dream!
LADYTRAP, INC.
the flip side of reality
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guns, grand theft auto, pacemakers
Wow, turbulent dreams.
I learn about the modern weapons they are issuing to motorcycle cops; they look like something out of Robocop. Since there is not room on a normal motorcycle to store your typical shotgun and machine guns, they build the gun into the motorcycle, as a detachable piece . The gun is a giant egg-shaped device that you stick both arms into.
I see a demonstration of the guns in action when the cops chase down four teenagers that were going wild on a motorcycle. We're on a bridge and somehow the teenagers end up on the street below. One of the police bikes has somehow fallen below and one of the teenagers has gotten ahold of the gun on it. He pulls away all the egg packaging to reveal an ordinary machine gun, which he fires up at us.
I hear a sort of narration as this story goes, as if I was living in a documentary with an omniscient voice. We all run away and the teenager contents himself with shooting the gun everywhere he pleases. There is an extraordinary amount of ammunition in it. He is able to basically hold the trigger down for hours. He eventually shoots the gun toward his high school and decides to go take care of some business.
Bad news, eh?
This turns into an on-the-run dream as I frantically try to stay one step ahead of the bullets. Even though I know what is going to happen (the narrator is still speaking) I always seem to be just on the brink of danger.
The kid ends up destroying the school and 500 houses on 72 acres of land. I run from house to house, hiding in backyards as the houses next-door go up in flames. I never did figure out how houses were burning down from gunfire... he must have been hitting their gas tanks or the bullets are superexplosive!
I eventually escape danger by running over a hill. Now I am on the run in general and somehow I become the bad guy. The details are hazy here but I am in a sort of postapocalyptic desert scene. I chase down a traveling group in a caravan. They might be a church group, or part of a bicycle race, or a tourist group, but regardless of who they are I need to steal their van, and I've got an accomplice to help me out.
We somehow befriend them (either tactfully or by force) and end up on the van. What transpires is an action-move scene full of explosions, car crashes, treachery, trickery, and bravery. We are able to blow up or steal all the tires from all the cars and make off with the van, leaving all those poor folks (mostly over 50) alone to fend for themselves in the desert.
We drive all night. We're not even sure we'll reach the safety of our destination.
In a parallel storyline, I get left behind with the group, and we all seek safety together, although they constantly resent me for having destroyed all the tires! We hike through the wilderness for days, up to 15 miles at a time, mostly at night.
Eventually the dream shifts (slightly) and I head down with a few friends to a store where I am going to have to get a pacemaker. These aren't like the pacemakers of the world we are awake in. They are sold in a tube about five inches in diameter, about nine inches long. I have the choice to buy the Wal-Mart one or the Walgreen's brand; I think the former is cheaper so I go for the latter. There is not much difference in price here; both are under $10. The pacemaker does not get installed in your chest; it works externally, and you only get it out when you need it. It looks like a horrible little device, but I try it out at the encouragement of my friends. It draws its power directly from its user with a regular 3-prong power cable you place into your mouth. I touch it to my tongue and get that horrible sensation you get when you lick the top of a 9-volt battery. Big surprise, huh? I tear it from my mouth and spit. They say I'll get used to that.
My friends get me a bed at a pacemaker lounge, which is a room full of beds. Here is what a pacemaker does: You lie down and plug it in, placing the small on your chest, but it has nothing to do with the heart. It is for sleep and dreaming. The pacemaker puts your brain through a regulated 14-minute cycle, 7 minutes of REM and 7 minutes of the other stage of sleep. This cycle normally takes about two hours.
I hear all of the above information when I plug into the pacemaker, much in the same way that the Traags get their info sessions in Fantastic Planet.
I have reservation about this device, fearing that it will interfere with my dream experiments. I also don't like having to go into this public room to get my sleep. Most people with money are able to rent private rooms for their pacemaker chambers, but since this is through public health insurance it is not so cushy. I actually have to share the bed with a stranger (at least it's a big bed) and it won't be the same bed every time I come back. Furthermore, many people are using these beds for elicit sexual purposes and it's kind of gross to be seeing that go on around me as I try to regulate my sleep patterns.
Some friends show up and I try to hide the magazine I have been writing for them as a birthday gift. Fortunately they do not notice and we all go to Mambo's, the Cuban place in San Diego that is no longer open. Yummy. I especially enjoy the friend plantains.
post-tijuana
Blue is the theme for this dream, like the big blue leather car.
I'm watching Todd's dance group practice on a large concrete rooftop (covered by a ceiling but the walls are all open like a parking garage) and they invite me to join in the exercises. I'm a bit shy at first but when I join in, it feels great to be moving the body and getting in that zone. Kind of like Tai Chi.
