Blue_Opossum

Morning of February 9, 2018. Friday.



Today marks my 24th year in Australia and in being with the girl of my dreams, Zsuzsanna.

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I am going to try something new here. As I still have tens of thousands of dreams I have never posted online, including thousands from before I was even a teenager, I might try entries that include sequences of specific types in a series of no more than 12 for a specific part of the sleep cycle. Although I usually recall at least six longer dreams per normal sleeping time, there are many more of different but basic types that are mostly autosymbolic of the transitions between different times during sleep and of which I usually just pass through without drama. I am going to try this to see how it goes, randomly selecting dates, after this one, from over the last fifty years to see how the autosymbolic content has remained unchanged for the most part and perhaps note influences when I can. In some cases, I might include a very short summary of a dream I had already posted if it falls into the sequence of a certain dream type and time. The dreams are listed in reverse order, last one first. (Missing numbers are either related to private sections, abstract stages that cannot be described in words, or too long to post online.) (To quote the Yo-Yo man, “Try to remember everything you passed. But when you go back, make the first thing the last.”)

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12th There is one farmer working in a rice paddy. The water is lower when I look again later. (My dream self vaguely recognizes this as autosymbolism for the cessation of the dream state, water lowering waking symbolism, which has been as such since early childhood, having occurred as such through thousands of my dreams.) I do not speak to him but recognize the essence as RAS (personified preconscious). I eventually become aware that RAS has transmuted from a Filipino rice farmer into a Caucasian cowboy. He stands before a fence (my side), which is the division between dream self identity and conscious self identity, and I walk past him through an open part of the fence to wake. I do not speak to him, he nods, and I nod back. RAS mediation as utilizing a fence is less common than porches and doorways, or even parking lots, but does occur on a regular basis. RAS is typically more dominant or even aggressive when a porch is rendered as the waking space, probably because it implies that my dream self wants to remain “inside” for longer (that is, not wanting to wake yet).

11th I am walking over a large high truss bridge (unknown location) over water. I do not see any traffic. A bridge is autosymbolism for a transition in unconsciousness and the water lowers to become the rice paddy scene of the next segment.

08th I am walking through a circular tunnel, which I first consider, with a level of wariness, that it is the Large Hadron Collider. Still, it is mostly a featureless silver tunnel. I eventually consider it as just a transition between different levels of unconsciousness after briefly wondering if it is the inside of an airplane with no contents (including no seats or flat floor). There is sometimes a very vague sense of wariness when walking or sliding down through tunnels, not exactly claustrophobia (as I do not have this in waking life), just some sort of unusual level of awareness triggered by semi-lucidity. This is not usually the case with hallways of which are the same basic autosymbolism (dream state transition), though less transpersonal.

05th I usually have one dream per sleeping period that is either prescient or of another inexplicable factor. I am in the backyard of our present home and there is some sort of distorted event related to five cats in a large rectangular container full of dirt of which may be a plant pot. I get the impression they are not alive, being half-buried in the dirt, but the feature seems unusual. The cats are not fully grown. There is an odd impression that they might not be “real” cats, for example, a perception of thread instead of cat hair, and an odd sort of composition, and even separated “parts” of cats (though still five in total). After waking, Zsuzsanna had shown me an older cross-stitch she had done (of which she had taken out of a rectangular plastic box this morning, with no way of me knowing that she would be doing this). There were five cats on the item, with different coats, but each of the same appearance and sequence as each from my dream, though she had related the cross-stitch as being prescient of our final number of children and the ratio of girls to boys (based on the appearance of the cat’s coat as certain coats are only common to certain sexes, such as most gingers being male and most tortoiseshells being female). This does not mean there is any symbolic connection to my dream (that is, of the cats being linked to our children), as prescience and shared dreaming is often mixed in with other factors. The symbolism still validates the prescient connection, the cats being in a rectangular box, not being “alive”, and of an unusual appearance of thread (cross-stitch thread) mixed with hair.

