8/9/2023 -
I'm walking down the street near my mom's old place in Beacon Hill with an old friend and he's telling me he's terrible at playing spontaneous guitar solos. So I offer that he should start by looking up basic pentatonic scales and just start working on going up and down those scales. As I'm saying this I'm also trying to hand him a corn dog and for whatever reason the corndog stick keeps falling out of the corndog and breaking. It's for some reason incredibly difficult to just hand this dude a corndog and as I'm doing this I think to myself:
"Jesus, this guy can't even operate a corndog properly."
Also, the metaphor that pentatonic blues soloing is sort of corndog shit isn't lost on me. It's corndog shit that I just happen to be a sucker for. Corndogs are delicious.
Now I find myself on some sort of odd vacation scenario where it's me and 2 other women staying in like an a campus apartment/hotel scenario at Colorado State. We're there because of some sort of academic conference that one of the women is involved with but the other woman and myself aren't associated with at all. We're just sort of coming along for the ride. I also get the impression that there's some brewing romantic chemistry between me and the other non-academic woman who's this shorter white woman with chin length dark brown curly hair wearing a grey shirt with a black vest. I get the vibe that my interest in her is the only reason I'm tagging along but none of it's explained honestly.
When we go outside and start wandering around the campus though, it's this absolutely stunning small town nestled in a lush green river valley with rolling hills. It all feels very much like the prettiest parts of the Midwest and I even feel like it's in the Midwest by nature of my internal navigational system but it is absolutely supposed to be Colorado State. I didn't even know where Colorado State was until I looked it up and no, Fort Collins, Colorado looks nothing like this. Again, the natural beauty is absolutely lovely though which is the only truly compelling part of this dream and I even comment on it as we're wandering around the campus.
"Wow, I never thought taking a vacation to Colorado State would make any sense but this is quite gorgeous. Who knew?"
Now it's time for the academic woman to attend a session at this conference or whatever it is and for unknown reasons the other woman and myself decide to tag along. When we enter the large classroom type environment it's at like an intermission point and I very quickly lose track of both of the women I came with. I'm also wearing a sleeveless shirt which even I find odd because like: Should I be wearing a sleeveless shirt to an academic conference? Seems like an odd choice.
I also figure I should probably go to the bathroom before what I'm sure will be a very boring presentation starts and there's a huge line but I wait. Then it's like a packed co-ed bathroom sitch which I find strange but it's even stranger when I get to the front and realize everyone's just peeing in like trays that aren't even toilets. It's finally my turn but I get pee shy and can't even go. Then I realize I didn't actually have to go in the first place.
As I'm leaving the bathroom I now realize that somehow I'm wearing an oversized Sonic Youth t-shirt and this confuses me to no end. But...I was just wearing a sleeveless shirt and I didn't change in the bathroom, so how the fuck did that happen exactly? I try to get out my phone to text the women I came with and now I realize that I also somehow picked up someone else's phone with a pink case in the bathroom as well. This also makes no sense. So I'm just sitting in a crowded hallway confused when my dad and my step mom walk by to say hi. They're wondering if I want to meet up for dinner later and I am baffled.
"What? How? Seriously? You guys just happened to be at the exact same conference I was attending at the exact same time, at Colorado State University. And we just so happened to run into each other?"
The intensity of the dream world I'm lost in is such that I'm still struggling to process what's going on. A part of me understands that I'm dreaming but it's just so hard to accept because it all feels more real than real. Honestly I think part of it is that I really wanted to see what was going to happen romantically with the woman I was into. But I do eventually get it and when I do, I immediately force myself to wake up, which is a bit disappointing.
One of the forms of lucidity I didn't honestly conceptualize before I started keeping a daily dream journal. The one where the knowledge that I'm dreaming leads me to immediately flee the dream. In this case though I will say that I was so lost that a part of me honestly didn't even think this was going to work. I suspected that I was dreaming but I didn't actually buy it entirely until I did in fact force myself out of the dream.
8/10/2023 -
I've been catching up on my Marvel movies which led to the wildest of fun ride style adventure dreams. Of course, these experiences were so far out that I can only process parts of them into a meat suit mindset. Here's all that I can really put together into talking monkey narrative format. We're on this epic mission that involves secret compartments behind the scenes of consciousness inhabited by green energy. Blazed out psychic cabinetry.
I do not get the vibe that any of this is menacing or evil at all, but there is a goal we're trying to achieve. In fact, we're kind of in a bind and here's where the recall kicks in. It's the classic Star Wars Lando sort of scenario where we need help to complete our mission and I know just the person who's our only hope but it's shady. She's my ex and I know that if I start contacting her there's an implication of a romantic entanglement that I'm dangling and I'm married. But I know it'll work and I'll compromise because it's our only option. We hit up her pad late at night and I am right. Everything works out and honestly, it seems like we just needed her help to get us to this other afterhours dive bar to make some sort of connection critical to our operation.
When all that business is settled, I know I can't get back home as drunk as I am at this hour of the morning so I head back to my ex's without the rest of the super hero team. I now realize she still lives with her mom and witness this absolutely insane surrealist scene with them arguing in the kitchen. Holy shit is this out there and yep, this girl did have a totes batshit relationship with her mom in actual life. I didn't even begin to fathom how fucked up it actually was at the time honestly. Now we're sitting in her hot tub sipping wine in her back yard in the wee hours of the morning and she cuts right through the shit.
"So like, are we gonna do this or not?"
"Well, I just happen to be between entanglements right now."
