Films That My Mind Makes

OPD: NONSTOP

2011-12-20T23:57:00.000-08:00

rock fingers

2011-09-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

In a vast parking lot, stacks art work wrapped in paper all around. I am held prisoner, free to move around the space, but I can not leave. The parking lot is a cave, with big sandstone boulders jutting out of the walls. It is important that I escape, but to survive in the desert outside I need the paper to build fires. I am flummoxed as to how I will get the wrappings off, unnoticed. I find a large bundle, like packing material from inside a box, a big lump of crumpled paper. "I'm just going to take this to the trash," I tell a group of people. I'm not sure if they are prisoners or guards, but I am able to walk through a narrow split in the rocks into the sunshine. It is warm and dry outside. The landscape is a jumble of boulders with scraggly manzanita clinging to cracks in the rock.

I can see myself now. I am an older man* with a grey beard, long stringy hair and sun-baked skin. I'm dressed for this landscape in a worn cotton shirt, bluejeans and boots. I hear the others scrambling out of the cave after me, so I run at the rock face, jumping up from boulder to boulder until I am almost over the top. Two big, long rocks stick like fingers out of the side of the hill. They are thick like tree trunks and taper to ragged points. I leap at them, grabbing one in each hand so that I am strung between them, too far from the ground to drop and too far from the cliff face to get a foot hold. I hear a creak that turns to a big snapping crack and I wake up, disoriented.

*Incidentally, in waking, I think I looked a whole lot like Jeff Bridges in True Grit. I was just listening to an interview with him the other day, so he was in mind.

Grandfather Wolf

2011-09-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

Visiting my Grandfather's house, I discover that he now keeps a wolf. In the driveway nervously peering out from behind some bushes I see my childhood dog (a skittish, shy German Shepard mix). She skips out onto the pavement and immediately, the wolf appears from out of nowhere tearing at her at full speed and making this terrifying noise. She scrambles away around the corner of the house, just dodging the wolf's snapping jaws. After she's out of range he straightens up and trots calmly back across the pavement.

Again later I encounter the two in this same dance- she comes tentative, peering out for her chance to cross the dangerous territory. Convinced she's got an opportunity, she sneaks out into the open, but he sees her right away and leaps out after her. This time, she's just about to slide down under some thorny bushes when he catches her, pinning her to the ground with a bite to her neck. 300 feet away, I'm horrified, screaming. I hesitate to intervene, there is nothing I can do and I'm scared that I'll be attacked too.
The upset wakes me and my heart is racing.

spider bike

2011-04-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

My mother and I are entering a park on bicycles with a dog. We pass through the parking lot bordered by a low split rail fence and onto a wide dirt path into grassland. The dog is excited, loping back and forth in front of my mother's bike. Eventually we come to a divide in the path. Both directions are gravel strewn and steep enough that we will need to get off of our bikes and carry them. Having never gone down the path on the right, we choose to go that way, but reluctantly.

My bicycle has a heavier steel frame which I carry with difficulty, but with the dog tugging at my mother's arm we are both clumsy as we scramble up the hillside. Soon we've reached the crest of the hill and the trail goes steeply down. Somehow going downhill is even worse and we both fall, scraping our knees and elbows on the rocks, our bicycles stab into our flesh. The dog gets loose, and easily tumbles his way down to the bottom. I discover that the front wheel on my bike has gotten damaged, so I remove it in order to inspect it better once I reach the bottom of the hill.

At the bottom of the hill the trail ends abruptly in a single lane of asphalt. We are frustrated to discover that we've left the park entirely. Rather than retrace our steps over this hillside, we realize we will have to go all the way around the hill on the street. Angrily, I stop to see what can be done with my front wheel and I am dismayed to find that the rim has crumbled away in places and the rubber of the tire is riddled with long thin splits. At this point, I notice cobwebs in-between the spokes. I hold the wheel out away from my body as a thick, juicy black widow dangles free below it. Now that I've seen the first one, I realize that the whole wheel is alive with spiders, so I put it down on the ground and step back. Four, five, six spiders wobble off the spokes and into the dirt. The dog comes over to sniff at their bulbous black bodies.

We both are frightened by the spiders, but I shudder and brush frantically at myself hoping they're not crawling all over me too. Then we just stand there, pulling at the dog and worrying about where they came from and what to do about the bike. I didn't wake up at this point, but this scene faded away into some other scenario.

Boss lady and her dog

2011-04-05T22:15:00.000-07:00

Another dream from Ms. Danielle Peña:

I was on a road trip with friends. We were driving along a highway passing through northwest coast Redwood forest woodlands as the afternoon wanes into evening. It was getting late so we pull off the highway. Next to the highway is a bath house. It's dimly it inside and the blue-green light given off by the fluorescent bulbs is only magnified by the fact the tiles are the exact shade of blue-green. It's maze like, and I lose my companions inside.

After minutes of silent wandering and searching, I find a dog. It's dark brown, medium build, and starts in a slow trot down a hallway. Being as it's the only living thing I've seen since being separated from my friends, I follow it.

The dog turns a few corners and approaches a woman, who happens to be an old boss of mine. She scowls at me but seeing that I'm lost invites me over to her house. When we get outside my friends are waiting in the car, and I let them know about the invitation to my boss's house. I hop in the car and we follow her and her dog down the road. Almost immediately after crossing under the freeway and making a left we make a right into her driveway. It's a single story 1950's bungalow with a long sloping roof, once white with sea foam green trim but now dirty and decrepit.

Inside is similarly plain, musty and dimly it - with ancient crocheted quilts in yellowed yarn draped over most of the furniture. Dusty, lacy curtains fill all the windows in the house and filter the fading light of dusk into a dull beige. She offers us lemonade with ice cubes and my friends uncomfortably settle into the living room.

She motions for me to join her in the next room, and closes the door behind me. Everything in this room is quilted like the last, and there's a large, round-mirrored vanity along the wall to the right and a heavily quilted bed to its left. I catch my reflection and see just how much of my discomfort my body language conveys. She approaches me and pulls my hands around her hips.

Still holding my hands in place she forcibly kisses my neck - I feel child-like in my inability to resist or end what's happening. As she brings my right hand around to the front of her khakis and presses my hand along the length of her erection - I WAKE UP.

zoo canals

2011-04-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

I am out walking on the property where a cabin I use as a studio sits high up in the foothills above the Mohave desert. It is hot and dry, the ground is littered with sharp rocks. I find myself walking along a desert highway, down in the flat land in the wash of the valley. On the right there is a gate, and a dirt road leads out to the North of the road.

There is a large pool of water here, artificial like a reservoir. I see something red floating on the surface, so I get into the water and swim out to it. It appears to be an algae bloom- little foamy poofs of color in the dark, murky water. Now I see that there is some kind of fountain-like spout, a jet of red rising up ten feet or more above the water and scattering color on the surface. Satisfied, I swim away towards structures on the North side of the pond.

The structures are holding cages, apparently for a zoo. Blocks of concrete (the size of a cargo van) with many little hallows covered with iron-bar gates make up the cages, each block rising up out of the stagnant canal water. There are different animals crammed into too small spaces, dirty and derelict. Most look thin and ragged, and as I swim along past them I argue with myself about what the right thing to do is. Finally, I float up next to a small, dark, furry animal's cage and begin to pry open the door. Just as I reach in to pick up the animal, I wake up.

performance art

2011-03-22T22:09:00.000-07:00

Another dream from Ms. Danielle Peña:

I was at an art show opening with my boyfriend, it was a multi-room gallery space with art covering almost all the walls practically floor to ceiling, with even some ceiling covered!

I was there because a friend was doing a performance piece where she was dressed in a sort of goth baby doll dress outfit with patterned black stockings and reddish eye makeup. She was basically just sitting in the doorway of a room and blocking the way, but also ignoring everyone at the same time with a really moody look on her face. I have no idea what that even begins to mean artistically or otherwise - but here's when it REALLY gets weird:

My friend sees me (but makes no change in facial expression), and wordlessly, nonchalantly grabs my hand and leads me towards the wall. She finds a hidden knob and opens a tiny lopsided door about half the size of a regular door, if not smaller.
It leads to a small room (maybe 10'x12') with black walls and hanging red and black cloths.

She then takes off her dress to reveal a black satin corset accompanied by a black garter belt and no panties. She puts on a 'burglar' type mask and walks over to me.

As I kneel down in front of her, an erect penis emerges from her!

What really should one do when presented with this sort of situation? Go down on it, of course!
And that is what I did. And it was pretty fucking sexy.

Cut scene to later, I'm back with my boyfriend, but he seems a little uncomfortable - I'm supposing he's not too pleased I just went off and went down on a friend at an art show.
This is when I realize that my boyfriend is not my current boyfriend, but a guy in my study abroad class that I was sort of seeing but never actually had sex with - we just snuck out of the dorms a lot to make out late at night.
This is when dream me gets just about as uncomfortable as dream boyfriend!

twenty-two hours

2011-03-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

“If someone were to tell me I had twenty years left, and ask me how I'd like to spend them, I'd reply 'Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.'” -Luis Buñuel in his autobiography My Last Breath

working for Putin

2011-03-13T14:39:00.001-07:00

Back in Jan. I had a long, convoluted dream that ended in an industrial area under a highway overpass. My man and I were on a secret reconnaissance mission, working for some kind of underground rebel group. We'd been running for days and we were exhausted.

I got the impression that we were freedom fighters, the cause was good and lives needed saving- so the struggle was heroic. A contact was waiting for us in a big open industrial staging area under the freeway bridges - there were a few temporary buildings, lots of fencing and piles of different gravels. To the East a mountain of broken up concrete was piled up, bristling with ragged bits of rebar. He saw the contact first so he walked ahead to meet the man. It was Vladimir Putin. I don't know what they said to each other, but my body stiffened when I realized who it was we'd come to meet. I caught up to them, Putin turned to me and told me how proud they were to be working with my man, how he was the best in the field. I thought this was creepy, but it was all so confusing I just remained silent.

There was a noise. Without saying anything, we all three bolted in different directions. Putin disappeared behind a jumble of fencing off to the West. We made for the mountain of concrete, scrambling up and jumping from pile to pile. The mountain spread out following the path of the highway above us. We moved quickly, now astride each other a few hundred meters apart. Eventually the concrete pile ended high up above an empty freight train, coal cars backed up right to the edge of the pile. We jumped down into the first of these, the train began to roll and I woke up.

OPD: five boxes of fish

2011-02-22T14:15:00.000-08:00

Feb. 22, 2011 - another dream from Ms. Danielle Peña.

Last night was pretty interesting:
I was at some sort of sleep-away camp/center - like where organizations go for 'retreats' and to go do 'workshops' about 'teamwork.' It was nestled within a group of small hills, much like either the Oakland or Mariposa foothills - lots of oaks and shrubby, dry grassland. I was there with a group of about 20 people - either from my past, present, or future... they were all familiar to me, but their features and identities were blurred. At one point wandering around the complex I was talking to someone and they became very shocked and curious about my tongue piercing. In the dream I had a 10-gauge barbell with black glass spheres on either end going through the middle of my tongue. Having such a piercing was completely mundane to me (even though in the dream world it was done recently and still healing, the edges of the piercing were raw, as in they were rough, but only stung, didn't bleed) and was mildly annoyed at how much of a ruckus it was causing - the person had started to call others over to look at my tongue. I could feel myself clicking the top sphere against the back of my front teeth as a nervous tick... waiting for all the attention to be over with already.
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continue to next sequence...
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I was traveling within a subway system. I'm dressed in fancy, flowing egg-shell off white clothes as I have a very important appointment across town. It was very late at night so there were very few trains still running. I wanted the "O" train which runs directly to my destination, but it wasn't going to arrive for an hour or so. Instead, an "R" train pulls up - I glance at the grungy map on the white-tiled wall and see that the "R" will take me at least halfway to where I need to go, so I hop on.

This particular train is itself unusual; it is only one car (given the late time of night and therefore less passengers) but still it is about two-thirds full. Most people sit with their shoulders slouched forward with weariness, a young man bobs his head to the inaudible beat expressed through his over-ear headphones. I find a seat towards the front and the train lurches forward.

Arriving at the end of the 'R' line, I walk outside to gentle rain and open my umbrella. After a bit of walking I arrive at a round plaza about the size of a soccer field. It is entirely white marble, and many rectangular streams of water are cut in a labyrinthine pattern on either side of the central, bisecting walkway. The plaza itself is about twelve feet below street level, with a small platform leading from the sidewalk to an ornate curving staircase.

I approach the platform and peer over to the labyrinthine pattern. Each path of water is only about a foot deep, and ripples gently with the influence of a small spout pouring water from the level of the platform. I turn to go down the stairs but I am stopped by an omniscient presence that did not allow me to descend. It required me to organize five boxes of fishes - which at that moment appeared to my right, near the edge of the platform. The boxes ranged in size from the size of a tissue box to the size of a violin case. One was long, narrow, red and rectangular. Another was small and navy blue with square holes cut in the sides. Another was shaped like the skull of a blue whale, bone white and made of light, semi-translucent plastic. Each box contained various numbers and sizes and colors of fish - it was my assignment to organize them into the appropriate boxes. A small shower of water appears from above to provide the fish with a constant supply of oxygenated water, but it only can do so for up to two boxes at any given time, so I must continually rearrange the boxes so all the fish have adequate oxygen.

The first fish I pick up is a thin tropical fish, long and black with two blood red horizontal stripes on each side. Almost immediately it slips out of my hands, flies off the platform and plops into one of the paths of the water maze. The entire plaza (being white marble) is empty of all fish or other forms of life, so I can easily spot the fish I dropped from the platform. I make a note to fetch it later when the other fish are organized. I'm busy handling the other fish with more care than the first one when the omniscient voice (a little angrily this time) demands that I fetch the red and black fish immediately. I respond (telepathically) "Okay okay! just a minute no need to freak out! I don't mind going down and getting it!" I think of my fancy clothes and consider that I should remove them as not to get them soaking wet in the fountain. I'm just thinking about what boring underwear I had to wear (all white/beige as well) to accommodate the fact I was wearing fancy white clothes ...when I woke up.

