Dream Archive 52: Lost in the Woods

We were wandering around some version of Ann Arbor. I had a special type of scope you could look into that would allow you to see the landscape before human civilization came along. It was just like being lost in the woods. That’s a pretty clear metaphor for the fact that we’re all essentially lost in the woods despite being surrounded by modern life, right? Sometimes dreams are so on-the-nose.

I tried to remember if I still lived in Ann Arbor or if I’d moved back to Denver or if I’d moved back to Denver and then back to Ann Arbor. I have this dream all the time. Why would I move back to Michigan? I hated it so much. But nothing that has happened to me since then feels real.

The version of Ann Arbor to which I dream about moving back never looks like the real place. I tried to picture the apartment I was currently living in, but I couldn’t remember for sure. I could picture a variety of apartments—some of which were actual ones I’ve lived in in either Ann Arbor or Denver and some of which seemed familiar but were clearly imaginary. The one that felt the most recent was one of the imaginary ones. I knew it wasn’t real.

I thought as hard as I could but couldn’t see the place I lived. Then I woke up, and I was like, “Oh yeah, this is where I live now.” It also felt completely unreal. My current apartment is one of the imaginary ones, because nothing that has happened to me since I left Michigan has been real.

This is what it must feel like to be a ghost or a wandering spirit. You can never quite remember the details of your life, and everything feels like it could be a dream. No wonder people are so terrified of ghosts—either being one or meeting one. It’s the worst possible feeling. Any spirit that became lost like that would surely go insane and would do anything to come back to “reality.” They would try and steal someone’s life in a heartbeat. I would do it.

Dream Archive 51: Apocrypha

My dad played a show of songs based on a folk singer’s interpretation of lost biblical stories. Then he figure skated a whole routine with costumes and flips and everything. But all we cared about was that the music was too loud, because we were trying to play a board game of some kind.

Dream Archive 50: The Moon

We took a trip to the Moon. Apparently someone had figured out how to grow things there, because there were trees everywhere. It looked like a grey, rain-soaked logging town. There were ramshackle houses set close to each other with small grassy yards. It looked like a poor neighborhood about two steps away from a trailer park. This was all on the Moon.

HAPPY 50TH TO THE DREAM ARCHIVE!

Dream Archive 49: Shady Acres

I was making lunch at work. The nature of my job was unclear. I made a delicious banana shake of some kind. My dad needed help preparing for a board meeting. We walked through an indoor mall, and salesmen kept telling him he looked stressed-out and that they could help him. He refused.

My dad gave me three posters. The smallest one showed blurry shapes. The next one was larger and clearer. The biggest one showed an aerial shot of a housing subdivision by a lake. The lake looked metallic and polluted. The text across the top read: Now do you get it? Shady Acres, California...

My dad was worried about the consequences of decisions he’d made on the project. He compared it to a previous scandal that had involved 20 lobsters. A woman named Jill Herring had complained, but no one had listened to her.

Dream Archive 48: Skeptic

I was trying to find my way home, but they kept adding numbers to the street signs, so I became a college professor. As a police detective it was my job to track down a missing person. My partner said she had a vision of where he was. I told her not to believe in things she didn’t know for sure. Later on we did find him, but I refused to believe it or do any tests to confirm that it was him.

Dream Archive 47: Method Acting

We were trying to toughen up a friend of ours to get him ready for a role as a troubled police detective on a prestige drama. We showed him how to steal every single item in a store. Then we helped him steal a car. Apparently stealing things was the key to being a tough, troubled police detective.

Dream Archive 46: Memse

Walking around outside and reading different magazines to find out where to buy things. Nearby in an industrial part of town there was a business where all they did was film cars crashing into each other for movies. One of the roommates spoke to us in a very high-fantasy type dialogue. She used the word “memse” (pronounced "memsy") to refer to someone in a derogatory way. She looked like a punk rocker but potentially with a fin on her head instead of a mohawk, as though she were some sort of aquatic creature. There was animation of the fin appearing on her head in silhouette, so I don’t know if it was real or something she was imagining or describing.

I looked up where we should go in a zine-style book that was apparently so dangerous and badass that it jumped and lurched in my hands as I tried to read it. Whatever. Overrated. Inside there was a comic strip poem based on “The Night Before Christmas” that was actually a guide to different places around town. It was apparently inspired by a different article someone had written in a different magazine called “Ten Places Where the Bartender is Doing Your Dog.” A guide to bars so rough that the bartender is engaging in bestiality instead of serving you drinks? Please. It was clearly hyped up beyond belief. What kind of laughable person reads a magazine to find depraved bars to hang out in? Sounds like pathetic poser tourism to me.

Every “edgy” person in the world is a piece of shit. Every violent person in the world deserves to go to the hospital or the morgue. Ideally I would like to send each and every last one of them there myself. Fuck everyone in this dream. Stupid, sad nobody assholes—too lame to even exist. You act tough, but I’m the one who gets to wake up and continue with my life while you fade away. You were never anything. You’re meaningless, only ever seen by one person and then immediately forgotten. That’s what you’re worth.