Blue_Opossum

Morning of September 14, 2016. Wednesday.



I am at our present address where we live now, though eventually the layout becomes larger and quite different. I am looking for a letter that I had somehow misplaced within moments of reading it. Not only that, I recall at least four other versions of the letter that we had received over the last week or two. It relates to our oldest daughter having some sort of unusual medical concern regarding her back (which is relevant to Zsuzsanna’s younger half-sister, not any of our children) and perhaps needing to stay at a children’s hospice (even though she is an older teenager). I am annoyed, because the issue does not seem real and that it seems more like an incompetent intrusion by the government.

I look through a few piles of magazines and random papers, including piles of scholastic worksheets and unused coloring-in-pages (one featuring four rockhopper penguins on ice ledges of different heights), but cannot seem to find any of the copies of the letter. I tell Zsuzsanna that I do not know how all copies have seemed to vanish including the one I had just been reading at a desk.

Over time, as our residence slowly expands, I notice that our oldest daughter has gone into the left side of my wardrobe to sleep (while in a standing position). This does not strike me as unusual. I begin to hear her deep breathing through the closed wooden door.

I notice Dick Van Dyke (the actor, now 90 years old in reality), who is wearing a black business suit, walking around as if he is looking for something. He appears as he did in the late 1960s. I am not all that surprised and find it a welcoming visit. He stops near my wardrobe and puts his ear to the door. “Your daughter is very special,” he says sincerely, “she creates marvelous poetry”. He continues to press his left ear against the left door of my wardrobe and comments on the rhythm and beauty of her poetry, even commenting on particular stanzas that I myself do not hear, and even though she is asleep. (Our daughter is a very talented artist and she has done professional work for others at an early age, but she does not write much poetry.)

I finally start to talk to him by firstly addressing him as Richard.

“Richard?” he considers in a puzzled manner, not directly addressing me, but absentmindedly looking at the shelves of what is now a grocery store. My wardrobe is now perpendicular to the beginning of the aisle. “Richard,” he softly mutters, barely audible, and seemingly responding to an incorporeal voice rather than my actual presence. I conclude that I had unduly puzzled him and instead decide to formally address him by his surname. I cheerfully start to say “mister…” but then I somehow forget his surname. He does not acknowledge me at all but seems to be interested in studying the contents of the shelves, picking out a jar of orange marmalade (emerging consciousness metaphor), while I continue to wonder where the letters from the government are (subliminally waiting for my dream self’s ascent into whole consciousness as a letter symbolizes potential threads between dream self and conscious self in non-lucidity).

I go through a couple “rooms of our house” and end up near the entrance to “our house”, which is now the checkout area of the Woolworths grocery store. This does not seem strange to me at all. I look through a pile of papers near two different cashiers, but still cannot find a copy of the letter. I am not bothered by the unknown patrons being in our “home” which is now apparently solely a grocery store.

---

This dream was typically precognitive (as there is a precognitive element in nearly all my dreams of one kind or another, often left unappended - in fact, over the last few years, at least one a day based on something my wife or daughter had thought of or mentioned to each other without me having any way of knowing), though in a rather skewed sense as is often the case. Zsuzsanna had returned from shopping with a sheet of paper (given out at the grocery store checkout) that was a coloring-in drawing for the promotion of a children’s hospice (featuring four hummingbirds, not four rockhopper penguins, though still in the same position regarding the birds). I find it amusing how dreams do this all the time, that is, foreshadow forthcoming events, but often in a “cleverly” altered way (though literally or visually exact in many cases).

Still, in contrast, there are the typical dream signs and standard components and waking transition. Our oldest daughter has gone to sleep (dream sign) in my wardrobe (secondary dream sign) and my dream ends with a typical waking transition symbol (a grocery store checkout symbolizing the leaving of the dream state). My preconscious personification (here, Dick Van Dyke) ended up “avoiding” me, or “failing to understand” as is often the case, but still lovingly commented on the nature of my family (just prior to the waking stage), the most important aspect of my life.

Morning of June 27, 2013. Thursday.



In my dream, I was shopping for food, a not uncommon recurring scene, probably because I do a lot of food shopping for my family in real life. There is almost always something unusual about the food or about my money (such as being printed on only one side though realistic otherwise, or being Monopoly game money, or foreign).

I had selected some supposedly good meat at a store that had opened just recently (or reopened after a long closure - as a few have since the floods here in real life). The cut is unusual, like a very thick and more rounded steak and I have two of them. The manager is there and he is making a claim about how good their food is. There are also two other pieces of meat, perhaps chicken, or a different, smaller cut of beef or pork - and I remember that I had some other items, including cheese or something processed and in a small cardboard container. I soon understand that I had forgotten to wrap the meat pieces up myself prior to purchase as the manager makes a note of it, similar to how a shopper bags his own fruits and vegetables in many cases.

The meat itself looks very strange (although the bone and outside area is seemingly normal), like a sort of transparent and soft pink jelly, although it actually seems more like watermelon, but is still “seen” as “meat”. I can see a total of four cigarettes inside farther down, two in each cut of “steak”. There is this strange idea that they somehow got into the food when it was being processed or “made” (although the idea is pointless, as the meat would be otherwise solid in real life - unless it is a “fake steak” made of various bits of meat). Although these cigarettes are new and unsmoked and encased in the jelly-like meat, I still get the sickly impression of dirty cigarette butts, ashes, and dirty water and chemicals (and people of ill health having touched my supposedly “fresh” food) and a growing disgust at having almost bought this awful “second-hand” or “used” food.

Another shopper, a female of about thirty, is looking at the meat in awe, seemingly being surprised by such a thing being in a store and for sale. As we look down, one of the cigarettes encased inside the pink “meat jelly” somehow lights itself rather brightly and dramatically (with no oxygen yet, although reminding me somewhat of a sparkler, as sparks seem to fly out from the cigarette as well, even when inside the “meat jelly”) and parts of the steak explode from the side, but no one is hurt. Another one does that as well. For some reason, as the cigarettes light themselves and explode and mostly burn up, the more sickening feeling I had lessens just a little, but I still make a mental note not to shop here again and leave everything else here as well without buying anything.

I have not been near a smoker (other than occasionally in public settings around people I do not know) in over twenty years. Neither of my parents nor friends smoked as I was growing up. Also, I rarely eat steak on its own, as I have always found it (even as a child) akin to trying to chew on a shoe. I do eat beef and all meat in other forms, but not nearly as much as other people. Perhaps this is some sort of play on “smoked” meat for whatever reason or more likely, implying that eating a lot of red meat is as unhealthy as smoking.

I have included the “dream journal synchronicity” tag because of this entry which appeared right after mine but with a date just prior to mine: WATERMELON