Tag: video game

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Dream Journal

Multi-level Video Game, plus NYC, lots of Bright Light Too

Under summery outdoor awnings in a backyard, I wait at a bench examining a pair of eyeglasses on the table there. They remind me of Plarvolia’s. Sure enough, I see her return with a group and I immediately get up to leave, assuming I must be near her chair. I expect neither of us want to see each other. I briefly make eye contact and nod in acknowledgement though, which feels assertive.

In a video game level, while escaping while chased by a gargantuan monster, I under a huge turning waterwheel. It has a strange double mechanism which rotates the wheel at the same time an arm sways the against/away the wall of the pool it’s in. Good to see the monster frustrated while I simply sit and chill.

The video game proceeds. An underwater level of a brightly colored colored mall where I discover an exploit of passing through the sunroof. This adds more time on the breath meter than it should, much more. I can gather pile of trinket loot, handfuls of rings. I go back a second time and find a room with a white abstract sculptural mechanism which activates a boss fight; with the breathing bonus it’s actually quite easy.

In our solarium I discover that my wife and I own a “paper wasp” tree which is quite large. It’s in a huge pot and obviously been there quite awhile. Probably quite valuable considering it’s rarity and development. Beautiful thing too, with delicate papery-textured bark and exotic foliage. I notice while I’m watering it that over time the trunk has curled spiral-like at the base, continually reaching for the nearest lighted window. I gaze out from the glass balcony at the evening skyline of a big city (New York I think) and chuckle, realizing that perhaps the tree isn’t so perfectly valuable as first thought.

Later, my wife is selling an old electronic toy of mine. To our surprise it’s neither a PlayStation 2 or 3, but a famed PlayStation 2.5. This is rare find and should be quite a rewarding sell.

I stand atop a tall square brick tower in a public pool in NYC with a few other people. It topples with us on it, cascading into the wave pool and shoreline. There was previously a different option we chose not to take. It turns out that, instead of being on the tower, we would’ve had to turn a spigot or something. I remember looking across the street at urban multistory residences, sparser than one might hope. Those unlucky enough have to put up with this noise every day. Not that it inspires me to be quieter.

I drag myself up to the beach and notice my wife (who is very young in this instance) masturbating on the seashore facing away from the water, toward some men. She stops as I approach. The men walk away up a ramp. I have to gather my hat, sandals, etc before I leave up the same slope. Near the base of the ramp entrance, my parents are standing — my parents in this dream anyway. They’re unhelpful and neglect to tell me that my stuff is right at the base near them.

I’m in the final levels of an urban maze: interior courtyards, themed shops with neon signs (back from the video game setting earlier perhaps) hidden back areas. I’m tracing my steps back from earlier levels I played here (near where the big monster chased me onto the waterwheel). I flip through dense layers of arranged material making up a packed sewing & fabric store which spans two floors. The courtyard it’s in is highly angular, irregular overhanging floors with empty residential windows lining it. The exit of the courtyard it’s so out of scale it feels like a corner drain. Along the next progression towards back where I started, I take a side track up old-timey wooden stairs to an unassuming door. Somehow reminds me of one that might bring to a psychic reader. But this one goes to more back rooms.

Within, past a small valley and up a hill there (bit like a Appalachian holler), I visit a community that played an interesting role in the Yugoslav war. The single small venue in town was a cafe with a split part of the building open to the street. The front window became a performance stage, with people gathering on the street outside for what became rock festivals. This may have been a loophole for some law against public rock music performances. The cafe now is a popular “quiet cafe”. I watch a commercial for it where a scruffy looking guy puts on a headset and starts blathering on a work call. The entire cafe unanimously shushes him, going around the room as he tries to turn a different direction.

One last image, which I didn’t properly jot down but which was my hypnopompic cue: an unfinished structure built of colored columns, open to the elements, set amid parkland, jauntily angled to the street. I meet someone there as arranged.

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Dream Journal

Creepy Emptied Home, Corridor with Vacuums

In the back of my apartment, my studio has partially cleaned out. I can see into the kitchen where the walls are similarly blank, a creepy and almost eerie emptiness compared to how I normally exist in that space. Plywood panels are exposed on some of the walls, and I keep looking down at my feet when I notice rugs missing.

