dream!
LADYTRAP, INC.
the flip side of reality
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thermocouple one
i'm with erica in pittsburgh and we decide to rent movie - pam goes to get it, and since our choice wasn't available we take her choice.
later i explore pittsburgh on foot in the middle of the night, looking for "thermocouple 1", which is one of several huge white electrical complexes that look like multiple grain silos.
bioluminescence or dream state?
I slept at Blacks Beach last night. We have been having a red tide, and the bioluminescence was incredible. Imagine near-total darkness. Hundred-foot-tall sandstone cliffs behind you. The ocean churning before you. And with every break of the surf, intense blue waves of liquid light flash through and illuminate the whitewater. With every footstep you create a glowing blue print in the sand. Incredible. Otherworldly. Dreamlike.
This was concrete, physical reality, folks, but I couldn't help but believe I was dreaming.
back to the pirates' den
Erica leaves for work and I stay to sleep at the Ladynest. In this dream there is a window up in her loft (the Ladyloft). I hear someone calling me and reply ... turns out I am talking in my sleep but have got the attention of the Indian guy down the hall. When I look out the window, Erica is still there at the bus stop...she is with Stella and they are taking digital pictures of me with the camera the Indian guy lent to them. Erica comes back and says she is skipping work to go surfing with the guy she and Stella just met at the bus stop.
I go with them in his van and see that Erica has loaded up my Sauritch (the board I actually don't have anymore in real life). They are taking it to an automotive mechanic's to get it repaired and I suggest that one of my other boards would be more suitable for a beginner.
So we go back and swap boards but I remain behind (I actually have too much to do). The mechanics are there and they want to fix the board still but I'll be damned if I let auto mechanics do delicate surfboard repair! Erica had wanted to peel off the foot grip (At the recommendation of van guy) and it was torn in the process but I'm able to tie it back together. It's red, and covers the whole board.
Then I'm driving home after a day of activity (I don't know how it's gotten so late.. in my dream I chide myself for having slept through a majority of the day, a suggestion that I was at least on some level aware that I was asleep) and need some water since I'm thirsty and may not find anything to drink at my next downtown destination. I see the Pirate's Den is open (John is just hanging out with friends) so I stop by to say hello. It seems they are a little reluctant to get it but eventually he fills up my square tupperware box, half a cup at a time. It takes time for the compressor to deliver so the flow is slow.
I hang a bit and then head back to my car. Kettner is crowded and alive with people! What seem like hundreds of people of all ethnicities and ages are milling about. It's 4pm on a Friday and they are waiting for the bus.
There seem to be a large amount of mentally handicapped folk... maybe there is a center for them nearby. One of them is trying to get charitable donations from a group of skaters who blow her off. I feel bad for her but am secretly glad I'm moving too quickly to be approached.
Then I see Mitch and Erica (or maybe Ayube and Dani... some loveable couple) and we have a foot race. My cell phone falls out but in front of a big crowd of people waiting for a bus. I'm sure someone conscientious will return it to me. We run and run north on Kettner and then back the other direction. They leave and I sprint back to the bus stop to find the phone. The bus is just about to leave and I board it to make an announcement, but no one has the phone.
Some street gangsters outside have something that looks like it but it turns out to be the spilled contents of someone's discarded purse... including the broken plastic shell of a Star Trek phaser.
It's getting dark now and I see a Latino couple in a doorway... right next to my phone@ They are having what looks like a private tender moment but I reach in and grab the phone. Just as I do this I hear him say something like "Don't you know me?". He repeats it insistently. She takes great offense and goes in the house angrily, slamming the door and leaving him on the street. I apologize as if my getting the phone was the reason she split... he turns out to be nice enough but far too forward and horny for an American girl.
why i hate car culture
Erica and I get ready to wait out a big hurricane. We're actually looking forward to it; the rain and wind are unusual in San Diego. Everyone seems to be scrambling around, evacuating this and that facility. From the window of the building we're in we see an elementary school; what looks like a large group of blue-uniform-clad third-graders is actually a large group of blue-uniform-clad third-graders running out to greet the arriving pink-uniform-clad third-graders and help them bring their stuff in. One girl holds a cake in both hands. I don't see what the hurry is; the wind hasn't even started to blow yet. It's just good old American paranoia, trickling down through the fussy teachers into the minds of impressionable kids. Future paranoid Americans in the making.
