FallenAwake

WAKING LIFE DREAMING LUCID
BOLD IF IT FEELS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT

From the night before last
*This is a rough draft that I may or may not get around to cleaning up more*

I woke, trailing out of a dream. I tried to remember but was disappointed that I didn’t. Then the dreams started to come back to me.


Dad, mom, a friend from college, and maybe another friend (best friend from high school?) sitting (on a bed or floor with cushions?). Comfort but not a lot of affection, not needy affection at least. Calmly focused.

I was asking questions about what happened when I was a child (about traumas that occurred).

It was observed that I wasn’t as angry as usual.

I told them yeah, I don’t get so angry now when talking about my childhood traumas with dad. I say “I just got tired of being angry,” feeling very heartfelt and with a glimpse of that exhaustion. “Now I just ask questions about what happened.” Dad agreed, though he still didn’t like to talk about the what. The 4 or 5 of us discussed the change in my questions about childhood traumas and if it was a good thing. My college friend appreciated my change (in the face of others having concerns about it).

WAKING LIFE DREAMING LUCID
BOLD IF IT FEELS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT

This dream is from the night before the night before last


Book-ended Children

Children running down a sloping sidewalk that curved back and forth. Stone wall along the sidewalk. Cobblestone ground. My consciousness looking down on them as they ran toward “me”. Saying to myself I remember this, I remember reading this. My mom was showing me another reel.

There was something forced about what the children were doing. they didn’t like it but they did relatively well at pretending. I think I knew more about why, that it had something to do with the parents, but I don’t recall now.

Mom put on another old reel. it seemed to be of my father’s side of the family. I knew he would like to see it and wondered at my mom having it instead of him.

In waking life my father idealizes tradition and is also an extraordinarily creative and brilliant man. I think he idealizes being a child, simple carefree yet responsible times. He was a “hippie” black sheep in his family when he was younger. That side of my family had a lot of power that was used for massive capitalistic gains and political influence. There is corruption, greed, addiction, and yet amazing intelligence and creativity smattered around the people. I am curious and feel it is important to know more about this family history. It also makes me feel sick to think of knowing more. My fascination and desire to know the different sides of my family (and myself) usually wins out, though. Well, at least in the internal battles of which I am aware.

I watched the reel on an old contraption that displayed more like a television than a projector. My mom stood to the side, close to the moving picture.

Soft thwacking noises like an old projector. I could almost see the frames as they shuffled past, specks and lines of light flashing and morphing with them.

A man (I think a/the/[my?] father), somber and proud like in older photographs, sat on the right, looking at the camera. The children to the left of him in their sitting positions, and then sat a huge man in a tuxedo complete with tailcoat. The two men were like bookends, the children between them. We’d only been watching it a minute, and mom already wanted to change reels. I said no, I want to see them when they move. I said their body language would be very significant, would show me more about who they actually are. It felt intensely important and I was riveted.

The large, hulking man stood and walked to the right. Maybe 8 or 9 feet tall, who knows, maybe 10. Big, round belly, sloped shoulders. (He reminds me of the way my maternal grandpa looked when he was dying of cancer, that same kind of oval shape, but much more extreme, and more solid and thick.) I didn’t think he was a family member of mine. The father (it was my impression I think, though perhaps it was a waking reflection) stood and slowly walked to the right. I watched his body carefully (from where the audience would be if there was one) and couldn’t tell much about him from the way he walked. It was so slow, as if he was favoring physical pain. His stiffness swallowed up his personality.

There were a lot of dream characters projecting their personae in this dream, like they were conforming to older, more serious social pressures. Personae that were hollow yet strong. Weak, deep, and shallow and full of tightly woven rules.

I feel an association between the father dream character and my paternal great grandfather, father of my father's father. I never knew him. It makes sense, given my grandfather’s and his brother’s dichotomies, success and greed for one, creativity and susceptibility in the other. Or so I've interpreted and oversimplified.

The trickle of this history of family emotions is a reason I think this song taps a large body of water inside me.



“I am out here studying stones
trying to learn to be less alive
using all of my will to keep very still
still even on the inside

I've cut all the pertinent wires
so my eyes won't make their connections
I am holding my breath
I am feigning my death
when I'm looking in your direction

...when all the forbidden fruit is fallen and rotted
well that's when I'm gonna come down"

Even if they’re partial hogwash, I feel love flowing from new understandings.