Night of August 12, 2018. Sunday. Reading time: 1 min 29 sec. Readability score: 73. I had made a music video of one of my songs. An unknown male happily praises my work, saying how “perfect” it is. I had supposedly not seen it for a long time. The video recording is somehow on an audio cassette. (I have not recorded on audio cassettes for years.) I notice that the tape, in a cassette deck about three feet below the monitor and vertically oriented, had been left near the middle and I remember that not having a cassette tape rewound when not in use exposes the surface and might cause wow and flutter and damage the area. I start to play it, but it is about a minute into the song, so I rewind it to the beginning of the video. “My” song turns out to be a strange version of “Sloop John B.” It mostly features me standing and singing in front of the sides of old ships. I am singing out of key. My voice is wavering and is annoying. Not all the words are the same as the original song, but I eventually make out, “So hoist up the John B’s sail. See how the mainsail sets.” In the last scene, I notice a cannon pointed towards the viewer, on the right of where I am standing in a closeup shot from my chest up. It appears to be protruding from behind a tarpaulin. My dream is a typical mix of associations that are unrelated. The main idea comes from sailing, as I had been using the word “oneironaut” (“dream sailor”) in some dream-related essays I had recently been writing. (Boats and water occur regularly in my dreams as it is.) Another word I had been using recently is “canon,” though related to known facts about my dreaming history. (In contrast, there are photographs from when I was about four, where I sat astride a cannon in a park.) Being the video’s last scene, it is the reactive representation of the cessation of the dream state. (Additionally, it may be a phallus association that reflects a need to wake and use the bathroom). In real life, I had recently made a video of a recent track of mine, but there are no vocals.
Morning of June 15, 2018. Friday. I am carrying an acoustic guitar, walking around in an unknown large room of equidistant picnic tables, similar to the break room of the factory (Northern Engraving) I worked at in the 1980s. The lighting is dim but it is clear enough to see. At first, I am mostly lazily strumming an up and down series of chord progressions that are not musically interrelated; C, D, E, D, C (in Majors). The chords are not fingered correctly even though the guitar is perceived as having the standard tuning. I mostly move my left hand, fingers all in a row, down and up the neck, leaving the second string open, which would not result in a proper sequence of chords either by fingering or by more desirable musical progressions. What I am playing would, for example, imply a C Major chord being F#, B, E, A, B, F# which is incorrect. Danny Trejo sits with others, facing me, and watches me from another part of the room. He looks at me as if he is very annoyed by my activity. I start moving my left hand closer to the sound hole to create chords of a higher pitch, sometimes playing only the first four strings, though with the same unrelated down and up sequences of three Major chords. Eventually, it seems to sound better and takes on more of a song-like quality. I find myself walking near another group of tables and playing both rhythms and melodies. There is a fuller sound, but of which would not be possible in real life, as the melodies and rhythms are simultaneous. A girl unknown to my dream self (though meant to be a rendering of Lucille Starr as in 1965) is soon walking to my right, having stood up from a nearby picnic table. She starts singing very harmoniously in French. (“Quand le Soleil Dit Bonjour aux Montagnes” / “When the Sun Says ‘Good Day’ to the Mountains”.) I continue to walk around playing intriguing melodic patterns as the singing continues, until my dream fades. Autosymbolic threads of the dreaming and waking process: Other than the transformation of the preconscious personification in the waking transition (by way of non-lucid dream control) to the emergent consciousness factor as Lucille Starr (who represented my subliminal memory of Zsuzsanna as I woke), most of this dream is based on literal factors and literally focused awareness (rather than the typical autosymbolic focused awareness). Literal threads of dreaming and waking process (dream state indicators): The song itself (“When the Sun Says 'Good Day’ to the Mountains” as a waking process reference and “Je suis seul avec mes reves sur la montagne”, sang in English as “I’m alone with my dreams on the hilltop”.) Non-lucid dream control evidenced by: Transformation of the preconscious waking autosymbolism from Danny Trejo being annoyed to Lucille Starr singing joyfully on my right. (Waking orientation is typically autosymbolically rendered as to my right as I sleep on my left side, which is less exposed to the real environment.) Present real-life-related literal threads: I follow Danny Trejo on Twitter but we do not post to each other. I am joyful in being married and with a loving family for over twenty years. Past real-life-related literal threads: I produce music, but I do not play acoustic guitar as much as when I was younger. The Lucille Starr song was one shared between Zsuzsanna and me before we met (as well as being a song from my childhood) and is very nostalgic for me. She sent a copy to me on cassette. Abridged and simplified on Friday, 15 June 2018. I offer thanks to the casual reader for their time and interest.