Amongst all this mania we take a leisurely stroll around the corner to the beach, where the water is an unusually vivid blue under the setting sun; reminds me of what Hawaiian water is supposed to look like. The waves have started to crash with a deafening roar, way off shore. It sounds like buildings falling down. I find a spot on a dune where I hope to watch the whole event.
Remembering that dune just now reminded me that earlier in the night I had a dream I was being chased by villains with guns, in a city.
And speaking of cities, another dream had me in New York City for the day. I have an errand to run before work. New York is so friendly and inviting! It's sunny and full of young people who are all so different and interesting and friendly, people with whom I feel very connected while walking the streets; an entirely different feeling from walking around as an isolated rock in San Diego.
Even though there's work to be done, I decide to call in sick and spend the rest of the day absorbing this stimulating environment. I stumble on the sidewalk and the people behind me almost run into me. I get back up and fall into step with them, a woman in her 40s and her young children. Even though I'm a total stranger they are keen to talk with me and walk with me for a few minutes. I mention that I just finished my book (The Dying Animal by Philip Roth) and what should I trade it for. I don't know why I say that; I don't really mean it since I'm planning to lend the book to Jinx or Todd. The woman offers me money and an exchange for her book and it's such a poetic idea to exchange a book with a stranger you just met on the streets but I decline, disappointed in myself. I head with them to the market that is their destination but once we are there I have no desire to be in a commercial setting and say my goodbyes.
At one point, the coming hurricane is an eclipse and a young man in a business suit stands with me waiting for it to come up over the horizon. He is fair-skinned and really worried about sunburn (more American paranoia) but I tell him to relax and just enjoy the beauty of it. And beautiful it is. When the sun rises, it is fully eclipsed. An impossibly black disk surrounded by an impossibly red dancing electric corona. It's incredible, and far surpasses anything I expected.
sparky's demonic transformation
I'm at some sort of conference at a university with Rikker. It's UCSD, but it's hilly like Scripps. All the surfboard makers in San Diego are somehow associated with the university. I never knew that. One of the small companies, called Surfline, doesn't make bags with the boards but provides leather rail and nose guards.
After a full day of screwing around and not going to the conference, Rikker and I return to the hotel room (Shawn stays out) and Rikker is hungry so he looks up this vending-machine hamburger stand in another hotel. Even though it's a Friday and our last night, I am feeling like a quiet night in. Rikker suggests that I'll do some tai chi or read a book, or go to bed early.
But I get hungry, and there is a Chinese buffet, and even though it's $35 and I was hoping to save my per diem, I decide to go anyway. Lots of food, that's for sure. The first section is sheets of bacon that fall apart with the little metal tool that's provided for scooping them. The bowls are almost too hot to hold onto. Someone says it's a medieval Chinese meal.
***
A Sparky Nightmare
Somehow Sparky escapes from his cage and I am lucky to get him back in but with his newfound love of freedom he escapes again and again. The process of getting captured by me is so stressful he goes through a major transformation. He gets considerably bigger and grows teeth, big sharp-edged molars. Is the last stage of aging?
I am starting to become afraid of him, and he looks me in the eyes and growls very nastily. Creepy. In his ire he attacks another inhabitant of the tank, a smaller lizard or fish. Gobbles the whole thing in his mouth up to its tail. The attack is a bit too ambitious.... he breathes fire on it but must spit it out because it is causing internal damage. And then everything is on fire and Sparky is screaming with rage and since the tank is so tall I have to climb on the precarious roll chair to spray water in there.
Yikes, why the nightmare?
shaheen's trip south
Shaheen is on a cross-country road trip and she invites me to join her for some of it. I fly out and meet up with her.
She is driving a Saturn and we start from somewhere around what I think is Kentucky. We are to head south to Louisiana. The first person we meet up with is a guy with what I determine to be a very heavy Bayou accent, making me think we reached our destination quickly. But by the end of the day we head to her nieces' house and pull off the freeway on Seminole Dr. and I realise we are in Michigan... in the very town my parents grew up in! My parents and sister are even there and even though Shaheen has been driving for sixteen hours and is anxious to get to her destination she patiently agrees to stop for ten minutes at my aunt's house.
