Blue_Opossum

Morning of June 13, 2018. Wednesday.



My dream self holds a liminal awareness of being asleep. Eventually, a subliminal focus on bodies in blankets, as we have more (and thicker) blankets on us in the cooler weather, helps build the first dream segment. The setting is unknown, but seems loosely based on an association with our backyard on Stadcor Street in Wavell Heights (where we have not lived in years).

I find myself carrying a corpse fully wrapped inside a thick blanket (autosymbolism, though with literal threads, for my physical body being inactive in sleep). I consider that it is Earl (an older half-brother on my mother’s side who died in 2007). Even so, the body is not of realistic size or weight (though my dream self does not consider this). I drop him into a pile of other bodies that are in a hole in the ground. The hole accommodates the length of a little less than two bodies and the width of about two bodies. The bodies are almost to the top of the hole. When I drop Earl in, he somehow easily slips down vertically into a space between my mother and my brother-in-law Bob on the right (though Bob is still alive in real life as far as I know). (They are each fully wrapped in a blanket.) This cheerfully surprises me. There is an awareness of how his body actually seemed to quickly shrink as it slipped down into the space below (vestibular system correlation autosymbolism). I know there are several other bodies farther down, all relatives. I briefly think about the bodies being together like this, vaguely pondering if it is the right way to have a burial. I have a false memory that it is normal to have the bodies of deceased relatives in a backyard like this.

Knowing that they have to remain buried at a deeper level, I push down on the bodies and even roll around on top of them to force them farther down into the hole. This works to a degree and about two feet of space remains near the top of the hole, but I do not yet shovel dirt into it.

In the next segment, dominated by non-lucid dream control, I am in an indoor location, though it is mostly unfamiliar (though my dream self perceives it as our present home). I am explaining to members of my family how to see into the spirit realm. They are all on my right, including our youngest son. I consider possible communication with Marilyn (older half-sister on my mother’s side who died in 2014).

This connection to the spirit world is activated by pressing a paperclip onto the edge of a button on the television remote. (In my dream, the perimeter of each button is metallic.) Doing this distorts the signal, removing most of it to display supposedly ghostly broadcasts and patterns. At first, the screen is mostly black, but there is a fuzzy form that moves across the screen from right to left (though of which mainly just seems like signal interference). I point it out to family members as evidence that ghostly activity is being seen.

Soon, another form is seen. It is like a very hazy incomplete rendering of Godzilla, about half the height of the screen, somewhat like a pale gray outline with some other details, but it also seems to be a chubby young cat walking on its back legs (which my dream self does not pick up on the autosymbolism of in a cat being a “witness” to the nature of the dream state in mediating the preconscious bulwark, here rendered as the television screen). The image wobbles and sways as it moves from right to left. I tell the others to watch this odd feature.

Eventually, very clear and detailed scenes are visible, though they are in black and white. There are two “devils” conversing in one scene, one female and one male. They are also insect-like, though mostly human. They have goat horns as well as insect antennae. They are in an outside environment near a rocky area. I have no concern about this scene (as I even find it amusing) and I start to consider that this is a farce. At one level, despite continuing to pretend the images are coming from the spirit world, I realize that all I am doing is weakening a normal television broadcast to create “ghost” images and isolated partial pieces of the real broadcast.

Sliding the paperclip against the buttons on the remote, the normal broadcast of a schooner at sea, originally in color, changes into a hazy black-and-white image and the rolling sea becomes the wavy lines of the vertical hold being out of adjustment, distorting diagonally (an amazing effect in my dream). There are other images after this, one being the hazy “ghost” of a sea captain. Soon, color images from legitimate television broadcasts start to remain on the screen longer. I tell my family that the process is starting to weaken and the supposed spirit world contact is no longer viable. It has an association with static electricity lessening after more continuous contact with the metallic surfaces. The last image as I wake is a vivid colorful view from under a girl looking down at the viewer, her head against the blue sky.

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This dream was caused by the typical combination of autosymbolism (based on the sleeping, dreaming, and waking process) with television influence, which is interesting, as television is an analogy to a liminal space division or preconscious bulwark.

The primary influence of both dream segments was “The Seven Year Itch” episode of “Grimm”, seen just prior to going to bed. The remote and paperclip scenario was additionally based on a question from “Think Tank” seen earlier yesterday, though based on an incorrect answer otherwise regarding how a felt-tipped pen saved the Apollo 11 mission (by completing a circuit). It is extraordinary how non-lucid mediation of a dream combines total fantasy with distorted waking life associations, though this is by lifelong habit since early childhood in sometimes reviewing and altering content of television shows, movies, comic books, and so on, in liminal stages of the dream state induction process.

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Morning of July 17, 2015. Friday.



