2011-06-24

i was with erika t. and one of her friends and we were on a road trip, or on tour. we were going through soviet eastern europe, i believe, and stopped at a roadside attraction. it was an aquarium where, at the end of the tour, the guests got to jump right into the tank and swim with the fish themselves. to maximize the comfort of the guests, however, the water was kept the temperature of a hot tub at all times. i protested to erika that most of those animals needed to live in temperatures that were single degrees celsius (converting from fahrenheit for her benefit) and she just kind of smiled like she knew but that this was too good to pass up. "i guess i just like having transcendent experiences," she said. "it's a hipster hobby." 

i waited in line with her friend, filled with dread and anticipation. on top of it being inhumane, it was extremely unsanitary. the fish were do densely packed in the pool, which was one giant tank, that one was going to be knocking up against dozens of animals at any given moment. it was not limited to fish, but also contained octopi, and presumably eels, etc, any sort of aquatic animal this place could get its hands on. as we waited, the cleaning period was taking place, which happened every so often, like the zamboni on an ice skating rink, in which someone shoveled piles of fish out of the tank and threw them over a net, into a sort of strainer which strained out the dead fish but somehow let the living fish go. the dead then ended up in a wheelbarrow, but from there they didn't go far because there were piles of dead fish everywhere, creating natural barriers and even directing the flow of human movement. i was disgusted and apprehensive but fully planned to do it anyways, filled with anticipation as i waited in line. i knew the animals were miserable, but the octopus did look like it was hamming it up for the guests. 

2011-04-16

i was supposed to talk to nicole about air waves stuff, but when she called i told her i would have to call her back, i think so i could stay on facebook a little longer. she IMed me but her IMs came out diagonally on the page, so that i had to scroll down to read them but even so only a few letters would show up in the frame at a time, it was pretty pointless. the gist of the IM was "how do you do this? why do everyone else's IMs show up normally and not mine?" etc. soon she showed up in person. she said hi to me but then went straight to chris p., who was running some sort of coffee shop, because she got a $60 credit at this shop every month and it had just renewed and she wanted to use some of it immediately. we then hung out in a room where i disassembled and reassembled a desk, naked, and we still didn't talk about anything relevant. the desk had two drawers which had a lot of depth despite the fact that they were built into a completely flat piece of wood. i commented on it, but attributed it to innovative design rather than something that could only happen in a dream. soon she was outside the window of the room we were in, and was hanging out with some other girl. she asked through the window if i wanted to go with them to get something to eat, and i agreed.

she and i and a lady who was maybe going to have a snack, and a lady who wasn't going to eat at all but was a famous juicer, and ryan ellis all walked there together. the juice lady was something "ethnic" although i don't remember what it was or what culture it was originally from. as we walked through a shopping center, some kid asked "what is islam?" to ryan and i, which was a comment against muslims, via the lady's ethnic clothing, which itself was not in any was islamic. me and ryan gave him the finger, and i turned around and yelled "fuck you!" i saw some cops walking behind us and yelled "cop, fuck that guy!" which i then realized might be illegal to yell, and it sounded pretty awkward at any rate. i turned around and kept going. a brief discussion amongst the group ensued about how there are a lot of ignorant who people can't tell the difference between hindu and islam and anything else.

we walked into one restaurant, but then out again almost immediately without sitting down, as though we just took a shortcut through it. it was a very fancy restaurant in which most everything was completely white. when we walked out the door i ran into my grandmother and grandfather. irl my grandmother is in a nursing home, and is confined to a wheelchair most of the day. here she was walking and energetically, frantically bouncing around, clearly some sort of overmedication. she talked to me in this manner for a minute, and i commented to my grandpa about how drugged out she seemed. "yes, she is." he said blankly. "and to be honest, i'm not really sure i feel too well either." he seemed like he was just trying to keep it together and not think about it until the effects of whatever he was on had worn off. they had been there for some sort of social event, but it was ending and another event for adults (those not in a nursing home) was about to start. i walked my grandparents back to their room. on the way a lady flagged down my grandmother to take another pill, and scratched her name off a handwritten list. i got back to the room and spoke to my grandpa; he seemed pretty desperate, i can't remember though specifically what we discussed. i noticed that i had bought some spices for cooking and left them in their room at the nursing home. i thought this was a pretty bad idea since i was hardly ever there, and definitely never cooking, so i took those home with me.

