Potato or Potatoe [dream]

Potato God worship

1:20pm, Friday, 4-19-2002

In this dream, Al Gore is giving an informal speech to some folks, including myself, at a library (not recognizable as one I have been in). In the course of his talk, he trys to quote Edison. He flubs the quote and his audience is laughing because even though he did not deliver the quote, people recognize that the quote he is reaching for isn’t actually from Edison anyhow. [This reminds me of the whole spelling of potato issue which plagued him for so long.]

Anyhow, Gore is making a joke about flubbing the quote as he walks across the library toward the card catalog so he can find reference to look up the quote. The card catalog is not where he expects to find it and he says something about how the audience rearranged the library while he was gone. “Did you guys short-sheet my bed while you were at it?”, he jokes. The audience laughs, and his self-deprication comes across as quite charming.

Gore can’t find the quote in the reference work, so he paraphrases it. The gist of the quote is that is has to do with an experiment involving agitating electrons and noticing that the electrons take the path of least resistance in their movement to fill the container they are held within [This is like stuff I read in "The Arrow of Time" for research]. Then, I say: “Some Chinese guy noticed that same phenomenon while watching a waterfall thousands of years ago; that’s the East versus the West for you.” [Obviously, the waterfall has more to do with fluidity and gravity, but the similiary had to do with element taking easiest, or most obvious path based on physical laws].]

I immediately feel bad because my statement is interpreted as a slam on Gore that ties in with audience first laughing at him for flubbing the quote. I didn’t mean to demean his comparison or use of the metaphor, I merely meant to disparage the use of habit in forming perceptions in America and how that leads us to proving the obvious only via technology sometimes. Or, at the very least, preferring to use technology metaphors instead of natural ones.

The whole concept of this dream seems to tie in with how I have always gotten into trouble by using the second person form of speech, and my tendency to generalize a topic beyond it’s current context, and in the end I seem to be disparaging the person I am talking with (the “you”) while to my mind I’ve moved to another level of abstraction. And this tendency in general, which has been justified via intellectualization, seems to tie in with the fact that I joined in the joking about Gore being stupid back in the day. And now, I seem to realize a) that I did not know him at all, and b) that alternate spellings are okay and valid. As a matter of fact, the more I study portuguese, the worse my English spelling becomes as I re-map my brain.

p.s. uhh . . . turns out that was Dan Quale, not Gore

Some themes:
Language
Social embarrassment
Judging others
Quoting Sources
Technology verus Nature

www.sleepwaking.com

Dumbo’s Mommy [dream]

The dream factory pumps ‘em out

4/9/2002

I was on the phone flirting with some unidentified woman (after phone conversation with Noemi about meeting for tutoring, but we didn’t flirt). As I am chatting on the phone I notice outside that there is a momma elephant and her baby in a pen on the far side of the property. It’s a fairly desert-like, or savanna type, landscape (reflecting AZ?). I step outside to let the dog (what dog?) out. I watch the mama elephant leading the baby elephant around the pen. It looks like she is teaching him or entertaining him, perhaps like me with the dog. So, I move closer to watch them.

Then, the momma starts showing the baby how to gather grapes and lay them out in a single layer. I get the impression that within this dream that this is a normal task that the momma elephant is trained to do. However, she deviates from the “normal” method because she is teaching the baby elephant how to lay the grapes out on a blanketed surface. And then, instead of crushing the grapes normally, the momma elephant starts to maul the grapes with extraordinary violence! I was appalled at the hatred flashing in her eyes. And I remember how the little baby elephant couldn’t even get a single drop of the grape juice because the blanket was absorbing all the grape juice. Then, the momma elephant tried to kill her own baby. An odd, merciful (in her mind) attempt to save her baby from living an imprisoned life. There was a race in the dream between me deciding to try and intervene to save the baby (with its bulging terrified eyes), and my hesitation because I was thinking that it would be impossible for her to be strangling the baby since elephants do not have fingers. Then, I woke up to urinate. I was suprised that it was not yet past midnight.

Some themes:
Conscious dreamer versus dream content (like the Invisible Man dream)
Freedom/Imprisonment
Ejaculation
Nuturing baby
Faceless communication

Human Sundial [dream]

Time passes through our bodies?

