vignettes from a different world

i was in the dining room of my old townhouse. it was night, but the lights were on. my mother and father were preparing for passover (we're not jewish...) and they told me that eating before 9 pm wasn't allowed. i didn't care about this because i am not jewish. i was hungry and i wanted to eat some of the snacks they had laid out on the table, but i thought it might be rude to eat in front of them when they had to fast.

later we were going to the mall, which was located in toronto and called "queen elizabeth mall" or something like that. it was quite large. the colour scheme was warm yellows and browns. i was still looking for food. i went into a dark corridor and emerged into a large, dark room that housed animals in cages. i went into one of the larger cages which contained a group of otters. i decided to build a swimming pool for them. i did this similarly to how one would build a swimming pool in the sims. i had some difficulties with this.

i walked out of the zoo area and was accosted by a large woman wearing an elaborate red and yellow dress. she was angry at me for a reason that i don't remember.

i returned to the entrance of the mall. there was a coffee shop here. a fat guy in juggalo face paint was displaying some fancy squares and cupcakes on a tiered platter. i sampled several of these sweets but they didn't taste like anything. two teenage girls were fighting nearby and the juggalo said something like "hey bitch, why don't you have a caramel square?" i thought this was funny.

in the first dream i was in a kind of forest area with a river (i think)? i was reading a poem that was accompanied by victorian-style engravings. i felt that this poem/drawing was incredibly significant. a sense of nostalgia pervaded this segment.

in the second dream i was on a beach bordered by a forest. it was sunny and bright. i was recording a wildlife video with my phone. i recall swimming in the water while two swans followed me. later i was editing the video to add a title and credits. the graphic design was kind of 70s-esque.

when i had finished recording my boyfriend showed up and i showed him the video. soon we were inside of the video. we were both swimming with the swans when my boyfriend noted two penguins in the water. we were surprised that there were penguins here. these penguins had a large yellow crest and a dolphin-like beak. we decided they were emperor penguins. my boyfriend wanted to go closer but i was afraid they would attack us. i had a vision of large, fanglike spines on their undersides, which were arranged in concentric circles. this prompted me to leave the water and watch them from the edge of the beach.

slept 11:30 - 9:00, awakening and falling back asleep several times between 7 and 9

i am in a large, dark house with some caribbean women who appear to be in their 50s-60s. they are acting strangely. someone tells me that in their culture, it is considered polite not to acknowledge strangers. later i am cutting myself in the bathroom (similar to townhouse bathroom) and the blood is getting everywhere. later still, the women and i are in a room with a young red-haired child. he keeps changing in size, from the size of an average 4 year old to the size of a mouse. he crawls around on the floor. the women are thinking of adopting him.

then i am in a "hospital", which is similar to the house in colour scheme. there is a lot of wood. i am a nurse here and i am watching over a middle aged man. his hospital room is a huge cylindrical tank with transparent walls. he is sitting in the far end of the tank, attached to many machines. he is wearing a sports jersey. i leave the room and report to the doctor, a tall young woman, that he is doing ok. she decides to initiate a different treatment. the tank is filled with water and numerous small, pink, swimming creatures. i go into the tank to explain the treatment to the man, but the creatures keep swimming into my mouth and it feels very uncomfortable. i leave. the doctor tells me to prepare a powerpoint on cellular respiration and photosynthesis.

in a fragment i can't place, i am at some kind of religious ceremony. the "church" seems to be underground and has a domed ceiling with pillars that fan out at the capitals; everything is hewn of grey-beige stone. somewhat gothic architecture?

in a different dream, i am playing with dogs in a park. it is hilly, with yellow-brown grass: beside the chainlink fence is a stone chasm and then a road. a beige concrete overpass stands further away, over the road, and in the distance, a cityscape can be seen. the sky is bright blue and clear. occasionally i see a massive red balloon rising over the city. it is very beautiful.

my final dream begins as a video game but the perspective changes. it is night in a cartoonish landscape; the land is pine green, the sky dark blue and full of stars. there is a little boy here whose pupils are shaped like crosses. he sees an area where the land slopes down, inwardly-curving, to a beach; but the slope has been separated from the level land, creating a vertical cliff. he realizes that he must push the cliff and the slope back together to save the other children. there is a segment of this dream which engenders a strong bittersweet feeling inside me, and repeats several times: the boy floats up into the sky among the stars, holding on to a red balloon.

1am-6am

this dream takes place in the apartment. i have just bought a new pair of jeans. buying these jeans enters you into a contest: the contest details are written on a pink leather square on the back of the jeans. i show the jeans to my mother and she becomes incredibly angry, screaming at me that the jeans are awful and i am stupid for wasting my money on them. i try to reason with her but she continues to furiously berate me.

i later had a lucid dream in which i was able to exert control over the environment -- although i have lucid dreams quite regularly they are typically very short & i am not able to control anything... this dream was different. sadly, i don't recall it too well.
i was inside of a house. something about the environment tipped me off that it could be a dream, so i performed a reality check. it was successful, so i ran outside of the house (rubbing my hands to stabilize the dream -- i remember i looked at my hands once and they looked normal, which i've never experienced dream before) into an autumnal forest area with many elaborate fountains scattered around. the fountains were all turned off but i was able to will them to begin flowing. i felt an invigorating rush of power. this is the first time i've been able to change the environment in a LD and makes me optimistic for my dream control in the future.

7am-9:30 am

i am in an unfamiliar house with three teenage boys and an older woman. at one point i ask the woman what the boys think of me. she tells me i disgust them with my insecurity. i have a breakdown and begin crying. i think i might have to go to the mental hospital.

later i dream that i am playing sims 3. there is a new item, a box that your sim can crawl into. when you click on it there is an option to "enter the dread cave". i choose this option: my sim enters and does not come back. the scene then switches from observing a video game to being inside of a real life scene. the box has turned into a kennel and there is a small black dog here. i put the dog into the kennel but it escapes somehow. i talk with someone about this and we somehow make the dog want to be locked in the kennel.

i am at the "doctor's office" for a checkup. the doctor's office is a large circular mezzanine located in a tall cylindrical structure. everything is made of brushed metal and creates a sort of sci-fi atmosphere. a red and yellow cylindrical tower rises from the centre of the structure. my father is here also. i am naked. the doctor says that i am very underweight and my father is greatly concerned by this. to demonstrate how thin i am the doctor picks me up and begins shaking me around.

then i am in a house. there is a dog here, a small cream-coloured husky. i understand that i will soon have to leave here forever. there is a feeling of great sadness.

next i am "downtown" with a chubby teenage girl. we wander into an alleyway and open a door to a dilapidated corridor. there are three doors here, each with windows; from what i can see through the windows, this appears to be some sort of child sex ring. the rooms house a number of female children, ages 8-12; they are all naked. the girl and i enter one of the rooms and we're relieved to discover (by looking at a framed poster on a wall) that in fact, this is not a child prostitution operation: the children are just working for a cereal company! this makes complete sense to us.

we enter another room. this room is white and contains several young girls who are all clothed in 50s style blue-white dresses. they have various deformities; it soon dawns on me that this is an institution for the mentally disabled. one of the girls tries to bite me. we leave.

next, my boyfriend and i are attending a music performance at a coffee shop. we arrive after the performance has finished, so we offer to put a tv show on to entertain the others. i want to put on a show about a frog without a tongue, but my boyfriend is intensely disgusted by this. i decide to put on a show about dolphins instead. however, all the dolphin shows i can find are crappy cgi videos; we want to look at real dolphins. the song vox humana - deerhunter is involved somehow. (absolutely amazing song, listen to it).

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.