There’s a place I dream about from time to time, and I dreamt about it again last night. I used to think I had actually gone there once, when I was awake, but now I am not so sure. It’s possible that I did go there once, but also possible that I have dreamed about this place so many times that it is as real to me as Venice, or The Vine. It is kind of weird though, that I would dream so vividly about one place over and over in my life if I had never really been to a place like that.

It’s so beautiful there, it’s easy to see why it would make an impression on me, even if I have only been there in my dreams. To get there, you have to walk through a valley, and the only valley I can think of that resembles this valley is the valley at the ocean entance to Big Basin State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I know that no one who reads this blog has ever been to this place – well, maybe one or two of you have – but let me just tell you there is a reason that California has a reputation for it’s beauty, and this valley, though not nearly well known as Yosemite or Death Valley or even a smattering of COUNTY parks in California, is one of the reasons. The coastal range meets the ocean here, and foothills covered with wildflowers flank you on each side as you walk east towards mountains covered with redwood and pine trees. There is no one there. I’ve had SEX there. Maybe that is why I like to make it part of my favorite dream locale.

Anyhow. Keep walking – in the dream, not Big Basin – and eventually you’ll get to a small mountain range that is more like the high desert than the coastal range. Keep walking (this is where I start to think this is only a dream, and never really happened in my waking life, because that’s a long way to walk without hitting a bar for some refreshments) and you get to a military base of sorts. That’s right, a military base – and this is where you think, well, maybe it IS real. Or maybe, there is NO WAY it is real.

At the military base you have to get on a bus and they take you to yet another mountain range, and from there you hike to the top and have a little picnic. At the top, you have a view of the other range, which is always tan and pink with the sun going down, and everything glows.

That’s it. That’s the place and I don’t know why I dream of it so much but I do and it is always the same. The only thing I can think of, is that somehow it has taken the shape of the hills behind where I grew up in El Granada, California. In the end, I guess it comes down to this: after several months I got this email from classmates.com that I had a message from someone I used to know, which got me on the website, and I started checking out all the other people on there. One of them was this guy I used to know when I was seventeen or so and living in a dark apartment with an alcoholic boyfriend and no electricity or hot water. Life was pretty dismal, so I used to go up in the hills with this guy Matt and talk. Our relationship was very easy and almost quiet, really. I’d never hung out with anyone I could just be silent with before. We were the same age, just two kids with some bad circumstances, and then we planned to run away and work at the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennesse. We never did anything but talk – we were both too scared of my boyfriend for that – but we wanted to.

We never made it to Knoxville but sometimes I think of what my life would be like now if I had, because at that age I was already a wanderer, even though it would take me several years to become myself. And I don’t even know if it is the memory of those hills, or Matt’s name on a website, or the approaching end of this speeding bullet that was 2006 that brought the dream on again. Maybe the dream brings me back to something I know, even if I don’t know what it’s from. Maybe, it’s been in my waking life all along, but I just haven’t gotten there yet.

This morning I had another crazy dream. I always have crazy dreams, so when I have one that is really over the top, it makes an impression on me. I think that this one came to me so that I would write something, and I haven’t been writing anything, because I haven’t had anything to write about. I feel like I am drifting in a sort of sludge, and also when I haven’t written, then I start to resent writing. And when I start to resent writing, it really is all over until something intense smacks me in the face and makes me do it. Writing is sort of like a lover that way.

Also, it has been very cold here in San Diego. I fear that people from the far corners of my reality will be like are you fucking crazy? Do you REALLY think it is cold there? And I can only counter with – no, it is not REALLY cold here. But when it is fifty degrees it seems like twenty because a) we are simply not used to it and b) neither are our houses. My little beach shack is freezing inside. No matter how long I run the heat it never warms up. All of a sudden I am aware of the fact that I am aging, because in this little cold spell we have had, the joints in my fingers and toes got all swollen and hard to move. It is really, really, REALLY scary. Aging I mean. For a good forty years you look all baby faced and shit and then all of a sudden, Rheumatoid fucking arthritis. These changes are scary, also humbling. Maybe I am not so invincible as I thought I was.

