dream!
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the flip side of reality
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umbico rolo and the apocalyptic sky
I dreamed of Erica and some abstract issues but
that was purged when I awoke into a very dreamlike state in the real world.
Despite the curtain over my window, my room was bathed in an eerie yellow glow
unlike anything I've seen in the morning. What time was it? Did I
oversleep or wake up early? Is this the time change?
And then I stepped outside and it got stranger. The air outside was deadly calm and quiet. It's 7:30am, yet it is room temperature outside. Must be in the 70s. A thin patch of pale blue lines the horizon to the east and the rest of the sky is dirty brown haze. The sun has just passes up into that haze and is a serious red glaze. All the soft shadows are cast from the horizon light, and then washed over in this firey orange glow.
Being an already-quiet Sunday morning this whole scene has an unsettling apocalyptic feel. To step up the eeriness notch, every surface outside is peppered with white ash.
The Santa Anas have arrived. Suddenly and overnight. These are the rogue winds that bring dry heat in from the desert to the east, rather than our typical cool moist wind off the ocean. California is dry and alive with fires right now so this year's Santa Ana appears to have picked up a hitchhiker, and unexpected guest who has descended on us like a plague.
If I was superstitious I would be at wits' end this morning.
_______________________________
I remember my dream now. I go with Erica and a group of people (I think it's her school group of some sort... feels like high school) to the YMCA to go swimming. There is tight security at the entrance to the pools, and it's run by the office of homeland security. A stern-looking girl about our age in camouflage sits at a desk as the first screening. The first person in line passes through but Erica is next and there is a snag. The guard asks her her name and when Erica tells her she says "Say, don't I know you from somewhere?" They find out that they both know a man named Umbico Rolo, an ex-boyfriend of Erica's. This seems to be to be validation that Erica can enter the YMCA but cammo girl calls back on a radio to the real TSA officer who says Erica is not to be allowed in. Turns out that since she knows Rolo she is too much of a security risk.
I'm next and they let me in but I exit again, in protest of Erica not being allowed in. But I duck back in one more time to grab my jacket and do some investigation. I come to a cafeteria where people are playing ping pong, sitting down in booths, like in a restaurant. There is a girl who has beaten three men at poker; they are unconscious under the table.
And I find out that Umbico Rolo actually works in the cafeteria. So my assumption that he was the dark character is wrong... and I start to wonder if he knows something dark about Erica, which is why she wasn't let in.
Then the scene changes and Instead of going to this moist water place we are heading out to the desert. Once again I am ahead of Erica and I come to a cafe in a small town in the desert. And Umbico Rolo is working there! He is a Venezuelan immigrant working in the kitchen with mostly Mexican immigrants. He is very friendly and interesting, a longhaired dude with homemade jewelry. He finds out that I will be camping in the desert and asks if he can come with me. He says the reason he moved to the USA is to experience the outdoors but his coworkers all want to drink beer and go to bars and get prostitutes all the time. He says he just got all his papers in order and he is legal.
His English is worse than my Spanish so we speak Spanish. Usually in dreams my Spanish is flawless, but this time it is more realistic, and I fumble with conjugating anything more than the simplest tenses and with assembling anything more than the simplest grammar.
I tell Erica I met her ex-boyfriend but she can rest assured that it was a friendly encounter and we didn't talk about her at all.
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Interesting that my dream shifted from very wet to very dry almost instantly, as if the desert winds brought sentiments of the desert directly into my dream experience. It certainly feels and smells like the desert today.
I have also discovered that the ash and smoke is actually from majors fires right here in San Diego. Creepy. Erica is not taking it well... this is an instant ticket back to the horror of the Laguna Beach Fire exactly ten years ago this weekend.
grad school is wacky
I'm on a long plane ride to London with three friends. It's a huge plane and instead of sitting in rows, we are on stools sitting around tall round tables that seat four, like the ones you might see in a bar. They serve us all sorts of food, but since I didn't expect it, I had creatively gorged myself early on in the flight so I am incredibly full. The flight goes by pretty quickly and I'm almost sad when it's finished since it was rather fun.
I enroll in a class at a university and because I am exploring the campus all day I am late for the first session. It's partially excusable, however, since the classroom is hard to fins in a dark building.
Just when I find the building I say goodbye to Stefan. I won't see him for at least 9 months and he looks like he is going to cry. I thank him for his help and rush off.
