boccaderlupo

I dreamed I was visiting some distant place and was to train in a storefront judo place with a high-level trainer who was a friend of a friend from long ago, with whom my son was training. Now, I have not trained judo, per se, at least not in any coherent way, but the instructor seemed to know me nonetheless, and I was invited to join them for open sparring (dangerous for the neophyte).

About 20 minutes before all was to kick off, someone presented me with a large bowl of pasta and/or rice, which is probably not the best thing to chow down on right before you step on the mats. Ravenous, I devoured it all anyway, then prepared to go get thrown around.

I dreamed a white, longhaired stray cat who lives outside in our neighborhood and who we'd been feeding walked into our apartment. He began interacting with our two kittens, which concerned us as we were unsure of whether our new guest had any kind of transmissible disease. We tried to separate the cats, but they kept swarming back together, as cats are wont to.

*

I dreamed I had the ability to fly. We were sitting in some purplish house our friends had rented, and I explained as we sat near the fireplace that I could just will myself and start gliding through the air. The lady of the couple laughed, so I leaped up and showed them, soaring about. I told them anybody could do it, it was just a matter of will. They were amazed, and so we went out on the streets to try our luck.

We were in downtown Passaic at night. Lots of crowds of folks, maybe some fireworks, but a chill in the air. I began to float, hovering only a few feet up, passing folks by just overhead. I almost crashed into a group of startled onlookers, and walked back to my friends. My brother was there, and he explained he couldn't figure out how I was doing it. Finally, just to have an end to it all and be done with the incredulity, I told them it was actually my new sneakers, which had some kind of technology that allowed for gliding. They all nodded sagely, and we returned to the house.

I dreamed the wife and I were at a hotel. I was working remotely with a colleague in Maine, when we all reported getting a fishing/hacking message that tried to get us to click a link. I tried to warn my colleague and avert clicking on it, however we all seemed to do so and our devices got locked down, with a ransomware notice to pay up or else. The wife and I began to try to figure out how to contact the kids, given that our mobile phones had been hijacked. As we did so, our phones began to overheat and erupted into flames. We tossed them out the windows. (I expect this dream derived from the international developments we've seen this week.)

*

I dreamed the New York Metropolitans had drafted a baseball player from Germany. I didn't know there was much baseball in Germany, but here's the catch: Over there, you didn't run the bases, but instead rode a horse from base to base. after putting bat to ball. The television announcers described this unique, local ruleset and showed footage of the guy playing over there, leaping on the back of a giant equine and flying down to first, almost running down the first baseman. The move was widely perceived by U.S. baseball aficionados as a publicity stunt, as the guy was not really MLB-level quality and had a bizarre wind-up and delivery, although his equestrian skills, at least among major leaguers, were unparalleled.

I dreamed that, back in the 19th century, out in West Jersey, perhaps near Stokes, a group of city swells in some kind of fraternal order purchased a plot of land on which they built, all wood frame, a "vacation" community seemingly based on the planetary designs of a Tommaso Campanella or the like. There were cabins set aside for each planet, with all the requisite design elements, in a rustic Americana style. Over decades, the order vanished, and by the end of the century the whole place had been bought by Methodists and turned into a "camp." But the Methodists had not done away entirely with the apparently magic substructure of the place, keeping many of the structures intact, albeit repurposed, and once a year, around the time of the autumn equinox, they would "convert" it back to something of its former shape, and gawkers would come from miles around to wander and wonder through the weirdness of a past barely recalled.

The family and I went up there, and in the late afternoon milled around with the various other tourists hoping to see something strange out in the woods. I noticed on the side of one cabin, with a hexagonal shape seemingly dedicated to Jupiter, a hand-painted old sign that was partly stripped by the weather but clearly read "seven virtues, six sins." And as I puzzled over that, my kids, now younger again, ran ahead of me with their mother through a snarl of haphazard wooden posts like a poorly thought out labyrinth, chasing random shadows and other schoolkids and their custodians through the dimming light.

