Category: Dreams

I dreamt last night that I'd changed jobs.

I went to work for some pretentious architectural firm downtown; not in a production capacity, but rather as their (only) network and computer support person.

And when I say pretentious, I mean pretentious: Cavernous rooms ala Dennis Villeneuve DUNE, replete with stone walls and minimal outside light, except for the conference rooms and executive offices that were on the outer perimeter of the building.

For some reason I arrived carrying only a pair of ironing boards, which I was directed to store under the owner's desk. "Under his desk?" I asked. "Yes, just put all your stuff under there for storage."

And it only got weirder from that point on. No one really introduced themselves, and I knew only a couple of people from my initial interview who seemed uninterested in helping me get settled. While I was hired for computer support, as I walked around the office, what struck me was that there were no computers—or for that matter, drafting desks—anywhere. I finally decided to just find a place to sit down and wait until someone came for me and direct me to my desk. Then I realized I'd left my backpack and laptop at home, so I couldn't even log on the company's internet.

That wouldn't have mattered, because as the morning drew on (for some reason it felt like it was only 8 am) every conference room and every available chair was filled with someone busy doing something.

I finally cornered someone (portrayed by Quinta Brunson from Abbot Elementary—albeit with bright, hot pink hair) who reluctantly showed me around the office and the immeidate neighborhood. Ooh! There was a Starbucks on the opposite side of the block the office occupied. Noted. Also some kind of bakery/pastry shop. Also noted. I lost her as we were walking back to the office, and as I made my way back inside I kept thinking, "Why am I even here? I'm retiring in 9 months!" Thankfully I was rescued from this frustrating nightmare by my alarm going off…

Though it's been twenty years since I moved away, I still often visit San Francisco…in my dreams.

The City that exists there is a strange, twisted version of reality, and my visits are usually prompted by having run across a particularly nostalgic photo online that day.

Most of those visits take place in the City at night (the photo above almost completely captures the vibe of these dreams) and usually in the Castro/ Upper Market area—if not exactly on the last street I lived before leaving. Streets are skewed. Getting from one point to another is…off. There are dirt roads in the heart of the City. Hills exist where there are none. I stumble across entire neighborhoods that I never knew existed—and only exist in that realm. Mission Street runs at a strange diagonal to other streets in the area and is bordered by multi-story Victorian buildings for its entire length.

Other times I find myself downtown, South of Market, or walking in absolutely cavernous underground MUNI tunnels between stations. I sometimes find myself on a MUNI train, encountering stations that do not exist in real life. My mind writes these obvious anomalies off by saying, "Oh, this must be that new station/line they opened."

The common thread that seems to run through these dreams is that of photography, or rather my inability to photograph anything I see. I come across the setting sun glinting off a building and think, "That's a fantastic shot!" and without fail my phone malfunctions. By the time I do get it working, the perfect shot has passed. I can't tell you how many absolutely gorgeous photos have been lost because the dream phone starts acting wonky. It's almost like I know I'm in a dream and think that if only I can photograph what I see and bring it back on my phone, it will prove I was really there.

It actually started out with watering a plant. It was one of those plants that was rooted in a bowl of water. I was going to top off the bowl when I saw something moving among the rocks and roots. Upon closer examination it was a small crab. "Where did that come from?" As I continued to look, fish and other small creatures appeared. I thought I couldn't top off the water without messing up the water chemistry.

At some point this bowl transformed into a small fish tank and the angel fish that Ben had bought last year (now living at my sister's) appeared. "I thought we moved him!" and at the same time realized I really needed to move these animals into something bigger.

While in real life I haven't set my aquarium back up since the fire (and was discussing with Ben my desire to just get rid of it altogether last week) in the dream I had two large aquariums, both brightly lit with deep blue backgrounds. The smaller one was nearly empty, so I elected to put these "new" creatures in  there. At first the larger one looked barren of life as well, but once I transferred the fish from the plant bowl/tank into the small aquarium, dozens of fish came out of hiding in the larger tank, including a beautiful blue, white and yellow angel fish. (I cried upon seeing him, as I thought I'd lost him forever.)

