Everything good, within walking distance.

I was in the scuzzier part of the downtown core.  My cohort and I were checking out a venue of some sort.  The main floor consisted of indie gallery and performance nooks, and a lobby that was reminiscent of what it would be like if an old style hotel was repurposed by the art crowd – couches, lamps, ironic classiness side-by-side with kitsch and comfort furnishings.

We found the elevator, and made it up to what I think was the third floor.  The front windows looked over the street, with an inspiring view of a mixed-up neighborhood.  Little restaurants and shops, people on bike and on foot, cars, sidewalks and alleys, animals and garbage, a perfect city microcosm.  At the back, the balcony opened out onto the street, which was at a higher level, and the streets led to a gentle maze of residential lanes and quaint low-rise apartment blocks and houses.

If bohemian literary characters lived in a common neighborhood when they weren’t busy being in the stories they came from, this would be the neighborhood.

I cannot recall what it was I was there to investigate.  But I did find a good Holmesian loft, and a couple of interesting businesses that I felt would support my lifestyle if I were to move there.

And this leads me to the realization that my dreams have been exceptionally cooperative lately in supplying me with magical settings, as demonstrated by the images above, with the added benefit that all of it was taking place along the stretch of de Maisonneuve between Atwater and Guy metros – which in '99 was my first home turf in Montreal.

Cows in the city.

I woke up unsure if I was still dreaming.

I looked around my loft, and considered rearranging to make best use of the available space.  Then I remembered I still had another little bachelor apartment downtown -- I could even remember the feeling of the neighborhood, from the other dream months ago in which that place existed.  Was I still renting that too?  Is that why I didn't have as much money as I thought?

I looked down and saw the store where we all worked.  Eric and Christelle were on the floor, and I dangled my legs over the edge of the loft floor.  I went down to look around at things.  I found some industrial breath mints for smokers, named after popular bands, in large format packages.  I took them to the counter to show Christelle, because I thought they were funny, but she mentioned that she thought they were detergents, which they were.

Then I retreated to a car-interior-like pod on the floor, where I watched Eric drive some cleaning machine back and forth.  I realized he was taking the place over out of necessity, and they were basically humoring me to be kind.

I left, facing a long semi-industrial street.  My door was one of the few on a long stretch of low, white buildings.  Across the street was a field with train tracks, beyond that, trees in the distance.  I realized that this part of Ontario was very much like the prairies with its wide open blue skies, and how I missed that (and would continue to miss it in tall cities or regions with mountains).

I turned right and walked east.  I was wearing my plaid pyjama pants, white bathrobe, some kind of shirt, with my backpack and headphones.  Every once in a while a car would pass and I laughed as I thought what they must think of the sight of me.  Occasionally I'd spy someone inside a building or car, always silhouetted.

I tired of walking quickly and turned to go back, but the street was different, and I couldn't find my place.  I realized this wasn't a dream-case of the territory changing, but was actually a sign of mental illness, and that I was basically lost and confused, stumbling around the streets in a bathrobe.

I changed streets in hopes of finding something familiar, but just ended up in more commercial areas, with no bearings on where I was.  Did I even know the city?  Would anyone know me?

Hinterland Who's Who:National Park Sex Zombies

I was stumbling east down Sherbrooke Street, out of my mind on drugs or alcohol or medication.  I was sort of aware I was acting like a crazy street person, with odd pauses and poses.  I passed by the record shop on the corner and decided to go in and finally buy a Feist album.

Inside, after wandering and browsing a bit, I was distracted by a video screen.  Someone had taken some animation of a character running through red hallways, and set it to a dub mashup of Evil Nine's Crooked and something by Slick Rick.  The animation eventually gave way to something else, but I was distracted by my realization that I was only wearing a towel wrapped around my waist.

Only a few blocks from home, I decided to walk.  But I was accosted by a beautiful girl with long, dark hair, who I apparently knew.  She took me on a different route that led us to a strange set of streets, with quaint European baroque buildings, but constructed in Lego colors, like some kind of theme park.  She had already rented us a room, at the narrow end of a Flatiron-shaped hotel, and sent me there.  The entire room was bed -- narrower at the foot than at the head -- but with windows on three sides the view was amazing.  She arrived, immediately stripped, and we had a lot of sex.

We received a notice from friends and went to meet them -- a tall, thin guy who looked a bit like George Orwell, and a blonde with short hair and a squeaky voice.  We got in our car and headed south, into the national park.  Orwell was driving, and the blonde jumped on the other girl and I -- more sex.  Then sleep.

We were woken up by the blonde, who was now driving.  She had turned the car around in a panic, because something had gone wrong where we were heading, though she didn't say exactly what.  Orwell took over driving again, and the blonde's panic didn't stop her from pushing the other girl and I into sex again.  We got to the unmanned park gate, and headed back to the hotel.

The lobby was run down as though it had been abandoned for years.  It was also full of zombies.  They would see us, lunge at us, then determine we were not fit for eating, which led to the conclusion that we were also undead now.  This suspicion was confirmed by Zombie Barry Corbin, sitting in the corner.

We were making peace with our new status, when suddenly something occurred to me.  I knew Barry Corbin had a variety show in New York.  He also didn't look like a zombie; in fact, a few of the zombies looked and acted pretty much like normal people.

