dream!
LADYTRAP, INC.
the flip side of reality
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todd's candy stash
hiking at taquitz, playing tennis over a bush
bug in piano key
almost lucid... was thinking about dreaming
todd has an extensive collection of candy in a purpose-built box in his kitchen. It is red and has a roll top. Inside the candy is organised and look tempting. About the table hangs a rack for cups?
edifice love
Erica takes me to a house in Coronado where she once worked. Surprisingly, southeast Coronado is all nature preserve (I never noticed) and parkland. It's all owned by the Navy. On our way to the house I also notice how dramatic the mountains are just across the bay, starting right at the border, east of San Ysidro. So tall and steep and rocky that you could never hike anywhere from town and find a flat place to camp in one day.
This house is watched over by a woman named Diane. She is very strict, and enforces all the rules of the house, which are broadcast on Big Brother-style screens in all the rooms. It's a historic house, you see, and people visiting it must act out certain historical traditions.
After waking, I fell asleep again briefly and dreamt I was watching a short animated clip. It's a big city. The narrator describes it as "A somewhat rough neighborhood, slight decay visible in the corners..." We see a strange symbolic representation of a man having sex with a building. The building is comical and cartoonish; a transparent blue shell with a forty-foot tall woman inside. The man is regular-sized and repeatedly throws himself against the woman, bouncing off her thighs, breasts, and stomach and shouting over and over things like "Whoo! I loves ya!". We see this from every angle possible, but the most common is from below, right between her feet. She wears giant white concrete underwear. So strange.
barrels in NYC
Stressy work dream. I'm supposed to travel on the same day that I finish up a big part of the Light Validator project. I'll be going to NYC with Steve and Karen.
Unfortunately I for some reason am not guaranteed a space on that plane. I had better get down to the airport early to sort that out. My flight isn't until around 4:13 but I should leave work by 11.
Erica's mom has an MP3/movie player that she wants to lend to me but it's her son's... she offers to buy one just so she can lend it to us but that's a bit excessive. We won't really need it all that badly, since we have a busy agenda in NYC.
The device has an odd L-shape to it. Fits nicely in a lap, but not in a bag. It's red and silver and white.
When we arrive at Steve's he is surprised to see giant barrel-like sculptures in the driveway. A group of artists live next door. They have also put up a slogan I don't understand. It's some sort of Star Trek reference having to do with Silver.
Before I leave Cubic, Mama shows up in the CAD room, crawling around on a ceiling ledge with her new kitten. My office is full of people, standing around and playing with the cats. Wow, that's the first Mama dream I've had in quite a while. I used to get them all the time.
spadi or outsies?
I somehow run into Liana and Marike Steyn, the Afrikaner sisters I met at the hostel in Paris, who first clued me in to South Africa. I remember more about them than they do about me, and I recount the details of that evening... the Y&H (young and happy) hostel, playing chess, the Egyptian guy who drew me a picture of Shon Conri (Sean Connery). I seek photos but cannot find them.
It's now New Years and festivities are ending. I'm left out in a park at night with Erica, trying to figure out what to do next. (The park looks like somewhere at UCSD, surrounded by modern architecture.) Are we going to walk home, or somehow catch a bus?
A light blue minivan (Caravan?) taxi passes and tries to elicit our fare, but we wave it past. Very quickly after that we change our minds and flag it down before it disappears into the dewy night. We hop in and it turns out that Erica's brother Josh is in it! Great! We didn't think we would be able to meet up with him. Josh is in the front left seat and the cabbie is in the back left so Erica gets in the front right and I in the back right. The cabbie is an older fellow with a British accent so I assume Erica is driving for some time. Then upon closer inspection I discover it's actually Josh driving an American-style car.
It's so convenient to be heading home and we are all in high spirits. But Josh is driving a bit erratically. He doesn't seem to be seeing everyone in the dark, and there are plenty of people about, walking home. He turns a corner and nearly hits a group of young folk crossing at an intersection. There is a thud on the right fender and a girl starts crying.
