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Spate of new-ish programming lately that’s kept me powering through the interminably repetitive weeks: From is back and as abstruse as ever; Matt U. assured me there’s a supernatural component to Yellowjackets, so I gave in to see what all the hoopla is about; Mrs. Davis, Damon Lindelof’s latest romp, about an omnipresent AI that is actually hardly around; Rabbit Hole, which really should’ve gone where its title suggests but instead seems like a worse version of Mrs. Davis; and the superior spy show with the MI5 rejects in “Slough House.” Gary Oldham’s Jackson Lamb is the freshest character I’ve seen in some time.

Apple’s been picking some winners lately, so I gave Silo a shot, and the scene with Rebecca Ferguson climbing toward answers at the end of the second episode must’ve led me to a dead end in a neighborhood completely sealed off by connected buildings, some businesses like a coin laundry, most of the others residential. The cul-de-sac didn’t appear to have any exit than the way I came, until I spotted what looked like one on the third floor up a mesh ladder, followed by the traditional kind from the second level. Surprisingly no fear of heights. An Indian woman called for her boys Xavier and Shervin, neither of which I recognized as Hindi names. A prominent radio antennae stood on the roof.

I’ve been tracking my sleep with the app religiously for the month now, and while I got the impression it had a pretty good handle on my REM, last night’s series doesn’t seem properly reflected in the breakdown. I could’ve sworn I returned at least thrice to the same class or group of people after waking, the first in such an agitated state, alas, with no recollection of its cause, that I was certain my heartrate would have spiked. And perhaps it’s only more evidence of the time dilation that occurs in dreams, but my last outing, where I fearlessly ascended a wall by hand-screwed bolts (a premonition of or motivation for finally assembling my “걸쳐 culture” rack), definitely felt longer than the three minutes recorded.

There was a brunette stewardess with an eyepatch; a vest hanging on the wall moved, indicating the presence of a ghost, whose solid but invisible body the boy and I proceeded to hit with poles, but weren’t sure what effect it was having. Oh, and I had a bunch of floppy diskettes I packed into the only available box, folding some of them in a way that at least the 3½-inchers couldn’t and definitely shouldn’t be. It was his birthday, and Rush were guests, Geddy Lee offering a wall display of their cables and adapters for his friends to pair with their electronic equipment, then finishing with a set where Neil Peart (RIP) set up his kit outside the screen door, he and Alex Lifeson (whose name I got right, but they insisted was “Eric”) used exotic pedals and keyboards instead of directly handling their guitars. To my bewilderment, our young player added “Thunderstruck” to the jam, which the group surprisingly incorporated deftly, equipment levels flickered, and I scrambled for my phone to capture the moment.
But maybe it took being wowed by a Constant-caliber bottle episode of The Last of Us to trigger truly once-in-decades appearances by Elaine Benes and Clara Oswald in our best ages, the former way out of my league though she deigned to lead me as she stomped through the huddled masses of the university halls; I stopped for a quick greeting as we cross paths with the latter, then later received a call from her jealously (!) asking me if that was “Lucille from the restaurant.”

…Of course that’s followed up by one where I’m still in a school somewhere, accompanied instead by two cases of Mountain Dew Pitch Black, a few 20-oz. bottles of a brighter flavor, maybe Maui Burst, some loose cans and unable to move the lot at once, I opted to leave the boxes on the floor and come back for them, my arms full, as I slowly made my way down a wide stairwell. This is why I don’t deserve control of my subconscious, it’s full of insecurity and greed. Seems only a complete clearing of all my fucking hangups makes my dreams come true.

Not so much the fear of seeing rocks, feeling them, petting them nor even being pelted or crushed by them, but walking across them, as we saw this morning: I was part of a team that seemed to consist of co-workers from both current and previous jobs wrapping up an onsite client visit to a warehouse. The manager there offered me one of their uniforms for me to wear next time, so I waited for him to fetch it for me while my party left for the car, and surprisingly through all the commotion at the end of day (as well as typical disappointment from my dreams), he came back with a new green/navy reversible down vest. It was cold outside and I put it on over my own coat, which was probably the hooded Uniqlo one I’ve been wearing around the house this month. My wallet and phone were in my back pockets, too, also unexpected since I usually lose them. The parking lot was way off in the distance from the building exit, past a ravine-like field which had to be crossed by rock formations along the edges. People were still coming and going, and to avoid one oncoming fellow I opted for a lower path to his left that I soon realized wasn’t going to get me to the other side as all the jagged boulders ran out and sank into the dark pool below. I leaped to an abutment to the side but it wasn’t stable enough to support my weight, gave way like rock shouldn’t and I had to grab hold of one flimsy attachment after another. Onlookers gasped while I relied on my pull-up strength to stay above water, but as I inevitably felt my butt submerge—no wonder I was left with my things—the lesson of this short segment dawned upon me, always to take the high road.

After the bathroom break, I was driving the XTerra again and exited off a freeway intersection into an elongated entrance to one of our gated communities. (Last I swear I saw Sylvilagus was along this path to CPE on an early lockdown run before the Asics mask, but surely my two signature bandanas was a giveaway…?) I asked John Chen if he wanted to be picked up, but he wasn’t interested, no surprise.

Update: Rained like it does here once a year today and during whatever is the opposite of sleight of hand that happens getting into the car (namely, the transfer of the contents of my back pockets to my front rather than sit on them, hindered by anything I’m already carrying, in this case a wet umbrella mid-collapse), my wallet fell into a puddle as premonitioned earlier. I picked it up out of the water quickly enough that the last of the paper inside would be unscathed, maybe because I knew I was better off it dropping than my phone, there was no pause for misery. It was almost comical, too, the first time ever in the drought-stricken Southland when I remember driving through Texas torrents that made the windshield look like aquarium glass, like the surfeit of silly storylines on this season of Curb that required suspension of disbelief in our annual precipitation.

