Blue_Opossum

Morning of June 16, 2007. Saturday.



I have had variations of this dream setting most of my life. I first started calling it the “Enchanted Forest” in 1968 (at age seven), after the Harvey comic book location (for example as with “Casper the Friendly Ghost”) which likely influenced it.

There is a place that you can get to by way of a certain older dirt road (sometimes a rut road), and often part of the road is slightly muddy and overgrown so that many people do not know it is there even though it only takes moving a bush or tall grasses aside.

This place that is seemingly only in my dreams is fairly large (I am sometimes able to estimate the distance from how far it goes before coming out near a highway on the other side, though coming out of the area before my dream ends does not often occur). There are some turns; I would say about four main changes before you get to the “best” areas in the apparent middle. I often show two or more people (often friends or former classmates) where it is and feel a great joy at going in to show them around and we usually go in at about a twenty-two degree angle (about half of the standard vertical diagonal of forty-five degrees) and I am not certain, but we always seem to be going in from the west with a particular seemingly familiar area of entry.

There are usually areas that are so “hidden” (from other parts of the nearby path), that such a thing would not be possible in real life, especially near a main road. There is also sometimes an idea of animals around that cannot be found anywhere else; often certain types of bears, wolves, or wild boars, but with no stronger fear factor involved; just the knowledge of what direction to go from that point if becoming aware of one.

Most of the time, the secret forest seems to reflect the same mood as always or fictional “memories”, and it seems that I had been the only one to know about the area for a long time. It is so clear, it is sometimes possible to make a general map of the area (though it would not be exact, as sometimes, it seems to change slightly, often relative to slight flooding or more plant growth in different versions). The area usually also reflects an amazing feeling of appreciation which is hard to explain.

There are only a couple of other places (both fictional) that I have dreamt about (about half as often) many times; an area in an unknown city near a certain set of streets where there are also train tracks, and some sort of eerie area in a bigger city which often has a hint of potential danger of some kind of large rat (which also always has the same mood but more eerie than the others).

This time, near the ending point of my dream, after we are back in town, I am somewhat lucid. At least, lucid enough to think to myself of the phrase “this dream seems so real, I can make out the reflections in water moisture on the bark of the trees” (which I can). I am amazed at the details of the buildings and the plants, and take it all in. Some of the homes on a particular street look amazing, with beautiful ornate details.

After a little while, my dream becomes less vivid as I am waking. I notice that one of the people who had apparently been with me is a young girl, but is not really a girl at all; more like some sort of walking plant with no actual human characteristics. The “arms” and “legs” seem to be made out of corn-silk and there is no actual head (or even “body” so to speak); just a cluster of wheat or corn husk or some such. I find it quite odd, yet the other people I am with seem normal, but I do not say anything. It actually seems like some sort of “familiar” entity and faithful “friend” but I do not recall seeing “her” at any previous time in any dream, at least not in this particular unusual form.

Morning of October 17, 1981. Saturday.



In this dream, I am walking with my old science teacher from high school when I lived in Arcadia (though we seem to be in Wisconsin in my dream). There is a mix of other males including a couple classmates from WWTC (WWTI at the time), and some coworkers from Eco (Ecology) 3 in La Crosse. We are walking through a large wheat field which seems to go on forever at first. The science teacher (who is male, but not very intelligent for his station) is talking on and on about something, but it is not clear what he is saying. I believe it may relate to whatever job is being set before us all to do.

Over time, we seem to be at work somehow getting wool from the wheat field (rather than from sheep - yet it is somehow still sheep’s wool), as some sort of industrial product for other companies. Eventually however, I am the only one left in the field, as everyone else is gone.

Over time, I find my way into a machine shop similar to the one I worked at in real life (Eco 3), but it seems to be abandoned. There are piles of wool sitting randomly askew over various punch-presses and drill-presses, much of it hanging off the edges. There is a strange mournful feeling as if everyone else had died or perhaps abandoned their life’s purpose. Later on, the pure white wool seems to have naturally changed into dirty or tainted “steel wool” from just sitting around for a long time - but is like wet, rusty iron (in a sponge-like form) that crumbles fairly easily, as if the workers did not perform their duties in time, I think, or again, perhaps all died before finishing their work and so the factory was then perhaps closed or abandoned from there. It seems an enigma, though.

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This dream dramatizes oversleeping. The dream state is represented by “wool” (and the field is recognized autosymbolism for liminal space, a specific level of awareness in REM sleep) and then the iron manifests as potential thinking skills and logic that is only viable in consciousness. It becomes rusty from both physical inactivity in sleeping an hour or so longer and the slower Saturday morning waking transition. The association with “steel wool” and its appearance may or may not be incidental, though again, the metal is mostly perceived as rusty iron, with steel typically associated in waking life with “stainless”.

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