1/31/2023 –
I’d call this one “Postmodern Sleaze” or “The Day I Tried to Live”
As I’m walking my dogs I’m slowly ensnared into the orbit of this older overweight Italian couple who live in my neighborhood. This starts as a friendly conversation but later turns into a friendship. Suddenly rather than walking my dogs outside I’m now stopping by their place to chat regularly in their open kitchen/dining room space. This is all fine and good before I come to realize that they are shady as absolute fuck and their friendliness was actually a guise to get me involved with their criminal empire. I eventually come to understand that I am now inexorably associated with them and would be found culpable for their crimes, at least in the court of public opinion, despite the fact that I was intentionally duped into this position.
It's a variation of a dream I’ve had over and over again. I’m with someone who commits a murder and I know I’m going to go down for it despite the fact that it wasn’t my idea or intention at all. After having this dream a gajillion times it was finally explained to me that it’s past life residue. I was involved with some shady associates in a past incarnation, and that still needs to be resolved. This time it’s different though as I immediately know that I’m dreaming and can take control of the situation.
Here might be a time to talk about different types of dream lucidity. Until I started writing down all my dreams a few weeks ago, it’s not something I’d contemplated a ton. You either go lucid or you don’t. Except that I’m starting to realize that lucidity doesn’t always equate to dream control and also, there are different levels to it apparently. Here I’m only semi-lucid. I realize that I’m dreaming and can control the dream but there’s no association with my waking life. I do not remember that I am also a human lying in a bed in the dark on another level of reality at all. And yet I know that I’m dreaming and because of that can control the environment I’m immersed in.
Very odd and I start taking control of the world like a true sorcerer, except that the course of action I take is sort of hilarious. I challenge these mafioso weirdos and they vow to make me pay. Except that they don’t realize that I essentially have super powers so they can’t really win. They think they can beat me by undercutting and out sleazing me essentially, except that they don’t realize that they can’t. I could take the higher ground I suppose, but I choose the opposite. I’m going to beat them at their own game. They go low and I go even lower. You can’t be a shittier more ruthless capitalist in this realm. I will destroy you by being even shittier and more ruthless.
What follows comes across like a vibrant hyper colored shape shifting strategy game. Very post modern. I see the moves they’re making and I counter by doing the exact same shit, only worse. I win every time. There are no words for how weird this goes down as it’s like we’re both controlling entire plot lines that play out while we wait, on levels beyond us and yeah, it’s like I’m a goddamn wizard bending reality to my will by making cool hand gestures that warp the astral terrain in my favor. The whole thing is a ridiculous metaphor on the excesses of capitalism and it’s delicious in its own odd way. There is such an obvious spiritual bankruptcy to what we’re doing, but I’m only doing it to free myself from them and to teach them a lesson. I’m continually shocked by the depths that they’re willing to sink but am also like:
“Okay, that’s how you want to play it? Your funeral”.
This eventually leads to me getting them arrested. That’s the lowest I could go, selling them out to the feds with ironclad evidence. As they’re being arrested I’m leaving their mansion in a ridiculously fancy phantasmal sports car. I head back to my pad and there’s now a realization that part of this conflict involved one of their minions who’s presented as a gorgeous thin black woman. She saw me as her enemy until she realized that I was actually more powerful than her mob bosses.
But since she’s soulless and only respects power, she’s now all wet for me because I have the power. The dream ends with her sitting on my lap while telling me she’s going to fuck me to sleep and I’m like:
“Bitch, you’d put a knife in my back the second I went under.”
Later in the night I have two more dreams that I don’t remember at all. All I recall is that I’m powering up. Bursting out of the dream world with a new bulging psi musculature.
2/1/2023 –
In this scenario I find myself in a zombie apocalypse film, which is particularly odd because zombie stories are essentially my least favorite genre of anything. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve watched, read, or played anything zombie related since 28 Days Later, which came out 21 years ago. Despite that, somehow here I am and it’s an odd kind of zombie narrative. Typically zombies are potent because of their sheer numbers. Here’s it’s different. Whatever is turning them into mindless drones (which is never explained) is turning them into bulging green and blue super beasts, although they honestly don’t look scary at all, just kind of stupid.