The street is wide and wooded and I seem to remember this setting from a previous dream that happened probably years ago. Was it a dream about Camarillo? We turn left off a country road and there are some tall barn-ish looking houses set back in the woods. One of them has an exterior door on the second or third story, leading out to open space (there must have been a balcony or staircase at one time), jogging my memory from the last time I was there in a dream. (In that dream I played music in a field with some friends before or after exploring that house in the autumn).
So a few houses down we arrive at my family's house, and they are just sitting down for dinner. My mother is delighted and despite my feeble explanation of why we can only stay for ten minutes she insists we sit down and eat dinner with her. I feel bad for keeping Shaheen waiting but she is very patient and we eat yummy food for an hour or so. My mother does all the talking (my father and sister are generally quiet) and she is clearly distressed when it is time for me to leave. I feel awkward leaving but at least I got some quality time with the fam.
We then head up the block to Shaheen's nieces' house. We enter through a side door that leads into the basement and are met by two young women in their teens or early twenties, which means at least one of Shaheen's siblings must be much older than her. The are very friendly and when greeting me lean in for cheek kisses like in Europe. But there are so many different cultures where the cheek kiss is done differently and it always ends up a bit awkward, since you don't know what to expect. In some countries, it's one kiss, in others it's one on each side, and in others yet it's left-right-left or right-left-right.
It's turns out that in this particular family or culture or part of the country, you kiss the rleft cheek, and then lean a bit further so the mouths end up near the ears, then repeat that on the other side. I think you are supposed to whisper some religious greeting at the ear stage but I don't understand what the first girl says to me. I just shake hands with the second and give a single kiss in order to avoid any bruises.
The first niece introduces herself with a strange foreign-sounding name and when I ask her to say it again she says "you can just call me 'Saviour'". Now that's interesting. Is that like Spanish-speaking parents naming their sons Jesus?
We all chat late into the night and before I know it morning has come. Shaheen decides to trade cars with one of her cousins or uncles... and the newish purple Saturn is now a 25-year old short yellow school bus. Very fun, and I appreciate Shaheen's sense of adventure, but I worry that the thing will guzzle gas and possibly won't make it the rest of our trip. Oh well, she says, we can just sell it and improvise if that happens. I like that spirit. There are a few old school buses in the back yard, and we take the one that looks the least beat-up and most streamlined, yet even it doesn't quite seem roadworthy. The cousin says he hasn't started any of those buses in five years but the one we chose should work. And sure enough, it does, so we load our gear, say goodbye, and hit the road, in style.
Eventually we come to a town whose baseball team Shaheen used to work for and she gives me a tour of the stadium. We head right out to the field and a game is about to start. She signs me up to hit for the team. I'll be batter number 832. It would be a fun adventure and a great story to end up playing in a professional sports match on a road trip but I get intimidated by all the pros and eventually bring my bat back to the rack. I will certainly strike out and don't want to piss off the team. And I'm also a bit afraid of getting hurt.
As I'm putting my bat back (the bats look like hockey sticks in this dream), a huge man rolls up in a wheelchair. The entire bottom half of his body is imprisoned in a cast (from the waist down) and he is titled back almost horizontal. I image he had become obese from sitting in that wheelchair for so long and he looks up and groans with his mouth in an O-shape. Since he has no neck, it reminds me of a pasty volcano but I don't tell him that. The poor guy looks really uncomfortable. I ask him if he broke bones playing baseball and he says that the bones are okay but he pulled dozens and dozens of entire muscle groups. He list them for me, and it takes forever, and I am itching to walk away, but it seem cruel to walk away from a sad man who can't stop you. While he speaks he climbs all over the bat-rack, trying to put his body in a position that eases the pain.
For some reason I'm also having another flashback to a roller coaster or water slide or amusement park dream I had once. Was it this year?
after radiohead
slept at a concert, erica almost doesn't see me since only my nose sticks out of the sleeping bag. enav spills something on her shirt. all sorts of concert dreams (saw radiohead last night).