Monday, May 3, 2010
medley of weird
But in a coffee shop.
1
I was at a spacious coffee shop with Jacquie and Elisa, both of whom were up getting their drinks. I was lying on the table because a Tyrannosaurus was trying to eat me and I knew that if I lay flat enough, he wouldn’t be able to pick me up with his mouth. Jacquie and Elisa and I were all having a casual conversation, none of us really worried about the Tyrannosaurus.
However he got a firm grip on my side and was about to pick me up and eat me, which I remember regarding as a mild inconvenience. Jacquie paused whatever conversation we were having to say, “You better do something about this guy.”
I don’t know if I knew it was a dream, but I did know it wasn’t real and that I could control what happened. With my mind I forced him to stop, and then made one of his legs disappear.
Later I was somewhere in Manhattan, tucked into a semi-enclosed building entrance that was below street level. Looking up I could see people running in the streets. Then they all stopped and started running the opposite direction. A second later a herd of dinosaurs rushed past my field of vision in the same direction. I figured they in turn were being chased by a giant Tyrannosaurus.
A tiny dinosaur with a kind of circular head and beak lost his footing and stumbled down the stairs to where I was, landing in my hand. I contemplated the quickest way to kill him so he wouldn’t alert the Tyrannosaurus to my hiding spot with his noise, but then I woke up.
2
I worked for a kindly Latino landlord of a small apartment building. He owned a dog that was made entirely of cockroaches, and he used this roachdog to enter his units to see if there was a roach problem. If the roachdog came back saturated with too many roaches, then he knew there was a problem, and he had me unleash his pet mountain cougar to catch and eat the roaches.
3
I worked for a law firm and decided to get to work at 9:15 instead of 9:00. When I got to the court I saw that there was already a trial going on headed by a judge who looked like Nancy Pelosi. She wasn’t wearing a robe and was seated at a cheap folding table with three other people. The court room looked like a cafeteria. The trial was about e-books.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
sorry kyler.
Needs more rice.
New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles, which were all the same city, underwent a minor cataclysm that killed all the electricity permanently. Damien, Chris, Kyler, myself, and a couple others were living out this quasi-apocalypse.
Kyler and I went back to Damien’s apartment for something. The apartment looked like my middle school choir room, with step risers taking up the back third of it. I don’t remember why, but I ended up murdering Kyler. It was not pre-meditated.
I got a bit panicky and tried to convince myself it was accidental, not murder. I had to hide the body, but I’d also made plans to go out drinking with everyone and didn’t want to miss it. I dumped a huge bag of rice over Kyler and left him on the second or third riser.
By the time we got back, some of the rice had fallen off, exposing Kyler’s face and a hand. Also, his fingers had gotten extremely brittle during rigor mortis and one had broken off. I covered him with more rice because we were about to go out for more drinking, but later it fell off again.
Chris noticed the body when he went into the apartment by himself. He started hinting to me that he’d seen it. When we all went back even later, I made sure to open the door first. I could see Kyler’s exposed face again, so I asked everyone to wait outside for a minute.
Then I went and covered it with actual bags and random objects until he was safely hidden. After admiring my handiwork, I let people back in.
Friday, September 25, 2009
unless it was imitation crab
Damien and I crashed a Bar Mitzvah in Manhattan. It was a chubby blond boy neither of us knew, but for some reason we decided to stop in for the services. I came very close to making a congratulatory speech to the boy, but didn’t.
It was being held in what looked like a triangular reception hall with glass walls. The chubby boy about to become a man was sitting on the floor, wrapped in his talit, with the Rabbi sitting in a chair behind him, and the tiny congregation in fold-out chairs staring in silent bemusement.
After it was done, Damien and I wandered over to the reception a few blocks away. Damien was late getting there so I waited for him. There were patches of sleet outside.
At the reception they were serving crab salad, which in real life is extremely unkosher. Damien and I helped ourselves.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
butter/soccer/water
Damien and I were sitting on his couch in his living room with a female friend who in the dream was his roommate. He and I were eating butter sandwiches she had made for herself and left in the fridge. Every time one of us took a bite, she would smell the butter and ask if it was her butter sandwich. She didn’t seem to care that much.
Adam, Damien’s roommate in real life, walked out of his room in a towel to go to the bathroom for a shower. Damien catcalled at him. Adam said he wanted to show us his new underwear. After the shower he came out wearing black soccer shorts, and said, “See?”
At another point I drove to what I thought was an elder care facility to pick up Aruna and Brad. It turned out it wasn’t an elder care facility but some kind of water resort emporium. There were a half dozen indoor pools, some of which made waves and had special chutes, like an upscale water park. To get out of the place, Aruna slid down one small chute and let the current carry her along.
