Blue_Opossum

Night of November 29, 1968. Friday.



This (in quotes) is the original title and has remained so. I had entitled this as such due to there already being a story I was familiar with called “The Grasshopper and the Ants” (However, the Wikipedia entry is entitled “The Ant and the Grasshopper” - a variation I had never heard of before). This dream was one of many at a very early age that was very vivid and unforgettable in scenery and “momentum”. I am not even “in” this one. It is more like I am floating and viewing things in another world.

In my dream, there is a young female ant named Susanna (a variation of my wife Zsuzsanna’s name interestingly enough but pronounced without the “zhu” and “zha” sound although I did originally call her Susanna at times), possibly influenced by the Stephen Foster song “Oh! Susanna“. In that song, there is the line “The sun so hot I froze to death” and the grasshopper in the original story will supposedly starve in the winter or possibly freeze to death.

I have accepted the precognitive implications for four reasons; the bride’s name being Susanna, my wife being petite (thus much smaller than I), and the nature of our mixed marriage. She also has more than three younger brothers. Also, the building in this dream was similar to the one I first stayed at with my wife - even called Clarence (my middle name) House. There is also the association with “clodhopper” and “grasshopper” as detailed below. Though I was not certain of the grasshopper’s name, there was a vague association with Marco Polo.

This was a long dream, but I only summarized the main scenes originally. It involves the female ant being “courted” romantically and secretly in a “jungle” - or rather, an area with more grass and stones and such, a fair distance from her home. The female ant’s younger brothers were like composites of three Hot Stuffs and Huey, Dewey, and Louie - but with ant-like features. The scenes were not that cartoon-like at times, but rather like an animated painting. The ants seem to live in a scaled-down condominium rather than an anthill though, so it is kind of funny. There was also some sort of implied practical joke routine related to “condominium pandemonium”. I was not even quite sure what the words meant. I do not think I heard this exact term in real life, or maybe it had been a newspaper headline or some such.

Her rather mean-looking brothers do not want her involved with the grasshopper or any chance for a “mixed marriage” (which is rather a self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose, as I have been technically in a mixed marriage all these years - even though one man, a Jehovah’s Witness, thought we were brother and sister).

The main, most vivid scene has an interesting meeting between the female ant and the male grasshopper (and note the play on my first name of Claude - I was actually called “Clodhopper” in real life for a short time by at least two classmates as well as “Kadiddlehopper” - from Red Skelton’s fictional comedic character Clem Kadiddlehopper).

I can sense or hear romantic music playing. The grasshopper offers his love a rose. She accepts it but says “Thank you, but I like dandelions much better” in the voice of a (unknown) human female. There is not much drama after this. I am not certain what happens, but I do know the three brothers will be bothersome to both their ant sister and their grasshopper brother-in-law.

The real-life joke has a couple variations, but only one relevant to the reversal of the romantic scene from my dream. A teacher asks a child what her favorite flower is and she says “dandelion” (or “chrysanthemum”). The teacher asks “Can you spell that?” and the child says, “Actually, I like roses much better”.

Morning of September 6, 1977. Tuesday.



This was a long dream as a teen (seemingly with a few “resets” in the first versions), first dreamt in Cubitis in 1977. It recurred many times over several years (until the movie “The Fly” 1986 version was released and in which a scene matched my much older dream). The “soundtrack” of later versions was the music from the movie “The Black Hole” (1979) which I had the soundtrack record of.

Lisa M and her family are moving back to Cubitis, having driven down Highway Seventeen from the south, though I am not sure why. It is seemingly midnight or just after when they pull stealthily into their driveway (of tiny broken up seashells, bits of clam shells, and sand). I run and inform my parents regardless of the later hour, with somewhat of a sense of awe. (In reality, ironically, she had begun public high school for the first time after her family moved - the same one I would have went to - but shortly after I stopped going.)

In my dream, a fictional song called “Grasshopper” (supposedly by Kenny Rogers) was part of my “dream-movie’s” background music in later versions. (Two of the lines of the song were “When we were kids we used to play in the backyard” and “Grasshopper, grasshopper, come back to me” - slightly similar to the melody of “Matchmaker” from “Fiddler on the Roof” - possible association with the grasshopper fiddling in the “Ant and the Grasshopper” fable.)

Over time, I learn of some unusual and disturbing issues; “this” Lisa was not the “original” Lisa; at one point, something to do with being right-handed or left-handed due to an injury from doing cartwheels, I think, which is based on a distorted memory of a story about losing virginity when doing too many cartwheels or riding a horse. The “new” Lisa is some sort of shape-shifting creature, possibly from another planet (though this is not certain). The grasshopper as a deuteragonist may be associated with Jiminy Cricket relative to morals and conscience (or presumed guilt), though greatly augmented.

Later, a human skeleton is found in the concrete flower-box in front of where my bedroom is (outer west-most wall) when some new coleus plants are to be put in by my mother. Surprisingly, it turns out to be the real Lisa’s skeletal remains. It seems that the creature had somehow taken at least partial control of the parents to move “back home” to produce offspring. This mind control wears off at one point. (The focus on death is likely more about Jenny C, who was murdered about a month earlier by another male a couple years younger than me). This also loosely foreshadowed a real-life experience I had while fishing one morning. My mother had used plastic milk jugs as filler for the flower box. When I reeled my line in at one point, I mistook a plastic milk jug filled with sediment for a human skull, which gave me palpitations a temporary shock.

The fake Lisa had vanished when the news was spread about the shape-shifting alien invader. I later (for reasons I am not certain of) communicate with her again very late at night. It turns out that the real Lisa had been deliberately replaced by the female grasshopper-like creature that could mimic people (much like the movie “Mimic” that came out years later but the creature being far more human-like in my dream).

Earlier versions of my dream ended with the same scene as in the new version of “The Fly” (1986) where the large insect “foot”/leg moves out and comes down in the same way with the same timing, personal mood and reflection, and “color” upon my seeing the movie for the first time. There is one final scene where a small white shaggy dog (unknown Maltese) is barking at the creature as I fall backwards in my presumed “death”. (This turns out to have been precognitive of my wife’s life as related in the June 2014 dream “A Long Journey with my Wife”.)

Parts of later versions of my dream seemed similar to scenes from “Five Million Years to Earth” (1967) as well (“Quatermass and the Pit”). She becomes a mother and produces thousands of locust-like creatures that destroy the world; nothing but empty trees and bare ground as far as the eye can see, which again, uses the soundtrack from “The Black Hole” (same ending theme to my “dream movie”). Grasshopper-like creatures leap around almost like a sense of playful horses from an underside view, but…no more people, ever (other than myself). (There is no logical pondering of what will happen when all the vegetation is gone, which would likely be not that far into the future as I already see a lot of leafless trees over the infested landscape.)