Blue_Opossum

Morning of August 4, 2014. Monday.



I am on Loomis Street in La Crosse and it seems to be very late at night at first. Eventually there is the knowledge of an explosion to the east. Once again there is, for some reason, a focus on going east on Gillette Street (recently recurring only - though it did recur somewhat in dreams of around ages five to six as well).

There is apparently a nuclear bomb dropped to the east, but it is only a “practice” one that is meant to implement data on some sort of social study. There is no actual danger. However, a very thick but white “cloud” or fog exists in the area east of where I am, stopping precisely at Loomis and Gillette, and it is supposedly very difficult to walk through, which seems relevant to the beginning “test” or “experiment”. Drivers of cars cannot see where they are going, either, other than fairly close to the car, and require bright headlights to see anywhere at all. There is the idea after I try to walk near the area, that it is probably unsafe to even attempt to go very far in the fog. I have an idea that cars may not successfully travel the street and beyond, either. So, the first time I plan on walking through, I change my mind, but I am ready to go through a short time later.

Still, regardless of the problematic nature of maneuverability and lack of visual orientation, a number of people must get to work by walking. Many of them are Japanese and work in the same area at a fictional local business. Most do not seem that concerned about being able to get to where they are going. I eventually walk through the fog again, noticing a few other pedestrians in random locations, a couple of them even walking down the middle of the street. I experience an interesting perception as I enter and am able to find my way through without going off the side of the road. I am aware of an area that goes over a smaller bridge. I end up at an area that seems like some sort of resort and things can be seen a bit more clearly.

In a way, I am surprised that I do not become lucid, especially as I had recently mentioned to my wife that, even though it is somewhat of a movie and television show cliché, certain types of dreams (especially in childhood) have had a mist rise from the ground or floor (but usually only several inches high). I am not sure if this is a “borrowed” cliché that is sometimes utilized by a particular dream state, or if it is just a natural feature of dream states in a metaphorical sense of some kind. As such, it has still never worked as a trigger for lucidity and always seemed a “normal” part of my dream environment in both inside and outside settings.

Morning of December 23, 2008. Tuesday.



In this dream, I vividly see a black fog. However, it then becomes connected to the “Swiss cheese” effect that I have not had in many years. The “Swiss cheese” effect seems related to “evil” (or at least negativity) as well. The three who seem to cause the “black fog” effect are also in my dream. Normally, I would see this as a warning - and it may still turn out to be as such. I think the “Swiss cheese” idea is somehow related to being able to see important truths or environmental facets to some extent even when much of the truth is not visible otherwise, or perhaps more mundane facets are blocked to clarify the “message” or to “force” the seeing of it via the “holes in the cheese”. (This “Swiss cheese” actually looks like a vertically floating slice of Swiss cheese, but perhaps more like a dark 2-D energy pattern, partially with the effect of a blurry flyscreen.)

One of them does some sort of maneuver to hurt my family and ends up slipping on wet stone and breaking her head on the floor (the setting seems to be some sort of ancient castle); it seems very realistic and “correct”. I feel resolved in this - that the danger is less than before. I even feel good about it, thinking it will symbolically be a part of the real world (vindication) as well.

Also, I had an amazing visionary dream, so beautiful as to be breathtaking in its large-scale nature and feeling of closeness. Thousands, perhaps millions of people, mostly girls of various ages (up to about twenty or thirty years) and from every culture and race imaginable - all equally beautiful regardless of skin color - from the lightest to the darkest, in all shades - singing throughout many scenes and environments, including some sort of place of worship - but far too large to exist in reality I would say, as it seems bigger than a city. I try to single one entity out, but it is impossible - as there are too many (although I am aware of each as an individual when I see a particular singer). They are singing for me (and my family) and the survival of my kind(?) or “species”. A few times, there seems to be far more of them than humans presently on Earth. The scenes are different, though. At times they seem to all be wearing a white robe; other times, various forms of elaborate (even bizarre) jewelry and costumes. There is something like a light remaining after their eyes and mouths open and close, which seems egg-like, of a shining, but “ancient” bronze-like property, which seems inter-dimensional or some such and having a different nature than their supposed origin (hard to explain). There is bright light. There is love. I have a slight uneasiness. They are like angels that can eliminate the human race with the blink of an eye at the right time. I feel an eerie sense of hearing this singing of a “higher power”. They eventually seem infinite as I study in awe. They are without end. I had similar dreams around age eight.

