Satori, dreams — Stephen on December 28, 2011 @ 8:59 am — 0 comments
I awoke with a start this morning (my alarm always startles, that is its purpose after all), with the barest remnants of a strange dream. Here they are. I was with my ex, Brian, and we were driving (in separate cars) to the outskirts of San Francisco, but it didn’t look like San Francisco. It looked like a cross between Los Angeles and Indianapolis, and the traffic was terrible. We kept driving around, desperately trying to find a place to stop. Then I was in a body shop / garage with my car, waiting to pick it up while Brian went to park his somewhere close by. Their system for finding the cars they were working on was byzantine, with rotating racks of numbers not unlike the ones that clothes go round on at the cleaners. Finally they got me my car back and I parked it right outside, wondering where Brian was after all this time. I called him and he was in a fit about finding parking but finally had. I told him we would walk into town and he freaked out. He absolutely hated walking and wondered why I couldn’t just drive us to where we were going despite the traffic. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about, but he was screaming mad about it. Other than that, I remember watching some crazy live fashion show/ advertising campaign in the lobby of some building while waiting for him to join me and thinking, I could do better than that….
Satori, dreams — Stephen on November 14, 2011 @ 8:57 am — 0 comments
We (I think I was with my aunt, but I am not sure) were in a very old, impossibly large cathedral with an old sound system that was not working. There were many ancient, small wooden rooms on a kind of balcony level that people (including us) were staying in, and there were cobwebs over every thing that we were continually removing. This seemed like a place abandoned by a previous civilization, and the words that were coming through the sound system were being used to control people. What we heard were static-like voices, not very clear, but that were nonetheless keeping us in a kind of trance state, doing the bidding of the people in charge that were issuing commands about all sorts of things. Somehow, I discovered a way to fix the old system, and then people had control over what was playing on it, which consisted of very old recordings of music and speeches. At the same time this woke them up to what had been happening and brought them out of their trance state, freeing them from the control. Everyone was very happy, and then I woke up.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on November 2, 2011 @ 8:28 am — 2 comments
I was with a friend and we were walking around a really cool bunch of buildings, mostly houses, exploring them. We got separated and I was then inside one of them and led to a room along with a family (father, mother, boy and girl — all dressed in black) that was also visiting. The family was asked to sit down and I was asked to take umbrellas as props to a man in this room who was going to tell his life story to the family. Suddenly there was another woman in the room, directing me to hand the man umbrellas which he would use to point at things while he told his story. And then it seemed this woman was my grandma and the man telling the story was my grandpa, but neither of them looked anything like my grandparents. The man was telling his story until at one point the woman (my grandmother) stopped and yelled out “And then you cheated on me! Tell them!”. The family got all quiet and it was a bit awkward. My grandmother explained that it had happened in 2003 (after they were dead btw, but dream logic is like that) and even though they had reconciled, she was still pissed. After that, I left to find my friend but couldn’t, and I was kind of angry with him for taking off like that. When we finally did find each other, he was with another person and we all got on bikes to ride down very steep but peaceful roads meandering through grassy green hills. The feel of the air rushing by was perfect and beautiful. At a certain point it was clear that we were leading a group of kids back from a trip, and we split up with each of us taking a separate group of kids back to their homes, each in a different sector of the city. As I led my group towards the downtown area, I woke up.