i walked out the door of their room into a large room with massive containers each maybe 10' wide, 50' tall, and maybe 100' long, in a grid on the ground. the room was completely black except for the moonlight getting in through a window high above. i ran freely through the corridors created by the containers, and took long, smooth slides on my stomach down them. i knew it was safe to do so (i.e. i wasnt going to collide with an elderly person) because they were all asleep. at this point i realized i was dreaming. i thought i should try to lucid dream, but couldn't think of anything on the spot, and could feel myself slowly coming out of the dream. i had remembered a piece of advice given a week or two ago from a friend, which was just to keep moving and not spend too much time thinking about what to do. i just kept running down the corridors, which i was having a great time doing anyways, and slipped back into the dream, not lucid, but about the same as before.

fast forward to an hour or so later, where i had driven to hang out with austin swann, in carmel, CA. or at least we were looking at a map of carmel, which i knew was less than an hour's drive from wherever we were. he pointed to malibu (in the dream, a neighborhood in carmel) on the map, and told me he had a friend who lived there in literally one of the richest neighborhoods in the world. he then told me to look at a website, which zoomed out forever and always revealed new stuff no matter how much you zoomed out. i thought about taking him to the containers in the nursing home, but then i realized the only reason the alarms hadn't gone off when i was there was due to the fact that i was already inside when they set them, and if i tried to go back the alarms would go off. he then showed me a remix someone else had made in garageband, in which the file was called "cluster" and i enjoyed it, and put the distortion effect on it. it was still playing in my head for a few minutes after i woke up.

2011-04-12

i was in some town with a sort of rustic feel to it, but also very metropolitan. by this i mean that the streets were very narrow and cobblestone and the street lights were candles in low hanging boxes, etc. delegates, important figures, and heads of state were in from all over the world. i was briefly in a church. einstein was there, albeit a black and white version of himself mixed in the technicolor of the rest of the dream. i left the church and started talking to the president of sweden outside, a woman in her mid-30s. i kissed her, and then we went on to the roof of the building we were sitting under to really make out. we made out for a good while, and talked a little bit afterwards. she told me that all of her friends were married or dating people their age, but she only ever found herself attracted to way younger guys with longish hair. we eventually had to go back down because she had already missed one head-of-state meeting during that time and couldn't miss any more. i went and got my ipod from a bar i had left it in while making out. the rest of the dream consisted of me running into friends, minor acquaintances, relatives, etc, and trying to work into the conversation: "...oh, and if you're wondering whether or not i made out with the president of sweden, the answer is yes."

2011-04-10

i was on my way out to a party and somehow ended up [my best friend from childhood] andrew's wedding instead. i walked in late, i think during the reception, and dressed in a hoodie and jeans. he and his family still seemed happy to see me though. i was tearing up throughout the entire thing, thinking about how we spent our childhoods together and now here he was, getting married. nimai was DJing playing a teen inc. song. the reception took place in what seemed like a very ornate lobby, where everything had a rosy glow.

i was hanging out with andrew, jason, and some other dudes, on the side of a building. it started to rain on us, but luckily just down a bit onto a larger field it was warm and sunny. i laid down there against a tree and was listening to the audio of some video about some historical topic or other. it was interesting and i tried to transcribe it as the narrator spoke, but it was difficult to keep up with the pace of his words. after that i got on a bus which turned out to be a bus tour of brooklyn, which drove not only through streets but also through buildings and even the narrow passages in the gift shops. i was certain that the driver was going to destroy parts of the buildings we drove through, but he navigated the bus with ultimate precision, always a fraction of an inch away from hitting something but never actually touching anything.

i again in a room with a bunch of other dudes, somehow being instructed on something. from time to time we (the dudes in the room) had to go a few miles away to another spot near the building we were in, and to get directions to it one had to do something on a computer. i held down the d+m keys at the same time which played two notes an octave apart, but there was a lot of hiss and white noise that played at the same time. my mom was there and was frustrated with this, an inefficient method of getting directions to this second place. she opened the drapes to show the landscape, and simply pointed to the second building. the drapes she pulled back revealed two adjacent wall-sized windows, so that 180 degrees were overlooking the area below. it was in texas, possibly deep southwest texas by the look of it. the building she was pointing to was a bit more towards the north, but straight ahead to the west was what looked like a capitol building, with the six flags of texas out front at equal heights. the valley below was lit by houses and streetlights, but most of what was visible was lush palm type trees with deep green leaves which looked stunning in the sunset, which was orange and purple, in its last few minutes before it sets completely. i hoped that aliens would land at that moment, or that someone from the past would travel forward in time to the exact room i was in, so they could see how beautiful it was at this time and place and experience what i (and sometimes, other people) got to experience. it felt like either the distant future or the atlantean utopian past.

