past_dreams epitome of incomprehensibility Three dreams about the "poet friend" Min, the one whose birthday party Leonard Cohen ditched in more_things_learned_from_dreams. -arguing with someone else in a classroom and concluding by turning to Min and saying, frustrated, "I don't like religion!" though the argument had nothing to do with it -clapping for her while she received the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature, which looked rather like a soccer trophy, and everyone in graduation gowns -us at a little snack shop and me realizing she is actually a reincarnation of Spinoza, which explains why she told me "You have to believe in God but you can't have religion" while holding a notebook, but doesn't explain why she insisted on me eating a giant chocolate bar, even as I protested I couldn't This could almost be a serial_story, with me, God, Leonard Cohen, and chocolate in supporting roles. 130717 ... e_o_i also, from purple notebook, circa 2008... And then 2 nights ago: woman reading in bed, woke up at night. Passing time while husband is away and trying not to think of memories of war. Bad memories are called "kashvas" and reading materials are called "otchkes" - is that real Yiddish? Then there were comics with bright colours. L came over and played with blocks on the living room floor. Woman afraid husband would die. I was partly her and partly observing (happens in dreams). Lachine trip, yearning, reading aloud "perfect proportion" The miners buried in accident, trying to find them, shifting ground based on notes (counterpoint nightmare!) 130717 ... past a recurring feverish dream from childhood that i've dreamt enough that it's etched in a part of my brain that triggers while awake when i'm sick or sick_adjacent: imagine a cavern deep underground with a smooth curved roof, a thin slit in the roof allows a sliver of light in. it's sort of like being inside a hollow ladybug, looking towards its mostly closed wings. there's a house nearby, stereotypical with gables and dormers, except the windows are eyes and the door a mouth. I think it was from some tv show from the 80s. there's a little garden, subterranean butterflies, and the like. suddenly the ground starts shaking. a gaping jagged cavern opens in the cave floor. the house calls me to safety, but as i arrive it closes the door, sprouts legs and runs off leaving me alone. the crevice expands and i fall. 220317 ... past it was a mishmash of british cities i've spent some time in (both the cities and the particular mix of the dream): london and glasgow were the main scenes of this dream world. a mix of the experimental farm at rothamsted and park around arthur's seat stretched between being redeveloped into apartment flats via a stint as a royal zoo. the dream london was hilly like glasgow and the dream glasgow had remnants of a city wall and george square was filled with a gaudy demonstration of everything "scottish", things my scots friends are at best bemused by at worst insulted. most of dream glasgow was familiar west end streets in partick and st mary and hillhead. this time i had a companion, a local (to me) urbanist who leaned more left anarchist than anything. our politics often align from different but related departure points and philosophical underpinnings. it started as a tramp through dream london, following twisting streets and stopping at pubs and cafes. she was determined to find something, some kind of gum or tooth brush, and was convinced dream london was the place. after much journeying and drinking we paused. she looked at me in the eye and said "i don't want you getting any wrong ideas." i waggled my ring finger in her face, she smiled and hugged me. in an instant the world faded and we teleported up hill. to the developing fringe. to a street you can find but never leave. she had never been there before, but i had and was instantly uncomfortable. i knew at once where she'd find her quest relic. a corner store that sells the usual: sim cards, chips, irn bru. nervously i kept trying to steer us to a junction that had a looping metro and would get us into dream glasgow. all roads in the in between get you to where you need to go, not where you want to go, so we ended up at a block of flats at the bottom of a forested cliff face (strangely reminiscent of a side street near me, here). at the end of one strip was a corner store. we went in, the bell rang on the door and the shop keeper smiled. he knew what we wanted and after convincing me it wasn't a sim card ("why would you need a phone? you're not in danger" he said in a not at all reassuring tone) he passed my companion a small round jar of lip gloss. she was confused but paid with a few stones, applied it, and the world shifted. 220319 ... past it has mostly faded but the setting was a courtyard surrounded by mid-century apartment buildings. we were being inducted into some kind of army but there was no cloth for uniforms so the top half of everyone's left ear had to be sliced off (by yourself, to prove commitment) and then everyone at their own severed half ear. i tried to sneak out, being an observer of this movement but not supposed to be a participant, but was stopped and told by one of my fellows that to leave it was either partial ear amputation or death. so i the shears, cut my ear, ate it, and entered a stairwell. there my baby was well wrapped in swaddling blankets and sleeping deeply. i picked her up and ascended the stairs. 