RuffBlog

deep sleep...

ever sleep, inexplicably, for 17 hours?

ever have a dream that you're riding a bike to work? to an office you've never been to? in a relatively foreign city? and you know the EXACT address of where you're heading?

Welcome to 2012 Van Ness Ave, presumably in San Francisco, as pictured below.

I never actually made it there before waking up....

mis-cooking? mis-ikea-ing?

last night i had two dreams.

first, i was boiling water or something in an Ikea 365+ pasta cooker... a big pot with a stainless steel strainer that fits inside.

except in the dream, the strainer was upside down, and sitting underneath, rather than inside, the pot. and so the strainer (never mind that it was steel) began melting on the burner, causing the precariously mounted pot of presumably boiling water to tilt and risk spilling.

apparently, i wasn't so upset about the boiling water, but rather the damaged pasta strainer.... i removed it from the burner, saw how it was caved in and melted, and i guess i just started crying....

the next dream is weirder. i was in las vegas (no, i've never been there) and i decided to leave my hotel and head to some kind of theme park. i took a limo, and it was waiting for me at the end of my afternoon.

i climb in to head home. i notice the return trip seems longer than the initial ten minute ride, and the 30-ish (black, male) driver explains it's just the way to roads are laid out... so I sit back and don't give it a second thought.

at some point my hand brushes the driver's hand... for some reason he had it dangling behind the back of his seat... (i suppose this wasn't a very big limo at this point...)... and he instantly recoils his hand without saying anything.

i start to realize he is so NOT driving me back to the hotel. i also start to suspect he's pretty upset that we brushed hands... and that i'd done it intentionally...

basically i'm doomed... he is totally going to chop me up in a dozen parts an hour outside the city. and i'm kind of resigned to my fate. i try to take in the scenery, and notice a really cool housing development... but this only upsets me more because i realize how stupid it is to ooh and ahh over a suburban housing construction when you're being fatally chauffeured by a homophobic axe-murdering limo driver.

morning rise?....

a couple days ago i woke up and realized i had to rush out the door... but i'd had a really weird dream. i didn't have time to process it, so i just scribbled down the dream on a scrap of paper, then carried on with my day.

i thought about it all day, but didn't return to the scrap of paper until now... in the dream, I was on the school bus going to my childhood home, and the AA batteries had fallen out of some kind of device, and rolled all over the place on the bus. And I was naked. I realized I'd never find the batteries again, so I got off the bus and checked the mailbox. i'd received a letter in the mail, and the title read: Repairing the Knaveless Ascension.

Knaveless isn't a word, but I give my subconscious an A+ for vocabulary.
(I remember Knave was a word in Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing: Deluxe Edition)...

Garden Dream... Freudian Cheese.

Last night I dreamt of the vacant lot beside my parent's house in Wards Creek. They owned the lot, bought to hedge off anybody moving in beside us, I guess.

The lot had turned into a garden. A famous garden that people visited as a tourist attraction. Or a secret garden, like out of a children's fable.

The place was so cultivated and unique that very little tending was required. It just grew the most unusual and beautiful things. Mushrooms that looked like topiaries, or even bonsais. Or Bonsais that looked like mushrooms. Things that grew two feet high on a stalk, then bloomed only at the top, the roof of the plant forming a perfectly flat surface, looking soft as foam. A table.

Then a voice overhead explains that, provided all the elements are in proper order - the soil, the weather, the seeds, the most beautiful things grow naturally. This is a balance to strive for.

(Euphamism for life).

It is understood how seeds blow into the right spots in the ground.

Then there is a root. A hunk of wood, a stick... about the size and density of a brick. It's blowing in the air. Then it's fifty feet up in the air. And it's going to land on me.

I run.

Just as I think I'm no longer at risk of it falling on my head, a gust of wind shifts its trajectory, and I'm once again aware that the root is out to get me. It'll knock me out like that flying thing in a Harry Potter novel. I run into the porch of my house, only to realize the root is not going to stop at the glazed panels of the porch. Then I open the door, and I know it can still get in. I run into the den to see that the root has again blown around the corner of the house, and is now ready to drop down and forward into the window. I run upstairs. To my room.

Same thing.

The root is going to hit me.

The proper order is arranging itself.

Freud, Freud, Freud

Stairways

OK now I dreamt I was in fake corners of montreal's underground city.... and i kept turning corners, only to find stairwells were the stairs seemed to be under construction.... or where escalators had been gutted, and makeshift ways of moving between levels were there in bits and pieces.... robes, ladders, piles of boxes to climb up.

O'Reilly, the drowning dog.

I just dreamt I was in an indoor swimming pool... and there was this blind lesbian with a swimming seeing eye dog named O'Reilly, and I was hanging out with these two, except all of a sudden the dog disappears, the lesbian gets worried, I leap to find him, and realize the dog is on the bottom of the pool, being held down by the construction-booted foot of some gnarly homeless looking man. I pushed him and pulled the dog up for air. And when I brought him back to the lesbian and said "here's O'Reilly", she was angry at me for saying his full name out loud, in case any of those gnarly homeless men overheard the name and tried to lure him away.... so I felt bad I'd undermined the safety of the lesbian's seeing eye dog, but on the other hand, I was thinking "well, how else am I supposed to reach him? should i just shorten his name, and say 'hey, O, stay away from that homeless guy!'"?

