found_drama » Dream

dream.20100302: katana at the spire at the end of the world

found_drama — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:05:39 +0000

Post-apocalyptic? Under a subterranean sky? Civilizations crumble; infrastructures crumble. You band together with whomever is left, with whomever you are close to when it all went down. Folks from work; the odds were in favor of it being them. Holed up somewhere, we all load up—stuff backpacks full of provisions: food, rope, matches, green metal bottles full of whatever water will still run out of the sputtering taps. I go back for a sword—a gleaming katana. My travel-mates poke fun at me (“What good will that do us?”) but I don’t see any of them going back for weapons. And why shouldn’t we carry at least one of these, at least something like this? There are bound to be more folks out there—some of them may even be marauding. Didn’t any of you read The Road? So they press on ahead. ”I’ll catch up.” And it takes a while but I figure out a way to get the katana attached. But it’s difficult to move with both the blade and the backpack over-stuffed with gear and food. I run a rope out the window and rappel down the side, looking up at the stone sky, hoping that everyone is already safe at the bottom when I get there.

dream.20100129: sushi

found_drama — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:08:56 +0000

I’m at… work? No, not work. The floors are concrete but this is an Eastern Shore-style crab house. Concrete floors and rows upon rows of long red picnic tables covered in newspaper. But I may as well be at work. I’m surrounded by co-workers, all of us toting our laptops. We take our seats around the tables. There is work to be done among the software engineers. Except that before we can really get started, the project managers descend from out of nowhere, each one carrying huge trays laden with sashimi and rice and other treats. Everyone dives in.

dream.20091219: ghostly forces

found_drama — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:44:12 +0000

We’re having a party at the house. I look out front and those tire tracks are back. And there are way too many cars parked in the driveway. I rush out there to see what’s going on. There is someone I don’t recognize changing his oil in the driveway, his car half hanging out into the yard. The tire tracks are definitely from him. I confront him, ask him to get lost, to leave and never return. He ignores me. I go inside and call the police. When the police show up, they claim not to be able to see him. Or any of the other cars. The man changing his oil just laughs at me. I try to grab him but he twists away and swings at me with his wrench. The police are just laughing.

II.

We are about to leave on some errands. I jump into the bathroom to pee. Mid-stream, the flow of urine bends upward and starts to collect on the ceiling. The moment it stops, it all falls on me. I cry out. A. rushes in: is everything OK? No, of course not. Then my glasses fall off and break.

dream.20091006: something old

found_drama — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:22:30 +0000

It’s you and me baby. The way we used to be. But older. Wiser? That’s debatable. Our conversations meander just as much. Maybe more? We avoid the important questions. Same as we always did? More so? The air is thinner. Thinner than you used to be. You’re not that thin anymore. The air between us is doing that. It stole your look just like it steals our questions, steals our transitions. The question went unasked, the move unmade, and we find ourselves in a different place. Only you’re missing and instead it’s them. It’s us. The way we used to be. But older. Sillier? There’s an urgency to wrap this up. It’s not to close it off but to bring it around. The way it used to be. Making juvenile jokes. Juveniles pretending to be adults. Only when you are the adult, casting your lot with the juveniles feels wrong. So we turn instead to other topics, other discussions. Sports. And what would happen if a lacrosse player fashioned a baseball glove? Funny how it looks a lot like a hockey goalie’s glove.

dream.20090604: climbing tunnels

found_drama — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:53:21 +0000

I am at a rock gym in … Maine? It has an unusual layout and setup. Rather than a series of routes set up along walls, you rotate between routes that are setup in “alleys” or “lanes”. The traditional wall is replaced with what is (in essence) a tunnel, and each route quickly ascends up the sidewall to progress (sloping upward) along the ceiling to the end of the alley/lane. There are a few more traditional upward routes but even these are basically sequestered from the others, tucked away in silos.

When we arrive, the gym is basically deserted — only one or two other people in the whole place. But there are no ropes. We hop from route to route, looking for one that has ropes in place already. It makes sense that they wouldn’t be “up” already — these are almost all lead routes. But after going to fetch a rope from the counter, we return to find the interior of the gym thronging with people. There are lines 6-8 people deep at every lane.

dream.20090412: Sith bus

found_drama — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:14:31 +0000

After a long and humiliating training, my “brother” Jedi and myself are ready for our first assignments. Our mission? To pilot and defend a re-purposed, Corellian-equivalent of a school bus, taking it and its Rebel contents from one secret encampment to another. The Rebellion is young and the Empire still spreading its tentacles — Order 66 is a very recent memory. My “brother” and I fear for our lives and for the lives of our Rebel brethren. Danger is everywhere but to sit idle is foolishness as well.

