| [Disclaimer] |
[Friday|01|January|2010|00:00] |
The dreams in this journal are intellectual property of Steffox. They may not be used in part or full without written consent of the author.
I may want to use these myself, so I thank you to not steal them.
Stars of the show usually include
Me: Myself, Steffox, Stephanie. I take many forms, not always female.
Will: My boyfriend. He also takes many forms, but no matter what it is I always tend to love it. |
|
|
| Alien Apocalypse |
[Saturday|10|January|2009|10:00] |
In England with mami driving a car really fast through Spain-like countryside and I had a camcorder in a weird car, running out of battery and speeding past really cool things, recording the journey. The buildings looked more Scandinavian than British.
End of the world via aliens.
The aliens came out of nowhere, and people freaked out a little. they were tiny and weak at first, but when the environment started killing them, they morphed. Every time they adapted to something, they would stab themselves under their chins with their fingers and pull out a little gooey orb, which they burned, and they'd be set.
Will and I ran away as fast as we could, in front of the herd of people. We came to a huge building which Will got open and we got to the far end of it and tried to keep people calm.
Will somehow organized everything, was handing out little raffle tickets to keep people calm and pretend it was not going to be scary. There were rumours that Oprah was going to show up and Will got all excited and started organizing all the famous people in the front next to himself. I got a bit disgusted at that and went to the back, where people were coming in. I guided them in and yelled for people to get closer together so more could come in and just in general cared for the non famous people.
A guy who was pretty hot showed up and I asked him his name and he turned out to be famous and in an indie movie I had wanted to see. He introduced me to his brother, who was also an actor but was a detective in his free time, which was so cool, but I had to send them in and not talk to them, but they were plotting to get at me somehow.
A lady came all by herself (not in a herd) with a baby and I set her all up, but we got to talking and she told me she had a son and she felt guilty because she had purposefully left him behind. He was five and she hated how he only thought about himself, and cookies, and was so obnoxious and attention-hogging. She had made him hot chocolate with benadryl in it. Lots of benadryl, and set him to colouring a colouring book, and then she'd left him to die and ran for her life with the baby. I was a little horrified but at the same time I understood for some reason. I told her the secret that I thought the detective actor was really cute and I was thinking that if we were all going to die anyway maybe I should... but then I heard something that sounded like Will's sniffling a runny nose and stopped, but it was the actor guys, and I told them to go away, but they didn't want to, until a huge herd of people appeared in the distance, coming towards us. So I got to dealing with them. People were jumping over the organizational mazes we'd put up to streamline their entry and just being chaotic, so I called for everyone to scoot together more and just let them flow in.
Meanwhile, Will was trying to set up a huge interview with Oprah and Katie Couric and Barbara Walters all at once and people were getting antsy because it didn't look like we were doing anything to protect ourselves besides fill a building so that we'd be easier to bomb.
A house, the upstairs was a little girl's room, there was carpet but it felt really loose and weird, so I deduced that the house was steel framed with wood planks, and with x-ray vision or something or we ripped up the carpet, we found a bunch of boards (but not enough of them to make a solid floor) zip-tied to steel I-beams, and there were cracks everywhere, and it was supposed to be a little girl's room. |
|
|
| [Mustn't forget] |
[Sunday|25|May|2008|17:00] |
I'd forgotten most of this dream but I remembered this little bit, which I hope will spark a memory of more of the dream...
I was a young cowboy with another cowboy, who was Clint Eastwood.
We rode into a town. Actually we walked.
There was a young schoolmarm and her two kids, the boy was a troublemaker, the girl a little angel. They owned a fancy souvenier stall. I tried to find something for my cowboy master but the boy kep accidentally dropping what I wanted and then not being able to find it again. I wanted to get him something like a keychain with a heavy stone pendulum on the end and a chain with a silver stick on it on the other end. it could be worn as a bracelet. There were a bunch of rocks and dirt on the stall and I tried to clean it up but realized some of the rocks had been painted on and were souveniers themselves. I didn't recognise the adobe city painted thereon and they thought I was weird, but the schoolmarm told them to lay off, because travelers sometimes go backwards and learn some things before and some things after, and that I might know a bunch of places that they did not.
The town was gathering some carts full of donated food for a ravaged town nearby, but also they were selling food for lunch. The Cowboy and I didn't haev much money between us, but it was a 3.99 buffet sort of deal, and there was an excess of pastas all over the place. |
|
|
| [Lost Dreams] |
[Sunday|13|April|2008|00:00] |
I forgot to write these down soon enough. Sucks. Here are som snippets and bits:
A dream where the lake suddenly floods and the water reaches up to my bedroom window. I think this will prevent me from going to school but the driveway is free of water and I have to go anyway, and I am late to class.