02nd I mentally light a candle to see where I am (unrelated to the apnea events I experience very rarely, which is like mentally trying to will a candle flame back into existence with the fear it has gone out) and it is a small copper-walled room without much space. There is a focus on having recently taken the vocal out of David Essex’s “For Emily, Wherever I may find her”. “What a dream I had. Pressed in organdie. Clothed in crinoline…of smoky Burgundy. Softer than the rain.” Solely the isolated vocal plays from a gramophone, with an eerie echo. Sometimes when I strip the vocal out of a track in real life, it takes on a very unique quality, especially when I add certain kinds of reverb. I was thinking of using the isolated vocal in a new dub track I had already started (not for commercial purposes of course).

00 Induction stage. I walk down steps with the intention of going deeper into the dream state. They are outdoor concrete stairs in an area near buildings of which are covered with vines. When I was very young, I learned to manipulate levels of unconsciousness by going up or down stairs in dreams (in both lucid and non-lucid situations, as I have recognized dream symbolism for so long, I was manipulating it at six years of age - which eventually became non-lucid habit), which is autosymbolism for traversing the specific level of unconsciousness (and is used the same way in hypnosis and meditation). Outdoor stairs are sometimes modeled after the ones in Veterans Memorial Campground in West Salem (Wisconsin), where I sometimes spent time as a young boy.

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Morning of December 25, 2014. Thursday.



This was a typical “one animal becomes another” dream (which is possibly one of the oldest dream types in my memory - going back to my toddler years) and it was fairly short and uneventful. However, there were other sections which were not very clear or well-rendered.

In the first part of my dream, it is established that we are “still” living on Duffy Street. I am only vaguely aware of the holiday season. I believe we seem to have some sort of business of selling or giving away pets.

I go into an area of the kitchen where there is some sort of wooden platform with several small trap doors and which is built into the larger kitchen counter and part of the stove top. Over time, I notice that we have a large collection of Mottled Houdans, a type of exotic chicken (supposedly a French breed, but looking quite similar to certain Polish breeds). There are at least twenty of them if not more. They are probably about three-fourths their final adult size.

After a time, I realize that we actually have black and white cats, not Mottled Houdans (this may be based on absentminded in-dream questioning of why there would be chickens inside the apartment). I am not that coherent at any point. I think we are going to try to sell some. At any rate, I am aware that both cats and chickens “roost” in higher locations, just sort of standing there. We have more (younger) animals in another room in cardboard boxes under the bed, but I am not fully clear on anything or whether they are cats, chickens, or something else (such as Guinea pigs).

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Morning of November 24, 2014. Monday.



I am back at my older sister Marilyn’s house in La Crosse and trying to get her to appear by calling out to her to show herself (having the understanding that she had died yet also still potentially present in certain supraconscious dream realms, perhaps). I am semi-lucid in an atypical way; not in a more coherent sense. In one sense, it is vaguely like some sort of soliloquy-like seance. Over time, my sister does not walk from the other room as I expect her to even though I vaguely sense her presence on the other side of the darkened doorway. I am trying not to project my frustration as there is a growing realization she does not exist anymore, yet at the same time I sense her unwillingness to come out. However, there is no stronger focus on mortality by that point. (I have had very similar dream scenes in the past but usually tulpa-based, not related to real people either living or deceased.)

Eventually, three cats enter the house somehow (possibly through the open front door). One of the cats seems to be one which my family presently has (though had supposedly died in my dream’s back story weeks before). It is Franco, a black and white male cat. The other two cats are more like miniature leopards in one way but still with domestic cat attributes including the body proportions. From here, my dream goes into some distorted scenes where my perception is badly skewed.

I falsely “remember” that these were my sister’s two cats. Somehow (also an in-dream false memory) they died around the same time she did, which is supposedly related to something unexplainable (relative to “mutual deaths” which stems from real-life ideas of the past where a sister’s neighbor died and then their otherwise healthy spouse died shortly thereafter, supposedly out of grief). However, at the same time, there is a highly ambiguous idea that they are still alive (but Franco had been partly made sick by them as well) and had caused sickness in other people (in turn causing their death) by biting or scratching them (again, a false memory as the other people reflected upon other than my sister are still alive). Again, this is directly related to the two “leopard cats” (possible association with leprosy as well as the pet hybrid bobcat attack I experienced in my youth). They are not very aggressive (they seem to be mostly just playful though do attempt to “hunt” based on my body’s movement), but I want to completely avoid contact with them as they are seemingly venomous. I am aware of mild pressure on my body at times but I do not seem to actually be bitten at any point. (This seems partially related to a “struggle” with the bed sheet and an attempt to get my real physical body into a more comfortable position.)

