Tag: zoo

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Dream Journal

Roman Bricks, Zoo Friend Desk

Walking along a seaside path of ancient bricks made in the ancient city of Manchester. The bricks were cast in prehistory, but completely removed, sifted, and replaced in Roman times. As an archaeologist this makes me sad (so much we could’ve learned) but at least the bricks are still there. Grass grows through them, the sky is dark and overcast, and salt spray is in the air, but it’s peaceful and quiet.

A Volkswagen drives up to a sphere at a turn-off of the brick road. It dumps bricks on the family car parked there. This is some family trip with my mom and dad, I delay us by having to stow my cases of cherry soda under the table in the RV.

To enter Cleveland zoo — or Columbus? — you pass through a short-walled entrance into an enclosure with loose animals that might attack you, leopards, gorillas. The next area for guests is large and open, with tacky safari décor, but everyone immediately gets in a line to wait. We eventually get to the line’s front at the zoo assistant desk. The counter person is our friend Chloe. I don’t think we’ve met her before in this dream, but we can be openly friendly and she shows us a special brochure the attendants keep under the desk. She flips through the pages speedily — some seem to have explicit diagrams comparing animal mating vs. human mating. I comment on how cool this is, but only get a “hey, keep it down” expression in reply. Chloe then pointedly resumes the default assistant-guest script.

Atop a hill or ridge I dig through a trash pile against a short cinderblock corner wall. It’s mostly nice lightly-used furniture since it’s so close to a new upscale development. The impersonal row of buildings looms over the narrow plateau; I head over. It gets very quiet as I approach the hotel. The café’s gimmick is serving a bowl of big beans with a big spoon. A charismatic shyster tries to use NLP on me while I eat, but doesn’t say give me anything I want to open up for. I end up trying to give him an empathy lesson instead.

In a different time, a different dream but a similar hill, I gaze out on a hillside toward a stepped stadium, and the dusty hill leading down to it. I put my motorcycle boots on to leave.

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Dream Journal

Family of Church-Neighbors, Destroyed

An abandoned pioneer-era church at edge of the freeway in my hometown, a place I’ve explored in a dream at least once before, in the form of a small kid. My wife and I are able to explore it a bit — but some family has built their home right against it, with big windows facing the rustic interior. They threaten us, accusing us of trespassing, and in impulsive righteousness I use special powers to electrocute them. My wife does the same, wiping out this entitled family who constructed their modern ritzy hellhole against sacred ground. As we leave, my wife points out a security camera DVR — I fry it to hell, too. I note the time I wake up from this dream as exactly 4:44 am.

In Disneyland, I sneak up a narrow obscure trench up the side of a hill. From my vantage, I can see broad open walking areas where people mill about, fairytale mountains seeming more like Middle-Earth than The Matterhorn. I reach the top and can see through a triangular gap into an exhibit of animals — gorillas, flamingoes, perfectly sculpted fake natural surrounds. As I lie prone in the small area where I can peek, I realize the park staff must somehow know I’m here — so many security cams, so much well-preened presentation. But they let me gaze secretively nonetheless, enjoying a view someone, sometime must’ve made on purpose.

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Dream Journal

Midnight Menagerie, Starfish Swansong

extracted cut-out collage artwork from album cover

Donald Trump’s existence suggests an axiom: the higher the getting, the bigger the dark side.

Being hosted at some guy’s elaborately-decorated stylish apartment, white walls and expensive décor, a congenial upper-middle class bougie gay dude. He gives up his bedroom per my request. In the middle of the night I’m awoken and think I’m being visited by a group of raccoons, but it turns out to just be a few of his cats.

Later, I think it’s happening again so I stay asleep. Yet slowly I realize that in the bedroom with me are a whole menagerie of apes, macaques, zebra, even a giraffe maybe. This is his personal zoo, something he acts like I should be impressed with, while he himself acts nonchalant. It is (I admit) bizarre and impressive. Doubly so with the apartment’s trendy Instagrammable Pinterest-y surroundings.

(This is midpoint of my night’s dreams, which I remember when I wake up earlier in the night — for real — with some insight into my own progressed technique into the writing of dreams. Yet I still don’t wake up to take notes on it, worried I might not get back to sleep…)

In the classroom of a middle school, which feels near the coastal location of my University. I’m my current age, hanging out in bookshelves behind the rows of desks observing class, but I pop in occasionally, keeping tabs on the teacher and mingling with students.

A class lesson: “what’s wrong with this cream cheese recipe?” I personally think they added lemon juice, or didn’t use real cheese. Moving past, the teacher calls on me, somewhat jokingly. Nose in a textbook, I respond mispronouncing ‘book’ like ‘boooook’. She responds in the same joking tone that we’ll name our next lesson’s monster “Orin”.

I abruptly notice that a green starfish kid in the front row has suddenly developed injuries consistent with exposure to a contagion we studied in class. Teacher has also noticed but is playing it off so as not to alarm the students; I don’t do so well hiding it. We help get the student out. Afterwards I take time reflecting on it in the bookshelves.

I return just a bit later, but class appears to be over for that year. Instead, the room is occupied by a choral group of young kids, 4-6 years old, in flowing robes with hoods, singing what could be a Buddhist funeral dirge. Their parents wait behind them to take them home, some breaking down crying. It’s obvious the starfish kid didn’t make it.

