Blue_Opossum

Morning of April 2, 2015. Thursday.



I am sitting in the back seat (on the right side) of an unknown car which is facing north, in the central area of a parking lot of a medium-sized shopping center (probably near Shopko regarding the streets and general layout that appears later on). My wife is in the front seat but on the passenger side on the right (we seem to be in America in La Crosse, though she has never been there in reality). Over time, two unfamiliar younger light-haired males (that remind me vaguely of rock stars from the 1980s but are dressed informally) get in the car and then argue and physically fight (not that violent, just pushing each other around) over who is going to drive. Finally, they both get out without even seeming to notice either of us.

Soon, another young male gets into the car, which is somewhat of a surprise as I had decided I might drive us myself. The young male, wearing an unbuttoned denim jacket, reminds me vaguely of a young Lionel Richie though he seems completely unknown in-dream at the time. I ask him if he needs any money and he passively acknowledges that he does with a slight nodding. I give him two ten dollar American bills, although that amount seems embarrassingly small to give if he needs food for the day. Oddly, even though I am not at all lucid, I will them to change into two fifty dollar bills, which they do without much mental effort. I hand him the money and so he will then drive us to our next destination. He seems slightly tired and world-weary but is cheerful. (There is possibly a play on “Rich” here, as well as a focus on the “hello” vocalization of his song “Hello”.)

From here, my dream goes into a fairly rare state of me completely ignoring the implications of the environment as if I was not fully “in” my dream (even though I technically am, and fully in-body). There is some sort of nearly inaudible “music” that seems to be caused by “tidal waves” of lava coming from the west of Third Street (and me additionally expressing my illogical and unlikely boredom of the event with some sort of dull mental “humming” of a mostly static melody). The streets at this point seem elevated by about four feet by volcanic rock and streaming lava. We travel in the car through the lava and cooled volcanic rocks for several blocks without much difficulty (I seem to be “mentally driving” the car at this point for the most part even though the other male is still technically driving) even though “everything” else (including most of the commercial buildings) is being destroyed. Curiously, I am somewhat annoyed by the imagery but otherwise think nothing of it. My dream takes on a very dull and bland awareness and emotion at this point, but grows again in vividness and comfort in the next scene.

Eventually, we are at our house, possibly somehow now in Australia on Stadcor Street, though rotated ninety degrees westerly to the earlier established directions (overall layout) of Wisconsin. I notice that we do not have that much bread, though I am preparing to use some raisin bread (from about one-quarter a loaf left) to make a ham and cheese sandwich (as there is no other fresh bread). It seems the previous volcanic “tidal wave” and streets covered with both cooled and ongoing lava streams was so inconsequential I have already seemingly “forgotten” about it at that point in-dream. My family seems cheerful, though there is a slight awareness of how ridiculously expensive bread is as well as how it often does not even last a day or two without going moldy (and is sometimes already moldy in the store). There is also a slight awareness of how store shelves are growing more and more empty with less and less workers acknowledging customers and even a hint of reasonable service (at least in this region).

Morning of July 19, 1969. Saturday.



This dream, looking over notes and doing a bit more research, seems to have been influenced by the following real-life events and associations:

1. “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (original movie from 1951).

2. Visits to a parking lot near a store at an early age (not sure where, somewhere near Port Charlotte, I think) where an elephant would perform tricks near our car. It terrified me when I was much younger, but as I got a older, the fear subsided. My mother had said that I had yelled for them (my parents) to roll up the windows of the car when we first went there when I was really young. An older sister still has photographs of these events.

3. Movies in the earlier grades in school about Pompeii and volcanoes in general. My wife said she had dream influences from such movies as well. I dreamed of volcanoes fairly often during my early years and once in real life, was startled by a sudden hailstorm which I thought was lava and volcanic rocks pouring down on our roof (this was a few years after this entry’s dream) and so I ran and hid in the closet until I realized what it was. Due to the fact that there was a large rutted metal section as the roof over most of our carport, it was really loud.

4. The “Uhny Uftz” episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, first seen September 29, 1965.

Contrary to what my dreams sometimes presented, I was never alone in a car at an early age.

My dream begins with my becoming aware of being in the middle of my backyard and assuming it is Sunday, late morning, perhaps around ten. A shadow appears on the ground, which is perfectly round, moving southward over our neighbor’s house. Perhaps it is a cloud, but perhaps not, so I go inside. I get a very vague sense of a “poisonous cloud”. Inside, in the living room, a man on a news report is talking rather unemotionally about a flying saucer having been sighted.

I am slightly lucid, so I decide that I will take control for a time and visit Brenda W, a female classmate who lives north of me. We go back to my house and I notice the news reader is still talking about the flying saucer and some sort of (I think) toxic gas or some such. Brenda is laughing because when the man is speaking on the television, certain things he is saying seem to be going on outside in the backyard at the same time as each spoken reference (round shadow, flashing light, strange hum…).

Later, Brenda seems to have gone home and I am seriously annoyed at this, as I want to spend the day playing with her (more like “playing house” even though I was quite young at the time). I decide to go back to her house. Soon, though, the round shadow appears on the ground, but I do not really look up. I start walking faster and faster, first trying to hide under trees, but eventually I start running and turn to go south towards town where there may be bigger and safer buildings and more people - and I have a vague idea that Brenda may also have gone there instead of going home.

Amazingly, I run so fast and “perfectly” that I manage to run straight down the wall of a gulley, then turning about at fully ninety degrees upright again, treading effortlessly and swiftly over the surface of the deeper stream - only lightly splashing the surface, and turning my entire body again at ninety degrees and going straight up the wall on the other side - and then continue on as if nothing strange had happened, my only concern being that I had wasted a few seconds by not running in a straight, horizontal path!

Eventually I am in town (Arcadia) and I do not notice any people around. Even though it seems to be the weekend, I notice a few cars in the elementary school’s parking lot and think it may be a meeting of the teachers - or perhaps a few alarmed people did not know where else to go for safety.

I notice that the flying saucer seems to be landing, so I go to duck down near a car (but do not yet get into the car). It lands and looks just like the spacecraft from “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The “door” of the flying saucer opens and…as I start to climb into the front seat of the car to hide…

Out walks a large elephant…

The elephant lifts its trunk straight into the air and out sprays a massive amount of lava and volcanic rocks. I jump into the car, but I notice the volcanic rocks quickly stacking up over the front window of the car (almost in “fast motion” animation) and so…it is the end of everything.

Morning of April 9, 1972. Sunday.



Whenever it starts to rain, or especially hail, I feel a bit strange and then notice it is not rain, but a volcano erupting in the distance (always south of my Cubitis home) and little bits of lava or perhaps small volcanic rocks hitting the roof. This volcano seems to be in a similar location as another later volcano dream - “Heart of a Volcano”. I leave the house and start to run north (I almost always ran north in dreams when living in Florida, even though the main town itself, including schools and stores, was to the south, because I think I was somehow aware that Florida eventually came to an end if I went too far south though I had moved from the north as well - though there are exceptions regarding dreams where I was looking for a partner of the “mystery girl”). I suddenly find myself stuck inside a tumbleweed-like bush and cannot move much (no bushes or larger plants were anywhere in that area in real life). I just somehow sort of “popped” into it, as if I was just suddenly there as I was running. Later on, I am designing a coloring book (with me as the main character on many of the pages) with this scene as one of the pages (recurring), the line underneath reading “trapped in the bush”. The threat from the volcano at the point is almost nonexistent.