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Dream Journal

First to Arrive in India, Drip Basket in Back Room

Travel to India. I’m the first to arrive and start figuring out the Airbnb, which is like a drained indoor pool with a shallow ceiling. The feeling of being outside, looking at the totally different architecture and streetscape, thinking about all the humans who made it (and it being a whole different society) is memorable. Trippy even. We are asked for our passports and realize we didn’t even have them on the packing list. Luckily, I find mine — and two more I didn’t intend to pack — in the sunglasses pocket of my wife’s backpack.

Laying in bed with my wife and suddenly get the urge to have sex. Somehow know what to do with the right timing to get it really nice.

I lay out a receipt for my friend Dara to sign. Some kind of reimbursement from 2017, in the period we were broken up and didn’t talk to each other. It’s next to another similar receipt for my neighbor friends the Goldies.

At the same time, the mother/daughter pair are sleeping in the back room of my apartment. Birds are playing outside the back window. A water dripper designed to be calming streams down into a wicker basket above their heads. It’s a bit too fast and I keep trying to figure how to slow it down, with no success.

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Dream Journal

A Spillway of Colonnades

Sliding down a long wide slope of water, riding a boogie board attached by rope to a remote-controlled motor. Meet my brother at the bottom of this spillway and we talk about how fun yet frightening it is. The water is startlingly deep and dark for a pool despite civilized touches, like the pleasant collonade at water’s edge.

I’m with a subby girl who might be a satanist. She has a distinct, plump shape and is usually seen intently talking with her boyfriend (also a satanist). It’s clear she has a keen interest in murder, perhaps even a fetish for being murdered. (Probably derived from the Silicon Valley characters Gilfoyle and his girlfriend Tara, who I just learned were also satanists.) There is an acknowledged creepiness to this, and I do worry about being drawn into it or even blamed somehow.

Off to the side of the vast slide area is an anteroom, part of a museum. The cases have a display of California coins you can leaf through. I knew that before the Federal Reserve Bank, states used to mint their own currency. But I never thought to check before.

My tenth grade English teacher Mrs. Roos assigns homework: the paperwork they give you to fill out when checking in to the mental ward. The forms are oversized to be able to read it, copied from real materials but structured like every other generic homework assignment. Supposedly this is too help us understand what a character in our book I going through when she goes to the mental ward. I approach Mrs. Roos in what can only be described as a sanctum; darkened archways, candles, burnt offerings. I explain playfully but confidingly that I might skip the exercise, even deserve extra credit — you see, I once filled out these forms myself at the mental ward. How better to relate to the character than to have had to same experience?

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Dream Journal

Deep Dark Aquarium, Safe Again

Doing maintenance on a giant aquarium tank of mine, as tall as a two story building. I’ve nurtured it over years into a careful ecosystem. All the animals are fairly small for the size of the tank, nothing larger than the size of my hand perhaps. Most of them seem like they could be Paleozoic types, including some lateral swimming worms like Pikaia. The tank stays very dark and dim, making things intensely immersive when I dive to the bottom. I immediately notice there are fewer critters to be seen than usual. I’ve had it long enough that this has happened before and bounced back fine, but it is something worthy of concern.

On the way back down another time I notice and investigate my ability to breathe underwater. I realize it’s something I normally should only be able to do in dreams — it occurs to me that I could be dreaming of my tank, which isn’t exactly correct. Regardless, the realization does not increase lucidity.

Something about a jar for my friend Spanky with a yellow top. I recently did some home renovation for him.

Last part of the dream is about a thin yellow beetle that is accidentally released into my vulnerable aquarium biome. I’m greatly concerned, as it could tip off the kind of invasion that’d be devastating (especially to the creepy-crawly detrivores and roots in the dirt) especially now in it’s fragile state. I’m methodical though, and several people are enlisted to help. It’s caught with a bit of fanfare and exasperated relief.

[The event reminds me of a real story I heard of hundreds of oil company personnel paid to catch a single mouse on Barrow Island off the coast of Australia.]

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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

Motorbikes, and the Bays of Australia

Have to retrieve my motorcycle from a public classroom (or small compound) where my old nemesis — well, former friend/boss — Chicken John is in charge. Red dusty walls, open entryways, stalls where kids learn. I try to be as quick and discreet as possible but we still exchange an unfriendly glance. Outside I have a bit of difficulty getting the kickstand down, and balanced, but leave the motorbike in a good location against a short retaining wall with line of shrubbery.

The compound is on on high ground above distant water. I survey the different bays of Australia, noting how their unique shapes have affected the developing character of their cities. Canter Bay is the one where I now am, the smallest, hanging out on a chunky narrow little peninsula near the water in Melbourne. From here my friends and I can view the ocean and the harbor going around, chatting and having a lovely time together. One of the people with me is a female singer of some fame; perhaps it might’ve even been the great opera diva Nelly Melba.

From out of the foggy ocean horizon I spot a stubby battered-looking orange military transport plane heading north to the compound visited earlier. I declare “oh that’d be our ride, time to get back.” A pallet of two motorcycles arrive delivered by tow truck, but there’s been a miscommunication: my wife can only ride a bicycle. This makes our time to get back quite tight. I offer to haul her on the bike on the trailer but my bike’s folding safety-yellow hitch extender just barely doesn’t reach. Instead, I kindly offer to go get her helmet and protective gear from outside the compound. I really out of view as I speed off to fetch them.

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Dream Journal

Lakeside Hot Tub Boat

Fancy hotel on a lake’s edge. I’m walking along a narrow cement wall just at the level of the water. In a lakeside dip rests a sunken boat made into a hot tub, snooty-fancy (yet friendly) folks hanging out in it. Boat actually crashed there ages ago and has been worked into the design.


Going into small men’s locker room a half hour before closing, while no one else is there. Can’t find my own locker because there aren’t enough graffiti scratches on it.

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Dream Journal

Thriving African Village

An African village has traded part of its water rights to a group of foreign investors. I dip a hand in murky light brown water off the side of a canoe as I come upon a hut at the edge of their traditional lakeside fishing grounds. The lake contains petroleum that no one has figured out how to extract, but I gather this partially explains the investors interest. Beyond the hut, I’m shown a beautifully restored, wide, gurgling river, bountiful with wildlife including hippos and cranes. In the distance, I see the narrow cliffside dirt road that is the only access in or out for travelers.