vignettes from a different world

i was directing a music video with my mind. i do not remember what the music actually sounded like but i recall thinking it was like the doors. the vocals and lyrics were very prominent. the music was vivid and complex as it always is in my dreams. the lyrics were about some kind of drug hallucination or delirium.

the music video was set in a darkened suburban area, on someone's lawn. the colour scheme was mainly dark blue and black. the lead singer was dancing around erratically while i caused strange imagery to manifest. there were many of these strange images but i only recall a few. at one point there were cloth-like, lumpy growths swirling around the branches of a tree, disappearing and reappearing. later, there were unfamiliar people standing in rows and i caused their faces to distort. after doing this for a while the dream scene unexpectedly went black and an image of a humanoid figure with a bright red, glowing circle for a head and an ill-defined glowing yellow body appeared. i felt a jolt of intense fear unlike anything i have experienced in waking life. i screamed loudly in the dream but my screams sounded muted and distorted. i wondered if i was screaming in real life. soon afterwards i woke up. (i wasn't).

did not sleep at all previous night. napped from about 4:30 - 6 pm, took 30mg temazepam + 100mg trazodone and slept from 10pm-6:30 am; still tired upon waking.

i am on a bus with soldiers who are returning from war. they are meeting their newborn children for the first time. the babies all have square sections of their skull cut out to reveal coagulated blood and unidentifiable tissue underneath. there are black tubes coming out of the centre of these sections. in the dream, this is not disturbing to me. i just assume the babies have recently had surgery.

later i am in a large basement, which is unlike any basement i have been in in real life but which has featured in my dreams before. there is a tall french man talking (in french) about farts.

the imagery in these dreams was not as vivid as my dream imagery typically is. sometimes my vision would fade or objects would turn black.

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.

fitful sleep tonight. various fragmented dreams. not well recalled. content is quite shallow except for the last fragment.

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my father and i are driving in the country at night. in a recessed area on the side of the road sits a dollhouse & a wicker shelf that was in my childhood bedroom. the shelf is full of stuffed animals -- i remember one was a dragon. i take some of them with me because i understand i will be going to the hospital soon.

i am then at "the hospital"; it's a distorted version of the townhouse i lived in most of my life. the lights are off. the stuffed animals aren't with me. there's nothing hospital-like about the surroundings; it's just the main floor of the townhouse. there are 2 bro kind of guys visiting a middle aged woman who has tuberculosis. they talk about how she is defecating blood.

i decide to escape. i am suddenly in bright, sunny, warm-hued "downtown toronto" -- nothing like downtown toronto really, just big glass buildings and an immense urban atmosphere -- adrenaline rush, i'm running through beautiful streets, i crest a hill on a cobblestone road and i yell "santa maria! santa maria!"

i am back in the "hospital", i don't remember how this happens. i'm in the darkened townhouse kitchen. there are two nondescript tall men watching me -- the guards. i understand i am here for mental reasons. i think i am fine, but i accept my hospitalization with equanimity. i open the fridge and eat some kind of pastry with a raspberry on top. i hear a voice narrating lil wayne's current medical situation. i wake up.

later: something about a girl at school, i don't quite recall what she looked like - generic teenage girl, probably around 13? she's very bubbly and excitable, a little obnoxious, but she takes an interest in me and i'm glad that someone finds me nice to be around. we are rehearsing something and she starts rubbing her body against mine. i am a little uncomfortable. i point out that it seems dirty; she laughs. next we are talking to each other on a bus. i remember that her backpack is very focal in these scenes. it's a jansport style backpack, mainly white with yellow, lilac and blue thunderbolt designs. we get off the bus with some of her friends and we are in a dark city area. one of her friends is wearing - hard to describe this - platform shoes with the platform made of hard black plastic; they are hollowed out in increasingly smaller concentric circles, like the pattern of a mining pit - goes clear through to the other side. i remember thinking this is really cool, actually i still do. we walk through a bridge-tunnel. we realize that the bridge has no railing and is thus illegal to walk on. the girl comments that she should have removed her shoes (they have a specific name -- it's very german -- i understand that its named after the guy who invented the pattern) and now the people on the adjacent, legal bridge would know she walked on the illegal bridge, because the opening of the tunnel has the same pattern as her shoes. i find this remarkable. a boy with us comments that he's seen the same pattern in greece and i understand that i'm in some kind of european country. the atmosphere in this scene is very nice, everything's lit by soft incandescent streetlamps.

then i am in a distorted version of a thrift store i frequent. my stepmother is getting married, today, and she wants a pink themed wedding. she gives me 5 dollars to buy a dress and she also wants me to look after a young girl (age 3-5, black hair, olive skin). i notice that the girl is wearing lipstick and eye shadow and i think to myself that her father is awful for making her look like a slut. i ask her if she likes wearing eye makeup and she says yes. i can't find a pink dress at the thrift store so i go to a version of the victoria's secret pink store. i find something and i try to steal it but i fail somehow. then an employee asks us to leave. i am frightened for a moment but then i realize it is just because the store is closing.

then i am inside of a south park video game (??) it looks terrible, like some awful game you'd see on newgrounds in 2005 or sth. top-down view, white background (snow) with a grey line representing the road and brown blocks representing buildings. i understand that it was made to be terrible on purpose. i have to go somewhere in the game but every time i try to go there i am transported back. this goes on for a very long time.

finally i return to real life. i am in a different store. this one has bright wooden floors, white walls; it is very open and spacious. the girl and i are standing in front of a white shelf which houses a scattered assortment of strange toys. she takes interest in a toy which seems to be some kind of japanese thing based on jersey shore?? i realize i have spent a very long time in the video game and i should have returned the girl by now; my stepmother must be wondering where she is. the girl's face has changed - her eyes are very dark and there is a swollen red area under her eyes (similar to the famous picture of omayra sanchez -- if you're going to look this up be warned that it is disturbing).

the room has darkened. my stepmother appears. the girl is lying on the ground. stepmother is angry. she tells me that the "death squad" has been informed and people from all over the world are searching for her. i break down crying. i understand that the police will be coming to talk to me.

i walk over to the edge of the room and beyond a short banister is a beautiful landscape. it is hard to describe its beauty in words. i am high above the ground; i can see the peaks of mountains and clouds moving through the deep & light blues of the sky. below me, miles below me, are vast rolling hills and lush greenery. rivers flow through the land. the immense scale is very very difficult to describe. i understand, somehow, that this is Iceland. i want to get closer. there is a very thin wooden tree trunk that i jump over the banister onto. the landscape more beautiful now and I understand that this is not only iceland but Heaven. i almost cry.

i know the police are coming for me soon and my life will be awful. i debate whether to let go of the tree and fall into heaven, or face real life. heaven is so beautiful. i let myself slip a little but then i grip the tree again.

i wake up.