Work-Related Dreams

2011-02-09T16:23:00.000-08:00

via SFMOMA : staff art show 2005 © Tammy Fortin

OPD: earthquakes, colossal squid & robo-velociraptors... in space

2011-01-12T16:43:00.001-08:00

January 12th, 2011 - a dream dreamt by Ms. Danielle Peña

I'm in a house located roughly in the North Berkeley/El Cerrito hills- a nice property, I'm visiting with acquaintances. It's relatively early in the morning, the sunlight streams in the windows at a nearly horizontal level. Their home is comfortably decorated with wicker furniture cushioned with pastel floral prints. I'm sitting in the living room on the couch when a low rumble rises up and vibrates the whole house -- from the small sways and jerks I can tell it's an earthquake - but it's very low magnitude (no more than 2.0) and it lasts about two minutes [Coincidentally, last night at 12:51am there was a 4.5 magnitude quake a little NE of Salinas]. I find it odd that it's so low and lasts so long - I grab my computer but after minutes of searching can't seem to access the recent CA quakes map; which I'm in the habit of checking after every quake. Frustrated and a little hungry, I leave the house and walk down the hill.

I am definitely walking around El Cerrito by this point - the feeling of the streets and the people rushing along it is that of a place that generally isn't all that unsafe but has a reputation as a sort of run-down area. I'm walking with purpose - and walk into a quaint indoor market place and lunch spot inside a circular building. Each vendor has their own stand either lining the walls or out in the center of the terra-cotta tiled floor - it's mostly Asian food and Asian employees. I stop at one of the vendors in the center of the court and order a chicken and vege kabob. The chicken gives off a huge plume of steam when it hits the grill. While it's cooking I wander towards the back of the place, and end up at a fish monger's stand- checking out the fresh red snapper on ice. I turn around and there is a huge open-face refrigeration unit with about twenty different kinds of squid - all shrink wrapped and in various states of frozen-ness. The owner walks out from around the counter with his fish-juice stained apron and starts pulling out different packages. He speaks a few words of a language I don't know as he gestures at his products. Some squid only have one eye, others have two central, forward facing eyes ... eventually he pulls out one that is essentially a miniature Colossal Squid - this I'm rather impressed at but don't want to purchase it in case I get caught trying to eat a specimen of what is generally considered a very difficult squid to find [The room I was sleeping in when having this dream has a Colossal Squid painted on the wall - my boyfriend and I have been working on completing it for a long, long time]. I end up settling on a package of six squid mantle 'filets' - about 8" long and 3" wide. I pay for the squid, pick up my kabob and head out.

It's about 4pm, and the sun is dipping lower in the sky - I'm in a car being driven around somewhere that's a cross between the St. Francis Wood neighborhood of San Francisco and the Gold Coast Victorians in Alameda. I'm with the acquaintances from earlier whose house I was staying at. It's Christmas time, and there are long ornamental garlands and reflective orb ornaments hanging from the maples lining the streets. We park and enter a home of an upper middle class Caucasian family. They have a number of sons and daughters that all have dirty-blonde hair and boring haircuts. The father is balding and the mother is wearing a maroon blazer with shoulder pads, decorated with Christmas trees. There's no television and the children are all playing board games. There is a large brick mantle and the fireplace holds a roaring fire that can be seen furtively through the heavy grate. There's holiday jingles quietly playing somewhere, this is meant to be a holiday party.

Nearer to sunset it's approaching time to eat - but all the food is waiting to be picked up from a stately plantation house across the street. It's powder blue with white trim. I'm really bored so I offer to help bring the food over. The porch of the house is one of those that leads one level up from the street, the heavy oak doors are on the right once you walk up the stairs. The door creaks open inwards, revealing a small tortoise-shell cat with blue-green eyes. The others picking up the food walk past me through the door towards the kitchen, but the cat seems to wait for me on the stairs leading up to the second level. After it darts upstairs, I follow it to the second story - only to find it is one giant room and that it is absolutely full of cats! None of them make a sound except for the occasional purr - then the tortoise-shell one locks eyes with me - her gaze seeming to read my thoughts. We speak to one another telepathically - she's as surprised as I am that it's happening. To my left a large, brown and black mottled male with golden eyes leaps out of the crowd of cats towards me, hissing fiercely. The tortoise shell runs down the stairs, and I follow close behind. We make it out the front door just in time to slam it in his face. The people carrying the food give me a puzzled look and continue down the porch stairs and back across the street. I follow them, glancing back at the tortoise shell who sits quietly at the top of the stairs.

I eat dinner with the strangers, but the food lacks flavor and I can't stop thinking about the friendly cat...

After leaving the party we take the Bay Bridge back over towards the East Bay - only to find that there is crazy traffic because every car is being stopped and searched by police dressed in what are essentially RoboCop uniforms. People are being split up into groups and waiting around between all the stopped cars. I leave the people I'm with and search for a bathroom. They have a port-o-potty set up right outside the entrance to the Yerba Buena Island tunnel, guarded by another RoboCop who's interrogating everyone in the line before they can use the port-o-potty.
Suddenly there's an explosion to the left and all hell breaks loose. I spot a group of six or seven others who seem to know what they're doing (despite the chaos) lead by a tall, well dressed bald man. We make our way across the rest of the span of the bridge on foot - ducking in between toppled and smoldering wreckage of cars while sneaking past Robocops doing battle with robotic alien velociraptors. At the end of the bridge is the space station. On the space station is the Captain's (the bald man's) small but impossibly fast space craft that will allow us a speedy getaway from the velociraptors.

We're very near the station's blast twin blast doors when our luck turns - an alien robot velociraptor has spotted us! It leaps over to us - we take shelter in the bay of the second blast door - the guards inside manage to open the doors a crack and we start to squeeze through, one by one. Thankfully there were some guards in the opening door who distracted the velociraptor from attacking us as we slid under - but now there was the problem of getting rid of the velociraptor attempting to squeeze itself under the blast doors to the station. The Captain did some quick thinking and pulled a space grenade out of his breast pocket. He activated and rolled the grenade over the the chomping metal jaws of the robotic dinosaur. Its head exploded as soon as its jaws made contact with the grenade effectively blowing it to pieces and allowing the guards to shut the blast doors once again.

Once inside the station we needed to get to the Captain's ship - but we were one floor too high and the public elevators were out of commission. However, in the main foyer of the station there was a lengthy chandelier spanning from the ceiling of the second level to about eight feet above the lower level. Upon closer inspection it was composed entirely of elastic bubble wrap, and judging by its supports I deemed it a safe method for us to descend. I leapt from the foyer balcony onto the wrap, and with some fancy aerial acrobatics managed to swing it over to the rest of my team, who then slid down it like a fireman's pole. Once they were down below I cut loose half of the elastic bubble wrap, sliding down the remaining half and bundling up the rest of the wrap in case of an emergency. We made our way over to the docking level's service elevator and waited for it to arrive. This was when I noticed it was eerily quiet in the station. Typically it is a bustling hub of travelers but we had only seen the guards and a few administrators going about their business. Once we walked onto the grungy service elevator and saw the other regular deckhands with blank, bored expressions we realized that communications must be down, otherwise everyone would be screaming for their lives. There hadn't been any travelers to the station because the bridge was shut down and being attacked - no one had managed to alert the staff.

In the docking bay there were no employees to help with the loading procedures - but The Captain managed to remotely open the cargo door. Unfortunately, it was still 20 ft off the ground. It occurred to me to use the bubble wrap I had salvaged - and we were able to rig it into a rope which we used to board The Captain's craft and fly safely away from the inevitable destruction that awaits those on the space station...

my family is nauseating?

2010-12-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

My Dad is in a ratty bathrobe. He's wearing worn-out black slippers. He's also in a mall walking around with my brother and Mother. I'm tired of his antics, so I walk to the end of the mall, looking for a cell phone store. The walls are all the same in the giant alley of the mall: They remind me of Egyptian stones used to build the pyramids, but they are light khaki in color and it's nauseating.

I walk the length of the mall and come to a court with a fountain. One exit to my right is bright, with many doors and sets of tables and chairs dotting the area. The second exit is a narrow hallway in front of me, and it looks depressing. The only cell phone store in the mall is run by a Washington State company and the phone calls made from their phones reach nowhere outside the state's borders. Ghetto. The only entrance to the store is from the outside. How inconvenient that is for Washingtonians, I think to myself. Frustrated I turn back to find my family. I walk the length of the mall without seeing them and mysteriously end up at the cell phone store end. Confused, I slowly turn around to walk the mall again and catch my Mother in a Motherhood type store. She's looking at clothes on hangers. My brother is mimicking her. My Dad is wondering around in his robe with a can of beer. The thought that my nausea may not be caused by the wall color occurs to me.

the return of charlie, golden retriever

2010-12-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

A Golden Retriever called Charlie has gone missing. I promise his owner I will do what I can to get him back. I know some hoodrats who live in a motel have stolen him with the intention of selling him on the black market. There's only one chance I have to get him back, without the Hoodrats knowing my plan or seeing me with him, before they split and no one ever sees Charlie again.

The journey to the motel is arduous. I must travel through field after field of golden wheat, evergreen forests and green grass dotted with aged wooden fences and scarecrows. My path isn't quite set. There are a few markers I must look for to know that I'm going the right way. One of them is a suspension bridge. Every road I come to, my hopes rise as I look to the right. My hopes dwindle when I don't see the bridge in the distance. At each disappointment, I sigh heavily, readjust my backpack and trudge on. Eventually I reach a road that somehow feels right, like I had been standing in that same spot at some point in my past. I turn to the right and see the bridge. Elated, I turn left and know that at the end of this road, I'll see the dumpiest strip motel that ever existed. Yellow blooms fall from the trees above me.

I hide behind a tree at the end of the road and peer around it at the motel. I see the Hoodrats who took Charlie. They're fighting and piling into a red Chevy pick-up truck. One of the jerks forgets something, runs back to his room and then jumps into the cab of the truck. It roars away down the street in the opposite direction. I know I must act quickly. I rub dirt on my face and hope that the journey has made me look haggard enough to fit in. I walk over to the room, #258, and open the door. Charlie's lying on the ground, looking sad, with his head on his paws and his leash tied to the radiator. I close the door and listen for danger. I sense no one in the room. I untie Charlie and hope that the Hoodrats don't come back and see me, as well as any other motel jerk who could tattle. They'd definitely know me.

The dream replays again, weirdly enough, in nearly the same manner with four additions: One: I have to travel over mountains that get high enough for snow to slather huge portions of the landscape. I do my best to walk around the snow to keep my feet dry, but I'm cold and fumbling, and unsure now more than ever of my journey. Two: There are false suspension bridges. I see three of them and walk to the end of each road before finding the correct road which makes my journey even longer. Three: The Hoodrats have renamed Charlie. They call him Nelson and have created fake documents to prove he is and has always been Nelson. Four: I'm vaguely aware I'm in Minnesota and will never leave.

celebrity movie replay

2010-12-11T19:13:00.000-08:00

This dream plays out like a movie and I never appear, but feel as though the characters do something similar to what I'd like them to do: Mila Kunis is on a busy street in Chinatown. She's standing in a very crowded Asian shop looking for something, but she doesn't seem to know what it is. A woman's voice floats on the air, sounding like it's being filtered through a speaker, but feels like it's in the back of my mind. The voice is telling a dirty joke. Mila walks toward the voice: exiting the shop, crossing the street and entering an Indian store. The woman is Eva Amurri and she looks kinda slutty compared to Mila's pseudo-preppy clothing. She's smoking a cigarette and wearing a leather jacket, mini skirt and boots. The duo proceeds outside and sit on a wooden bench in front of the Indian store. The conversation revolves around the need to find each other. Eva suggests they do LSD. Mila agrees. Scene.

In the next scene, Mila and Eva have transformed into Eric Idle and Robert De Niro, but not the current incarnations of them. Eric is his long-haired Monty Python self. De Niro is his Midnight Run self. They're sitting on a wooden bench in front of a barn overstuffed with hay. Both of them have blankets featuring Navajo patterns and colors wrapped around them. I instantly know they've been on a bender that's lasted for days. Eric starts to tell De Niro about a turtle he used to have while De Niro is fixing a pipe full of LSD to smoke. Eric talks lovingly about the turtle and bursts into tears. De Niro is surprised, then angry. The manic tears fade into maniac giggles and before long, De Niro's giggling, too. Scene.

A rich woman's husband (who I know is having an affair to get even with his wife cheating on him) is wearing 1980's style sunglasses and sweater while sitting in his 1980's red convertible. He's leaving the house as his 13-year old daughter is having a lavish sleepover. He screeches away in his car. Moments later, Eric drives a stolen golf cart down his very long driveway. De Niro is standing on the back, trying to hang on while holding a gun in his hand. They need to rob someone to get more money for drugs. They're both insanely happy. Scene.

The dream replays again, for no good reason, with only a few additions. One: When Mila Kunis walks into the Indian store, she decides to pull a gun, wrap her arm around Eva Amurri's neck and aim at the store owner. She and her captive back out of the store slowly and sit on the bench. The store owner runs out the front of the store past them with his hands up, screaming about the crazy bitch with the gun. Two: A groundskeeper at the rich couple's house sees Eric and De Niro steal the golf cart. He knows they are going to try and rob the house. He calls the lady of the house. She's sitting at a desk in an office staring at security monitors that are embedded into the desk. She tells the groundskeeper that she sees them, and they will pay.

touring a secret government facility

2010-12-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

A group of anti-government militia members is standing on a ridge, looking into the valley through binoculars at a secret government facility. The members elect me as their camera operator and equip me with a small camera that nestles into my hip. There is literally, a monkey on my back. The desert sky is layered in purples and pinks.

At the main door for the facility, I notice there are windows. Windows in the walls and one in the door. "There's no way this place is that secret if there's a window in the fucking door," I say to the two men assigned to go in with me. They glare at me and one of them leans into the camera I'm wearing. Since it's at my crotch, I'm a little unnerved. The door opens and an elderly man smiles at us. He's our Tour Guide. He asks our names, tells us a little about the facility and lets us roam on our own while he resumes his post at a center console.

"There's no way this is a secret facility," I grumble to myself. The room is the size of a warehouse. The walls are adorned with gift shop trinkets and blown-up, black and white photos of smiling men standing next to planes with captions about the procedures of the government in this building throughout the years. The left side of the room is set up like a convenience store: stuff all along the walls with things on shelves that form aisles. At the end of every aisle, a packet of stapled papers hangs on a string. On the wall, there are more of these packets. I pick one up and flip through it. Each page is black and white and features a mug shot with basic info about each "criminal". I find these fascinating and look at each one. Near the back of the room, I realize my behavior might be suspect and the Tour Guide might be considering me a criminal.