220322 ... past we were back in the office after well over two years, and everyone was having first day of school feelings. of course we moved offices during the pandemic and were in a new, extremely poorly built, building. standing in the lunchroom with a retired colleague i tried to get water but the taps were all installed so they poured over the counter not the sink and you couldn't fit water bottles under them. also if you stood at the counter too long ketchup packets exploded on you (but some how only left a mess on the counters, not the people). just outside the kitchen was a gym locker room. very much lacking privacy, both in it being open to the kitchen and that the lockers were shared one to three people. i remember having conversations but not what they were about. 220330 ... past this one was a bit meta. there was a something that ate characters and dream figures. as we are all ourselves characters in the imaginations of others, who it will eat depends on who it decides the active party was. when something got eaten it ceased to exist and slowly the world dream whatever refolded on itself, so the missing pieces were not even know to be missing. the more concerning part was it appeared in the room where i was asleep with the kids, they having had their own nightmares and needing help sleeping. 220412 ... past the dream was itself a replay of a conversation about a back and forth overheard_in_conversation. i was out for a walk with the baby. two voices approached from behind, discussing the intersection of science and politics and how much deference should be given to each in public policy circles, and the arrogance of scientists frustrated when their advice is taken as advice not prescription. as the two women passed me, one turned and looked at us. in real life it was a stranger, in discussion we tried to guess who they were talking about, in the dream it was an old boss. 220419 ... past a weirdly lingering dream from falling asleep while reading while sick. i sort of seeped into the backstory of the novel. there was oddly little to no visible features. except some even darker black (or a darker_shades_of_blue) tracing geometric patterns against the pitch black backdrop. there was dialogue, between me and some kind of brain scanning machine trying to riddle out my consciousness from my body. it wasn't philosophical, but i'm sure those lines where meant to mean something. 220423 ... past fragmentary visions linger: walking down a busy street seeing a neighbour from when we lived in residence stop and yell "hey you're not going to say hi?" being in a wrap shop asking for a blt and being told with disgust "we don't serve Ls here." 220525 ... past i was a miniature version of myself walking across a landscape that was shaped like a gigantic version of myself. 220526 ... past two parts linger. i'm not sure how they're connected, and maybe it was two different dreams. first: a bike mechanic came by to fix the brakes on the longtail. he also decided to replace the tubes in the tires. he didn't use tire keys or anything but instead was able to split the tire in half, take out the old tube, and replace it with a fully filled one and then put the tire seamlessly back together. this all happened while the staff of the diner we were inexplicably in were yelling at us to leave and to explain what we were doing in there. no idea bud, no idea. second: a returning_passing encounter. we were in a different diner then the bike repair episode, talking about something. her curls kept falling in front of her eyes and she was getting very annoyed but also smiling wistfully. that's the extent of the dream that remains. 220531 ... past i was part of a group of four on some kind of embassy or trade delegation in a vaguely high technology post apocalyptic world. we were stopped at the border for enhanced screening, including public health measures. somehow they missed swabbing my mouth until one of the party came back positive with "type two consumption" (some kind of tuberculosis? something more sinister?). whatever it was it didn't seem too transmissible. before release they realized they didn't test me. when they did, i had "type three consumption," which in the dream world was apparently the bad one as it showed some kind of connection to particularly disliked malcontents. 220605 ... past i couldn't smell anything. I was cleaning up at the end of the day and kept trying to smell more and more fragrant things left out during the bustle of the day. nothing made an impact on my nostrils. (when i woke up, i tested myself, starting on honey dew and the subtle scent of that fruit did the trick.) 220626 ... past i was fighting with the robots-- actual battle robots in the dream-- that run the cra over my parental leave benefits. (which truly isn't fair to the people doing their best on the frontlines of a shit system. 