There is some sort of game going where everyone takes cues from a leader, and that is going fine until the last one where I start dancing with my eyes shut and just end up far off in my zone. It's a bit embarrassing when I awake and find myself against the wall when the rest of the group is in the center of the room but it's no problem to join back up with them. We then move to a corner of the floor (overlooking some thick trees at night) and it's another game. I think the leader hands a stack of identically numbered flyers (i.e. they all have a seven on them) to one person and the trick is to get all the flyers into everyone's hands as quickly as possible. It's a cooperation project. The leader also hands another numbered stack to another person, maybe ten different stacks of flyers and by the end everyone has to have one of each flyer. Improvisational cooperation. I think there may be some sort of competitive edge as well, as if the first person top get all the flyers win a prize as well.
It is a weird feeling to have everyone cooperating and simultaneously competing, kind of like all the merging traffic at the border when coming back into San Diego from Tijuana.
During that activity I once again zone out and when I awake there are only three dancers around, and they eventually sneak off. Turns out the current leader started a mischievous trick by tricking a few of us to end up at the OTHER corner of the garage, that look so similar to the original one. Eventually I figure it out and find them all in the right place.
Eventually I leave and am driving a racecar like mad through the streets of Tijuana. I am on the phone telling someone about the Mexican wrestling match (lucha libre) I saw the night before and then eventually I am SKATING like mad down the same streets. It's rough going since the streets are rough and my board is getting stiff and brittle. But I've got enough speed and momentum going to fly over the bumps.
I skate down a street that I remember from a dream years ago. The funny thing is I haven't recalled this dream in my waking life ever before. At least some of these dreams really are locked away somewhere in the brain! It is a sunny street by the bay in San Francisco, on a fine summer day. As I cruise down the hill toward the bay, a little news report plays in my head:
Attention: The body of a great white shark has been found in the bay. Repeat, the body of a great white shark has been found in the bay. It has the bodies of two young girls in its mouth.
The part about the two girls seemed like almost an afterthought in the story, as if the reporter was making it up along the way. Sure enough, the story is pure fabrication, a lie told by some bored 8-year olds to their friends and maybe parents. They has a fantasy of becoming heroes by finding a shark in the bay. It turns out they buy a tiny fish (three inches long and not even a shark) and pose for pictures with it as if it was the shark and terrible surprise they hauled out of the water. I think they put Lego people in its mouth to represent the unlucky girls.
It is night now and I continue skating, and now I
hold in my right hand a curious ball I picked up at the rooftop dance ses
sion.
It is slightly bigger than a baseball, made of plastic, full of batteries, and
covered with colorful lights. Looks like a toy replica of a cool science
fiction idea. Well, I accidentally drop it on a cobblestone street (looks
like I am in Paris) and it starts bouncing down the street. I take off
after it (no longer carving in the street to control my speed and moving
nervously fast) and am almost upon it when a bus comes over the crest of a hill
and I must move to avoid being crushed. At the last minute I toss my
jacket (the brown zippered fleece I wear constantly) in an effort to try to stop
it. NO luck; and the bus plows over both of them. The sweater
survives (Albeit dirtily) but the ball is crushed into countless fragments.
Then an interesting happened in my physical life. I awoke at 9 AM with a start. There was some sense of insistence; a sense of importance that I get up. You see, lately I have been sleeping in until 11 (usually after staying up late working on projects) but yesterday morning I got up early on my day off and it was wonderful. Being up at 7:30 allowed me to have a leisurely breakfast with Erica and Shawn down at Influx, to randomly run into my old neighbor Dan (and therefore to connect with Cam, who I then learned has been doing dream research!), the attend a political rally with Shawn, to drop in on Erica's place of work, to check out some cool homes and canyons and Mission Hills, all before I would normally even be awake! I hate getting up early but I love being up early!
So I vowed to get up early more often when I didn't don't have to, and I think that was what happened this morning. Some bit of my memory drove me to wake with a sense of urgency. Regrettably as I lay in bed trying to recount my dreams I fell back into slumber until 10:00. Alas. But, hell, I actually needed the sleep last night after such a long day. Here is yesterday's itinerary:
7:20: Wake up after 5 hours sleep and write in the dream log
7:45: Head down to Influx for coffee and bagels with Shawn and Erica
8:15 See Dan and talk to him about photography, Dao Son, and dreams
8:30 Drop Erica off at work
9:00 See Howard Dean, candidate for Democratic presidency, speak at Trolley Park
9:30 Visit Erica at work, meet coworkers
10:00 Explore new houses and old canyons in Mission Hills
10:30 Return home to pack surfboard and listen to music
11:00 head north on highway 5 and get into gnarly death-defying smashup.