Morning of June 3, 2017. Saturday. I am in an unknown and unfamiliar setting, lying on my left side on a bed that is unrealistically large. It seems to be late morning. There are several other unfamiliar people in the room, though I do not perceive them as imposers or annoying in any way. There is also at least one young girl to the left standing on the floor, though near a young Hispanic female who seems to be a teacher and is also on the large bed. The implied teacher has some sort of curious device that seems related to computer technology yet is more like an abacus with spherical drops of water as the counters. Over time, I watch the beautiful silvery imagery of the pure water droplets moving smoothly across the horizontal abacus rod by themselves, almost as if inferring a clock or timer of some sort, yet also somehow seemingly linked to the back of a desktop computer. Still, I also get the impression that the Hispanic female is involved in using them at times for actual mathematics. She reminds me of a young Sonia Manzano (perhaps about twenty); (Maria from “Sesame Street”). After a time, my dream self seems oddly unlinked to my intent (even though I am otherwise fully within my dream self’s imaginary “physical body”). I want to communicate with, and become closer to, the Inducer (personified higher unconscious). Instead, my dream self becomes my personified preconscious (which is extremely rare in non-lucid dreams of this type). I spontaneously start singing, “Like a moth to a flame…” in a higher pitch (sounding somewhat like a young teenager), my dream suddenly shifting, becoming more vivid, yet with the Inducer seeming annoyed and deliberately taking the child and the water induction abacus away from the area. Knowing this, I am already entering peaceful dark and undefined liminal space, but quickly shifting into my full conscious awareness. This dream is very atypical regardless of having the usual water induction and “return flight” waking symbolism. I rarely shift into becoming the personified preconscious in this way. (Usually, the personified preconscious is a different dream character, completely unrelated to the conscious self. In fact, even my emergent consciousness is sometimes projected as another dream character until waking coalescence occurs.) However, I am already in bed (in my dream) to prepare to wake for real. I had already enjoyed the (biological) healing continuity of the spherical water droplets imagery. Singing “like a moth to a flame” is a metaphor for the temporary dream self (moth in flight related to the hypnopompic jerk of the waking mechanism) merging into the whole conscious self identity (the flame) and “dying”. The song itself is apparently fictional even though I was sure it was a classic country song by Leroy Van Dyke. The lyric is in “Four Walls” (Jim Reeves) but is a different tempo and melody. (It may be related to the first line of “Four Walls”; “Out where the bright lights are glowing”, as my family and I had just spent the day and evening at a carnival on the outskirts of town.)
