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Writer's pictureThad McKraken

The Ancient Mystical Church District



7/11/2024 –


It seems like I’m in band class here and an ensemble is being formed to play a particular piece. They need a guitar player, my brother wants to do it and I’m totally cool with this. I could do it better but I know he can pull it off and if he wants to, I am 100% OK with this.


So this collective starts forming and I’m seeing it as a bunch of circular icons kind of piled on top of each other with other much smaller circular icons at certain points in the circles. I’ve actually seen this before and it’s a metaphor for a life with a couple of choices a person can make contained within. In fact, the last time they showed me this, it was very much indicating that there were only 2 real intersection points in most human story arcs.


Here because it’s music, this action point keeps looping back around indicating where the guitar is supposed to kick in and my brother keeps missing it. I’m watching him like:


“Duuuude.”


What the fuck? He wanted to do this and he’s totally balking. I should have just done it myself I suppose. In thinking about this upon waking, I did in fact play in a band where another guy insisted on playing all the guitar but then didn’t actually write anything new for years and that was in fact pretty weird.


In the next vision there’s this very tan I’d say late 50’s early 60’s white woman with a brown almost beehive hairdo sitting on the beach on a sunny day on her side on top of a beach towel, smiling up at what would be the camera. It’s kind of odd but I’m getting slight Flintstones vibes from the outfit but not full on. We really wanted this woman to be a mom to these 2 kids (which I can’t entirely even tell are hers) but she’s like:


“Nope. Look at the circular icon thing. It wasn’t actually even an option. I know y’all wanted that but it wasn’t possible.”


I’m not sure how I understand that she’s correct with the circular icon thing that’s now floating sort of phased on top of her but I do. There is only one inflection point icon there. Really only one choice she could have made and it didn’t involve raising those kids. It wasn’t in her character loop.

I’m told something else about a teacher who doesn’t want to teach and I have a feeling they’re talking about me.


One more scenario. I’m sitting in a tightly packed cubicle farm office situation. There’s a kid with shorter slightly floppy curly hair sitting next to me who I’m guessing is possibly right out of college. Guy looks like a much younger Apert Sengun, which is very specific and kind of funny. He asks me a question about something and very quickly goes into:


“Holy shit I never should have taken this job, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened” mode.


I think I answer his question about the software but roughly a minute later one of our coworkers synchronously stands up and mentions something specific about the thing the guy just asked me about, so I get his attention again and explain it to him. Again he’s freaking out though:


“You don’t understand, I never should have taken this job.”


Etc. and I’m just trying to get the guy to chill out.


“Have you ever had an office job before?”


I keep slowly asking. It’s easy to forget what a shock the bizarre cultish sterility blended with horror show style systemic dishonesty working in the corporate world can be for a young person not at all versed in it. The what the fuck factor is pretty off the charts and the level of weird mind-numbingly dumb bullshit you have to deal with is astronomical. My brother sort of ran screaming out of that world now that I’m thinking about it, which sort of ties to the first dream now, doesn’t it?


7/12/2024 –


It’s the family vacation theme again except this time I was promised we were supposed to be heading out and the plans changed so now we’re staying longer. I am freaking the fuck out about this to my brother and everyone thinks I’m overreacting a bit, maybe even me on a certain level. The next thing I remember it’s Christmas and they’ve gotten my other brother a nice gift but not me and think I didn’t notice.


When I wake up, I’m really contemplating how weird it is to have extremely neurodivergent outsider people in the family, which this all seems to be a metaphor for. There are actually several when all sides of my extended family are taken into consideration.


Moreover though, god, that absolutely overwhelming sense of excruciating boredom. What’s so fascinating about this feeling is that it’s not the severe thyroid depression I deal with in waking life, which is decidedly different. The sensation is equally intense though and it somehow encapsulates the larger profound ennui lurking behind my day-to-day talking monkey reality. The feeling is metaphorical in itself and that’s a fascinating concept.


When I get back under I fall into a multitude of other realities and all I can really remember is getting drunk with my wife and retiring naked to the bedroom. I kind of can’t believe I managed to forget so much as I could tell there was absolutely a ton going on beneath the surface, so I meditate to dig into it further. When I do, I walk down a hallway and a younger Gene Siskel emerges from a wooden door and walks over in front of a bunch of living screens representing the 5 or 6 seemingly completely unrelated scenarios I’d just lost to the ether. He singles out one in particular and I fall into another trance.


Now I’m told that I’m in prison and it’s further explained to me why I’ve been put in prison. Here’s where it gets mind boggling: The reason not only absolutely makes sense but it’s somehow in tune with the exact section of my next book that I left off editing earlier in the day. Was I planning on leaving off on this segment? Of course not, my wife decided she wanted to go out to eat last minute. I didn’t even get to the altered stopping point based on the new dinner plans I was shooting for.


It goes even deeper tho’. I’d never mentioned it because it’d take too long to explain but I was told in a trance to revisit this exact vision and when I did, I didn’t entirely understand why. It did occur to me that I accidentally left off editing on the exact passage I was told to re-engage with though and yeah, in light of this Gene Siskel lesson plan, it now makes perfect sense.


So I’m told to revisit a dream from a year ago. I do and don’t entirely grasp the significance. Then when editing my book I accidentally leave off there one day. Then I have a dream where it’s explained to me exactly why I was supposed to revisit this vision. Anyone that tells you they truly understand the way this shit works is lying to you. Mysterious ways bruh.


One more dream scenario. It’s the family vacation theme again and this time everyone has decided to leave. Except it was sort of last minute and now I’m the one having to get all my shit out of the Airbnb suddenly. It’s no big deal and I’m not cutting it very close but like, they could have given more of a heads up. They got all their shit out earlier. I’m finally getting to jet though, that’s the important part.    