220712 ... past i was on my way back to my parents house and saw what looked like a giant harvest moon shining through the trees between their house and the neighbours. only, it wasn't that familiar rocky face but instead it looked like a gas giant. i walked to the back yard, to get around the trees, and saw that it wasn't one harvest gas giant but two. as i pulled my phone out to get a picture the view changes. "what the fuuuuuck" quietly slipped out of my lips as the thing turned, the "gas giants" flared and a large triangular shape sped away. i just barely got a picture. i went around the front and into the house. the power was out, and there was no reception. my entire immediate family was there, and everyone was as shaken as me. i passed my phone around and the horde shook their head in disbelief. we talked about what it might mean, staring at the blurry photo that captured what they all saw with their own eyes. when i later went to send the photo to my wife, after cell reception came back, the picture was gone. i was scared. 220722 ... past it was a blatherskite_dream, set in some small irish town (though what made it irish i couldn't say). it was located on a peninsula and the tide was something to be seen. i was on a quick, less than a week, visit to an unnamed skite. as the week went on, i realized more and more past personalities from these red and blue pages lived in this curious little place. i remember jane and misstree, at least, being there although i don't recall my host. we talked about those who used to share these pages but who everyone had lost track off (leif in particular i remember being discussed as caught between the western mountains and eastern shores). the place i was staying at was located at the top of the peninsula and run by the dad of a skite, and she was a municipal politician of some kind. on the day i left, the peninsula was hit by a series of large waves that washed through shops and pubs. residents took it in stride, as if it was a normal occurrence. i called a cab for the airport but said the pub i was staying above and everyone there was offended i actually said the name of the place, even though it was written above the front windows in lights. the car didn't want to come so far down the street so i had to run. i really had to catch my flight to get back home to start a new job doing something ecology related near kelowna. 220803 ... past my favourite mayoral candidate came to my work, which was located in some kind of archival warehouse. they had a small entourage and was handing out signs. both for themself and my former councillor, forgetting that the maps were recently redrawn to reflect growth in my old ward. i took one of each and walked into the area where all my colleagues were hiding away from the politicians. everyone was eating heavily loaded hotdogs, but i managed to start a fight between two coworkers who both wanted the councillor's sign, but didn't want to leave our little hidden spot to get their own. 220817 ... epitome of incomprehensibility (This made me laugh, not just in what it depicted, but how it was worded. Speaking of wording, let me voice my linguistics-ish delight at seeing you reinterpret the blathe title as [proper noun] [verb] while I'd started it as [adjective] [noun].) 220818 ... past something about heat pumps. dream people were really excited about them. 220821 ... past (yes! it came up in either three_words or a gander and i ran with it.) 220821 ... past i was getting a tour of some kind of custom made plastics and glass wares facility with my brother, led by the owner. all the workers were happy but young. the owner wanted to show us how things work so took over making a garden edger from scratch. it involved malleable plastic and flower to make the handle (but it didn't, apparently, have a pile). the owner kept getting distracted and had to run off, so we sort of wandered. we shrugged it off as he wanted to know every aspect of his business, and not being business people didn't want to judge. the staff seemed like children but also grown at the same time. one was a kid i know is five, but he was my height. even the owner was like this. immature, as in young, but seemingly adultish too. anyways, i popped into the washroom to find it open to a ward-style hospital were a worker was getting treated. i figured out the cartoonish button labels to make the toilet experience private and an article about a deceased staff member appeared. she was in her fifties, looked five but tall, and the article went on and on about how all the staff hated her. eventually we left. my other brother picked us up and as we were leaving the owner ran out an gave us imperfectly spherical balls, in faded red, with raised veins of pink on them. even though we entered through a grand front door the exit was deep underground. 220901 ... past i dreamt i had a truly prodigious bright orange bowel movement. curious, i used a stick to poke at it. turns out it was made of fully formed carrots. 221003 ... past a mayoral candidate was concerned about his chances so he decided to buy and cook all the ikea meatballs. all of them from everywhere. he went to his mom's house, which in the dream is near me because i recently learned this guy grew up near by. anyways, in the dream ikea had a new line of "popcorn meatballs" that expanded in size when cooked. so here was this desperate dude cooking all the popcorn ikea meatballs in the world. now the neighbourhood is in a little valley and the meatballs filled all the space between the hills on three sides and tumbled into the river on the forth. 