Army Snowstorm

Last night I dreamt I was a soldier in some high-tech futuristic army... we were more interested in wearing lots of cool combat gear than actually having to go around killing people.

Anyway, we were done training, and our mission was beginning, so we'd all bunked up in this old farm house.... outside was nothing but bare, flat tundra. It felt comforting to be squalled up, surrounded by all that harsh space. But then we realized two things were underway: the enemy was closing in on us, and a huge snow storm was brewing.

There was a sense of excitement that things were beginning, but next thing I knew, every room in the house was filled with mountains of (warm) fluffy white snow. I was shocked at how quickly it fell... it was up to my waist, with no sign of stopping.

The good thing, I thought, was that at least the enemy can't encroach upon the farmhouse with this blinding storm beating down. We could take comfort in the time. But then it occured to me that the snow was warm and easy to move through, even if it seemed to occupy all the space around us: suddenly, those white heaps took on an entirely knew meaning, as every sound and shape seemed to carry the threat of a hidden enemy.

Ice Cream Stand

I'd just landed in a tropical tourist town (NOT ft. lauderdale), and I'm at an overpriced ice-cream stand... waiting patiently for my turn, can't see the flavour listing until I'm right up close. I can't really decide if I want mint chocolate chip or something else, because I always get mint chocolate chip. When I order a medium and realize it's going to come with two scoops, I contemplate asking for the top scoop to have a different kind, but I figure no, that's too try-hard, and shows indecisiveness. She dips the top in chocolate before adding the second scoop, and this seems to please me. When she asks if it's for here or to go, I find the question misplaced, because it's not like a coffee shop, where your latte can be sold in a mug or styrofoam. Then I realize she's concerned because it's genuinely hot out, she's trying to do me a service. I mumble something about I am going outside, but I'll try hard not to let it melt, I'll walk in shadows or something. I even take a first big lick, just to get started on the thing. She then informs me it costs $7.02. Of course, I don't flinch at the gouging... what can you do. But then I realize... I'd just landed here, I only have Canadian money. I purposefully avoid saying, with a weak little laugh, that I only have a foreign currency, as if she cares. Instead of waiting for me to dig through my pockets, she starts opening an envelope... the ice cream lady has received a birthday card from her family. She's very excited, engrossed in reading it. Then I realize I also received a birthday card from relatives... and inside were American Dollars. I present her with an American $50... she goes to hand me change back, but she's so engrossed in that birthday card of hers, she doesn't notice she's handed me a fistful of cash, far, far more than I was due to receive. I decide not to say anything else, or even count it in front of her. I go to leave quickly... I go to pick up my cone off the little cone-holding rack, I find it on the metal counter beside the rack, but upside down, the melting ice cream resting on a wet napkin. I can't remember if she did this, or if I did it. I'm partly annoyed, partly embarrassed (if I did it), and partly impressed at the sanitary purpose of the soggy napkin. I peel it off and delve into my ice cream.

I walk outside, it's along a beach. And then three young black guys sight me and rush over. I try to pretend I don't see them and walk away, but I know it's too late. I owe these guys money. On one hand, I'm in luck, because I just scored some cash from the ice cream shop. On the other hand, they could take it all. It all seems to be a "win some, lose some" moment... the ring leader walks alongside me, talking... I say "how much do i owe you", he says "you know how much", which is true. then I blurt out "was it $100?", when I know full well I owe them $150, and I'd certainly better cough it up. He says nothing, just stares at me and smiles. I wonder if he'll even take my ice cream cone from me. I'm not quite sure how I'll get the money out of my pocket, without revealing how much I actually have, without dropping the ice cream.

Japanese University Dream

my dream last night...

i was a foreign student in a japanese university. i'm arriving at a tremendous, dark, ampitheater with thousands of seats... you'd almost expect it to be a rock concert, filled with noisy young people. but it's a standardized test. we are going to watch japanese commercials on a huge projector, and we have to write something down... i find a seat just as things are beginning.

there is an ad for, what i thought, was a volkswagen touareg, running through a desert. suddenly, the SUV flips in the sand and rolls over. it was supposed to be funny. there was an ad for a golf course/country club, with images of luxury - but they're very much a construction of luxury as it would be in phoenix arizona, or dallas texas. there are several other advertisements as well.

i hear someone, possibly lauren fuller, who often appears in my dreams, whisper a clue for a test - something like "classify the ads into categories like AMERICANIZED".... so i start to piece together my own loose set of categories that, even if they weren't proper, where at least coherent.

then people start yelling at the proctors... why weren't foreign students notified of this exam in advance? why didn't we get details? though the proctors won't admit it, it seems the exam was fulling explained, but only in the japanese versions of the course material. so the foreign students were unfairly disadvantaged. they start booing, and finally the entire ampitheater erupts in anger, and people start getting up and walking away - no one is going to submit the test for grading!

as i'm walking up the stairs, a guy sees my test sheet in my hand - i'd drawn little boxes to represent each commercial (like i do when i'm taking notes in art history for slides of artwork) and then written titles and other information beside each box. the guy says "you did it all wrong, you were supposed to chart out every instance where we received a communication from the ad" and then he flashes his completed exam, which was a series of non-textual flowing lines with boxes, dots, and downward pointing arrows, each line representing one advertisement, marked-up according to the neccessary observances. it didn't matter that i did it wrong, because we weren't submitting the exams, in protest, but it still bothered me that i did it incorrectly.