We set out from the encampment and head along the main road for a while before turning off. We keep driving, following this bumpy side road when suddenly, we spot a marching phalanx of clone soldiers at the top of a hill. My “brother” turns to me with fright in his eyes. ”Floor it,” is all I can think to say. From inside the bus, the scene that unfolds looks like some kind of Looney Tunes moment: clone soldiers go flying every which way or get stuck to the windshield. Our Rebel crew is ducking down low as we are fired upon from all angles. The soldiers get thicker outside and before we know it, more and heavier equipment gathers. My “brothers” swerves violently to avoid being crushed by an AT-AT and our bus over-turns.

When we come to, we are bound in bracelets and being held at gunpoint in the bay of some Imperial ship. We are surveyed by their commander. ”Rebel scum,” and all of that. The command is mid-tirade when someone else interrupts him — a Sith apprentice? I manage to work my lightsabre loose and posture myself in defense of my captive brethren. The Sith unleashes his as well and spar briefly. He is good and it is doubtful that I could defeat him with so many clone soldiers at his back. We tussle some more and I create enough of a diversion to flee into a network of hallways, tunnels, and ductwork to escape into an unknown darkness.

dream.20090411: dinner at Sonar

found_drama — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 12:38:26 +0000

The whole “Extended Family” (plus “the new favorites”) is here for the occasion. The whole old school SMCM crew. It’s a pot luck and everyone has pulled put all the stops. There’s a little bit of everything: spicy beef tips, a herbed crusty bread, an Indian dish with lots of curry… I’ve dropped off my dish (a savory cream of bacon soup) on the buffet table and work on setting up the decks here at “the old” Sonar. Granted, they already have the house gear set up but we want to go nuts with four turntables and four CD decks. We’re having trouble finding room for everything but we’re making progress. But people are starting to sit down so I turn to start spinning but my brother has stepped in to take the first turn. Part of me is a little jealous but then I smell all that food again….

dream.2009127: mental console

found_drama — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:20:16 +0000

tail -f /private/var/brain.log

dream.20090117: meat mats and coke dealers

found_drama — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:33:19 +0000

I’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of 80s-style coke dealers. They seem nice enough at first (mostly because I don’t realize that they’re drug dealers) as we drive around in their white Bronco. We talk about things. Skiing and snow-plowing. The drive is a long one. One of the guys starts talking about his meat fetish and how he makes big mats of meat scraps and makes his girlfriend walk barefoot across them. When we get back to the parking garage, one of the guys shoots the others. He pulls some replacement cronies out of the trunk and we get back in the Bronco. The main dealer rolls down the window and has me pay from the back seat. We take a right out of the garage and head up the strip, watching out for cop bot drones.

dream.20081126: haircut

found_drama — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:40:00 +0000

I’m in New York state as part of a secret government agency that has sent me to retrieve (extradite?) Omar Little (from The Wire). His van has been stolen and he needs some help getting out of the town but he’s also suspected of a series of crimes here. Naturally he maintains his non-involvement and stresses to local authorities that he is in fact working with us.

While in the town, I stop to get my hair cut. Outside of the barber shop, I see two women that look familiar (J.W.? from Flickr?) though I am positive that I have never met them. As I get closer, it appears that they are either doppelgängers of each other or else identical twins — they have the same face, hair, and body; only their clothes are different. The woman closer to the door smiles and asks me to come on inside, that she isn’t waiting on any clients. We go inside the barber shop and there is only one other stylist (an Italian woman that barely speaks any English).

Once seated in the chair, I decide to play dumb — that it would be creepy and weird if I gave any indication of recognition. On the other hand, she launches right into, giving no pretenses that she “thinks” or “believes” that she knows me from online — she just comes right out and says it and asks me to pick up a story wherever I’d left off. I start to talk about the writing projects I have in the works, she explains that the woman outside isn’t her twin but a sort of clone. She determines that I don’t actually need a haircut and offers me a close shave instead.

dream.20081120: you can’t always get what you want

found_drama — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:46:06 +0000

We’re at a bookstore, A. and I. It’s a used bookstore but it looks like a good haul. They have several copies of Snow Crash (for example) though they’re all in varying states of decay. I go through each one meticulously; I want to leave with one of them.

I get an alert on my phone. My bank has been sending balance update by text message. Convenient, but sometimes it’s troublesome to discover randomly, in the middle of the day that the $10 insurance co-pay you charged to your card turned into a $10,000 hospital bill instead. In a panic, we give up our search for the perfect used hardcover of Snow Crash and leave the store.

