Categories
Dream Journal

Drafting Letter to Old Man

Writing a letter to an old man regarding a recent experience. Maybe our trip to Mexico. As I’m editing I’m figuring out what I want and should be saying. There’s an opener which references the controversial incident obliquely — possibly rather too clever — and I try to dance around insulting the other actors involved, the greater context, or really spelling things out. I need to avoid giving the impression of a promise, or an admission of guilt. But I want to seem like the good guy. This is a creative way of cleaning up from overly-complicated events.

This is becoming a bit meta to me, the person who dreamt it and the person who’s writing it. Perhaps it seems that way to you too, dear reader. That may be because the way it’s being written appears to be auto-descriptive. Best I can give my own analysis. Take it with a grain of salt, though.

The old man was kind of a Walt Disney or John Waters type. But his moustache was not important.

Categories
Dream Journal

Australia, What Might’ve Been

I go return to Australia now, as myself, a middle-aged man. I end up spending much time reading in a dark pub and saving really good memes. The room where I’m staying is compact and oddly shaped, on the corner between two long rural streets. The whole thing is very much a nostalgia tour but it’s made more difficult on account I didn’t have Google Maps in Australia back then. I remember one thing on my to-do list: “ivywalk”… though I admit I don’t even know what that was. It’s relaxing — yet nostalgia itself is a kind of pain, the bittersweet pain of a place you cannot truly go back to.

At some point near the end of this trip I consider revisiting the town I spent the last days of my younger trip in, Shepparton, where I was humbled as a salesperson and walked up and down the sheep inhabited main street. This is… somewhat close to my real-life waking memories. I try to think of even one person I could visit there, and the one who comes to mind is the charming old lady Josephine, the only customer I feel I actually helped, getting her new bill put under the name she’d always chosen to use: Jo. And yet she was fairly old then, and that was 14 years ago.

Curiously enough — and this is the waking truth — last November I had a brief lucky few hours when I could’ve bought deep discount plane tickets for Qantas 100-year anniversary. I had a three week trip for two all queued up (for $1400!) yet ultimately we decided that even that wasn’t quite low enough for us, what with food and lodging too. I’d quite forgotten about that untaken chance… today would’ve been about when we flew back.

Categories
Glot

The Big Summer Trip

Otherwise known as the Big Summer Trip that Never Was. Just didn’t pan out, what with being unemployed and gas prices topping over $4.50. It being fall, seems like this summer’s trip probably won’t happen. I’ve been keeping notes, and we sure had some big plans. Mighty big plans…

View Planned Route

  1. Emperor Norton’s grave in Colma, for good luck
  2. Pick up Sigma 10-20mm lens from BorrowLenses.com in San Mateo
  3. Winchester Mystery House
  4. visit Jenna in Monterey
  5. Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno
  6. Amargosa Opera House
  7. Airplane graveyards of the Mojave
  8. The Museum of Jurassic Technology
  9. Homepie in Palm Springs
    • abandoned water park on Edom Hill
    • my old house, high school, Desert Memorial Cemetery, other nostalgia
    • old friend Angela Kinley (if I can find her)
  10. Desert Center CA, with Llamas and palm tree geometry
  11. shore of the Salton Sea
  12. Salvation Mountain
  13. Mexico! Because we can!
  14. Cabazon Dinosaurs (on way back)

Sigh. Maybe in a better year I’ll come and visit this little post o’ mine and negotiate my way back to an awesome trip. It’s not as we’ve never pulled this sorta thing off before. Better luck next time.