So, then, the dream. I was on a plane, a big 7trillion7, going from here to Europe or something like that. There was a long time in the dream where I was on the plane, walking to and fro and watching movies and stuff like that, but then all of a sudden I was outside, and the top of the plane had no top. It was like a cruise ship plane. So I was hanging out up there for a while and then all of a sudden George Bush Senior was there and he was like, GET DOWN! I looked over the edge and there were little planes shooting at each other and also, at some targets on the ground. I bent over and kept walking and as I walked, I felt a bullet graze my back. George Bush Senior saved my life! But, in the end our 7trillion7 got shot down, but went down slowly and landed easily, as plane crashes in dreams do.

Then we were on the ground, in a green, lush, and I guess, war-torn country. Someone else from the plane was there with me, and we knew we had to save everyone else on the plane, but they had all turned into kernels of corn. Only coach though – first and business had been wiped out – vaporized. Only the people in coach were left and they were now corn. I had to rescue the kernels from ziplock bags that they had somehow ended up in after the crash, and put them into piles so they could breathe. At one point my associate said, how do we know if they are still alive? And I said YO! CORN! GIVE US A SIGN! At which point all the kernals started to shimmy and then we knew that we had saved them all.

It’s the end of the year and I feel that big changes are coming, and that is possibly why I am dreaming about saving corn, and also about the possibility that Bush Sr could save ME. Well, who knows what it all really means. It could be, most simply, that I am a creative person and I am doing fuck all with that. But I am thinking, thinking, thinking… about how to make the most of the years I have left before the really bad stuff sets in. I am thinking. Fight or flight… and the flight sounds better about now. So where should I go?

So I almost couldn’t bring myself to post this because it is just too weird.

Last night, or this morning… sometime in that other reality, anyway, I had this insanely crazy thing happen in one of my dreams. It wasn’t weird like flying over pits of a purple substance that looked like melted PopRocks or weird like making out with Vanessa Redgrave or other types of bizarre randomness. It was even weirder – I was holding a bean and cheese burrito, and it farted. TWICE.

At the risk of becoming known as the blogger who once confessed she dreamed about a farting burrito, I am not sure I can let this one pass without asking for some outsider tips about what the fuck this all means. Not only did the burrito fart twice, but before it farted, it sort of stiffened up in a pre-fart pose. It was an Animistic Burrito. A farting burrito with a SOUL. How else can I explain it? There is no possible way. I don’t think.

Right before I went to bed I was reading this book I got at a garage sale yesterday for fifty cents, called The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Reincarnation. My favorite line so far? “And now this Complete Idiot’s Guide gives reincarnation another boost of respectability.” Um, OK.

So was my dream somehow connected to reincarnation? Or maybe the burrito symbolizes a penis? A farting penis? Or maybe, this is just a subtle move on my brain’s part to tell me to lay off the bean burritos. I don’t know.

In other news, I made the most kick-ass homemade ravioli this weekend, with pumpkin, crushed amaretti and Riesling. And I also made two ice creams – a chocolate one laced with grappa and a creamy custardy one with an acorn liqueur I bought in Spain. I think I might have a future in ice cream – Shannon’s Super Sexy Ice Creams. No kids can have it though.

This one is for Kasch. She wants me to write something.

Writing is hard sometimes. I struggle with my own voice. I wish for more discipline, but I hate what discipline does to my voice. It’s a bitter battle, so thanks god I am not relying on this for my income. I do this for myself, I do this for my friends, I do this for a woman in Berlin who I have not yet met by maybe could be someone I know for the rest of my life.

Life is weird that way. All day, actually for a few days, I have been thinking of the connections between people, how they can all of a sudden just happen, just like that. There you are, just like that, you have a friend and a sister, living in a different reality. She sits in a European city, lonely, thinking of someone we both love while it rains outside. The image has entered MY reality. The lines are clear. The connection is strong.