A few nights ago, a dream where I have to drive everywhere, I can't do it right, and the bathrooms are all broken. I need to take shit out of the toilets in order to use them, and there is no toilet paper in sight. At the end of the dream, everyone is using hand towels instead of TP, and there is a little embroidered sign over the towel rack saying "everyone does it so pretend you don't see it" and the towel is awful. In this dream we also find a pair of abandoned kids in a department store, and to keep them occupied I try to draw things for them to colour in, but I cannot find any paper that doesn't have something printed on it. This one takes place in a recurring dreamscape, an area of roads and strip malls that I usually just drive by but this time I explored.
I have recurring dreams of this strip mall, which as a very small anime shop and a huge yarn store, as well as a supermarket where I never have money and I only realize it after I've collected all my stuff and been checked out. There is a manga series I collect in these dreams, which I got a few books of in the first dream but I cannot remember the name and it is no longer stocked.
I also had a dream once in a really big art/books department store, where I took in some broken plates to get them appraised because they sell broken fancy china at insane prices and mine are prettier. They wouldn't pay enough for it, so I spent a lot of time running up and down escalators looking for a specific book, and I never found it before they closed.
There have been a few dreams lately where I find HUGE FRIKKIN fish carcases all over the beach and no idea why they are there. Very scary looking fish carcases, too, of huge fish with big teeth or pointy weird fish I've never seen before in my life. In one dream, there is a big nasty thing living in the lake, and I make a pile of dead fish and it comes up on shore to mess with the pile. A crocodile tries to eat it and the croc explodes. I first see the big thing from my room, where I can see a shadow under the water and I think it might be a whale. Very scary. |
|
|
| [Fuormo Angelico] |
[Saturday|12|April|2008|23:00] |
My sister and I lived in a huge house together with our parents. She and I were walking around together when we found an intricate looking safe in the middle of a bridge in our house. She picked it up and took it to her room, which was set up as if three different people slept there, since there were three beds. She settled down on the floor and played with it until she opened it. Two glowing balls came out and flew around like crazy before disappearing. We didn't know what they were or what they'd meant.
My mom came in to tell me it was time to go, so we all loaded into the car and I drove us through a weird neighborhood to get to Gladys' house. I almost passed it. The street we parked on was very steep, so I waited in the car to make sure it didn't go anywhere. Gladys' mother got in and we all drove off again. It started to snow really hard and eventually the car got stuck.
We had to get out and walk through the snow to get home, but Gladys' mom can't walk in snow, so we gave her a cellphone and a bunch of instant noodles and left her there overnight.
We got home and wandered around the house looking at the snow. The glowing balls came to Moni and I. She became a little demonic, and I was a little angelic. I had a vague memory of having been angelic before, so on a weird screen I went to my inventory and found I could equip one set of wings, and there were three choices. I chose angel wings, of course, and tried to remember how to fly.
I learned really quickly, and soon I was flying around the house, albeit slowly.
Moni was really jealous, she hated me a lot. I felt bad that she didn't get wings, too, but I couldn't help her in that regard.
My mom kept telling me not to fly, that I would get tired and fall and I should take it slow, but I remembered how to fly, so I didn't stop.
Moni was sitting in the living room pouting, and it was snowing really hard outside. I snuck out onto the deck and flew up as high as I could and tried to do barrel rolls to impress and entertain her. It felt really wonderful to have snowflakes falling onto my face and not be frozen by them. I flew up and down, twisting and turning, falling and scopping up at the last second, relishing the rush of it all. Inside, I could see Moni enjoying the show I was putting on for her. I landed on the deck and went back inside, snowflakes all over my clothes melting onto the floor.
My mom came to me and I was sure I would get in trouble for disobeying her direct orders to not fly, but I was wrong. She had a mission for me, and she gave me a map to follow to go check out some factory. I went on my way, flying over people who looked up and were shocked to see an angel flying around their town like that.
I found the factory and landed at the front door, which was on the second floor of the building. Inside I met with the owner of the factory, a plump little elf with a white mane of hair like a lion. (literally a mane) He was wearing a purple business suit and assured me that everything was totally normal in his factory.
I took a tour around and saw all his machines running smoothly and normally. Nothing seemed wrong until we passed by a door. I stopped and he looked embarassed that I'd noticed the door. He couldn't stop me from opening it, and what I found inside was awful.
A bunch of little maned elves were dead all over the floor, lined up in rows and rows. They were all shrivelled up and white, all the juice sucked out of them. In the back of the room was another door into a hallway with lots of doors in it. In each room was a dormitory for an elemental creature. Most of the dormitories were currently empty, all the elementals off working.
As I reached the last door, a wizened old water witch came out, her face dead-set on something. She looked at the little elf and announced that she had quit her job and was going to retire. The elf chased her down the hall, her legs being much longer than his, begging her to stay. He had totally forgotten about me.