Josh stops the car fifty feet down the road and we get ready to back up and investigate. The girl is crying and limping but we know she is faking it for attention so Josh starts to take off. But the cabbie sees them writing down his license plate number and he tells Josh to go back, let he get tied up in a nasty hit-and-run trial. Josh assures him that in these cases it's just the driver vs. the victim, so the cabbie need not worry, but the cabbie points out that they can't prove who the driver was if they only have the license plate.
So now we drive as fast as possible in order to get around the 1-way main plaza without looking like hit-and-runners. When we arrive we see that the "victim" is a 12-year old girl who was just scared and not hit, and her companions seem to support us, as they seem to be annoyed with crying girl's lame tactics to get attention. She does this all the time. In my opinion, she looks more like 30 than 12.
They are part of a school choir or theatre group, and my dream starts to follow that train of thought. We end up in an apartment which must be Josh's or Erica's, and I see pass by just outside the window a tour bus that must belong to the choir group, which is a college a cappella ensemble. The roof of the bus is shaped like the open and downward-facing cover of a book, and a dust cover fits over it. But the dust cover is slightly too big; it's as if we are missing a section that fits between those. I imagine that when the bus fills with students it swells and fills the cover, and since the bus is empty now it's in it's reduced state.
We head out to a Greek/Shakespeare festival that is happening in another park. It's a big deal, and hundreds of people are there to act and observe. The line between acting and observing is a bit hazy, as it's an audience-interacting event. We arrive a bit late but figure it all out for the most part. The stage is a giant rectangle, and the audience sits in low bleachers on three sides of it. The empty side is a short side that overlooks a stone terrace maybe 5 meters below. I'm sitting in the far short side (moved there from the long side) and when I look back to see where I first sat I see my sister Karen.
At one point, just before the intermission, there is a big spectacle where we have to decide between persistence or clarity (or was it persistence or quality?) Somehow this decision will gauge our character and our future. I experiment with some three nesting strainers (about half a meter in diameter) that are hinged out over the terrace so as to swing into and away from nesting. They are all full of little bits of gunk and junk that end up trying to go down a drain. I figure that persistence means passing them by each other enough times to catch all the bits into a single strainer. Clarity or quality means doing your best to get one or two of the strainers as clear as possible. I opt for persistence and when I am finished I see that no matter which one they chose, everyone has two clear strainers and a full one.
I take this to mean that you have to choose a solid path in life, and be true to your deepest motivation, and no matter what your choice, if you do this you will end up content and fulfilled.
Erica's itching to hit the hay and I am pretty much finished with this event so we start to head out while it still continues. I see Sam Moses outside on a cell phone... he was calling me to see if he should come into the theatre. Now they pose the new choice spadi or outsies? and, caught up in the spirit, he wishes us goodnight and ducks in. Spadi is Italian for sword and the idea is either you get in here and stand by this big blue sword or you leave forever. We, of course, have chosen the latter.
officer, there's a bear loose in my apartment
I meet my family for lunch, including my sister and mom, and dad. It's a pre-wedding thing, and Shawn comes with me. The meal is light, and consists of fried eggs (round, like an Egg McMuffin) and some sort of sashimi. There isn't really enough food to fill one up and when everyone else is using the toilet Shawn and I take the leftover food on their plates.
Eventually people start leaving and before long it's just my mother and I. I realise that I have been there from 10am until 1pm and I had better get back to work. I accepted a meeting without knowing what time it was, and now I worry that it was a morning meeting that I blew off.
****
I have a pair of shoes that Todd really wants to borrow, so I make arrangements for him to pick them up. But since it's more convenient for him than coming to my house, I leave them on a busy street corner in the city with a sign that says "free", for him to pick up on his way to work. Pete wants a pair as well, so I go to the library and check out a pair of worn but quality running shoes, and leave those on another street corner for him, also with a "free" sign.
I then go with Pat and Erica to a rented hotel room (it's more of a seedy residential hotel) so we can pack our gear for a camping trip. While we pack, Pat and I tell Erica how to deal with brown bear and black bears if they come snooping around for food. The mention of bears gets her a little nervous and I try to convince her that the chances are very slim we would even see a bear. I don't really believe that myself, so I must not be very convincing.