Searching throughout the house for a mysterious electrical issue, perhaps a circuit with vacuums running. I go into is a long hexagonal corridor, shorter vertically than wide, a place I was before. It feels like a 70s sci-fi inspired space, perhaps themed a similar aesthetic as Disneyland’s Space Mountain. Nothing like it can be found in my waking home. My dad and I together open a door at one end of the corridor which goes beyond to another, where there are in fact **three** vacuums running. This further corridor has the feeling of a dusused old European aristocratic space, some forgotten fad from hundreds of years ago. There are no lights, and the darkness stretches into the unseen distance. Back in the first corridor there are video screens and I settle down to rest. The one in front of me is playing The Last Starfighter, thinking to myself “I’ll sit here until I can be useful again”.

Trying to convince a young couple (maybe some new people I met, Yune and Brook) to vote in favor of a new bridge. Specifically a proposed thin pedestrian path in SF that would join alongside a large existing car bridge, allowing passage when traffic is bad. I don’t recall why I was in favor, but this part of the dream is more vague than the rest. Less imagery perhaps.

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Dream Journal

Dragon Loot & New Logo

Setting is somewhere in the Warcraft universe. Perhaps Azeroth, maybe not. After you defeat the dragon queen Alexstraza, you collect her dropped loot from the lake. I’m staying there and “camping” the same loot over and over, but not for greedy reasons — there’s some kind of glitch that happens when high level loot gets collected by low level players. The thinking goes, I can distribute it myself if any happen to show up (none so far though).

The devs have changed the name of the Horde and now I’m inspecting the new logo, which is a paw print wrapped with a banner, with the name underneath: “Congress”. Takes me a minute to process their intended meaning as just “a gathering”. Terrible name choice. Plus the thing makes the horde look like a bunch of furries.

On waking, I have an advertising jingle from the album Music For Biscuits in my mind: Luxol by Mike & Sammes Singers. It was used on an old Radio Unpronounceable, the Olympics episode, once upon a time…

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Dream Journal

Retro Store, Tree Sacredness: Zinka

[ Zinka is a name that pops into my head during the process of remembering and trying to sort though the night’s dreams. I’ve been having difficulty motivating myself to write and publish them, as my own obligations have grown tiresome. I manage to both remember, write them down, and publish them. A noble effort I hope. ]

The landlord next door has cut down a tall tree with a chainsaw, piece by piece. All that’s left is a tuft at top. There must’ve been some city order as my landlord also just chopped down some plant cover.

By chance, I come across a new Amoeba records location. They’ve relocated it into a janky space that used to be Aquarius Records. Hand-painted artfully decaying banners hang over different sections of the store. Bins of music are stacked on retro acrylic shelving. Something about it is like the original GAP store on Ocean avenue in SF (though it was long before my time). They kept the bohemian charm but increased all the prices for the bourgeoisie. Reminds me of New York City in a way. As I’m coming round a corner, over a metal railing, I chance on the beginning of a three-way in hot tub. The two guys never see me, but I almost make eye contact with the girl — which feels intrusive, though I never get a bad vibe. I coolly direct my attention elsewhere, but know that whoever she is, she knows I saw everything.

I’m stand near a steep dirt-sided cliff, in the vicinity of a sacred tree. As it happens, a line of witches is coming back from a ritual and has to make their way up the hill. For a moment I worry I shouldn’t be there, but just as quick I’m able to do a random good deed by helping give a hand up the scrabble-y slope. The witches realize this is passing chance, but I earn their favor nonetheless. Smiles of many women.

In the retro store I find a vintage two-button Tetris game device in a plastic case. It’s quite fun to play around with, though you have to smoosh your fingers hard to actuate it. I write a note in pen for the person it belongs to, thanking them, when they hopefully find it again where I left it as found.

Short stumps of trees skid across long patches of dry grass, among sparse trees of a forest gulch. I realize people are whipping them with some degree of skill, making them seem to jolt across the landscape. The whips are long and it’s difficult to imagine how quick they must move.

