Reawaken my dream life

^{From mid to late December. Nothing solid, mostly fragments (due to insomnia, stress, or being abruptly woken by toddlers and telephones). Still worth recording…}

• Animated, video style, but a sense of the old, ancient. Friends melt into each other.

• A wolf.

• I’ve re-dyed my hair red. There are too many flowers. I’m looking into a large rectangular mirror, focusing on my hairline, wondering why I have no memory of “dying”.

• I’m taking a bus trip. It’s nighttime, and I’m outside with a suitcase in my hand waiting for the bus to arrive. There is a long winding road in front of me, a school(?) nearby, and a sense of foreboding – something scary, but the bus pulls up and I get on just in time.

• Fell asleep in semi-lucid state, floating up to the ceiling and away, inside a dream, but this broke when Markus came in to go to bed. I was convinced I’d remember the dream when I woke, but I didn’t, just something about a face.

• She’s walking away, into a tunnel.

• I’m crushing a dying alien spider. It’s large, yellow and repulsive and makes an odd buzzing, whooshing noise. I feel guilty and creeped out and call Markus to help finish the job. I’m waiting for this death. (I’d forgotten all my dreams until Isak began singing the itsy bitsy spider)

• I’m in a chair, brushing my hair. My father is there, tea is on, and a guest is coming. Something is wrong, but I can’t put my finger on it. The scene shifts to a curio/antique shop, and I’m describing a curled up carved bone hair pic to two elderly ladies. I find a thin, grey, circular, pearly broach on the edge of a glass counter and hand it back. I suddenly feel quite manic. Police want to talk to someone, saying she may be guilty, and I know she is. (Casey Anthony?)

• A number of my brother’s friends are playing music. We are in our family house, the way it was in the 70’s. There are fisher price toys and matrioshka dolls lying around.

December 24, 2008
^{(Away overnight, lots of dreams, but most were quite fragmented, indecipherable.)}

• A man with a beard is climbing through a hole in the ceiling. I see his boot disappearing and reach for my camera.

• An emergency helicopter is taking off from a city area. There is a rope attached to the bottom, where a man is dangerously swinging by one arm, his feet on some kind of board. The dream shifts to a downtown spot within a city where several ethereally lovely women are sitting amid highly polished gold and silver statues that are so brilliant and overshiny that I find it very peculiar that none of us are squinting. There are hybrid lion-dogs walking around us, and an important door is about to open.

1. Sad mummers in vivid drag, bright wigs (Bob?). Quiet hysteria.

2. It’s late evening, cool and dark. I’m in front of a big grey building/castle with a high fence that looks like it might have been designed by Edward Gorey. It gets higher and thinner, almost splintering at the top. Yellow light shines through the far away windows at the peak. Other than this light, the rest of the dream is in high contrast black and white. There is a box. When opened, fleas start jumping out. The quote: “Dedicated to anyone who shares my blood, and anyone who shares my heart, shares my blood”.

3. It starts epic movie style (passive dream observer), with a man (Tom Hanks), who wears a pale olive army uniform, and is with a boy named Kaleb, who was an “army baby”. They seem to be important mythical archetypes, but I’m not sure why, they don’t do anything particularly dramatic other than just be (but maybe that’s the point). A man is saying it doesn’t make sense because he was more “the army guy” then “his timid self”. There’s a debate about split personalities, newly dominant egos taking over and integration.
^{I think my brain was trying to say all dreaming selves = me.}

The dream shifts and Isak and I walking along a path, everything around us is green and warm, with layers of leaves and their shadows. A large, mutant, pearlike fruit (with two tops and a thick, round base) causes me to question “reality” and I realize I’m dreaming. I pick the pear-thing and we throw it back and forth, then I take out my camera and start taking photos of Isak and his reflection in a small pond. It’s quite mesmerizing – looking through the lens at the image of the image, realizing they all exist only in my sleeping head. I find myself wondering if I can take the photos back with me.

I slip in and out of lucidity and semi-lucidity; wondering if “they” heat this dreamworld, since fruit is growing and it’s winter, or fretting about Isak getting lost somewhere, being left behind when I wake. There are a lot of people (they seem to be other dreamers, also aware of their state) walking around us, and we’re all traveling up a smooth path. Gradually the characters change again, and I’m suddenly reading the back of a video box, realizing the dream is ending as I flip back and forth between passive observer, dream participant, and reader within the dream.

4. I’m at a loud concert (not something I’d go to, hard edged metalheads in spandex, a lot of screaming noise). I’m near the merch table, run by a fellow with sloppy tattoos and a terrible neon yellow mullet wig. I feel guilty about how ridiculous I think he looks, even though I don’t say anything – it makes me feel shallow. The table is covered in all sorts of buttons, shirts, iron ons, cd’s, band photos etc, and when I look closer at the photos, I realize a bunch of them are from the previous dream and wonder how they were developed so quickly and what they’re doing on the table.

^{(I also wrote “I call up 91 mental icons”, but I have no memory of this or what it means. I should transcribe these while they’re fresh in my mind.)}

I had an odd stretch that was either dreamless (too tired/not enough sleep) or where something would happen (phone calls, small people demanding porridge) as I was trying to write the dreams down, causing them to blow away like dazzledust. They’re so slippery sometimes. Lately though, they’ve been back in full force, so I need to decipher the scrawly dream journal next to my bed. I’ll try to make time for this over the weekend.