4/8/2002

This was an apocalypse dream. The sky was full of black and gold patterns over a dark world. Centered in the swirling mass of the sky was a cloudy shape that someone in dream suggested was shaped like an anus. Anyhow, the cloud boiled more and more furiously, and darker. Finally, a shattering yellow light shot out of the apeture in the sky and destroyed the world; not like a bomb, but like a sonic sound wave. I remember that buildings were still standing but leaning and pockmarked, totally blasted to the edge of their structural integrity.

I remember talking to a survivor. He was a complete asshole. He seemed to take my ideas about rebuilding civilization seriously, but when he thought I was out of earshot he made a disparaging remark. Then, without his having a clue, I pulled him down to the ground from my hiding spot crouched behind something and pressed a straw against his neck as if it were a knife to show I could have killed him. I had him dig a shallow, body-shaped depression (like body outlines in “Death to Smoochy” which I saw a few days ago). Even though he was digging a shallow hole shaped to his body, he didn’t seem to have any idea that I might do something bad to him.

Then, I had him lay face down in the depression. It fit his body pretty well so that the top of the back of his head and shoulders were even with the top of the shallow hole (grave? like in the Jack Nicholson dream?). I marked lines on the man’s back to measure the progress of the new, diseased sun of the apocalyptic world so I could begin to understand how our world had changed. Whenever the guy started to become conscious, I would smack the back of his head with a hammer, he would fall forward unconscious, and I would continue to track the yellow and black sunbeams along the marks I had made in his back like some weird sundial.

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Invisible Man [dream]

Can’t we all be friends?

2/21/2002

In this dream, I am living in an Apartment with LK. I keep getting phone messages from strange woman that I do not know. At one point KH comes into the room, yet she is Hawaiian or Asian for some reason. LK’s bedroom smells so bad that she wants to move out of the apartment. I am explicitly not invited to move into new apartment, so in a fit of anger I go out and buy a motorcycle. Then, I leave town on motorcycle when I catch her kissing another guy.

Then, the dream shifts dramatcially to a cab ride through Anchorage. The passenger in the cab is a prominent black man (a celebrity), and the driver is also black and he is more of a tour guide than cab driver at the moment. The driver drives the taxi through impossibly narrow alleys into streets that do not actually exist in Anchorage, yet I can tell that the ride is taking place in Spenard district. The driver points out the dingy home of some famous Black-American.

The taxi goes another couple of blocks on Minnesota and turns into another insanely narrow side street. Cab parks in covered driveway by poor house. Driver explains that this is was the home of famous writer that has since passed away (which is interesting because I had just heard about the 50th anniversary of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” on NPR the day before).

There is a bunch of furniture under the covered driveway area. The funiture is all collectible and antique; stuff that the deceased writer got at a speakeasy (huh?). It is a shame because the furniture is warped and peeling due to inadequate cover. The covering is clearly a poor attempt by an underfunded agency making a token attempt to preserve a bit of history, and it clearly deserves more than this horrific neglect.

The celebrity from the cab suddenly picks up a warped and bent coffee table, lets out a mighty roar, and crashes through the locked door of the abandoned home. Then I (or the cabbie rather, in a point-of-view fashion), run after the man.

The initial room of the home is too big for the actual home’s external dimensions. It is full of locker banks and looks like a forgotten locker room in in some ancient high school. The floor is covered in a foot of smelly, green water and water drips from spots in the collapsing ceiling. The celebrity is yelling and running through the poorly lit, wet, and bloated hallways, his feet splashing in the muck and kicking up the smell of must and decay. The cabbie (me) is racing after him wildly.