I went up and challenged him directly: your show staff would know if you were a zombie.  So either this is all a hoax, or we're some special type of zombie who is resistant to decay and retains their consciousness, which implies eternal life.  So which is it?

From the look on his face, it was evident I had uncovered what he was trying to hide from us.  He stammered and hesitated.  Then, before he was able to confirm which option was the case, I awoke.

I'll never be the same.

I had some strange job, in a place that was half a laboratory of some sort, and half some old lady's apartment.  Not physically half-and-half, they were just both in the same place.  I think it was in Winnipeg.

I was working there doing some sort of testing of something, because I had quit my other job and needed something to keep me going.  I was making $12 an hour, but the work was boring, and the vibe was weird.  The place was like the rebel ship at the beginning of Star Wars -- modular white molded plastic, which sounds cool, but wasn't in this case.

So I'm gathering up my stuff to leave, and two things happen.  I have trouble getting a book of mine because all the rooms have been taken over by old ladies having baths.  And Hall and Oates are on television playing Scrabble on Oprah (which probably isn't her idea for her new show in real life), but once I mention that Daryl Hall is my favorite singer, the main old woman changes the channel immediately.

At that point I decide I'm never coming back.  When I leave, I'm at the corner of Roslyn and Osborne.  It's a nice summery day, and I decide that I'm not going to subject myself to that sort of thing anymore.

G.D.W.

"Guitar done worthy".  "Girls don't wallgaze". I was told these things in dreams, but I don't know what they are intended to mean.

I don't really know what any of it means.  My dreams have been screaming at me lately, trying to get me to hear something.  But it's like being yelled at frantically by someone in Japanese while they point to an approaching car; are you supposed to get in there immediately, or run away from it as fast as you can?

Last night...

It was winter.  I was somewhere in Manitoba, I think.  I had a truck that carried a lot of stuff I needed, but no driver's license.  I was driving anyway, from village to village, town to town.

I had parked nose-first in someone's driveway, at a trailer park, and was at the front of the vehicle when I slipped in the snow and slid down toward the backyard.  But there was no backyard -- it just sloped down about twenty feet to a cliff, and below that was a long, long drop into barren forest.  A tree just before the edge was all that stopped me.

My left arm was holding something I didn't want to let go, so I had to grab some roots with my right, and pull myself up.  Eventually I was able to reach some fence that offered a better grip, and I climbed back up into the neighbor's yard.

I packed up and prepared to leave, though my truck was now a pushcart, and I headed off into the snow again.

God damned winter.

Gary Busey was exceptionally helpful.

I had moved in with my mom, into her new faux-townhouse condo, where are the row houses are across from the elementary school in Swan River. While she was outside being ditzy, the place caught on fire. I lost pretty close to everything, and freaked out. I walked away, holding my head, yelling out loud "how could this happen to me, after everything else?"

I walked downtown, and reached the hotel with a bar and diner (the name of which I can't recall).  Gary Busey was there, and was about to drive his truck and trailer north to Nunavut with a delivery.  He offered me a ride, and I was glad for the chance to get the hell out of town.

It was a long trip, I guess, but it didn't seem so long.  At one point we came across some airplane debris -- a large wing fragment and a tailpiece from a commercial airliner.  We got out and took pictures of us posing with the wreckage.

I drove for a while, despite having no license, until it looked like a cop was behind us; we switched seats while driving.

Finally we got to our destination.  I don't know the name of the town, but the road forked gently to create a downtown area shaped like the Flatiron building (with the left branch going gently uphill).  There were a few restaurants, a surprisingly well-appointed arcade, and (I think) a remote college campus nearby.  Seemed like a nice place to stay.

As soon as we parked in the garage and got out, a Spanish man ran up to us and delivered a black notebook.  It was mine, and apparently not lost in the fire; it was his task to give it to me, but he didn't know it had belonged to me.  "Remarkable penmanship", he said as he handed it over.

Tales of the Golden City

For quite a few years I transcribed my dreams.  I kept a notebook and pen at bedside to be ready upon any wakening, in case my just-interrupted dream was still reclaimable.  Many of these records are in high detail, and go on for pages.  In general, the sooner I wrote it down the more detail was accessible, but practice did increase my longer-term recall as well.

I don't do it anymore, and for much of my thirties I didn't seem to be dreaming at all (or at least not in any memorable way).  But lately as I've been considering some major life questions, dreams have been forcing their way back in.

A couple of weeks ago, I dreamt that I should tell my boss to take some time to reflect and think about his future.  I didn't, but two days later his boss lost his job, and my boss was thrown into a tornado that has had a noticable impact on him.

Last night, I dreamt -- without TMI-ing -- that my next move in life was in fact the beginning of an initiation of sorts.  This view seems designed to help me gather strength for my return to an important place in my life.

A recurring theme in my adult dream life has been the Golden City (as I've come to call it).  While many of my dreams seem to take place in urban environments, some of these have a particular kind of vividness that sets them apart, and I know even as I'm dreaming them that they take place in this City.  (Take what HDR does for an image, and extend that into the dimension of an entire experience, and that's kinda the idea.)

I associate this Golden City with one real city, although many parts of other cities belong to it.  That real city is where I thought I would be moving every year for the last four, and it's there that I would expect the full breadth of this initiation to present itself, if it exists.

But I think I'm going somewhere else instead, because geniuses don't rely on mere logic for fundamental life decisions.

That was sarcasm.