Morning of September 14, 2016. Wednesday. I am using a notebook computer as well as accessing the Internet in an unfamiliar residence which is apparently where my family and I live. Our oldest daughter is present at one point and she is also using her computer. The large room does not have much furniture and I am seated on the floor, my daughter also seated on the floor on the other side of the room. The common distortion of somehow “using the Internet” in an actual notepaper notebook occurs (where images sometimes move on the paper, though not in every such dream, and in this case, actual type appears rather than handwriting). I try to search for the term “Ghost Riders in the Sky”. I seem to have forgotten how to perform a search, at least in a more feasible manner. I type “Ghost Riders in the Sky” with a small keyboard so that it appears on the notebook paper. I then move the computer mouse across the notebook paper to near the top of the page and watch the image of the print move in line with the mouse. I seem to remember that by doing this, it activates the search. However, nothing happens. I then reason that one has to move the computer mouse more quickly so that it creates a sort of “momentum” as the print on the paper is then somehow “flung” into a virtual but unseen search engine box on the surface of the paper. I cannot seem to do it correctly. I reason that there must be a virtual impetus setting (for the computer mouse) of plus or minus and in a context menu but I cannot remember where it is. I ask my daughter if she can get the search function to work on her computer. She seems to discover that the search function is offline and informs me of this. Still, I decide to try a different computer, which I recall is in a different room off to my right. There is a very large rectangular wooden table that holds six computer workstations (the narrower end of the table parallel to the doorway), both towers and desktops, each with a large CRT monitor, which are arranged as three facing outward on each side. I decide to use the middle workstation on one side of the table; the side where the doorway is then to my left. The search still does not seem to be working after I type in the phrase “Ghost Riders in the Sky”. I notice that the USB cable that is required for the search function to work is at an angle, halfway out of the electrical outlet (which is a white upright surge protector power board with three outlets), but tipped to the left (which is based on two absurd notions; one, that a USB cable needs to be plugged in somewhere for an Internet search to work and two, that a USB cable would fit in an electrical outlet). I adjust the USB cable to push it down fully into the outlet which is on my right. It is in the outlet between where the desktop computer is plugged in (left side) and where the CRT monitor is plugged in (right side). Soon, there is a sizzling sound. I am not sure what is going on. I see an orange glow coming from the monitor without paying much attention to the side of the monitor looking more like a vent with equidistant horizontal louvers. Soon, there are sparks flying out of the outlet along with a bit of fire and more sizzling from the other workstations. I soon realize that I had better turn off and unplug everything. First, I turn off the switch on the power board, but the noise and fiery glow seems to grow and spread and I wonder if I had turned it on instead of turning it off (which is illogical as I had just been using the computer). I go around the table attempting to turn everything off. There is even a power board with three outlets hanging to the left of the doorway at about chest-level, which I also turn off and pull plugs out of. My wife Zsuzsanna comes in. Our youngest son and daughter come in and playfully walk clockwise around the table cheerfully and I tell them that they should leave. Although the fire becomes brighter and the sizzling louder, it does not really spread that far. Each fire mostly remains inside the perimeter of each computer workstation, which is looking more and more like an arrangement of tall vents with equidistant louvers that I mostly watch the fire through. There is hardly any smoke. Soon, the crackling and sizzling becomes a very strange metallic music. It is firstly an instrumental version of “Ghost Riders in the Sky”. The metal of the burning workstations “plucks” the song, though is not that loud. The gremlins (from the 1984 movie “Gremlins”), though remaining unseen, are “singing” - though not the actual lyrics, just “ya ya ya ya, ya ya ya ya” to the melody, though for the chorus, they sing “yippee-yi-ay, yippee-yi-o, ghost riders in the sky…” the title being mostly muttered and somewhat indistinct as they go back into the “ya ya ya ya” verse. As I stand in the doorway, I marvel at what seems a “frozen moment” of perfection (even though I know it will cost a lot of money to replace the computers). The thin metallic plucking of the melody sounds very distinct as each louver of the vents snaps, though the workstations (and vents) still appear as complete and undamaged through the fire. (The equidistant horizontal lines of light have appeared in previous dreams, akin to venetian blinds and relating to the nature of liminal space, including with the potential of greater clarity or lucidity, between dreaming and waking.) Although I consider this a beautiful and unique dream (analogous to the dream-self identity as the phoenix), it carries the same core meaning (and sleeping, dreaming, and waking components and inherent symbols) as the majority of my dreams since early childhood. Firstly, my unconscious dream self seeks to return to whole consciousness (which is often the primary goal of most dream-self incarnations though in many cases the dream self attempts to “escape” from the “interference” of whole consciousness, or does not want to wake yet) through use of computer technology (as only the conscious mind has viable thinking skills or a stable system of logic). The common “return flight” aspect is here, but in this case as the “ghost riders in the sky” (the sky often being symbolic of the conscious mind as being “above” the dream self), where fire is mentioned in the actual song, fire of which represents emergent (waking) awareness (or if one prefers, the emerging sun or light of day). Orange is also a factor of sentience (and the need to wake up) between yellow and red (which also represent states of consciousness when dominant, yellow or gold being the “softer” phase and red often indicating more of a need to wake, in my case, often after sleeping a little too long, relative to circadian rhythms). The color red increases the pulse and heart rate, and raises your blood pressure in preparation for waking. Red, orange, or yellow are typically the final dominant colors in my dreams (depending on the type), where blue typically serves as the opposite, that is, dream induction itself (or the calming of consciousness which transmutes as the “sky” but focuses via the “sun”).