I dreamed my brother got married on the quick. It came out of the blue for everybody. The ceremony was in a sandstone, Romanesque church, huge, the size of a full city block. One priest was a small, affable Hispanic man, who looked much like my good friend's brother; another was an older Hispanic or perhaps White lady. They talked to the wife and I as we waited in the nave for the bride and groom to emerge.

*

I dreamed the family went out to Los Angeles with my sister-in-law. She took the kids, the wife, and I out in a small vehicle to an area she called "old San Leandro" (not the city of the same name), which was a desert region with a sprinkling of palm trees. The vehicle we were in got trapped in the sand, and we thought: now what?

*

I dreamed I had reached out online to some folks to procure some tubes for a project or another. The guy said he and he son would deliver them; they were driving up from Florida to Maine, and could I meet them in Maine at their destination? Knowing they were going to be driving through Jersey on the way there, I used a tracking device to follow them, and began tailing their pickup, which I managed to flag down. They pulled the vehicle to a stop in downtown Hackensack and I got out and talked to the two.

They showed me the goods, which were two clear plastic tubes that were filled with rubbish, including shredded pieces of dollar bills. I asked them if they wanted any of this stuff, but they shook their head. We settled on a price and I forked over the money, and then we made some small talk. I asked about where they lived down in Florida, and the father told me he lived next to DeSantis, and that the governor's property line was cordoned off by guard dogs and some kind of laser sensors and a tall fence. As the father spoke, I found myself drawn into his mind's eye as he recounted the various terrors of the property, and was transported, saw the man walked the edge near the fence. Suddenly out of the sky shot two ravens that pinned the man against the fence, plucking out one of his eyes. I shook myself out of the vision, and was back in Hackensack, but standing there the man was all bloodied and eyeless. The vision had come true even as he described it to me.

The pair got back into their pickup and drove on.

I dreamed I was on a busy, four-lane street in one of the Outer Boroughs. I was on a shady sidewalk looking to cross the street to the other side, lined with low brownstones. The distance between the lights and their attendant crosswalks, on my left and right, was a little more than a football field, however right in front of me was a crosswalk, lines striping the road, but without a light. I assumed it was okay to cross, and ran to the midway line as traffic careened by.

That's when the cops appeared, driving up in a beat-up old '70s police vehicle. I screeched to a halt and considered running back to where I had came from, but sheepishly accepted my fate. The mustachoied, bald cop who got out had a world-weary look about him, and began writing me a ticket. I told him I thought it was fine to use this crosswalk, and he admitted it was deceiving, but the law was you had to use crosswalks that had lights at them, meaning the corners.

The fine was 40 bucks, and I woke up rather angry, more at myself than anything.

I dreamed I was in a cavernous dark place, like an airplane hanger. On the ground were myriad plants grown up, all of them a kind of purplish hue. My son's soccer team was milling about, and the young brother of the twins was wandering away from them, out in the dark fields of the hanger, underneath a hole in the roof. Here there were two demons, with what seemed like snakes for hair (Gorgons?). He couldn't see them, but wandered between them as they veered for him. I had some torn meat in my hands, and would throw it at the demons, who for some reason recoiled from it. The boy eventually wandered back away from them towards the other kids.

*

I dreamed I was working in a supermarket, several blocks long, light brown interiors with shelves piled to the ceilings maybe 20 feet up. A big place. In the back room, a remote-controller scooter rolled up. I knew it had been piloted by the Batman villain The Riddler, and contained explosives. It had an announcement system and began a countdown. I ran through the store, urging patrons to leave. A coworker jogged alongside men, a young woman who I don't know in the waking world, thinking it was all in fun. Then there were explosions behind us, and I redoubled my efforts.

Finally out in the street, a light rain. The coworker and I and patrons who had escaped turned to see fire trucks rolling up just as the whole back of the place went up in flames.

*

I dreamed I had found a shortcut up to my town from the Raritan River. It took me a winding path along what looked like a seashore, a vista I had never seen. I drove up and over a highway offramp and somehow found myself hanging by my fingertips over a plot of land with a VFW hall on it below. There was a party of some kind going on—our destination. Folks told me to just let go, I would fall down in the soft grass and be unhurt, but I shimmied along to where the ground was level and finally lowered myself, then walked down to the hall. Lights glowing in the twilight.