I go to the couch, slowly going back into a semi-lucid state, and am on my knees on the floor at that point, my head near the seat of the couch. However, there is not that much coherence even though my general awareness is slowly sharpening. I then go into an odd state that is quite rare, where I attempt to “spit out” my dream while still in it before I fully wake. It takes about three attempts in making sure my dream’s environment does not “enter” my waking essence (the opposite of healing dreams where I intentionally carry facets of my dream’s energy into waking life). I do not seem to recall reading about this sort of dream experience, other than some supposed healers in real life spitting out the essence of what they supposedly take out of their patients. On another note, this dream setting near the couch is the exact spot of one of the only times in my life I have been ill in this manner in real life (from one of the only times in my life that I drank alcohol).

Morning of September 21, 1969. Sunday.



This was a highly annoying dream that seemed to “reset” all night long. There were a couple vaguely interesting parts, but it mostly involved having to sweep outside, in the early morning until late afternoon, the whole area between the cafeteria and the northern side of the main West Elementary school building, not just the sidewalks and portico areas, but the grounds as well. Of course, there was always more sand and a bit of debris to go back to and never actually feel any sense of completion of the required job.

The other students were doing chimney cleaning throughout the neighborhood, apparently. There were not even any actual chimneys to speak of much for such work in reality. In the past (about a year before I finally “got” the real lyrics), I absentmindedly sang “Chin chin chir-ree” (instead of “Chim”) without anyone noticing - I guess because I thought “chin” actually related to the person’s face while doing the cleaning. This was also related to the somewhat precognitive “cat-woman” dream where the girl on the roof at Rose Street was a foreshadowing of an actual school play with the “same” girl (of the sparsely recurring December 20, 1966 dream). I believe there is also a vague association with Mickey Mouse in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and a concern about not getting my job done (the idea of “without magic” is only a very vague thought at one point). Of course, it could also imply an indirect association with the “mystery girl” during this time, in her Wendy persona, as she rode a broom.

In the background, also, is the “Money Cat” association. The eerie black cats, however, are only moving about in sparse patterns of swiftness on the roof of the main school building (the “Mary Poppins” rooftop associations were “perfectly” integrated with the “Gay Purr-ee” rooftop associations for some reason, with that sort of tentative “charcoal”, “submarine periscope chimneys”, and vaguely unpleasant wide-reaching industrial implications). No one else is around and I am close to anger at having to be the only one with the job at hand. The task seems ultimately pointless. The dream drags out in an uncomfortable manner - and, if that were not bad enough, it resets as I have already stated - back to the “beginning”. The cats coming out later, especially as the sun sets, means that I have “failed”, yet I do not see the relevance to my actual school grades.

Relating to this dream and several pleasing ones, there is some sort of odd, layered nostalgic conscious association going back to the “Money Cat” song from “Gay Purr-ee”, the “carrot creature” (what I call “her”) from “Cold Hands, Warm Heart” (“The Outer Limits”), the dance by Nichelle Nichols in “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” (which had alien “cat women”), and the “cat burglar” girl from the 1966 (and later) dreams. I found it interesting how the first viewing of the “Star Trek V” movie triggered what almost amounted to a false and “distant” memory, but was actually a “buried” long-term association with the imagery. It “struck” me at a very deep and personal level.

Morning of January 4, 1969. Saturday.



This childhood dream journal entry has been revised on Friday 20 October 2017 to complete and clarify revelatory dynamics to more coherently define the meaning. This dream occurred about 3:30 in the morning. Sunrise was not until about 7:20 a.m. I had attempted to watch the 1942 black-and-white movie “Cat People” (which started around one a.m. on this Saturday morning), though our television was black-and-white anyway, but I slept through most of it, though I did not go to my bed until about 3:15 in the morning.