I’m reading a new book on dreaming, and finding that some of the exercises I got from the previous one have been both interesting and helpful (when if comes to falling asleep, sifting through the mundane, and remembering upon waking). Sometimes when I close my eyes at night I feel as though I’m going on a blind treasure hunt. I look forward to it.

I’ve really enjoyed reading other people’s dreams/posts…

^{A new beginning. Every night I read a bit more of my dream book in bed and remind myself to try and remember (both my actual dreams and the fact that I’m dreaming). I’ve been actively trying to write something when I wake, even if it’s vague. It’s getting easier. It was a bit tricky to decipher some of my sleepy bedside table scrawl [there are some drawings too, but I’ll add them later], but here’s what I have for the first week:}

• Dec 1, 2008

Our landlord is selling the house, and our upstairs neighbours have bought 2/3. We could buy the lower half for a decent price, but don’t want to be stuck living with them permanently, so it’s very frustrating. The thought of moving is very stressful.

• Dec 2, 2008 (8:40 am)

1) Search for a girl
Book – collage
Book – death (I’ll continue)
Black & white VS the grey area

2) The little rainbow that couldn’t reach the sky (style of children’s story)

3) I’m low to the ground, intently trying to take pictures of the grass sloping downhill, very close to the blades (they begin to blur the farther away they get). There are several people in the way, and I don’t want them to think I’m trying to photograph them. I’m using an old film camera, like the one I had in high school. There seems to be a very colourful youth festival going on, a fellow next to me is smiling and unwrapping his white turban, 3 prom queens hold hands; it’s very ethnically diverse and positive. Someone is absent.

4) Green Queen, green staircase, lost and searching. Dressed up differently.
She said: “It is always now. We are all fragmented pieces of god.”

• Dec 3, 2008 (10:20 am)
  ^{Falling asleep was odd, semi-lucid. Visuals: rising phoenix, roller coaster, images rushing past. Strange physical sensation, like leaving my body, still attached at the head.}

Documents. Trying to catch someone Bad. Notes & old photos. Cotton eyed Joe. Leave it out, they’ll ask. Bardo.

• Dec 4, 2008 (6:00 am)

1) I’m moving dreams physically, as if I’m using Photoshop, dragging and dropping images: photos of rust on blue paint, the sound of the ocean. “Shaman with a tinfoil hat”.

2) A fragmented epic, wrapped up at the end. Gangsters. Spun glass rods (about 3 inches long) with gold colored balls on the ends, 1 is broken, missing wrap. Attempting box sculpture. Madonna in ratty sweater, she’s walking away and I can see the hole in her back left pocket, revealing fishnet stockings. Swimming pool, lots of people, blue reflected light/water. They find “the Bad Egg”. At a mall restaurant, there is one of those obnoxious “thumbs up chef” statues. I put it on a table, it repeatedly moves to the floor when I turn away, which really bothers me. I’m watching fish in a tank, there is a small half-size matchbox in my hand, picturing Bettie Page scrubbing the floor with a pink sponge.

• Dec. 5, 2008 (8:41 am)

1) Lobsters. Bathos. Flight. (untrackable fragments)

2) Gluing ear bud/hearing aid radio in ear. Ominous. Unfamiliar people. Outside time restraint. Old family home. The collapsible robot chair that puts itself together.

• Dec. 6, 2008 (6:00 am)

Turtle guide. I’m remembering dreams, and almost joke with my Self about it.
Winter. Sleds and ice around branches. Heat and dreams, around a tunnel, questioning Self.

• Dec.7, 2008

In a little boat, wearing a poufy dress & drifting. Blueblue. We are a painting (Monet? Tissot?). Smooth driftwood. —Woke to Ray Charles’ version of Eleanor Rigby which had wound into my dream strangely.

• Dec.8, 2008 (10:00 am)

1) An asylum (named Bediamyre?), surrounded by a dark moat/water. 4 people: myself, 2 men, and a child. We’re in for observation and questioning. There are arguments. ‘Hoity Toity’ decides to stay to make them cease, even though he believes he’s mentally stable, which is doubtful.

2) Water. There is a 6 foot long lime green snake with golden eyes, unthreatening. Then (like a movie) I’m in an unfamiliar kitchen putting a little lizard in the microwave for a snack, but I know I need to bite into the head first (“like an apple pie”) and don’t want to. There is a discussion (with my brother? Sherry?) about the meat darkening if it’s gone off. I heat it, then change my mind about eating as I vividly picture biting down. I give to Dan/Sherry, then feel like a jerk because I know they don’t want it either.

3) Flying nun / Flying buttress. A sad dirge plays.

^{I’m very pleased with how much I’ve been able to remember so far. It may make more sense to post more regularly, rather than doing a weekly digest. Hopefully I can manage something daily.}

As I mentioned here earlier this week, I’m dearly missing my dream life, and hoping to recharge it, start remembering again. I’m keeping a pen & little book by the bed, and every morning this week I’ve managed to catch snippets when waking. It’s still rather like drunkenly going after tiny butterflies at this point, but I have the feeling that if I stick with it, things will progress again. Hopefully I can get back to writing out epic dreams and return to lucidity.

I’m experimenting with some of the suggestions in the book, such as rewinding the day in your mind, going over everything backwards from present to waking, which helps to filter out static from the day so you’re less inclined to dream about washing dishes (I’ve found a fun way to do this is when Isak is settling down for the night, I talk with him about everything we did during the day).

It’s surprising how vividly I can recall the dreams I’ve written about, even if they were 20 years ago. Equally surprising is how easy it is to lose the ones I’ve just had if I don’t make the effort. So I’m making the effort.