Head Space

I had a neat dream last night. Since content might be light here for a spell, I’ve
written it up along with a couple more I scribbled down from earlier this year.

The one from last night involved the work of Nikki Stafford, author of books about Lost and other cult TV, whose blog was among my select re-entry points to online activity when I finally got a working computer a handful of years ago now. Co-starring in the older dreams were actor/filmmaker Lena Dunham, creator of the HBO series Girls, whom I’ve never met, and comics scribe Kurt Busiek, creator of Astro City, whom I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with online and in person a fair amount over the past couple of decades.

In the snippet of last night’s dream that left an impression, I was mostly running around from table to table in a large dining room with a gravy boat of salad dressing.
At a certain point that scene, which I vaguely associated with a college dining hall, transitioned to me teaching a class on Buffy the Vampire Slayer that drew from Nikki’s work as well as my own blogposts. The real-world irony of the latter is that I’d hoped to publish a series of relevant posts during Nikki’s year-long rewatch of that show but I had to suspend that plan. (I did earlier share thoughts on my first exposure to Buffy
on television and review the original movie.)

More involved was the dream with Lena Dunham from a few months ago, which took place at my dad’s house — except, as tends to happen in a dream, it wasn’t quite right.

I only saw a long, narrow swath of the downstairs, but it was interesting enough that
I wanted to sketch out the floor plan upon waking. At the start of the dream, I sat in a
den like the one in my dad’s actual house and looked through a kitchen situated where his kitchen really is; the kitchen itself was different, however, and beyond it was a kind of solarium. When I went into the kitchen and turned around, the room that I went back to was, again as tends to happen in a dream, no longer the room I’d been in but rather an ornate study.

Apparently I had a preparation cooking on the stove that would result in iced-coffee drinks like we’d recently had somewhere. The mixture was syrupy but it became less so as I poured it out into glasses by a computer in the study. Lena walked into the kitchen from the solarium as if she were a houseguest whom my dad knew, and she was teasing me about gingerly pouring the drinks from the pot I’d used for brewing there in the study rather than in the kitchen.

More involved still was the dream with Kurt that found us sharing a stateroom on a cruise ship, quite possibly as rival spies.

When the dream began I was leaving a restaurant on shore. I went to the ship and crawled up an access tube in which I’d previously stored several valuable items before entering our stateroom, I suppose for the element of surprise and I suppose for the first time; Kurt, it turned out, had already claimed not just the bed he wanted but lots of the rest of the territory as well, spreading around his computer and pocket change and knickknacks. Although I considered going through his stuff I couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t also set up a surveillance device.

Later the scene switched to what might have still been the cruise ship or could have been a hotel but which looked like my college dorm. Kurt was standing in the hallway talking to a few people, including his wife and I think maybe Larry Marder. He was wearing only his glasses and a bath towel wrapped at the waist.


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