12:00 return home, swap cars, bring Shawn home.
12:30 Deal with insurance companies' robotic answering systems and pseudorobotic agents.
2:00 Return home, shower, plan trip to Mexico, make phonecalls
3:45 leave for Tijuana, battle traffic
4:30 cross border, go to Cultural Center of Tijuana for modern art and history of Baja exhibits.
7:00 walk to Tacos el Gordo for tacos al pastor (pork?) and tacos de cabeza (brain).
8:00 drive across town and for several hours watch lucha libre, ludicrous Mexican WWF-style wrestling
11:00 arrive at the border
12:00 cross the border and help Mexican man jumpstart his old truck.
12:30 return home and rehydrate, update Josh's tour page.
2:00 sleeeeeeeeep
So, you see, I earned the sleeping-in this time.
In my final dream I am readjusting the wires at the bottom of a metal clothing rack. this part reminds me of the many contacts of an RJ45 electrical connector, with a few bend awry. Someone has lined up a six-pack for the night, but I have no intentions of drinking more than one beer.
the new cult of sparky
Okay, in the dream all our cars were broken into but all the good stuff was hidden well (except for Erica's tapes) and now that the dream is out of the way let's talk a bit about the ideas Erica and I had last night for art projects:
I once had an idea to include, as part of this web site, the Sparkycam, that is, a streaming-video upload that allows website visitors to see what Sparky (my green anole [lizard]) is up to 24 hours per day. Sparky is interesting enough to warrant such a project; he changes colors from green to brown, and all shades in between, even patterns of spots and stripes and partial-coloration. When he's horny (especially in the spring) this big red crest extends out from under his chin and he does funky pushups. He jumps about the cage, hunting crickets. He is cute when he sticks out his little pink tongue to drink water. And most excellent of all, he periodically sheds his skin by tearing it off with this limbs and mouth... and then eating it!
We though about taking the Sparkycam idea to the next level and building a shrine around Sparky, with the idea of starting a religion. Maybe it would be in jest at first, but eventually the details would be so fine that perhaps people around the neighborhood (or around the world via the internet) start to actually worship him.
His cage would be remodeled into a scene of pyramids and thrones. We would surround him with crystals and waterfalls and sexy plastic lizards in robes and such. We would write music for him, make art for him, sings songs to him, accept donations for him, have him marry people, tell children about him. We would encourage people to eat their own skin (after sunburn) and do pushups regularly.
The media would call this the "Golden Hill Lizard Phenomenon" or "Internet Lizard Cult".
score!
crossing the Mexican border, Pat finds $1700 under a chair. We try to hand it over to the right person in customs, but everyone thinks we're crazy. The man we try to hand it over to tries to make us sandwiches. I'm late for work so the details will have to be confined to my head.
out of film!
Pat and I And Jeff Thomasson and Greg Sandoval (?!) go to check out the sea lion training area and we put around in the pool for a while. Oh, Sandra is there as well. Pat tells us the story of how (unfortunately) one of the younger sea lions accidentally wandered into the fish-processing tunnel and got pretty messed up... limbs cleanly removed. Still alive, though, and somehow still managing to swim.
We are all going to Pat's triathlon the next day so we hit the hay. Pat and I find places to sleep in the mammal area, and Jeff and Greg find bunks next door in the jewelry store.
When I wake up I sort through some bills and sea world benefits papers and then take a look outside. The light is beautiful. We are by the sea, and the sun has not yet risen. The sky is a deep purple/blue, and the mountain to the right is just starting to come alive with color. Some old windswept homes are picture-perfect. Even though we are somewhat in a hurry I grab my camera and tripod in order to shoot the scene. Ack! I am out of slide film! I decide it's not even worth it to shoot on print film so I dejectedly get up.
Even though it's already 9:30 the sun is not yet up and Jeff and Greg are still sleeping and we must be out of there in five minutes so I go awaken them. They are nervous about competing without breakfast so while they are getting their act together I go to the grocery store to (unsuccessfully) track down some Clif Bars.
Oh, earlier in the dream I somehow get sucked into some diamond-selling scheme and buy a bunch of diamonds at wholesale prices. I don't have the nerve to actually try to sell them on the streets but fortunately I bought them for so cheap that I didn't lose much money.
- - -
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the greek avenger
Going camping with rikker, andy kearl, and others. (I notice that in dreams I'm often "Going camping" but never actually make it there.) We pick Andy up in a busy part of London... his office is next to a fancy colorful restaurant called "animal planet", and they ask us to leave because we are not wearing suits or red.
One of the waitresses is not so stuffy when she leaves (it's all an act) and she shows us to andy and our van, which is called the "greek Avenger", or something like that. Looks like a large luxury Vanagon.
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