Tag: toddler

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Dream Journal

Butt Pinch from Gabrielle

I’m volunteering at a fair along with some friends. The booths are indoors but the public walkways outside, a bit like a public market. I’ve been wandering for a bit and come back to our booth, where I think we’re raising money for a charity. My two female friends have been holding themselves up with their feet raised on a dais and their hands on the ground, like the wheel pose in yoga. This has the effect of having their butts flexed tight and held in the air. I offer to take a turn the remainder of a the day to replace them, despite the obvious expectation that my male butt won’t be as eye-catching as both of theirs. Nevertheless, they’re thankful to take me up on the offer and I feel pretty good about being able to provide some equal-opportunity butt presentation.

While I’m zoning out in my pose, visitors to the booth mill around. I don’t pay much attention to them, as my role for now is just to keep the pose during my shift. One of them startles me by pinching my butt, which — while not exactly disallowed — isn’t particularly encouraged. I collapse in surprise, and when I look up to see who did it, I see a familiar face: Gabrielle from the TV show Xena (as played by Renee O’Connor). There’s no obvious connection for why she would’ve pinched me, nor have I thought of her recently. It’s a good laught though, and I’m kind of happy it happened to me. It’s a fun story to retell to the girls, and I doubt the reverse situation would be the case. I mention that hope we got the event on video.

There’s a Mom shopping at the fair who drops her two-year-old with us at the booth. I’m talking to it while, having realized that the kid can understand a lot more that she can answer. It’s fun to have a full conversation though, without regard for what she probably expects from adults. I remember a specific occasion where I made a very long, sophisticated, multi-step question, where I knew she understood the whole thing — but all she can reasonably manage as a response is a flustered “well I don’t know!” It’s a bit of mischief we both seem to enjoy.

We review the time we’ver had when Mom shows up again. Shortly afterwards, I get to tell the girls about Gabby pinching me, which the do find as entertaining as hoped.

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Dream Journal

New Society of Yet-Learned Secrets

I ride on an open railcar through inhabited forest land. It’s like a terraced Santa Cruz mountains full of houses. Once I arrive, I sense that I’ve “woken up” in an unfamiliar post-scarcity society with very different social rules. I must take my time to learn their ways. There’s artifacts from when I was alive previously (hundreds of years ago perhaps) which I get to explain. One is a jade stone green surface with matching sticker, partially torn off and covered in illegible handwriting. I offer to finally clean it off since I’ve explained that it was quite mundane, and it’s treated as a joke. This is their ancient history, after all.

There’s something hidden though — not quite sinister, but a secret aspect I’ve yet to uncover. My pet rat Porkpie (of all people) finds a ways to get away, escaping on a raft across a dark sea/lake. Little guy is cleverer than I expected.

I’m seated at a communal table with my friend Phoenix and her toddler Moxie. Above the table is an angled bar of color-coded lights which resembles the floating plastic lanes of a swimming pool. The linear code represents people at the table I think; Phoenix is white, Moxie green because she’s a baby, several others. Someone jokes to our waiter that they should put up searchlights.

At that suggestion I partially jolt into different consciousness, my view is a spreading fan pattern of messengers being released from a fortress under siege. Through the hostile rocky desert scramble hundreds of little Chinese figures in traditional costume (with conical hats) looking like a golden age Disney cartoon. One by one they’re shot in various ways as the roaming searchlight of the enemy finds them — all but one figure that, by brute luck, escapes the exposed killzone and delves into bafflingly rocky terrain. They must then follow a circuitous route to stay out of sight to reach a second fortress… the searchlights must never discover it as the destination.

Before the saving rendezvous takes place, I’m startled awake but my wife (gently, I’m told) telling me it might be time to wake up, Orin.

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Dream Journal

Time Travel Gift, Footrace with Borrowed Kid

Meeting my late twenties friend Jimmy near an empty triangular lot. A lone fancy metal fence is all that remains of whatever was here before. Almost like a neighborhood in my town of San Francisco I don’t go to very often, maybe North Beach. Worn in, familiar, yet strange and novel. Jimmy proceeds to explain an unusual offer — him volunteering to travel back in time to when I was in college in 2004, leaving a very specific object for me to find. It’s a set of skinny and colorful tarot cards (that I didn’t consider much at the time but that proved important over the years since). This is an exciting possibility and explains so much — I gave those cards to myself! I relive my younger experience on a back road, taking an officially closed rural roadway, livestock paddocks on both sides, unfolding a beat-up cardboard box and scavenging the stuff inside. Holding up one of the special holographic cards in the pack. This act will pass it on to my past self, forming a causal loop.