At the end of a hallway, the black celebrity falls into a giant milkshake container. He is thrashing around as the blade is lowered into the container to mix the white, frothy milk and the rich, dark chocolate. I begin to rearrange the dream in a semi-lucid state so that the man escapes the blades, dripping with milk, his skin momentarily liquid white. But the dream wants him to get blended and chopped, so he keeps appearing back in the blender. The dream wants him mixed, but I don’t. Due to the exertion from rearranging the dream events, I wake up.

www.sleepwaking.com

Honey, I’m Home [dream]

Death’s Smile

2/18/2002

This dream was like a movie. It was “starring” Jack Nicholson in some kind of dark, night-time Middle Eastern setting. The political situation is such that he is running through the desert at night in complete terror. At one point, he runs toward the “camera” until his slavering, slack-jawed mouth is filling the “screen” in a barely suppressed scream.

He has stumbled upon a group of native people gathered omniously around the lip of a shallow grave in the moonlight. Jack stumbles nearer to the hole. A bloody hand from the grave reaches up for him. In the end, it turns out that there was a young woman in the grave, bloody and wounded and she becomes Jack Nicholson’s wife and they live happily ever after.

Mechanical Halibut [dream]

Keeps on Ticking

1/27/2002 

Had a dream that I was fishing for halibut for a relacement “motor” or mechanical organ for another halibut. In other words, some kind of mechanical part transplant. Myself and others, including my father, fish up a halibut corpse (which actually looks more like a Grey Lord, of the sort that plagued the one real halibut fishing trip I went on with my father).

The halibut corpse has a little “window” or translucent area on its back through which you can see a little motor (which, oddly enough, looks a lot like a motor that I saw a repairman in the hotel carrying in the elevator yesterday). It turns out that I recognize the halibut corpse; it’s some famous halibut in some way. I tell my dad about this and finally get him to recognize the halibut too (note: my process of getting my dad to remember the halibut is a lot like the times we’ve been in a bar and he trys to get me to remember some friend of his that I met in passing as a young boy).

Stunt Man and Pumpkins [dream]

Out of gas again Linus!

1/26/2002 

Eric H. is on show where he culminates show by coming out as Mephistopheles in ‘57 Chevy. The car is blue with flames painted on the side. It is a convertable with the top down, and the seats are filled to brimming with gasoline, as though the car were left out in a rain of gasoline with the top down. Flaming guy in stunt suit runs and jumps into car igniting it in mushroom cloud explosion. At first after gas ignites and kills Devil guy it’s Eric H. in the stunt suit and he survives. Then, it switches and he dies from stunt and becomes daredevil martyr.

Then, I’m driving home with some girlfriend, I think it’s Lois, on a highway coverid in small pumpkins. Then, the pumpkins start to get bigger and bigger as they flash past the headlights and squash under the tires. Eventually the pumpkins get so large we have to stop and back the car up. Then, the lights come on and it turns out the highway is actually a suspended walkway in a high-ceiling restaurant (weird parallel with Lemke dream in terms of being in dark, weird place in car only to have lights come on).

Someone at the restaurant shows us out the side door. After realizing that the head waitress has a tip jar that is actually a restaurant fund, I go back and put in about $80.00 to help pay for broken pumpkins.

NOTE: had told story about Eric H. recently which may have prompted the dream. Also, in terms of tipping, knowing Lois is what made me start tipping. Also, Eric H. looks a bit like the devil as played by Tim Curry in “Legend” . . . uh . . . without the massive horns and red skin.

Dream Haiku [dream]

O Pointy Bird, O Pointy Pointy . . . Annoint My Head, Annointy Nointy 

1/24/2002, 3:38am 

hmm . . . let this one go for too many days before typing it up . . . absolutely no clue what in THE hell. Here is a literal transcription of chicken scratches:

sentient mold stuff
in crock pot
Growing hot, cold
Afraid it went
dormant only to come
back after 7 days.
made connection to DUI
and woke up

Shopping Mall Psychosis [dream]

It’s Not Just a Movie . . . it’s a Metaphor, Dude!

Take That Naughty Dream Man!

1/10/2002, 5:45am 

NOTE: mostly direct transcript of notes written upon awakening from dream on Fri. 01-10-2002 at 5:45am

This dream starts with me standing in parking lot next to some woman’s car. I have just dropped her off at home and she is asleep up in her apartment. The car, the building, and the parking lot don’t map to any actual place that I know of. I need to take her purse up to the woman because I realize she left it in her car (which I was driving, and so have the key). As I get the purse, I turn around and notice a pudgy woman with dark skin sitting on the bed in the back of a van (sort of like the Leisure Van I owned as teenager) with the side door completely open.