221021 ... past i may not have been asleep, but i was definitely not awake. the mattress began to mould to my body, lying flat on my back (not my usual sleeping position). a hundred thousand pinpricks of small infernos danced across my body while a cold wind fought to break through the window and carry me away. eventually i peeled myself from the sheets and stumbled to the bathroom. my temperature was in the red zone and i quickly swallowed both ibuprofen and acetametophine, and did my best to get back to bed, cracking the window to let the promise of cool relief in. as i lay back down, my mind tried to piece itself in and out of existence, finding itself instead a muted pink smear across these cranberry pages. 221114 ... past i don't remember the details, but it had something to do with trying to find yeast in the dark to bake something. 221116 ... past i was cooking dinner. a splendid layered dish: raw chicken, chopped onion, and thinly sliced eggplant. it was all thoroughly drenched in oil. the meat would be cooked in an instant, if only my barbeque lighter would work (and ignite all that oil). i had matches on hand but was not keen to use them as i expected a fireball to rise from the dish as soon as it caught. 221201 ... past playing soccer with beachballs. it wasn't great. 221207 ... past the department where i submitted my last academic job application called me to offer me a job. it had been half a decade or so, so i was confused. also i didn't get an interview at the time (they only interviewed people who already had academic jobs, which is how these things work these days). anyways, i showed up and tried to negotiate but they wouldn't match my current salary even though it was in the range of the offered position. so i jumped in a little red play wagon and took off down a steep hill while giving them the finger. 221208 ... past i had reclaimed the captainship/organizer role of my soccer team, which i relinquished in 2013 after a five year stint. while doing the paperwork to effect the change (and thinking "i thought this was supposed to be informal!") an error message came on the screen: "Please Confirm Registration as Candidate in Local Election." so i duly registered as a candidate in my ward. my campaign consisted of paying for a website that read "vote for someone else! the incumbent! she's fantastic! i am only doing this to sign my soccer team up for the winter season!" anyways, i won. 221221 ... past the husband of one of my wife's friends somehow ended up behind me while i was checking these red pages and asked me what i was looking at. "just an online writing group" i said, wincing internally at the facile description as well as his deepening interest. the last thing i wanted was to share the url with him, or her, or anyone i know primarily in the flesh, especially if they've been written about here. (dream me is feeling some feels eh?) 221231 ... past i woke up from a vivid dream in the night to comfort one of the kids, and committed to myself to record the dream here. but even though I've been up for the day for less than 10 minutes and the flavour of it sits on my brain, i've lost the details. though, in a meta way, i have a weird feeling that the above might actually have been the dream. 230101 ... past i was making pot pies for friends (this is something we do. rotating pie based potlucks in the winter.) and added mashed sweet potato to the pie crust. it was delicious. (now i'm trying to see if this is something that is real, and discovering the world of sweet potato dessert pies.) 230107 ... past this one was a bit recursive, though the memory in the dream in the memory in the dream is already fragmenting (to be fair to dreaming me, i have been up for two hours). i was on a work call with a really random mixed up group of people that didn't make sense together. they were in a forest. the scene was familiar and triggered a dream memory of rolling in our old car, over and over, and landing with a broken arm. i somehow pushed the car upright and drove the 200 or so kilometers home and then to the closest hospital. i snapped back to the meeting as everyone was looking at me through my computer -- they were all on site (we do not do site work like this) and had asked me a question. i started describing the emotions i felt as the car rolled and then the dreams of being an arm being broken. there was more but it's gone. 230119 ... past a voice boomed out a simple truth: "the things people celebrate as heritage are just the built remains of previous waves of gentrification." 230210 ... past one: i was part of some kind of non-combattant military unit capture by soviets. they made us all put on ill-fitting skates and play hockey against professional teams. there was a giant zamboni that would rev it's engine menacingly and flicker into some kind of pickup truck then back to zamboni-form. two: i was doing taxes and transformed, bodily, into an rrsp. (i don't even know what that means.) 230225 ... past when i finally slept, work crept in (though i am typically good at compartmentalizing it away), and then i woke up and logged in to a whole different degree of professional annoyance. 230315 ... past i was curled up in the passenger seat of the van and heard a screeching sound. a purple fiat whipped around the corner into the parking lot and did a wild series of turns, sort of like a dazed house fly. then it crashed into the wall of a building and turned on its side. I got out and helped the man inside out. he was fine but told me either pretend to be asleep or run. i pretended to be asleep and he got back in the car and more men came, lifted it up, and carried it into a building. i felt the presence of someone peering into the window but was committed to the act and did some fake snoring. they left me alone. 