vignettes from a different world

i had a dream early in the night but i don't remember it at all. i will edit this if i recall any details.

later i am in the dining room of the townhouse. various people are here. i have gotten 7 or 8 identical tattoos on my hip. they are tiny outlines of men. i colour them in with a pink marker to make it look like they're naked. a girl laughs and asks me if it's my halloween costume. suddenly i realize that it is halloween. i want candy but i do not have a costume so i go to my room and find a pair of bunny ears. i put them on and leave the house (it is night) but i only get a few steps before realizing i've forgotten to get something to hold the candy. i go back inside the house. there's a long segment here that i don't remember much of. all i remember is that i was carrying a purple nightgown with bleach stains and i saw an identical nightgown on a shelf, which creeped me out a little, and people were discussing times? i went upstairs to get a pillowcase but for some reason went into the bathroom instead. i heard someone talking about slenderman downstairs. then i entered my room. i grabbed a pillowcase and put on a glove shaped like a bunny's paw. the dream ends here.

around 9 am i had the following dream: i am visiting my mother in an unfamiliar house. we get into an argument, the details of which are a little personal and so won't be posted here. i end up screaming at her, throwing a stack of paper in her face and leaving.

edit: remembered another part of the last dream. this occurred prior to the argument. my father and i were in an apartment with white walls; a lot of stuff was made of wood. the room was filled with blue light. there were parts coming out of the walls that created steep hills and inclines and we were trying to climb on top of them. at the same time that these represented parts of the room they also represented a landscape and at times they would become much larger in scale and look, for lack of a better description, like real-life video game platforms; at one point there was an elaborate gothic church on top of one. yet they were still components of the apartment.

comment: these simultaneous perceptions feature commonly in my dreams and often make it difficult to write down an accurate description. the best way i can describe it is that they add layers of depth to the dream world.. that is to say a table in a dream is not just a table; it may occasionally be perceived as an object that is functionally or structurally related (eg a chair because it's used for dining, a dog because it has four legs and is brown) or, if not fully perceived this way these sorts of associations will persist at a subconscious level and colour the dream experience. the mechanism behind this, i think, is an intensification of associative thought. i have experienced similar perceptions in waking life w/ the use of marijuana.

first i am trying to sneak in to a children's arcade. i don't remember anything else about this dream.

then i am on a hilly cliff-edge with a woman who seems vaguely familiar. the ground is blanketed with snow. there are several white and orange cats roaming around. we realize the cats are coming from an area further ahead so we follow the path to there, but we find that it is blocked by thick shrubs. the woman remarks she hopes to get into that area someday. the ground slopes softly to the right and we walk down there, but as we continue down the slope we gain momentum and lose control. the woman slips and accidentally touches a snake. there are 3 snakes here: one with yellow and black stripes, which she touched; one tawny brown coloured; and one whose pattern i don't remember. the woman is afraid the snake is venomous and she wants to get medical attention. i follow her to a building that resembles my school; it is night now. i have brought the snake corpses with me. at some point they turn to globs of pink flesh. i enter the school and the woman is gone. there are two boys at the top of a stairway with a metal bucket. they instruct me to put the flesh in the bucket and i do so.

then i am outside the school again with a girl. we see a dead man's body and i remove another glob of flesh from it. this one is lighter pink and fat-streaked. as we reenter the school the girl remarks that i should hide it, so they don't know i'm adding human flesh to the bucket. i try to throw it into the bucket when the boys aren't looking, but i miss. they don't seem put off by the fact that it's human flesh, however.

i wake up with severe abdominal pain.
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short analysis:
in the dream i considered the snowy landscape to be part of the dominican republic. this explains the presence of snakes and is attributable to the fact that a friend who had visited gave me a ring from there the day previous.

the brown snake looked and moved exactly like a large snake i saw in a forest a year or so ago (i live in ontario-- generally the only snakes you encounter here are tiny green garter snakes - this one was brown, 5 or 6 inches around and quite long... unusual sight to see on a walk in the forest. it didn't scare me at all, in fact i was curious -- and in this dream i adopted the same attitude towards the snakes, although the woman was terrified).

the dead body and the globs of flesh didn't disturb me in the dream; it was all very matter-of-fact. i wonder, upon waking, if these images of bodily mutilation can be explained by the severe pain i was experiencing. although i did not feel any pain in the dream, the body-horror type images could have been a sort of alternate perception of it -- a symbol of pain, so to speak.

recall has been terrible the past few nights. thinking of taking up awareness-enhancing/LD-inducing techniques again but that's difficult when you're very busy irl

the dream began in the townhouse basement. it was dark. i don't recall what i was doing there. later i was trying to change the colour scheme on an ipod? then i was with my uncle in a version of my grandmother's living room. some other people were there but i forget who. he put on a blues song which i recognized as frog eyes - time reveals its plan at poisoned falls (i assumed that this version was a cover of the "original" blues song). i sang along to it. then it was very dark and i was sitting at a computer. i was trying to make a fake kickstarter for a tablet so that i could make money. i recall having significant difficulties with this.

then i am hanging off the side of a bed and trying to get a pin that has fallen underneath. B---- is watching me and making sarcastic comments. there are two lollipops under the bed, one wrapped and one unwrapped. i cannot reach the pin. i recall that i need the pin for sexual purposes (what in god's name are those purposes? i don't know.)

finally i am watching a woman dance in an empty room (concrete floor and walls; dirty; colour scheme is desaturated, dark teal). she is nude except for a pair of pink panties and i am not able to see her face. on her lower back (left sacral area) she has many deep wounds, which are (insufficiently) covered by flesh-coloured bandages in the shape of bows.

