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DREAM
JOURNAL: JULY thru SEPTEMBER 2005 |
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2005
July-September // 2005 April-June
// 2005 January-March // 2004
October-December // 2004 July-September |
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2005.09.25 At the parallel universe call center where I work sometimes, one of our more popular coworkers is leaving the company. The team is having a going-away party for him, and he has brought us a home-cooked "traditional Italian meal," which I am presently eating from our team's good china, which is kept in a cabinet above our desks. There's a pasta salad with cauliflower, carrots, zuccini and spiders, and a beef stroganoff with something in it that I'm not sure I'm going to be able to eat. While I'm picking through the spider salad, the departing employee is busy cleaning out his desk, and someone takes his picture with a digital camera that looks just like my Sony MP3-CD player. 2005.09.20 Nina and I are watching women's boxing from Japan. A small, cute girl, about 17 or 18 years old, comes into the ring as the crowd chants "MISIRU, MISIRU," which is somehow a reference to an off-color taunt she made to an opponent the day before. Today she's supposed to be having a rematch with that same woman to decide the championship. The opponent doesn't show up. The young challenger announces that after yesterday's fight the two of them had secretly agreed to a draw. A female sports commentator standing in the ring with a microphone starts to scold her for wasting the time of the fans and the TV crew. The wacky challenger responds by walking up to the commentator and suddenly taking her fighting stance. The commentator drops her microphone and does likewise, and the two exchange a few punches before both falling down at the exact same time, and staying down, seemingly on purpose. Double KO!
Joe and I have let ourselves into the house of a girl we know. I don't really want to be there, but I don't feel like arguing with Joe either, so I just lurk behind as Joe sits on the mattress where she lies sprawled in her clothes, face down. We glance at the digital clock nearby. It's almost 3 p.m. "Are you awake?" Joe asks loudly. Of course, she immediately begins stirring, and then sits up with a sharp intake of air, blinks and looks around groggily. 2005.09.05 There's a movie theater room in our house that I forgot we had. It's very nice, with stadium seating and maroon velvet drapes on the walls. I really should use it more often. I could even sleep in here... Right now I'm watching Tim Burton's Batman. It's pretty cool seeing it on a big screen. Although, now that I look at it, the screen's not that big, just an above-average-size TV. I should get one of those giant plasma widescreen TVs to put in here. That might set me back a couple grand. Hm. Still, a very nice room.
I immediately understand that the weird matrix thing Aaron sent is the "key" he's talking about, and by "key" he means some sort of weird program designed to hijack my computer. Not knowing whether Aaron is trying to send me harmless information in some new, scary way, or if Aaron has turned to the Dark Side and is trying to destroy my computer with hacker magicks, or if it's actually Aaron at all or just a robot impersonating him, I turn off my computer and unplug my ethernet cable. 2005.08.23 Homer Simpson is crying and wailing over the corpse of what appears to be the Feejee Mermaid. "HoJu! HoJu! Why, HoJu?!?"
The Batman suddenly appears in front of the fireplace, and the frightened and enraged police officers train their weapons on him. Batman mocks their attempt at securing the apartment, but allows himself to be led into the corner, where one officer keeps his gun pressed to the back of Batman's head. Midnight chimes. There is a flash of lighning, and Batman vanishes before the police. The are sounds of yelling and chaos from somewhere in the shadows. Bat wings seem to land on the ceiling and then glide through the air... (Based on "Batman vs. the Joker" by Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson, from Batman #1.) 2005.08.09 I'm in a house similar to my own but a little nicer. My dad is here but I'm not sure why. Penny (the dog) is lying on the floor. I pet her and say something to her. A minute or two later I see that she has peed all over the floor, leaving a huge puddle in the hallway. I start to mop it up but then Dad says he'll get it. * * *
Back in the present time, the bird-head priests are standing outside their temple around a ceremonial basin filled with water and the captive stars. They are shocked when several phoenixes seem to emerge from a hole in the sky and begin to circle above them. The phoenixes speak to the terrified priests in one booming, telepathic voice: "WE ARE THE LIFE-FIRE, A FORCE NOT SEEN SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME..." 2005.08.08 Mom is in my room, asking me all kinds of probing questions and rifling through my dresser. I imagine that she's looking for something that she can use as justification for kicking me out of the house. I shove her out of the room, and she pretends to be surprised that I'm offended by her invasion of my privacy. Later I notice that she's getting ready to leave the house to meet someone, and in a pathetic attempt to make her feel bad, I start shouting questions at her about where she's going and who she's meeting. As I do this I walk around the house and pretend to ransack drawers. 2005.08.06 I'm in a big, fancy ski lodge with rich wood floors and walls. Sleeping bags and blankets are spead out over the floor. I lie down on a sleeping bag next to a cute girl with brown hair, dressed in pyjamas and a sweatshirt. She turns to me and smiles. I think she's going to kiss me, but then she licks my face, from my chin to my nose, like Catwoman in Batman Returns. Whoa. This is awesome. Then something instinctive and retarded takes over in me, and I lean in closer to her and stick my tongue down her throat. I hear her say "stop it!" in a muffled voice, and she pushes me back. I apologize to her, but she doesn't really seem that perturbed. After a moment she smiles again and says "We could be doing that more often, you know. I don't know if I love you...but I like you."