In the dream this is a real history and I feel it is prophetic… perhaps prophetic in reverse, in that it reveals the past. I bolt awake at 6 am, knowing the details are important and this is a valuable dream to remember. But I managed to get back to sleep and continue some of the narrative, the feeling, the aesthetic.

In a partially outdoor auditorium walking amidst a large audience. Talking with my wife about Star wars in a quiet way but I still get shushed by a single person. Chagrined that anyone thinks it’s inappropriate, but also angry at the single complainer, I loudly announce I’ll be quiet if whoever shushed me shows themselves. A slightly older man on the balcony (perhaps a long-ago punk in his, reminds me of a few Gen Xers I know) seems to acknowledge me by being extra grumpy. I rise up to his balcony level seat and confront his crossed arms with a challenging look. It ends in a stalemate; the rest of the auditorium seems to ignore us.

While seated in the auditorium watching whatever performance or presentation is happening, someone’s young toddler sits decides (unannounced) to sit just below my knees. There’s a feeling of being in the 1980s, though it’s difficult to pin down why, perhaps the moment reminding me inexplicably of my own childhood — as if I could have done the same thing. Though at first I’m hesitant on account of whatever the parents could think, once I make known that I don’t mind, the kid turns out to be pretty fun. The parents seem happy to have her off their hands for a bit, but none of us have an idea why she picked me to hang out with. I end up participating with her (on behalf of a parent) in a footrace/obstacle course down a mountainside. Sometimes I carry her on my shoulders but I also manage the tight rocky turns with a stroller.

I decide near the end of the race to give up. Jenn Alex, an artist friend I know, nearest the finish line of this skating/skiing race, soon wins. Reflecting on how the race has changed things, my home seems emptier now; I can imagine leaving and not minding much. I idly discuss a certain brand of hardware store and how it’s different at every location, stocked with different items at different locations for a personal touch. I like it but the person I’m talking to is frustrated they can’t just go anywhere and find what they expect. No one is around as I return back through a window in standalone wall, this part of obstacle course having been passed already and now empty of other competitors.

I’m proceeding in reverse through the course as if to undo the entire thread. It’s now treated more like a video game, with levels and challenges I’m supposed to complete. I peek from underneath a table to examine a distinct checkered cap, at this point expecting and wishing to avoid another challenge. Sure enough there are new enemies to defeat, ones I recognize as the palette-swapped game assets from an earlier class of undead enemies. Now
they are supposedly flying Hogwarts wizards, with the unique trait of being named individuals. They disappear as they’re defeated just the same. The name that sticks with me: Peter Tarn.

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Dream Journal

Bed Rides, Reverse Dine-n-Ditch, Floating Telepathy, City Hall

Riding an oversized bunk bed with a few acquaintances and a cute (but nervous & skeptical) toddler. At the top of a stairway, we all slide down, holding onto the bed railings and play-screaming.

Leaving a low-ceilinged semi-outdoor restaurant without paying… I instead end up across the street and pay the tab that belonged to Mickey and his friends. I pay more, meddling with social order, and the action is both self-evidently ethical and appealingly subversive.

Walking down the median of a busy street in a caftan and sandals, an ethnically Mideastern young kid hops out of his dad’s car to say hi and ask me about myself. I realize it’s because he’s excited to finally see someone else who dresses like his family. I turn the corner and pass a Walmart where I overhear someone flub the word ‘teleport’ — I telepathically correct them as they huff past the painted white brick walls.

Sort of flying, sort of floating. I go very high up, above City Hall, which is cavernous and lavishly renovated, with expansive enclosed spaces of exposed wooden beams. The roof is more utilitarian, simple tarpaper with a steel rod decorated with religious iconography. Peering over the side, I can see it’s twice as tall as Grace Cathedral nearby. Perhaps it has the air of Seattle.