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In my dream, as I am walking out from the front of our Cubitis carport (after deliberately “stepping into” the stabilized hypnagogic “portal” rendered as the unlit carport area), seemingly only about three-thirty to four o'clock in the morning, and walking in a northwesterly direction towards our neighbor’s orange grove, I maintain my lucidity.

Even though I am lucid, I feel somewhat vulnerable when I find myself walking into the opening of a fictional feature. It is a hallway in which the walls are seemingly made of fog, yet with a suggestion of at least partial solidity. This eerie hallway starts from between the middle area of the driveway and the neighbor’s orange grove, and runs from east to west towards Highway Seventeen (and is perpendicular to it). I do not perceive the potential length of this hallway or clearly discern a door or doorway on the opposite side, which makes me hesitant in continuing.

From here, I see various domestic cats (at least fifteen) in various positions throughout the hallway ahead. Some cats are sitting or standing on tables (one near a vase on a table) and some are sitting or standing on the implied hallway’s floor. One cat jumps down from a table (or simple platform) on the left side in this scene and walks toward me though never gets very close or attacks. An unknown male narrator’s voice (seeming to come from above and to my left and as if from a loudspeaker with slightly fuzzy audio) only says “cats” in a very informal way and without emotion. I feel that he may not be speaking to me as it may be a voice that was recorded years ago. There is also the vague idea that I may not be fully in the setting but looking at a realistic three-dimensional movie scene either superimposed or bilocated into the front yard area. Despite my lucidity, I feel somewhat wary, uncertain, and passive to what I am seeing even though there is no discernible threat. Soon, with deliberate intent (lucid choice), I fade from my dream with a soft awakening. (The liminal space transition is also softer than usual.)

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Following is an extensive and highly revelatory explanation of the most likely factors and personal history responsible for this dream along with their related meanings. I have recorded this dream as of the doorway waking symbolism type.

It was obvious to me at the time (despite being only eight years old), that my dream was trying to fill in missing details from “Cat People” even though that was not my original dream entry intent (which was to visit my younger neighbor and friend, Brenda, who lived north of me). However, my dream was completely unrelated to the movie’s plot as my distorted memory implied that the movie was about an older woman with a fear of domestic cats.

The otherwise ambiguous hallway setting is modeled after two common real-life locations and progressions, one, walking through the hallway in my Cubitis home, and two, walking down our Cubitis driveway (as the fictional hallway was rendered as just north of it and parallel to it) to wait for the school bus on week day mornings. The possibly implied exit of the fictional foggy hallway would be at the east wayside of Highway Seventeen and it should also be mentioned that while waiting for the bus on week days in this time period, there was sometimes dense fog. Fog was far more common as a dream feature during the time periods there was fog in the mornings in real life, although fog also seems to be a factor of the dream state itself, possibly influenced by dream scenes in movies that include fog (to represent that it is a dream), though is also a natural association with dreaming.

There is also an association with Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog”; the line “The fog comes on little cat feet” (which was silently integrated into my dream near the last moments). The poem was first published in 1916 and my mother was born in 1916. This seems to be the association with the “old woman” (my mother) with a supposed fear of domestic cats (again, not what 1942’s “Cat People” was about). However, neither my mother nor I had any trepidation relating to cats. In fact, my mother had a pet gray tabby named Dewey at this time. The mild trepidation in my dream was more about my lucidity being intruded upon by the absentminded association with the movie that I had not even seen much of, based on my earlier wondering about it (but not consciously intending for it to be carried into the dream state as it was).

