, the merchandise is sparse and I proceed down the hallway-like space. Instead of a back room, it leads into a hippie-bohemian styled space with a glass frontage to an indoor mall. There’s a piece in the front window that I inspect. The place smells of good leather.

I’m marching across a creek in what feels like the Canadian wilderness. Attractive female strangers pass by, having just crossed the creek as well, as I wait for my female companion to catch up. I lean one-legged with my walking stick and reflect on promiscuity. Chattering on to my companion (my wife probably) it feels as though I’m deliberately ignoring the cute girls, which almost seems rude. We proceed down the hiking trail. I keep unusually good notes along the way. We pass by a series of lakes, getting more and more remote. I put on several circle stickers in sequence on my foam shoe, their handwritten messages spelling out a story. When it seems finished I take a photo.

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Dream Journal

Waking Barefoot in My Neighborhood

Walking around streets of my neighborhood barefoot. I’ve gotten further from home than I had originally planned, and I’m being thoughtful about it, but it’s very present in my mind as I slowly walk along.

I recalled this dream upon discovering that last night, I had accidentally cracked the handmade cork sole of my shoe. I realize, too that I ran outside in them late at night around the neighborhood to check on a honking car.

I see a pair of Madras pants like I like on top of a barrel. On closer inspection, it looks like a dress that would fit my wife. There are a couple of pairs of shoes as well, a bit of a free pile it would seem. Their outside of a sewing store that’s open late nights. Unusual that I’ve never noticed it before in my neighborhood, despite living here for so long — I wouldn’t have discovered it if I hadn’t been walking slow.

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Dream Journal

Strip Mall Waystation, Rat Deaths, Map Anomalies

I find myself sleeping in an odd, interstitial liminal space — a kind of waystation for world travelers. It feels like a forgotten space within a strip mall, perhaps a former party supply store. A solidly-built, boxy metal grid forms the internal structure of this place.

A rat dies. This is the second rat to die, unfortunately. I have to tell my wife before she gets back. But then I remember the first rat died a long time ago. Does that make this news a little easier to share?

I’m allowed to sleep there. I’ll be sleeping just outside the big metal grid, but still inside the store. It’s a privilege to be here for a few days, but feels strange too.

When turning the perspective of a 3D map, all the buildings change too. They’re very detailed, but wrong — a bad guess by the 3D analysis algorithm. It’s too bad, since they look so crisp and good. But there’s no way now to tell what they really look like.

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Dream Journal

Apt #99

These dreams all take place at night for no particular reason.

Earliest remembered is playing on a school athletic field where I’m not a student. But I manage to successfully fit in, heading in with the rest of them and peeking over the wall into the locker room to see what I’m getting myself into.

Having friends over in my new place, Apt #99 (the only double digit unit on the second floor). I become more aware that it’s cheap and somewhat sketchy building with weird architecture. The hallways and stairways especially are dark and dingy, but with an unusually intense vibe of human activity. Maybe it’s like a one-building Kowloon Walled City — except I think the second floor is the top. I’m up and down the stairs several times, giving instructions on how to find stuff to one of my visitors.

I’m informed by some Mormon friends of a free trip to China. It’s sponsored by our school, but takes only one day. Feels like far from enough, and mysteriously so. I wonder what the Chinese face recognition would make of my all-too-Western face.

Participating in a survey of the Great Lakes and their borders. My favorite is a smallisg lake located higher up between others called King Lake. The view there is very interesting, as from the vantage of its center one can see a ring of the other lakes below. But on a newly released map it’s been labeled “Piss Lake” because locals don’t like the smell and think it doesn’t have enough bathrooms. Near King Lake there’s a small cabin perched on a hill that’s supposed to have a groundskeeper, but when I visit it just has a cat napping on an armchair. I fondly start thinking of him as the groundskeeper.

The Great Lakes also has an international border, and I visit a liquor store near there on land that should never have been claimed. The man who built this place, the so-called owner, has punted on the issue for ages by avoiding paperwork to clear it up. Because of the legal complexities with the border no one has been motivated enough to sort the situation out, and he continues running his business only semi-legally. I have some idea of what the place was like before and so I’m made a bit sad by learning all this.