Hungry and hundreds of miles from home, we wander into a deli across the street. It looks like I recognize the proprietor (S.W.?). I ask for a ham sandwich; he gives me pastrami on rye. I hand it back. ”Ham it is.” And I get back pastrami on pumpernickel. He smiles and insists that the pastrami is the way to go.

dream.20081109: new tattoo

found_drama — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:03:30 +0000

I go in for a haircut but the salon has become a tattoo parlor instead. My usual stylist is there with the tattoo machine, preparing the needles and the inks. We make some chit-chat, catching up about The Boy and that time my refrigerator exploded. She asks me what I want and where I want it. I produce a sketch of a knife superimposed over a stylized Celtic knot of a circle; the tip of the knife is shaped like a scorpion’s stinger and the hilt has a distinct shape as well, suggesting the legs of the scorpion. She explains to me that she has to work from certain templates or else she needs to charge me a significant amount more. Plus (she goes on) she would really prefer to apply the tattoo to my arm and not my chest. I relent and she preps the skin on my upper left arm. Before she can make the first prick though, I pull back. We need to renegotiate.

I get her to agree to do the tattoo on my chest like I’d originally asked — not giving a damn if she alleges that it will hurt more. She has a template for similar tattoo but it’s not quite the similar enough for me. We try to work out a compromise where she executes the tattoo as it appears in her template (viz., a standard straight dagger piercing a black circle) but sneaks in the barbed tip and the correct curve of the hilt. She fusses over it all though, hemming and hawing about what might happen to her if she got caught and how she wasn’t really confident enough in her free-hand tattooing anyway.

I put my shirt on and walk out even as she tries to convince me otherwise.

dream.20081028: back burner

found_drama — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:10:51 +0000

The kitchen isn’t a wreck but one of the chairs is pulled out and there is a basket of laundry left on the floor. I’m too exhausted to do anything about these errant items quite yet so I leave them where they are. I make some coffee and retire to the living room to drink it and down a bowl of cereal, to unwind a little before proceeding with the chores. But when I go back into the kitchen, all of the burners on the stove are going full-blast and fire is spewing from the oven. I manage to get close enough to twist the knobs and turn the gas off. Though the burners have gone out, fire is still leaping from around the edges of the oven door. I rummage around the room for the fire extinguisher. When I finally find it and turn around, one of the burners has come back to life. I try to spray the stove but my aim is off and the carbon foam goes all over the floor, covering the laundry and the over-turned chairs and everything else that’s been thrown from the cabinets in my mad scramble. I blast the stove again and manage to hit it this time. It takes a few blasts but eventually the fire goes out. A. comes home just then, sees the mess, sees that everything is covered in foam. I’m at a loss for how to explain it.

dream.20081016: alien puppy

found_drama — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:17:51 +0000

At the end of a long square chamber, I’m locked into a narrow channel that runs along its back (front?) wall. It’s just barely wide enough to crouch down in. There is a breathy howl from the far end of the chamber. I can see movement but not the creature itself. It is coming for me, that much I know for sure. There is the sound of some other fleshy entity being eviscerated. In the distance I can see it leap high into the air — at least twenty feet — and watch a thin trail of blood and guts trail after it. As it hangs there in the air, I see that is the slick black carapace of the alien a la Ridley Scott and/or H.R. Gieger. It is young, it is a juvenile; it is part canine. I crouch down into a ball and pray it will not sniff me out.

dream.20081013: buffet style

found_drama — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:09:10 +0000

We are attending what is probably the worst organized party in history; certainly it’s the worst organized party we’ve ever attended. The party is being hosted in a house that is entirely too large for the man that lives in it — one of those over-paid executives with no kids that still finds it acceptable to put down a 6,000 square foot bootprint in his neighborhood. I suppose it’s supposed to be a holiday party but the decorations are not terribly festive. I am there with A. but we soon get separated. We had assumed that this would be a sit-down banquet and instead we discover that the food is served as a buffet. But the elements of the buffet are scattered across multiple rooms and multiple floors of the house. We assume at first that these are simply appetizers strategically scattered about the party but soon we discover that this is it, these are the entrees and the sides — racks of ribs, whole fish filets, steak tournedos, vegetable kebabs… But the cutlery is plastic, the dishes are little more than paper, and there is no place to sit down. I get frantic looking for A. as the party whips itself into a frenzy.

dream.20081012: brane

found_drama — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:20:38 +0000

A terrorist (think Irish Republican Army and not Al-Qaeda) has holed up in the hospital. The weapon he uses is some kind of sub-space brane that seems to fold matter into itself. As a hostage, I witness him calling on the brane — which looks like a misty pink cloud — to unfurl itself from sub-space and dissolve other hostages. The hospital administration refuses his demands and the pink cloud seeps out of flat surfaces. But something goes wrong and the pink cloud dissolves all of the hostages except one (me) and the man takes me by the arm and furtively guides me through the halls, out into the parking lot.

dream.20080926: last train at the end of the world

found_drama — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:01:25 +0000

Post-apocalyptic. Landscape is overrun with forests; thick, chocking forests. What left of us all fit on a train. We live on this train. We must keep it moving or else perish. No one knows what lives out there in those woods. We rarely stop; we cannot afford to stop. When we do stop it is for quick repairs: stumbling across another car to add to the train; locating food or fuel; fixing a wheel or a tie or the brakes. Each stop requires all hands.

