Blue_Opossum

Morning of October 10, 2015. Saturday.



This is a set of three shorter dreams in which one shifted into the other with only partial wakefulness.

The first involves being at an unknown location near a river bank. My wife Zsuzsanna and I are watching alligators swim through the water every now and then, just under the surface. A few other people are walking around. The alligators do not really seem threatening. Eventually I notice how a few of them look very different from normal alligators, though mostly around the head. I point out that it seems someone is apparently doing strange experiments with dinosaur DNA or possibly even living dinosaurs and alligators, as each alligator seems to have minor features from a known dinosaur, one having a head somewhat like a Tyrannosaurus, the other like a Styracosaurus, though flatter and more alligator-like. I even manage to pull the Styracosaurus alligator out of the water and partly onto the bank so that I can show people what I mean.

After a partial awakening and back into sleep, my wife and children and I are back on Barolin Street, except that all of the houses north of ours (as in reality) are gone and the area is replaced by a large field of mostly short grass and which is bordered by a fence adjacent to the sidewalk. Only a few other people are around farther to the north.

An unnaturally large Tyrannosaurus, probably about twice as large as any real one ever was, is walking about in the field as if being kept there by the small fence, which is only about the height of an average human waist. I see another Tyrannosaurus nearby, about three lots beyond the first one. In the back of my mind, I sense a part of myself contemplating how I will change my dream from an uneventful one into one where we are chased by the dinosaurs. (This vague awareness of making my dream in real time which also occurs with clearer awareness in indescribable abstract dreams has occurred since early childhood, though there is no hint of lucidity otherwise.)

The Tyrannosaurus moves his head down, leaning forward, and smashes down the tiny fence with his head, as if the tiny fence was somehow keeping him in the field when all he needed to do was just step over it without even noticing. I find this scene somewhat comedic, pondering the seeming low intelligence of the creature. I tell everyone that we need to go back to our house, as the dinosaur is now loose. It is soon moving very fast in our direction though the other one seems to be considering which direction to go (as there are more unknown people to the north). We go onto our porch, though the door to the main entrance and hallway is locked. From here, I non-lucidly manipulate my dream by rewinding it, pausing it, and jumping about in terms of sections of previous events.

In my next dream, we are inside the Barolin Street house, in the living room, I think. I am near the center of the room sitting on the floor. For some reason, I am practicing my firing of projectiles, which are actually finger bones from my hand. I somehow pop them out from my skeletal hand and fire them across the room (with a force that carries them to the wall, a few hitting a desk). I do this at least twelve times with all twelve of the phalanges of my right hand (not counting my thumb). I somehow continue with my left hand (not realizing it would not be possible as my right fingers are all gone). Looking down at my own skeleton, I see that I must have also already used some of my ribs at an earlier date. It is no problem, as I will eventually probably snap all my bones back into place later on.

(This may have something to do with the difficulty we had in snapping together the life-sized Billy Bones model kit a few months ago.)

Morning of June 20, 2015. Saturday.



My wife and children and I are again living on Barolin Street where we have not lived since March 2008. There is a fictional body of water in the backyard which first seems like a river (in a similar orientation as a fictional feature in my dreams about Cubitis where it replaces the railroad track area) but is later a swimming pool that is much closer to the back of the house. My dream “resets” a few times, and it is as if I am creating or forcing the drama at a background level. This is one of those dreams of a type I have not felt in some time, which is a strange type of sleep paralysis but not full to where it is lucid or as blissfully enjoyable, where my legs have a strange sensation all over the skin that is hard to describe - along with a bizarre anticipatory feeling or the nerves in my legs having been augmented to an almost overwhelming level. This happens on and off after waking several times and quickly going back into the same dream as a “reset” (usually with a slightly different sequence). Thus there are at least four or five versions of this dream within the same time period (though a more common event when I was younger). This dream also seems to have more “immediately reset and replay” scenes than usual.

In the primary version and main outcome, I notice a huge alligator head that had emerged from the surface of the water behind our house. At first it seems amusing, though over time, a part of myself seems to force elements of my dream for dramatic effect. A few times, I typically am aware I am creating my dream, but yet am not lucid or self-aware at my dream-self level. This is a common state I have never really read about in all the dream literature I have seen and yet is my most common “normal” way of dreaming.

There is a scene where I am describing the alligator to two unknown males who had been in a canoe on the river. I say how its head was about as large as half the living room though I realize that is an exaggeration.

There is a scene where two cats (one being our real black-and-white cat Franco, the other unknown) fall into the water of which is now of a swimming pool. I am looking out a fictional back window from what would otherwise be the kitchen area. An alligator head emerges and swallows the same cat a few times (in “resets”) and I feel upset and also realize my children will be very upset though I do tell them in most versions though it ends up to where the cats were not swallowed or eaten at all.

We still have to abandon the house and leave the area to the alligators. At one point, there is a fictional male that seems tiny and he falls down the front staircase (with a strangely cheerful manner), which are much bigger and with more steps than in reality. I do not regard his miniature nature at all. I only know we all have to leave to avoid being eaten by the alligators, of which there are perhaps six or seven.

My dream continues to jump back and forth with “resets” and replays in somewhat random and completely incongruous sequences (even for a dream) even though I retain all the main dream scenes after waking. Long ago, I decided this was some sort of “practice” function of dreams, which may be why some people cannot remember or resolve their dreams in the manner I usually do in that, because so many different versions of a scene or outcome resulted, the dream becomes muddled or uncertain in singular details (which do not exist due to there being several versions of the “same” event). This may also explain in-dream deja vu, where your dream-self had forgotten the first version of a dream sequence while still in the dream.

Most of the events seem to occur at night, though the cat scene was well-lit (though possibly with outside lights on the eaves of the back porch). We “escape from our home and do not return” a few times in a row. Each time after the “reset”, the setup becomes more and more ludicrous. There is one bizarre scene where I am aware of an alligator having put a ladder against our house to climb up and enter through the window like a person. (In fact, it is as if my dream-self is trying to force this to happen - though it never does.) In this case, the living room extends to that side of the house where the bathroom would otherwise be. Also, the (one-storey) house seems a bit higher up. (In reality it was on stumps, but the first floor not at what would be perceived as second-floor level when compared to a normal house.) I become vaguely aware I am creating my dream at this point, though with no lucidity. There is also an idea they will start coming in from the south end of the house (which has a fictional layout including a hall rather then the outside side staircase entrance leading directly into the living room).

My wife also had alligators in her dream at the same time, with no real-life prompts (other than her seeing something I did not in a children’s book from the library); a type of partially shared dreaming that has been happening continuously for a few years - though often based on something my wife was thinking while awake that I could not have known about.