There is someone with a knife who is trying to kill an emu. There is a strange distortion in this in that there is a picture of it where it has hundreds of small wings. There is also an idea that my wife had another baby, but it is on its own and outside (although this is anachronistic in that it occurs in an older home in the USA before I met my wife). This “baby” is more like a smaller featherless emu - I am somewhat angry over how the emu/human/baby is seemingly on its own. I pick up my baby emu/human/mother/son(?) Many people are near me, including slaves from both Egypt and more modern times. There are flowers tied to a cage (recurring during this time period only). I ask an African-American (who seems to be from the 17th century - there are a mix of people from different eras) about working in a business office in his last “incarnation” and also talk to some supposed Egyptian slaves and others. There is a strong idea in my dream that “slavery” (relative to the human race in general) as such, now works at a more advanced, precise, and negative way than ever before (but far more subtle). A man goes up to an “infamous” woman and stabs her in the back at the same time she is stabbing someone else in the back, presumably out of revenge(?) She is not fully human, though (part emu?). Oddly, she tells him to stop doing what he is doing even though she should be dying at that point. The man seems to consider taking the knife out or becoming more violent to stop her from completing her act. I am not sure how it ends.

There is some sort of conspiracy involving Mesopotamia and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers - something to do with a “secret code” evolving with the alphabet relating directly to “clues” passed down for and by my “species” to survive in the world with the dominate species of “normal” humans. It goes on and on and on for seemingly an hour or so, but I can remember none of it.

Beautiful visionary states arise out of another “black fog” dream. It apparently has different implications than usual. The “black fog” is more and more solid, some sort of entity which becomes a gigantic face looking up from Earth into the sky. A face made of black soil, burnt wood, muddy water, and smoking ashes. The sky becomes a “face”. The “Sky-face” is made of ocean water, and cloud (water-vapor). I am trying to work out who is who. Is it Yin and Yang? There is a feeling of movement and spiral-related changes. I am not sure if the black fog in this case is “evil” and the sky is “good”, but I am aware of the relationship of “opposites”. The great “Sky-face” seems to invert when I fly around it (similar to the Necker cube illusion - that is - looking into a hollow as from the inside of a mask rather than from the outside). This divine(?) being immediately inverts itself instead of turning its head to make its face look in the opposite direction from where it was looking.

In real life, an emu named Mary was killed (this being the only time I ever dreamed of an emu being stabbed by a man and my dream’s scenario actually occurred in real life a block or so from where we live and at the same time as the dream). Link: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-02-0...-killer/281998

Night of November 8, 1985. Friday.

Dream #: 6,899-02. Reading time (optimized): 1 min 30 sec.



Vestibular stage: I feel as if I am in a southwest area of La Crosse, possibly near Third Street, but my dream’s rendering is erroneous. I am riding my bicycle, probably past midnight, through a mist with an eerie glow. I had not seen any other traffic.

I am enjoying myself. I pedal faster and faster even though I cannot see what is ahead of me, though I am vaguely aware I am dreaming. At one point, I am moving fast through an alley, heading west. Suddenly, I see another vehicle approaching from the north as I am exiting into an open area that seems adjacent to a small parking lot to the north as well as an intersection. My dream becomes more vivid, though the certainty I am dreaming increases only in the last few seconds.

Preconscious emergence (as authoritative): The vehicle is a small motorcycle with a police officer riding it. I cannot see his eyes because he is wearing dark sunglasses (an indicator that I am sleeping) or a face shield under a light-colored helmet, though I can see his mouth, which has no expression. I suddenly slow down so as not to draw his attention with my speed, especially as it seems we might collide. Even though the scene is otherwise vivid and realistic, he and his motorcycle seem scaled down to about half the size they should be. I slowly approach the intersection as he continues south, to my left and beyond, without turning his head towards me at any point. I wake after he passes out of sight. (There was no vestibular drop, only a vague awareness of the process as the motorcycle crossed my path.)