I was picking them up in my old pickup truck, Sebastian, to help them move.
Friday, August 28, 2009
find the poison
I had a garden set up on a side of the lawn of my parents’ house in Houston, where I grew up. I was walking to it when I noticed some of the plants in a small pile, and a note next to them that said,
“Rafi – I took the liberty of removing some of the poisonous plants. The rest are good to eat.”
I saw that the note-writer had removed one of each type of poisonous plant, and had left the rest for me to do. I walked over to the other side of the lawn, where some elderly Chinese people were tending their own gardens (this was apparently a very Chinese section of the neighborhood). I spoke to one old man whom I knew reasonably well and recruited him to help me. I explained what happened in fluent Chinese and then showed him the note. He read it in English and laughed, then walked over to help me.
As we got nearer I saw that paperclipped to the note were several more pages; the notewriter had drawn to detail each of the poisonous plants in color with notes on how to identify them.
Old Chinese Man and I went around the garden removing the rest of the poisonous plants, many of which were pretty exotic. There was one purple thorny plant that I recognized at once, but on it was a pale blue glowing orb of light. As I got nearer to it I could see the faint outline of an insect. It was like a blue, perpetually glowing firefly, but about the size of a baseball. The notes said, “I wasn’t sure what to do about the dangerous blue glowbug, so I left it alone.” So I also left it alone.
At one point Old Chinese Man removed a giant lizard, like a baby kimodo dragon, from a tree he thought was poisonous, and tossed it aside after tugging on it at the base of its tail.
The lizard bit me. It hurt only a little, but then he bit me harder. Not enough to break the skin, but enough to want him to stop. He had nearly the entire width of my forearm in his mouth.
In another dream, I was getting tea at a coffee shop in a mall with a work colleague. She was ordering for other people as well. She ordered two caramel cappucino teas, which I guess is tea that tastes like a caramel cappucino, and one regular black tea. She also wanted to pay for my order but I wouldn’t let her. She already had a check made out to me, with my name typed in, but I made her tear it up. Before I could give my order, though, I was distracted by an arcade game.
In another dream, I was at a bar in New York City with Damien and some friends when I noticed my wallet was gone. I retraced my steps a couple feet and there was a young guy sitting on a barstool holding my wallet out. He had taken it to show me how vulnerable I was. For some reason I was grateful rather than angry; I thanked him and took my wallet back.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
new york bazaar
Several of us were shopping along a long stretch of markets that served as a sort of bazaar lining the beach on Long Island, or what in the dream was technically part of New York City. Summer Dinh, Nate Manske, and Nick Manske were there. Probably Damien Butvick too. And I think Jacquie Osman.
I was looking for something in particular; I think it was a map. I couldn’t find it, though one shop had it close.
There were a lot of waves crashing on rocks, and lots of people. The bazaar was miles and miles long.
At one point we were talking to a shop owner who was boasting about a billfold he found. He was going on about how it was conveniently filled with cash but no ID, so he didn’t have to worry about finding its owner. As he was saying this, he accidentally pulled out a Maine driver’s license from the billfold. It had a black and white photo on it that looked photocopied, but in the dream that made sense.
The shop owner glanced at it only for a second, then pretended not to see it and tossed it aside.
Friday, July 31, 2009
just the apocalypse
I’m in New York City and there’s some kind of global thermonuclear chaos going on. Sort of like the end of Terminator 3 — the world’s nukes all firing at once. A lot of cities are already gone, but somehow New York hasn’t been hit yet. Everyone knows it’s inevitable since it’s New York, but no one seems too worried.
I’m just trying to find a basement. I consider going in the subway, but then I realize the pub I’m in has an underground floor.
At some point we do see nukes going off, but they’re a couple dozen blocks away, and that’s somehow too far to affect us.
At another point, I’m entering New Orleans on a shuttle going from the airport to the stadium. In the dream I’ve taken this route many times but I’ve been nowhere else in New Orleans. Normally the area we drive through between the airport and the stadium is a concrete jungle, dense with industry and apartments, all within the stadium-high fortress walls that surround the city. This time the land is just grassy and slightly hilly, no buildings leading up to the stadium, like undeveloped land. I can’t see past the stadium to see the rest of New Orleans.
I ask what happened and someone I’m riding with tells me the area was abandoned after it became economically depressed. I say that wouldn’t account for the missing buildings and untouched land. He relents and tells me the real reason. I can’t remember if it’s nukes or something else.
rafi's dream blog 