I ask for directions to a fireworks stand where I can return some items I purchased and no longer want. She tells me, and then rolls onto her back on the bed in the van. Her skirt goes up and I walk over and start to play with her pussy. I remember her pussy being very close-up, and very realistic in the dream as I put my mouth on it. We get into a sixty-nine position, and like the “Lois and the Zombies” dream, it is very realistic sexual activity.

The woman tells me she is wearing some kind of condom. It’s some kind of sarah wrap bikini underwear thing. So, we have intercourse. Then, afterwards, I’m stuck debating whether to wake up whatever woman it is that is asleep in apartment above to return her purse that I think she needs the next morning, or whether to just wait until the next day. Then, the dream shifts gears entirely.

I’m riding my mountain bike around inside building; almost like a shopping mall inclosed as one big city (sort of like “Logan’s Run”). In restaurant part of the mall, I ask someone how to get outside the building. I’m told to go out by a certain way, and that once I get outside to go by the bus stop that has old buses, and then past the bus stop with newer buses, and then I can get home.

As I go out the exit, I meet a busboy on his way back in to the restaurant. As we are talking, he announces the arrival of the paperboy. The busboy is so excited about the newspaper that I decide to stay for a moment (still on bike) and read the headline. The headline is about how some celebrity named Lisa Harper (looks a bit like Sandra Bollock) was washed up on shore having accidentally harpooned her own face (and, somehow, she incidentally killed three children . . . the implication that I remember from the dream being that the harpoon passed thru her head and pierced children that were standing/swimming behind her).

The picture on the front page is a graphic, full-color picture of the celebrity lying bloated and dead on the beach with long harpoon through her mouth. Blood, brains, and chunks of disgusting seaweed are mixed together in the sand and you can see the water lapping away up to her chest. The busboy says something about how since the newspaper reports that the incident happened yesterday that it’s hard to believe the photo wasn’t doctored to appear more horrific than it actually was. Also, I remember that the difference between looking at the photo on the newspaper and thinking that I was actually seeing the corpse at my feet was intertwined.

So, I get off the bike (for some reason) and I walk around the corner of the building to a beachlike nook (the outside landscape having become like a coastline, presumably because of the news article. A zombie-like guy (similar to zombies on “Lois and the Zombies” dream) comes out of nowhere and trys to stab me with rusty ill-used knife. He is just swinging away, and I felt a good degree of fear in the dream. Just before he gets me, a woman comes around the corner laughing and tackles him. She is cackling wildly as she starts stabbing him (thus saving me, probably mostly be coincidence). Then, I wake up.

Lois and the Zombies [dream]

Where’s the Cotton? 

1/8/2002, 6:48am 

NOTE: interpretation of wild, chicken-scratch notes written upon awakening from dream on Tues. 01-08-2002 at 6:48am In this dream, the standout image (initially) is having sex with Lois. I mean . . . it’s very realistic considering that I haven’t typically had very many realistic sex dreams. And it’s really awesome dream sex. We are doing this in the living room of some unknown house. Just as I’m very near climax in the dream, we are interrupted by a call from Norman. I remember being really annoyed (as if he may have actually known he was interrupting a crucial moment). As I’m talking with him on the phone, other residents of the house are waking up and coming into the living room.

I distinctly remember Sabrina K. rubbing her sleepy eyes and sheepishly realizing she didn’t have a top on. And Tom comes out into living room as well. He is sharing my annoyance with Norm because Norm wants us to get some kind of postcards or letters printed and delivered somewhere. We have to do this task soon or right away, and it’s annoying because it all has something to do with Norman wanting/needing this done to impress some woman he is seeing.

Anyhow, we go immediately from hanging up with Norman to me looking out a window and seeing zombies approaching the house through the moonlit yard. Then, all I remember is fighting an army of zombies, one by one, by myself. They are there with big sticks, needles, and cotton. They mean to disembowel us, stuff us full of bloody cotton, and sew us back up (make us zombies too?).