Then I realise that I have no idea what to do if the biggest of all bears, a polar bear, comes around. Pat uncomfortably says he does know and we'll just have to hope there aren't any where we'll be.
No sooner than that a small polar bear (which is at first brown and then later bright blue) comes into the apartment and starts snooping around for food. At first it is slow and tame, and then, when it discovers we have food and senses our tension, gets antsy and aggressive. We eventually bolt from the apartment and leave it wrestling on the floor with a big blue bag of potato chips.
While we are running down the tenement-style stairs, getting glimpses of various underrepresented minority families, it finally dawns on me that the whole shoe arrangement wasn't one of my better ideas and they were likely taken by strangers!
So I run straight down to the street, which means jumping across several rooftops and very steep lawns, and down a retaining wall, to the bustling intersection where the shoes were. From across the street I don't see them on the wall I left them so I shouted "Does anyone have my shoes?". A friendly-looking man in his 60s or 70s raises them above his head (he is waiting for a bus) and when the traffic clears for a moment I run across the street to him. I am thankful that he is cooperative and understanding, and I that I caught him just in time. He can't pass up a good pair of free shoes apparently, but he is very accommodating and gives them back when I explain. As I leave I think to myself how remarkable it is that some people would take shoes right off the street. I respect that man for that choice. Too many people would let a good pair of shoes, or a tasty meal, or some other clothing go by simply because a stranger used it once.
So that story must go along with me taking food off other people's plates, which I'm always surprised other people don't do more often.
I then head off after the other shoes and find them near the subway stairs I left them. Again, I get them just in time, as another friendly man (this one younger) has just found them. He also has a torn but sturdy pair of shorts I accidentally left there. I think I let him keep those.
I return to the apartment and Pat is already there. The landlord had cleared out the bear and had commented that this wasn't the first time they had bears in the building. I had no ideas bears ran wild in this city!
Later I meet up with a girl who reminds me of Karen Murphy. She lives near me and I have seen her around every once in a while. It turns out we know some people in common; either someone named Allison or another Karen. As we walk down the street talking (it's the same street I left the first pair of shoes on) a car drives by. A Mediterranean-looking man on a cell phone drives by and for some reason I know his name is Ojay. Either a voice in my head identifies him or I saw this to my companion.
fallopian tank
I’m on a car trip with one of Todd and Pete’s friends… probably Mark. We’re driving a Mustang and we are in radio or cell phone contact with some of his colleagues. We’re coming back from Mexico or something like that and need to stop for food or some other attraction.
Mark can’t park the car in the parking lot since he doesn’t want to pa for parking or isn’t allowed to park there so we troll for parking in the surrounding area. It's not the kind of place you want to park you car at night and we finally park on a section of curb between two benches. The whole time he bitches about the parking around here and the problems with his car and his asshole insurance agency who harasses him about the car.
We need a mechanic to look at the car (the gas tank is having problems) and the guy rips us off. He saws off a section of gas tank and tells us our fallopian tubes are full of gunk. We know it’s bullshit but he has us over a barrel since there is nobody to complain to. It’s Mexico. He then pulls off the back license plate and then denies that it is a blue Mustang with blue plates. The car is trash, he tells us, since the plate is gone and the “fallopian tubes” are severed, and we owe him money for the “inspection”, so he seizes the car until we can pay up. He sells the car back to us for $50 (we have to take it since the cargo in the car is more important to us and our mission than the car itself) and head out to get some tacos.
Later, still on the car kick, I need some help with my car. Someone has to inspect it twice in one day but I will be leaving town or working late and won’t be able to personally conduct the second inspection. So I call Pat at work to have him help me out. It’s not exactly the best day for him to be helping me since they are doing training trials. This means they are testing the abilities of their animals in hour-long sessions during which nobody can talk.
I drop in at Sea World during the tail end of one of these sessions and watch from the side. They are conducted in spare cubicles inside the offices of Sea World. Someone is attempting to get a Sea Lion to move a lightweight grey textured ball around with mental and hand powers only. The sea lion doesn’t seem to have the dexterity, and the ball flies across the room into a neighboring cubicle. The woman working there is annoyed and asks what is going on, but the trainers seem to temporarily have all the authority, as this is the most important business Sea World has to conduct for the day.