A Drama Queen I'm acquainted with is suddenly posing next to me. She's looking at the wall behind me. My tiny, black cat Shaye is in my arms. Her eyes are freakishly teal instead of her normal yellow-green. She reaches out to the Drama Queen. I move closer and Shaye puts her paw on the Drama Queen's shoulder. Shaye has claws in her front paws (another freakish note) and she gently digs into the Drama Queen's skin. She makes a lilting purr noise each time she digs in. She digs three, four, five times, lilting away as if she's trying to say something. Content, Shaye moves back to my chest and nuzzles my neck. Confused, I move away from the Drama Queen to a table next to the Tour Guide's console. The table is labeled "Succulents from SPACE!" Most of them are dead cactuses. One is shaped like a condom. The Tour Guide asks the group how we would react if we were to wake up on the moon. He calls out names. As I walk by him to examine some rocks, he calls out, "Sally?" I know he's speaking to me. I can feel his confusion as he settles into himself. A spark lights up in his mind: "Heather, how would you feel?" I turn to him and say, "I would feel panicked. I would look surprised." I make the surprised face. He's surprised by my answer.

A fat woman comes into the room and demands an inspection. My cat is gone and I'm recruited. Everyone in the room walks along the walls, looking for cracks. We sit on a couch and stare at her. She determines the best course of action is to flip off all the wall switches in the room, no matter what they control and to unscrew each light bulb slightly. This way, when a light switch is flicked on, the light will still be dark. The team sets to work. A guy called Tyler follows me around, way too close, checking on some lights I unscrew. Concerned, I turn and walk away.

mother earth provides what you need

2010-12-05T15:36:00.000-08:00

I look into the mirror in my Mother's bathroom: my eyelids are badly bruised because I've rubbed them so hard. Maybe purple eyeshadow will offset the damage?

Today, I need to go to work. It feels like emptiness outside as I put on a black dress, stockings and heels. I get in my car and begin to drive. Now I'm miles away, driving on a hill next to a sewer plant. In my memory, the street was full of potholes. Now it's smooth. I'm under the impression that I'm in Shelton and Seattle at the same moment in time.

A man is driving up the hill in a beat up Mazda truck. I want him to drive faster, begin to gesture but realize that the speed limit is only 25 mph. The man exits his truck as it's moving. The truck careens off into a driveway and the man, dressed in 1970's blue jogging shorts with a matching sweatband and socks to his knees pulls a U-turn and jogs down the hill.

I'm not driving up the hill any longer, but walking and carrying a 3' x 5' piece of insulation stapled to a thin, white window frame. The insulation is sticky. I'm using it to pick up trash along the side of the road and in people's yards. Most of the trash is cigarette butts. The stickiness is very low quality, so only a few butts, some dirt and leaves stick. A man in very poor health appears to my left. He looks like a stereotypical Redneck. His clothes are dirty and his scraggly hair is cut in a mullet. He makes some passing comments about the weather. I'm polite to him, he's polite to me. Standing on the side of the road speaking to this man, I feel walls closing in on me. I know that if I don't break away from him I'll be trapped with him forever. I bump into an end table and nearly knock off a vase. The world is creating a home for us out of nothing. I make an excuse about needing to continue and the man politely accepts. As I walk on, I know that he will expect me to come back to pick up trash next Saturday, even though I've not stated this to be the case. He will buy a box of chocolates shaped like a rose. Inside, the chocolates forming the stem will be wrapped in green foil and the rose chocolates will be wrapped in pink and red foil. There will be three thorns, wrapped in silver. He'll eat a chocolate when he believes I'm late. As the day goes by, the box will become emptier and his hatred for me will consume him.

objective: avoid being photographed

2010-12-05T14:58:00.000-08:00

I was walking through downtown LA, but the buildings were far too tall. The streets slanted at such angles that I felt I was lsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">simultaneously in San Francisco. My oldest friend M and I were walking in a group consisting of two former college classmates who are working photographers, three or four hipsters and a woman who's clearly in charge, with a clipboard and horn-rimmed glasses. The Serious Woman shouted our objective over the crowd as we walked downhill: You must survive five days with your teammate without being photographed or captured by another team. M and I broke apart from the group suddenly and ran through traffic to get to the Roosevelt Hotel. We knew of staircases and secret passages that could get us away from the group. Our two college classmates broke off from the group after us. We assumed they were chasing us as opposed to taking our lead.

As soon as we reach the back doors of the hotel, M and I block the entrance with wooden benches. We stop to discuss our options on the landing and decide to hide out for a bit instead of making a break through the hotel and out the other side. We leap up stairs two at a time and enter a theater room. The room is dark. A black and white film plays on a giant screen. The crowd sits on the slanted ground. M and I move toward the front and hunker down in a group. In a few seconds, we become lost in the film. In what feels like a forever moment, I drag my eyes from the screen and wonder how long we'd been there: 5 minutes? 55 minutes? Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man moving down the far aisle. It's the Male Collegian. I tap M's shoulder, give her a signal to follow and move low to the ground up the aisle. I'm so focused on the Collegian that I don't see a man in the shadows reach out and wrap his arms around my neck. He shoves me to the ground. I quietly fight with him and we roll in the aisle. His hand is on my mouth and he flips me onto my back. He's all shadows. He puts his finger to his mouth and says, "Shhhh...stay quiet. Stay hidden." We both get to our knees and he points into a group of shadows he emerged from. I crawl amongst them and wait. A few moments later, M scuttles by. I reach out and grab her arm, yank her into the shadows and whisper, "Shhh...it's me. Wait."

Amongst the shadows, we become enraptured again by the film. So much so that not only do we lose track of time again, but we lose track of our purpose and we lose track of how the shadows have all but slipped away, leaving us exposed on the slanted concrete. Panicked, I grab M and she looks at me with startled, wide eyes. We slowly get up, but we know the movement attracts attention. All eyes are on us. Some eyes are shadowed and others are just dead. I see the Female Collegian push away from the wall and walk quickly toward us as she signals to the Male Collegian. He has a camera. M and I bolt for the exit. Nothing but a blur of hair can be seen in his picture as we slip through the doors.

We end up on another landing. I decide on an extreme course of action. The Female Collegian bursts through the doors and I slam them back in her face. I can hear her pain as she slams into the door and falls. I picture her nose breaking and blood spurting through the air as she falls. M laughs and tells me how she's yearned to do that herself. "Let's go!" I vault the railings as we head down the stairwell and we run through a door marked "Floor 5". The secret passage leads us into a room and hallway decorated like a Vincent Price film set. A hidden door marks the exit and we burst through the door into a field of wheat. It's now dark. Weeds line the ground where the wheat won't grow. M and I shove ourselves through the wheat, carving a path and we exit onto a crossroads. I feel exposed again. There's a scarecrow at the crossroads and a tin shack to his left that I know is full of rusty knives. The moonlight shines silver over everything. Standing in the center of the crossroads, I turn to M to tell her how I think we should hunker down and hide for the five days, because I'm really sensing danger at every turn. It could be imagined, but I think we're both going to be fighting for our lives instead of avoiding being photographed. She agrees. The scarecrow moans. We look up at him in horror and see that he's covered with blood. His eyes are silver and his face is shadows. I wonder if the Serious Woman ever imagined how dangerous this objective could truly be.

like Russian dolls

2010-12-03T22:01:00.000-08:00

A long dream the other morning left me with a stunning image without a plot:

In a narrow rail-road style apartment in the basement level of a big house, my path is blocked by a giant spiderweb. Something small is caught in the web far off to my left. I don't see what it is, but the movement it makes attracts a big spindly spider. Just as the spider pounces on it's wriggling prey, three bright blue birds zoom in from out of nowhere and one darts it's beak in and eats the spider. In almost the same instant, a coiled yellow snake snaps upright and sinks it's teeth into the body of the bird.

All of this action clears away the web, and I am able to pass. I step away into a pool of sunshine.

backward minorities

2010-11-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

The mission was clear enough: walk into the dark end of the parking garage, down a cleared path. Throw a cup of acid to the right to make the lights flick on. Throw a cup of acid to the left to make the whole garage illuminated.

I felt my way down the path with my right hand, cup of acid in the left. I reached the wall and touched it gently. There wasn't much room to maneuver, but I angled my body and aimed for the wall above the parked car. The knowledge that I was holding acid that could back spray onto me was very much in my mind. I braced myself and threw the acid, quickly tilting the cup away from my body to avoid drips. There was a hiss and a smoking sound, a smell like bleach and a flicker of lights deeper into the garage on my right.

I walked back up the path and retrieved the second cup. Having successfully completed the first part of the task, I felt confident. I repeated the same moves, heard a hiss and smoking sound and all the lights came on. A man was sitting against the wall, on top of a very tall van, wearing a light blue-green superhero suit complete with cape and eye mask. He was wet. He stared at me in shock, then began to scream. The acid ate into his flesh.

I walked back to where my team was posted. My brother Ed and his wife Michelle were in black business dress. I realized I was, too. I reached into a jar full of Tootsie Pops on a folding table and pulled out a chocolate Pop and an orange Pop. I handed the chocolate one to Michelle and unwrapped my own. We stood there in silence, sucking on the Pops, as the superhero panicked and screamed, yelled about how he'd get us. He managed to get down from the van and started to stumble up the ramp out of the parking garage. Ed said, "I need more time." Michelle and I nodded and walked up the ramp after the superhero.

He was walking through a down-and-out section of town. Glass panes were broken out of windows and unhappiness clung to everything. A voice-over commercial started to blare in my mind, and it might have been playing from some kind of speaker system in the street, but I could hear it like it was right next to me. The cheesy salesman voice asked if as a minority, was I
tired of being ridiculed and tortured. The voice asked if I was sick of seeing people like me treated unfairly. The voice asked if I was ready to limit the torture to just once or twice instead of the five times allowed by law. At that moment, Michelle and I saw the superhero stumbling in the street. We nodded and black shadowy creatures lurched at him, grabbing his feet. He face-planted onto the concrete road and screamed. The creatures dragged him back to the parking garage.

As I stood there listening to the voice, I was thankful I wasn't one of the minorities. Lady Liberty walked down the sidewalk, her shoulders drooping, dried blood having poured down her face and staining her gown. Her torch was missing. A man made of glass walked across the street cautiously. He looked both ways before crossing over and over again, but three steps into his sojourn, a bus came around the corner and slammed into him. He exploded into tiny shards and tinkled to the ground. I didn't want to stand around watching him put himself back together again, so I headed back to the garage.

queen of sleep

2010-11-07T10:10:00.000-08:00

I was moving very fast through what seemed to be, for the most part, a circular pattern in and out of buildings. I was in a very spacious bathroom that had a dripping sink and a ton of white towels, shirts, dresses and such tossed into a mountainous pile at my feet. Urine was on the floor, carving a path to the clothes, poised to cause stains. The room smelled like bleach. I used the facilities and washed my hands. The mirror was wet and cracked.

I went into the hall. It was stone, cold and every noise echoed. There were no panes of glass in the carved windows. The place seemed like a castle.

I went into the kitchen. It was my Grandmother's kitchen. My brother was there and he began to argue with me about what I felt was nonsense. As I was staring at his wild hand gestures and flying hair, my ex-boyfriend walked into the kitchen from the hall behind him. He was wearing fake out-of-date glasses. He punched his time card on the wall and looked at me in an angry, yet meaningful way. I sneered at my brother and put my hand up, signaling I was done, and went down the hall.

The door at the end of the hall was open. I walked in and closed it. The room was like a cavern, with mountainous piles of colored clothes about and a huge, undressed bed. My ex wrapped his arms around me and slammed me against the wall. My panties, acting of their own accord, slipped down to my knees. Embarrassed, I reached for them, but thought maybe I could get some, so I hesitated. He kissed me and I knew it was on. "Take off your clothes," he said. I pointed to my misbehaving undergarment and he looked at me and smiled. We had sex up against the wall, then changed positions. He stopped midway through and said, "Give me a minute."

I was outside a department store. The doors were propped open in a haphazard sort of way, but wouldn't stay open. My friend Shera had four little girls that she was supposed to present with a show featured in this store. She looked really frazzled. The little girls were wearing ballerina outfits, but they were green camouflage. They had lots of silver Christmas garland about their faces, necks and heads. The four girls were standing in a line, looking bored and uncomfortable. From their arms, random bags from different stores hung and they all seemed empty. My attention turned to Shera's display. Extremely fit male models in Speedos were dancing suggestively and riding around on unicycles in the store. They were wearing party hats and streamers were dumping on their heads. One model ran toward the front doors near me and yelled, "This one's for 'Refrigerator' Perry!" He began to dance really slow, mimicking the former Chicago Bears defensive lineman's touchdown dance. The girls looked very dissatisfied.

The sidewalk became a boardwalk, teeming with people. I walked toward the beach and airport. My other brother and his wife came up to me on a tiny sidewalk that seemed to end in the water. We walked for some time, chatting about how confused we were in all this madness. Then we saw two DVD cases for South Park, Seasons Three and Four, lying on the sidewalk. Ed picked them up and we saw the angry brother walking with his girlfriend on the other thin sidewalk. The three of us walked to the parking lot and waited. Angry brother and girlfriend walked up to us. Ed announced that after searching all day, we found the South Park DVD's. Girlfriend started chattering about nonsense, maybe to be conversational. I stopped her and said, "Look. I've got no problem helping people out, but you're the only one who flew anywhere today. Did you drop these?" She denied it and started talking about her bags and her plans and her trip. I stopped her again. "You don't have to lie. If you lie, it makes me never want to trust you or tell you anything. Don't lie. This is not a big deal." Ed handed the DVD's back and everyone began to walk to their cars. I noticed a friend trying to get out of her truck as she was parked to close to a Hummer. I pointed to the bed of her truck and began to say something, but it didn't make any sense, so I walked away.

I was in the bathroom again and the urine had saturated the whites, spreading the stain.

I was in the hall and I could hear someone in a room somewhere scolding Ed about the scribbles in his notebook. "Everything here indicates you've been asleep for the past two days and knew nothing about it!"

I was on the boardwalk watching all the people move like shining robots in the sunset, away from the beach. They were all dressed in pastels.

