Visions in the Dark

I dreamed I was in some sort of classroom, and it appears that it is situated in a basement. The walls were concrete and painted a pale blue, with three windows near the ceiling along the north wall. Flourescent lights provided most of the illumination. There were many students in the room but I cannot remember any specific details about them. I cannot remember exactly what it was about them but I knew that I did not like them because they were bullies and stuff. I was relieved when they all left when the bell rang. I do not know what time it is and what the bell was for as I am busy painting on two canvases. I can clearly remember every step I took and every stroke I made with the paintbrush and it felt like I was engaged in this activity for hours.

There were no clocks for me to look at but the daylight did not change from what I could see and it was unusually quiet for a school. It felt like everything outside of me was frozen in time. As I finished the second painting, however, the group of students who left at the beginning of the dream returned. They surrounded me to see what I was doing but I ignored them because I do not like bugging me when I am painting and I assumed that they were just going to bully and harass me like they always did.


I cannot remember anymore of this dream.

This dream is not the first in which I have created art but it is frustrating because my dream art skill level is always much higher than my skill in waking life and I can almost never recreated the images that I see in my dreams anyway. The two abstract paintings I made in the dream are still fairly clear in my mind, and I want to try and paint them for real. The first painting was made with the colours blue, green and purple, while the second painting was made with the colours red, orange and yellow. The second painting also had three distinct curved strokes, painted in red, in the lower left quarter of the image. I have tried quick sketches with pencils but they are colourless and insufficient.

There is a some sort of family gathering in a small house. I think it is my grandma's old house, but I am not sure. There are many people , some I recognize as members of my family, and some that do not resemble any person I know in waking life. There only seems to be three rooms; the kitchen, the living room, and the basement. The kitchen does not have a table or chairs but there is a green sofa against one of the walls. The living room is sparse as well and only has a white loveseat and a large screen television. Needless to say, most of the people in the house were standing as they socialized.

There were some people in the kitchen preparing food and some people standing around with drinks. I was in the kitchen but I was not preparing food or drinks, nor was I socializing. I didn't want to be there and I felt very tired and bored. I sit down on the green sofa, curl up on one end and start to drift off to sleep. I can hear my dad come into the room and everyone starts asking him what's wrong with me, as if they can sense the fact that I don't want to be there. I cannot hear exactly what my dad is saying except that he is going around the room and apologizing to everyone.

I wake up when I feel someone sit on the other end of the sofa. I sit up and see that it is Uncle Doug. He is making rude and offensive jokes about women and everyone in the room (which I notice at this point is all male) laughs along with him. I am disgusted but I cannot think of anything to say. Uncle Doug turns to me, grabs my arm and asks if I am "cool" with the jokes he is telling. I scream at him not touch me and to stuff his misogyny up his ass. He gets embarassed and apologizes and asks if I am offended, and even though I am, for some reason I say no.

Everyone starts to head down stairs and I get up off the green sofa so that it can be carried into the basement. I start washing dishes because I am too pissed off to talk to anyone. Dinner is being served in the basement and everyone is down there, but I refuse to join them because I still feel raw about the incident with Uncle Doug.

I climb up on the kitchen counter and look out the window, but instead of seeing a backyard at groud level, the view is from several storeys up and I am looking down upon what appears to be a train station. There are many people walking around or just standing on the boardwalk as a passenger train very slowly pulls out of the station. Out of the corner of my left eye I see a frieght train appear out of nowhere and slam into the back of the passenger train at a great speed. I watch in horror as the frieght train cars pile up on each other and onto the boardwalk, violently crushing some of the people who had been standing there. I feel helpless because I cannot do anything but neither can I look away, even as people continue to be crushed and mangled by the crashing trains.


Then the vividness of the terror and sheer graphic nature of the train crash woke me up.

#1) In the first dream there was an old lady travelling through a thick temperate forest on a ship. The ship was magical and it could sail across both water and land. The old lady was hunting down an enemy that she had been pursuing her whole life.

She comes across an old man who is stranded in the middle of the forest and offers him a ride on her ship, which he gladly accepts. Through their ensuing converstaion it is revealed that the old man is the enemy that the old lady has been hunting for, though they do not fight because they are too old and too tired. The forest clears and the ship sails away on a large body of water, and the dream ends.


#2) The second dream takes place on a peice of land owned by my Aunt and Uncle, out in the eastern coast of Canada. There is some sort of gathering and we (both friends and family, as well as some random unrecognizable characters) are all sitting around two fires on opposite ends of the open space, wrapped in blankets or doing various activities. The sky is overcast and it is "spitting" rain, but the gathering continues despite the slight chill coming off the ocean.

I am sitting on the ground near one of the fires when a shadow falls over me. I look up and there is an elderly Native American man standing over and staring down at me. He is dressed in the traditional clothing of his indegenious clan (though I cannot recall the name of the tribe) and radiating a pleasant warmth. It becomes quickly apparent to me that no one else can see him. The dream becomes fuzzy here and I cannot remember any more for a bit.

Later in the day the drizzle has stopped and there are a few partings in the clouds where the late afternoon sun shines through. The gathering is still going full strength though I am laying down on a blanket away from everyone else. Through half lidded eyes I again see a shadow fall over me. I open my eyes and there are three native indians in traditional clothing huddled together and staring down at me. There is a young woman who seems strangely farmiliar though I cannot place a name to her face. There are two young men, one who looks like someone I used to know named Mike (but with long hair), and another whose face is shrouded in darkness. I am not afraid or worried, though I am a bit uncomfortable with all of them staring at me in silence.

I get up and go over to my Aunt Dorothey, and ask her who the three strangers are, even as they continue to watch me. Again, though, no one else can see them except for me and my family silently thinks that I am eccentric. For some reason I know what my family thinks of me. The dream ends there.


#3) The third dream takes place in a busy city with narrow streets. There are two people with me; a young woman and a young man, and though we are friends in the dream I do not recognize them as anyone I know in waking life. Everything about the city seems very dreary and grey and takes place in the Chinese section of town. I think it's raining.

The young woman and I give our hair scrunchies away or something and then convinced the young man to come along with us to buy some new ones. We all went into a store that had three stands filled with hair elastics. Even though it wasn't necessary or whatever, my friends and I wanted to buy bigger and more poofie scrunchies.

There is an old man in a grey trench coat standing in the entranceway of the strore. No one else sees him except me and we make eye contact. His look unsettles me and I am afraid to leave the store because I know the old man is waiting for us. I cannot remember any more of this dream.


#4) In the last dream I was a beautiful Chinese movie star who had just been signed on to a new movie. The filming location was deep in a temperate forest and was difficult to get to because there were no paved roads. There was a shallow, rushing river near the filming site that I had to be carried across because there was no bridge and I did not know how to swim. For some reason I was already in a bright red film costume when I was carried across the river. I could not see the face of the man carrying me across, yet he smelled farmiliar.

Filming eventually begins but is quickly halted when it suddenly starts to downpour. The cast and crew try to take cover in the equipment tents. As it is raining, the director adds a sex scene to the film, starring my character, and doesn't ask if I am interested in participating because he just assumes that I would. I refuse and say that my stunt double can do it, but she refuses also. I storm out of the tent and into the pouring rain after I quit because the director would not stop harassing me about doing the offending scene.