2011-04-03

i was in nina and brittney's apartment complex, a building mostly made up of apartments but with one room which served as a backstage area for comedy central. the corner of backstage room, which was a large room with low, slanting ceilings with many windows, had an oven in which jonas mekas' severed, hollowed head was used to cook pizza. a woman would fold up the pizza, stick it in the head as best she could, and stick the entire head in the oven for a while until the pizza was warmed. adam cahoon was there and was telling me about his experience with this woman, he sounded very weirded out by it but it also sounded like he had eaten the pizza anyways.

jason was in nina and brittney's portion of the building playing sonic the hedgehog. he seemed like he was having trouble so i tried to offer some help, since i spent a good portion of my childhood playing that game. at one point i advised him to do something that caused him to use up his last life, so i taught him the up-down-left-right-a-start code to get to any level you wanted to make up for it. when i tried playing the game myself i found that even though it was in traditional 2-d / l-r scrolling mode, you could easily die by barely pushing the up or down buttons, which would make you go back or forwards off the designated path in the game in a 3-d way.

2011-04-02

i was in jordan jackson's apartment, visiting. we had only talked for a couple of minutes when janet (his gf, who also lives with him) came in, bustling around and looking very stressed, saying it was good to see me but that i would have to leave. apparently jordan was making an installation in his own apartment, where he took all of the posters he used to have up but no longer did, and put them back up exactly where they were, even if it meant putting them directly over the posters that are there now. the idea behind this was to demonstrate the passage of time. jordan said that i didn't have to leave but did agree that he needed to work on that. i only remember him putting up two posters, which didnt really take too long.

i was on the corner of congress and denton st, where calhoun middle school is irl but where, in the dream, were more houses similar to the ones that surround it. a group of four people, friends of mine in the dream but not people i know irl (not entirely true - one was a girl named laura baldwin who i haven't seen since early high school), were selling food from a card table they'd set up in their front yard, which i'd arrived there to buy. they handed me a pipe and told me there probably wasn't much left and to finish what was left of it. i told them i didn't want to but that it still had plenty to go, and handed it to the next person in the circle. immediately after i handed it to him a cop walked up to the circle on foot. she walked up from behind the guy i passed it to, so he was still smoking, while the rest of us could plainly see her. i tried to take the pipe from him and throw it, but i only called attention to it by throwing it, still lit, a few feet away on to the ground. the cop then took us all inside the house and sat us in the living room. it seemed clear that she wanted to at least write tickets if not send us to jail. she left the living room for a minute or two and i realized that she hadn't taken any of our information yet, and that as she was in the back of the house, we could make a run for it out the front door. i gestured a silent running motion with an inquisitive look to one of the guys in the room, and he agreed. we quickly and quietly went out the front, crawled low to the ground so as not to be visible from the windows, and then ran once we were further away from the house. eventually i made it back to my house, and was in my bedroom, which had large floor to ceiling windows that wrapped completely around half of the room, so that half of the room was normal wall material, and half was clear glass. it didn't overlook anything particularly scenic (just the street a bit below), but it was the type of window that anything you looked at from it was going to be scenic just because it was on the other side of that beautiful window.

2001-03-31

i was with a group who was helping to trim trees, etc, along the 6 train (irl the 6 train is all underground, no plants of any kind), everyone else there was there because they were convicts and it was part of their punishment. i don't remember exactly why i was there, but i do remember that a few years back i had fallen on a donald judd installation there which had very sharp corners, and busted up my chin and had to get stitches. that day, darcy sent me a picture she had taken of me on the emergency room stitching table from that time; i looked like i was taking it in stride.

i watched the convicts working, and one of them started to float above the ground. he kind of hovered at first, but it had soon developed into full floating, yet still not quite flying. he floated all the way up onto some power lines about two or three stories up. he then danced around the power lines, never quite using them for full support, but touching them for guidance every few seconds. he danced around like this for a bit, and came down. the warden gave him a look like "here we go again," and then the floating man went back to work on terra firma. i was lying down, and directly beneath me there was a large, hairy, stereotypically disgusting spider. i tried to squish it by lying on it, and every time i lifted my back up to see if i had killed it, it was still alive but in a different spot beneath me. i got more and more freaked out as this went on, but eventually did squish it.