I was in the parking lot when it all made sense: I was asleep, too. But unlike Ed, I was in control. When I learned how, I knew I'd be able to keep people in my dreams or out of my dreams. I knew that I was the Queen in this place and I could be generous or terrible. I could make everyone suffer or give them the best. In my mind I could see my notebook. All of my scribbles made sense. This was a world in a bubble, a place I'd never been, but a place I already knew. I knew I never wanted to wake up.

purple sari, orange sari

2010-11-03T07:30:00.000-07:00

I was with a woman from India and we were both wearing saris. She decided it was time to upgrade from purple as purple wasn't appropriate any longer. Wearing a purple sari meant you must become an apprentice at your trade, but she was an average waitress. I felt strange about her need for change as I didn't feel any spiritual presence informing me of any status upgrades regarding myself and I thought we were both on the same level. Maybe she was competing with me? She started unwrapping the sari and I could see she had a white sports bra on as a top. Odd, I thought. My competitor decided to upgrade to the orange sari, but I knew it would be considered to be too taboo as it was a more advanced level than where she was currently.

annoyance, then coffee, then sex in a hot tub

2010-10-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

I was late for school. Not college or graduate school, but high school. The place where I was living was on an island in the woods. It was a manufactured home painted white, with blue trim. As I was walking to my car, with my school bags dangling over me, a black SUV pulled up in my driveway. I tried to not look annoyed. My friend Amy had a habit of dropping in on me whenever she felt we hadn't seen each other in a while and I don't like surprises. She honked the horn and waved. I walked to the driver's side window. She told me it's been so long since we've seen each other and I should get some overnight clothes to stay at her place after school. Granted, in the dream we're both 30 and we shouldn't be in high school. I couldn't think of an avoidance technique, so I consented to going as I already had overnight clothes with me.

Amy drove down the curvy road in a reckless manner: cutting blind corners, crossing into the other lane and speeding. My grip on the "Oh, Shit!" handle could not have been tighter. The La Bouche song "Be My Lover" was blasting from her cassette deck. She turned suddenly down a tree-lined driveway. I thought it was the driveway to her house, but no. There was a small clearing and a drive-thru coffee stand. The coffee stand was painted purple with pink doodle marks all over and a giant chalkboard menu with elegant handwritten items. Amy parked her SUV at the end of the coffee stand instead of driving up to the window. She asked, "Do you want to get some coffee?" I said, "Sure." "Would you mind paying this time?" I totally expected this from her as she asks this question every time we see each other. I tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. "What do you want?" "A Double Pepsi Gum Latte with whipped cream and salt and red pepper sprinkled on top, not stirred in. Because when they sprinkle it on top, you can taste the salt all the way through the coffee. But not if they stir it in." OK.

I walked up to the chalkboard menu and looked for her requested drink. Lo and behold, it was there, with three sizes. I yelled back to her, asking what size she wanted. Small was $2.69, Medium, $2.89 and Large, $3.50. She nearly climbed out her window and yelled, "MEDIUM!" OK, again. I ordered the coffees through a drive-thru speaker and waited awkwardly. A confused driver pulled up behind me. I just nodded and hoped my eyes conveyed that my friend was a dumbass. A metal panel shot up and a robot lady shaped much like Robot Devil from Futurama, only silver, handed me the coffees. I gave her cash and hopped back in the car.

A short time later, we pulled up at another manufactured home, painted white with blue trim that looked like Amy's mother's house. There was a giant freestanding pool that was twelve feet tall in the front yard, a mildewed Big Wheel turned upside down and a broken trampoline. I couldn't see into the pool, but I knew the surface would be a film of dead leaves and algae. The porch was pretty large, with a hot tub to the left of the front door. I went inside.

No one was in the living room, although it was a bit of a mess. Clothes, junk food bags and soda containers, DVD's and partially finished games were strewn about. There was someone in the kitchen cooking fried potatoes. By the cracking and crunching of his knees, I knew it was my Dad. I leaned on the refrigerator and he looked up at me. He was wearing a pair of shorts that were more like pants and a Green Bay Brett Favre jersey so faded it was a light teal blue with the number and name completely gone. He told me my stuff was in the back bedroom. Confused, I walked down the hall and opened the last door. There was a princess bed with a canopy and a bunch of cardboard boxes. It smelled off. A lot of bags were lined up against the wall. I knew other people were here. I looked over my things: A gym bag, a black shopping bag, a white shopping bag and six items on hangers, neatly laid on the bed. The only thing I could think of using, especially since I was about to get drunk, would be the black and white Adidas pants on the hanger. There was no use for the evening gowns, the hi-top red Converse or the curlers. I had over packed.

I went out into the living room. The living room was exactly like the living room belonging to my younger brothers, with their furniture and things. People were using the living room window as an entrance to the patio and hot tub, even though the door was feet away. The curtains were soft fabric, but no one was moving them completely out of the way, so I was sure they'd be dirty and torn down by the end of the night. There were two black people in the hot tub, completely naked, having sex. I was surprised. I didn't know either of them and I couldn't see their faces as the woman was obscuring the man's face and all I could see of the woman was her round bare ass and back.

My Aunt Linda walked up to me and handed me an Old Style beer. I wondered if she mailed herself a case or two. I began to drink. My cousin Monica waddled over to me. She had dirt and leaves in her hair. She told me about her children. I looked around for them. No where to be found. She waddled away. A teenage guy with a backwards hat had his arm around a pregnant teenage girl. They were sitting on the couch. He seemed to be reassuring her, maybe even pressuring her to do something for him. His eyes kept flicking to the couple in the hot tub. A girl called Janie introduced herself to me. She was stick-thin with stick-thin light brown hair. She told me she wanted a job. "I figured if I'm willing to give head, someone will hire me on out here." She walked away and left me standing there, shocked. The knowledge that she had blown the man in the hot tub lit a fire in my brain. I wandered over toward the window and could see that the woman in the hot tub was now attempting a blow job on the man. Every now and then, I could see a turquoise colored condom on his very erect penis.

three scenarios

2010-10-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

I had just begun a job at a fancy pants hotel/casino as a housekeeper. This was a job I felt both comfortable and ashamed by having, as I did the same job in high school. On my first day, I received a cart with a giant yellow trash bag on one side and shelves of cleaning products on the other. I pushed my cart down a hall on an upper floor only to find there were already two carts in the hallway. One of them belonged to my partner, who I had yet to meet (you had to clean hotel/casinos in pairs), and the other belonged to a strange little man who could have been related to Hoggle from Labyrinth.

Both housekeepers exited rooms whose doors were propped open and looked at me. Apparently, I was wearing the correct uniform: a white t-shirt, red flannel shorts and white socks, no shoes, just like them. I thought it odd that the hotel/casino insignia was nowhere on our clothing. We looked more like guests than employees. My cleaning partner wanted to show me some basic ropes, but knew I knew what I was doing. She also thought that I could do the job in any manner I liked, just as long as the place was clean. Hoggle's cousin didn't agree with this approach and tried to talk over my partner, correcting her, rolling his eyes, crossing his tiny arms and stomping in circles.

The dream changed and I was no longer a part of the scenery, just watching the scene. Buck Malachi Mulligan, a character from Ulysses by James Joyce, had perched himself in a leather lounge chair, dangling his leg over the side, staring at a wall while holding a newspaper open to the business section. Other characters from the book would drift into this room, one at a time and see Mulligan perched, realize he was looking at something, turn and see a framed painting. Mulligan had the same pose and same response for everyone: "Yeah. It's a bleeding Picasso." Bloom commented on how similar this work was to others. Stephen Dedalus said something in Latin. Simon Dedalus was too full of himself to care much.

The dream changed again and I was sitting in a car in a strip mall parking lot. Target, Office Max, Happy Teriyaki, among others, all had happy homes there. I was really far away from any of the stores and I wondered why the parking lot was so huge. At the rate it would take me to walk to the stores, I could call in an order of Teriyaki Chicken and it would be done by the time I entered the restaurant. I decided to do just that and figured Pineapple Bubble Tea would be a good dessert.

innocent and in the woods. again.

2010-10-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

An Attractive, Jewish, Boulder of a Man was leading me into the Washington woods. We had a task to accomplish and had to get to the lake. It was really bright outside and the sun was at its highest point in the sky. The heat was pressing in through the trees and I really wanted summer to be over.

I walked on a narrow, tree-lined path that lead downhill. About ten steps in, I encountered three giant spider webs crisscrossing the path. They seemed to web into each other, but they were also very individual and distinct. The biggest web was on the left of the path and it housed the fattest spider. The smaller webs were on the right, one in front of the other, each with their own smaller spiders. I had to walk down the path after the Boulder, but there was no crossing without destroying the spider webs. I grabbed a thick, four-foot long stick and gently moved the webbing so I wouldn't harm the spiders. After I cleared all three webs, and all three spiders were running through the centers of their webs, obviously upset, I noticed a small path behind me off to the right. I walked down the path and came to a clearing.

The Boulder was standing at the open tailgate of a black SUV. I walked over to him and saw a man in a black suit and tie wearing sunglasses. He was kneeling like a rock star and he looked grim. He had Polaroids in his hand. He handed them to me. He told me that these eighteen people in these eighteen Polaroids believed that the Boulder and I were guilty of sedition, lies and possibly murder. One of the Polaroids was of the actor Robert Forrester. Another was of the actor Robert De Niro. As I handed back the Polaroids, I couldn't believe that any of those people, especially Forrester and De Niro, would think that of either of us. I realized that it was nighttime, I could hear crickets and the Boulder was no longer standing next to me: Alanna was. We looked at each other with confusion and worry.

At a cabin 200 feet to our right, two people emerged and jumped into a powder blue Chrysler convertible. The man in the back of the SUV groaned, and both Alanna and I knew who was in the car before he pulled up. DA Ellis Lowe, the dirty attorney from LA Confidential stopped a few feet from us with a ditzy, large-breasted, scantily-clad woman in the passenger seat. He smirked at us and told us we would pay for our crimes, he'd see to it. He pointed at Alanna and declared her CIA. He pointed at me and declared me ATF. He laughed like a prick and drove away into the night. We had no idea how he could possibly know which department we both worked for.

secret boyfriend

2010-10-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

I was walking through a warehouse during the summer. People were all around, being busy with pallets and warehouse dealings. A tall nerdy guy I went to high school with (whom I haven't seen since graduation) walked up to me and handed me a cell phone. He grabbed it out of my hand immediately and it rang. He had given his phone to my secret boyfriend (sb) and sb was on the line. I looked around the warehouse and saw sb walking with a phone to his face, egging me on to take his call. He walked outside.

I took the phone and sb and I started talking to each other while ignoring each other. We said how much we loved each other and how happy we were to see each other. We said how much we missed each other and how we loved each other some more. As I was talking and trying hard to ignore that he was so close and all I really wanted to do was run to him, kidnap him and run away, I didn't realize the warehouse floor had become grassy. I could see dirt through the grass. I was back at the old mauve and plum apartment complex I lived in when I was twelve.

I told sb to enter the woods directly behind a set of mailboxes. That way, we could kiss and hug and touch and no one could see. He wanted to do it later on, but I told him I couldn't wait, so he agreed. I closed the phone and saw him, from a distance, walk into the woods. Suddenly I realized I was being followed. I ran. I knew sb and I had to make it quick as Lindsey Lohan and her girlfriend were hiding behind buildings, rocks and trees, being sneaky, following me. I couldn't get rid of them as I was a slow runner. I turned away, not wanting to blow sb's cover and aborted the mission.

I went back to the front of the warehouse. Lindsey Lohan was hanging out with a bunch of Hispanic guys I used to work with. They were fixing a car together. Another ex-coworker walked by in a suit an tie, looking far too important just as someone spilled a container of used oil. I immediately went to help, stopped and turned around. Monica, my best friend, was leaning against the wall. She opened her mouth to say something incriminating about me to Lindsey Lohan. I hushed her and said, "No. I need to tell you something." I dragged her away and began to tell her about my secret love affair with sb when I realized we had a hanger-on. The girlfriend who also followed me was staring at us while in a Hunchback of Notre Dame pose. I said, "Fuck off!" She fucked off. I proceeded to tell Monica everything, including the fact that sb had a baby daughter that he named after me. Her name was "Esther Blue". Monica replied, "Like EstherBlue2000.com!" Apparently, that was my e-mail address.

sushi and love

2010-10-18T10:57:00.001-07:00

I only remember a snippet: I had to go to Safeway, as a war was brewing. There were three armed militia (read: redneck) members in the refrigerated section of Safeway. They wanted to start some kind of uprising, but alas, they were the only three involved and I intended it to keep it that way.

I walked past the deli section and something in a small refrigerated case caught my eye. Sushi! Tons of it. Every container had a sticker that said, "Inspected by Number __". I realized I was Number 6 and totally forgot to inspect any sushi. I made a mental note to come back and set up a sushi picnic in the middle of Safeway to begin testing.

I felt renewed and energized knowing I was going to eat a ton of sushi after I dealt with the uprising. I saw the three militia members. They were standing in the single-serving sodas and beverages refrigerator aisle. They were dressed in head-to-toe camouflage and had weapons that looked as if duct tape was holding them together. Their leader was called Brady. He said something I took offense to so I hit him in the mouth. Then the other two charged me. I was hitting them all and they were hitting me, but for all it was worth, I felt my punches were weak and not doing damage. Their deliveries were similar, but sometimes one dude would land a stinger or two.

Brady decided we were at a stalemate, so he called his dudes off. They left. He and I argued for some time before he started to be more and more flattering. He said something about how nice my cleavage looked. Instead of punching him or covering it up, I flushed pink. He had my heart.

everything happening in an alternate time and space

2010-10-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

I was at a 40-unit apartment complex that my parents managed when I was twelve. It was still mauve with a plum trim. I was running down a concrete sidewalk with Alanna and Julia from an upstairs apartment, #40, to Julia's apartment, also upstairs, #24. We were in a rush to move her out by 10 AM. We were racing down the sidewalk when it occurred to me that I was winning our little race. Then Alanna and Julia turned on the jets and both left me in the dust. I felt dumb.