I tell her. I'm lying, but the second these words leave my mouth she's pouncing on me. Now comes the most fascinating part of the entire sequence. We start making out and this brings back all kinds of memories. I haven't slept with this woman in17 years and the foreplay feels identical. She was one of the more sexually aggressive women I've ever dated and my conscious mind had completely forgotten about this entirely, but consciousness exists eternally. I haven't been touched like this in nearly 2 decades and the nostalgia trip factor is mind melting. Also, don't think the fact that this is happening right after the bonkers incident with her mom is accidental. I suppose I didn't really get that at the time either honestly.
Anyway, we go back into her place and as I'm in the bathroom I'm looking at my phone like, uhh, can I get away with this? My wife knows I wasn't coming home tonight but it still seems sketchy as hell. As I enter her bedroom she's still freshening up when she walks in and informs me that she's already made plans for us to hang out with some old friends together tomorrow evening. Christ, it's like 5 in the morning, so this evening I guess. I was mentioning the price involved with all this. No Lando level kind of no win situation betrayal but it ain't great. Taking one for the team quite literally.
From here my inner world warps back and forth in unfathomable contortions until I find myself in a speed dating scenario, except it's like I'm watching this as an invisible observer rather than a participant. A few men cycle from table to table as I remain in the same spot. Eventually I come to understand that this is all happening at a yacht club and these are all seemingly potential suitors in their early 50's at the youngest and I can't stress this enough, holy crap are they all fucking douchebags. Like wow, the pickings ain't great here for whoever this is that's looking for love. I get that these dudes probably have some scratch but Jesus they suck. Slim they are, the pickings.
When my reality reconfigures I'm now exploring a ridiculously detailed underwater world and one that can't be easily translated into human constructs. It's all very much like a video game and at one point I'm informed that the person who designed this environment died during its construction by descending too far into the deep abyss waters. Because of this, there's actually a challenge point icon embedded into the experience where the designer passed away. It's this white almost newspaper looking icon you can activate and the question is:
"Can you get back to the surface from this deep down?"
I'm intrigued and decide to give it a whirl so I click to initiate the challenge and start frantically swimming toward the faint light at the surface. After a while I realize that wow, if I was actually holding my breath there's no way I could have made it back up in time. I can do this because I'm not actually holding my breath but even just swimming to the surface from that depth takes quite a while. I have the cheat codes on essentially and even then it seems like a haul.
Dude got himself in way too freaking deep. When I get back to the surface it's in this wooden shack and quite obviously a reference to the game The Sinking City that I just finished a few weeks back. I do redeem my prize though, despite the fact that I had the difficulty on super easy. The payoff is the same.
Upon waking up I realize the whole thing is a metaphor for depression and a rather awesome one at that. I did just have a vision of a man assigned by the red old school bat phone style suicide hotline. His job was to make sure I didn't go through with it. In a way, it's like I had the cheat codes on the whole time, which is the only reason I'm still here. They first pointed this out to me all the way back in 2010.
I descended to those blackened depths and managed to come back, but only because death was protecting me the entire time. I'm sure Lovecraft's world was largely influenced by crippling depression and I hadn't honestly contemplated it until now. Truthfully, I've never actually been that huge a fan of his writing but that was a cool freaking game. Holy shit, when I looked it up though, the dude died at the same age I currently am, which is kind of bonkers. Seems like a simple dream but the metaphorical complexity is astounding. Much more beneath the surface level the deeper you get, which is yet another metaphor. See what I mean?
8/11/2023 -
Two things. At one point I'm at a crowded dinner table. There's a huge salad bowl in the far corner of the table to my right on the other side of the table being passed clockwise and headed my way. Rudy Gobert is seated a ways away on the same side of the table but to my left and he really wants some of this salad. Like, he really freaking wants in on this shit and he's being pretty pushy about it. I'm trying to be an intermediary, like, got it man but it's coming to me before you. It's being passed around the table but the people in the one corner are in fact seemingly hogging it. I have to kind of advocate for us and point out that they're taking forever passing the salad.
By the time I get it though, there's only celery and thinly sliced onions left in the giant clear glass bowl. Rudy is still pissed and I look at him like:
"Dude I don't know what to tell you. By the time it got to me there wasn't even any salad left."
Next thing: I'm for some reason stuck in this trendy pizza shop in Ballard, which is bizarre. The sitch is that I just ordered a pizza and obviously I can't leave before I get my pizza, but I also really don't want to be here. So I eventually decide that I can just tell them to deliver it to my apartment and start walking away. I then realize I'm dreaming and try to pull out of the dream but I won't let myself. Instead I end up back in the trendy pizza joint.
Now I'm at a table waiting for my pie sitting with these sort of surly looking younger people who don't even look like arty types honestly. Just standard drunk and surly white bros with a lot of facial hair. Guided By Voices comes on the playlist and for whatever reason all these kids look at me like, you're the expert on GBV, explain them to me. I try briefly and one thinner cocky dude with no facial hair interjects:
"Isn't there whole thing that they're run by some typical egomaniacal asshole?"
I think he's talking about the school teacher angle but I'm like nah, the whole thing with GBV is that the guy is actually inhuman as far as his creative capacity, and surprisingly weird. I also go into how he has a level of integrity that a lot of other musicians don't and a jackass on the other side of the table scoffs at the entire concept:
"Right. No one has any integrity, and what the fuck is integrity anyway. Capitalism bruh."
Sort of shit. I explain that he's pretty much done whatever he wants creatively and could make more cash only playing his old stuff over and over but refuses to. The conversation fades out not long after that but I'm later, in a liminal state I'm told that I'm right and the negative dude bros were wrong.
Integrity absolutely matters. More than we'll ever understand.
While you're here, do you like psychedelic industrial noise rock? Of course you do.
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