Dream Log: October 23, 2000

I dreamed twice: I was organizing a party at 5 pm. It was going to be great. I was lounging in the backyard of the house I lived in when I was 8 with my boy. Oops, it's 5 pm. I must email everyone to tell them the party will be at 8. I wake up and realize I have a commitment at 7 tonight and can't attend the party. I reschedule in my mind to next week, then wake up a little more and realize that I can't, becuase it was only a dream party. Sigh.

I dreamed too that I was talking to Bjossa, the killer whale at the vancouver aquarium. At one point I ask why she has a human head, neck, and shoulders sewn to her head. "I used to be Stephan Richards." Oh. After a bizarre pageant, I, Sue, get to be the second head sewn on, in some weird lifesaving operation. The second place winner in the pageant is distraught, and becomes a really really mean fictional character. We all wore green.

On the road. I am asked to set the delivery van on fire, since we have no faith the driver will ever get around to moving it. I raid it for cash and useful stuff, but Gordon calls off the exercise before I can start smashing and igniting.

The plastic card factory, much like the 8/7/00 dream. At first I am just visiting, but my successor is nowhere to be found, so I try to chip in in the computer room. I make a dramatic display of falling asleep at my desk, "waking" disoriented as I fall off the chair in the back of the classroom, and now the factory staff are interspersed with high-school chums like Frank and Joe Z. I have an urgent responsibility, but no leadership. I run into Melinda and her clique by the lockers, and we all wander through the cafeteria to the dorms.

The boys are watching sports or maybe Baywatch, and the girls chat and bustle. From the corner of my eye, what looks suspiciously like the leg of the black-and-yellow-striped tarantula probes delicately, questioningly from a stack of magazines on a footrest. No, it's a snake, and it makes a beeline for the left back pocket of my jeans. In panic, I grab it by the tail and attempt to stun or kill it by whipping its head against the footstool. The recurring dream theme of ineffectual offense kicks in, and it flops weakly. I can't kill it, and dread mounts that I am angering it - this being Seattle, Oregon or northern California, it must be venomous, sooner or later it will bite me. It's no bigger than a pencil, I throw it away from me and it heads right back for me. It must sense my heat. The carpet confounds my efforts to stomp it under my boot, and I wake gasping.

Finally, a night without an erotic dream. Instead, I had dreams about video games. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

Atari Bubblegum: I have dreams about the atari 2600 every now and then. This was my first real game system, and I still play it every now and then. Demon Attack ruled, Phoenix blew. Well, I was in a strange nostalgia shop, which I think I've been in before in other dreams, and I was hanging out in the video game department. All of the atari games were packaged in tubes, presumably to keep compatiblity with the store's automated archival systems, since the store was so huge. I searched through the stock, and discovered a section of games that had additional components (much like Star Raiders had the extra controller). Among them was a strange game called Bubblegum Fighters, which was packaged with this high-tech electronic bubblegum that you were supposed to chew as you played the game. How well you chewed altered how well you did in the game. Unfortunately, the dream ended before I got to play the game. I just chewed the gum instead. The bubblegum reference may have something to do with my new tongue piercing. The night before I kept waking myself up when it clicked against my teeth.

Carmageddon Commute: Part of my regular trip home has involved a lot of construction and delays, and sometimes I take the back route home. Annoyingly, I never know if it saves me any time, since if I take the back route, I don't know if there were any delays. At some point along this route, the drive turned into the game Carmageddon, and I rocketted off of a collapsed bridge, falling miles down to the road below. The car had a parachute. I think the girl I like was in the car with me, which could also be a reference to the fact that I crashed my car on the way to get my tongue pierced, and she was in it at the time. I'm not sure where the dream went from there, although I remember retrying the jump a few times.

Don't you just hate it when you've typed an incredibly well-written and detailed Dream Log into E2, only to find several hours later that doing so was part of your dream? That's what happened to me, today.

