Blue_Opossum

Morning of January 10, 2017. Tuesday.



After exploring an unknown but interesting region in an unfamiliar rural area, I eventually start thinking about fishing. It seems to be late afternoon. I find an area where several others are fishing, mostly males in their thirties. There is a building on one longer side of a pond with a pathway just wide enough to walk on. The rectangular pond is about three-fourths a city block in length though only about half that length at the ends.

When I decide to fish, I see that there are too many bobbers on the water’s surface near the side I first go to. As I walk along the pond’s length near the building, I see bobber after bobber on the surface (as well as the trailing fishing line) and a number of fishing poles along the bank that extend over the entire length of the pond on that side, the setups of which apparently belong to the group of three men who are sitting at the end of the pond. This annoys me but I do not become very angry.

I walk back to where the other three males are (even though it would have made more sense to keep going around the corner to the other longer side of the pond to search for a space to fish). After a short time, that longer side of the pond I had just walked back along seems clear (though there is neither a memory nor enough time implied to have passed for the men to have actually reeled it all in or to have gathered up their equipment). There are only a couple areas where bobbers and line are still visible on that side. For a short time, I walk in midair above the water (not on the water as in certain past dreams) to get past a corner. I do this without thinking it to be unusual.

I sit down to fish. I have a soft plastic jig body (shad-style soft plastic lure) and slide it onto a hook. An unknown male to my right tells me that I am not doing it by the proper standards. I take it off and slowly put it back onto the hook and he seems satisfied. “You know the fish in here aren’t that big?” he asks me. I nod, regardless of not knowing anything about the area. Still, when I look into the water, I can clearly see under the surface. There are several very large walleye and carp. I intend on catching a walleye.

After I cast my line, I see that I am almost immediately snagged on something. It looks like a large Ragdoll cat swimming under the water. I try to get the hook disentangled from its fur, which is along the side of its body near the middle. An unfamiliar boy of about ten wades out and is eventually able to take the hook out. I am not sure if the cat belongs to him or if he is there to perform a service (as an actual parks and recreation employee). The cat remains swimming in the water. I notice the boy seems to be dressed as a boy scout or parks employee, so may actually work here.

I ask the male who is still to my right about the “other area to fish” with the pretense of me being familiar with the area. I hint at it being a place beginning with “m” and pretending not to remember the full name. He asks me if I mean K-Mart, and I tentatively nod. I then ask him if it is legal to fish there presently. It seems it is.

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• Fishing, a common dream event for me since early childhood, represents the subliminal desire of the limited dream self to bring the emergent consciousness to the surface in order to wake or at least increase awareness. Water symbolizes sleep and a fish on the line is the downgraded conscious self identity developing coherence (often increasing in size and strength) when being caught.
• This is more specifically confirmed as a self-initiated waking precursor due to the behavior of the personified preconscious. Typically, the preconscious is only hostile when the personified subconscious (dream self) does not want to wake or (metaphorically) initiate waking. As fishing is an act of deliberately seeking the emergent consciousness, the preconscious is passive here. He even helps me continue my task without aggressiveness or treating me strangely.
• This is more specifically confirmed as a self-initiated waking precursor due to the behavior of the personified preconscious. Typically, the preconscious is only hostile when the personified subconscious (dream self) does not want to wake or (metaphorically) initiate waking. As fishing is an act of deliberately seeking the emergent consciousness, the preconscious is passive here. He even helps me continue my task without aggressiveness or treating me strangely.
• The personified preconscious rarely appears in fishing dreams (again, due to what fishing metaphorically represents in real time). He only appears here due to the delay in the waking transition, which was caused by my own hesitancy and non-lucid dream control in creating the additional bobbers and too many random additional "lines of communication".
• The cat in the water is a factor of the circadian rhythms of nighttime (and the dream state during a particular sleep cycle) and has also appeared as the final waking prompt in past dreams though is underwater here based on the time of my dream (after sunrise). Catching the cat would be akin to enhancing the essence of night (or night-based thoughts), in contrast to the “correct” waking goal.
• The reference to K-Mart is a mixed waking prompt and dream sign, since I associate K-Mart with clothes and getting up and getting dressed.

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