She reached a big room, a fancy showroom for the product made in the factory. I don't know what the product was.
There was a waterfall feature in the middle and she strode towards it. The elf manager grew suddenly vicious, horrifyingly angry that she would dare leave his employ. He took out a tube of crude oil and squirted some into his hand, then flung it at her.
I suddenly knew that the life of a water elemental relies on its watery body staying clean. I leapt out, spreading my wings for extra lift, and caught the blob of oil in mid-air.
Everyone in the room froze, except the water woman, who kept walking towards the fountain. They were all shocked that I, an angel, would dare to get myself dirty with oil. Most angels were apparently complete neat freaks. Not me.
The elf manager got over his shock and threw a blob of canola oil at the water woman. I caught that, as well. He roared at me, trying to say that he had planned for this all along. He ran at me and tried to push me into the water woman. The oils had mixed in my hand and were smeared all over my arms and chest, if I even brushed up against the water woman, she would be dead.
I flared my wings and pushed the elf to the ground. I pinned him down and he struggled against me with much fury and beat at me with his fists. I held him down anyway. He screamed that if the woman escaped he would kill the world, and I would regret it for the rest of my life, that the life of one elemental wasn't worth the world, was it? He tried to convince me that he could actually do something that awful, but I knew he couldn't, because his factory was, even as we fought, being shut down for good.
The water woman stepped into the fountain, turned to me and smiled, then turned into water and splashed into the depths, gone.
The elf stopped struggling and just looked immensely pissed off at me. I got up and looked around at everyone in the room.
There was a devilish looking elemental, I don't know what of. His skin was brown spotted with blue and green, his hair slicked back and black. He looked apathetically at everything in the room, not at all expressing any sign of joy that he would be free from his evil boss. He picked at his teeth and examined what he had found.
My job here was finished. I lifted off and flew towards home, a little velvet bag in my hand, I don't know what it was but it was something special to me.
Suddenly I remembered Gladys' mother, who we'd left in the car the day before.
I flew as fast as I could to the car and found her frantically dialing and redialing numbers on the cellphone we'd given her. We'd forgotten to give her NUMBERS TO CALL.
Whoops. I got her out of the car and flew her to her house, where she was happily received.
The rest of the dream is kindof blurry. There are problems involving the apathetic elemental man, something about a giant parking lot, and Moni using her devilish powers to do some strange things. It was an awesome dream, I loved flying with wings. |
|
|
| [Spring Quarter] |
[Monday|24|March|2008|03:00] |
In this dream I was starting a new quarter at school.
My schedule looked pretty fun, and my first class was English.
I went to the english class. The teacher was the one I had in 8th grade and the room the class was in was supposedly in my high school. All us students filed in and scattered to find our seats. I noticed that amongst my fellow classmates were many freshmen and sophomores, and not just seniors. The class was really weird. Anyway. Lots of stuff happened, including stretchy bandanas with our names on them. And breaking a computer.
After the class, I went to my locker to check where my next class was. I had so much trouble holding things in my hands, they were full of all sorts of random things and I couldn't read any of them. I finally found my schedule and saw that my next class had already started and it was on the opposite end of campus. In the gym.
I run over to the gyn to find a huge modernesque building, it looks like it could blast off into outer space if it weren't so huge. I run in and find my class easily enough. It's a fencing class, and I am totally hyped to join in, until I see that everyone is in gym clothes and I need to go to the bathroom. I run around the building looking for a locker room or bathroom or anything, really, and I am so lost.
I wander tight corrriders that are really just doorways strung together meaninglessly, and when I stop to look at my surroundings I see I am in the hairdressing school (which doesn't ectually exist) All around me are doors leading to salons where students are practicing on other students, cutting and washing hair. It smells like hair product and burnt hair, like head and shoulders mixed with perfume. It's kindof gross. One of the doorways leads to something different, so I go through it.
I am suddenly in the cabin of an airplane, but it is empty. The view outside the windows is an obviously fake panorama of clouds, and the plane noises are being piped in through the ceiling grilles. This is the airline hostess school, and I just realize this when a student comes in, wheeling a dinner cart in front of her and hurrying me to the back of the cabin, where a door leads me back out into a hallway. There are a few other doors leading to fake airline cabins. I run down the hallway until I come to a giant room with a pool in it, an olympic sized pool. This pool is part of another dream I had a few weeks ago, so I know now that I am close to a locker room, although it's a sucky one.
I end up not finding the damn locker room, and so I go back to the fencing class, since it is only an hour long anyway. I show up in time to see the teacher explaining about precision and making each student stick a sticker to the wall in a random place. Everyone does, some people in really impossible places, like near the ceiling or the floor.
Then the teacher informs them that by the end of the class, they will be able to poke any of the stickers on command, with utmost accuracy. I think this is bullshit, why would you need to poke any of the places that are not lethal to an opponent?
