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.

2011-03-28

i was in a dilapidated building with a stage in d.c., it had the vibe of an off-limits place at first but slowly more people showed up and there was going to be a show there. jack schafer was in a band that was about to play, but went home to get a cable. quite a bit more happened but i don't remember much of this one.

andrew had died while tossing a ball back and forth in the westway backyard with daniel bass. he had chased it into the street without looking and been hit by a car. we had buried him in the westway backyard and placed either things we had made ourselves that we thought he might have liked, or things of his that he liked, on top of the grave, which was actually a mound. it was really staggering. i thought of the last time i saw him which was in austin, how we'd talked about riding back together but i had to leave before he could to catch a flight. at this point i became aware that my dad had died too, though i don't know how. i was still in the westway backyard, weeping uncontrollably. i hoped it was a dream, that they were both still alive, yet at the same time i had the bizarre feeling of wanting the weeping and the intensity of emotion to be real.

this next section takes place (not at the bookstore itself, but) superimposed on the half-price books in lewisville parking lot. it bears no resemblance to it other than it sharing the coordinates of that parking lot. anyways ::: i was in a supermarket and ran into shane wright. we chit chatted but then went our separate ways. i went into the parking lot where there was a gas station, and could still see him in the distance. i decided to call him and ask him if he wanted me to get him a pack of cigarettes while i was here, to which he said sure but that he didn't have any money to pay me back. for some reason i decided to go with it anyways, then went to join my parents who were eating at a taco cabana adjacent to the gas station. this was a fancy taco cabana with waiters and live entertainment, which my parents were watching as they ate. i stood there waiting for shane and trying to conceal the cigarettes, which were not even mine, from my parents. apparently i had ordered a beer for someone else, and the waiters decided to bring an entire pitcher of frozen margaritas to our table as well. they poured them for the three of us, but they lost their consistency and turned to water almost immediately, so we had trouble distinguishing them from the waters we already had on the table. we were sitting in an outdoor seating area facing a stage, although i don't remember what was happening there. we were sitting stage left, but parallel to us stage right were two people who were also married and who looked exactly like my parents. briefly i thought of the odds of two people a) each looking like my parents b) getting married c) eating at this same taco c at the same time as us but didn't give it much thought beyond that.

at this point a group of kids came up to me and asked me to retrieve something for them that had been confiscated by a gas station attendant in yet another gas station across the parking lot. i didn't want to and told them no, and one of them tried to start a fight with me. i was standing on some steps so i was a bit below him, so that when he lunged at me i was able to duck and then flip him over my back. i tried calling some employees over to have him removed, but no one came, so i just continued holding him down, punching him as needed, etc. later, now night, i went even further across the parking lot, past the second gas station, to a second taco cabana. i waited for my food in the outdoor area there, though it was no more than some old wooden tables with benches, nothing like the previous one. the kid i had fought before came up and tapped me on the shoulder, though from the start i knew it was nothing hostile. i put my hand out to give him the bro-diagonal-five-handshake. he was holding an infant and seemed much more calm and clear.

2011-03-27

hello everyone,

i am starting this back up primarily because it's a good way for me to stay diligent about writing my dreams down. when i am writing them down on a regular basis i find it much easier to remember details (quality/quantity) about them. it's also amazing what you can notice about dreams after having somewhat forgotten about them, then going back and rereading them, i.e. common themes, symbols, moods, or images that appear and reappear and are obvious in retrospect but that you don't notice the first time. i also miss reading everyone else's blogs, now that we are all scattered across the country/world, these are a good way to stay more in touch with each other beyond what you can get from a status update. anyways, night one:

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i was at some sort of sleepaway camp, similar vibe to church camp. i got in the cabin and saw that the nicest, most comfortable, non-bunk bed was still available. i looked around and threw my stuff on it as if to say "all right, if no one wants it..."

at one point i was on land near sort of harbor. there were some kids swimming (two boys and a girl) and chasing each other further out into the water. we were all part of a larger group. eventually i lost sight of the kids but it didn't concern me very much, especially since there was a large manmade concrete building planted about 100 feet off shore they seemed to be heading towards. later i saw the two boys without the girl, but since they didn't seem panicked i figured everything was probably ok, that the girl hadn't drowned, etc. an older man and i were also trying to get something done, i don't remember what. he got in the water at one point and pulled a bike out and handed it to me - i don't remember if it was my bike, or someone's, but it was definitely not just a random bike pulled out by chance.

i was in my [parents'] house in coppell [texas], but the dream must have also taken place on the french riviera, because i was trying to get a day trip to hyeres together. i wanted [my sister] lindsey to go and a couple of other people. the dream had nothing to do with the camp from above, but i remember that i wanted to take a few other people who had also been at it, now that the camp was over but we were all still within driving distance to hyeres. i was pretty frustrated because it was getting late in the day and no one seemed like they were making much of an effort to go in a timely manner, if at all. lindsey was just watching tv, and i begged her to please hurry up, since as it was we hadn't left yet and the sun would only be out a few more hours. i got a call from my friend julian's mom, which showed up on my caller id as "caroline" (i have no idea if this is her real name or not). she said she noticed i had contacted her over 30 times looking for help planning this trip, which was unusual, so she was calling just one final time to see if there was anything else i needed. i replied that, yes, now that i thought of it, i had no idea how to get to hyeres, so if she could give me directions, that would be fantastic. she agreed to do so, but demanded i watch a few youtube videos that she found hilarious first. i wasn't too thrilled but agreed, since lindsey still wasn't ready and the other two people we were waiting on weren't even there yet. i watched one where the funny/viral-worthy part of the video was that a woman got caught looking up information about condoms on her laptop in a mall food court, which to me wasn't that funny or viral-worthy at all. i just wanted to get the directions and leave. i humored her though, and pulled up the second one, which started with the same woman in the same food court, but zoomed out. the camera was moving backwards, almost at ground level between the seats, with first kids running/skating by, and then a group of large men running/marching by in processional form. the whole thing looked staged to me but i didn't want to waste anymore time on this video, so i decided not to mention it.