(I just tried finding a picture online of something similar, but of course this being a dream creature, nothing could be found; apparently that color combination doesn't exist in the freshwater species.)

I determined long ago that when aquariums appear in my dreams, they are indicative of the general state of my mental and emotional health. When I've dreamt of dirty and decrepit tanks, the overwhelming emotion I feel is sadness and guilt that I've ignored them for so long.

You would think that after the last eighteen months, aquariums in my dreams would be a disaster, but it was just the opposite. First new growth appeared in an unlikely location and I transferred it into obviously clean and healthy tanks that had been there all along.

I think the meaning is obvious. I know I woke from that dream with a smile on my face.

In my dream it was late afternoon. The sky was clear and they were coming in from the west, just in front of the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson.

Ben and I were both exhausted last night, so—very strange for us—we were both in bed and asleep shortly after 8 pm. I don't know about Ben, but I was immediately dead to the world, and actually slept well all night.

That was, at least until around 4 am or so. With everything in that's happening in the world, I'm not at all surprised that my subconscious chose to generate a 2012-inspired nightmare last night.

I was sitting in a Starbucks (natch) right on the beach in what felt like San Diego. (I've only been to San Diego a couple times, but this didn't feel like Los Angeles or San Francisco, although I suppose it might've been Santa Barbara.) Anyhow I glanced out the window at the parking lot and watched incredulously as a small light blue coupe parked there started hovering. It rose about ten feet in the air and then began drifting and slowly made its way back to the ground, hitting a silver sedan parked several feet away as it did so. Needless to say this caught the attention of everyone in the store and we were soon watching as more cars started exhibiting the same behavior. I started gathering my things and advised people to get out of the store because this—whatever it was—was not normal and we should all get as far away as possible. But no, instead of fleeing the store, people started gathering outside filming the phenomenon on their cell phones…

When other, small bits of broken metal objects began falling from the sky, however, I knew it was time to take my chances (although it probably would've been safer staying inside), grabbed my stuff and headed out. It was then I noticed that the ocean was rapidly receding. Remembering the Indonesian earthquake from a few years ago, I knew what was coming and everyone had to GET THE FUCK inland, and started yelling.

I ran away from the coast. I got lost in a maze of office buildings and glanced back to see the ocean surge begin in the distance. I pressed onward, and then found myself lost in a residential neighborhood and trapped in someone's back yard. I turned around and saw the wave; it was easily a thousand feet high  and now only a few miles offshore. I realized that no matter what I did, I was done for. There was no escape, and surprisingly I calmly accepted my fate.

I woke after that.

While I still ponder the deeper psychological meaning behind this, the practical aspects certainly fascinate me. It was obviously an asteroid strike in the pacific, something big that would affect gravity (or at least attract metals and not organic objects). In any case, the visual effects were stunning.

I woke this morning from a disturbing dream. I was at work in a meeting when we heard emergency sirens. While my colleagues remained in the conference room I went to the window (I work on the 19th floor) to see a ginormous tornado moving through downtown. It was almost the width of a city block, and was black as coal. The twister was close enough that it should've impacted the building I was in, yet all it did was throw debris at it, none of which seemed to do any damage.

Then I looked off to the west and saw it approaching: a tsunami wave, a wall of water fifteen stories high, heading directly toward us. The scene was straight out of 2012 or Deep Impact. My last thought before the wave hit the building and I awoke was, "So…this is how it ends."

This is not surprising considering where my head has been at lately.

A wall of water that high approaching Phoenix could mean only one thing: a civilization-ending asteroid strike in the Pacific.

Ever wake up from a dream thinking, WTF was that all about?

For some reason I'd decided to take a World History course at ASU. Apparently everything was in place and after receiving all the confirmation emails I arrived on campus on a Tuesday morning for the first class. Why Tuesday? And why morning? Being a working adult, maybe only the first class was in the morning and all the rest were scheduled for the evening?