The class files out and I run to catch up to the teacher. I ask him to wait up so I can talk to him, since I missed his class. He gets a really pissed off look on his face.
"If you don't care to come to class, I don't care to teach you."
"I TRIED to come to class but I got lost!"
"You were probably up all night partying and drinking" he says with disgust.
I am totally offended by this. All of me radiates offense, complete resentment at being thought of as such a person (it is a good place to note here that I did drink a beer last night before going to sleep. heh) and I respond fiercely. "That is absolutely untrue, and you will retract that comment NOW."
He feels the offense and the strength of my honour. He grants me the chance to talk to him as we walk. I tell him of my experience as a fencer and what I hope to get out of his class. He doesn't have the slightest idea about the world of fencing that I come from, though he's wary of me because he can sense that I don't go for the point, I go for the kill.
Well, he listens to me and is like "okay, we'll see how it goes for you" and then he leaves. The rest of the class and I are gathered around long tables for lunch, and I talk to them about how my style of fencing works.
Then Cecil randomly shows up and offers to run a few demonstrative bouts with me. We use chopsticks. It is ridiculous, but the other students are intrigued. The other teacher comes back and is all aghast that there is someone else fencing in his area. He challenges Cecil to a duel (in the way that people who do not know about real duels challenge people to duels) and Cecil declines to fence such a rube.
Then I realize I have to go to my next class, which is actually delayed for a "welcome back for this quarter" event. We go to a giant auditorium and I am confused as to where to sit. It is like what masses were like at Bellarmine, where seniors get to sit in special place on the ground plane close to the stage, except I am told that even though I am a senior, I must sit in the stands. I am a bit peeved at this change in practice.
I climb up to the empty senior section, realizing that I am early to the event. The program states that several pretty neat local bands will be performing. I find Kaitlin in the stands and am excited to see her after so long. I also find CJ, who happens to be part of one of the bands in the event, and who is nervous as hell. We sit together in companionship and chat about our lives since we've graduated.
Then I woke up. |
|
|
| [Fright Night Double Feature] |
[Sunday|02|March|2008|04:00] |
I had a few really scary dreams last night, and I can't even remember them all, although when I do the images come to me in full glory, maybe with more detail than they came with originally...
1.
This dream was an insane collaboration between Battle Royale and Diary of the Dead. My dad, my mom, Will and I were in a house. Mami was acting like herself, but the rest of us were gathering the things we would need in order to make dinner. For some reason finding the right food supplies was really hard, The pantry was pretty wiped out and everything in the fridge was rotten to the point of not being discernable from one food the the next. It was just all brown gushy stuff in saran wrap.
Will was trying to set up his computer so he could get some information, and I found some stuff that was cookable, though now I can't remember what it could have been.
Will got his computer online and found some news reports and videos that explained (vaguely) that the dead were being brought back to life.
Well, we weren't all too worried about that, we'd been fighting for our lives for a while now, and against living people who reason. Zombies would have actually probably been preferable.
But right as my dinner was starting to come together, an announcement rattled through everything, and we got out our maps to look.
Our zone had become a danger zone, and we had 5 minutes to get out of it. I wasn't even sure we could get out of it in 5 minutes even if we dropped everything and sped straight out as the crow flies... and here we were, scattered around the house, hungry and in the middle of the woods, where there are curvy roads. We all piled into the car with minimal fuss, however, and drove as fast as we could through the woods, not daring to look at the clock.
Anyway, things went like this for a while. Mami and Pops eventually became just two other people that were with us. We snuck around through groups of militant assholes and zombies alike. The goal was to find shelter that could be completely sealed off from the outside, something safe. We found a really snazzy house and went around making sure everything was locked up.
The house was great, it was one of those urban sprawl deals with white walls and shelves of bric-a-brac in the hallways, but good appliances and plenty of nonperishable foods in the kitchen.
Actually at some point there was this stupid part where we were in a supermarket looking through all the rotten vegetables looking for usable ones, and lots of people were there, the non-militant kinds of people. When the assholes with the guns showed up, we all scattered, and that's when we found the house.
The house was pretty good, and would have been enough for us had we only been dealing with zombies, but we had the militants running around enjoying killing everything regardless of if it had a pulse or not. So we were in the house, which had far too many windows, really, and we turned on the lights to work on our defenses and inventory. Will had a short little knife that he was really handy with, and I had something stupid, maybe a stick. Or a boomerang. The others had pretty useless items as well.
We heard something outside and turned off the lights. In retrospect turning off the lights was almost as stupid an idea as having the lights on in the first place. Lights draw zombies. But lights turning off draw people.
I hid in a closet and Will hid in front of the door to it, blocking me in and keeping those that were approaching us out. I wanted to scream at him to get in with me, but that would have been counterproductive. I sent urgent brainwaves to him instead, and even though I think he heard me, he didn't pay me heed.