Later I’m working as an impromptu messenger. In a thick forest on expansive level terrain adjacent to an outpost, I deliver a message to a hidden group. The member I meet uses a mech to traverse the dense terrain. As soon as my message is delivered however, my government launches a nuclear missile at the location where we met. Luckily the rendezvous is not where the other side’s base is, and actually 20 miles away. But now how am I supposed to get them to trust me/us again now? I’ve been manipulated and there’s no easy way to get that across.

Visiting a restaurant in Wyoming which is full old-timey themed. A photo posted in the review shows diners dressed up in frontier style dresses, oversized frilly things which are more Victorian extravagance than Midwestern demure. The cloth patterns remain very much Little House on the Prairie or Potato Sack Dress though, a pleasant combination. The photo’s poster has chosen to recolor their original wide angle image and overlaid a pastel rainbow coloration across it. Another interesting detail is that each table has its own container of dry ice which spills fog across the diners and food — something I would expect more for Halloween than the old west, but this is essentially a cosplay restaurant and the effect is fun. Reecy fits in well among the crowd. She told me about the place (she may have taken me, actually). But since I’m currently traveling all I have with me appropriate to wear is a colorful squarish-patterned shirt with black lapels, which feels underdressed. I find a rainbow bowtie to go with it and feel just a smidge finer.

Somewhere in here, I wake up from dental surgery, having had my chipped premolar that’s been bothering me for years finally removed — wake up in the dream, that is. I’m kind of surprised that it finally worked.

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Dream Journal

Alt Wolverine Steals my Papasan

Mom didn’t listen (My mom? A mom). Mom left my papasan chair on a street in my neighborhood. The street might be different than where I live now, more north/south than east/west. But it’s certainly my neighborhood. Even though I almost immediately notice the chair was mistakenly put out, a guy still insists on trying to take it. Says he claimed it first or something, while ignoring that I just ran out of the same house. Round-faced large guy with glasses, young and entitled but fit. Bothersome in a deeper way than mere inconvenience. I drag the chair back through a maze-like thicket of brambles surrounding a friend’s home with him still clinging to it. The brambles seem designed for such purpose. I make it all the way to the communal home at the center. The spirit seems to have ebbed from whatever consensus-based group project once powered it, in the heights of 1970s communalism perhaps. Folks in the rooms there seem sleepy — the rooms that are even occupied. To my great chagrin, the round-faced thief runs for community mayor of the home. Despite my efforts I can’t stop him from being elected. The community is too apathetic. I know it’s still just about the chair.

Later, I discover that this man is an aberrant clone from an alternate universe. He should be Wolverine in that universe, but instead he took the role of Jean Grey. It’s quite clear when I see the color palettes swapped. Here, he’s a thief of X-Men genetic material. This dream much seems like a justification for my feelings in the one before, a dream created just to make peace with my own attitude toward him.

Discussing with my wife when I should really leave Gathering. Doing the math that every extra day I stay, it’s equivalent to an extra $100+. This feels tied in to other parts of the night’s dreams, but mostly the later ones.

I observe rolling hills in a long line, evaluating their land usage. These hills are outside Phoenix, Arizona supposedly. Most have a particularly, perfectly smooth pasture land that gives the impression tight clothing. Delineated thickly are occasional nature preserves with hiking trails, the natural state of the land. It’s bizarre that they chose to convert most of it to plain boringness, when it seems so obviously more valuable in it’s diversified and self-managing state. But that’s a lot more complicated, especially for the simple-minded.

In a warehouse thrift store. In the front section there’s a record store. I mention to the guy running it that he has several records my friend and I both have. I exaggerate a little, mentioning a record that I claim only had a hundred copies made but which we both have. I inquire about a certain record my friend showed me last time I was over. I’m only half interested in buying it, I suppose I want to test his knowledge. The guy answers that he has it and hands me a the record sleeve. He seems to expect I’m buying it. As politely as I can, I let him know that this is just the paper sleeve and there’s no record inside it.

