dream!
LADYTRAP, INC.
the flip side of reality
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self-induced OBE in san francisco
(recorded in physical dream log)
polyrhythm
I'm at Cubic once gain lat at night. This time John Niekrasz is around and he is really good with polyrhythms. He has me clap steadily while he runs around clapping and making sounds like he's crazy
mass transit in china
Erica and I meet some friends, and crash at their place in preparation for the next day's activity. We're on the top bunk, and at some point we prepare some cakes. I make a round version of my mother's gooey butter cake, and my mother makes a similarly-shaped strawberry cake, which ends up tasting incredible with the gooey butter topping mixed in with it. I sit down at a table with mom and dad and Karen and all we have to drink is milk. I actually consider drinking a pint of it, and then cancel that decision, keeping in mind the gastronomical distaster that might well ensue.
The next day I'm on a train in China, heading to meet some friends for a movie. People on the train speak various levels of English, and I end up sitting next to a very friendly guy with broken English. We teach each other the names of colors and I ask him a lot about this particular train system. The conversation is limited by the language situation, but we are both annoyed when a guy with really good English in the next seat over continually interjects with his cocky translations. T's as if he can't bear the sound of our pathetic conversation and always pipes in with contempt. Fortunately he eventually leaves.
Some where along the way my friend changes gender and appearance. Now she looks like a white girl with curly hair but is still Chinese. She's the Chinese version of Erica... very friendly and outgoing and pleasant and talkative. I tell her I am going to a movie and what Stop Nine is like on that line (it's the one my friend told me to meet them on). She says it's a mall and you can tell that the mother and kids in front of me are hading there.
I ask her if she wants to join me for the movie (hoping she will since I'm sure I will get lost trying to find it), and she agrees. At one stop the train waits for a while and she gets off to tell the friend waiting for her that she has changed her plan.
She then has to do some sort of security checkpoint and pass her white jacket through an X-ray machine. Security spot checks. I don't have to do it. We joke that they are looking for weapons of mass destruction!
Back on the train and we finally end up at a gathering place, some sort of activity center. Half a dozen people are gathered at a couch to watch a movie of some sort. The screen is against a wall, and in the dream it seems as though it is a hole in the wall and we are seeing the actual activities unfold outside. 3-D with depth.
It seems to be a history of 18th- and 19th-century maritime England and fortunately for me most of it is in English. Lots of singing. At one point they talk about pirate traditions and for Halloween a certain community (or pirates or just enthusiastic citizens) sets up a barge full of garbage and skeletons. A floating deathmobile. Looks like a plague-era bodycart. One rather overweight woman stands naked on the barge, singing sea shanties and smearing herself with large scallop shells and rotting seafood. I am very interested in the detail of this film and move from the couch to sit right in front of the window/screen. I even grab a few mollusk shells and smear them on my face. One sticks neatly on my chin.
Back on the couch, various lecherous men has nestled up next to my new friend. Men seem very forward and grabby in this culture, holding and stroking her hand, putting their arms around her. She is clearly annoyed but polite and patient. One of the guys now reminds me of the friend of Erica's Sri Lankan neighbor that we met at her housewarming party. He was from the Mission in SF.
She eventually finds an excuse to get away from the lechers and comes to sit next to me on the couch. At this point the movie has switched to a show about Arnold in the new governorship. He wears a tuxedo similar to the one I am supposed to wear at Karen's wedding. His friend/advisor wears a similar outfit with big western collars.
free sparky!
I talk to some lizard experts who assure me that I can let Sparky out of the cage and he will hang out in the general vicinity. He will know to return to the tank for warmth, water, and food. I worry a bit about possibly stepping on him but it's too good of an idea to pass up.
For some reason when I do this, Sparky is running around with a little silver collar on, the type they put on dogs and cats who have stitches in their feet that look tasty.
While I am outside tending to lizard matters, I open the front door and check out the Nova. I don't realize that the exhaust pipe is pointed right into the living room and it hurts Thomas's and Stefan's lungs. Sorry!