We went up the stairs to Julia's apartment and I fiddled with a box on the patio for a minute only to realize there was a shack where the parking lot was moments before. The ground was spattered with crabgrass. The shack had that worn-wood look: untreated wood, broken in places, in the rain and elements for a million years, dilapidated. I went down to the shack. The screen door had been ripped off ages ago by the wind. There was a short hallway and four doors, two on each side. My two brothers and sister-in-law each had their own room while the last door on the right was mine. I unlocked the door and went inside. It was mostly furniture that belonged to the shack. I had a few bags packed with personal belongings. Panic hit me when I realized the four of us needed to be moved out by 10 AM as well.

I heard someone knock on one of the other doors. Nothing happened. Then a knock on a second door. Nothing happened. A knock on the third door. Still nothing. Finally, a knock on my door. I looked through the peephole to see my ex-boyfriend standing there with a full beard and hair past his shoulders. He moved toward the peephole as if he could see someone. I slinked away from the door. I turned back to the room. Ages before, a truck had plowed into the shack and tore a gaping hole in the wall of my room. It had never been replaced. I picked up a pink bag with a drawstring, a black hefty bag and a plastic laundry-hamper type bag. I turned to the hole in the wall to escape only to find the ex-boyfriend standing there, smiling. I knew I had to pretend to be surprised. I feigned shock and asked what he was doing there, it was amazing that he was there.

I stepped down through the hole to the ground and we hugged. He seemed to hold on a little too long. Julia was at the top of the stairs on her patio, glaring down at us. I couldn't tell if she was more upset that the ex-boyfriend was there, or because I was being nice to him, or because I wasn't helping her. Maybe all three.

backwards bee sting

2010-09-08T06:45:00.000-07:00

I had a meeting with my old boss to finish some outstanding paperwork. When I arrived, she was still in a meeting, so I had to wait. There were sandflies, and one stung me on my right index finger. It really stung - but when I inspected it, I was stunned - a thick, black thorn protruding from a white bloody hole in the side of my finger. Just then my old boss arrived, and she went into Mom-mode, grabbing my finger and pulling out the offending object. Only, it wasn't a thorn, it was half a bee with that huge black stinger. The bee had been ripped in half, and as it came out of the hole in my finger, a little glistening string of intestines spread across the gap between it's body and mine.

blue velvet

2010-08-19T07:45:00.000-07:00

All I really remember is a tiny short snippet:

In a modern post-war bungalow of a house with a dark, wood-filled interior there is a party. It is a quiet gathering, and in a small alcove with low square armchairs, Isabella Rosellini is standing alone. She's dancing subtly, just barely moving her body but she is reaching up the back of her short skirt, feeling herself up really, really slowly.

giant toothpaste

2010-08-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

In my bathroom, I have two tubes of toothpaste. One I was trying out which is really awful, but I don't like to waste it so it's still there in the rack, with the new tube and my toothbrush.

I dreamt that I went into the bathroom, and in front of the two tubes of toothpaste, my boyfriend had added a third one. This tube was huge, more than a foot long, and covered in a peppermint-patty swirl of red stripes. I thought, "Oh no, I must be breathing some kind of horrible halitosis on him."

mystery theater

2010-08-07T07:44:00.000-07:00

Joe was putting on a new play. It was a medium-sized theater, lots of empty seats. All the people who were there were friends. The house-lights were on.

Danny was the first performer. He stood up to receive his prop, and was handed a large bushy mustache. This meant he was to portray Matthew. He sighed, and made a big show of grumbling his way onto the stage.

Part of the performance involved different people going up to the middle of the stage where there was a puppet theater, and making not-energy drinks in a big industrial blender just inside the little miniature curtain.

It was my turn to go up to the blender. Behind the machine, little slits in the wall boards let in streams of sunlight. The blender already had three cups or so of creamy white stuff (which I imagined was ice cream), so I added an equal amount of whipped cream from an aerosol can, then chocolate syrup and finally, I pressed a button above the machine which caused a stream of sticky red foam to shoot out of a nozzle into the blender. This red foam expanded as it settled, and I clapped the lid on the blender and hit the chop switch. As soon as the blade began to turn, the thing just exploded with sticky, creamy foam erupting out of it like a molten volcano. I ran off the stage to find something to clean it up with, shouting something to the effect of, "It's fine, just leave it. I've got it."

On the rest of the stage, the play was still going on, only now it was John who was directing it. Everything was the same, the content was the same, but all the actors had been switched out with people from my school days.

As I came back through the seats with paper towels and cleaning supplies, I could see that the women in the audience had already gone up to the blender and were making the mess even bigger by opening the machine and trying to scoop up the froth with the curtains. I was exasperated.

your mother is his mother

2010-08-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

Visiting the family home of a friend from school, his mother questioned me about another friend's mother. "Where does she keep the salt in her kitchen?" She seemed to be planning a break-in. Waking up, I realized that the face of the woman asking the questions was the face of the woman she was asking about.

Also, there was a small one-room dacha in the back yard. The windows and door had been left open to the elements, so everything inside was layered with dust, dirt and pigeon droppings. There had been a bed made up in the middle of the floor, just a pillow on a few folded blankets. These were caked so thick with grime that they looked almost sculptural.

rotten wooden tooth

2010-08-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

Visiting Ross with Erik. Ross is living in this designer mobile home, all custom rosewood interior, fit into the trailer of a semi. We're visiting because he's just released an album of music- I didn't know he was a musician.

Looking at the back of the new album, I see that one of the listed musicians is [forgot the actual name of the guy] who is the band leader of a pretty famous band. I am surprised, but Ross looks as me, confused- he's been in that band from the very beginning.

Other people begin to arrive, everyone is sitting outside, chatting. It's like a BBQ, casual. People are just dropping in to visit. There are pine trees.

I have a loose tooth. It's spinning around, still attached at one corner and I can't stop my tongue from fiddling with it. I remember that this is the tooth that I repaired years ago, before I had health insurance. It's got a carved wooden tooth super-glued over the cavity.

I go inside for privacy to pull the tooth out. I stick my hand inside my mouth, grab on to the wiggling tooth and yank. It pops, and falls out into the palm of my hand. It's big, the size of the marble from earlier that night. Under the carved wooden tooth is a completely black, rotten mass of bile with chunks of bone in it. Chunks of bone and tooth fill my mouth, and I go outside to spit them out.

Once I finally clear my mouth of all the little chunks of gross, I inspect the ball of rotten junk, scrape it off my hand and marvel at how huge the wooden tooth is. It's carved from dark wood, like the interior of Ross' trailer.

I am relieved. I wake up excited.

marbles

2010-08-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

I set out walking into the desert. There was a two-lane road stretching out to the horizon through red sandy soil. It looked like Australia. I was tasking.

Something happened, and I was injured. The sun started to set, and I hitched a ride in an old pickup truck back to a small town. The truck delivered me to a house that was not my own, but where I would be safe. It was an old, weather-beaten house, the slats of wood that made up the walls were gray from the elements, devoid of paint.

I knew that Ian was worried about me. He knew something was wrong, but he didn't know why I'd veered off course. I knew this intuitively.

In this old house was an old man. He gave me a game. First he handed me a big marble which filled the palm of my hand. It was rough glass, opaque and nearly white. It reminded me of sand-cast trade beads I had as a child. The rest of the game consisted of a pile of die-cut cards of all sorts of sizes and shapes, but each with a central pit cut out. (These were the equivalent of a game-board, the object being to get the big marble into the central pit, and any of the opponents marbles which are knocked out of the course are your prize.)

OPD: prison torture

2010-07-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

Horrible dreams: tortured in a prison with drugs/suffocation (somehow also in a movie with Casey Affleck) Huge fight with [my wife], hunger. @burnunit

OPD: highschool crush

2010-07-07T06:48:00.000-07:00

Dream: makin out with gal I crushed on in HS. She looked different, kissed painfully hard, and asked me for $200 for a divorce lawyer. @burnunit

OPD: problem food

2010-06-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

Dreamed our broccoli turned yellow and a tooth broke on the food I was preparing ... and fell out spectacularly. @burnunit

writers strike

2010-05-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

(Two tweets. I don't recall the dream itself, but boy does it spark the imagination.)

BU: had a lot of dreams about sex this morning. And one about a murder investigation in an Italian cathedral on the beach.

AS: @burnunit Your dreams and mine seem to have been scripted by the same team of writers. I got all sex, ciphers and alien insects.

wrong film behind the veil

2010-04-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning from a terrible nightmare:

I was screening The Wizard of OZ to a room full of people. The screen was a big sheet of cloth half-hung, half-draped across the room on a rope or a wire. The film started up just fine, but after a few minutes the projector started to make a horrible noise. I got up out of my seat, diagonally as far from the projector as I could be and had to run through all the folding chairs to get to it.

The projector was draped with white tule. One handful turned out to be a fully finished wedding veil with a comb in a sort of 50s style. The other handful was an unused yardage of the cloth. The projector was now making that 'the film is snapped' noise from the loose end slapping the machine as it turns. Indeed, the film had ripped, but worse, it was folded over- 1/3 flattened down over the picture. I knew the projector only had sprockets on one side, and this film was double perf. but no, worse, it was a 35mm print, and I was trying to run it through a 16mm projector.

I woke up mortified. Wouldn't I have noticed it looking odd in those first few minutes?

OPD: a horse and a wolf

2010-04-05T06:06:00.000-07:00

"Dreamt of a snow-covered field, dancing with a horse, the horse running away when someone tried to ride it, petting a wolf." via inktea.

lost in dreamland

2010-04-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

Somehow, I was aware that there was a lot happening in my dreamland and I could understand all of it without needing to be "caught up".

I felt like I was watching deleted scenes from "The Godfather," but was also the main character. In this part of the dream, I could see over my own shoulder as I sat in a theater seat. The main character (mc) was rotund and balding, no Michael Corleone, but his tux and attitude made him more important than he ever would have been in real life. The Godfather, who looked like de Niro, was standing on a balcony overlooking an ocean. The mc was standing in the study, occasionally looking out the doors to the balcony, watching The Godfather's face. He was frustrated and angry, because someone was knocking off members of his family. Not hoodlums doing grunt work, but top-notch guys who had been with the family for years or who were actually his brothers or cousins. The mc would occasionally watch him and then look down at the desk, where he was trying to organize his vitamins. He had pills in his hands and in groupings on the desk, by size and color. He took a pill from each group, but as he reached for the reddish one, it all hit him, and me at once. We both knew who was killing everyone and we knew who he was going to kill next. In fact, we knew he was on his way there RIGHT NOW.

During this part of the dream, it was as if I was still the mc, but I could watch the mc from the ground. He was patting down a dead body. It was a man in a tux and he was splattered with blood. As the mc did this, he kept looking down at the ground, to my exact viewpoint. I thought to myself that I was dead, I was the murderer, I killed the next target. I killed Tom Hagen. As I thought that, Tom Hagen walked past the mc, wiping his blood-stained hands on a handkerchief. He had taken his tux jacket off and his white shirt was covered in blood splatter. I felt relief and knew that the mc had somehow gotten a message to Tom Hagen in time to save his life.

In the last part of the dream, I was me in mind and body, and I was in a house that may or may not exist in real life. I feel like I've dreamt of this house many times, but the dreams were so vivid, maybe it's a memory of a place I haven't been in ages. Sort of an Alice in Wonderland scenario.

I walked through the house, looking at the furniture and knick-knacks, realizing that I hadn't been here since I was a child. As a child, I once followed someone from room to room, with no adjoining hallways, through doors I wouldn't have seen if I'd been alone. There were secret passageways and pathways that led to specific places. One of these doors led to a giant deck of dark brown wood that was walled in by the pine trees of the forest. The deck was huge and the floor was built in circular and hexagon patterns. But it had been years since I had been to that deck and I had failed to find it on my own ever since leaving. Just knowing it was part of the house comforted me.

Each room of the giant house had a theme, but mostly the theme was clutter and dust. I wondered were the owner was and why things weren't being taken care of, then heard screaming and screeching in a room I'd already passed through. I ran back, through doors and a path I'd carved with my feet on the dusty floor. My Dad's wife was pulling at her hair and making all the noise. She was surrounded by a group of men, who were all wearing old bathrobes and military issue underclothes, some white, some Army green. They were trying to contain her, so she couldn't get out and attack anyone or anything. Annoyed, I left and walked to the bathroom.

I sat on the toilet and the door flung open. It was my Dad in a bathrobe. I said, "Hello?!?" and gestured to the fact that I was on the toilet. He mumbled an apology as he marched to the next door, leading to another room. I could hear him rumaging through drawers and talking about pomegranates and steak. I got the feeling that he was going to be poisoning his wife to death with her dinner. I felt bad that it had come to that, but also felt relief at the fact that he was finally going to be rid of her. I sat down on the ground, next to the bathtub and looked at my hands. As I was analyzing the lines of fate, someone entered the bathroom. It was my brother. We both watched as our Dad marched back to his shrieking wife and my brother turned to me. He towered over me and mumbled something about inviting someone over. I asked who and he gave me the look he always gives me when I can't hear him. Exasperated, he said, "Patrick. From the Dime Store." "Dime Store? Where is that?" I asked. He looked at me annoyed. I felt inadequate, thinking it might be on the highway and thought that I shouldn't have brought Carrot Blondies for dessert.

what am i supposed to do now?

2010-04-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in a meadow, full of soft, light green grass, wearing a sundress. My legs were tucked under me, very ladylike. In the distance, I could see rolling hills. I looked up and watched the soft, puffy clouds pass by slowly. The breeze was blowing my hair around my face and I could smell flowers.

While looking around, I noticed the grass wasn't grass at all, but soft, thick, lime green moss. I could see through small gaps in the moss and it looked like the dirt was moving. I could see yellow moving under the moss as well. Then I felt something touch my bare foot. It curled around my toes, and I knew before turning around that it would be a snake. Regardless, I turned around in time to see a black and yellow striped garter snake slide across the bottom of my upturned foot and burrow its head into the soft moss. Horrified, I turned and realized the dirt wasn't moving at all. I was sitting on a moss bed of hundreds of snakes. I stood up quickly and hurried to a picnic table a few feet away. I hopped on top of the table and crossed my legs, holding onto my toes, afraid a snake would bite them if they dangled over the table's edge. I sat on the picnic table, watching the ground roll, thinking, "What am I supposed to do now?"

OPD: Brain Worms

2010-03-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

Today's xkcd.

two charred surfboards

2010-03-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

We'd moved into a new building. The former tenants and the owner were in a dispute over a pile of junk left in the crawl space under the building- an area used for storage. I'd already moved a couple of things in there- two charred surfboards, a bunch of long leather belts and something else vaguely black. My things blended in with the old pile, there was much confusion as to why I wanted to keep the surfboards.

