Blue_Opossum

Morning of September 12, 2015. Saturday.



I have not posted that many infestation dreams, though I have had several per year since early childhood. It usually involves unusual unique-looking (but problematic) bugs getting into the house as well as mice in some versions.

In this case, our house is somewhat unidentified. It resembles our present one in some ways but seems to have features of our last home (on Barolin Street) as well.

The main scene involves large velvet ants crawling up one corner of a wall and mostly remaining near the ceiling, making a trail through the house, and going out through another corner. I spray them with a can of insecticide a few times (not that worried about the spray going back into my face), but this only seems to work near the end of my dream. There is also a point at which only one gets on my arm and latches on and I pinch it and pull it off. The sensations are quite realistic.

There are also some sort of unusual beetles (which can fly) in a fictional back room, approaching a doorway in a line, crawling over the top of some sort of built-in table or counter-top (though the room is like a large storage area). Eventually, I spray the middle of their main line and they stop forming larger groups.

Near the end of my dream, I notice large groups of different-colored mice in our living room. They are grouped by color. (A group of mice is apparently called “a mischief of mice”, though that is just a bit too silly to implement in my writing.) A large group of green mice crawls about to the right and red and blue units are to the left. There is also a smaller group of yellow mice in the foreground. For some reason, this strange scene does not trigger any degree of lucidity regardless of the intense vividness of the bug presence. In fact, it is rather “pretty” though still inherently problematic. There must be at least two hundred or more mice. Suddenly, as if just seeing me as a threat for the first time, they scramble, making a thunderous noise (and shaking the house itself) as they go off in divisions of their particular color and as I get the impression they are going back into the walls of our house. I am not too concerned, as I just do not want them inside the rooms of our house.

Dreams like this are often caused by being temporarily annoyed by people (though sometimes caused by fasting in too cold or too hot weather); in this case, an NBN worker hanging around close to our house all day (thanks to the NBN cabinet that was installed right near our house without any notice, right in the middle of the footpath - how stupid) and playing a car radio from prior to sunrise, the vehicle actually parked on our footpath as if he cannot walk that couple of extra feet when leaving the area. (I honestly do not know what is wrong with these people other than being completely thoughtless with no seeming respect for residents or any responsibility for their presence or unwarranted and unjust impositions or actions.)

Morning of April 23, 2015. Thursday.

Dream #: 17,657-02. Reading time: 2 min 15 sec.



My sleeping dreaming mind is separate from my unconscious mind (and over twenty years of memory) in an altered version of Loomis Street. Instead of Marilyn dying recently (though she did not die while living at Loomis Street), it is about 1978. My brother-in-law Bob’s appearance matches that time. I am in their house, sleeping on the floor in the south room, with my head west near the windows. The bathroom is more like the bathroom of our present home. When I am in the bathroom, I vaguely recall my identity.

I am building a new foundation of instinctual dreaming practice (to deliberately enhance my dreams). I have placed about one and a half inches of blue electrician’s tape on the door vertically, on the right side above the doorknob at eye level. I test it by going close to make sure the tape center is at eye level. It may produce more personal and vivid dreams. I adjust it by sliding it around on the door like a magnet, which would be impossible. I vaguely think about my brother-in-law questioning why I put it there, but he does not. He passes me in the small hallway. I want to make sure it remains in place. If it does not, there is the concern that my next dreams will be less expressive of my desires. There is also something to the left of the blue tape (near the middle and at the same height). I am unsure of what it is. It seems like metal, related to the tape strip’s function.

Later, I am again lying on the floor to rest. There are many miscellaneous objects near my blankets, near cardboard storage boxes. I start thinking about why I did not go to Marilyn’s funeral. It seems strange I did not go, like lost time. It seems related to how only a few people (mostly female relatives) went. Perhaps her husband did not go. It does not enter my imaginary dream self’s erroneous mind that I did not go because I live in Australia.