I see this particular trainer move the ball around by just waving his hands over it. He has expert control of its speed and direction. I’m amazed. I know it can’t be telekinesis so I ask him what’s happening and he says it’s all in minute manipulation of the air around the ball. It's so light that it gets whisked along with the currents of made by your moving hands.
I find Pat between trials and he agrees to help me with the car, and he takes me out to the parking lot to show me where to park it. It’s a lot few people know about, right behind the Sea World credit union building. We walk through the credit union, which is decorated in white with organic white sculptures. Thanks, Pat.
*******
The server is still down at Cubic and I since I just can’t get any work done I see it as license to head out and take care of other business in my life. I head to to desert for some camping with friends, and we find a nice perch on top of a knob in the Badlands. There is some water around, which is unusual for this time of year, and I pause to take a few photos. We have the whole basin to ourselves, and look forward to a weekend of exploring the folds and chasms of a tortured landscape.
But we return to the campsite later that day, or perhaps the next morning, to fin the place infected with other people. Dozens, maybe a hundred of them, with their RVs and jeeps and remote-control cars and radios tearing up the peace and silence. They have just as much right to be there as we do but nevertheless it’s sickening. I take a few more photos but it’s difficult to pull it off without getting unwanted people in the frame. One girl climbing the hillside with her family (they are going to dare camping with us on our little knob!) yells and complains that she can’t have her picture taken and would I please cut it out?
At some point there is some surfing. Big surf. I miss surfing, and can’t wait to get back in the water!
the bicycle-borrowing biz
An earthy female friend of mine—might be Bethany or Gabi—is going on vacation and I arrange to borrow her bicycle while she is gone. I need it for just one day, the day she heads up to LA to catch her plane. She will be going briefly to London and Holland, and then the meat of the trip will be spent in Angola. She had just been there a few months before, after never having traveled anywhere outside the US, and is now hooked on Angola.
I know it’s an inconvenient time to be pestering her for the bicycle, but it’s for some very important cause. The problem is that at the last minute her bike isn’t working or it’s stolen or somehow else I can’t use it. So I make arrangements to borrow one from one of the neighbors in her apartment complex. (All their doors face a common courtyard on the ground level where everyone stores their bikes so it’s easy to tell who the potential lenders are.) Never having met this neighbor before, and not consulting Bethany first, I never get a chance to learn that he is thought of as the most ornery fellow in the building. And I make arrangements to pick up the bike while he’s not home, so at first I don’t meet him when I get the light-blue mountain bike. Also in his bike-area are an old ten-speed in need of repair (looks high-quality, though, probably worth fixing), and the black frame of a stylish old bike with fine white trim.
But something doesn’t work out on this bike; I think it doesn’t have a lock, which complicates my plan of leaving the bicycle locked up in the courtyard when I’m done with it, so I head back and meet the man. Bethany’s neighbors have now warned me about him and I prepare myself to deal with an “ornery” person. He’s actually not bad at all; it seems there is some very understandable explanation for his occasional states of mind that come across to the casual observer as orn, but are indeed genuinely likable when you know what’s going on in his head.
We go back to the bike corral and I ask him about the old frame. He tells me it’s from the twenties, and he eventually plans to collect the right parts to make it work again. I thank him and head out.
I’m not sure why I end up heading north but it’s with a soft-spoken bike-ish male friend. Our mission takes us as far as Oceanside and we head back south at the end of the day, riding all the way back to downtown San Diego. It wears me out, and there are some dangerous parts where we cross freeway offramps, but the ride goes very quickly and helps me realize how small and accessible by bicycle San Diego can be.
At some other point in the dream, I produce a radio or TV show. It has the feel of KSDT, the college radio station I worked at for 5 years at UCSD. But this is bigger and more important, as if the station has grown up a bit (I think it may have, actually, with the onset of internet broadcasting). It’s very exciting to be producing something that people will be paying attention to and learning from.