Outside of the closet I could hear a window breaking and something thumping on the nice carpeting. As if breaking a soundproof barrier, suddenly the sounds of the undead moaning was audible. There was a rattling of automatic gunfire as the militants tried to scare us into giving ourselves away to the zombies, but we managed to stay silent. Will let me out of the closet as their heavy thumping boots came into the house. We tried to keep one step ahead of them at all times, turning corners as they did, slipping into rooms as they walked past. It was scary. While the jerks looked for us, zombies got into the house and looked for all of us. The live assholes kept out of the zombies' way, but didn't hesitate to perforate them if necessary. They didn't talk to each other, so the only sounds were of footsteps, zombie groans, and occasional gunshots.
Will and I slipped down into the basement and found a secret door leading out of the house.
It led down a long but wide tunnel which was moist and gross but safe from those hunting us. We couldn't risk having a light on so we felt our way on the cobwebby boards that held up the earth around us. We stopped every so often to listen for sounds from ahead or behind, and never heard anything.
The tunnel opened up to a ledge running along a manmade river. We followed it swiftly, keeping low to the ground.
There was a building up ahead that we could get into. It was solid looking, made of stone with steel doors and built into the bank of the river. We slipped into it and closed the door behind us, relieved.
Suddenly we were four again, as the two that were with us before either showed up before us or were with us all along, I don't know. They were adamant about the place being airtight, and they were so sure we were finally safe.
We all relaxed, relieved by thier analysis of the building. As we caught our breaths and looked around at our surroundings, I started noticing that the walls were very incomplete. They had been bombed up, crumbled, filled back in with plastic tarp. The whole back of the building was in ruins, with temporary wood frames hung with tarp filling the gaps.
As the others started to notice what I was noticing, we all started to hear that the militants were all around us. We were in the middle of their base. We kindof freaked out. Each of us ran to a door and leaned up against it, trying to barricade ourselves in. Bodies started slamming up against the other side, hands trying to squeeze through the cracks of the splintered wood doorframes. Will stood up from his door with his knife in his hand and a crazy look on his face.
He went up to one of the tarped-up holes in the wall and looked through the smoggy white plastic. Then he leapt through it and onto an adversary with a much bigger knife.
The two fell apart as they hit the ground and both scrambled to their feet. Will knew how to knife fight and it was obvious in his stance and fearlessness, but his knife was much smaller. The other guy has some sort of eight inch long stiletto blade, and even though he was holding it incorrectly, he didn't seem afraid of Will at all. He was actually grinning. And looking at ME, watching them from the place were Will had jumped.
"You're going to watch this." he said, and it wasn't a question, it was an order.
I couldn't not watch, it was Will, and I wanted desperately for him to stop the nonsense and just be back inside. I wanted him to come back so we could be safe together, even though we wouldn't actually be. It's the mind of panic that sees danger everywhere, and also the mind of panic that sees safety where there is none to be had. Even if we rewound our lives to before he jumped, we would be in the same awful predicament.
So I watched, because there was nothing else to do and no one else I would rather be watching.
Will lunged at the guy, and there was a scuffle. Will shouted and the two broke up from their grapple. He was missing his hand, bleeding from the stump where it had been and looking even more wild than before. I began to scream at them to stop fighting, but they didn't listen. The other guy had Will's hand in his, and was wielding it as a second weapon, the knife still clutched in it. Will stumbled back and fell. I scrambled down to him and grabbed him closely.
He was dying, and all I wanted to do was to be with him until the end.
The guy was standing over us, smiling.
"When he dies, he'll come back and try to eat you." he said, nonchalantly.
He dropped into a crouch so that he was eye to eye with me.
"Will you be able to kill him when he's dead? To scramble his brains up so he won't be one of them?"
I glared at him, not wanting to admit that I wouldn't be able to. Will coughed bloody curses at him. The guy looked at him as if he understood them through the mouthful of blood.
"Not very nice of you. I am a good guy. I'll even save you both the trouble."
With that, he grabbed Will by the collar, pulled him away from me, and threw him on the ground. He struck out with sure hands and stabbed Will right in the middle of the forehead. And then he did it a few more times for good measure. I cried.
And then I woke up and I was very glad to have Will next to me, where I could hear him breathing and feel him warm under my hand, and I think I woke him up a little with my grateful kisses.
2.
In the next dream I had, Will and I were running away from something, or at least we had been running. Now we were stumbling through a grey and rusty landscape. We came upon some train tracks with a train approaching sluggishly. We crossed quickly.
The train cars scattered across the field next to the tracks were huge. We could walk under the cars just by stooping slightly. We stopped as we reached the first of these huge train cars and turned to watch the train pass us.