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there's not much to analyze here, but a few things i found worthy of comment:

i often have dreams wherein my subconscious is able to replay a musical piece entirely from memory and it is always flawlessly accurate... in real life my musical memory is nowhere near this prodigious (i tend to recall only lyrics and vague ideas of the vocal delivery). i really wonder what about the dreaming state allows me access to greater musical capabilities & how i can come to harness this ability in real life.

in most of my dreams that have sexual content the sex object is female... in waking life i consider myself heterosexual, i'm in a happy relationship with a man and i don't really find myself attracted to women. it's interesting, therefore, that it's mostly women who appear in my sexual dreams and i find myself wondering why. i have a vague idea that i find male sexuality more threatening than female sexuality and thus sexual situations involving women are simpler/"easier" to dream about, but really i'm not sure.

very busy, haven't been able to sleep much - ruining my dream recall. some fragments tonight:

1. i was in a distorted version of downtown (bright colours, very sunny) with my boyfriend who now had massive dreadlocks cascading from the back of his head. i found that very unattractive but i decided that he is my boyfriend, so i should deal with it. we entered an empty furniture store. it was hexagonal with large windows on every side; the carpet and most of the chairs were green. we sat down on a couch. we wanted to kiss but we were afraid people would see us through the windows, so we just cuddled a little. suddenly the room started tilting from side to side. we heard the store owner coming in and we ran away -- but he was actually glad that we visited his store and he gave us smoothies.

2. i am with friends (the only one i recognize from real life is M-----) in a huge department store. we are wandering around and i was stealing things. i recall spotting a stick of men's deodorant that was selling for 80 dollars, so i decided to go to the women's department and steal a similar product. i never found the womens department but i stole some books.

then it is night and we are downtown. we want to go to a bar (i don't drink irl) but the only way to enter is through a third-story window. my mother is wearing a red shirt and lying motionless on the sidewalk a few yards away; her body seems shrunken. we pay little attention to this. i try climbing up the building's many roofs (roof-awnings? what's the architectural term for those) - dead ivy vines cover the building - but i can't make it to the top floor. at one point my mom gets up -- she's acting normally, wants to join us.

3. i am at a public indoor pool with a lot of other people. there is a young girl in a wheelchair there and a fat middle-aged woman is saying rude things about her. i tell the woman off and people applaud me.

4. i am reading a website about a spa. the company is from quebec and much of the website is written in french. i don't recall what the text said now but i remember that upon waking i remarked at the fact that it was sensical and grammatically correct -- strange because text in my dreams usually makes little sense in terms of content or syntax -- especially strange because french is my second language!

one part mentions that they have special tools for relaxation or something to that effect. the text is a link, so i click on it. it brings me to a page that displays various styles of bongs (they're all blue and silver and quite elegantly designed). there are also prices for "asian massages" for women and men. the prices are all in the 1-2k range. so i come to the realization that this is a brothel where you can smoke weed.

i decide to visit.

the spa is an outdoor pool. it is very sunny and bright outside. the geometry in this scene is odd - i think i'm floating above the water or something. a girl arrives, but no sex acts transpire, at least that i can remember. i wake up.

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quick analysis:
i've had many similar dreams about department stores. my dream-stores are always massive, labyrinthian, with blank white walls and floors and an eclectic assortment of items.

the image of my mother lying on the ground probably comes from the time i saw a hipster girl lying face-down on the sidewalk in toronto (with her ukulele of course). she wasn't drunk or sick or anything, i think she was trying to be artistic or protest something, but it was just silly. the police made her get up. there's also another dimension to this image i think - my mother was an alcoholic while i was growing up and to this day i have a strong aversion to being around any drunk people... especially her.

almost all the dreams i've catalogued so far have had something to do with sex. generally, dreams with sexual themes are very rare for me. i haven't had any changes in my real life that could trigger this... maybe my subconscious is just trying to embarrass me.

seems to have been a full-fledged dream but i can't recall all of it. at the beginning of the dream i was watching a video. the video focused on a brown-haired teenage boy. he was quite thin, very pale and had reddish areas on his skin that resembled abrasions. i understood that he was very ill and close to death, although he was acting normally. he was lying on a bed under rainbow sheets in a blue-walled room. the lights were off but a window let rays of white light through. his shirt was off and i understood that this was a pornographic video, although i don't recall ever seeing anything that would indicate that. there is a strange atmosphere about this scene.

at some point the viewpoint switches: i am no longer watching the video but inside of it. the boy lives in a large house (warm hues, oranges and reds) with many other people - i recall a young blonde-haired woman. there was some controversy over the fact that the boy had been in a porn video. some people hinted that he had other videos in which he performed very perverse sex acts.

edit: i have another memory, but i'm not sure whether it's a dream or not! i was walking from my bedroom to the bathroom and i was bumping into everything. very clumsy. the setting was indistinguishable from real life but the extent of my clumsiness makes me think it may have been a dream... also the fact that i didn't see any bruises on myself on the morning... but i took benzos on an empty stomach before bed, so who knows.

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rather odd dream, made me a bit uncomfortable when i woke up. a quick analysis - the theme of this dream seems to have been derived from a) a uh, porn video that i watched recently that involved a man who resembled the one in the dream and b) a documentary about a hospital for disabled vietnamese orphans. i am not sure why my subconscious decided to combine them, but there you are.

the "strange atmosphere" i talk about was an odd sort of calmness... i would define it as acceptance of, and contentment with, one's impending death.