*

I dreamed I was part of some kind of elite military force. Another Batman villain, the Joker, had this device on a boat where he would put you in large, see-through bubbles that ran along a sort of overhead metal bar. It acted like a cannon, and would launch you into the sea. Two hardened battle-looking guys, the soccer player Rafa Leao, and myself were selected as his first victims. We were each placed inside one of the four bubbles, and the Joker piloted us far out to see. It was supposed to be part of the plan that the military would track us and use the opportunity to attack the Joker, turning the tables on him, as it were, but his boat moved too fast for them to catch him, and soon we were out of sight.

*

I dreamed I was a camera guy working on a documentary about the life of a restaurateur on Long Island, a younger man in his 30s with a wife and real young kids. The documentary portrayed him as working his fingers to the bone in the kitchen, a profusely sweating creative genius who then returned home to various shenanigans with his family. And yet when the cameras stopped, the guy took off his costume and went into a back office, where we saw him working the phones and typing away at his computer. Turns out he was running some kind of franchise at the executive level, and his family live was constant turmoil, the guy a mental wreck. It was sad to see. We left him like that, his head on the desk, near tears or oblivion, and told him we'd be back to film some more tomorrow.

I dreamed we were sending troops over to Ukraine in a dramatic escalation of the war there, and they had drafted all the young men of the country. We were at one of my son's soccer games, and officials were literally coming on to the pitch and escorting boys as young as 11 or 12 years old off to waiting Army transport vehicles. I remember the expression on our keeper's face, quizzical, as they tried to explain to him what was going on and why he had to go.

Not good.

Somewhere in between the dream and the waking world, a sort of fully lucid dream, I found myself in the presence of a peculiar entity. I was leaving a sort of restaurant or hall with my family, one of light brown stone. They had gone to the parking lot, but this entity beckoned me to turn back into the restaurant, and so I did. She move with a grace and levity belying her apparent age, and looked like one of those venerable aunts one might see on the Benedetta cooking shows. Notwithstanding the fact that I had to see my family, she moved at her own pace, as if there were all the time in the world, and sat down at a wide kitchen table. Myriad workers and servers bustled about her, and I could perceive deep halls and kitchens beyond, full of activity.

We spoke only in Italian. I gently asked her identity. Fortuna, she said, pushing up her black-rimmed glasses, and I asked if she needed any assistance, but she smiled. She had many lavoranti e attendenti about. We spoke briefly, and I got the sense that I could leave, so I did.

The thought that remained: One may labor for many years for a particular end, but it is only by the Grace of God, Fortuna, the Providence of the Eternal One, that we arrive at an outcome.

Axé!

I dreamed we adopted a teenager, freckles and red hair, tall. He was a few years younger than my daughter, and we had him living in the basement. He was severely depressed, and the wife and I didn't know what to do for him.

*

I dreamed I was sent undercover to Palestine, disguised as a priest in the pope's entourage, to tour the scenes of devastation there. The CIA had arranged it, and there I was, Roman collar and all, walking besides the pontiff and other officials. The debris and destruction were unreal. Scenes of crying old people on piles of dust. Explosions shook the night.

When we returned to our deployment site, I spoke with a short, red-haired Israeli female soldier. I marveled that I was somehow able to walk there (no plane transportation from Newark, in the dream). She shook her head. "Yes, you can simply walk there," she said. "It's closer than you think."

Back in New Jersey, I was on a suburban street, like Levittown. All the houses were roughly white and looked the same. It was twilight, and it had snowed enough that it made the going difficult. I was carrying a sort of orb inside a cage that shed water, which would then drip down into a pan underneath. I gripped the two sides of the pan tightly, trying not to spill the water on the just-shoveled sidewalk, where it would freeze over immediately. My son was with me, but I couldn't see him; he may have been lingering on a random house's porch or otherwise fooling around in the snow. I told him to be careful, and that I would meet him at home.

In the darkening sky above a biplane flew overhead in the direction of New York City, too low for my taste. It was followed by two police helicopters, with lights shining on the clouds. I called out to my son again, and together we made our way down the street.