Later, I went down to the area again to make sure that was really my stuff. Standing there in the half light, a little boy came into the doorway and began asking all sorts of probing questions. I was annoyed by him. Then suddenly, he was gone. I went outside to see where he'd gone, but there was no one on the long gravel driveway stretching over a hill and lined with tall wispy trees.

sleeping in the underground

2010-03-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

I found myself walking along a canal or a pond. In a path all along the water were rectangular boxes, like for planting, floating just a few inches from the shore. The first time walking through, I slipped into the wet. But, taking Mother through later, I was able to warn her where to step.

Walking through a Muni tunnel, to a tiny underground cafe for brunch. There were people, passed out after a long night at the clubs above ground, sleeping in the middle of the tracks. The first trains of the morning started to come through the tunnel. I even had to jump out of the way of the first one.

A couple sleeping in the tracks clutched on to each other as the train passed over them. Another train came from a different drection, and at the points where it merged onto the main track, a young hipster boy sat up, thinking he had enought time to get up out of the way. In the last second, he slammed himself flat. The train passed over him, but his leg got scrapped by the axles.

I realized that the Muni police must come through the tunnel at night to clear out campers, but the only place the party-ers were able to hide, out of sight, was in the middle of the tracks.

OPD: beans for buttons

2010-03-12T05:40:00.000-08:00

"Dreamt I was trying to pilfer beautiful old victorian buttons, but my mother got there first, so I just ate the black beans she left instead" @inktea

volcano flood

2010-03-08T07:33:00.000-08:00

Dreamt an enormous volcano was going to flood the earth, and everyone was driving the wrong way on the interstate, trying to get away. @inktea

naked on the stairs

2010-03-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

I slept fitfully last night. Just enough to drink at the bar that it interrupted my dreams. What I remember is this:

I had attended a party that Seth was throwing. I didn't know anyone else aside from him, and I felt awkward.

Later, I found myself rushing, late for something. It was early in the morning, and I was in an unfamiliar building. It was several stories tall, built around the turn of the century with fancy plasterwork caked in layers of thick paint. I ran down a spiral staircase, enclosed thick masonry construction, and painted all white. I was naked except for a long beige cashmere coat with poufy white fur on the collar running all the way down to my feet. The closer was loose, and as I ran down the stairs, I kept kicking it open so that I had to clutch at myself to keep my body covered.

When I got to the bottom, it was an open plaza where cars could pull up, like the front of the Mark Hopkins Hotel on California St. Two curved stairways connected the doorway to the plaza, and I stood halfway down one of these trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. The coat fell open again, and the sunshine was warm on my thighs.

terrorist in the workshop

2010-03-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

The guy rappelled in through the window.

He scrambled up from the floor, grabbed a skeepskin off one of the cutting tables, and threw it on the floor. He dug a can of gasoline out of his rucksack and poured it all over the hide on the ground. Phun didn't understand what was going on, and she ran over to him to help pick up the stuff he'd dropped on the ground. We all started yelling at her to get away, but she still didn't understand. The guy was having trouble getting his lighter lit.

A big group of us started to run across the workshop to the exit, but just then the man got his lighter working, lit the hide and bolted back out through the smashed window.
I ran back to the burning hide and threw things onto it until I'd smothered the flames. Then, we all went out to the fire escape to confront the terrorist.

poisoned lozenge

2010-03-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

I watched this dream like a movie.

One of the girls from the latex department at work was hanging out with my grandfather in his house late in the evening. (They were alone in the house, no grandmother.) The girl had a little cough, and dug around in her bag for a lozenge. My grandfather, seeing this asks her if she has another for him. She digs around some more and finds two Ricola- one cherry (in the magenta wrapping) and the other original (in yellow).

Later, I realize that she knew he'd want a lozenge if she had one herself, and she'd poisoned both flavors so he wouldn't suspect. My grandfather died in his sleep... in my dream.

living in space

2010-03-02T08:34:00.000-08:00

We were living in orbit, but now it was time to come back down to earth. The interior of the space shuttle was huge, big living room, recreation rooms, spacious kitchen, etc. I had spread my things out absolutely everywhere. The place was a mess.

As we were beginning reentry, I couldn't find my flight jacket, my helmet- anything. Little clips of what would happen to my head if I didn't have my protective clothing on kept replaying in my head. I realized as I started to take it off, that I was at least wearing my big bulky motorcycle jacket (in space!) so at least my shoulders wouldn't get so badly bruised.
I raced around looking for my things, realizing that when we landed, the NASA staff were going to have to bag up all of my scattered junk to get it out of the shuttle. I was embarrassed that I hadn't gotten around to cleaning up, let alone keeping my things better organized in the first place.
I got to the living room, and my man was there, lounging on a big black steamer trunk. He told me something to the effect that I should stop worrying about being a mess, because there wasn't time to change anything, and just relax. He pulled me down to lay with him and held me for a while, at least until we started to see clouds in the atmosphere, which meant we needed to brace ourselves for reentry.

As a note to myself, it's worth pointing out that the interior of the space shuttle is apparently based loosely on the floorplan of my grandparent's house.

OPD: no fat, happy bees

2010-03-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

"No dreams of fat, happy bees. Instead I found m'self in the abandoned high school again. Full of long shadows and bad smells." @theGonzalez

"The Woman"

2010-03-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

In a department store, after hours.
The manager - always referring to herself as "The Woman".

She dropped her cell phone on the floor beside a cash stand. I recognized it- an old model Nokia with blue light shining through silver buttons. I pointed it out to her and she was surprised asking, "How did you know it was the woman's phone?"

two bits

2010-02-25T08:44:00.000-08:00

The first thing I could remember this morning- a voice in my dream had said, "The little box full of ones and zeroes that makes the pretty colors." (I interpret this as meaning a digital camera.)

Earlier, there was a performance in a big open gallery- a museum, maybe? There was a webbed dome, made from white nylon strapping. It was my bed. The audience was all around the room, pressed up against the walls of the gallery, one deep, uncomfortable.

locked in the closet with the cat and cake

2010-02-23T07:32:00.000-08:00

In an institutional building, Erik, Thomas & I are hanging out, fooling around. There is a big, spacious broom closet and for some reason, we decide to lock the cat inside. Erik & Thomas begin a joking competition... and eventually, Thomas pulls the short straw. We lock him in the closet, with the cat and a single piece of white cake.

Sneakily, Erik & I creep around the corner in the hallway to a second door to the broom closet and steal its brass door knob. Walking away, laughing, I turn to wave at Thomas. He is standing in the open doorway in his underwear, eating the cake and looking forlorn.

the girl at the massacre

2010-02-23T07:24:00.000-08:00

Big group of people getting ready for an expedition, or something...
- everyone is made to change out of their clothes
- each person is given big paddle- made from light foam, like a swimming pool toy

There are four white passenger vans, everyone lines up waiting to find out which they will travel in. Suddenly, the vans begin to back up to the far side of the gravel parking area. The 'helpers' pull out guns + shoot everyone dead.

A little girl, five or six years old, sees that something sinister is about to happen. She hides behind the vans, moving with them as they back up.
After everyone is dead, she starts to run away, across the gravel behind the vans. Just as she reaches the edge, and begins to scramble down the far cliff, an officer sees her, and begins to give chase.

OPD: tiddly winks

2010-02-22T00:30:00.000-08:00

"...Dreaming about tiddly winks with Reagan, Thor, and Dracula." via BryceyBryce

sectional spider

2010-02-19T11:00:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamt a lot, but the only tid-bit that stayed with me into the sunshine was the image of the sectional spider.

It was a big, chocolately brown spider with a shiny bulging body the size of a small lime. It was weaving a web-tunnel, but there was some bit of information missing, a step it was skipping so that the web came apart in little wedge shaped pieces, like Ibarra Mexican hot chocolate.

OPD: dream prep

2010-02-17T17:59:00.000-08:00

"Dreamt I was in Macbeth, but hadn't read the script. Today: went to the library to get the book, so that I will not be unprepared tonight." @bustedpuppet

OPD: dino fight

2010-02-16T13:13:00.000-08:00

"Almost forgot! Last night's crazy dream included running around underground, [with people], fine dining, and a dinosaur fight."

"And when I say dinosaur fight, I mean Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus death match on the streets of San Francisco. It was awesome!" @lankyjoe

hard to make at 30 knots

2010-02-13T07:14:00.000-08:00

- re-enacting scenes from the 1940's on a boat.
- trying to sneak the boat out of it's tiny harbor (on a cliffside). "Sure, we could clear the lock, but the turn would be hard to make at 30 knots."

- something about a fascist influence on the Impressionists. Nazis in our midst. Stress, urgency.

OPD: Owen's nightmare

2010-02-10T19:52:00.000-08:00

From Archie McPhee's product blog:

"Ten- year-old Owen made a movie of one of his nightmares using our products. Includes twist ending!

The original post can be found here.

Berlin cab driver

2010-02-06T07:45:00.000-08:00

This half-dream happened to the tune of Regina Spektor's song, 'That Time.'

A man is remembering a business meeting in Berlin, Charlottenburg. He, another man and a woman are leaving their meeting at a cafe- he gets a phone call. He walks out along the edge of the canal. They hail a cab.

The other two will continue east, but he must get out at Potsdamer Str. to get another cab to take him North.

Their cab driver misunderstands.

The man, as he is getting up from his seat, hails another cab. The pale yellow Mercedes pulls up across the street.

Seeing this, the original cab driver thinks the whole group is trying to skip the fare- leaving his cab because they are bigots, because he is Turkish.
He starts yelling.
He gets out, into the street, threatening violence.

The pair remaining, still sitting in the back seat of his cab are perturbed. The business man, standing in the middle of the road, is trying to explain, but the driver is yelling so loudly....

... + both my calves cramp.

OPD: secrets of death

2010-01-10T16:32:00.001-08:00

"Dreamt I was investigating the secrets of death- our yards were all graveyards and I was pursuing death through a marketplace." -Inktea

restaurant on a hill

2010-01-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Thursday morning.

Restaurant on a hill, a little 1800's farm house converted into a big kitchen and many indoor/outdoor patio dining areas. Erik and I go in to eat.

The front lawn on the hill has tables all around and verandas. People are watching clouds, excitedly pointing up, saying, 'Oh! Ah!' in unison. The clouds are big balls of vapor transforming with bursts of different textures.

We continue inside into a maze of sloppily converted spaces, mostly little bits of kitchen, storage and behind-the-scenes things with little tiny staircases winding up and around three stories.

We lose each other immediately. Separated by rushing kitchen staff. After running around searching for the way up, I eventually make it out onto a top floor patio- not quite the rooftop.* Erik has secured a table in the sun and ordered already. When I arrive, our food is just being served. It's a French restaurant - we're eating brunch.

*there are little bits of building still taller, like attic spaces with dormer windows facing both into the patio, and out to the street.

Transcribed at Café Revolution on 22nd between Valencia and Mission.

death by annoying

2010-01-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

This dream happened yesterday also, but I didn't remember it clearly enough to write anything down. Again, I can only remember little bits and pieces. This morning I woke up with a sore jaw from gritting my teeth.

I'm away from home, living in a hotel with Erik, on an upper floor- the windows of our room look out over a city. We've been here a while, running around from place to place. We've killed people. Several people. Apparently because they were annoying. But now the authorities are catching up to us.

Scrambling to pack up my luggage with enough time to get to the airport, I'm finding that things are scattered all over the room- clothes in piles on every piece of furniture and little things, coins, perfume bottles and dozens of decks of playing cards are strewn under the bed and couch. I think to myself, "I should put all the playing cards into one box..." but there is no time to pick up the little things.

Coming down the hallway, I can hear the cleaning staff knocking on doors calling out 'house keeping'. This makes me rush- house keeping arriving means I'm running late. Erik is standing in the middle of the room, looking overwhelmed. There's a knock on our door, but before anyone can say anything, a short man in a brown uniform rushes in the door and grabs Erik, then fumbles for handcuffs.

For some reason, as I wake up, I know that he's been caught, but they've let me go. The sun hasn't come up yet, and the cat is sleeping on my shoulder.

[Earlier there was a bit in a parking garage, driving around a circular ramp... and walking confused through the giant concrete building. We were both panicked and late.]

jungle war zone

2009-12-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

First night back in San Francisco. Staying at Mother's.

Long meandering dream on a campus - walking back and forth with different men - at some point with Shal. Sand in my shoe, raw ankle.

Then a more clear dream, a war zone in a muddy jungle. No real sides, just all out chaos - mangled bodies face down in the mush of the path along a ravine made by a slow moving brown creek. Dark in the forest, light only just glistening on the wet edges of bodies, guns, leaves.

Sweaty.
Flies and other buzzing insects.

Then, suddenly out of the bush, children - not yet teenage boys - with big clumsy rifles. Old, worn rifles. Slow to load. Inaccurate. Unpredictable, staring boys with guns.

Then I woke up.

"Get the cat out of the bag, out of the closet."

2009-12-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Coff's Harbour, Australia

It was hot and we were busy the morning I had this dream. Initially the notes were vague:

leaving the old apartment
+ the landlady moving my things for me.
Cat in the bag + in the closet.

Shipwreck + fake sea floor

Later, I filled in the 2nd part of the dream:

Excavating household goods, common daily items out of the rocky sea shore where the wreck happened. Leaning over rock outcroppings, the side of a metal rowboat. Tide goes out + the sea floor is empty. Porous, volcanic rocks, no creatures, no barnacles, no plants. Eventually we realize that it's a mechanical floor, covering the actual seabed.

Still, I don't think that's a terribly complete description either. This dream has stayed vivid enough that I've already re-told it twice or more without notes. Here's another shot at it:

First part -
My roommate has already left, and I am moving today, must be out of the apartment by the evening, but I haven't packed anything yet. I put the cat into the freestanding wardrobe to keep her from getting loose and underfoot while I move things. Something distracts me, and I leave the apartment for a little while in the middle of the day.

When I return, my land lady has been in the apartment, and clearly was annoyed that I hadn't made more progress packing, so she had undone my bed, stripped the sheets and everything is in a pile on the floor- a mess. She had also moved a few pieces of furniture, but in the same half-ass way. I'm furious when I see this.