Some kind students in the courtyard in front of the building direct me to my classroom. They tell me that the rooms are not numbered well in this building and aren't on the floors you might expect. They tell me to take the elevator behind a certain door. It's locked, so I knock, and eventually a woman in a bathrobe opens it and yawns. Despite the apparent fact that I woke her up, she is very friendly and welcoming. What else would you expect from the literature and creative writing department? Yes, I'm going to grad school for an English degree.
She leads me up the stairs of a cozy homelike building and shows me the classroom. It is crowded but I fumble my way to a seat in the back. I am carrying a sleeping bag and all sorts of stuff in loud plastic bags, which I stuff under the seat and with which I try not to hit people.
People are doing an activity which I missed out on ... they are writing comments on a small piece of paper that gets rolled into a tube and tossed back to the young professor. This step is already happening and I try to read the questions on someone else's paper and write them on my own before it gets sent back. Too late. No worries; it was simply a get-to-know-us exercise. I was using one of the homemade pads I made from old mechanical drawings at work.
The class is full of interesting people and I am excited to meet this new group.
Class ends for the night and as I walk across campus I see a train pause momentarily on the tracks. It is elevated and big and silver, and sitting in plain view are three people I haven't seen or thought about since high school-- Vidya, Brain Hammond, and Jackie Zaidman. I amaze myself by waving, pointing them out and being able to identify them all by name from so far away. They are amazed as well, and I do a silly little dance for them, expecting them to roll away with the train any moment.
But the train stops and they get off to come talk to me. I'm not prepared for this so I bolt, as fast as I can, away from there. But a fourth person, Javier Flores, is hot on my trail and catches up with me. He seems to be running to get to class as well, but we pause and talk for a few moments. Javier is still my age and young-looking, but he has a really long grey beard. He is still in school, working on his masters. I ask him if he's working on the side, and he tells me that once he learned that his work was killing people (he is a specialty in missile technology or something like that) he quit working forever and decided to focus on school.
I head back to class and my father is there with me. We're punctual this time and have a few minutes to socialize with our classmates, who all seem much younger than me. My dad makes architectural drawings, which impresses one of our classmates, who says he likes people who make drawings. Then I show him the backs of the pad of paper I have, made from my old mechanical drawings. I feel like I'm showing off a bit. Our young professor sees the paper and asks me what I do. I tell her that it took me three years as a corporate slave to realise that my spirit needed to be freed so I decided to come study english. She says the former scientists and engineers are always her favorite english students since thy have a fresh perspective and open mind about the subject.
The small quiet Asian girl next to me is eating what I thought were white sunflower seeds (since she was eating those at the previous session) and she has left a few on my desk. But it turns out they are small pill-shaped candies with Rush lyrics and albums on them! She is a huge Rush fan, and we bond over that.
The next activity in class is to watch an animated video inspired by a Rush song... it is a reddish planet and two guys are exploring it with their spaceship-looking truck, taking samples and such with their instruments. The planet looks strange and alien but the street signs are green and in English, just like the ones we have in residential areas here in California.
Rush girl takes Mitch and me back into her kitchen to show us around. We are giddy and excited from the music and she and Mitch act out a footfight. It's incredibly fast motion, and they pull it off so well it looks scripted. Really quick punching and stomping of the feet, and there is an imaginary R2D2 involved that they both are somehow aware of without ever having mentioned it. The final scene has Rush girl stepping back and Mitch duking it out with an imaginary and impossibly quick robot. Wow. When it's all over I applaud and we all laugh.
Then we look in the over and there are some crumpets or pastries or tortillas baking in there. Mitch is now Mike Sullivan and we both reach in to pull of samples to taste. Yummy.
mama is back (again)
I'm at a pre-party for karen's wedding; it's at their new place. Jeff has arrived and we were supposed to be rehearsing all day but we end up here for hours. At the end of the party three of us end up staying to watch a movie of some sort... ends up being some sort of drama that I normally wouldn't watch but is excellent.
Mama comes back, again, and this time I'm convinced it's real. I even reason about it, since the last fifty times I've dreamed about Mama, it's been just that--dreaming. She looks really small and ragged, as if she truly had been homeless and hungry for the three years she's been missing. As always, it's great to see her. But eventually she disappears, as if it was dream.
I also find a snake that looks like Jerry. I try to keep him in a box but cannot. he, too, escapes into the bushes.
I go with a group of people (friends and coworkers) to a tournament. We are standing at the top of some steep ramps and it's a downhill ball-rolling tournament. An old old guy with a cane comes on and I can't tell by the way everyone cheers if he is a champion or just an opening-pitch type guy.