My friend points to an oversized photo of Heather Graham that's mounted on the wall nearby and asks, "Is this the picture?" "No," I say. "In the one I saw she's sort of crouched, with her cleavage exposed." 2005.07.08 I'm with Nina inside an emormous video game. It's foggy, at daybreak. We're walking along a paved trail through a thick, deciduous wood in the hills overlooking a city. I think the city is Tokyo in the early 1950s, although I don't see anything that I would identify as traditional Japanese architecture. The game world is so incredibly huge and realistic that I'm not sure what I want to do first. Very beautiful and exciting. There are some houses down in the foothills that I'm interested in checking out, but they seem so real that I feel guilty at the thought of barging in uninvited. "This is like ten times better than Shenmue," I tell Nina.
Also working in the warehouse is a girl whom I seem to recognize. Each time she passes nearby I'm careful not to look in her direction, even if she's just two feet away and we pass each other in a narrow corridor and I can smell her. I pretend that I can't see her and hope that she doesn't see me. But I've noticed her glancing at me several times through my peripheral vision, and now as I'm sitting on the crate she has taken a seat a few feet away, and though she's talking to someone else, I can see her looking at me over her shoulder every couple of minutes. I can feel her looking. Finally I can't take it anymore, and I look back at her and smile. She smiles back, a smile that seems to age and become wiser after a second. "Hi," I say cheerfully. "Hello," she says, turning her head directly to me and smiling. It's a complete sentence the way she says it. After a few seconds of mutually dumbfounded silence, she rolls her eyes in a way I've seen before, a way that means, "Oi, this is going to take a while." "Soooo?" she says. "What?" "...What do you think?" "About what?" She gives me a look that says, "What do you think I mean?" I take a wild stab at telling her what I think she wants to hear. "I think...I mean, I know there's...not a chance of...you and I..." "NO," she says, grinning weirdly and turning her body toward me to put her full physical presence in the conversation. "THERE ISN'T." Suddenly embarrassed, I try to hastily tack another clause onto my previous blathering. "...and, I...know that..." She beckons me to follow her out of the warehouse, away from the crates, outside to a small playground enclosed by an unpainted wooden fence. It's a warm summer evening, just after sunset. Fireworks are going off in the distance. "What is it you want to know about?" I ask. She takes my hand and leads me to a place along the fence near some large trees, and motions for me to climb on top of a garbage can and look over the fence. "There is definitely no chance of 'us'," she says, just sort of tapping the mental torture-screws without turning them. "But I want you to know that deep inside you have the potential to be a great guy." I step up to look over the fence, expecting to see some sort of symbolic reflecting Pond of Truth, but instead I see a vagrant with wild hair climbing a tree. I come back down from the fence and the girl and I sit on opposite sides of a seesaw. I tell her about an idea I have for a stage musical about a guy who leaves home to run a circus. While I talk to her I'm singing a song in my head, and when I come to the final note, I push down on my end of the seesaw. As she goes up I imagine her in a wedding dress. * * * Later, my dad and I are standing in a narrow, white-tiled hallway just outside a locker room, waiting for the Irishmen sports team to come back from halftime. Dad explains that the Irishmen are having shamrocks painted on their faces to intimidate the opposing team. The players start to pour out of the locker room into the hallway, glowering with sporsmanly rage as they file past. Coming after the players is the Irishmen's makeup man/mascot, Leatherface. He looks like a big cartoon catcher's mitt made from gray leather. In his hands he holds a makeup brush and a tube of paint as he watches the players rush back toward the field. |
2005.09.19
There was...a party? With Super Nintendo? No, I don't think that's
right... 
2005.08.10
A wealthy Gothamite has received a threat from the Joker that he will
be killed at the stroke of midnight tonight. In response, about a
dozen officers from the GCPD are assigned to guard the man in his
apartment. Now, as midnight approaches, the electricity has gone out,
and the penthouse apartment is lit only by the staccato flashes of
lightning outside.
A
motley group of humans, animals and other creatures are standing inside
a stone temple. A powerful, 
2005.07.01
I'm in a large warehouse or maybe a train depot. I'm sitting on a crate
amid hundreds of crates, and there's a bustle of activity all around
me. I'm here with a friend because I've volunteered to help with tagging
and loading the crates, but right now I'm taking a break.