Night Vision

I am in a large room where many people are gathered, where the wall I’m facing is almost entirely windows, and a forested area is visible beyond. A woman sits in a chair in the middle of the room. She is in bad health, and seems to be the center of attention. I have the impression that everyone here is family.

Through the glass of the windows, I see a shadowy figure appear. I shout at it and make gestures, trying to “catch” it. I can’t allow it to come any closer to her - although I’m quite aware that nobody else here can see it, and this probably looks pretty weird right now. Not that it’s there, in any kind of objective sense. But I can only perceive using the senses I have, and so it’s got to “be” somewhere. But whatever. I’ve just got to make it go away - that’s what’s important. I finally manage it, at which point the thing splits into two and vanishes.

It isn’t over yet, though. I see a disembodied arm very close to the glass, grabbing for a necklace. I run over and grab the arm, which is extremely hairy, and pull. I tell the others that they need to pull too, holding onto me, for it to work. I’m not sure if they’ll believe me and do it, but they do. One woman reaches out to try to feel the arm. She can touch it, as I thought she'd probably be able to, although it still isn’t visible to her. It actually seems to be working.

7.7.24


I’m in a museum with my aunt and uncle. It seems to be a museum of techno. Various displays are set up in a large, open space, but the different music playing at each one seems to be the focus rather than anything visual. The default language here seems to be German. I want to go off to explore on my own, but if my uncle also decides to go off alone, I’m not sure how my aunt will do by herself.

Later, I’m on a train. I didn’t manage to find a free seat, but I really don’t mind too much. In another part, Nina approaches me, holding a bottle of hand soap she found in the bathroom, showing me that it has some kind of punny train-related name.

—

In another dream later in the night, I seem to be a university student. A group of students approaches me, having discovered that I’ve taken classes in “the French room”. They have apparently heard stories about this place and want to see it for themselves. I say I’ll take them there, although it isn’t clear to me what’s supposed to be so special about it.

I ask one young woman why everyone is so intent on going there. She gives a couple reasons, one about it being where somebody’s finger was pricked. I don’t outright realize I’m dreaming, but the fairy tale reference still makes me take notice. I realize that I need to understand what she’s saying in a symbolic way. She seems upset - so much that I ask her if she really wants to go there, when just talking about it is that bad.

28.7.24


I’m lying on a couch, reading a book. From where I am, I can hear my aunt and uncle talking downstairs. My aunt says that she’s going to drive herself to an appointment she’s made with a doctor. I don’t think she’ll follow through or get far enough to put herself in danger, but my uncle should probably hide the keys anyway. (I’m probably thinking of my grandmother and her car crash on some level.) Sure enough, I can hear him going over to the cabinet by the door and getting them out. The keys fly up over the half-wall and land somewhere soft. I get up and go find them.

In the next part I remember, I’m somewhere else - a landing, apparently in the same house. I set the keys by the top step of the stairs, where my uncle can get them again if he needs them. He’s just downstairs, and I tell him as much, then go to get changed. I’m still wearing the shirt I’ve been sleeping in. I take it off as I head back. It seems to be the only thing I’m wearing.

The setting is once again different - it seems to be a school gym. The gym leads into an enormous cavern. I recognize the cavern as mine somehow - it belongs to me, it’s my home - and just being there makes me feel more clear-headed and spacious. I can recall previous times I’ve been to this place, and I’m already acting as if I’m aware I’m dreaming, although the realization hasn’t explicitly dawned yet.

The entrance is very wide and tall, and the area inside is vast - like an entire city with a nocturnal atmosphere. In the entry area, I see a group of people, two women with a group of teenagers. They all look a little lost. I figure I should offer to help them out - although maybe I should put on some clothes first? Then again, this is a dream - I realize - and does that really matter? I decide that I’ll offer to help, and also say I’ll put on clothes if they’d prefer - and proceed to do so.

They react as if I’ve just confirmed something they suspected, and one tells me that they can get out on their own, so I go further into the cave, going over the dream-familiar areas as I pass, now flying. There are six or seven in the front area I have memories of, which I revisit mentally, one by one. But I’ve only explored a small part of what’s here.

