Month: February 2026

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Dream Journal

Revisit to Australia

Visiting Australia, I never thought I’d see it again. I’m traveling deep inland and the green hills and my feelings for the land are very specific, nostalgic, touching. There’s been a series of contaminations lately, and quantities of high-quality cow fat has to be dumped. I dig a shallow hole to pour out what someone calls “beautiful 90s fat” into the dirt while the wizard Gandalf comforts me.

Renting a place in Mexico. We’ve still not acclimated and made friends, partly because it would mostly be expats, so we mostly stay in our room. This isn’t so much an issue since there’s sometimes a beautiful golden light in the evenings in the corners of our room (which is like my childhood bedroom in Kemper court). The house where the room is has a private road veering off to one side, though I don’t realize that’s what it is at first. I see a Mexican man sleeping on the road surface in the shade near the first curve. He would be hard to see in the shadow there, which seems intentionally dangerous, even suicidal. I take stock and realize I’m being imperceptive of the cultural environs, after all how many cars are really going to pass this bumpy road passing by the front of this dinky house.

In what must be a different dream, we discover the room our landlord has rented to us is still being used as a commercial kitchen. It was reasonable enough when we assumed it had been converted for residential use, but we don’t even have any private area… it’s literally a working kitchen using rolling industrial fridges.

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Dream Journal

Dreams from The Long List

It seems in the dream I have a list of hundreds of short dreams. I’ve been saving them up, many on the bottom are from nights past. These are ones that happened last night, the ones that I remember at least, and I think they could probably be boiled down to bullet points.

Munich, I’m told by my wife, has the interesting quality of having no tennis courts, because none of the ground is level enough. It started out as a mining town in the Middle Ages. I retrace old trade routes through long and narrow mountain valleys. I go in and out of modernist buildings and long canals or ruts in the ground. I’m there for what feels like an entire night’s dreams, but I think I just fell back asleep after waking.

In another one, I’m entering Sarah G’s house, leaving four pennies outside the gate. Coming to apologize and make up. She had me try on a fancy blue tuxedo coat, which didn’t quite fit. But I did arrive in my nice, fancy blue velvet jacket. Charlie mentioned they didn’t know about a big TV. There’s actually two big TVs inside their house, but the one I came to see is an ancient, fuzzy CRT from the ’40s or ’50s in the garage.

Hanging out in what might be a big hotel with Angelica’s girls loafing around. One is idling, reading a magazine, looking at a plaque on the wall. Have a brief chat with her, saying how I had great times reading magazines as a kid, playfully asking if she’s come up with anything vulgar to scratch into the plaque, which endears her to me. I realize I’m playing the role of the playful adult, scoring points, even though that’s not the greatest idea to give them these ideas. The reaction is fun though. It’s my role here.

Watching two surfer/stoner dudes on LSD get on a Ferris wheel, attacked by turn-of-the-century style old Chinese men, one of them unexpectedly rises to the occasion and bites deep into his nose, possibly biting it off. I remember from some other factoid the surprising thing about the blood tasting salty, that’s why the Chinese man falls off, he spits it at his face.

Oops. Forgot to do the bullet points.

Categories
Dream Journal

Port-a-Potty Stabbing Samurai

Entering an abandoned hospital in the future where there are much fewer people. We’re here to scavenge parts, including an alarm clock block of wood. In the bathroom, I have a strange feeling of understanding: I’ll be one of the last people to know what a place like this was before the fall. In the bathroom, I imagine finding a hidden wall panel to go through a secret corridor, a way to escape the ward — the kind of fantasy someone I would have been trapped here would have, the kind that one day won’t be understood anymore.

A samurai race: one samurai leaves the starting line early, chasing the quarry into a port-a-potty. He stabs his samurai sword strongly right through the middle at first, then seems to have a moment of reflection and genre-savviness, realizing his victim would probably kneel to avoid the strike. So he then thrusts the blade diagonally down into the porta potty, likely killing the victim (who was seen to enter). It is never confirmed, though. The race was scheduled to start at dawn, but the other samurai remains asleep at the starting line. The winner hopes his opponent will not notice his cheating.

A magazine from January 2005 features a light green background. It’s eye-catching, seemingly an intentional misuse of chroma key. More to do with it that is now forgotten (I used to be better at leaving myself hints… hmm).

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Dream Journal

Three Fragments

In the classroom of an enthusiastic teacher before school ends, then I leave right after.

The crew of the Serenity from Firefly are meeting to sign their original flight agreement using melted wax.

Rebooting a computer system on loop. The command “egg” does a job I haven’t heard before, and is essential for use on Discord (with which I’m not super-familiar).

I’m trying to be better with actually publishing these even when I’ve largely forgotten the details. That’s what practice is about I suppose.

Categories
Dream Journal

Suddenly Iced Coffee (dream of LA)

An odd Wikipedia entry of a female author’s biography. It’s odd because it’s the size of a neighborhood, displayed laid out in a giant index like blocks of a city. And if I were to guess the city, I would guess Los Angeles — it’s certainly dry and sunny and industrial enough.

Park the car in a parking spot at a long, convoluted, angular strip mall. Find out there’s a store that has paid to make the spot available, the Panax Ginseng Store. Decide to walk there to check it out. Partway, I realize just how long a walk away it is. It’s shorter to walk back to my car and drive there. That’s LA.

The store itself is small, mostly novelties stored in plastic boxes in front. Plastic tarps cover most areas as though this is all temporary. Honestly, it’s not what I expected. It’s more intriguing, really, as I want to know what the deal with the place is. There’s a certain kind of benign neglect that elderly Asian immigrant shop owners have in their businesses. The very specific type of dirty-but-interesting corners I happen to find quite appealing.

Passing by, someone invites me to Costco with them. The entrance has very tall nursery plants and the same smooth cement floors I remember. We shop separately once inside. I worry whether the person who invited me actually can share their membership, as they said. As I pass by a free sample table, iced coffee is snuck into my hand, or mysteriously appears. For whatever reason, this seems to be the strongest image from the dream (and seemed a funny-enough title — well, why not?)