There is one more relevant commonly recurring factor I should include here. The doorway waking symbolism and other types that sometimes include the liminal space cat symbolism (in addition to the term “putting the cat out for the night” as subliminally relating to shifts in unconsciousness and waking symbolism itself) curiously was validated to have come from having seen the ending credits of “The Flintstones” (an animated television series) so many times. A domesticated saber-toothed cat is seen throwing Fred out of his house (after Fred firstly put the cat out) during the end credits, resulting in Fred pounding on his front door and yelling “Wilma!”, waking the whole neighborhood. This also established not only the relevant waking symbolism but additionally established this symbolism as a more influential dream state end marker in many examples throughout my fifty years of dream journaling. There are additional reasons for liminal space cat symbolism, one being an influence from the 1962 animated movie “Gay Purr-ee”, another with my childhood association of a cat sitting on a fence as existing between dreaming and waking (that is, a fence as the liminal space divider between dreaming and waking). Additionally, I think of cats as being more active at night or while people are sleeping and dreaming, thus a natural symbol of the dream state itself.

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Morning of January 1, 1975. Wednesday. (New Year’s Day.)



Summary: Two cats quickly going in opposite directions meet on our Cubitis carport and their movement ceases as they stare at each other until my dream ends. This dream was possibly at least partially influenced by the limerick “There once were two cats of Kilkenny“, as the term “Kilkenny cats” did seem to be in the back of my mind at one point in-dream but was not spoken aloud (though the cats do not fight or even move as in the limerick). A younger neighbor and friend I waited with at the school bus stop on weekday mornings had the first name of Kenny, which may have added to the associations.

It is early morning in Cubitis just prior to the time I would be going out to wait for the school bus on a normal school day and the sun has not fully risen. I become aware that I am going onto our carport at the start of my dream for this reason.

Seemingly out of nowhere, two (unfamiliar to me) cats suddenly approach each other and both assume a stand-off position in our carport near the front entrance of our house, facing north and south. Immediately before I actually see them, I get an uneasy sense of a loud two-layered human-male-like “Ugh!” as if both of the cats had somehow “said” or “exclaimed” it simultaneously, each with a sense of implied disgust at the other, immediately prior to their near-collision.

Time seems “frozen” for seemingly several minutes as the cats stand completely motionless, facing each other from only about an inch apart (nose to nose). I get an eerie feeling that they may somehow have additional human-like attributes (though there is no real evidence for that other than the unvalidated assumption that they spoke).

Soon, at least a dozen (unknown) reporters, both male and female, having donned primarily early 1960s dress styles, appear on our carport as if out of nowhere. They are evenly gathered around, both standing and crouched in a semicircle (open to the driveway), with cameras (a male near the main door seemingly using a Polaroid 185 Land Camera) and yellow notepads with pens (though I briefly notice one female making continuous cursive loops rather than words or sentences). The reporters are gathering around the cats (though not that closely - about a yard or more away) and appear to be ready to plan or begin some sort of television or radio broadcast on the event. The cats do not make any other sounds and continue to remain motionless throughout the rest of my dream. I still feel a growing and somewhat unpleasant eeriness that they are “more than cats” and I almost expect something else to happen but nothing else does. There is a strange mythical awareness that neither cat will ever move again.

Analysis from my primary standpoint: This seems to be a play on the “old year” meeting the “new year” face to face or “blocking” potential progress into the new year with any issues of the previous year, almost in a mythical sense; thus, the in-dream uneasiness and “waiting for something to happen” even though a new year is basically just a continuation of the prior day. My family did not have a Polaroid 185 Land Camera but the camera has a feature that resembles the bellows of an accordion, which my father was well-known for playing and writing popular polkas and waltzes for. The reporters had a very vague association with cartoon characters on “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour” though they did not really appear cartoon-like in any way in my dream. The “reporters” are there perhaps to “record” my progress in my path into the new year and my otherwise blocked passage into the new day, one cat being “of me”, the other a potential rival with opposite opinions, perhaps; likely a classmate I have conflict with.

Analysis from my secondary standpoint: What people have seemingly failed to see throughout the entire history of so-called dream “interpretation” (as I have never seen much evidence of it in commercial publications) is that certain types of dream events often reflect the dreaming process itself. In this case, it would be my dream self being “blocked” from the knowledge of the holiday, part of me wanting to wake up in thinking I have to get up for school (though I do not) and another area of my (dream-self’s) mind saying “Hey, you can sleep longer today, what’s your hurry?”. Of course, dreams are typically multilayered, sometimes with so many layers, it sometimes takes years for certain facets to reveal themselves.