I had a weird dream last night, or this morning rather,
in which I lost my left ear in an accident that was somehow
tied to the purchase of a purple denim jacket.

for some logic that was sensible in the dream but makes no sense
upon waking, the solution to this problem was to preserve my left ear,
remove my right ear (which only required four small cuts), and
re-attach it where my left ear had been. in my dream, I knew this
was possible because ms regina had done so in the face of a similar
dilemma.

I had an odd dream that I don't recall very well now. but...

the background (in the past of the dream):
I and my brother and my mother and apparently some friends
(none of whom are from waking life) had somehow gained entry
into an alternate universe. we knew how to get back but stayed
cuz we liked it better. now the culture of the alternate
universe had caught up to us, and becuase my brother and a
couple other had overused their superior knowledge in some
fashion, everyone was getting captured and were going to be
burned as witches or some equivalent.

the actual action:
I was trying to avoid getting caught, gather the belongings
of my mother & brother, and trying to recall/figure out how
to get back to the Regular Universe. there was some reason
I had not yet been captured/arrested but that detail escapes
my recollection. dreams. so hard to hold on to.

the key was in either my mother or brother's belongings. I was
gathering them and carefully arranging them in some sort of
pine desk that bore a remarkable resemblance to an Ikea computer
desk.

meanwhile I would visit the other folks with me, who were all
chained naked and horizontal in this big city square.

...we tend to focus on the plight of the homeless a lot. we focus
on people on the street, who probably need medical and/or mental
assistance to survive. but there is also an echelon right above that,
of a really poor community that is rather tightly bound. they may
or may not really be homeless, but they are still in a poor
underclass. for some reason the "darker" comics tend to focus
on that level of society...

so in my dream I was part of this. and was an active member of a
community that consisted of the more invisible members of society.
part and parcel of my daily world were people performing charitable
acts - like some nuns - and some lay people - and one was actually
my cow-orker Kellie, who in my dream we could not tell if she had
taken holy orders or not [in Real Life[tm] she is married].

that I was back in Oxnard, with my dad. we went to the bowling lane
where my parents worked when I was a youth. the building has been
standing unused for many years and is in disrepair.

for some reason we decided we wanted inside. all the doors were
locked and I got in an argument with my dad over whether I was
capable of picking one of the locks (of course he could). there
was some power panel or whatever in the back of the building with
a juniper branch growing infront of it. I started looking at that.

the doors to the main east entrance opened and 2-3 people came out.
they looked asian-american. they were talking business as if one of
them was showing the others the place. we went over and talked to
them and the larger gentleman brought us back inside.

it looked very different from my recollection. instead of a raised
concourse with 32 lanes on the south side of the building, it was
mostly flat inside. at first I didn't think there were any lanes at
all. we started talking and the big asian guy told us of his plans to
reopen the bowl. he started the lanes up on automatic recycle and
that's when I realized - there were 17 lanes on each side, north
and south. the pin sweepers looked weird.

[considering my dream now the reason they looked weird was that instead
of late-50's Brunswick pinspotters the lanes had modern AMF pinspotters.
the sweeps were blue & white. but I don't recall anything from the front
of them, it was blank.]

both my dad and I wanted to do something - my dad wanted to roll a ball;
but with the lanes recycling I told him he couldn't. I wanted to run & slide
on the approaches, which I had noted were in surprisingly good condition.
the asian guy wouldn't let me, even though I was in rental bowling shoes,
becuase I had been wearing them outside.

we started talking with the asian guy about how we would like to help
out repoening the place, both by contributing work & expertise and by
buying into the enterprise.

I dreamed I lived in a big house - you had to walk up a wide grassy
walkway, with stone stairs and grassy landings, to get to it.
Louis lived in one of the houses along the walkway. He had a housemate,
who was sort of junior/new to the whole geek thing.

I had a lot to do and I couldn't sleep. it was 4 in the morning;
I decided I would get up and go to this local but isolated watering
hole/pond/swimming place, becuase it would be secluded and peaceful
and I could study there for a class I was taking.

I went outside and it was blazing sunlight. the sun was low but not
like early or late but more like this was at a high latitude. I had
my book and a towel and was wearing a bathing suit and a robe. I walked
down the walkway towards where I was going; and a bit past Louis' house
I ran into him and Heidi on one of the landings. they were also in
swimwear and were returning from this swimming place where I was going;
they were about to go in and get some sleep. I told them where I was
going and why and Louis told me, "everyone was there." I found this
disappointing as I was hoping for solitude and study - I was behind after
all.

Heidi went on and Louis and I hung out and talked. after a while we began
to attract these butterflies that looked like small monarchs; they kept
landing on us. they covered my soda can, which was blue, and some got
stuck inside under like a bubble of soda pop. Louis showed me a trick
that made them gather in the air, from one's hands, in a sheeted pattern.
this also got them out of the soda can so they didn't die.

I dreamt that my mom was still alive - and had gone an a date
from a personal ad. for some reason this inspired her to give
wonderland accounts to both the date [who got an account name of
Pokemon] and to James [who also got a capital-letter account].
both men used the accounts to plug in these odd game ports that
looked like those tear-drop-shaped camping/raver emergency lights
and shoot lazer-tag-like guns out the window at the alley behind.

I was upset at this and made them unplug the lazer tag guns.

I dreamt that it was Tuesday 27 August. and I realized, wow, I had't
yet bought my ticket for burning man. I convinced Karine that she
should go but she didn't have any gear/clothes for the desert.

we ended up in Southern California driving back and forth between
these clothing/supply stores. one was in the desert but you had to go
west from where we were to get there. I spent a lot of time in the dream
looking with Karine at baby-blue and pink fleece pullovers, euw.
we were piling the the purchases into this little golf-cart that we
were driving back and forth - a considerable distance.

I can only remember fragments of my dream, but the house
we were in was really in an area bearing a remarkable resemblance
to the old Black Point Faire site. while I was at a neighbours
discussing pets and swimming, our couch migrated outside becuase
my housemates were too tired of it and wanted room for a new one.

I fussed over how weather would wreck it and we decided fuck it
and all went to catalina.

okay maybe that's more coherence than I thought I remembered but
it wass still only a tiny part