Visiting one of my family member’s who’s living in my old college dorm, maybe my dad and/or my brother. He mostly sits at the computer in one room while I’m there. He’s divorced now, and I’m a bit irritated to discover that he’s using up all my candles. Not even enjoying them, just forgetting to put them out. I peek in bathroom mirror (I seem to almost get confused or lucid; can’t remember now why this detail was important). Outside, near the lawn and the parking lot, no one seems to notice the clear tube coming from the dorm’s window — though big enough it’s for multiple people to slide down. I look for a moment into a basement stairwell, which my family person has been down to the first level. I knowing there are actually three floors there. And not used for anything pleasant. I have the fortitude to go all the way down, but I have the sense not to desire to.

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Dream Journal

Spelunk into Demo Space

Wandering at the terminus of a rainy street, the edge of a neighborhood I don’t visit often anymore. Looking to see a movie there, unusual for me at this hour. There’s a premiere or re-release of some culturally important film (y’know, Jurassic Park just had it’s 30th). I’m leaning toward choosing the chain cinema, nestled in a dark alley with its line of pinpoint bulbs glaring in the night. I don’t want to choose the wrong place for the sake of the kids around here — this movie seems to be having a moment in youth culture. I want to avoid disappointing them, and also avoid getting shivved.

A naked pet rat (one I can’t recognize in retrospect) the next in our lineage after Xolito. A chubby cute older little bugger, with a port wine stain on the side of his stomach. Went by the cute name of Spool.

Old Man So-and-So has a horse pasture next to the town river. Flat little idyllic island, it was. The old farmer has worked skillfully to get the flowing nearby water still enough, but it happens that there’s a certain stillness that horses find provocative. They’ll horses try to flatten it with their hooves and jump in, maybe thinking it’s a puddle. This time the horses swim to a rocky outcrop with waves cresting just over it.

Falling into an elaborate funeral structure (I think of it like a palace tomb) that is accessible by falling through from a graveyard. Reminds me of a creepy spelunking cave I heard about in Australia called The Shaft — where divers are easily disoriented. Come to think of it, it’s also located in some farmer’s horse paddock. But this strangely expansive and elaborate artificial cavern is a demonstration space left by the developers. Developers of whatever video game is the reality I’m inside. I remember a long curved Wall with unique frames, each of which holds a preserved doll that was once alive. Inside a cubic hollow I observe renderings of 3D shapes which change their shading logic as a move my viewpoint side-to-side. I seem to remember a redwood Grand Hall that I step outside, looking up through openings at its immense spiral stairway.

Harder to finish these as there wasn’t as strong a story as some dreams from past week. But focusing on them as I go to bed brought strange feelings of familiarity, other dreams I know I’ve written but that weren’t “finished” with publication. Those are harder to search through.

There was one, where I may have been living in a trailer somewhere tropical, behind a picket fence, defending my home and community…

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Dream Journal

Doing Nothing, Variations

In a shared closet passing in-between rooms I discover a few very cute baby rats. It’s in a house that resembles my childhood home, making this my parent’s master bedroom closet.

I go to search for my buzz razor. My sister Alia is using it to cut her hair in the hallway using a mirror. I know better than to interrupt something like that. Still the same house.

Leaving a hotel, while our arms are full of travel gear, my wife decides she wants to check out the inside of a specific hotel room. She jimmies open the lock and saunters around, proceeding to lie down on a bed. We’re spending a little too long and I start to get worried that she’ll fall asleep, and begin complaining to her. I’m starting to suspect that there’s more to her motives than mere idle curiosity.

Map-based naval video game where the strategy to advance is unclear. A long featureless coast with a small inland lagoon. Beach waves endlessly repeating. Patiently, I expend a disgraceful time not doing much in the game. Not particularly minding, either. I don’t notice the blocks of cash at southeast corner until after I exit the map, immediately realizing that was probably the way to win.

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Dream Journal

Replaying

Replaying the same video game level repeatedly. It’s a military campaign, like a map from Command & Conquer. Re-learning with each failure, avoiding certain areas. The only way to win is to fail — repeatedly.

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Dream Journal

Ice Spiral Tower; Dating Over Different Backyards

A mood detector and translator — for guinea pigs — beeps out “cunt! fucker! safety! what’s that!? over there!” Seems surprisingly accurate, though I’m not able to spell out how exactly (you’ll have to use your imagination, dear reader) but now I’m annoyed that I know for certain how easy it is for me to pick up a guinea pig wrong and irritate it. Wish I didn’t know, actually…

A clothesline of skulls and other bones stretches across the city towards Plarvolia — for artistic purposes. As I gather some bones, I realize they may be only enough to fill a single transported line, rather than the usual convoy that she typically sets it up for. Perhaps enough to fill a single box.