Jolted, reminded of life’s brevity, I set aside time to enjoy hanging out with one particular girl I like who reminds me of a fun redhead I knew in high school — Sam Promenchenkel. She’s quite taller than me; my head reaches just under her armpit. With a group we stroll along a stepped boardwalk away from the school. On the way I’m goaded into doing a scooter trick up some stairs, and manage to leap all the way to the second-to-last step, where I do a little bounce and make it all the way up.

My cousin Betty is with our group, skipping away ahead of us toward her wife. She seems so happy and excited, I’m very happy for her, though I watch her get further and further away.

We get to the ocean and do tricks leaping into the surf on scooters. Someone brings up how left-brain-focused people will typically veer to the left and miss their mark on the waves. We practice crossing our eyes, water streams squirting from our pupils, trying to get the streams to meet where we want.

Music in my head upon waking:

Heartsrevolution – Heart vs The Machine
Architecture in Helsinki – Heart It Races
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Dream Journal

Wings Over A Closed Amusement Fortress

My third grade crush and her kids run into me selling wares at a craft fair. It’s the pandemic so I can’t touch anything to help them pick something out, but her small kid manages to find a very special item. I take the opportunity to sell it to her at a discount and I’m overjoyed to have reconnected and, somehow, closed the circle from when I bought her chocolates on Valentine’s day — back in third grade.

Amusement park is closing soon. They don’t kick you out, they just close all the exhibits one by one. Left almost alone in a vast fortress-like space, wooden piles driven into the ground separating rare bird enclosures and such. Like a zoo, but oddly not centered on the animals.

I conspire with Mickey in a small bathroom, but it takes a long time to convince each other of our plan. We leave across a wooden drawbridge, hanging out with shady night-time mob characters in a room like a movie-theater lobby across the way. The theater seats are often moved back and forth, front to back, per the command of an authoritative fit woman at the front (reminds me of a muscular yoga teacher I had in college).

Constructing an ersatz set of wings, I launch off the side of a tall, steep, rocky cliff. The kids I’m with think I can’t do it, but I know I can, my arms are just skinny and I’m nerdy (I’m like Billy the blue Power Ranger). Soon, I fly away from the all-too-3D cliff and over wooden bridge — possibly the same drawbridge I crossed with Mickey earlier.

Woke up in bed at my wife’s dad’s house. I didn’t think I remembered any dreams, then I remembered there was a good significant one in the middle of the night. That was the one with my third grade crush, and everything flowed naturally after letting go while focusing on them.

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Dream Journal

Out-of-Aquarium Fish, Psychic Baby Moment

At my kitchen table, the fish are swimming outside of the aquarium. Classic dream image for me. One fish bullies another into synchronizing their movements, which is entrancing to watch. From out of the aquarium, I lift out a curved plastic support to help a baby turtle out of it — a tiny little miracle which gradually coalesced from particles shed by the fish.

While I’m flying surveying a wide cul-de-sac, I watch as a rabid giraffe stampedes across driveways, a dilophosaurus one of its victims. Like a whole zoo went awry.

In another dream, I am introduced to a tousled black-haired baby, and lay my head on it. The longer I lay there, the stronger I feel the familiar feeling of a psychic link — the same feeling you get looking into directly into someone’s eyes. I pull back suddenly, startled by how strong this feeling is.

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Dream Journal

Fan Dads! at The Old Western Zoo

Fan Dads!Somewhere on vacation with Lynae, a specialty zoo with a quirky-healthy-family vibe, uniquely Mormon/Utah. We decide to go back a second day — something we’ve never done before. Get there late in the afternoon, so late I wonder if it’s still worth it. Paying admission is a long chore… exchanging coins for a donation slot, Lynae finally making change herself from the cash register, leaving notes on slips of paper for the individual drawers. There are some obvious indications of a seedy underbelly: repeated graffiti pieces and tags on the Old West log cabin facade (a consequence of being so far out on a country road), a hollowed-out warehouse across the street, where local teenagers congregate. I witness a bizarre and memorable instance of albino giraffes galloping through a dilapidated Fort Ord-like building of broken glass, rusty support columns, and families with young children.

We climb aboard a personal paddleboat-steamer-themed mini train and go through a set of swinging saloon doors. I immediately spot a few large folding knives in a water feature. I retrieve one (hey, free knives!) and it’s comically huge, the size of a sword, branded as ‘Bowie’ — not a Bowie knife, though. Turns out people have a habit of discarding their knives in this particular ride after they stab someone. Like I said: seedy underbelly.

I make my way out of the visitor areas of the park and access a back room with rows of rickety shelves, like a rural garden nursery, stacked with curious merchandise. They’re aging avocado water here for instance. Here I find what is certainly a unique marketing demographic: Fan Dads! That is, men of a certain age who enjoy working with all manner of circulation systems, professionally or as a hobby, who nurture a passion for controlling flow of hot/cold, water/air/oil, or rotational propulsion! I see a beautiful silhouette of myself testing one of these boy-toys, plumes of air or water billowing from my face. Of course I manage to tip over a weathered old shelf and just catch it before disaster strikes. Gah, the maintenance with this place! To be fair, I wasn’t supposed to be there.

I don’t know why I find Fan Dads inordinately hilarious, but… Fan Dads! I’ve been saying it in my head for like 2 hours. Fan Dads!