When I was young, I met a rich guy who was in and out of my life for a number of years. I first met him when I was fifteen, then for the next few years, I ran into him here and there, in weird places, like the Orange County airport. He was kind of a weird guy – he had various businesses and was into holistics, but at the same time he was also, basically, a drug trafficker. When we finally hooked up in a more-than-just-running-into-you way, I was twenty, and he was on trial. He went to jail for a while, but when he got out, I saw him from time to time (again) in San Francisco, where we would go out to a fancy dinner, then a bar, then I would castrate him vocally for a while, which he loved. Then I would drive his ginormous expensive car all over the place when I should definitely not have been driving. It was the late eighties. We got away with a lot back then.

Anyway. What I am getting at is this weird connection thing, and it is about to get weirder. I believe in reincarnation, and there was something with this person that transcended normality. When I looked at him in the beginning, later on when our relationship took on this bizarre mother/son/castrator mode, whatever it was, it was deep. Then one day I learned that in a past life I was a German nightclub singer in World War II who was killed by an American bomb at the age of nineteen. Telling this to my millionaire friend, HE tells me he was an German officer in World War II, who was killed by his own government because he was not doing what they wanted. Now, I know this all sounds totally crazy and farfetched, but seriously. I screwed around with that guy before we both died back in 1944 or whatever, and that is why we kept running into each other in this lifetime. We have a thread that ties us together and it will go on and on until we resolve whatever it is we need to resolve (which we, I am quite certain, did not accomplish in this lifetime. More fun is yet to come.)

So, Kasch. There is a thread that ties us together, made of silver silk. Made of memories, from the past and the future, and from right now. THIS is the memory, the moment between jumping off the cliff and hitting the water, the moment between entering the club and the lead singer taking the stage. Or the drummer. Heh.

I see the silver thread that connects us. It is weird, but it is there. Now I want the whole suit.

Last night I started thinking about luggage. As in, what am I going to do about it. Basically I am thinking about how I can buy wine in Spain and bring it home – now that I can’t actually bring it into the cabin, I am sort of screwed. So essentially I am visiting three different wine regions of Spain and I can’t bring any wine home. Well, screw that. Ship it? Not (too expensive.) Put it in a box and bring it home like that? Not (too complicated, too hard to move around when you are exhausted.) No, I have to buy some sort of a rolling suitcase that is big and also, hard-shelled. Then I can throw away all my clothes and just fill that sucker up with wine.

So since I have been thinking about this so much it is only natural that my overactive imagination would take over, especially since I have had immense quantities of mindless time over the weekend with nothing to take my mind off it. I started to think about those big black cases that musicians haul their gear around in. And I started to think, how cool would it be to have a suitcase that was not only big, and not only hard and tough, but also looked hella cool? As in, if you rolled it around in the airport everyone would think you were a rock star, or at the very least a roadie? I figure, with one of those big black cases, I could slap some wheels on the bottom and outfit the inside with some styrofoam wine holders, and voila, I could bring home ten, maybe twenty bottles of wine.

The only problem, of course, would be the weight. I guess each one of those cases probably weighs something like twenty pounds, and this would probably be kind of a drag when the airline wants to charge a hundred and fifty dollars because you went fifty pounds overweight. So then I started thinking, well, you just have to make this luggage DESIGNER, and charge $5000 for one suitcase just like Prada does, because rich people don’t care about extra weight because they not only have people to carry their shit, they also have private jets, hence they don’t have to worry about overweight charges. Then with all the money I make on the Prada Roadie Luggage, I can then afford to pay for these charges myself.

So in my mind I have the whole line of luggage going, complete with bumperstickers of rock bands you have never heard of, and stencils that say stuff like PROPERTY OF BRITT DANIEL. And it would be sold already banged up and thrashed. I swear, sometimes I have some brilliant ideas, what can I say, maybe Irving, Texas is good for me.