There’s also this narrative where the wealthy want people to believe they’re not much of a problem and to go on with life as usual. This myth is personally dispelled for me as I go to a crowded sporting event and watch them easily rip Zion Williamson to shreds. This is weird because he’s sitting in the stands when one of them appears in the aisle and he steps up to take it on, only to be immediately annihilated. Fuck, Zion’s like the biggest dude in the universe and he had no chance. Shit is serious.
And from that point on most of the rest of the scenario takes place in a darkened mall. There are people that want to believe the just-go-about-your-day narrative and I try and convince as many as possible that no, you do not want to fuck with these things. Stay here where it’s safe. From there for quite a while we’re just fortifying the mall in various ways to try and keep these things out.
Eventually for unexplained reasons my consciousness leaves what would be my body and flies out of the mall. I’m now descending on a city street in what seems like ordinary traffic. I am just floating awareness in this state and I look at the distant tree line and descending sun on the horizon. The whole experience is aesthetically gorgeous in feeling as much as it visually. Such a strange calm in the midst of the turmoil below. It’s at this point that I think:
“You know, I genuinely don’t like zombie stuff but I have to admit that this is quite well done. Not like I’m gonna watch The Last of Us but I suppose I sort of get it.”
After floating in this sentiment for another few moments, whoosh, I’m back in the hell mall. Except that we eventually find that there’s now a psychically protected enclave in the place. There are these almost like angelic looking humans with slightly pointy angular white sci fi helmets harnessing their mind powers in what look like glowing green emeralds on the top of their heads. Several of them are using this energy for creating a cloaking psi field and there’s hope they could find a way to end the whole thing.
But then, shit. These grotesque freaks have now found a way to attack in a calculated manner that’s gotten through the emerald mind deflection. Fuck, we have to get out of here. And with that, we bolt out of the mall running for our lives. It is now pitch black outside but it looks like we can still get away. I don’t stick around to find out though and pull out of the dream instinctively.
The metaphor couldn’t be more accurate. Rather than a swarm of zombies a small minority who look stupid and are crushingly powerful. Whatever could that mean?
Later the term:
“Uneducated”
Pops into my mind and I don’t get the impression that this is to be interpreted in an academic sense, but rather in a spiritually/morally bankrupt sense. Unfamiliar with The Invisible College.
When I get back under I’m now killing time in a beloved Greenwood dive bar that doesn’t actually exist. I’m waiting for my wife to finish something that I know is going to take more than a bit so the best option seems to be killing time with some friends at one of our old watering holes, which we do. Honestly, not much happens here but time definitely starts to stretch. We’re starting this shit up fairly early in the day apparently and the day just slides by.
Then, just like in the last dream I sort of fall into this state of peaceful contemplation. I’m now in a room in the bar with huge windows and there’s this transcendent pink sunset outside, except the sunset is seemingly inside the bar somehow. It’s in the room with me, flowing through me. I just sit there slowly sipping my beer while reveling in the fact that there’s another version of me lying in the dark snuggling with two adorable dogs. Yet here I also am, sipping an IPA while staring at a sunset as gorgeous as any the other me has ever seen.
Fuck, in that world you can’t actually merge with a sunset from the comfort of your barstool. There is an overwhelming sense of serene disassociation, which isn’t a common human sensation and I know my increased focus on my dreams is what’s causing this. I understand this in the dream.
Now I’m back in the main bar room. The regulars are starting to roll in. I haven’t hung out in bars regularly for at least 15 years at this point but there is such a sense of familiarity here. I remember this. The people you only knew because you always saw them at this certain bar and only knew through that bar because they were always there. Except I’m also thinking that wow, they’re still doing this. Some of them vaguely remember me and we exchange mild pleasantries. That’s about it.
