Categories
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.

Categories
Dream Journal

Wizard Camp & Ephemera

I’m a servant on an expedition somewhere reminiscent of Egypt. I am enlisted as an unplanned mediator between leaders of the expedition when they can’t reach an agreement. It’s my wizard friend Devin Person and some fancy Cleopatra-esque girl. The setting is like a Burning Man camp or an Arab Bedouin tent. We’ve set up a shade structure, the corners piled with throw pillows. There’s difficulty figuring out where to put the camp’s garbage can full of nitrous chargers. When they do their nitrous ritual, there’s a special mantra people are supposed to say; it’s inscribed on a plaque on the wall. I’m not really looking forward to hosting people.


In my hometown family room. A foil musical record is kept in a locked metal closet. There’s a love note from an acquaintance, Lydia, to her husband Paul da Plumber discovered in outer sleeve cover of photo album.

Review for Flora Grubb, perhaps Flora Grubb’s relative with the same last name.

Sailor Moon’s design, or redesign, focused around big boobs.

Practicing my long synthesizer keyboard in the garage, the keys can be early lifted off. That’s how I discover that they are for some reason wider, as I lift one up, turn it around, and compare its size directly to the beautiful antique piano with gold autumnal inlaid keys.

Categories
Dream Journal

Mini-Nations, School of Darkness

After a ritualized intellectual struggle, my Grand Wizard-King makes me the new king of a nation — a miniature, room-sized nation. It’s one of many, their near-microscopic humans living along various sub-scales, together in a quiet, darkened school building. My former gathered rivals don’t quite yet realize I’m the victor of our contest, but my first act is to free a rival agent (who looks like Odo from Deep Space 9). Walking away from this act, I deem that I will remember this all better if I can remember my full official title — yet I don’t know if ever got one, or the name of the place, which I find odd.

A group of similarly-sized Asian girls outside a Walmart in my hometown, part of some formal gathering. All with sharply cut dresses and fancy hairstyles. Their backs are turned to me and I try to locate my middle-school friend Jimil by her ponytail. The girl I find turns out to be an assassin and duelist, one from a rival tiny nation I’ve never heard of (down a set of stairs, called something like “the Lowlands Suzerainty”). I’m able to defeat her by luring her up a puzzle-like jungle gym climbing sculpture. A worthy opponent.

In the broader expanse of the nighttime school building, I explore what I suspect is the top floor. It houses a school admin office, the window overlooking to a flat dark roof. The space, even at normal scale, is smaller than I expect.

In a classroom nearby, rows of us sit in plastic chairs while a guest presenter lectures with slides on the nefarious points of being evil. I sit next to my homepie friend Mickey, and together we make excellent snark. Finally Mickey breaks in on the drone with a critical observation critiquing the talk’s contents. When he finishes I’m ready to put in my own take, reframing and reiterating his points. To my satisfaction and surprise my friend Chloe, sitting in another row, jumps in with a full accusation.

“Science in Action” is Chloe’s stated theory about this year (I at first incorrectly think she means 2016, but no, definitely 2020). From prior experience she’s familiar with how cults sometimes take over a classroom and perform fucked up experiments to prove their faith — ostensibly to prove it outsiders. She carries on, homing in on how the evil badassery this cult/school espouses is negated with their actions, epitomized by us being there to even listen to them. She absolutely nails it.


Music in my head on waking: Death Waltz, U.N. Owen Was Her, a midi version