It was a ghostly train. It looked like it was made of the usual steel and iron, but the steel and iron looked like they were forged from crushed bones and flaps of skin. Everything about it was dark and dull, streaked with rust and blood. We watched it chug slowly past us, car after car of this awful frieght train, as long as the ones that used to stop traffic on my way to school and back.
The last few flats didn't have freight boxes on them, but were full of people, silently sitting as if in some painting. As these cars passed us, no heads turned to look on our direction, but all the eyes were looking at us somehow.
The people in the cars were dressed in period clothing, but from many different periods. There were ladies with white powdered faces and men in oil man's suits, women in victorian clothing and men who looked like cowboys. There were British noblemen and French whores, all side by side in an open box that looked like it was made of solidified blood. They were facing away from the direction they were going, looking at where they'd been. Even though they were facing away from us, they knew we were there, and looked at us as they chugged by. Their eyes were inscrutable, no flicker of hate or hope. They didn't look like they wanted to be saved, nor did they want to save us. They were completely indifferent, probably because they knew that whatever fate we were going to meet was just as bad as the one they were going to.
The powdered face ladies were the worst, because they looked like porcelain dolls with exaggeratedly realistic features. They were all older women, and even though I was far away I could see that as they passed, the porcelain quality of their faces was cracking and sagging, oozing down their faces. Their lips cracked and lines spread out from the corners of their eyes and across their faces as the white powder aged and turned yellow at the corners. The following cars (there were so many of them, and so many people in each) had women with less perfect makeup, women whose faces were already cracked, whose paint was missing in spots. Their hair started to fall out in clumps until the women that passed looked like chemotherapy patients or starving old women with three teeth and about as many hairs on their heads as they had years left to live.
Will and I backed away from the train as the occupants became more and more horrifying. We were under the train cars now, cowering away from the eyes that stared at us. In each car there was one man standing at the front, watching all the passengers. The whole carful of people looked like some strange congregation at a gruesome mass, waiting for that one man to speak. But none of them ever did.
3.
Beef jerky dream...
First it was me and mami trying to find a specific place. Mami pulled the car off the road at a place that looked like maybe what a college in the woods would look like a year or two after it fell out of use. She was driving on the wrong place, though, where people should have been walking and no cars were meant to be. We drove around the dark wood building on this path and eventually stopped.
I don't know what we were looking for, but we found it at some stumps, and some other people joined us.
Then what I remember is being at a sort of camp with a few other people and we all got these gag gifts that were meant as a bonding game. We each got a gift meant for someone else, and we had to go find out whose it was. There was a lady who was fascinated by the landscape, and she was supposed to get a set of watercolours, but she had a huge shoe instead, meant for one of the young men who was very tell (only one shoe though) It was weird stuff like that, and I don't remember any of the other gifts except they were just as weird.
Then what I remember is us leaving the place after I had bought some very delicious beek jerky. Supposedly this was the place on the pass on the way to Wenatchee where Will and I got very delicious jerky this one time, but now the people there had realized its worth and raised the price... a lot. It ended up being $13.00 for two strips of the stuff.
One of the guys who was at the camp with us came back inside, and the woman who worked at the lodgey place somehow managed to trick him out of a lot of money using some beverage. I dunno. I got pissed at her and made her return it. Why did she even listen to me though. |
|
|
| [Architecture] |
[Wednesday|31|October|2007|12:00] |
My whole studio was in the school van getting driven around. We were given an assignment, to visit and analyze our favourite space, whether it be good or bad architecturally. In my mind I decided on an office building in my little hometown that was really interesting.
But then the van pulled over and... we were at the office building! We went in and everyone spread out to see what it was like. Disappointed, I wandered around knowing everyone would write about this building.
The entrance was really constrictive, a narrow brick hallway that was really tall. Offices on the upper floors has windows facing into the hallway, but it was so narrow, the view was probably the office across the way.
The circulation was emphasized by the floor, which was marble and concrete, the concrete strips branching into different paths to lead people to different program elements. Down one of the hallways, we found ourself suddenly on a terrace looking down into a large public space which was dominated by planter boxes. People had to duck under the plants' huge overreaching leaves to get around. Above, the ceiling had turned into a series of trapezoidal skylights. It was raining, and the water ran down the sides into the channels in between the skylights and flowed down off the roof.
But inside it was dry, and looking down off the terrace, it felt like a small sheltered city, or a biodome.
Opposite the terrace edge, the hallway wall had become a series of shops and offices. Above them, there was another terrace, I could see people sitting up there drinking coffee. The few tables on the terrace I was on were empty and merely blocking the circulation route. We continued on and found a wider part of the terrace. A huge staircase led down.
At the foot of the staircase was a freestanding wall about 10 feet from it's termination, forcing us to go around it. Behind the wall was a huge natural fountain, shaped like an upside-down L, with water spilling off all possible surfaces of it. Levi got all excited and took notes because his space was trying to achieve this effect.
