Blue_Opossum

Morning of August 13, 2015. Thursday.



In my semi-lucidity, seemingly very late at night, I am aware that my dream environment is only half-rendered. Thus, without focusing that much, or sharpening my awareness with any intent, I do not really feel like getting up and walking into another part of the house, as I will probably just trip and fly forward and become half-awake, as in typical first-stage light sleep paralysis dreams from night to night. Still, for whatever reason, it does not dawn on me that this dream type does not usually render my present home in any discernible way and is usually an area in a city, outside, where I most often find myself walking down the sidewalk. So, already my critical thinking skills are not functioning.

Not knowing what else to do (again, not being that focused), I continue to work on my computer. Still, I am somewhat suspicious of the technology being feasible in any dream state (where electronic devices sometimes explode into small smoking embers with amazing “realism”). In the back of my mind, I am somewhat aware that this “other world” has Gothic attributes. I feel a slight wariness. I am aware of a presence that is very different to me, like a feature of another world becoming known for the first time. It is very eerie, yet I also somehow sense love and joy at the same time; perhaps some orphan domain of Steampunk consciousness blended with something else.

A strange sound occurs, increasing smoothly in volume. It is every chimney in the (fictional) neighborhood suddenly “singing” in some sort of low-pitched hollow reed-like frequency, somewhat like a sustained pipe-organ note, but layered (overdubbed) to an extreme. Is it wind somehow speedily and heavily flowing through every chimney in the region? It is almost like a ghostly human chorus. Again, the pitch is very low, but some of the layers are slightly off the pitch by enough cent variation to give it a barely noticeable flange effect. The volume of this chimney “chorus” increases until it is “filling the world” with some sort of intended beginning vigil, perhaps. I am not sure how to mentally respond or take note, assuming I should. It almost reminds me of a factory steam whistle slowed down exponentially and layered infinitely. I remain puzzled; I get the ambiguous association of rows of churches with factory steam whistles calling the public masses into uniformity. Then there is silence.

Morning of June 19, 2013. Wednesday.



This dream uses a fairly recurring idea of human remains being inside a couch (sometimes inside the cushions).

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In my dream, I am sharing a place with the actor from the television series “Lost”, Josh Holloway, that I vaguely dreamt of only once before as his Sawyer character (in a representation of Tom Sawyer in that particular dream). In this dream he is also his Sawyer character, but instead, named Sylvester (even after waking, “Sylvester” seemed to be his “real” name or “identify”). The apartment seems to be one I had in real life at King Street when I was in my late teens, the one where I also had a noisy refrigerator in one of two larger closets and which was an “expensive” $25.00 a week. (I had, in total, three different apartments in that large historical house during those years; the smaller L-shaped one in back, the one in front with the rocket-like cupola on the east side, and a larger one near the middle of the building as in this dream.)

He is sleeping on the couch in our apartment, but wakes up because the couch seems to be moving inside. A large nail is sort of moving out from its position along the top area of the frame of the seat area in front, near the middle, but closer to the west end. This is very mysterious as if from some sort of ghostly activity. The nail slowly moves out as if representing some sort of approaching eerie revelation. Sylvester seems a bit nervous. I mostly find it curious and not really frightening in any way.

Eventually, there are bluish-green fingers visible, of a sort of ghostly nature that continue to work in moving the nail. The fingers are the only thing that is visible at the time, seeming to come out of the surface of the wood around the nail. (Some sort of odd play on “fingernail”?)

A little later, the east arm of the couch opens up from the front (I think we both may have pulled the upholstery off) - on my left when facing the couch - showing it to be somewhat like a two-level shelf. The bottom area holds a human skull, the second “shelf” or part of the internal couch frame holds a bowl of old human eyes and hair, and a skeletal hand is also inside the arm.

Sylvester is rather alarmed and of course, people must be told. There is no idea at all of whom it may have been or what happened. I am thinking that the bluish-green hand may be part of an arm that was kept in another part of the couch and acting somewhat like ghostly “remains”.

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It is easy to determine here that the “ghost” inside the couch (a dream sign, as one can sleep on a couch) is a subliminal distorted perception of my sleeping body. But why Josh and why is he called Sylvester? He played a character that was on an island (dream state within sleep as water represents sleep). I associate the name Sylvester with the cartoon character Sylvester the Cat. A cat is a circadian rhythms feature (as well as a liminal space element) typically based on nighttime activities (such as dreaming). (Even though a cat seems to sleep a lot, they are of course active in the daytime.) The skull on the shelf represents lesser critical thinking skills (such as reading books) while in the dream state.

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Morning of January 4, 1969. Saturday.



