Blue_Opossum

Morning of November 14, 2015. Saturday.

I am not sure of the setting. There is a generic one-storey house I think, with a front porch. In this first part of my dream, I am outside on a bed and looking at the front of the house from the right of it. There are large tree branches coming out of the house from an area that had seemingly been a vent (above the porch) as well as from a couple windows. The tree probably takes up a lot of space inside the house but I do not go in. (The later room setting does not seem like a part of this house, though it is possible it is implied to be - there is no tree visible at that point though.) There is also a tree just outside the house. I get the impression of one of our cats (Franco) moving in the branches of both trees.



I am recording something important on a cassette recorder feature (while lying on my side on my bed outside the house), some sort of singing or chanting from an unknown source. The voices are feminine and possibly related to spiritual growth or empowerment. I have slight difficulty (but not that annoying as I do not become angry) with the portable stereo’s cassette player relative to the record and play buttons, which must both be pressed at the same time with the same speed and pressure. There is a “pause” button between “record” and “play”, “record” being the last in the row and it is a bit problematic (counter-intuitive) to use as such. This is not a typical cassette player design (of the few different layouts I have used in real life), yet the highly illogical nature of the layout does not trigger lucidity. I accidentally press rewind a couple times, but it does not matter as long as I eventually record the sounds, since they apparently repeat anyway (though I am not sure how long they will continue). During this time there is something about interesting magazines (relating to either science-fiction or satire or both) coming out of nowhere, possibly based on particular sound patterns. This makes me more optimistic and cheerful for whatever reason.

Later, after being with my wife for a time, my dream shifts to me seemingly being a teenager again, possibly around sixteen. I am in a room with my mother though cannot be certain of the setting’s location (as it seems only vaguely reminiscent of the southwest room in Cubitis though also vaguely reminds me of a motel room my family stayed in on our way to Florida when I was six years old and she was surprised by an unlikely tarantula on the wall). There are a few large green spiny caterpillars crawling about (mostly on the wall), a couple much longer than they would be in reality. These are supposedly the most venomous in the world and are called “Slaughterhead” caterpillars (of which I have absolutely no memory of ever having heard this term before). (In real life, it was “puss caterpillars” or wooly slugs we had to put up with - also called “saddle socks” by a few locals but that name cannot be found on the Internet and is possibly wrong as one local ridiculously called oleander caterpillars “centipedes" and warned my mother about them - my father had been stung by a puss caterpillar by accidentally putting his forearm down on one on a table in June 1978, but amazingly rode out the pain and did not want to go to the hospital.)

After a time, there is a caterpillar on me, near my shoulder. My mother bravely takes it off without being stung (as if she was used to doing this - though she did check me for ticks when we lived in Chipmunk Coulee). Later, one crawls on her and she takes it off. Another one, nearly a foot long, is crawling on her side, but my dream shifts to where my gaze is fixed on beaded curtains. (There is also a point where I study my mother’s facial profile and contemplate her being very old. I find it slightly disconcerting but not that emotional - with no memory she died in 2002).



I stare at the beaded curtain and notice that most of the beads are either the number three or the number four (each bead in the shape of the number I think, as the depth perception is fairly discernible), seemingly arranged randomly. I very clearly see each (of many) number three and number four figures (all identical in size - no distortion in any number or feature) in each long vertical beaded string of about a dozen hanging down across a part of the room (seemingly not in a doorway but as a room divider). (Although there are various styles of number beads in real life, I am vaguely puzzled over this feature.)