Blue_Opossum

Morning of December 25, 1999. Saturday.

Reading time: 1 min 9 sec. Readability score: 55.



In a semi-lucid state, I allow myself to move into a desert landscape, with a focus on Christmas. I allow myself to correlate with my dream self’s illusory physicality. Zsuzsanna walks ahead of me, to my left (our sleeping orientation). A star also shines in the evening sky, representing the essence of my conscious self identity that is still extant in sleep.

I contemplate the story of the three wise men. However, only a couple of camels appear later. The Christmas story is skewed, and we are trekking to the Roman Coliseum instead of the traditional Nativity scene. I do not attempt to fix the reactive representations of my vague thoughts.

Three tortoises are slowly crawling on their journey. I consider this is an interesting story but then decide it does not make much sense. I contemplate how the tortoises may have appeared to represent my slower biological processes as I sleep.

They reach the Roman Coliseum. One of the tortoises lifts their head to study the height of the Roman Coliseum, and a question mark appears above its head. (The curious impossibility of a question mark suddenly floating above a character’s head, as if in a comic strip, has occurred in previous dreams. I call this the contemplation of the liminal space enigma, which is autosymbolism for the dream self questioning its separation from the waking life identity. It occurs in many other forms, such as jigsaw puzzle pieces near a doorway or the presence of spies or detectives as preconscious or emerging consciousness avatars.)

I walk around a wall and vaguely discern the Nativity scene as I wake. (Walking around a wall was a more common factor in the waking process when I was very young.)

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Morning of November 3, 1974. Sunday.

Dream #: 2,876-07. Reading time: 52 sec.



In my dream, Susan R is sitting outside on a brick fence in Arcadia late at night, and I am standing, facing her. She tells me that something will eventually be happening to take me on a different path, away from her (implying destiny, with a sense of finality and certainty).

On cue, a Catherine wheel detaches, or someone throws it from somewhere unknown in the distance (perhaps three or four blocks away), and it moves high up into the sky. I think of shooting stars (even though the feature is first going upward before arcing downward). I am unsure what could have propelled it like this. Susan tells me that I will hear my name in a song relative to this event. My “dream girl” (Zsuzsanna before we met) connects to my destiny.

Though there is the essence of eeriness, it is not ominous. I watch the small and distant object on an arced curve, soon resembling a glowing pinwheel. (The scenario seems partly influenced by reel three of a “Casper the Friendly Ghost” View-Master pack, titled “The Falling Star,” where an anthropomorphic five-pointed star befriends Casper.)

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The song “Catherine Wheels” (by Crowded House, 1993) uses my first name (Claude). Zsuzsanna and Paul Hester shared a brief correspondence, and he hugged her once in waking life.

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