There is a city I dream of repeatedly that I believe is supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, either in the U.S. or in Canada. The first time I dreamt about it, I thought that it was Seattle, although most of its features don’t at all correspond to what little I know of Seattle, and it doesn’t match with Vancouver either. The dream I had last night seemed to associate it with Calgary, but this is clearly wrong since it is not on the ocean, nor is it near any other bodies of water.

So, its features: a large saline body of water to the west, immediately making me think of Puget Sound, particularly with the scattered islands and the distant peninsula further to the west. A large freshwater lake to the east. Los Angeles lies far to the south. There is a heavily traveled north-south railroad, paralleled by elevated heavy-rail public transport. The heavy-rail system is large and profuse, criss-crossing the entire city, allowing one to travel to distant parts without ever requiring a car. Far to the east is a nuclear power plant. The international airport is to the south. The city streets are mostly aligned with the cardinal directions, except for what I imagine is the oldest part of the city, tilted 45 degrees (like downtown Los Angeles) Besides the tangle of freeways that perfuse the city, there is a large east-west expressway, five lanes wide in either direction that has traffic signals, but tends to function like a freeway anyway. There is an old segment of north-south freeway that is also heavily traveled but is in the midst of conversion to a normal city street. (It reminds me of Pacific Highway in San Diego, which used to be old US-101.)

There is a movie theater in the northwest corner of the city that plays weird independent films. The theater seating actually consists of church pews. (Was this an old church before? How deliciously blasphemous.) Next door is a place that specializes in virtual reality, with various “dungeons” that one can wander around in. I think one of them was specifically based on Douglas Adams’ “Total Perspective Vortex,” which is a torture device that makes a person realize how infinitesimally insignificant they are.

In one of my older dreams, my sister had actually taken a job in this unreal city, and I had gone on a trip to visit her. She happened to live on the westernmost part of the city on a large island, and nearby is a heavy-rail terminal which starts off at groundlevel, crosses the water, and becomes one of the busy elevated rail lines that crisscross the city. This dream was largely driven by time anxiety, as I had to navigate this unfamiliar tangle of transit lines in order to make it to my flight back to San Diego. Some of the major stops actually have oasis-like mall structures and restaurants—accessible only if you enter the train system. (This reminded me of the tollway oases in Illinois.)

My dream last night was supposedly a road-trip from L.A., a revisitation. In this dream, I had visited this place before with J, B, A, and E (not unlike my actual trip in 1997—except that E did not come with us.) In this dream, A and E had actually hooked up on this 1997 trip. So in my dream last night, I walked the streets of this unknown city, reminiscing about days long gone, and opportunities long ago squandered. I had breakfast at one of the cafes along as street that may have been named Medina. I tried to watch a flick at the movie theater with the church pews but some people got uppity and interrupted the showing. I wandered around the virtual reality complex.

In this dream, A and C both figured. B was there as well. For some reason I imagine a lot my friends were also in the city on vacation like me.

There is a sequence where I have to find my car, and I end up having to traverse the large Crosstown Expressway. To the south of this expressway is a series of hills.

The end of my dream featured the city’s train system guidance computer becoming sentient and trying to turn everything organic into androids (a la “Superman III” and the lady who turns into a machine) The computer is foiled by (1) the large body of water on the western boundary and (2) the fact that I managed to transect the powerlines connecting it to the nuclear powerplant in the west, thereby disrupting its ability to remain self-aware.

Who needs drugs when you have a fervid imagination like mine?