Zsuzsanna and I are either living at or “temporarily” staying in a mostly unfamiliar large apartment on what seems to be at least the second floor (though I am not aware of any backstory to this setting). It is possibly a variation on the King Street boarding house I have not been in or even directly seen since 1990. In this case, it still seems to be oriented south of the building (or north if it is relevant to our present house) and like an opened composite of Leonard’s room (the pinhead’s), my original L-shaped room, and the front (including the shared kitchen) being brought much closer to the back of the house. Other random characters make an appearance for no seeming reason or recent reflection or association, which includes: One of our landlords from Stadcor Street (Glenn), a cocaine user I knew in my first factory job (Greg R), a couple unremembered celebrities, and a couple relatives (though not correct in appearance). My sister Marilyn (April 25, 1942-Feburary 13, 2014) is also alive again and there is something about NCIS no longer being involved in an investigation. She briefly seems to be in the same “scene” with Ralph Waite (the actor from “The Waltons”; the television series), which is similar to a dream from long before they died.

This dream utilizes a folly I have encountered in other dreams; that is, confusion with dynamics relevant to the second storey of a building in implying we are also somehow at ground level at the same time. In this case, the confusion relates to the discovery of two bodies buried side by side in the “ground” just under the floorboards (again, somehow on the second floor) in what I believe is the kitchen. Finding two bodies is not the original intent. One of my dream’s (unknown) characters pulls up a couple loose floorboards for whatever reason and from there, moves some dirt and unexpectedly uncovers the bodies, which are fairly young and boy and girl. For some reason, this does not feel as macabre as it would in real life (ironic since some dreams augment minor concerns to ridiculous extremes). Over time, I go over to the windows, look down at the street (again, now from the second storey) and have minor concern about another male (our past landlord Glenn) who is approaching and possibly will be questioned on the deaths. The NCIS associations are not that organized or seemingly relevant at the time.

The investigation is slow and uneventful, and the two bodies (minimally skeletal, as the faces are almost discernible though not recognized) remain where they are, the mound of dirt like an elongated oval embankment around them. During this time, while I am sitting back in a chair, a young girl (about six) sleeps mostly on her stomach over me though is not my real-life youngest daughter (I assume, though sometimes dreams shift time elements dramatically). The sense of touch, weight, heat, and slight movement is augmented and lifelike. After this, there is a vague confrontation in another part of the room that I am not involved with, with random characters. When the girl eventually wakes, she walks about in the room before me and makes a sarcastic comment (unremembered) to an unknown character. At this point, she resembles Elizabeth Walton (a very young Kami Cotler), but aggressively out of character and saying the other character should “honor” me (as me being her fictional father). The other character seems somewhat perplexed and not fully developed as an in-dream persona. From here, my dream falls into the abstract as the girl’s hair seems “electrified” somehow and she seems almost goddess-like or at least like a well-defined tulpa (though her characteristics becoming mostly unfamiliar again).

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A part of this dream, as is typical, comes from something I only briefly glanced at for about a second the previous day - incidentally reading how Kami Cotler used to fall asleep on Ralph Waite’s lap during filming of “The Waltons”. Then I see and realize that Ralph Waite died around the same time as my sister on February 13, 2014 - which I had not focused that much on assuming I knew it at all prior to this point (I do not really watch the news that much and far less television than most people). This is in addition to how one much older dream somehow more clearly revealed my father’s death (April 26, 1901-February 14, 1978) several years in advance (as well as several other things that did not even exist at that time, including the “Jumpman” computer game and even the same music used as its theme). I always felt in the back of my mind that this sister would somehow die on the same date (not necessarily the same year) as my father. This was before she was the one to tell me (in the middle of the night) that my father had just died. However, from my perspective (in Australia, related to the time difference) she did die on February 14th when looked at that way (which I cannot help doing). Not only that, the last episode of Season 11 of NCIS (“Honor Thy Father”) was apparently a tribute to Ralph Waite, who sometimes played Jackson Gibbs. Sometimes the layered intricacies of a particular dream tend to seriously puzzle me.

How deep does this go…Ralph Waite may additionally be a play on “wait” and Kami Cotler a play on “cot” (cot/crib/youth) and even “Waltons” may be a play on “walled in” as with one humor magazine title I saw and distinctly still remember from when I was thirteen (No. 114 of “Cracked Mazagine” - spelled as such - from January 1974). (Additional note to self; there was a memory slip between “certain” and “thirteen” for whatever reason.) On the cover, Ralph Waite is standing directly below the word “Home”. Additionally, the setting itself (concerning the imagery of the first body uncovered) was very similar to the first panel of a horror/ghost comic book story I saw years ago (possibly from around the same week or time period as the Waltons satire), which I have yet to recover in my research. Finally, the cot/crib reference is related to the fact that the dismantling (or selling) of a cot or crib accurately foreshadowed my sister’s death (and is a known precognitive metaphor for an upcoming death).

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Despite the curious recurring ambiguity of a setting implied to somehow be on the first floor and the second floor at the same time, this is relevant to how the presumed corpses, buried under the floorboards of the second floor, is a subliminal distorted perception of my sleeping body (a dream sign of the first level) and Zsuzsanna’s, who is sleeping with me at the time.

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