Now I just have to find some investors but in the meantime, if you ever see luggage that looks like this, let it be known right now that THIS WAS MY IDEA.

I dreamed about Britt again! Happy Friday to ME!

I think I dreamed about him because last night I couldn’t sleep because it was so hot, so I got to thinking about I might go down to Bayside where Radiohead played last month and Spoon is opening for Death Cab for Cutie next month. I guess it’s an indication that I am not as in love with Britt Daniel as I was last summer, that I was possibly thinking of NOT going to next month’s show. The thing is, Spoon is opening, and the tickets are expensive, and what if they only play for half an hour or something? I have been trying, HARD, to get into Death Cab for Cutie but I am finding it difficult. Though maybe they are really awesome live. Anyway, last night I was like, OF COURSE I have to go and then I have to go out to the buses and see if I can find Britt Daniel. Like, screw Death Cab for Cutie, I am just going to do some stalking. But what would I do if I actually MET him? Uh, hey Britt, can you please sign my Poptarticus T-Shirt? Yes I am THAT Poptarticus, the one who writes about stalking you. Not the Poptarticus that is on that Reality TV Message Board or the one on the Marching Band Forum or the one who likes Soccer. THEY are imposters, while I pay $9.95 a month for my name. So can you sign it?

Anyway that is probably just the kind of fool I would make of myself. And this is probably why I had the dream.

In my dream, I was at the South by Southwest Music Conference, in a giant convention hall, and Spoon played a couple of songs. Then some other stuff happened but I can’t remember what, and then Britt played two songs, solo. He was right there and then Ladytron was going to play, so nobody cared about Britt anymore, they only wanted to see Ladytron. It was then I realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Oops. Some chick from the Ladytron group gave me a Ladytron sticker and I put it on my arm. But I was really bummed because I didn’t care about the sticker or Ladytron, I just wanted to see Britt.

So then I ended up in his room. Don’t you LOVE dreams? I was in his hotel room, and he had nailed his own pictures over the pictures that were in there. Not pictures of himself, but pictures of other stuff. Nailed them in! Then I was sitting on this long couch next to Celeste, my best friend from high school, and Britt’s parents. Thank god Britt’s parents showed up because without them inviting me, I would surely have been arrested as a stalker. We were all sitting on one long couch when Britt came in and sort of just looked at us. At that point I sort of wished the parents weren’t there, just to see what would happen, but then a very pretty blond girl in a sundress came in. The girlfriend, presumably. She sat down next to me. “Are you happy?” She asked. “Yes,” I said. But then I said, “no, I’m not that happy. Are you happy?” She said yes. “No you aren’t, we all think we are happy, but we really aren’t. We just think of things to make us forget we are unhappy.” She just looked at me.

So, I dreamed about him, but nothing will ever compare to the magic of that first dream, the one that I can still remember and that was almost one year ago. I went back to the conference after I left his room, and it was raining, and as I entered the hall I thought, I gotta start a label.

“We think the same things at the same time…”
Thom Yorke, Harrowdown Hill

Best. Hook. Ever.

I am pacing. It is fucking hot, the weekend has immense promise, and I cannot stop listening to The Eraser . There are those moments when you just want to drag your fingernails down the front of your throat, and draw blood. Is it the heat? Is it the waning moon? What the fuck is it, anyway? Those giant exhales you make when you are on drugs are normal in day to day life when it’s this hot.

Back to The Eraser. I AM DYING HERE, I AM SO OBSESSED. Picture a scary thought but sing it in a way that you can never, ever get that melody out of your mind. A lullaby for the apocalyspe. I was never one to want to have sex with the music on but damned if this isn’t the record that I could actually, uh, do something successfully to.

The whole package of last month, this day, is sort of putting me over the edge. I wish I could explain it better than this. Heat, obsession, and sex driven by a killer bass line is about all I can do. Oh. Did I say I was dying? “We think the same things at the same time.” God, I love that.

AWESOME.

You can listen to an MP3 of Harrowdown Hill here on the I Guess I’m Floating music blog.