My habit of reaching for the phone upon waking and checking my latest messages, even with nothing more to them than the daily spam that’s swiped to the trash, seems to be affecting my recall of any richer narrative from the streaming service of my subconscious, but because there must be something to the lingering remnants, please indulge me tracking them here:

Dream the other night had all my usual conundrums, debilitating fear of heights, frustration with commonplace expectations, and one that a quick search reveals I haven’t mentioned much if at all despite being a fairly regular concern, my slavish observance of the bus schedule. My return ride was always around 8-ish or else I’d miss a transfer and face a long walk home, never mind modern conveniences such as Uber. (I wonder if in a few-odd years when drones will come pick you up anywhere, my subconscious will update then?) The others in my group led the way to a higher platform, effortlessly traversing the gap over a ravine of white stairwells, while I froze; the steps on the other side were so narrow, I wasn’t sure I would land on them safely before attempting another leap upward—it was a wall-jump, fucking videogames! Eventually I determined my only solution was to be forced onto the ledge, which I somehow managed by inserting myself in front of another uninhibited procession. The balcony opened into a dark hall lined with warmly lit, classically decorated sitting rooms, each occupied with well-dressed snobs who seemed offended by my inspection. Lurking in the shadows beside me was Peter Capaldi the Doctor, looking a little worse for wear, but amenable nevertheless for a selfie, but try as I might, I couldn’t get the phone not to overlay dinosaur stamps on the camera.

This morning I found myself in an office building among a band of survivors of an apocalypse. Three of them who looked like members of the high school chess club decided that a Vietnamese girl Binn present would satisfy their pent-up urges. She complied and completed her duties promptly, and I tried to find her to express my sympathies, but instead I ran into an old colleague who seemed to remember me and called out my name. He wasn’t anyone I knew from my past, but he did seem familiar, like an actor who played the role of computer salesman in the 80’s, except his hair was gray and he was missing his right arm. We sat down at a table and he explained that he had been drafted for his expertise with the “Lexor-9” system, whose pre-Internet standalone capabilities made it especially useful in these times. I left by telling him to contact me if they needed help with the modems, which was apparently something for which I myself had a reputation… but as Silver Spear reminds us, “some reputations are false.”

Seems everything (in dreams) was about sex to Freud, and while I haven’t any argument against that interpretation, I’m more inclined toward the modern one about stairs representing the journey of growth or progress and the emotional challenges accompanying it. In my case those almost exclusively embody crippling fear, and you’d think that after all this time together, my subconscious could communicate directly without the need for any symbolism!

It was so typical of my former employers to find laughably cheap solutions for us. These stairs to the second floor were hardly a body wide, covered in the kind of vinyl used for gym mattresses and looked flimsy leaned against the side of the wall. I wasn’t about to walk up them, and instead leaned back on the steps and inched my way from one to the next while holding the sides. A conveyor belt-like mechanism seemed to assist me to the top, and when I reached it, by design, the lower half of the staircase lifted to keep us balanced. A metal railing lowered and would have caught my hands if I hadn’t moved them, another sign that this was a death trap. There were others at the bottom waiting their turn, but fuck them.

…He lives. (I should try speaking in aphorisms.) The recurring motif to my self-defeatism lately has been futile searches for exits from buildings, often through vast service infrastructures. The elevators never work right, so I’ve been taking to the back stairwells, which can’t possibly go well. Beats me why I even bother with these Escheresque obstacle courses, repeating, recursive floors, steps that end abruptly and continue on platforms off to the side, and when I do find an accessible door, they lead to others that aren’t or empty levels like the ones in an enclosed videogame. I ought to just pack it in, reset the whole thing, but the nagging drive to make the most of it always presses me on. A PC Card-like key offered entrance into a laboratory facility, but the lock wouldn’t respond to it. I wasn’t gonna meet up with the gang for sushi on the 14th floor, was I.

I was outraged seeing a resident of the old building with a child in her lap steering in the tight underground parking lot, but what the hell, I thought, a few more robo-signatures or so and any liability issues are no longer my concern. But I suppose the practice is unavoidable, as I indulged my son during a dream last night with a drive down the freeway in a small open-top coupe. With him behind the wheel like that, we missed our intended exit and went with the next, which took us into unfamiliar rugged territory. Somehow the vehicle managed to climb the first of a few steps from there on, but the rest were impassable, and going back the way we came seemed out of the question, so we continued on foot. The ground was awkwardly uneven, and each platform was separated by an opening to a precarious drop below. (It was only just to another landing, but I didn’t trust him to stay put.) Xavier slipped between such a crack but I got him by the right sleeve. His shirt slipped away, but I took hold of his arm and pulled him up to safety. Woke up and he was passed out on his back beside me.

Had not one, but two dreams over the weekend recommending I be more frightened of heights. (My midnight screenings have been positively exhausting for a week now, and while only a layman might psychoanalyze them as compensation for lack of real-world stimuli, I’m tempted to seek some seasonal or otherwise environmental pattern.) It was stairs again in the first, 老婆 having gone ahead at an unfamiliar airport and a thousand-foot almost vertical flight taking me out of the terminal. At the top a moving walkway ramped down to an attached shopping mall, but I didn’t think I’d find her in the mostly empty high-end stores. This morning I was participating in another Indiana Jones movie—which, interestingly enough, would be in the news I read afterward—where a cargo truck was stored on a platform high above the ground. Being inside it and seeing the heroes on their horses far below was quite an intimidating sight, perhaps because of my precarious position. Parked there also was a late-model white Dodge Avenger or the like, which struck me as an anachronism but I explained away by the modern setting of this latest sequel. Not correct, of course.