While settling on the floor to sleep, I notice big ants close to the wall, near my head. There are also at least two big ants near my feet. I trap those under a Lego brick. I crush a few others, and none of them get close enough to bite. I slowly wake in the position I had been in my dream. My waking-life memory and identity slowly return, and I feel relieved and happy about being with Zsuzsanna.

My dream’s dynamics stem from a lesser urge to wake and use the bathroom, but the ants finally increase my attention to contemplate where I am, getting me to think more about where I am sleeping, and my emerging consciousness activates. Ants coming out of an anthill is an analogy to emerging from the dream state.

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The rest stems from instinctual dreaming and dynamics to prevent associations with waking life. Because thinking skills are not viable in subliminal space, there is confusion. I mix several concepts into an amalgam. The amalgam includes a loose association with my use of a cassette TAPE to script dreams. That distorts into electrician’s tape. It is additionally confused with the stickiness of magnets. A door isolates the imaginary dream self from conscious identity but can be used to exit the dream or vivify and sustain it.

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Morning of February 13, 2015. Friday.



My family and I as we are now are living in an unfamiliar house in my dream (which seems to be a unique composite integrating features of our present home on W Street with Cubitis) in one of my lifelong recurring “strange bugs” dreams (but always unique with regard to appearance, this one being more unusual in nature).

Firstly, some sort of weird large black ant gets into our house from near the top of the wall, but it is not at all like a real ant. Instead of having three body sections (head, thorax, and abdomen), it has at least nine or more - being vaguely reminiscent of a centipede. Even though it has no visible wings, it is somehow able to fly and hover (vaguely reminiscent of the motions of a hummingbird). When I look back towards the wall from across the room, it is hovering near the wall with a long black proboscis that is at least twice as long as its body. It seems to be “feeding” from the wall (at human shoulder height) somehow. It seems very strange to me but I am not sure if it is dangerous.

Later, in a different room (that seems a little like our present kitchen on W Street yet also seems to have the feeling of the living room in Cubitis with respect to the layout concerning the room I come out of), I talk to my wife Zsuzsanna about unusual insects getting into our house.

I notice a large silver moth lying on the floor, apparently dead (though not crushed or noticeably injured). Its wings are very shiny - almost as much as aluminum foil. I notice a small line of black oil near it, extending out from its head, which is apparently the remains of its very long but seemingly “melted” proboscis. I am absentmindedly associating it with the weird ant as if I think it might be the same insect somehow (even though it looks nothing like it) or at least is somehow connected. At this point my dream slowly fades.

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Here, the waking transition is clearly “moon dissolution” (and is related to circadian rhythms in a similar manner as typical sunrise metaphors) which does not seem as common in dreams as I would expect. The moth is silver (a downsized moon as well as the association with “moth” and “month”) and it is melting and is also a “failed flight” element (which is very common in my dreams and simply represents the waking process.) The black oil could easily represent the “melting” (or fading) nighttime (again, relevant to circadian rhythms) although black is associated with the state just prior to waking (or just prior to dreaming).

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Night of November 29, 1968. Friday.



This (in quotes) is the original title and has remained so. I had entitled this as such due to there already being a story I was familiar with called “The Grasshopper and the Ants” (However, the Wikipedia entry is entitled “The Ant and the Grasshopper” - a variation I had never heard of before). This dream was one of many at a very early age that was very vivid and unforgettable in scenery and “momentum”. I am not even “in” this one. It is more like I am floating and viewing things in another world.

In my dream, there is a young female ant named Susanna (a variation of my wife Zsuzsanna’s name interestingly enough but pronounced without the “zhu” and “zha” sound although I did originally call her Susanna at times), possibly influenced by the Stephen Foster song “Oh! Susanna“. In that song, there is the line “The sun so hot I froze to death” and the grasshopper in the original story will supposedly starve in the winter or possibly freeze to death.

I have accepted the precognitive implications for four reasons; the bride’s name being Susanna, my wife being petite (thus much smaller than I), and the nature of our mixed marriage. She also has more than three younger brothers. Also, the building in this dream was similar to the one I first stayed at with my wife - even called Clarence (my middle name) House. There is also the association with “clodhopper” and “grasshopper” as detailed below. Though I was not certain of the grasshopper’s name, there was a vague association with Marco Polo.