Updated 08-03-2017 at 05:35 PM by 1390
Morning of September 13, 2016. Tuesday. This dream was extremely long (as is often the case with me), shifting and sifting in and out of different levels of consciousness (only partial semi-lucidity in one segment), and which contained too many scenes to feasibly document (let alone provide the meaning for), but I will include some of the clearer events. The main event relates to my wife Zsuzsanna and I living in the northeast apartment in the King Street boarding house. Of course, the room has to be rendered much bigger than in reality in order for everyone to fit. Not only that, the room is easterly duplicated at least two more times (which, as usual, I pay no notice to). The Jordanaires are visiting us. However, these “Jordanaires” (by which I probably confused with The Andrews Sisters, though there were only three in that group) are actually four dark-haired Caucasian girls sitting at a rectangular table with Zsuzsanna. My sister Carol (August 4, 1943-December 10, 2009; half-sister on my mother’s side) is also present, appearing as she did in the 1980s. For a time, the four girls sing Elvis Presley’s song “Teddy Bear”. Even though it sounds very harmonious and in perfect unison, I eventually tell them to shut up or leave (though I guess I really do not feel that imposed upon). (In a way, this could possibly be considered as a secondary dream sign due to the fact that children sometimes sleep with teddy bears.) “I don’t really like that hooga hooga music,” I explain to Carol (describing the blend of gospel and rockabilly as “hooga hooga” in mocking Elvis’s singing style in songs like “Teddy Bear” and “Don’t Be Cruel”). I then tell her that it is okay to listen to at times and that I sometimes enjoy his music, but I do not feel like listening to it right now. There was another long segment prior to this one which involved looking at a hexadecimal dump of a series of science fiction novels. At one point (as a normal display) I see a listing of three columns with two to three titles listed in each column. The first two columns have asterisks at the beginning of each title which means that they can be read for free. The third column has a price listing at the top which I think is $29.95 for each. I am aware that the writer is a young female. I do not recall the titles as I do not really focus on them that much. I look at the hexadecimal dump and see that there is executable code at the beginning in addition to each story. Although the formatting is not directly executable there are indeed subroutines in the code. I see the string “this story is not available for reading in Australia”. Very curiously, this does not trigger any present real-life status memory and I still perceive that we are living on King Street. Still, I consider reversing the logic of the sequence (“jump if” to “jump if not”) to display the message in America (to then prevent access) and to allow it to unlock in Australia just to be funny. As I am reflecting upon this with a cheerful nostalgia, I look at the rest of the formatting of the story but do not actually read it. I do notice that the margin code seems to be unrealistically wide but I do not puzzle over it that much. I hear Zsuzsanna ask our youngest son “Did you burn your hand?” and I expect that he did and I am concerned. I actually wake up while asking her if she had said this (and she had not but had been talking to him), but only briefly and I immediately fall asleep again. In another scene, I go into one of the duplicated rooms and notice that there are small paper sacks everywhere, some on tables and many more on the floor. At the bottom of each sack is a jelly roll, but most of boysenberry or blueberry filling. I take one out and find it delicious. (In the back of my mind, I even recall the oral sex symbolism without becoming lucid.) In another scene, I have the apartment door open. My (King Street) landlady comes up the steps and holds her hand out as if in expectation for me to give her the money I owe her. I tell her that I will pay her later and she looks annoyed and walks off to Leonard’s apartment. Meanwhile, I had been ready to hand her a green tambourine, except that I soon notice that the membrane is split along one side and coming off around the edge. I throw it onto a huge pile of various toys and junk that comes up almost to my waist. It looks like we have some cleaning to do as the pile fills about half of our apartment. Near the last part, I pick up large oblong pieces of dust from under a table, with my bare hand, which contains hairs and at least one dead grasshopper (a rather odd return flight waking transition, more specifically “failed flight”, with the loose hairs symbolizing the end of the dream state and the fictional “head” of the dream self).