Hmmm, zombies and bar lifers. The metaphors aren’t subtle on this particular night, are they?
2/2/2023 –
I’m at this almost like warehouse party and the main reason I’m at this party is that I’m supposed to be hanging out with this one particular dude. He’s a pretty non-descript but decently well put together average sized white guy with medium length brown hair, a form fitting grey zip down sweat shirt, darker washed jeans, and white sneakers. So I finally track him down and we chat for a bit. I try to get him to leave so we can finish whatever business we were supposed to be getting into but he wants to stay. At this point I’m realizing that I don’t actually know what’s going on here. It really seems like I’m trying to get into his pants but my astral persona is also somehow aware of the fact that my skin world component isn’t gay so the concept doesn't entirely track. It’s sort of strange and he’s basically telling me he wants to stay and party before he’d leave with me.
I ask how long he wants to stay and he tells me until at least 3am. I’m on the fence about this, particularly because I’m confused as to my motives in the first place but I go back into the shindig to determine whether I’d be able to last for several more hours there. We head to this small back room dance area and I’m like, yeah I mean, I like to dance. That’ll kill some time. This is funny because the exact second I hit the dance floor there are gay dudes all over me. I am pretty ripped these days. I take a brief respite and when I return, same deal. Dudes immediately swarm me.
I find this amusing but now I’m somewhere else, with a different college friend from years ago. Same scenario. I’m only coming to this party because there’s someone he’s friends with that I’m supposed to be connecting with. The only thing I remember about this party is that at one point I sit down and a woman with a very large donk in a yellow dress immediately sits on my lap without asking as if it’s nothing. And the ridiculous thing about this is that there’s seemingly nothing really sexual about this as far as I can tell.
Without much time to contemplate this party scene I’m now in a swanky east side mall, except that it definitely feels like California more than it does Bellevue. But whatever, I’m now wandering around a high end suburban mall for reasons completely unknown. I briefly run into a guy I haven’t seen in a million years and he is in fact a rich kid so I’m like, yeah, it totally tracks that he’d be here. Eventually I realize that I’m pretty hungry and there was a breakfast place on the other side of the mall that specializes in biscuits and gravy. That sounds perfect.
But as I try to get back there I realize there’s also a Panda Express. Naw, biscuits and gravy is the play. The mall is huge though and as I start walking back to the other end in typical dream fashion it starts to get super confusing in a nonsensical way. Eventually I’m like, fuck it, orange chicken it is and so I start moving back in the other direction.
Here’s where it turns into odd screwball comedy territory. In the course of doing this I somehow take an elevator ride with who I’m going to refer to as the boring family. Just your prototypical bland ass white people. Plain. No sauce. After the elevator ride I then accidentally somehow get in their mini van and leave with them. I am now in the awkward position of explaining to them that I accidentally wandered into their van and need to get back to the mall because my car is there.
The guy in the back seat next to me, who is this super clean cut pale dork with short blond hair parted on the left and wearing a grey suit for some reason is sympathetic. He’s trying to encourage his parents, who are driving, to pull over and let me get out. They’re not going to take me back to the mall, even though it’s a few block away, but he supposes they can drop me off. We’re getting further and further away but he reminds me I can take an Uber. I’m pretty wtf about even this and then further insulted when he doesn’t think I could afford one. I assure him I could.
But the driver of the van is seemingly not only not listening to a word we’re saying but driving increasingly faster in the opposite direction. I reassert to them that this was only an accident and I have no idea how I wandered into their mini-van with them without meaning to. I guess I really was hungry I joke, and the guy in the back seat laughs.
The driver now starts increasingly upping the speed. Now he’s going off road in this surrealist nature setting and really turning up the heat.
That’s where I pull out of it and wake up laughing my ass off. What the fuck? I accidentally wandered into your mini-van while searching for the Panda Express? And somehow none of them noticed until we were already driving away? Also, no, we won’t turn around and drop you back off at the mall. Too much to ask. Oh the absurdity.
