dream!
the flip side of reality
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turbulent and pensive
Lots of China, and new faces. One near-stranger is very happy I sent him the article about music; I had thought he was someone else when I sent it, but it seems to have reached him.
Plenty of turbulent and pensive dreams which I'll choose to keep to myself today.
wish us luck
Today Jim and I find out if our dream of sailing down the coast of Mexico is a possibility or a pipe dream. We're taking his boat, a Cal 20 named West Wind, down to the Coronado Islands overnight. This will be the true test of her seaworthiness and our own abilities.
the nine queens
Ack, I squeeze on the little bump on my elbow and it is full of fleas. They must have been there for weeks or even months. With enough prodding they start to crawl out, one by one. They are hard to kill, and I know each one I can't crush will eventually find his way back into my elbow.
Paddling around in a boat; she wants to test the courage of her cat.
I get involved in life of crime in city heights, a swindler.
At one point (after failing to toss the still-wrapped-in-styrofoam-netting asian pear into her apartment), the old woman I am trying to trick closes the elevator on me and sirens blare everywhere. The elevator stalls and suddenly takes me five floors down and then I am running, running, running with my bundled package, cops and caution tape everywhere. the helicopter has its eye on me, and everyone in town is reporting this well-publicised man on the run. I'm done for.
But somehow I get out of it, and I'm in a boat with a girl who puts her cat onboard, to test its courage. Our friends watch on from the side of the doughnut-shaped pool (round with an island in the middle). We paddle fast, we spin (makes me sicker than the cat) and eventually she throws me out of the boat to enjoy time with just the cat.
most of this comes right out of the movie i saw last night: an argentinan flick called the nine queens. you gotta see it.
real estate
stefan trick-starting a beetle. he's getting into real estate in my old neighborhood (bonita woods) and daily walks from house to cookie-cutter house, guessing the new value of each. There are only about three models of houses and maybe five different colors of paint, and two types of roofs.
guys ask for change from Nova in latenight parking lot, one takes my garment bag, cop interferes. amber shows up.
trip with friends, we go from the hotel to busy video store, EVERYBODY gets a video. on the way home we drive on sand trying to get to the campground.
i poo on a toilet at cubic, but from the waist up it's totally visible to everyone. disconcerting. I see a man with a video camera across the room... is he pointing it at me? I chat with housekeeping while wiping. ick.
the struggle to awake
Fumbling around on the floor of my bedroom, at the base of my great dresser, during a visitation from Eduardo. He looks older, and I cannot focus on anything since I am asleep and struggling to find focus. He regurgitates into my trash can and I realise that this isn't a social visit, but a desperate move on his part.
In the meantime Enav is visiting with Patrick in the living room.
At one point in my dreams I reached a point where my mind must have wanted to wake up but my body was too tired (I was up very late last night). It was a very literal battle between my mind and body as my consciousness struggled to fight its way through iron eyelids and foggy mental processes. This went on for what seemed like ten minutes, when finally the mind broke through and I awoke with an unpleasant shock.
deep in the L.A. flood tunnels
I'm driving a Jeep with Rikker and Stefan; it's great for driving in dirt and sand. I've had the Jeep a long time but never thought to take it out to the desert, for which it's ideal. We drive across a dirt lot between some houses in a residential neighborhood partially as a shortcut but mostly to try the thing out. Controlling it is tough and I end up getting it precariously high on an embankment so we get out and take a break, drinking a bottle of Coca Cola. Eventually I figure out that it is light enough to carry like a suitcase and hand down the head-high cliff to Stefan.
From there we explore some tunnels. It's like exploring caves in Anza Borrego in that the tunnels get smaller and smaller as they get deeper into the earth, but these tunnels are clean and furnished. It's Pat and I and Rikker, Rikker leading, of course, and some others follow us but are lagging with hesitation. each tunnel is like a staircase or ramp that we shimmy through down to another level. We must be at least 20 levels below the surface.
I wonder what these tunnels are for, and Pat tells me they were build as flood relief for various parts of Los Angeles. Some of the chambers are empty, just white drywall, but many of them are furnished in mid-70s decor with low furniture. Brightly-colored mosaics of religious scenes on the walls, and lounges.
At one point we come across two muggers with guns. They are nervous, since we can hear police activity above us, as well as a dinner party that our lagging friends are attending, and we all decide to go up and join them (including he muggers, who seem to have decided to turn themselves in). One of the muggers leads boldly, and the other hangs back with me as his friendly hostage.