Part of the structure we are on is not completely built.. it's all framing and plywood floors. Dan Stenger and I hang out in there for a while, and Erica is there after that. I can tell we are in Utah since the dirt is so red.
Next I'm still elevated, on a rooftop, and people are racing Minis on the roof, like in the original Italian Job. These cars are tiny, we're talking one-seater convertibles, and eventually everything turns to water and they are tiny speedboats. One guy is doing tricks and jumps, and then there is a boat with a group of teenage Asian-looking kids. The car/boat is souped up like the Japanese spaceships you see driving around kearny mesa and one guy seems to be playing a trick on the other guys by pretending to fall out of the boat (which I buy at first), swimming under it, and appearing on the other side. Looks dangerous.
Pete Wilson shows up around there and is answering questions. He has a curly thick beard, like maybe santa claus. I ask him if a vote for arnold was a vote for him and he says, well, pretty much yes, if this last advisor gets sworn in. I expected him to be angry about this question but he wasn't. In fact, I'm impressed by his honesty and frankness. One of his henchmen found out I've been hitchhiking and with disdain asks me to confirm if that's true. I say yes and he asks me if I think that's dangerous. No, I say, and I'm saving oil! Again Pete Wilson steps in to defend me (must be a PR move to make himself look better).
At some point I have arrived in a new city and am walking around. A largish mom and daughter approach my group and ask us if we have ever seen stand-up comedy. They just arrived in town and are thinking of seeing some. Yes, we tell them, it can be very fun, and there's a comedy club just around the corner. Oh, she says, they'll be renting a comedy video. I feel like the whole conversation was a failed attempt to introduce me to her daughter. I wasn't interested.
Going to visit Erica's place, I find a parking spot right in front of her house, but as I drive into it I realise it only looks empty because the white car in the spot has been tipped up on its right side. Somewhat guiltily, I edge into the narrow space anyway. I am parked very close to the SUV on the left and the undercarriage of the white Volvo that has flipped. The suspension on my car is very loose and if I move around a bit I am knocking against both cars. Only after parking do I notice that there are picketers across the street. Does this have something to do with the car situation or with Erica's building?
I'm in a conference room at work, and tools fall out of a giant flat toolbox I didn't know I had. Mari introduces me to someone from human resources I have never met, and there go all the tools again. Hundreds of greasy disorganized screws, nuts, and drill bits. Some guy helps me sort them out twice.
I use a salt shaker on food, only to find fine black powdery pepper falling out. I realise that I wanted pepper after all, so it's all fine. But then later salt comes out again and it turns out Pat had consolidated the two by adding all the leftover pepper.
noticias
Dreaming to the real-life news in Spanish, pretty much just listening to it. I show up at someone's house to watch the end of a sci fi movie, pretty much a mix between the wrath of khan and the empire strikes back?
cable teevee
I somehow end up watching TV and it's a program about people's deficiencies or unfortunate mistakes. Some of it's in Spanish. One of the stories is a Jewish kid with Downs Syndrome, which is actually fairly easy to live with for some people. He has trouble remembering his Hebrew, but the story has nothing to do with his having Downs. I find that unusually mature for a sensationalist television show to not comment on his syndrome.
Another report is about a couple who has been married for six months and isn't that amazing. Dumb, I know. They got married in the year 2003.3 and now it's 2003.8, so that's not even interesting. The man is some less-than-average-intelligence guy from New York and the woman is a refined character from an upper-class English family. They visit some castle in England, that is surrounded by canals and sits on a narrow strip of land around a square lake. The guy says something like "at least someone in the family has a nice place for us to stay). It's a charming love story, at least.
I'm a bit ashamed of myself for watching cable all evening, but I suppose I deserved it. I get sucked into some sort of science show about animals for the majority of the session.
wormies and shorebreak
This one's about another country; seems like Italy. I am looking for an apartment and Sue works on neverending assembly drawings. I find hundreds of little wormies in a pillow from the apartment and complain to the landlord; he claims that he is sick and everything in his life is affected by them. But I notice that his own house is in great shape... maybe I should just look for an apartment from another landlord.
Erik is getting married and his mother is a ball of stress. Leah is living in South America (Chile or Argentina?) and has a drivers license, boyfriend, and everything thing. Even has the language down. Way to go!
Earlier, down at the sea, I watch enormous surf crash onto the shore. Massive shorebreak; I can't believe surfers are out there.
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