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The intersection offers three choices. I can turn left to follow the motorcycle cop (which I technically do with the waking process), keep going (keep dreaming), or turn right with the implication of returning to slow-wave sleep (so-called dreamless sleep). (The direction options are atypical as I am otherwise on my left side when dreaming vividly, not my right.)

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One Christmas, my father bought me a toy remote control police motorcycle with an officer riding it. My dreaming experience rendered its nature as too small and of an artificial essence (though those aspects are common to dreams).

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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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Morning of September 28, 1968. Saturday.



I am sent to a warehouse-like area during school hours (even though I sense it is a Saturday - as it indeed is in real life) west of the school (West Elementary) and across the street to get a couple of textbooks, I think for other students (and perhaps one for myself). It is fairly dark inside.

A large “dogerpillar” crawls slowly near me from another part of the warehouse as a mist seems to rise up from the floor. There are shades of cyan, purple, white, and orange, and, terrified it will reach me, I stand up on a large crate just barely out of its reach as It is unable to lift itself, and can only crawl horizontally, which is an in-dream “relief” to me. It is at least a foot high or more and about five feet long. It starts making a strange, short mournful whining sound and I start to try to imitate the sound so that the creature will think I am one of its young (or one of its kind at least) and move on elsewhere. I continue to stand on the box making the sound in a somewhat worried state. Originally I had written “After awhile, I think that the creature may end up thinking that I am its offspring and may want something from me or to properly feed me! It seems there may not be a real way out.”

I am less afraid near the end (but still have an odd in-dream “faux end of the world” nervousness), but am concerned about missing reading class, and am wondering why they did not keep such a weird creature locked up. There is sort of a concern that I may never get out, but I slowly wake. (Oddly, there is no stronger thought of attempting to run away, even though the creature is very slow in its movements.)

Upon waking, I had found out (from my mother) that I was making a similar sound (vaguely like “vumpadump”) for several minutes before waking from the very vivid dream. (I have heard from some people that a person is unable to make sounds or speak in syllables when dreaming, but like almost everything else I have heard about dreams - it personally turned out to be wrong.) It is possible that the creature was partly based on the one from “The Monster That Challenged the World”, which I saw on Rose Street when about age five.

The very first dream journal title of this was “The Thing in the Room”. Someone who saw it (David K) said the title should be changed to “The Thing in the Attic”, which was pointless, as it was not an attic, so I later changed it to “The Thing in the Warehouse”. Because of what it looked like (a giant caterpillar with a weird dog-like head), the final title was “The Dogerpillar”.

This was not the first version of this dream. See this link: http://blue-opossum.tumblr.com/post/...ditional-notes

Night of September 25, 1970. Friday.



There is apparently a dangerous mostly black (with rust-colored nuances) dog (possibly with rabies) loose in the area, supposedly a Mastiff (or part Mastiff) wandering around in Cubitis, said to only make an appearance and be a threat when there is fog in the area (curiously enough, “something in the fog” is a recurring aspect in some of my more “threatening” dreams - starting with a giant caterpillar “prototype” - or “dogerpillar” - as a toddler). It may be that the atypical or “special” fog itself is making the dog dangerous. (Oddly, as a child, I did not even make the rhyming play of “dog in the fog” as I can clearly see now.) However, it is not certain if he is able to bite or not.

In-dream, I am still somewhat confused over the nature of the “Hounds of the Baskervilles” movie. (It was written as “Hounds” in the newspaper relative to the 1959 Peter Cushing movie, but I have also seen it as “Hound”, which seems to be the valid title according to IMDb.) I am wondering if the “wild” dog is in a muzzle and therefore not as dangerous as implied. I see him through a fog (in the middle of the backyard from the carport), just on the perimeter of the mist, but I run into the house (without taking the time to verify if there is a muzzle or not - as the weight upon me would also be problematic) with a sense my legs will be vulnerable and “feet left behind” (implying I may still live without my feet).

This seems to have been an earlier “prototype” dream for the more vivid and detailed “Dogpile” dream from over a year later, but I had many similar dreams, including lucid ones with this theme. As I have written before, most dogs in dreams of this time period (mostly 1970-1973) were either black or rust-colored and an in-dream threat. There seemed to be no real-life association with this theme.