We get to the level just below the dinner party and cautiously climb the stairs together. It's a very mellow event, and my family (including Mom, Karen, and Richard) are sitting on the couch, watching TV, eating from bowls the food they got from the buffet-style spread on the table. I grab a bowl and join them on the couch.
On the floor are some great posters that Pat and Karen have found in the tunnels. One is an old movie poster, and one has hand-sketched illustrations of various bands from the 80s. One of the bands is Erica's old band, although it's a famous band like the Cocteau Twins rather than Groove Tortoise. She's got straight red hair, like her driver's license, and I notices the artist signed the poster S.G. That must have been me! I only vaguely remember this poster from my childhood and decide that it must be my Mom's initials.
From there I end up visiting some friend young friends in the freshman dorms at UCSD. We stay up pretty late and have a pretty fun time. I leave late at night and notice that UCSD has changed significantly since my day. It's hopping! Even though it's about 1AM, there are students everywhere, hanging out, enjoying themselves, actually being social.
As I walk out the main entrance to the dorm, there is a dude checking IDs. I figure it's because only students are allowed into the dorms, and they check both incoming and outgoing. Fortunately I still have my ID in my pocket (Although it's expired) and I'm wearing a UCSD t-shirt. It turns out he doesn't really care, but figures I'm a student. But he does comment that I look a bit different, having facial hair and wrinkled eyes and the look of wisdom and no braces. I tell him I have that "older student look".
catalina research station
I'm to take a train somewhere for business. I get to the station and things are in a bit of chaos... I am in a hurry and the attendant isn't too much help. The guy who arranged my trip (Simon Banks?) tells me to use the ticket vending machine so I find it. The train station is being renovated so the vending machine is crammed in a tight corner facing a temporary wall. I'm able to rotate it a bit so I can access the front of it, but it's up pretty high.
The ticket is two dollars and for a moment I fear I only have one dollar in my wallet (and a 20) but then I find several quarters to make up the extra dollar. I can hear train noises at the platform while I fumble with the money, and it takes forever for me to get my ticket. But the time I get out to the platform my train is leaving and I miss it.
A man who has also just missed the train assures me that another will come in 20 minutes. That's reassuring; I thought this would be the last one.
I get on the next train, which is not very crowded (it's fairly late at night), and talk to a young military guy who has the same destination as me. We are headed out to Catalina Island. He has been assigned to this mission to transport animals either to or from Catalina, and as the train moves slowly past the freeway, he points out to me several red Aerostars without plates that are transporting tigers to and from the boat dock.
We take the boat across the channel together. As we approach the island I get a nice birds-eye view of it. I can see that a big chunk of the highlands in the middle is covered with a golf course which I never knew was there. The rest is the dry wildlands that Pat and I went hiking in once (see picture below).
We arrive on shore to meet our team. There is a small research camp set up at the shore, and we are ultimately supposed to hike up to the camp way up in the hills. But because of our late arrival we will spend the evening at the shore camp and do our work the next day. It's going to be a short but gnarly hike.
I have been to this location before, with Todd and Pete and Rikker and other friends. We find some photos lying around from that trip. It was purely recreational, in the winter, and the photos show us with backpacks, big smiles on our faces, skis, and snow everywhere.
Steve Minka was supposed to join us on this trip, and I call him but there are fire warnings for Mission Hills (where he lives in the dream) and he must stay behind in case they need to evacuate the house.
Come nighttime it is time for dinner and we head indoors. The team leader introduces us to the orangutans. There are about 8 of them, seated around a large dining table, eating from piles of what look like crispy fried pastry balls. They seem to be fairly well-behaved and self-absorbed and our team leader tells us that's because they are discussing food. She says that when they are discussing philosophy it can get hectic and usually ends in a massive food fight.
She demonstrates their tendency/ability to throw food by tossing a bread ball at one of the primates, who picks it up and lobs it halfheartedly at us. Yum, those bread balls look tasty, so I take one and chomp on it. Suddenly the big male stands up from the table and I worry that now I've done it. But he heads right out the door into the night.
Team leader then explains that the big male has this problem of flirting with the native primates and he has gone out for a night of fun.
Pete is sitting at the table and during a lull in the conversation he sticks his head under the table. Nobody but me notices that he is crying. It is sad; I think it is because he just got word that he didn't score a certain modeling job he was trying for.
The next morning some research assistants return from outside with about a dozen infant primates, the results of the big male's night of fun the previous night. This greatly increases our workload for the weekend, and we are going to have to carry all of them up to the high camp.