2/3/2023 –
The Adultery is Pink!
I’m on some sort of vacation with my family but it’s presented as if it’s our old house in Boardman, Ohio. I really want to get out to walk the dogs before it gets dark and am trying to organize an expedition. People keep semi-committing but then taking forever. Goddamn it, it’s going to be dark soon and it’s gorgeous outside. Why wouldn’t you want to get the pooches out and enjoy it before it’s gone? This is supposed to be like our childhood home and yet it’s also not. We’re supposed to be visiting somewhere and in my mind’s eye I can see how glorious this walk is going to be. It’s like looking at a painting.
As I’m getting mildly irritated with my brother for failing to mobilize in a timely fashion I get a call from the pop star Pink who is quite possibly the most random person to show up in my dream life imaginable. She’s in town and her husband is not with her. She’s also well aware of the fact that my wife didn’t come on this vacation either. Uhhh, Ok. I’m now remembering that I hung out with her once before and she wanted to hook up, but her husband was there and so was my wife. I had an easy out and I’m coming to realize she calculatedly put me in a situation where I didn’t.
I was not expecting this at all and it’s not like I’m not tempted. In fact, I really am. I can feel her bleed into my essence as she chats me up on the phone. I hang up and am still not sold though. It just doesn’t seem like a good idea. But what’s funny as hell is that I’m also like: Well, she’ll take the dogs out with me at least. And so I head over to her room to grab her. As we’re heading out I’m now realizing we’re staying in a futuristic casino with a wild west ghost town theme. It’s enormous and we navigate through multiple rooms filled with mysterious gambling machinery before finally escaping into the settlement, which is also has like a wild west ghost town type of theme.
We walk a block or so and there’s this small white run down looking building with all these large post it notes attached to it. Apparently you grab a post it note then hold it to your head and it tells you a supernatural mystery story in regards to the town’s history. When you read the notes you sort of get sucked into this little vignette. Me and Pink plucking psychic post it notes off a run down house in a sci fi ghost town casino. That’s it. That’s the dream.
2/4/2023 –
I’m hanging out at some imaginal friends high rise lower Queen Anne apartment and we’re listening to KEXP. What’s super bizarre is that it’s like this guy is cleaning his apartment and me and this other dude are just sitting there, looking out the window at the view and listening to the radio. Then this absolutely terrible sad sack cry in your beer indie rock track comes on. It’s this super slow thing with raspy sort of off key vocals. I think there’s a banjo. Absolutely awful and god, listening to music in dreams states is always amazingly trippy. I can still hear this garbage in my head while I’m writing this.
Anyway, after the track ends DJ Kevin Cole comes on and is just gushing about the thing and he specifically wonders aloud how much he’d love to do like a first listen reaction video segment. Then our friend texts him and sets it up pretty much instantly. Like, I have 2 people right here who just heard that song for the first time. He’s apparently friends with KC so in no time we’re on air and he’s asking us for our reaction. The other guy we’re hanging with pretty much gives an amazingly bland standard:
“It was great. I really dug it.”
Type response and now it’s onto me.
“I uhhh, you gotta understand. I just don’t like that kind of music. I like weird electronic music, psych rock, trip hop, psych rap, psych metal, drone, stoner metal, shoegaze shit. Stuff like that. That type of sob story alt country or whatever it was just isn’t my jam.”
I’m being very diplomatic about it and I wake up and know this was the point. One thing of note. The last 2 night’s dreams seemed super rando but were in fact based on mild hypnotic suggestions in the skin realm. I did see an article about Pink’s husband while scrolling somewhere on the internet. Didn’t even click on the article but there was a picture and he was jacked.
As for the KEXP scenario. I was going to grab take out that night but forgot to take my iPod to the car. Because of that I listened to a bit of Kevin Cole’s set and he played one of the worst songs ever. It was like shitty pop punk garbage rather than cry in your beer indie rock though and I’m going to be diplomatic here just like in the dream and not names. To his credit, when I got back in the car he did play a track by a band I’d never heard before but that I liked so much that I looked up when I got home. So there’s that.