All the running water made me need to go to the bathroom, so I seeked one out.
As I entered the ladies' room, a cleaning man looked at me. "Okay, you have a minute". Then he left me to my business. The stalls were all open to the whole room. The hadicapped stalls had large moveable flaps that could be opened up to create a sort of half-stall, but it was far too small to actually do anything in, and the toilets were really tall. Someone else came into the room and we tried to work out how to use the facilities.
When I finally exited the bathroom, I found that the space had become a library/bookstore. No one could find anyone to help them find stuff, so I took charge and hunted down each individual's books by utilizing the dewey decimal system. I found a book on Mantises for Alex, who was really happy to have the book. For some reason there was a stack of them, and even though the whole place was organized like a library, it was a bookstore. Maybe it was only a bookstore, but I think it really was both.
Eventually the person that used to be Alex (but had changed into someone else) and I got into a car to drive around. We went to several convenience stores, I was looking for a place I'd been to before that had Cryptogram books, those British crossword puzzles that are really hard. But the whole area was a huge Chinatown, so either they didn't have the books or didn't know what I was talking about. I avoided buying teriyaki even though it was really tempting.
Eventually the girl I was with took over the car and drove us into a neighborhood covered in trees and spread out houses. We pulled up to a familiar house. I recognised it as the house of a serial murderer who was also an actor and thought he was only performing when he killed people. She had been invited to a party at his house, and I could do nothing to convince her not to go in. So I sat in the car and watched the party through the windows.
The murderer, a large broad student-type person, was being a pretty gracious host, but I could see a gleam in his eye and knew that things were gonna get ugly soon.
I ran around to all the windows trying to get my friend's attention, but it was impossible. When I got all the way around the house, I found her in the car, waiting for me as if I'd been the one who had gone to the party the whole time.
Part of the French dream:
Walking down a dry dirt road, we see ghosts flying around a house that is cut in half so you can see everything inside it. We go up to it and the lady who lives there in her slippers comes to us and she is French. She explains how it's just a machine she turns on so she doesn't feel so lonely. Pops and I play with it a little and then leave. The road is parallel to the train tracks and we have to find a place to cross over them. On either side of the road is a little ditch with muddy water full of frogs. Beyond the small ditch, miles and miles of dry grass fields stretched until reaching distant foggy hills. |
|
|
| [Disneyland, NYC] |
[Saturday|04|August|2007|11:00] |
I was running around with my little PaperBlanks "leather" journal in a big city. It was huge. I went on a really confusing subway system I've dreamed about before. The cars are short-ceilinged and bullet shaped, they blast along really fast and there are emergency buttons and seat belts for every seat. It's immaculately clean in the subway cars, they're all white plastic and stainless steel. No windows. I originally came upon the subways in a dream where I was touring this really high tech military research facility, which also happened to have the airport at it. There were escalators everywhere but you had to have a pass to activate it to get you anywhere and I'd accidentally used up all my escalator rides on the wrong ones
Anyway, I was at a subway station where tunnels leading up and to every side make it very hard to judge which one to take, and instead of getting on one, I waited and Moni came out of one. We went up a long stairwell to this office, where I went in for an appointment with this lady. Her job is that I tell her everything that happens to me and she takes notes on it for later. I come out of the appointment and Moni's writing in my journal thing. I take it from her and every page is full of her scribblings, and none of my pages are there! I ask her what she did.
"I took them out. Isn't that okay?"
"NO, it's NOT OKAY! Since when is it okay to take someone's book and rip all the pages out?!"
"Well I didn't want to read your secret journal things, so I took them out. I thought you'd appreciate my discretion!"
"NO! You shouldn't even have touched my journal in that case! Where are the pages? You know this isn't a ringed binder, I can't put these back in!"
She has no idea where the pages are, and I am determined suddenly that I am going to buy a new journal. I storm off into a few stores but none of them have the PaperBlanks brand journals.
We're in new York but also watching a movie about New York as we walk. I comment on how in movies, walking around Central Park always looks nice, but that in reality there's a lot of ditches and potholes that are really unsightly, and how do they make it look nicer than it is? As if on cue, the movie we're watching is no longer pretty, but looks like what we're actually walking along, with all the garbage and everything. We come around to the back of the Park, where there's a chain link fence with a hole ripped in it. The sign there has been painted over so that instead of saying Employees Only or No Trespassing, it says You breathe, you live, no regrets. Moni and I decide that it's really iffy to go in through that entrance anyway though, so we turn the corner and keep walking around the Park.