I realized after getting there that no physical class location was ever specified in the email and there no phone number to contact. I was about a half hour early so I wasn't too concerned; I figured I could stop by the admin building or student union and someone there would have class schedules and locations and be able to point me on my way.

The information desks at both locations were unstaffed, and after aimlessly wandering around campus and asking random strangers, no one I managed to find knew anything. As time started ticking down to the start of class, I asked myself why I was even bothering with this; what was I hoping to accomplish? It wasn't part of some program; I had apparently signed up for just a single class. To make matters worse, for some reason I'd called out from work the day before and now I was going to miss a second day…for what?

The last thing I remember before waking up was walking back to my car after deciding to just blow the whole thing off.

I can't even find any symbolism in this that relates to real-world events.

I woke up with my lower back in pain around 3 am, so I got up, popped a Naproxen, and went back to bed.

The dreams I had thereafter were just bizarre. One in particular I found so weird I had to scribble some notes because if I didn't I knew I'd completely forget it by morning:

I was at work. I pulled my Mac out of my backpack and realized that somehow I'd grabbed Ben's old machine that's currently sitting in a closet. I briefly thought about using it (since I basically just needed it for email and cruising the internet) until I could go home at lunch but then realized it didn't even have an OS loaded. I told my boss I needed to run home for a few minutes (I live, after all, less then 5 minutes away) and left.

I arrived home to my last apartment in San Francisco, to discover a notice from UPS taped on the door that a delivery had been attempted and that Sparkles water had left a new bottle of water. The UPS guy was still there, saw that I'd come home, and came back to give me a large envelope.

I went in the building and noticed that the door to my apartment was ajar. I knew that the landlord was doing renovations, but she'd mentioned nothing to me about needing to get in my apartment. I walked in and every wall was covered with plaster patches. I thought, "what the hell?" and at that moment she walked in.

The landlord was Joan Rivers. Yes, Joan Rivers. (IRL, Molly, my landlord in SF was just as old and nearly as wealthy—she lived next door to Diane Feinstein—but not anywhere near as funny.)

"What have you done to my apartment?" I asked.

"Your apartment?" This is my apartment. You're on the wrong floor, silly! I'm renovating this one for me."

And then I realized that yes, I was in the wrong unit altogether and that the UPS delivery wasn't for me and neither was the bottle of water.

Interestingly, while this was supposedly my last apartment in San Francisco, it bore very little resemblance to the real thing. IRL, you got to the apartment via an outside balcony that ran the length of the building, and it was a large (for SF, anyway) one bedroom unit. In this dream, it was reached by an interior hallway and the unit I found myself in looked much a standard generic hotel room.

Have I mentioned that the entire time all this was happening, "Singin' in the Rain" was playing at angelic volume and that somehow I had forgotten all about the Mac—or returning to work—and had come home to watch the movie? (Something I've never seen all the way through.)

From there it got even more confusing. Joan had apparently taken over the apartment below mine, but I needed to go the apartment above mine to watch the movie. Joan wanted to see it as well, and while the door to the stairway was blocked by construction stuff, leaving only an opening about six inches wide, she somehow managed to get her skinny ass through but I had to take the elevator (which IRL we all referred to as Mr. Toad's Wild Ride). Apparently the elevator had been replaced as part of the construction as well, and it was now glass-walled and overlooked the four-story foyer—but still dropped an inch once you got on.

Upon reaching the fourth floor apartment, I realized I was now carrying my Dad's old flat panel computer monitor (apparently to watch the film on), but Joan was nowhere to be found and the apartment where this was going to happen was occupied by two black guys who had no idea why I was even there.

And then I woke up.

I always hope that by writing these dreams out I'll gain some understanding of what my subconscious was trying to tell me, but with this one I've got nothin'…

I realized the other day that it has been nearly thirteen years since I left San Francisco. Thirteen. Years.