As best I can recall, I had three different dreams, counting the one where I thought I was describing the previous two.

1. I'm a pumpkin seller on a street corner in San Francisco (where I was, in waking life, stranded for a week this past July with an ear infection while ostensibly en route to Manila). Catlike couples come up to me, buying pumpkins, and each asks if I have any of the special ones. I confide in each of them that I do, but it's a "little extra"... they gladly pay, and I give them a pumpkin without any seeds. Instead, the pumpkins have ibuprofen in them.

2. I'm helping a troop of Girl Scouts debug some problems with BGP. The neighbor keeps toggling between idle and active, see. I figure either the AS number is wrong, or the update-source command is missing. It turns out, instead, that the Cisco is configured to act as a scented candle. I explain this, and they thank me.

23 Skidoo!

Last night I was on Robert Anton Wilson's website, staying up way too late. I decide it's time for sleep. I wonder what the date is as I slide my mouse pointer over my computer clock. Time: 3:23, date: October 23. I get a quick head trip on the infamous number 23 as I shutdown and go to sleep.

• A garden party in my back yard. I'm eleven years old and while the adults get buzzed on red wine I climb the big oak tree. I climb way up into the skinny branches as the weak ones tumble down to the ground under my probing sneakers. I get to the very top of the tree and poke my head above the sand. I scramble up the side of the hole and back out onto the beach. It's a sweltering day, and the waves glint transparent green in the sunshine. I'm twenty-one years old and am slowly learning the power of magick words. In my head, equations made of words calculate themselves. I speak and walk out onto the back porch. I get the feeling that someone needs my help so I place my wine glass onto a red and white table cloth and walk down under the big oak. I look up and see a young child just as a two foot section of branch falls towards my head. I hear a warning from someone behind me as I bat it away easily. Then I am out of body and a clean white sheet of paper appears on my mind screen with a single equation typed out. It is a function of one magick word, which equals a sequence of numbers streaming down the page. I hear Robert Anton Wilson's voice telling my it is the formula for reality control. With understanding of it, one may turn any universe into a lucid dream. In the hypnagogic state between waking and dreaming, I understand the formula perfectly. In fact, I realize, I wrote it myself.

I expected nightmares after seeing Requiem for a Dream that afternoon with my cousin.

Instead, I dreamed about preparing for my new job at an Engineering design firm in San Diego. I thought that San Diego was a city in and of itself, but looking at the map, I realized that it was actually a suburb of Miami, which bordered San Diego on the south side. I called my friend who is from Miami, and he advised me to live in San Diego itself, rather than live in Miami and commute to San Diego. I realized that there was an additional bonus to this: Many girls who put amateur nude pictures of themselves on the web are from Florida, so I was sure that I'd meet a few wild ones, even though I knew that all the kinky girls lived on the eastern side of florida and (in my dream) Miami was on the southwestern corner.

Cafeteria of my old high school. I am not allowed to go in to the senior lunchroom, even though I am a senior.

My friend Eric, turns his back to me and will not let me sit with him. Everyone is wearing these really cozy, warm looking coats, even though we are indoors. I note that I do not have one and I become very self-conscious, particularly once I notice that I have no shoes on.

Mounds of tasty looking fruits and pastries, a long line of people waiting to get at them. Also, a wedding going on.
Someone has brought a baby and I watch as a flock of cooing girls swoop down on the new mom.

I find two muffins, how I will pay for them? There is money in a dish by the register, not just pennies, but quarters as well. The total comes to $2.01, which I can not figure out, as it is not divisible by two.

I wander the hallways in shoe-less exile, with my muffins.

I go through a door that says DESCENDING LEVEL. I can see the library on the lower floor and I try to get there, but the floor is suddenly slanted and then I almost fall into a hole.

I lay on the floor, cheek pressed to the marble, heart pounding. There is a cash register down there. It scares me. A puddle of red liquid gathers in front of me then drips down onto the cash register.

It is going to ruin the whole thing.