Lo and behold, a few meters down that way there is a more official back entry. We go in. We're walking up a slightly sloping hill and when we reach the top realize that we're standing on a plastic-turf-ed version of Pride Rock from The Lion King, and that there are automated lions and monkies and stuff reenacting the Circle of Life scene from the movie. We immediately drop down to hide, and the whole time I'm thinking "This is what Bri-chan said happened to her in her LiveJournal!" (I have to check and see if this is true. I imagine not...) While we're lying there, we notice that
1. We're in Disneyland
2. There's some sort of party going on down below
3. Everyone's watching the automated lions we're hiding behind.
4. There are people standing next to us, and they're about to give speeches.
I don't know what these people are celebrating, but I guess it's the birthday of some really reclusive kid who has finally come outside. They give a special speech about the camp counselor that got him out of his house in the first place, and then to the other people who helped him come out, and the kid's just standing there looking embarrassed since he's no longer a person so much as a puzzle that is so hard to solve that when people succeed, they brag embarrassingly about it.
When the party cleared out, Moni and I slunk down off the Rock and were hustled out by some pissed off people running the exhibit. We felt pretty bad about ourselves when I spotted Bri-chan (who works at Disneyland) cleaning up outside the thing. I went over to say hi. She of course had no idea who I was ^_^' But that's okay. She had gotten yelled at for our accidental entrance onto the rock, though since the same thing happened to her once, she wasn't angry at us. She was being forced to clean up the Easter Eggs that the kids didn't find, and asked us to help her. Since we were guests we're allowed to keep what we find, she couldn't. There was loads of chocolate and a few packs of stickers, it was pretty much just checking under the bushes, and next to every bush trunk there was SOMETHING. It was pretty awesome.
I wandered around some more and found these little outhouse booths with scenes set up around them. On some of them there was a little sewing pedal that if you pumped it right, a spinning wheel would work, or a little ski lift, stuff like that. None of them worked for me, so I opened a door and went into one of the outhouse things. Inside I found a guy in a washed out black and white costume looking really sad. There were newspapers all over the place so I picked one up and found that it was being used as a folio. In it, there were all these great old drawings and photographs, and I was really tempted to take it with me. I was about to when a guy in a dusty tuxedo came in and spotted me.
"So you've found the remains of a great career."
"I'm sorry, are these yours? They're fabulous."
He took the portfolio and looked at it with a really sad look on his face.
"Sadly, this place no longer seeks talent like mine. Great as it is, it means nothing now."
He handed it back to me. The guy dressed like a bum, who I had forgotten about til now, nuzzled up against the tuxedoed man's side. The bum didn't have arms, I hadn't noticed before.
"Round up the others. We're leaving for greener technicolour pastures."
The armless hobo left. I stepped outside a few minutes later after watching the tuxedoed man just kind of stand there longingly.
Outside there was a huge gathering of weird looking hobos. All of them were missing parts and were in black and white even though the whole park was colourful. |
|
|
| [Support your local animal] |
[Thursday|26|July|2007|20:00] |
I was out in the yard. The plum tree had given fruit and it had all fallen off but I found a big plum that has like a purple apple skin and was shaped like a long apple, or a bell pepper. I ran to show it to mami but she kept getting farther and farther away and I kept dropping the plum.
I ran into some friends and we went down to the lake instead. There was this weird animal like a raccoon but with a white mask and it was red. I was confused as it what it was but I tried to pet it and found it to be really friendly. It climbed up onto my shoulder and was really cute and awesome.
Someone said it was a red panda and I was shocked cause it didn't look like one, much, except the face. I wanted to show it to Will so I went home to get my camera.
My dining room counter looked like some retro diner, with red stools and stuff. The panda settled down there while I got the camera, and when I came back it got back on my shoulder, but it's nails were all sharper and digging into my skin, it was angry and hissing and really did not want me to take a picture of it.
We ended up driving around and around this lake with all these lights around it, advertising hotels and stuff. It was a new highway, made for lots of cars, but there was no one but me on it, driving around my sister and her mom, who wasn't my mom, and actually I think she was Will's mom or something. But we were driving around and there was a timeframe I needed to be somewhere for. When I got there (it was a school), my thing had been cancelled, so instead I went home with the teacher. I was really sad because I had wanted to spend the day with Will but had chosen to do this thing at the school instead, to no avail.
The teacher's house was like, in New Mexico. I was trying to find out how to go to sleep while Will was taking up the whole of the only bed there. I decided I needed to change my pad so I went to the bathroom to do it and found a half-used on on the counter. Apparently the teacher stores them stuck to the wall for later (no idea why) and there was a big bloody splotch on the wall where one had been.
On my way back to the room, I was walking down these three steps and found my eyes to be level with a window on the top step. I leaned so I could see outside and watched as mice and rats and animals ran around the dusty, weedy yard, lit by moonlight. It was kindof oddly nostalgic and I cried. I stood there looking out the window for a long time.
Then I woke up. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