Morning of September 29, 1981. Tuesday. A seemingly shorter dream (after a series of unrelated dreams), deemed shorter in conscious afterthought (which consequently probably seemed much longer than it was, almost “timeless” at the time) involved a boy’s spirit (a young boy, Scott R, who my sister was watching in real life at the time, as his mother had abandoned him) somehow becoming part of a bumblebee, yet also moving about in an invisible “cloud” of some kind at the same time. He is singing a melancholy song about being a bumblebee. One line is “Beh-beh-beh-bumblebee” (which is not a stutter but a slow musical intonation). It almost seems like a sort of prayer as well as a “cheerful” yet somehow mournful inference. At the waking stage, he lands on the top of the south fence of the backyard of my sister’s house on Loomis Street, which divides her backyard and the neighbor’s backyard. This is part 2 of a random but extensive set of dreams pertaining primarily to fence autosymbolism (which means it is inherent to the dream state, not waking life). A fence is rendered as a metaphorical barrier between the dream state and the waking world, though can also serve as induction and dream state revivification in some cases (though not as often as doors do in my case). In addition to liminal space autosymbolism, the very common dynamic of vestibular system correlation is present, with a bee as representing synaptic gating (due to the association with a bee “buzzing” and loosely associated with electricity as such). Thus, the bee is the preconscious factor of this dream. (The preconscious is often personified, and because the bee seems to have Scott’s essence on one level, it is partial personification here.) An additional but inexplicable factor is that the boy (Scott) also had the same dream during the same time period (though from his viewpoint as actually seeming to be a singing bee). Most people do not accept shared dreaming (or in fact anything they cannot explain) even though I have experienced it continuously since earliest memory, especially with Zsuzsanna. However, this series is for explaining fence autosymbolism and to help rise above the deception of “interpretation”. People will believe whatever they want regardless of someone else’s knowledge and experience. After all, each life is unique. In part 1, I wrote a little about the relevance of the rabbit. In that dream, it was a factor of returning to deeper sleep (even though it occurred during what would otherwise be the waking process), while this dream is a factor of closeness to waking (and was the last dream of my sleep cycle). (The rabbit goes under the fence but is stuck for a time within the fence itself. The bee in this dream lands on the fence with the assumption it will keep flying. Neither dream relates to waking life, but the dreaming process itself.)
Updated 06-02-2018 at 05:41 PM by 1390
Morning of February 10, 1980. Sunday. I am disembodied in my dream while watching a seeming display as if from a television movie or commercial, although it seems I am actually there at one point and hovering over the scene following the unknown Caucasian female as she walks. It apparently involves a female detective and “Swathy Daniels” is apparently her name. There is an unseen younger male of perhaps about twenty (as a voice-over) singing her name as she walks through the unknown city (though may be La Crosse) in a pale gold jacket - he sings it slowly in a sort of odd matter-of-fact way as she crosses the street (not at an intersection but near the middle) with a very slight sense of melancholy though still with a discernible degree of cheerfulness. Later on, I reason that it may have turned out to be just a perfume commercial (or perhaps a shampoo commercial) even though I still sense it is related to a detective show. (Detectives are typically rendered in cases where the non-lucid dream self is puzzled by being in the dream state). Trying to work out what this could possibly mean, there is a good chance that crossing the street is a liminal space period, though not as much a consciousness shift as with a staircase - though reaching the other side of the street would be a good waking metaphor. “Swath” is probably a dream sign play related to being wrapped (”swathed”) in a bed sheet during the dream. “Daniels” may or may not be a subtle play on actor Anthony Daniels, who played C-3PO in the “Star Wars” movies and in which case would reflect one of the aspects of the dream self in not being fully conscious. This seems possible due to the fact her jacket was of a similar color (also an emergent consciousness color) so then would represent the transitory waking self (hybrid stage, usually very brief other than in my childhood dreams).