This was a long dream, but I only summarized the main scenes originally. It involves the female ant being “courted” romantically and secretly in a “jungle” - or rather, an area with more grass and stones and such, a fair distance from her home. The female ant’s younger brothers were like composites of three Hot Stuffs and Huey, Dewey, and Louie - but with ant-like features. The scenes were not that cartoon-like at times, but rather like an animated painting. The ants seem to live in a scaled-down condominium rather than an anthill though, so it is kind of funny. There was also some sort of implied practical joke routine related to “condominium pandemonium”. I was not even quite sure what the words meant. I do not think I heard this exact term in real life, or maybe it had been a newspaper headline or some such.

Her rather mean-looking brothers do not want her involved with the grasshopper or any chance for a “mixed marriage” (which is rather a self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose, as I have been technically in a mixed marriage all these years - even though one man, a Jehovah’s Witness, thought we were brother and sister).

The main, most vivid scene has an interesting meeting between the female ant and the male grasshopper (and note the play on my first name of Claude - I was actually called “Clodhopper” in real life for a short time by at least two classmates as well as “Kadiddlehopper” - from Red Skelton’s fictional comedic character Clem Kadiddlehopper).

I can sense or hear romantic music playing. The grasshopper offers his love a rose. She accepts it but says “Thank you, but I like dandelions much better” in the voice of a (unknown) human female. There is not much drama after this. I am not certain what happens, but I do know the three brothers will be bothersome to both their ant sister and their grasshopper brother-in-law.

The real-life joke has a couple variations, but only one relevant to the reversal of the romantic scene from my dream. A teacher asks a child what her favorite flower is and she says “dandelion” (or “chrysanthemum”). The teacher asks “Can you spell that?” and the child says, “Actually, I like roses much better”.

Morning of November 8, 1977. Tuesday.



I am not quite sure what my motive was for making the original title to this “Rocks In Your Head” back in the late seventies, but I think it might have related to the level of intelligence of the two main (but unknown) characters as well as implying a fictional in-dream movie title. It is possible that my dream was slightly influenced by “The Zanti Misfits” (from “The Outer Limits” television series) although the ants in my dream do not really resemble the “aliens” from the show and are more cartoon-like. In real life, someone had stolen one of my father’s “inventions” from the carport or rather, a bicycle with a steering wheel instead of handlebars and a few other unique features in design. It turned out to be a younger relative (Roger D) of a neighbor (Larry D) - and he used the expression “rocks in your head” at least a couple of times.

In my dream, my father is some sort of well-known inventor. He remains in the background for the most part, though. Much of my dream is uneventful and focuses on vague ideas of possible improvements of products of the time - including “a better mousetrap”. He is working on this “better mouse trap” at one point, but also other devices; one to do with an electric device, looking somewhat like a tall teapot, that puts a person’s shoes on for him, some sort of “better shoe horn” I take it. (In real life, I did have the “Mouse Trap” game.)

In summary, the house layout is mostly as it is in reality, but somewhat bigger. My father did make a lot of intriguing things in real life, such as various unusual and naturally anthropomorphic cypress knee lamps as well as unique types of bicycles and such, but in my dream, he is more like some sort of lab technician at one point.

The main part of my dream is based on two escaped criminals who want to steal my father’s inventions. They are not threatening - it is more like some sort of documentary I am viewing in real time. Their behavior reminds me vaguely of Abbot and Costello. They end up trying to move a larger device in my father’s music room and thereby set off some sort of burglar alarm which transforms them into red ants with some sort of ray. One ant even has a mustache. They do not even know they are ants until much later. When the leader of the two (the one with the mustache) sees how huge the room is from their perspective, he moans “It’s gonna be a long way” (apparently implying how far it will be to leave the room and escape from our house). This is my dream’s last scene.

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