From what I can remember, I was in a strange, triangular shaped room with a small, floor to ceiling slit window at the wedge end of it to let light in. This was a room that I had built for myself while I was staying at this place (a kind of camp or school) and working the front desk. Then I found out, to my dismay, that two of the guys who had seemed so nice to me here were in fact making fun of me behind my back. Later, I was saying goodbye to a sweet old teacher as we packed up to leave for the season. And then they ended up giving my room to one of the jerks who had been mean to me, which I was not thrilled about, but not wanting to make a stink about either. As the teacher and I left the building with lots of teary goodbyes, she stopped and picked up a wad of cash off the ground, which was curiously laying next to a wallet which she left in place. She whispered to me not to say anything because she really needed the money. I promised her that her secret was safe with me, and then I then asked for directions to someplace in Australia. She pointed me to the station, behind the bar with a lot of rowdy but nice people in it who also pointed the way for me. Then I was in a really long line at the bus station waiting to buy my ticket but the jovial guy behind the counter was really taking his time with everyone and I was worried that I would miss my bus if I didn’t get to the front of the line in time. And as the line got shorter, he took longer and longer with each person in front of me, and would hop out from behind the counter a lot to show off something or put on a little show for everyone. He seemed very sweet and generally loving his job and everyone there, and I was impressed with his attitude. Thankfully, someone then pointed out to him that the train was going to leave and he came back behind the counter and I was able to buy a ticket to London, which was strange, even to me in the dream, because I was in Australia. And then I woke up.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on January 22, 2011 @ 9:54 am — 0 comments
I was transported to an ugly looking hotel in India after recognizing it briefly in a magazine, then started discussing the architecture and looking for someone. We (not sure who was with me) came across a sort of kid’s summer camp of adults in this part of the country, and several of them were leaving. A few of them I knew had secrets they were afraid of revealing, and I suspected one of them of being gay. After that, I rented a small apartment that used to be mine but now had another man and woman living in it, although they were not related to each other in any way. It was a strange kind of place, sort of a cylindrical bunker, with curtain lines hanging everywhere to separate the space into “rooms”. We decided to clean it up and make it nice, and as we were cleaning it up we noticed that there were bugs everywhere that needed to be exterminated. I kept noticing that as I would put my glass of lemonade down, all these little ants would gather around it quickly and I realized that because the drink was very sweet it was probably attracting them. I would move the glass and watch the ants follow it in a mini swarm. We were sleeping in these hammock-like things hanging from the ceiling and I was somewhat attracted to the man, with a small crush on him, and we kept holding hands but I wasn’t sure if he was into me or not. We kept planning the makeover for the place, and cleaning out and fixing up this small, weirdly shaped building which was at the end tip of a long island, very remote. And then I woke up.
I have a new client that owns a restaurant, and he thought it a good idea that I dine there before beginning the site design. So he comped me a dinner for two. I was thrilled by this idea because the restaurant is quite well regarded, and so I took Michael last night and we had a really wonderful meal. I ordered the sweet potato ravioli to start followed by the short ribs, complemented by a very nice glass of Malbec. The dishes were truly excellent, if a bit rich.
And sometimes after a rich and heavy meal, I will have very odd dreams — and last night I had a doozy. I can only remember little bits and pieces of it, but it involved a weird family reunion with hundreds of people (even though we don’t have nearly that many relatives) having a picnic in some windy field with many lined up tables. There was some discussion and argument about the best way for me to inflate a raft and what sort of pump to use. At one point I and a couple other people were in a seafood restaurant where they were serving frozen fish, and we argued over fresh versus frozen. Then we were in Italy and I picked up a WiFi signal to find the place where I had stayed with my friend Fabrizio (who I haven’t seen in 20 years). And finally, I was in the house from my childhood when the door rang, and I went to look through the peephole to see who it was. And it was a friend of mine who I didn’t want to talk to because we had had a falling out. And finally, it started snowing. I wish I could have remembered more, but alas these things are elusive. I have had dreams before that had particular story lines that were more fantastic or strange, but rarely one that covered so very many mundane subjects at once.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on December 16, 2010 @ 3:19 pm — 2 comments
