timothy's Journal: nutty, fairly pleasant dream of just now

20090603 - nap dream

Dreamed I was living in a place what seemed to skip between Austin and a N. California coastal town.

Part of the time I was traveling w/ dad, who was his usual accidentally infuriating obstinate self, causing arguments which I then stupidly fell into.

Happily, this part slipped away, and I was hanging out w/ a girl of ambiguous ethnicity / background, who reminded me by turns of M.D, M.B, P., MLM, and others beside; we were years-long friends -- she had either worked at the Texan or just knew a lot of people who had, and more recently than I did. Black or dark-brown hair (slightly curly) of shoulder length, short and petite but not skinny. I was driving around town w/ her, having lots of fun, and slowly realizing that I found her somewhat attractive (Duh). In the dream, her name was obvious and never left my head; on waking up, I can't even recall except to rule certain ones out. Two syllables, though. Sounds like ... I dunno. I will arbitrarily go with "Sonja" as diplomatically adequate, since I don't know closely many Sonjas, and none on whom I have a crush.

In part of the dream, we were driving around the "Austin" part of the geography; she was driving while I read the Statesman (something I hardly ever did while I was in Austin), and I noticed a familiar name, an Indian fellow who had worked at the Texan, in the dream world. I mentioned that he had a story on the front page of the Statesman, and she scoffed. "He can't really write! He's just good at manipulating himself into the position where he gets work handed out." The story was pretty weak -- about how a particular professor at UT was in some sort of trouble, or at least controversy, because his textbooks were considered inadequate; it was clear that he hadn't reviewed the materials very well, and students were mad because they'd spent hundreds of dollars on them. It was a professor I had had (again, in the dream world), and I was unsurprised by this, because I recalled that his class's textbooks had all been terrible, and even though the writer had been someone who annoyed me, always seemed a self-important blowhard, I was glad to see a recent Texan staffer with a front-page story.

My attraction to Sonja manifested clearly only when we were accidentally trapped together in a huge machine at a -- do-it-yourself? industrial? -- laundry (how exactly, I don't know). It was basically a giant robot that cleaned clothes in multiple stages, then pressed them flat (two of the walls were set up to move towards each other, pressing liquid out of the clothes. We were inside the machine, and laughing, when we realised we were trapped inside of it until the current cycle was over, but since it was a low-temp machine, we thought it would be easy to pull a lever somewhere and get out. We started to worry only when the press-flat feature became apparent. It started to rain, and I thought, non sequitur-style, that Sonja looked esp. good with her hair wet; she was wearing two dark shirts, layered (a t-shirt, and a sort of thin-strap tank-top), which looked good in the dream.

Inside the dream world, I knew that these machines were actually designed w/ safety in mind, had many failsafes, specially chosen chemicals, etc. I thought that it might be like an elevator, with sensors that would prevent it from closing if it hit an object as massive as a person, but then I noticed a little space perhaps the size of a closet, projecting from the wall we were standing against, and I realized that even if there were *not* sensors, that area of the wall was recessed (it faced some of the works, rather than the racks of clothing) such that it would never get squashed.

At this point, I manoevered both of us over there in case the motion speeded up and we were trapped by the advancing wet clothes. No smell of detergent; there was some sort of ionizing light administered by a device a bit like a pool robot (Hey, dream logic) that actually killed bacteria, and a combination of water and moving air to refresh the clothing generally. Maybe some other chemical bits applied; I know it was supposed to be very low-pollution and gently on the clothing, though. The advancing walls reached their clothes-squishing minimum, we were hugging tightly in the tiny alcove, and she was crying w/ fear. I felt the fear, too, but abstractly. The danger we were in (even potential) made me realize how much I appreciated this girl and would be heartbroken if she were to have been injured or killed, but I said nothing to her until some hours later, when a conversation turned to rumors of romantic love among various mutual friends, and I blurted out something incriminating (that I had a crush, or something stronger, on her) but also mitigating (that I didn't expect it to be mutual); she reacted with a sudden thoughtfulness, which left me a bit chastened, but glad she didn't instead put up a wall. There was some room left for hope at least.

Later in the dream, Sonja and I were in the California part of the landscape, in a town not far from San Francisco, and nearly as hilly. Famously, it contained the longest stretch (in the region, at least) of "horizontal street-car tunnel space" (if I recall the phrasing correctly) which the local radio station kept talking about with pride. There were some other subway / street-car tunnels nearby, but they used either steeply ramped segments at either end (to clear existing structures' foundations) or an elevator arrangement, where each train / car was lowered straight down before moving forward on the underground tracks. With this long stretch, the entrance was partway up a hill, so that the streetcar climbed only part of the hill before entering the tunnel, and exited at a similar point on the other side. Previously, there had been several of these straight-shot, mid-hill tunnels, but now most of them had been converted to the elevator ones, in order to accomodate more and deeper construction on the town's hills. Bicycle riders were esp. fond of this tunnel, because it had a nice path through, was protected from weather, and was pleasantly cooler than the summer temps (in the '80s).

Though I was interested in walking through the tunnel, didn't get a chance to. (This was allowed for a small fee, or with a sort of badge that locals could buy, rather like a system of zoned parking.) We met a bicyclist, a guy who looked in his late 50s or perhaps 60s, who was resting with his bike beside him on a small park-like stretch of grass nearby, and I asked him about it. "Oh, it's cheap for me, even though I'm not a resident," he told me. "I just pay the actual cost, which is very low, because I'm a citizen." "A citizen of ..." "Of California." Turns out, state residents had a special deal, and he might have had a senior citizens discount, too. The money I think went partly to maintaining the historic tunnel, but mostly to insurance. (Also, this conversation is how I know that part of the dream was definitely in California.)

On the same evening we met the bicyclist, I had dinner w/ Sonja and her parents, who were both visiting town. Her father insisted on paying, even though I had plenty of money for the pleasant al fresco place we picked. He was more Irish looking than I had expected from her own coloration. Pleasant dinner, though I don't remember what we had.

That's all I can recall ...