2/5/2023 –
No dreams tonight and its sort of funny that I know this happened because I was making trades in NBA2K GM mode before I went to bed and that often puts me in a very odd obsessive headspace. This is why I didn’t dream as I was obsessing about that stupid game. I knew I was dreaming nearly every night and at the start of this project estimated that it was roughly 95%. So far it’s been 20 out of 21 nights which breaks out to 95.23%, pretty much exactly as predicted. That is what it felt like before I started tracking it.
2/6/2023 –
As I’m getting to sleep I experience this stoned hypnagogic vignette. In it, I sit down at this open mic event in this classic small/bar coffee shop situation. There’s a white guy right next to me with long blonde hair, sideburns, a mustache, and a beard dressed in head to toe cream colored clothes with a cream colored turtleneck. He looks straight out of the 70’s and apparently he’s the first up to the open mic. Except that he doesn’t go up to the stage or anything, he just goes right into his number from his seat on the couch next to me.
What’s his performance? Well, a completely different version of Edgar Winter’s Free Ride. Except that again, it’s so different it might as well be a completely new song with the same chorus refrain. Also, it is absolutely terrible acapella crap. And with this I start wondering to myself:
“Oh Jesus Christ, why the fuck did I come to this thing? This is going to be painful.”
Not long after I’m having continual liminal dreams. I am infinite technicolor imagination, just waves of nonstop cascading color. But “they” (whoever they are) are cramming me into a very specific black and white television program. They are taking a boundless infinity and getting it so it can work within the confines of a very specific and constrained plot structure, which isn’t easy. There’s almost all this computer programming language type stuff going on in the background that I’m only sort of following which involves mainly the enforcement of rules. Like, OK, he we have to tweak this line of code to prevent him from leaving the boundaries of this story. Then we have to tweak this too, which prevents him from doing this. Etc.
I pull out of this in a contemplative state, think about some of the incredibly boring aspects of my waking life, then intuitively go:
“See. I knew this would fucking happen. This is why I didn’t want to be in this crappy show? I tried to tell y’all.”
Which is a reference back to a dream theme I’ve had repeatedly i.e. that I was sort of peer pressured or bullied into existing in the current capacity I do. Everyone wanted to take a trip into this dull ass time constrained narrative, I was the lone dissenting voice. Was I being a bit of a cynical asshole or 100% entirely correct in my reservations? I’m guessing a bit of both.
When I get back under I’m exploring this astral urban environment. It’s odd because I believe I was out to eat with a group of people when I apparently go semi-lucid and decide to leave their dinner party and explore the environment which is? An entire world full of trash. Even I’m sort of surprised by this. I keep wandering around this city, but it's mostly just trash piled on top of trash, piled on top of trash. Not a subtle metaphor.
Later I’m hanging with my friend and we’re taking the bus from downtown Seattle back to Ballard and for some reason I’m chewing paper. For unexplained reasons we have to transfer buses to get over what would be the Ballard bridge but now we’re in the middle of this field about to get on a monorail instead. Except that it’s a monorail that’s on the ground and in the middle of a huge lawn that appears to be in the clearing of a public park. Honestly it sort of looks like a grounded super sonic jet.
As we’re waiting to get on the thing I realize there’s too much paper in my mouth and I start spitting it out, which is somewhat difficult and uncomfortable. Sorry, this is going to take a minute I explain to my friend and he understands. Oh yeah, all the paper you were eating on the bus. This isn’t the first time the metaphor of spitting pulp has entered my dream space to represent my writing. I should refer to writing as "spitting pulp" from now on honestly. It also seemed intentional that I was eating all this paper on the bus, as I used to get a lot of reading done in that capacity back in the day. I suppose I’ve got some writing to finish before I can get on the super sonic monorail to more interesting times.
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