I had an odd dream last night. I was on a road trip with my uncle in an ugly Ford Taurus. We were moving incredibly fast though, through fields of smooth cut grass berms we couldn’t see over, zooming around curves. I felt the centrifugal force quite strongly and asked my uncle to slow down. We then stopped along the way at some weird technology center. We started wandering the grounds, alternately sure we were there to attend some conference and just stopping along the road to find a place to sleep like it was a motel. We then stumbled into a kind of precocious children’s school on the grounds, and we agreed to talk to the teacher there and try to write an essay or poem or something but we were having a very difficult time of it. We spent many hours trying to compose, each of us separately, a good essay or poem. I noticed I was working with line ruled paper and a nice, somewhat heavy silver pen, both long lost items from my childhood. The bell rang and we had to turn in our writing which wasn’t finished at all. Then the teacher did an analysis of our work and the work of her three other students, three young women, one of whom was suddenly my friend Ruthbea. The teacher berated all of us for the terrible quality of the poems we had written, then talked about how renowned she herself was at this, and talked about how she would be coming out with a new book soon. Then her three sudents started in with silly, fawning, accolades to curry favor with their teacher. I was disgusted by the transparency of it, but the teacher seemed to respond well to their sycophancy.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on November 20, 2010 @ 9:55 am — 1 comment
I had a very odd dream last night. I was with a group of people taking a long hike up to the top of a mountain, apparently to participate in a paramilitary singing contest of some sort. On the way up were were asked if we had our tags, as they were important. All along our hike we kept evaluating each other’s singing until we reached a large old wooden shack near the top where we stopped to rest and prepare ourselves. As we were getting settled in the shack and our trainers were showing us around, I realized I had to go to the restroom and had to go to several of them before I found one that was clean, where the door locked, etc. Once finished I realized I had a small stain on the front of my pants and tried to clean it with water from the faucet only to now have a large water stain on my pants. Embarrassed, I tried to sneak past everyone to my room to change my pants, and yet no one seemed to notice. We then talked in various groups about the contest, and what sorts of things might be expected of us. Separately we all started to make our way up the wooded path towards the competition hall, which was more like a high school gymnasium building. On the way, I noticed one of my friends had transformed himself into a bird and was circling overhead. He stopped on the branch of a tree and asked me to help him practice. I gave him a few pointers and tried to come up with some octave range tests for him. Then he changed back into a person and we walked to the hall. Once inside, we were all dressed in sort of karate black belt outfits and were standing on mats awaiting instructions. Over the loudspeaker system came this booming voice to layout the rules, which were then immediately posted on large flat screen monitors on the wall. While most of the monitors were posting exactly what had been said in English, one of them was all in Russian, oddly. For some reason, I wasn’t nervous at all, I thought it was all kind of interesting. And then as the competition was about to begin, I woke up.
I was in the low-ceilinged top floor of an old house, looking out the small gabled window for the guests that were arriving and impatiently waiting for those still to arrive. This room had perhaps been an old attic that was converted, and although painted a light, inoffensive color, it felt a little stuffy and cramped. The event was possibly a sort of wake or memorial, but this was never mentioned. Food was laid out along the table for the arriving guests, but I couldn’t really make out anyone that was there. I kept talking to someone though, and we kept trying to work out these odd formulas that kept floating in the air like writing on a chalkboard, the letters themselves in grays, blues, and greens as we spoke of them. They all had a kind of mathematical notation about them (several of them ended with things like “= #b4″) even as they seemed not at all related to math, but were more about people, their names and their personal histories. They were somehow related to telling a story about the guests yet to arrive and what had happened to them. There was a light sadness in the air as people came and went. Shortly thereafter we found ourselves, myself and two companions, in the countryside (it may have been France) walking down half abandoned pathways because the bus were we on had broken down. It was taking us quite a long time to make our way back and we came to several unrecognizable areas and had to guess at which fork in the road to take. Still, we were unconcerned and making our way back in the summer air with slow determination. As we reached a sort of open, grassy, and stony area my friend Andrew showed up and started walking with us the rest of the way back. He was complaining a little about not having much work and asking me if I was happy with my clients and the work I was doing. I told him that yes I was and he seemed a little frustrated and sad at his own situation. Concerned, I started trying to talk him out of being glum about it, letting him know that it was ok and that he would soon find what he was looking for, and then I woke up.
I had this strange dream last night that I was with some boyfriend and he lived on some high floor of a building that we had just come out of. There was some sort of big street party happening and we were chatting next to a line of parked cars with my first boyfriend from Paris (Marc) about something when he looked at me in a funny way and said I had some smudge or mark on my forehead. Then I realized that I had left something inside the apartment, so I went back to the building to get it. For some reason I had to take the stairs instead of the elevator, and yet it wasn’t like stairs, it was more like I had to climb up on various countertops and surfaces to keep going up. The street party seemed to also be happening in the building, and there was lots of music and drunk people around everywhere. At each landing I would go into the bathroom and look in the mirror for the smudge on my forehead that Marc had mentioned, but every time I tried to look at it, I couldn’t make out my own face in the mirror clearly enough to see it. I kept asking people around me if they could see it, and some said yes and some said no, so I was confused about whether it was really there or not.