Within a photorealistic video game universe, I ascend the long spiraling ramp of an icey tower. Proves very easy for me; perhaps I’ve trod this path before. As I climb higher I hear the voices of a pair of Native American brothers discussing money that I owe them. I keep navigating up and up, like a vertical glacier. At the top of the tower I discover a metal statue with jewels scattered about its base that resemble Infinity Stones. I pay them no mind. Instead, I focus on collecting small horse-shaped carved figurines from nearby stair alcoves, ignoring the “main objective” of the statue and jewels. Winning is not my priority, as it was never my objective, though certainly someone else’s.

For the first time now, I utilize my ability to flash between scenes (similar to fast travel in other video games). An sudden shift in scenery transports me from the straight garden pathway of a 1920s-era California country estate to a bright 2-story orphanage full of white, sunny windows. In this level of the game’s story it’s where I am being raised. But there are also multiple Home Alone-style criminal adult baddies who are chased me, hiding like the guards in Legend of the Hidden Temple. When they catch me it resets, and I attempt again to navigate through or around the ground floor rooms.

I find myself dating multiple girls, a situation that began around the same time. I effortlessly carry on multiple conversations, often switching from one person to another in the next room. Remarkably, I can recall each girl’s recent stories and seamlessly pick up where we left off when I encounter a different girl. These interactions take place in a narrow, unremarkable communal space, divided by wooden fences into backyards that are a dull blue and translucent in tone. It’s somehow based on the design of my childhood bedroom? Hm. During a barbecue, I access hidden panels where I keep stored equipment for certain occasions. Despite the complexity of juggling multiple relationships, I’m doing quite well.

Over a fence, I join a conversation about young Australians who have developed a new casual tense of their own invention. This isn’t just slang either, but genuine emergent grammatical innovation. I note that this has happened like three times now in my life. I observe that these kids find the demands of formality-entrenched work culture to be at odds with their Aussie attitudes, leading them to develop a new way of communicating with customers in their teenage retail jobs. This inevitably leads to the absorption of this new casual lingo into formal expectations though, necessitating yet newer forms of casual lingo. And so the treadmill marches on…

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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

Too Much Waiting, Not Enough Double Dream Cartoons

While the video game WarCraft 2 used flat 2-D sprites, the years-older “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans” (WarCraft 1) used a grab-bag of early 3-D tricks. I’m finally playing it and oddly, though the game is very basic, it’s more intriguing to discern the clever workarounds they came up with long ago. Pleasingly retro, as well. (Standing in front of my fridge yesterday I randomly appreciated the deep lore they were able to produce in those games, simply by creating the series for so long.)

When my Uncle John is frustrated about having to move, I’m able to share an anecdote about how, when the show wrapped, the sets for “Seinfeld” were almost immediately converted for use on the show “Friends” (I learned this yesterday; it was actually Full House)

Waiting on my motorcycle at a left turn signal. I leave, crossing to the sidewalk when I realize how long I’ve waited. Suddenly I realize it’s essentially just abandoned in a traffic lane now. Going back, I see I even left the key in the ignition. The back compartment must be repacked now (of course it does). I rejigger the back case’s mounting plate and straps, all while standing in front of a line of unusually patient cars also still waiting to turn left.

I’ve been fiddling with nose ring intermittently for most of the dream. It finally splits near the tip, coming off in my fingers just as I realize how long I’ve been fiddling. Still, it seems like it should be able to fit again, but the gauge at the break is inconveniently flat instead of round. It won’t fit in the piercing hole, and repairing something that stays in my skin seems like a non-starter.

In a jaunty Nickelodeon-style kids cartoon, one friend has fallen asleep in the shower. As his friend, and sensing an opportunity for mischief, I hide in the shower drain. Since my friend doesn’t wake up I start saying odd things in an affected strange voice, which reverberates through the drain pipe. Zooming into his dream I appear there as a semi-distorted subway announcer — ignored, as most subway train announcements usually are. I notice other characters from our cartoon have been animated in his dream as more realistic adult humans — stylized and shapely enough to evoke sexual lust, innocently but not incidentally. Rule 34 on hot double-dreamt cartoons.