230324 ... past we were at some kind of seaside look out at the top of a cliff. a car turned on to the little plaza and one of my kids and a kid i don't know climbed onto the crenellated wall. when the car left, i put my arms out to my kid and said "hop down" and he jumped to me. the other kid said "hello" and jumped towards the sea. he survived but landed screaming in the surf. 230422 ... past i was washing raspberries. 230505 ... past i was in a busy bank branch and although i really wanted to see a cashier i was in a hurry and left the long line for the atms. as i was putting in my request -- $500 in 50s and $40 in 5s, to pay some kind of rent (the 50s) and to split cabs (the 5s) -- four teenaged girls crowded to the machine next to me. one looked over as i counted the bills and said something like "look at mr fancy money pants afraid the robots are going to cheat him." 230601 ... past my dad was talking about his life after his family disembarked at the port of montreal, crossing an ocean to a new life. "we just hopped on another boat, got lost in the thousand islands, and settled on the south shore of wolfe island across the straight from those crazy descendants of napoleon's last retainers." (this, dear readers, is not where they settled. they settled in the anglo enclave of west island.) 230705 ... past this one was from a few nights ago but the taste of it lingers: we bought, sight unseen, a beautiful house in trinity-bellwoods (which i know is in toronto but beyond that i couldn't tell you a thing). on moving day we struggle to find it, only to discover that it is in the courtyard created by four towers, all of which have korean restaurants in the ground floor. we enter through a staircase that can't decide if it is going up or down and when we finally get in it is fully furnished and full of clean laundry. everywhere. it smells delicious though. 230716 ... past i was trying to kill earwigs the size of my upper arm with a flipflop. it was not very effective. 230718 ... past i was talking my middle kid to his first day of school (a month and a half away!) and parents were allowed to stay until the first bell and national anthem. he was upset, truly distraught, so we sat in the classroom at tiny desks in tiny chairs together. the school was the middle school i went to in my hometown, the new addition to it from the 1970s not the original 1890s structure. the principal came by (played in the dream by the president of the organization where i work, a jovial man who would be well suited, at least in his public and staff facing persona, to running an elementary school) and tried to cheer the little guy up. after that failed, the teachers came by. first the english one et, ensuite, la professeure française (these two the teaching team he'll most likely have in the fall). nothing worked. the bell started to ring and i had to go, lest i turn into a pumpkin. i was partway from the class to the door when the anthem began, the frog version -- you canadian skites who went to school in the 80s and 90s know the one -- and that was it for me. in a poof i transformed like cinderella's carriage on reverse. 230721 ... past that i answered all my emails. (nope.) 230725 ... past two dreams: first, of waking early and crosscountry skiing along the river as the sun slowly rose. second, of sleeping late due to lingering jetlag and missing an interview. 230904 ... past my teeth shifted and floss no longer fit between them. 230922 ... past the last couple nights have been vivid but fading. last night all that remains is a shoe that only fit with socks on. 231203 ... past i had a very positive, mutually respectful, conversation with the contractor who has been delaying coming back to finish work started to weeks ago that just needs finishing touches (and a big ladder which i do not own). he was already on route and through in an extra task he noticed for our troubles and left with a smile. 231212 ... In_Bloom RIP 2023, my past dream. Was it of me when you wrote of your raging gypsy, all her rage exploding like colored chalk bombs against pavement? My bitterness and wounded soul cannot be any longer now that I've learned of your passing from this mortal time. I quietly cry, feeling a sort of panic in finally letting go of our short story. Passionately I fell into you, let myself become enveloped and enraptured, throwing all my cards in. I have no other regrets than not more time to be your love, dancing in your eyes, burning and burning with joy. Forgive me, be well 231213 ... past i was at some kind of conference, in england, on a university campus that was surrounded by a wall of identical high rise hotels. as part of a group of invitees, crammed uncomfortably into tma room reminiscent of the study room from the tv show community, a question was posed about what to do with a ornery sheep. one by one various flavours of scientists stood up and gave their positions, backed by statistics and models and math. a holographic projection ran through each one. one failure after another. i slowly stood, last of all, the poor humanist in a see of number heads. "did you try giving it a little house?" and that was the solution. every creature needs their comforts. 240509 what's it to you? who go blather from