This childhood dream journal entry has been revised on Friday 20 October 2017 to complete and clarify revelatory dynamics to more coherently define the meaning. This dream occurred about 3:30 in the morning. Sunrise was not until about 7:20 a.m. I had attempted to watch the 1942 black-and-white movie “Cat People” (which started around one a.m. on this Saturday morning), though our television was black-and-white anyway, but I slept through most of it, though I did not go to my bed until about 3:15 in the morning.

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In my dream, as I am walking out from the front of our Cubitis carport (after deliberately “stepping into” the stabilized hypnagogic “portal” rendered as the unlit carport area), seemingly only about three-thirty to four o'clock in the morning, and walking in a northwesterly direction towards our neighbor’s orange grove, I maintain my lucidity.

Even though I am lucid, I feel somewhat vulnerable when I find myself walking into the opening of a fictional feature. It is a hallway in which the walls are seemingly made of fog, yet with a suggestion of at least partial solidity. This eerie hallway starts from between the middle area of the driveway and the neighbor’s orange grove, and runs from east to west towards Highway Seventeen (and is perpendicular to it). I do not perceive the potential length of this hallway or clearly discern a door or doorway on the opposite side, which makes me hesitant in continuing.

From here, I see various domestic cats (at least fifteen) in various positions throughout the hallway ahead. Some cats are sitting or standing on tables (one near a vase on a table) and some are sitting or standing on the implied hallway’s floor. One cat jumps down from a table (or simple platform) on the left side in this scene and walks toward me though never gets very close or attacks. An unknown male narrator’s voice (seeming to come from above and to my left and as if from a loudspeaker with slightly fuzzy audio) only says “cats” in a very informal way and without emotion. I feel that he may not be speaking to me as it may be a voice that was recorded years ago. There is also the vague idea that I may not be fully in the setting but looking at a realistic three-dimensional movie scene either superimposed or bilocated into the front yard area. Despite my lucidity, I feel somewhat wary, uncertain, and passive to what I am seeing even though there is no discernible threat. Soon, with deliberate intent (lucid choice), I fade from my dream with a soft awakening. (The liminal space transition is also softer than usual.)

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Following is an extensive and highly revelatory explanation of the most likely factors and personal history responsible for this dream along with their related meanings. I have recorded this dream as of the doorway waking symbolism type.

It was obvious to me at the time (despite being only eight years old), that my dream was trying to fill in missing details from “Cat People” even though that was not my original dream entry intent (which was to visit my younger neighbor and friend, Brenda, who lived north of me). However, my dream was completely unrelated to the movie’s plot as my distorted memory implied that the movie was about an older woman with a fear of domestic cats.

The otherwise ambiguous hallway setting is modeled after two common real-life locations and progressions, one, walking through the hallway in my Cubitis home, and two, walking down our Cubitis driveway (as the fictional hallway was rendered as just north of it and parallel to it) to wait for the school bus on week day mornings. The possibly implied exit of the fictional foggy hallway would be at the east wayside of Highway Seventeen and it should also be mentioned that while waiting for the bus on week days in this time period, there was sometimes dense fog. Fog was far more common as a dream feature during the time periods there was fog in the mornings in real life, although fog also seems to be a factor of the dream state itself, possibly influenced by dream scenes in movies that include fog (to represent that it is a dream), though is also a natural association with dreaming.

There is also an association with Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog”; the line “The fog comes on little cat feet” (which was silently integrated into my dream near the last moments). The poem was first published in 1916 and my mother was born in 1916. This seems to be the association with the “old woman” (my mother) with a supposed fear of domestic cats (again, not what 1942’s “Cat People” was about). However, neither my mother nor I had any trepidation relating to cats. In fact, my mother had a pet gray tabby named Dewey at this time. The mild trepidation in my dream was more about my lucidity being intruded upon by the absentminded association with the movie that I had not even seen much of, based on my earlier wondering about it (but not consciously intending for it to be carried into the dream state as it was).

There is one more relevant commonly recurring factor I should include here. The doorway waking symbolism and other types that sometimes include the liminal space cat symbolism (in addition to the term “putting the cat out for the night” as subliminally relating to shifts in unconsciousness and waking symbolism itself) curiously was validated to have come from having seen the ending credits of “The Flintstones” (an animated television series) so many times. A domesticated saber-toothed cat is seen throwing Fred out of his house (after Fred firstly put the cat out) during the end credits, resulting in Fred pounding on his front door and yelling “Wilma!”, waking the whole neighborhood. This also established not only the relevant waking symbolism but additionally established this symbolism as a more influential dream state end marker in many examples throughout my fifty years of dream journaling. There are additional reasons for liminal space cat symbolism, one being an influence from the 1962 animated movie “Gay Purr-ee”, another with my childhood association of a cat sitting on a fence as existing between dreaming and waking (that is, a fence as the liminal space divider between dreaming and waking). Additionally, I think of cats as being more active at night or while people are sleeping and dreaming, thus a natural symbol of the dream state itself.

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