And yet, The City still appears in my dreams—always accompanied by feelings of frustration, abandonment, and a profound feeling of sadness at no longer having a home there. (Ironic, because at least consciously I have no desire to return; San Francisco is very much a city of the young and wealthy and I no longer fall into either demographic.)

In my most recent San Francisco dream, I found myself South of Market with my friend Rick (who still lives in the City). There were new highrise glass and concrete buildings everywhere I looked and I was feeling very irritated because everywhere I turned I was being presented with wonderful photographic opportunities and I'd come to San Francisco without my DSLR, only having my iPhone with me.

(In this dream, like many others I've had surrounding the City, my visits have been impossible day trips, driving up and returning home in a single day.)

I tried several times to get one particular shot of the late afternoon sun glinting off one of these new buildings, but people either walked in front of me and wouldn't move, or when I moved the angles of the building in the shot were unacceptable.

I finally gave up and joined Rick for dinner in a restaurant, hoping to salvage at least a couple of the photos I'd taken. The iPhone camera app was very funky with none of the usual controls and it was confusing the hell out of me. Night fell, but the camera seemed to taking very good pictures in the restaurant even though there was no way of actually confirming it.

Rick left restaurant and I followed a few minutes later. It was once again light outside (which should've clued me in that I was dreaming, but sadly didn't). I lingered to finally take that one impressive photograph up the street heading to the financial district that I was trying to capture the before; the sun was again low in the west and the sky was dappled with clouds. Everything lined up in the photo, but again, I had no way of checking if it was actually any good or if the camera had even recorded it.

After that I lost track of Rick. I walked back up to Market Street and found myself in a very confusing Civic Center station. It was a morass of vendor stalls, intersecting stairways and undulating escalators. I took one escalator down but found myself in BART. "That won't get me to Grand View Avenue," I thought, and headed back upstairs. I knew I needed a clipper card to ride MUNI, but didn't have one and didn't know where to get one.

I was carrying two bags, one from the Apple Store and one that was full of clothing. No one could provide any help in getting a clipper card and there was no place in the station to buy one. Finally one guy told me I needed to go to somewhere far north of the station to pick one up. It would've been too long a walk, so I finally decided to just go back up to the surface and catch a cab.

I took my phone out and saw it was completely banged up and scratched; then realized it was only the case. "That can be replaced," I thought as it started pouring rain. I had no umbrella and resolved to getting drenched. I started walking up Market but ended up a bit north on one of the side streets. I called Rick, but had a horrible connection. I told him I was on my way back to his apartment and that I'd be there shortly. I couldn't find a cab anywhere, so I started walking up Market Street toward the Castro.

I woke shortly thereafter.

I dreamt last night I went to Walgreens to pick up a prescription. This in itself is odd because I haven't used Walgreens for scripts in years because their service (at least in Denver) is so uniformly appalling. But yet here I was, and not unusual for them, the pharmacy wasn't open even though a half dozen employees were milling about inside.

I was near the front of an ever-increasing line of people when they finally started accepting customers. At first they had only one window open, but when I was finally at the head of the line they opened a second. A large, at first friendly, black clerk asked for my name. "Oh yes, I just saw yours here," she said, while rifling through a huge pile of bags strewn across the counter. "I'll need to see your ID," she said.

I opened my wallet and could not find my driver's license, even though I'd just had it out a second before. My wallet is a huge mess, so I ended up pulling everything out in an effort to locate it. As it took longer and longer for me to find it, I could tell the clerk—not to mention the crowd behind me was getting annoyed. I finally found it and handed it to her. She took it to the back counter, turned around and asked, "What kind of Canon printer do you own?"

I thought, WTF? "What kind of Canon printer do I own? What does that have to do with picking up my medication…and how do you even know I have a Canon?"

"They're running a promotion and I need your information."

"I don't know," I said, becoming increasingly annoyed that I'd been there for such a long time and still hadn't gotten what I came in for. "Pixma something-or-other. I'm not interested. Just write down 'customer refused to provide information.'"