I also seek lizard advice in a machine shop. Looks like they've moved a CNC lathe into the welding area at CRMS, where I worked at UCSD.
I've had a lot of gay bosses (this isn't the dream, this is me remembering my old job): Richard, director of the machine shop at UCSD. Maureen and Russell, managers of Mandeville Auditorium at UCSD. Andrew, manager at the fees office at South Bank University in London.
I go with two people from work to some sort of university for training. It is very clear that we are corporate drones and a woman sees us and tells us that we should make ourselves happy. Nobody is going to do it for us; we have to identify our desires, quit our jobs, and pursue our dreams. She is doing so by taking photography classes. She is overweight, wears wrinkled clothes, and has the look of someone with years of sadness behind her. Some some glimmer of hope in her eyes tells me that this is purely because of a previously unfulfilled life and she has begun a transformation. It's inspiring
My coworkers head into the building and I lag behind to tell this volunteer advice-give that it's in fact my last day and I will start my new life tomorrow. Even though I'm only going to half-time, and not quitting entirely, I give her the impression that it's exactly what she's doing. She hugs me. I am reluctant for my coworkers to see me associating with her and her congratulating me; I'm afraid they'll feel offended as if I'm jumping ship and they don't know yet my decision.
Wow, I really can't wait for my new situation. It is coming so soon I can taste it. Theoretically this is my last full week at Cubic.
cheap
trying to piece together a computer... a woman and man in IT sell me the parts I need. Cheap.
SCODA
Work-influenced dream. Running around, trying to finish endless tasks. Most of it is forgotten by now. The dreams have been suffering lately as I am working an inordinate amount. It is all in preparation for the time, less than two weeks away, that I start working half-time. That day cannot come soon enough!
Someone finally explains the difference between SCADA and SCODA. SCADA is some kind of relay assembly, an electrical device. SCODA is a cabling CAD program. I am amazed at the level of detail it attains in the the graphics; crisp edges and you even see shadow. It looks like sunset. Long shadows and orange light.
tales of academia
I get a call on my cell phone from someone named "Ephrom". I'm talking to Stan at the time so I'll get it later. Ephrom must be one of the people I've told I'd drive to San Francisco this weekend.
I'm at a science center museum with about a hundred peers. It must be a school group. It's just about closing time and we line up to go to the movie inside. When the previous showing finishes, a hundred more people exit the theatre and I note that I had no idea there were twice as many people in the building as what I thought. This theatre seems reminiscent of a theatre I visited in a dream earlier this year. Or was it last year? I also know that this building was only recently turned into the science museum. It must have been a regular movie theatre before, since it would be hard to add two theatres to an old building that doesn't have them.
Keeping with this "school" idea, I'm young and back in college and living in a dorm. My roommate is foreign and lives in the bunk above me. There is a fridge next to my bed (such a novelty) and I get the idea to fill it with food so I always have something to eat when I'm at school. (I really should have that at work in my waking life!) So through the next few stages of the dream I am collection food and putting it a brown grocery bag labeled with red ink: THE AFTER LUNCH BAG.
I don't remember much about the classes themselves, but I went to a few of them, and the setting reminded me of the old classrooms and furniture in the Stratford Academy. I can't believe I went to an elementary schooled called an "Academy"!
I drive a small blue pickup truck. It must be a Toyota something from the 80s. The pickup version of the Corolla. It may even be called a Corolla. After walking around in some hills that look like Bonita, Someone drops me off at my truck. It's parked at the bottom of a hill on a one-way street that comes to a T at another main route. Up the hill behind the truck you can see that this street is the transition zone between the tool booths where a freeway has ended and the regular surface grid.
I have something to do up there, maybe walking my friend back, so I cross the street and head up the hill to the freeway booths. It's not really meant for passengers, so I walk in the uneven strip of weeds on the left side of the road. Streets not meant for pedestrians are terrible places to walk. Noisy, dirty, ugly, unsafe. There's not so much traffic, so this one's not so bad.