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Dream Journal

British Hooky & Backwards Mountain Climb

Atop Mt. San Jacinto (or a place like it), a group of people reveal that they’ve been walking down a mountain backwards and filming it. They film one bit at a time and intend to eventually play the footage in reverse as a kind of gag, so in their words “to look athletic instead of batshit”. Who walks down a mountain backwards indeed.

Attending a screening premiere with Noel Gallagher (or was it Noel Fielding?) when I go play hooky instead, slipping out a side door. Noel stays and isn’t happy about the idea, but will probably cover for me to prevent himself the embarassment of me leaving.

From the shared parking lot of the complex there, I enter a British store which is a long corridor presented as different merchants. Actually in Britain proper, I’d say. At the very end there is a table of affable Australians keen to sell their used motocross-style helmets. The brand name is just “Australia” — or possibly “Victoria”, with the comment made “does any other Australian state make as good a brand name?” I do notice that the design has a slit down the front, something I reckon wouldn’t be good for road dust… especially in a place like the outback.

I return to the end of the corridor later when no one is around. I take the obvious shortcut of jumping over the fence and out the back window. I do try to be polite about it by ensuring it’s closed after I go. Slowly I float down from my high egress, aiming and landing on top of a fat rat out in the parking lot. I playfully pat it to tease the little critter.

Soon I steal a tow truck or something. Can’t remember everything, can I?

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Dream Journal

Last Day of A Sliding Rink

Using a location randomizer, I find a quirky convenience store that sells a kind of orange liqueur I used to like a lot. That section has several brands, this one is Hawaii Rind or something like that. Standing next to the different orange-colored bottles I can vividly imagine the taste, far sweeter than what I would want to drink now. The store has an indescribably nice vibe though, with twisty little aisles that you can see over. It has a homemade feel. Novelty items are interspersed with staples like chips, nuts or candy. They might actually be playing Boards of Canada over the speakers, the walls under the high ceilings decorated with oversize posters and zany memorabilia.

I watch several videos tagged at the store and their entertaining. One starts because a guy films a screen which dispenses a humorously malformed Muslim prayer (intended as a novelty keepsake) but the moving sidewalk he’s on keeps moving him till it abruptly ends, the rubber printed with an oddly-worded warning not to let shoes get sucked into the conveyor. He immediately rounds the corner and sees someone wearing toe shoes, broken into four segments instead of the usual one for each toe, made of vintage brown leather. Looks like he’s writing with his feet. The guy videoing starts making the sound “brother, euhhh” like the meme, but realizes halfway that — no, those are leather gloves on hands — so it becomes “brother, euhhhoooh”. The cut at the end of the clip gives an impression someone took care to trim the end for good comic timing.

While I’m browsing the clerk makes an announcement that today at 8pm is the last chance to get something from the store. I’m surprised, but I’ve happened to visit on their last day of business. I would like a keepsake, I admit. Sitting down, my face reflects on one side of double doors to the kitchen — the door has a cutout of the mayor, so that you get to imagine yourself in charge. That’s partly how I work out that this place is in Chicago, as it’s Chicago’s mayor.

I pass through to the store’s back area which is used as a recreation space for parents and their small children. The floor is of highly buffed smooth linoleum. Using a single run-up I take a very long careening slide. Quickly I learn how to lean to steer, how to keep my momentum going, how to playfully dodge the many families in the rink. I’m really quite good at it. But I promise myself that I’ll only do this one excellent slide. I know they’ll be closing soon, and I know it can’t last forever. That makes it count more somehow. Soon enough, the end arrives. I’m one of the last out — or no actually, the last one. The sun changes into a nostalgic gold and tints the grass verging a nearby stream. The arena is then folded up into a compact object that resembles an upside-down table. I’m granted permission to take documentary photos of it, hoping one day I might replicate this design myself. I certainly enjoyed myself. There’s something difficult to photograph though, a distraction of some kind…

I wake up very early and find this dream quite pleasant. Unusually, nothing else seems to have woken me up. I couldn’t get back to sleep.