The movers are carrying the wardrobe up the stairs to my new apartment when I realize that I need to let the cat out of the closet and I think to myself, "Get the cat out of the bag, out of the closet!" I find this funny in the dream too.

My rooms of my new apartment are strangely arranged, with a bathtub in the middle of the kitchen, like in Married to the Mob. Behind the kitchen space is a doorway and a large open cutout in the wall, partially covered by a curtain. The gap looks into my neighbors apartment, which is a big collective space with many people. I think it might be alright, getting to spy into their lives, but then I think, no- they'll be seeing me just as clearly.

Second part -
Working on the excavation/cleanup after a shipwreck in a narrow inlet across the water from a small town. The cliffs are jagged and the volcanic rock is sharp. As described above.

When the tide goes out, we are able to walk out onto flat sections of rock, between tall jagged spikes, but not far from the cliff's edge, the ocean floor is an almost flat expanse of porous burgundy rock. We are puzzled, but someone finds the seam, and it becomes clear that it is a false floor- a door covering the actual sea floor, like the entryway to an evil mastermind's secret lair. This explains why we haven't found the remains of the boat.

building a weird thing in the trees at the sea

2009-12-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

Hotel Atlantis, Melbourne

Stumbled into a high rise office building, looking for a craft shop- found myself in the opening stages of a 'build your own bird' contest which also seemed to have a cat category. People were testing their prototypes in an airspace between three section sof the building and the fence of the houses next door. Some of the robots were able to cross the chasm and return. Others fell the three to five floors to the ground with varying survival rates.

Then,

Building a thing with Erik. I am sitting in a field of trees, pruned with branches littering the ground. I am sorting, making piles - straight ones of this type, crooked ones like that, etc. Erik joins me, wants to use some of the straight wet ones for a project of some kind. I find Oxalis (sour grass, little yellow flowers) and pile those up too. Talking, eventually, we agree to make this other project - and n my excitement I sweep all the piles of branches off the edge into one big jumbled mess.

We walk down a long dirt road past little shacks, restaurants and bars, most of which are closed. The shacks have banana trees and little colored lights, and most are clapped together out of corrugated metal and fiberglass. Leftovers from bigger construction sites.

We find wood - wide flat pieces of pine, really nice plywood. We cut and scrape and sand things very carefully. Two big pieces get handles cut in. Hammering in nails is more difficult. We don't actually have proper tools. One piece has moving parts - a long stick with thin shingles sandwiched between. All together after much trial the thing swings freely and we are pleased. Next is the bigger pieces, which doesn't come together as well - and we laugh at the weird thing we've built.

It ends up like a boogey board, but two- attached with a hinge in the middle and one with a strange little spoiler at the base which makes it impossible, or at least uncomfortable to ride. But we are pleased, at least that the heavy thing has handles and we carry it between us like a child.

We walk down to the shore, where there are a line of shops bordering a walkway along a high sea wall. The water is shallow foam though, pushed over a jagged mountain of reef just a few feet away from the wall. The tides push wave, after wave of water over the peak, but it drains in and around and through the spongy blue rock. People are pushed up against each other, crowding together to watch the water.

The shops sell candy and bright garish trinkets.

the prince and the islander's cotton revolt

2009-12-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

Already in Australia, this one's from Melbourne.

Four hour nap in the middle of the day. Long, overnight train ride, didn't get much sleep between Sydney and Melbourne. Dreampt about a prince(?) getting married, taking his new bride on a tour of all the places he'd been around the world in his youth.

South East Asian cotton farmers - 60 year revolt, not selling their cotton to the capitalists, letting their fields go fallow each year, or planting beans of some kind. Very, very poor people, but championed by the prince still, after a decade or however long, since he'd last visited their tiny atoll.

Shiny silver plane - prince was the pilot.

dinner with Obama

2009-12-01T09:51:00.000-08:00

Dreampt in the glacier town of Franz Joseph, NZ.

Dreampt of a tiny dinner party at the white house - huge, long banquet table - the president and two men at one end, many open seats between me and them... other people too, but no banquet. Few lights. Discussion. I forget the topics of conversation. At one point, Obama got up, walking the long way around the table, slowly, saying something in a 'I'm about to say something profound' voice, never getting to the point… near a side door, he turns on a small desk fan on the floor, then leaves the room abruptly.

The fan kicks up enough wind to upset the carpet. It raises up forming a giant pyramid shap. There were four or fie wine glasses on the carpet which go tumbling. I catch a few before the spill.

Later in the same dream, I'm at a table of lesbian friends of Joe's. Everything is friendly until one woman whispers to another across the table, "we can't talk about secret things in front of the S - T - R…" I laugh and pout, but they're serious.

skinning the polar bear

2009-11-30T09:36:00.000-08:00

The first of a back log of dreams dreampt while travelling in New Zealand and Australia. This one was dreampt in the town of Wanaka, after an evening of cider in a lakeside pub and a long walk through spring flowers on the shore.

…tonight, er, last night was the continuation of a long dream about skinning a bear for Dave S. A white bear, like a polar bear - although no one ever called it that. A very old, dry, crumbling bear that was some kind of endangered species. Knowing ahead of time that it was dying, there was much discussion about how to deal with all the paperwork, etc. to keep some part of the animal. It was all very complicated and impossible seeming.

I snuck into Dave's office - a huge multi-level Victorian-style library with a big mezzanine covered in stacks of papers and objects. It was the middle of the night and I skinned the bear - not terribly well, especially at the neck and face, where the skin tore, and the snout crumpled, but not so terrible for the animal still being alive.

I left the skin for Dave, and hid the carcass in a locker of some kind that belonged to me. The next day the campus was buzzing about who'd done this thing - and Dave was especially pleased because my illegal actions meant he was no longer obligated to do all that paperwork.

I didn't know how to tell him that I'd done this thing. I didn't know what to do with the carcass. We had a paper due. 3,000 words. I wrote a three page paper, telling the story and turned it in. Later I was embarrassed to get the numbers wrong.

(There was more to this dream. At the bottom of the page, there is a note: "Don't forget the special forces lovers on base and the rest of the bear dream with skateboarders." And again, on the opposite page, "skateboarding on new flagstones". All I can remember of that part of the dream now, I am walking across the campus the next night after skinning the bear. New flagstones have been put in to make a path across a lawn surrounded by damp concrete buildings. Obviously, there must have been skateboarding in there somewhere, but that's all I remember. The 'special forces lovers' was a dream from a few nights before, but that's missing too.)

abandonded parakeet

2009-11-14T05:47:00.000-08:00

Had several dreams this morning, the memory of which are pretty vague. In one, I was in Las Vegas, in a televised argument with Sarah Palin, who twisted out of every question she was asked and made little snide comments about completely random things and I got really frustrated. She was on television last night, so it makes sense.

Mainly though, I dreamt about a parakeet who had been abandoned in it's cage on the street corner across from my house. I lived in a big turn of the century house in a suburban neighborhood where the houses and apartment buildings were mixed together like in East Hollywood- mostly built in the late Sixties, with big ugly ironwork and strangely shaped hedges.

So yes. There was this big white birdcage left on the street corner, in the sun. Inside was this obnoxious parakeet who was wounded- bleeding from it's foot, but otherwise just a little freaked out from being on the street. I felt really badly for the bird, but I really don't like parakeets, so there's no way I would take the thing in. I went over to the cage and opened the door so at least he could make his own way.

Walking out across the street, my cat had gotten loose. Maybe this was when the parakeet's foot got wounded. I recall that all the animals bled at some point. Anyhow, I had to run back after opening the cage and get the cat back into the house. When I turned around after shutting the door, the parakeet had walked down the street, and now was being stalked by this little red fox.

Exasperated, I realize that this bird has always been inside, and it doesn't know any better. I run down to the two, and wrestle them apart. I bring them both back to the house, and think that I should go out and retrieve the cage. That way, when I post an ad on craigslist, I can give the bird away in it's whole package. I wonder what would posses someone to just leave their pet out on the street, when craigslist exists and makes giving pets away so easy. I can't imagine how guilty I would feel if I did such a thing.

K - potassium

2009-11-11T07:52:00.000-08:00

"Been on edge all morning after a stressful dream about a school-exam gone wrong. I know now that the answer was potassium. Ugh. Bananas!" 11:25 AM Nov 11th from Twitter.

The dream:
In a high school, maybe city college chemistry class. The British teacher is presenting a short exam, to identify and write about the qualities of the element represented by a K on the periodic table. The class starts to scramble around the deteriorating classroom, searching all over the place for a text book or something which will help us answer the question. The teacher decides that this American classroom is useless, we'll all do better at the British school across the way.

He leads the class out, across the campus to a totally separate campus across the street. We walk into the high tech totally over designed lab, like something out of a bad hollywood movie- there are technicians in bunny suits rushing around, everything is shiny and covered in plastic. The floor is pristine and white. The class files into a little side room, like a conference room. There are textbooks, like those Time-Life books on "Volcanos" and "Bears"- they're all about three quarters of an inch thick, with thick, maroon, plastic coated hardbound covers, full of thick glossy pages of photographs.

I finally find the book we need, and I'm tearing through the pages trying to find the question that we're supposed to be answering, about K. While I was marveling at the weird lab, I missed the announcement of which page the test question was on in the book. I see that other students are already finished with their exams. I still haven't found the question yet. I start to get a little panicked and then I wake up.

I know that it's potassium. I look it up, just to be sure. I think it's all about the conversation I had the night before about bananas.

composting the Ivy League

2009-11-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

Complicated long dream involving a bunch of people, late at night, taking trains and trams back home, last tram through town, not sure if it'll make it, etc.

Which led to this, obviously:

Three of us standing around a compost bed (not a heap, not a raised frame, but a bed). One person was standing, explaining how to select certain types of plants, twigs, branches to lay down in a pattern on the surface of the bed of compost. There were onions, leeks, ivy and sycamore branches with all the leaves torn off and more, but none I can remember specifically. All these were spread out, evenly spaced on the bed of compost. Then, with a big flat shovel, we covered them in a layer of clean dirt.

The first shovel-full of dirt sent hundreds of huge black flies swarming into the air. The person teaching us to do this explained it like it was a big secret, something only a rare few understood. And part of the story was that this technique had something to do with how the schools on the East Coast came to be called 'Ivy League'. The onions, leeks and floppy plants like that lay flat, but the sycamore and ivy branches, things with some shape, they were laid down so that the longest portion of the branch was flat along the ground, and a few branches, perhaps with leaves would stand up, five inches or so, poking up out of the layer of covering dirt. This was very important.

naan in my bed

2009-11-06T08:25:00.000-08:00

Woke up from a dream so vivid, I had scooted over in bed to make room for the naan I expected to find beside me.

Naan was being served as a part of a brunch with a large group of people, the morning after some big huge event. Most people were pretty hungover. A few people, Val, had mimosas or kir royals.

I had been sitting with Thom, but we wandered off and at the end of the table I was sitting at, someone started complaining about how no one had pitched in to help pay for the brunch because they'd all been paid in one dollar bills. I corrected them across the table, "No, it was two dollar bills- Thom always carries two dollar bills." To which Skwish rolled her eyes.

There was a lot of talk about an intersection, a difficult on-ramp onto the highway. The on-ramp was just after a big curve, so it was always hard to see, and traffic built up into a long line all the time. My solution was always to cross the intersection on the frontage road, turn around in the driveway of the big forest service fire station on the other side. But earlier, I'd been driving across to do just that, and I just kept going, down the frontage road to the next on-ramp. At the corner there, a big building was for sale and instead of getting on the road, I pulled into it's driveway, called the real estate agent and bought it.

Someone at the party started complaining about the intersection and all the traffic, and I remembered that I'd bought the building, so I told everybody about it. Someone male started arguing with me, saying I'd only just thought about buying the building, that I hadn't actually called and talked to anyone. I insisted that I had.

Somewhere at this point Lara sat next to me, and as I was chattering away at her, Thom came to find out if we wanted drinks- I asked for something really strange, something much too strong for the morning. Lara and I talked excitedly about some plan we were making- at some point, I said to her, "This'll make two tasks we've done together this week, we're on a roll!"

Towards the end, people had gotten up and wandered off in order to eat- the food was from all over the place. I was caught up in conversation with Lara and a couple of other people, so I still didn't have any food when Nancy came up to me and asked if she could get me anything- and if she could sit with me. I traded the open seat next to me for some of the food she was carrying, so she placed this amazing, luscious naan on the table next to me, and went back to the buffet to pick up more food.

OPD: the Poincaré Conjecture

2009-11-03T07:55:00.000-08:00

Stephen Fry tweeted: "Dreamt I solved the Poincaré Conjecture using a tennis racket, a teapot & a rubber sheet. It really worked but vital steps gone"

hermaphrodite

2009-10-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

The only thing I remember about this morning's dream:

I turned to the people I was with and yelled, "What, are you a fuckin' hermaphrodite?!?"

OPD: Space is so deep

2009-10-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

Another dream from David Byrne.

red sea sand disaster

2009-09-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

I am wading in the Red Sea with my daughter and a woman friend. (My daughter is about five or six years old, both she and my friend have wavy blonde hair.) The water comes up to my mid-thigh, and stretches out glassily still to the horizon, shimmering blue over white sand. My daughter splashes around ahead of us as we walk slowly through the water.

There is a rumbling sound. Off in the distance a slow moving wave of slate-blue sand comes rolling into the water towards us. Soon our legs are mired in the sand. We rush to extract ourselves, pulling our legs out of the mire, each step with difficulty.

Along the shore there is a boardwalk, flanked on one side with little docks and small, individual shops. My friend points to a low, flat boat that is moored alongside one of these saying,
"Shall we try to get on that boat- it's the Pushkin."
"No," I say, "That's not the Pushkin, it's the Titanic."
As I say this, the boat ripples, and moving like a caterpillar, it rises up out of the water and onto the dock to escape the sand. It is indeed the Titanic- the name is written in filigreed gold lettering on the front of the boat.

"We should go to Katrina's." I say, pointing down the boardwalk.
People are rushing around in a panic, they are afraid, but for all the worry, they aren't actually moving all that fast. We continue down the boardwalk to the very end.

The last little building on the end of the pier is a tiny red shack, not more than 10 by 20 feet. It is a home-spun bar, called Katrina's. The two friends who run the place are rushing around, closing up the shutters on the windows. One, who I assume is Katrina (with a big shock of curly black hair) tells us to go through to the back, into the mangroves. We start to move in that direction when I wake up.