Last night was insane with the dreams again, but at least they weren’t nightmares. The dreams went on and on but there were two I remember very clearly. In one I was living in the country sometime after the civil war – like camping outside living. There were a lot of people doing the same thing. At one point I ran into a priest who had this coffee table book about the Beatles. And I was like, how can you have a book about the Beatles? They won’t be formed for a hundred years! Someone took the book from the priest and threw it to the bottom of a river. Someone else dove into the crystal clear water and retrieved the book and the priest was very happy.

Then this morning a dream that was so real… I was somewhere in Normandy, in a town by the sea that had crazy architecture. While I was there I met a family, an older couple and their daughter and I think the daughter’s boyfriend. The mother outfitted me with wings and me and her flew over the town. I landed OK but she landed in the water. Then I was in Manchester, England with my mom and we had missed our connection so we went into a little square in the town. And there was the same family – they were FROM Manchester. So they totally hooked us up and we were eating and drinking and there was live music. I remember I asked how the wine was in the bar and they all made cracks that it could remove paint from the wall, or something like that. But it was sunny and I did not miss the wine because I ordered some crazy Manchester drink.

Anyhow, in the dream I was going to call the office to tell them I missed my connection, so I was going to be in my dream for a while. But unfortunately I woke up.

And I haven’t had a dream about Britt Daniel in a really long time. What up with that?

I had one of those dreams this morning. I’ve been longing for one, but I have to say, this one left me feeling more hungry and alone than I would like to admit. After all, these days, I am the lone traveler, the one who says I don’t need anybody, the girl who flies solo.

It’s all about touch, in the end, and all kinds of other bizarreness that only a dream can bring out.

It was so real. I’m with a guy, a much younger guy, one who is untouchable and who, to date, I have had no desire to even think about that way. We are in his house on Potrero Hill and we have a shitload of cocaine. I don’t remember doing drugs in the night, all I remember is waking up in the same room as him, in seperate beds. But he comes to me and he has the most amazing back. I ran my hands all over his back, trying to get the tension out, and if I could only remember the sensation of running my hands over a back that I only felt in a dream for the rest of my life, I could be slightly happy. Well, maybe not, because now I want to feel a back like that in real life.

It’s morning in the dream, and he is gone, because he has a girlfriend and they are going skiing. He goes to the shower and I find, on the kitchen counter, a big pile of cocaine. It is yellowish-white, crumbly, dense. Perfect. I take a fingernail and scoop it into my nose. Even in a dream, I can smell it, feel it, taste it in the back of my throat. I am hiding, and lusting. All I want is twenty-four hours, in bed, with that back. I don’t need anything, but I need that back. And why cocaine? I haven’t done any in a million years, and have zero desire to do so, but it sure did taste good in my dream.

I’ve been longing for that kind of intense experience in the other world, and I love it when it comes to me. I always want what I can’t have and long for what is bad for me. But in a dream, I only get the best of the destruction.

I’m kind of in love and it is affecting me. I am hurtling through space, and it is affecting me.

I dreamed of Montreal, a city I have never been to. I rode the city bus looking for a place called Savage something but I rode the bus too far and ended up downtown and then outside the city gates. Outside, there was a canyon and at the bottom of the canyon, a shallow lake of turquoise water. There were all kinds of animals down there, like water buffalo and emus, and there were dolphins swimming in the lake.

Then I went back through the city gate. Somewhere in there, I was with my boyfriend from a million years ago, Chris Albano, and when I said I wanted to stay another day, he offered to drive me back to San Diego. In my dream this would only take eight hours. We drank wine in a bar called The Vine. (There’s an easy one.) We ate in an Italian restaurant and drank a really good bottle of wine and the waiter was really cute. Then we went to a square with a giant church made of Istrian marble, and an ancient Roman structure. The dream went on and on. I saw an awful lot of the Montreal in my head. Maybe I’ll go to the real Montreal someday and wonder, hey, what happened to that square?