I Got Dreams Part. 2

Algiers Motel Neon Sign Redwood City CA, originally uploaded by hmdavid.

The majority of my dreams involve me moving around in familiar territory that is skewed to be steep and perilous. One reoccurring dream is that I find myself walking up and down El Camino Real from Mountain View, CA to San Mateo. The picture from hmdavid and it features one of the countless neon signs along El Camino Real in Redwood City. My life has intersected this long boulevard of storefronts and neon of a certain age just before me. In my older elementary school days I would walk down this boulevard and take Karate or visit various stores. Crossing it would take me to the Redwood Roller Rink that played the City of New Orleans as we would circle around a dingy floor.

Later I when I lived in Menlo Park in Junior High and High School, I would go to various movie theaters and restaurants in Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

In my young adulthood I would find myself driving from Belmont to Burlingame for various reasons as I went to College of San Mateo to transfer to San Francisco State.

I once lived behind the Glass Slipper Motel in Palo Alto which is this motel that features neon outline of a castle -- where Cinderella would stay after she drops out of rehab.

I return to El Camino Real now a days and it is like there is a psychic imprint to this boulevard. No matter how hazy the memories can be, I feel them -- random faces, smells, sounds, and feelings. I am like an apparition retracing my steps in an infinite loop. 

In my dreams, I am always walking here in the dark when the neon flickers and glows giving off this seedy beauty. The dreams are always hyper realistic when it comes to the storefronts and the maps of the offshoots from El Camino Real. As you venture off El Camino Real you know that this is a dreamscape. Everything is a steep climb. In fact, the entire Bay Area Peninsula is a steep incline into the bay. Some parts houses perch precariously and you have to be careful not to fall off when you go up and walk by these houses.

There is underlying gloom and wonder to the place. The stars and nebula often create a show like fireworks in the sky. The night is often less dangerous than the day, where some airplanes can randomly fall from the sky. Then you find yourself driving to the airport as you have a ticket to somewhere. You feel you need to hurry or you will miss a flight you dread. Once on board you can barely breathe from fright and the flight is terrifying (landing and take offs are very steep) but you arrive at what is supposed to be China, but it doesn't look like China. It is a lush jungle with storefronts with neon signs in Chinese. There were a lot of flowers.

The flights do take me to locales I am more familiar with London, Paris, Munich, Vienna, Boston, Amsterdam, and other points in Europe. They are heightened versions of themselves like they were Gritty Disney versions of the cities. You get the essences of the places but simplified with lots of grit. Gingerbread like inns that are crowded and dark hostels.  In Boston, the T is hyper-exaggerated almost like a rollercoaster with stations that reach the entire East Coast from Maine to Philadelphia. Then there are tremendous high rise buildings that reach into the sky so that it is breathtaking when you take the elevator to the top. I enter a room to the top floor and I am scared to look out the window because I know it that if I look I may fall through the glass.

Then I will find myself in San Francisco always moving to different apartments and flats that will magically expand out to involve different floors. San Francisco is the most steep of cities in real life, but it is even more exaggerated.Cable cars are more like ski gondolas. The bay below is a turbulent body of water hitting against the rocks. San Francisco is a city that still has Playland at Ocean Beach and it is very run down.

 In these dreams I am some kind of reality TV star and then I am in a dark club belting out "We'll Meet Again"

I Got Dreams Part. 1

Once I had a sexy dream about Robert Reich. It surprised me only because as it came from out of the blue. It turns out NPR was playing his speech at The Commonwealth Club. It is not unusual that I dream the news on NPR. During the Persian Gulf War I had a dream that I was on a beach where troops were invading and I turned into a spider who could write in Arabic. Don't know what to make of that dream.

This sexy dream was a good dream and rarely do I have them. Occasionally, my ex-boyfriends will visit but they are normally awkward rather than sexy.

There is something very sexy about Reich. I know he is around 4'11" but I do not care. He is an attractive, smart  economist. I thought he was great when he was our Labor Secretary under Clinton.

Of course, we are both happily married and there is no way anything would happen. He has only visited my dreams once and that was all I needed. Thanks for the memories, Robert.