"I can't do that, she said. You have to tell me what model it is."

"I DON'T FUCKING REMEMBER!"

At this point I'd caught the attention of the woman standing at the window next to me. She gave me a wry smile.

The clerk then pulled something out from under the counter that started shining lights into my eyes. I noticed it had "cognitive assessment" and "memory recall" buttons on it that were lit up. "What the fuck are you doing?" I said.

"You're acting impaired. I can't release your meds without verification that you're capable of taking them as instructed."

"Because I can't remember the model number of my printer, something that's none of your damn business to begin with? I never consented to a medical test!"

The woman to my left now got involved. "He's fine. He just doesn't remember his printer model number. Hell, I don't even know what kind of printer I have!"

The clerk then turned the device on her.

"Now you've done it," I said.

At that point I woke up.

This followed an earlier dream where I was walking around North Beach in San Francisco attempting to take pictures with my iPad! (Even though I had my old Pentax SLR with me. I think it was out of film.)

I guess this is what I get for having had such a late dinner last night.

While it hasn't happened recently, I used to often have dreams of walking in or actually boarding trains in the MUNI subway tunnels between the actual stations beneath Market Street in San Francisco. My dream tunnels were nothing like reality; while they often started out as the standard size you'd expect, they would often open into huge caverns, as if stations were constructed but abandoned at some point for lack of funding. Unlike the dark, damp tunnels of reality, these cavernous spaces—while no means bright—were decently lit from above. My tunnel dreams often centered around the Civic Center Station, one stop on the line whose energy I always found a bit odd.

Come to think of it, I have a lot of dreams about trains. Freight trans are often ominous, dark, frightening entities; passenger trains are the opposite, although they often take me places I hadn't intended. To this day I remember a dream I had shortly after arriving in The City in 1986; I hopped on a train that took me to the beach, but it wasn't like the real N- or L- lines, nor was it like any beach I'd ever seen in San Francisco. (Think sub-tropical with lots of lush vegetation.)

But I digress…

This morning, when I saw these photos of the big dig going on under New York City, it was as if they were pulled right out of my MUNI tunnel dreams. Even the lighting effects were spot-on.

At least in a dream last night.

Work, work, work. It's always about work.

I was at the office, and one of those dark, ominous storms was moving in. "This is not good," I thought as I kept glancing out the window. I looked up and saw the clouds swirling in a circular motion and saw the funnel forming.

Apparently others had too, because the office manager came over the intercom and instructed everyone to go downstairs to the inner hallways as we'd done a so many times before in drills. "Not without my laptop," I thought as I grabbed it, shoved it in its case and then into my backpack, and joined the procession downstairs.

The twister came and went. Our building was spared any real damage, but the adjacent structure had windows blown out.

The all clear was given, and the next thing I know I was walking down the street towards a non-existent (in real life) cafe. The clouds were dissipating and the sun was peeking out. Everything was a mess. As I was walking, another band of dark clouds started to move in, and I hurried my pace. (Where my car was in all of this, I haven't a clue. Maybe I took public transit to work that day.) I arrived at the cafe and stood transfixed in front of the television, watching reports of the devastation around Denver. I looked outside and saw the band of clouds heading northwest, where Ben was (at his old school). I took out my phone to warn him, and saw he'd been frantically texting me, trying to warn me of the approaching storms. I tied to text back but it wasn't working.

Suddenly it was night. Nothing came of the second storm, so I left the cafe and started walking to the train station. The wind picked up and suddenly there was another twister in the distance. Buildings exploded as it touched them, causing fires to spiral up into the sky.

Somehow having managed to escape that, the next thing I remember was being in my car, with the sun brightly shining, driving west down Colfax Avenue, noting all the destruction that lined the street. I had finally made contact with Ben and he was all right. We were both heading back home to survey the damage. I worried about what shape our place would be in, but simultaneously thought, "Well, if we've lost everything we have insurance; we'll start fresh in the new apartment."

And that is when I woke up.