There is unrest on the train though. Not quite disorder or revolt but serious grumbling. Rumors of a purge. It doesn’t make sense. We hunker down in one of the cars, myself and a friend and his pregnant wife. We hide there. We wait for this whole thing to blow over. While we hide on this car, we root around for supplies, trying to dig in. There is no way to know how long we will be here. This particular train car is self-powered; right now it’s being dragged along by the main engine but if we needed to, we could move ourselves. It has a diesel generator for power. And a nuclear reactor. After a while though, it seems to have gotten too quiet. We rush out of the car just in time to see the rest of the train pulling off into the distance, abandoning us.

From out of the woods comes a peculiar sound. There is a bridge not far off and we can make it there if only we can figure out how to engage the throttle.

dream.20080924: stolen

found_drama — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:29:52 +0000

I’m sitting in an IT office surrounded by computers and monitors and peripherals &c. when she comes in. She looks like an extra The Maltese Falcon, all skirtsuit, scarf, and sweater. The only thing that she is missing is the hat. She starts rifling through the items in the office, building a computer more/less right in front of me. When I ask what it’s for, she says that she needed a new one at home and she thought that no one would notice. I ask if she’s joking and she laughs. Like how could I conclude that she isn’t serious about this? After another minute or so of telling her to cut it out, I duck out of the office, flag down her supervisor and explain. She is fired on the spot. With much incredulity, she looks at me, heart-broken and in utter disbelief. I suspect that she might fly into a rage and start trashing the place but she is escorted out of the building before anything unsavory can happen.

I go back to work.

Minutes later, another woman comes into my off (the IT office), struggling to fight back tears. She is tall and thick-boned, casually dressed and very pretty aside from the tears. The woman pulls herself together just enough to explain that she heard about the other woman (that was just fired) and how could I do such a thing. It is flabbergasting to me that this would be someone’s first response. I explain what happened, terse as I can. She was stealing from the company, after all. And stealing in a big way. How did that make me at fault? I try calming her down but she seems only to get more worked up by the minute. And I start to wonder if it wouldn’t have been cheaper for us to just let the first woman take the computer in the first place.

dream.20080922: reverse

found_drama — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:30:29 +0000

A. and I return to our car, going home from a dinner party. We get into the car. I’m driving. The car is parallel parked and the street is slick and a light rain is coming down. I maneuver the car out of its space but the car gets stuck in reverse. I try to hit the brakes but they fail and we careens down the hill. I try to pull the emergency brake but that has no effect. I try pulling the car out of gear and forcing it into first again. At this point the steering wheel is even becoming less and less responsive to my tugging and pulling. The back window fogs up and I tell A. to brace herself.

dream.20080921: golfing

found_drama — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:43:26 +0000

I’m golfing with D.J., D.P., and my brother J. The country club is crowded. But it’s also indoors. The terrain is varied as one would expect: little hills, sand traps, scrubby woods, water hazards. But this whole course is under the kind of ceiling that you’d find at a grocery store or a warehouse. We rent clubs but between us we only have enough cash for one ball each. After waiting in line and joking about how long we’ve been waiting, we tee off at the first hole and our game is under way. I’m better at this game than I expect; certainly better than I should be for someone that’s never played before.

We keep the game casual and we joke around to keep it interesting for ourselves. We get a lot of funny looks from the regular players and country club members. But fuck those people. We paid our money to be here and we’re not breaking any rules. This one guy behind us though is taking it really personally. He’s playing a shitty game and he’s decided to take it out on us. After making some joke to D.J. (“Choke! Don’t choke!”), the man comes over and asks if I could keep it down because I’m distracting him. I fire back that he needs to be a grown-up about this and if he doesn’t mind his own business then we’re going to have a serious problem. He withdraws a bit but you can tell that we haven’t seen the last of him and it’s only a matter of time before he comes back. Even now he is plotting against us.

Fortune favors the assholes though and before we’ve played two more holes, we’ve managed to lose all of our balls to water hazards and other obstacles. We leave the indoor country club peacefully and are in good spirits until I realize that I’ve lost my phone and it’s probably still lying on the greens of that par four fifth hole.