I finish whatever business I have at the tool booth and start walking back. One car slows down as if to give me a lift. It's a friendly-looking man with long hair and a moustache, driving a small VW or Volvo van with an old blue California license plate that says just "C". I would really like to talk to this guy; if I was hitchhiking somewhere far I would certainly flag him down and get in, but since I'm just walking back down the hill it's hardly worth it. I make a mental note to go through with my idea of hitchhiking across the US or at least to SF some day.
I cross the freeway-cum-street just behind the tool booths, where the cars are moving slow, and head back down to my truck, where my family is throwing a little outdoor graduation party for me and my roommate. His Indian father and grandfather have missed the ceremony and when they arrive just shake his hand (different culture, I figure). They kneel down at the picnic table, rather than eating, and get right to the food.
M<y sister and mother and father are there, and my father says he has to go get a shower and he'll be right back. IS there one around? I tell him that I don't really know where the showers are... probably one by the gymnasium, which is way across campus, but maybe I remember seeing what might be showers up the hill at the tool booth. I assure him that he doesn't smell bad or anything, he just looks a little sweaty or oily, and it doesn't bother us. In that case, he says, he'll just stay. I'm glad. I'm hungry.
I gather the leftovers for my AFTER LUNCH BAG. This includes some canned drinks and a packet of dry instant oatmeal.
I get a tour of a friend's house in the area. Two couples bought it together. One of them is the couple from a house Erica almost rented in South Park this spring. Five people will be living there... I think maybe Lauren is the fifth.
It's an old house, full of surprise nooks and corners, and they will be renovating the whole thing. The upstairs bathroom has two adjacent doors to it. The downstairs bathroom looks like it was thrown together out of items in the basement in less than a day. There are two "balcony rooms" (as my tour guide calls them) upstairs, and one in the basement. I suppose "balcony room" means it faces the front year with a wall of windows. You can see the lower bathroom through some gaps in the wall along the stairs leading up out of that room.
In the backyard I see small balcony from an adjacent house that shares a courtyard and I hear the narrative of a professor (I hear it a few times until I can remember it) speaking about his early days at this university:
"I finished my degree in the early nineties and came here as a professor in his thirties. When I first arrived I saw two tall flowing barefoot women on this balcony, with flowers tucked in their hair and natural leather western-style clothing. They seemed to emit love and sexual longing, and I thought to myself "What wonderful times are these we live in!"
Even though he said "The nineties" I had the distinct feeling her was talking about the sixties. The second time I hear the speech he says he saw the women when he visited as a student, and that's why he chose to pursue a position here.
I head back to my dorm room and with my roommate join one of our teachers in the adjacent room. The teacher reminds me of a thirty-year-old version of my mom. We are playing a quiz game, and each person makes up their own quiz questions. My roommate and his friend have just been staring in wonder at how a sign they saw keeps shifting its letters around into other words that are spelled with the same letters. It's not clear to me if they really saw the letters shift or they were just imagining the potential for them to be rearranged.
The words were something like KITCHEN BIN and get rearranged into something like BITCH NINE-K. My roommate wants to use this as part of his quiz ("rearrange KITCHEN BIN to get a phrase that means ASSHOLE") but is embarrassed to say it in front of an adult. WE encourage him to, convincing him that this teacher who is my mom (or similar to my mom) will not be offended.
Here are some of the other questions:
Name the institution in Pennsylvania that roots AGAINST the Navy. Who do they root for instead? The teacher is stumped. since she imagines most communities root for the military and I figure out the trick-- it's West Point, which of course roots for the Army! I only know this because of the late night in NYC that Rasmhi's friend Josh had to drive his friend back up to West Point since his car broke down in the city and he had to be home for morning muster. In that waking life, West Point is actually in New York. Man, I'm sure glad I didn't' go to some sort of military university where they make you get up early!
Which of the following would you find in the district of Cation, Boston:
a) Arctic Tea Cozy
b) Haunted Elevator
c) Superheated...
This is the question I am writing and I can never think of the last bit, so I instead think to have choices a) and b), and then C) is all over the above and d) is none of the above. I know, I know, that's cheesy and difficult.
By the way, "Cation" rhymes with "action".