I realized later as I was retelling the dream, that all of the people populating it were women.

dawn burglar

2009-08-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

I was house-sitting for my grandparents. It's near dawn, in that half-light. I'm trying to fix the thermometer. The house is hot- it's near 105°.

There's a banging noise, like someone hitting a door with their fist. I step out into the hallway, looking through all the sliding glass doors into the other parts of the house. There's a blue flashing that takes me a minute to locate. It's a security monitor that's been disabled, reflected in all the windows and the pool.

A man is walking slowly, trying not to make any sound, checking how heavy some of the paintings are. He's nearby the front door, lifting up a big heavy gold frame, brushing his hands on the canvas in a too-familiar way. I try to yell, but no sound comes out. I clap my hands.

He spins around, looks through all the windows and sees me. I'm suddenly aware that I'm standing there in nothing by my underwear, vulnerable. I'm scared. I yell, "I'm going to call the cops!" The man bolts through the front door. I panic and realize that I don't have a phone, he saw me and he knows I don't have a phone... and I wake up.

OPD: David Byrne journal

2009-08-05T23:36:00.000-07:00

David Byrne dreams, and tells us all about it here.

Oscars

2009-06-30T18:23:00.000-07:00

I was at the Oscars this morning in my dream. Man, do they need new writers.

Lumberjack on a boat

2009-06-26T06:23:00.000-07:00

Dreamt of a boat in a storm. Why'd we let the lumberjack fix the navigation equipment? The boat flipped and I woke up swimming under water.

Lice

2009-06-25T06:24:00.000-07:00

dreamt about lice this morning. Big honkin' lice. *shudder*

The Hawk and the Quail

2009-05-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

Standing with my Mother, overhead a large red hawk. It lands in the middle of a clearing, it's tall, at least a meter tall with long straight legs like a puppet. It walks around the clearing as we comment on it's amazing form. Eventually, it discovers a quail's nest in the low branches of a tree. The quail had left the nest in an attempt to distract the Hawk away, but it hadn't worked. The other quail, in a last ditch effort to save their babies, grabbed the three chicks, and holding them high over it's head, was starting to leave the nest when the Hawk came up upon them.

Realizing what was happening, I intervene. I suggest that losing only one child to the Hawk is better than all three, and so I ask the chicks which is the most brave and adventurous? (The chicks at this point are three little girls, about 8-10 years old.) In answer to my question, the two girls standing nearest to me turn, and show me that actually they don't have any choice- they are fused together at the shoulder. The third girl, standing a bit further away doesn't look up, but holds her head down, dejected. I get the impression that this happens a lot, and she's always the odd one out. (I think to myself that she's lucky, my impression of the more talkative conjoined twin was that she would be a punishing bore to be attached to.)

The Hawk, apparently, was the Young Indiana Jones (yes, just as we've seen him in movies) and rather than eating the little girl (quail chick), he just wanted a traveling companion. The dream continues with him on a ship. An odd ship, more like an extended dock, with a radio station. I'm not really there, myself, but the only interaction I have in this part of the dream is with the radio station. Outside, on an otherwise blank maroon wall, two cables are strung up between various connectors. One is some type of power supply, the other is an audio cable, with a big sign overhead indicating that it should be plugged into one port during a live broadcast, and another port indicated with an arrow if a podcast is being recorded. I grab the cable and put it into the podcast port, just for fun. There is a distant sound of feedback, and I'm a little embarrassed, but I don't replace the cable.

The Young Indiana Jones is sitting on a chaise lounge, wrapped in bandages, and trying to read an incredibly over-sized book. It appears to be several volumes, re-bound into one huge, thick hardcover. The bandages on his hands make him frustrated, and he throws himself into the water and begins to drown. Again.

You see, it turns out that Y.I.J. is a bit on the dramatic side, and is constantly trying to off himself. This is why he's covered in bandages. Frustration with a ridiculous book? Suicide. The rest of the dream consists entirely of attempting to thwart his suicide attempts, all of which, for the time being involve dumping himself into the water in the hopes that he'll sink. I woke up during the rescue efforts of his last attempt, where about a hundred fully uniformed sailors came pouring out of the radio station, and all jumped into the water after him.

DJs and things

2009-05-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

Dreamt of a really bad photographer and an Indian DJ. Also, a bar made from torn up tractor tires. Sigh. I'm dreaming about bars again.

Poirot & Time

2009-05-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

Poirot observed the creation of an evil doppelgänger, and as a result was forced to drink the potion himself. (I was Poirot.) The other guy was somehow important, with fluffy hair and a tan suit, he didn't reappear, evil or otherwise.

A year later, Poirot is still on hand to assist/protect the same wealthy family, but now they are sick of his presence and are tired of his ineffectual investigations. They are all getting themselves packed into a large SUV, when evil Poirot sees that there is some thing in the grove of trees just beyond the lawn where the SUV is parked. As I walked past the SUV, I turned to look in the window to see if I was as Heath-Ledger-playing-the-Joker scary looking, and instead I saw myself reflected, without even a painted on mustache. (The lack of mustache was most shocking, and the boyish look of my face.) Startled, I indicated that I was going to go find out what was beyond those trees, something on the ground.

There were somethings on the ground- flat, round ply-wood cutouts; a bobbin, a buzzer and two more that I can't remember. I stepped on the bobbin, and an explosion went off under the SUV. I stepped on the buzzer and a second charge detonated. I jumped with enthusiasm onto the next two and back, creating a chorus of explosions. Mid jump, I realized the connection between the images; they were all puns on concepts of time. The bobbin is 'A stitch in time...' and the buzzer was something along the lines of 'time's up'. I continued to jump on the different stages of time, and slowly woke up to the explosions.

NOTE: The bobbin was just like Rebecca's matchbox etching. She tells me it represents her relationships.

Easter birth

2009-04-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

Dreampt of giving birth. Heather ML acted as midwife in this ramshackle warehouse artist's complex. I was observed by a number of odd people, and towards the end, Robert arrived. It was awkward and a boy, but the dream didn't seem to be about the baby- it was much more focused on the interactions between me and all these people who couldn't understand why I was still in the city.
I have a vague memory of Matt A. being there too. Robert seemed wistful, but it's hard to say.

There are rabbits here, running around in the garlic plants by the pool. Nothing much has changed, I guess.

transbay tube earthquake

2009-04-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

Dreamt of an earthquake. Was on the BART, in the tunnel under the bay. The train began to shake side to side and then something gave and we went down, like a rollercoaster.

I remember thinking, 'ooh, you're going to want to remember this when you wake up.' But the dream continued on from there, and that part is gone from my memory.

What's with all the standing on tables?

2009-03-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

A small Spanish colonial fort complex, the Presidio, somewhere with a lot of rooms connected by an outdoor terrace.
Walking through the rooms- Erik was there, Randy- I distinctly remember talking about Rebecca, people I find attractive. In one room a man was standing on top of a table, I walked through and into another room where there was an extremely tall man. As I walked out the door I muttered to myself, 'What's with all the standing on tables?'

This dream was a jumble, but I woke from it to answer the phone.

psycho killer

2009-03-20T04:43:00.000-07:00

In a far away out-building off the station, trying to pack up my things: scraps of cloth, leather, bags of things. Brandon is having a little party with two not-to-bright girls. The girls are very drunk, and running around in their underwear. Somehow between the picking up of my things and their drunken giggling, Brandon convinces them that they should let him tie them up- one girl on the couch, one on the bed across the room. They are surprised he has so much matching rope.

Somewhere around this point, as B is tying down the girls, Erik and another guy come in. We're all a little uncomfortable with the situation, but it gets really odd as we realize that B is no planning on killing the girls, hacking them up into pieces. We all get a little scared, B has a jigsaw, and when Erik starts to argue with him, B lunges at Erik with the saw, stabbing him through the shirt at the belly. In the ensuing fight, Erik manages to knock the saw away from B, the then materializes a knife. The girls are screaming, me and the other guy are just standing, watching dumbfounded. Erik gets behind B and grabs hold of one finger of his left hand, pulls him, trying to knock him over, but B still has the little knife. Both the other guy and I start to move to help when I wake up. My first thought is, 'Why didn't we dogpile him?'

Whatcha scared of?

2009-03-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

Two doctors.
The young one come to visit the older man.
The older doctor is frustrated because his paper on the ground breaking graft-surgery he'd performed got published, but not enough of a response back in the States. They're in some far-away distant province, a colony.
They move to the older man's office, his study- they're at his house. Outside, somewhere there is an air-raid, bombs are falling. The room is shaking, vibrating with each blast. The younger visitor starts to panic, he's sweating, gripping the edge of his chair... but it's not because of the bombs- they're deep underground in a bunker. He's panic-ing because his girlfriend is insisting that they get married.

German burritos

2009-03-06T10:00:00.001-08:00

Rachel picked me up from... somewhere. I had luggage that was difficult to negotiate. We drove around in the rain for a while, and then we stopped in at a little shop- I was hungry, but I didn't have any cash on me. The shop had two cases, one with drinks and breakfast items, and the other with bigger lunch items. It seemed to be a Taco Bell, but everything was in German. I got a breakfast burrito- and Rachel slipped a few dollars into the honor-system little yellow box for payment. I felt weird not paying at all, and I found a quarter and two dimes in my pocket, which I added to the box.

The dream then devolved into a long portion where I had to navigate a big mall, with many restaurants, all in a style like the casinos in Vegas. There were chimes in the entry way to one- women shopping, trying to decide which chimes to buy. It went on forever as the alarms kept going off on my phone.

wrong pants

2009-02-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

I was wearing the wrong pants on set. I stripped mine off, and then had to run across a big plaza, thru the crew to get to wardrobe.

EDIT:
Originally posted to Twitter, I recall that as I made my way in my underwear across a broad central town park where the crew was, I kept getting asked questions by the AD, who was a lot like Paula. Wardrobe was way down the street, several blocks.

red taser

2009-02-25T06:33:00.000-08:00

Another dream from the same morning- a fat man was trying to kill me. I sprayed him with a garden hose and ran away fast enough to avoid his deadly red taser.

the news infiltrates my nights

2009-02-25T06:21:00.000-08:00

This morning I dreamt of a crumbling villa's garden, empty fountains and Futurist sculptures. We broke in, but that was alright.

EDIT:
I originally posted this on Twitter, but re-placing it here, I recall that I led Mother into the garden via a gate in the back of the building. As we came up the terracotta-tiled stairs to a long colonnade, an official looking man came out of one of the doors and looked curiously at us as he passed by to exit via the gate we'd come in from. Instead of going up into the colonnade, we hopped over a low wall into the bare dirt area that would have been the garden to examine two objects on big pedestals. They were positioned next to each other so that one had to view them from the garden and not from the house- on the left was the Liberty Bell and on the right was a curious sculpture that turned out to be the bill of rights.

We were nonplussed by these objects, and continued past them alongside the building. The colonnade on our left ended abruptly in a short staircase down into what had been a large atrium, with big empty fountain basins. Over each basin were three sculptures- all with people as the large central object, but flanked by machines or vaguely industrial objects. These were the Futurist sculptures, and apparently what we had come to see. We clambered around the atrium area, inspecting these... and that's all of the dream I can still remember.

suicide

2009-01-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

So this morning I dreamt that Mother and I were embarking on a road trip in a big boxy winnebago. The bus kind, big, long vehicle, roomy. We discovered that even on the road, you could get up and walk around, even if you were driving, you know on the straight aways. Also, there was some kind of benefit to going really fast- we were travelling at 120-130 mph (and still, not always holding on to the wheel- although techinically, she was the one driving).

After a bit, we settled into a more normal road trip, and we chatted away, like we do. We came to a big freeway interchange, with lots of big curved sections of bridges over others. We were on a section going down and to the left, and over head was a curve that came towards us from the left and crossed our bridge. A man had jumped from that upper bridge, and was laying, mangled and dead in the no. 1 lane. We put our hands up to shield our view as we drove up to the body- but of course, once we were actually along side the body, the traffic up ahead jammed up, so that I ended up turning and examining the guy.

He was really young, like 20, and under his shoulder, kind of crumpled up into his armpit was a photograph of him and a girl. I was really struck by how beautiful his twisted arm and hand were- they were all folded up into this strange knot, but sunlight was playing through the opening and it was pretty in a morbid sort of way. At this point I realized that, mangled as he was, no one had actually run him over since he'd jumped. You could see him from a bit of a distance, approaching the bridge, so I assumed that people were doing as we had, moving over and shielding their eyes.

I didn't wake up right away after that dream, but it's all I remember from last night.

the old, old house

2009-01-24T11:49:00.000-08:00

Just dreamt of an old, old house where I've dreamt before.

(a description of the dream, from an email)
Something broke the uv filter on my camera, I took it into the bathroom and in picking at it, the whole lens collapsed in a rain of tiny shards all over the pink tile floor. I had lots of little bits stuck in my fingers. At another point, just before actually, I was on a yacht, a big honkin' yacht, sailing into a small marina. We tied off to a short pier, but the official at the pier checked our rope, and based on the style of knot, decided that our registration wasn't updated, and therefor we couldn't dock there. I realized these were the same knots that were in all sorts of other places, and they must be from some nebulous dark person, whom I apparently was able to identify in the dream. The knots looked like little fists, with barbs on either side like the letter 'Y' in sign language. They were neat, those knots.

(another email)
...people tried to push their way into the bathroom to see what had happened to the camera, if I was okay, etc. and I forced them out, pushed the door closed to deal with the mess myself, in private- protecting them from cutting themselves on the glass as well.

I wonder if I can pull up more of the dream from my memory- it was a long one, many different sections- a search party, that's how I ended up on the yacht- that's why I was in the house- looking for something or someone. I've dreamt of that house before, an old man used to live in it, but he's dead now and the building is empty, but not 100% clean- it still smells of his life and his things. It's an old house, with many DIY additions, some of the added rooms are incomplete, with raw floorboards and mismatched windows. The central, original house had been remodled in the 60s- the linoleum, carpet and tilework is in classic pinks and teals and odd color combinations. The garden too, I have memories of, but not from this morning's dream. It's like a house in the south, there's lawn, but it isn't manicured, just runs off into the dirt under trees and everything looks like it's been growing back there for forty years with out much attention. Lots of trees though.