Morning of June 27, 1976. Sunday. Dreams are sometimes known for providing supposedly worthless and ridiculous poetry that often has non-words or very odd variations of known (real-life) poetry. Here is an intriguing example: Don Grady, the actor (who starred as Robbie Douglas in the television series “My Three Sons”), stars in an epic Western - “The Legend of Tony Karoni”. He was from Virginia (associations with “The Virginian” Western television series, I suppose) and sometimes rode in a group of many other cowboys. After many adventures, gunfights, and stopping rustlers, he ends up in a small jailhouse in an area in Southern California or possibly Mexico, to meet the local sheriff (and possibly to rescue a friend who is being held wrongfully). Two Mexican bandits are standing inside, leaning on the bars of the jail. One of them says, “Well, gang, look who’s back!” (There only seems to be the two men, no actual “gang”.) They then sing in a perfect, layered, somewhat metallic voice: “It’s TOny KaROni!” “All the way from NEAto’s cell!” (or “All the way from Needles’ cell!” - Needles is a place in California at any rate). At this point, I am not certain if “Neato” was a play on the reversal of the “To” and “ny” of “Tony” or if they were actually singing “Needles” in reference to the town, though it does sound like “knee - toes”. There are some possible plays here, one being from hearing “macaroni” in real life as well as possible associations with the “Frito Bandito” song (1967-1971?).
Updated 08-03-2015 at 11:45 AM by 1390
Morning of December 23, 1970. Wednesday. (Original data and date validated.) Recurring over Christmas holidays during fourth grade. I am at school for some reason during the weekend starting Christmas break. A very short man/elf (who is very old) - or possibly a dressed-up dwarf or midget more “realistically” - is singing “Jingle Bells” very mournfully (dragging out “way” with a very melancholy flow with about three syllables). He used to sing it with great cheer, but his wife, who was three times taller than him (a blue Christmas fairy or whoever) had died the year before. However, in one part of my dream it seems her “spirit” is present and in a happy mood watching him and there seem to be a few other “woodland characters” in the background, possibly to later participate or remain an audience. (The idea for the “blue fairy” as a dream influence may have come from “Pinocchio”.) In real life, I had gotten a really long candy-cane-striped pencil with an elf head on the end - not an eraser though, it was made of plastic and cloth - from school as a gift from a teacher. I actually had it for many years, unused. Also in real life, I had exchanged gifts at school with Morris E based on name draws in school. I had given him (bought by my mother) a small spinner game with tiny pegs in a plastic box about the size of a deck of cards, and he gave me a pair of very cheap toy plastic handcuffs. However, the handcuffs broke after a very short time before school was out that day (and during the so-called Christmas party). The teacher made us switch back to where we kept our “own” gifts and of course, this made Morris E more of my nemesis than he already was, blaming me for “ruining his Christmas”, something I did not take all that seriously, though. My mother seemed vaguely annoyed at me keeping the gift as well. It is possible the mournful singing dwarf was some sort of representation of Morris in one layer, as he was a “dwarf” of sorts, that is, his growth was stunted and he remained very short as he got older. This dream colored my mood, but not in a negative way. It just felt “right” at the time, almost nostalgic (even for a child). I did make the stronger association with a “Christmas dwarf” rather than a Christmas elf.
Updated 10-11-2015 at 06:26 PM by 1390
Morning of March 17, 1970. Tuesday. Dream #: 1,184-02. Reading time (optimized): 1 min. The southwest corner of West Elementary School’s playground is my dream’s setting. A small light-colored rabbit is trying to get through the bottom of a chain-link fence with a few broken links (to leave the fenced area of the playground to go south, into the backyard of a home). The rabbit seems too large to squeeze through. Other children are with me, mostly friendlier schoolmates, including Danny and Annette, as well as Linda. Some are standing together, but a few are squatting, including me. We happily sing, “Come little rabbit you can do it” to the tune of “Glow Worm” (a song my father performed now and then and one I had played on the accordion and organ). It seems to work, as the rabbit is making progress. I sense our singing ritual is effective. Although we sing “come little rabbit” (instead of “come on, little rabbit,” though this would not fit the “Glow Worm” melody), the rabbit is going through the fence away from us. The “Glow Worm” lyric is “glow little glow worm, glimmer, glimmer,” which matches “come little rabbit, you can do it” with nine syllables. The causation of this type of dream correlates with instinctually or liminally navigating emerging awareness of physicality during the waking transition (as my mind cannot viably discern physicality or move my body while sleeping). The fence defines the state of liminality (and its duality) between dreaming and waking. A rabbit’s back legs kick, my liminal association with the anticipated myoclonus of the waking transition.
Updated 11-12-2020 at 08:57 AM by 1390