7/13/2024 –


I head down to a hotel in south Seattle to have an affair with my ex-girlfriend from way back. I don’t remember the sex at all but pretty much the instant it’s over I am so confused as to why I even did it in the first place. It seems fairly unlikely my wife isn’t going to find out and what do I even tell my ex? I clearly have zero interest in a relationship with her and I’m basically trying to shoo her out the door of the hotel room as quickly as possible.


After waking up and getting back under I’m now in my old Wallingford pad. I’m sleeping on the couch in the middle of the night when there’s a knock on the door. It’s the same ex and she’s in some variety of trouble. My wife, who was sleeping in the other room, comes out and we’re trying to get a gauge of what the fuck is up. The best I can tell she was with some creepy dude who either got violent or threatened to. Something to do with a gambling addiction. I can see this bro in my mind’s eye. He’s a muscular blonde guy with a short military cropped hair cut. I can see him angrily chasing her down these spectral hallways but she escaped.


I take her to the spare room where she can stay for the night and she’s continuing to chat me up but all I want to do is go tell my wife that I was dreaming about her right as she knocked on the door. Like, she showed up at our place at the exact second I was having a dream about her. This whole plot line derails me in some odd way that’s tedious and drags on forever. Some shit about renting a car in the south of the city but in the process accidentally abandoning mine, while having zero recollection of where I left it.


I have no clue how this happens but I eventually end up in this situation where I’m touring this freaky underground cave museum. I have no clue where we even are or how we got there but the what the fuck factor makes me go lucid fairly quick like. What I love here is that it’s the sort of lucidity where I’m so intrigued by the strangeness of the environment that I don’t want to disrupt it with my godlike powers as much as I want to explore. Like, an underground cave museum of seemingly at least semi-recent modern culture. I head into the thing and it’s mostly like calculatedly placed light brown statues in the exact geometric position of the cave structure where you’d expect them to be standing.


I find this all so strange that I fly over to this one that seems to be prominently featured in the way that I’m intuiting based on the hierarchy represented in the layout of the statues. The setup seems to be pulling you to this particular one. These are all made out of a brown otherworldly substance I can’t entirely identify. Seems more like precision hardened sand than anything else that exists in this universe I suppose. Anyway, I do get a look at the thing and it’s this kind of unremarkable looking semi-burly white guy with shortly cropped hair and a corresponding closely cut beard. He seems to be wearing what I’d guess to be a general’s outfit. If not military, some sort of official uniform.


As I’m studying his face, I’m noticing that there’s almost like a water bubble thing hanging around his head keeping him alive but existing in one dimension removed from the one I’m experiencing.


“Why would a sand statue need a life support apparatus?”


I’m thinking to myself. And also:


“What on earth kind of life support apparatus is that? It’s like a sorcerous water tornado hovering around his mouth.”


After waking up and getting back under, I’m now back in the missing car situation which is resolved when I move in at my dad’s company in this high-rise office building downtown. This all seems OK at first but the more I’m sticking around, the more I’m noticing what a creepy workaholic type culture this place has. It’s not like I’m an employee either, I’m just living here somehow.

Tangentially involved in some capacity I suppose.


The first thing that clues me in on the sketch here is that there are a ton of people hanging out working away at like 8pm on a Friday night. I’m obviously very creeped out by this but they try to assuage my doubts by getting me to attend this company party a few blocks over. It’s taking place in this high-end micro-brewery with a lot of large black glass windows and lightly colored wood paneling.


This is a total booze-fest and there are bands playing. I meet up with this white woman with messy brown hair who seems about my age. We have a good chat over some IPA’s and as she’s heading out I’m contemplating heading with her, then I remember that Guided By Voices are supposed to be headlining. It’d be ridiculous to not stick around for that since I’m right here.


Once she leaves, I just sort of awkwardly go over near the crowded bar area to grab another drink. I can tell this is where a lot of the big wigs are hanging out and oh my god is it fucking creepy. This one high earner lady is being super smug and they’re still talking work. A lower-level young black woman tries to make a minor suggestion calling her out on her obvious bullshit and is immediately shut down. As she walks away she pulls out her like employee score card.


Yep, each employee has this digital ID card they’re carrying with them that displays their company rank essentially, which is constantly being updated like a video game. She’s checking to see if her score took a hit because of that interaction. I think this sort of thing already exists in China if I’m remembering correctly but not to that extreme. My lord, everything I’m seeing about this company is about as sus as sus can get a genuinely just seems to be Amazon. In the same part of the city and everything. Now fuck, GBV aren’t even playing apparently.


With that news I’m out on the streets and I somehow wander into this sketchy old mystical church district. I’ve been in these South Lake Union neighborhoods before but I must confess I do not remember exploring the ancient mystical church district before. Why not seize the moment. I do and holy fucking shit this is excellent. I’m in these amazingly distant from reality spiritual structures and activating these glowing icons. Each time I do, an incredibly arty looking plant entity turns into a slightly anthropomorphized version of itself and imparts some sort of mystical wisdom on me.



I’m lucid during this whole experience too but like, why on earth would I want to do anything than learn about the personalities of these cosmic plant entities? They seem to have a hypnotic pull that’d be impossible to resist even if I wanted to. I can tell that some of them are not super fond of humanity too, which is funny. This one in particular with a vibrant red aura seems genuinely nasty and yet silver tongued. I fully understand why it’s not super fond of the talking monkey shit show.

Unfortunately, it truly does seem like I was not supposed to remember much of the specifics in regards to these lesson plans.



Too freaky to bring back into the waking world and so I walk out in the alternate reality South Lake Union night once again thinking to myself:


“I legit didn’t know there was an ancient mystical church district down here.”



Glad I checked it out.








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