At some point, my parents seem to be there as well, also flying. I don’t have a strong visual impression of them. There is a fire burning here - I can see more fiery areas as we go upward, through what now seems to be an unrealistically large space for an underground area. It doesn’t spread, but it’s still not safe to get too close. They now take the lead, flying ahead, further in. More memories arise of a location supposedly from an early dream of the night, also with fire - but we’re going to put that out, and that will also make one of the larger ones in the area we passed go out. This is how it has to be, I recall - they need to be the ones to do it. By the time I land, they’ve already put it out. The air is smoky now, and I’m concerned for one of the cats, T, who is now there as well.

20.8.24


I’m walking along the streets of a city at night. My long-haired Manx cat, C, is with me, keeping pace but exploring on her own as well. There are other cats around, and even a dog, so I’m keeping a close eye on her as we go.

Inside the building that’s my destination, I start to realize I’m dreaming, and I can do whatever I want (continuing from a dream even earlier in the night where I became aware but awoke soon after.) I head back out, going through a hallway. At a doorway, I pass a large Black man in a suit - he registers to me as some kind of security guard. We non-verbally acknowledge each other as I pass. Another guard stands by the door leading outside - but I decide to go up instead. It occurs to me - not fully consciously, probably at least partly because this is still a dream from early in the night - that I’m in a state of natural creativity, and so I start to hum/sing, letting the music spontaneously take shape. It’s partway between imagining it and hearing it performed - although it’s mostly instrumental, and I’m aware of the filter automation and gating that are expressed symbolically in my inflections.

Outside, it’s dark, as before, but well-lit. I’m in a plaza with a fountain in the center, and nobody else seems to be around. Where to go? Maybe to the top of the clock tower some distance away. I fly upwards, but gaining height feels too slow. I experiment with pushing off with one leg at a time as if there was something solid under me to “jump” upwards. It seems to work well.

As I rise, I notice a tall, narrow cliff ahead of me, going up even higher. Where is it leading? It seems to be narrowing out to a point towards the direction I came from. I change my mind - I’ll go there instead. I’m curious to see what might be at the very top. I turn around and rise still further until I’m hovering a little above it, almost climbing it, and then I’m at the summit. There’s nothing there, actually. How anticlimactic. The dream seems to be unstable now, and I know I have to keep moving, so I fly away, towards other spaces, but it still turns into another nonlucid dream not long afterwards.

1.9.24

I seem to be staying with a large group of people in a sort of vacation rental house. It’s late night, early morning, and having woken up, I’ve checked on the cats to make sure they’re still here, where they’re supposed to be. (I notice at some point that I’m not wearing pajamas, but an olive green cargo vest over a multicolor shirt, which strikes me as a little odd.) The cats are fine, but it looks like other people are up and about as well – the other young people there seem to be gathering together in an unused room, and there’s an atmosphere of anticipation, as if some spur-of-the-moment plan is being put together. I don’t really feel like going in to see what’s going on, though – I walk past to the bathroom down the hall.

After that, somebody actually comes along to invite me to join them, and there’s a jump to another location, this one outside, along a street of what seems vaguely like a small city. We’re near an ice cream vendor and his cart, and somebody has apparently managed to get a really good deal on a large quantity of ice cream. The man scoops different kinds out and hands it over to the people who are also out here now. An older man explains to me what’s going on: everybody is planning to travel together to Prague to see the Pablo Neruda museum. (This places the location firmly in Dream-Prague, as no such thing exists there, as far as I know.)

He has a picture of it, like a newspaper clipping in black and white showing the front of the building, which strikes me as familiar. There are four odd statues out front, roughly human-shaped. One seems to have a head the shape of a crescent moon. The man states that the museum is located in the Place of Right. This confuses me for just a second. Then I tell him that the name would probably be something more like “Law Square” or “Legal Plaza” translated into English. My memories of the place suggest that the association with the law comes from a former era and is not representative of the present-day location, that it’s located near the Mala Strana area (possibly by association with Nerudova Street) or a bit south of that, and that there’s a Gothic tower in the square as well as the museum.

All of us are in Croatia, and I’m not sure if I feel like traveling all the way to Prague, especially since I visited the museum relatively recently. But it would be an interesting experience in its own right, traveling there with all these people. And maybe they could use someone who knows their way around there. Somebody brings me a cup of ice cream, white with flecks of chocolate or cookies in it. I take it. I don’t really like ice cream that much, especially not first thing in the morning, but it would probably just sit there and melt if I refused.

-12.5.22