vignettes from a different world

haven't updated my dj for a while.. got lazy. have to get back into the habit. this was a very long dream and my descriptions don't really do justice to the feelings of absolute terror it inspired at points.


i dreamt that i lived in a big house with some other teenagers. occasionally my boyfriend came over. we played video games and cuddled and it was very good. i remember feeling anxious about how to arrange our next meeting.
then i was walking around downtown. it was sunny out. some store had gone out of business and they were giving away their furniture. i found a large bed, whose bottom panel comprised several dressers. i opened each of the dressers and i discovered very elaborate blankets and dresses, as well as some scraps of paper.
there was writing on the paper. although it was in "polish", i was able to understand it. (i don't know any polish). the words frightened me. i cannot remember what they said but the content was very paranoid, surreal and fragmented. it chilled me to the bone.
i went in search of the woman to whom the bed & these papers belonged. (she was an old decrepit polish woman with long grey-brown hair.) i was wandering through downtown at night. i remember also seeing medieval-style maps of eastern europe that the woman had made. an atmosphere of visceral horror pervades this dream segment.
i finally found the woman. at first i was terrified of her and i tried to hide from her as one might try to evade a bear. later i took pity on her and invited her to a formal dinner with some of the people from the dream house. she wouldn't eat at first but i got her to eat a small amount.
then i got into a car with a man in his late 20s and we drove around downtown, which was now sunny. there were two mario figurines in... uh... the little things on the inside of car doors where you can store tiny stuff. one of the figurines toppled over and turned into a waluigi figurine with oddly coloured, very dark (but not black) clothes. when this happened to the second figurine i knew the polish woman was dead. i felt relieved.
we knew that some scrawny ginger guy was responsible for her death and we took a different route home to avoid him. when i was home my boyfriend was there and we decided to go to a café called "the simoleon". this café was buffet-style: they had many sweets on offer and you could load up your plate with as many as you wanted. i ate a weird pudding thing and it tasted good.
next my boyfriend and i went to the mall. he wanted to buy a watch. there were two stores that sold watches, an absurdly expensive designer store and american eagle. the watches were bands of engraved black leather with detachable clock pendants that hung down from the leather band. my boyfriend went into american eagle while i tried to steal one of the expensive watches. i could not steal them because they were attached to the display rack with strong magnets.
i joined my boyfriend in american eagle but when i tried to leave the alarm went off. i hadn't actually stolen anything so i was confused. some people took me into the back of the mall to interview me. they thought i had tampered with mail? one of the people commented to the other that they had heard me talking about incest and even if i hadn't done anything they should arrest me for that.
at one point i became half-lucid and sort of willed the dream to become less stressful. i walked away from the interview and entered the "back" of the mall, which was where all the extra items were stored. i went into the luxury store and looked around. i also recall going into a store called "HERON CLOTHES" which sold low-quality clothes with small embroidered emblems of forest animals (no herons though). the dream ended shortly after.

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.

in the first dream i am logging back into the neopets account i had when i was like, 8.

in the second dream i am taking a bath, but the bathroom and the adjacent hallway soon fill with several inches of water. on the floor of the hallway is writing in finnish.

extremely fitful, disordered sleep. probably withdrawal from desvenfalaxine 100mg + other health issues. surreal and vivid imagery tonight. fell asleep for 1st time around 11pm, woke up every hour or so until ~3am, woke up at 7ish and fell back into fitful sleep until mid-afternoon

around 11-12pm
i am upstairs in a version of my house. i realize that my house looks different and suspect i am dreaming, so i do a reality check (breathing through plugged nose). it succeeds and i become lucid. i run outside (it is sunny and beautiful) and begin rubbing my hands together to stabilize the dream. unfortunately, it fades quickly and i wake up.


i had other dreams during the night but i do not remember them.

6-7 am
the entirety of this dream takes place downtown. the atmosphere is somewhat bleak - it's grey and snowy - but the sun is out.

first i am having a debate with Richard Dawkins and a Christian theologist in a parking lot. the debate is on the subject of marxism. many people are watching from the main part of downtown, which is several miles away; the geometry in this scene doesn't make very much sense. dawkins keeps attaching balloons to himself and floating miles into the air, carrying his debate on from the sky. at times it becomes night; the sky turns deep blue and stars come out. i complain to a friend that i can't hear dawkins from up there and she chastises me, saying i should pay more attention.

next there is a new attraction downtown: a massive tower which houses a gigantic transparent tube. you enter the tube and it shoots you up to the top of the tower, then back down. my boyfriend decides to try it. a team of middle-aged women in black uniforms pack him into the tube and i watch as he jets into the air then falls down at an astonishing speed. afterwards he mentions something about "astronaut MILFs".

then i sit down at an outdoor table where a group of unfamiliar people are eating. they arent bothered by my presence, surprisingly. i pick up a menu: some of it is in english, some of it in the Cyrillic alphabet. i decide that the cyrillic language is lithuanian (does lithuanian use cyrillic? i don't know... anyway...) i have no money to order food but the people let me eat some of their food. it tastes delicious: savoury and sweet. the dishes were primarily meat-based. at one point the restaurant owner comes over and asks me if i have any questions. i cannot reply because my mouth is full of food, but i point to an item on the Cyrillic menu for which no price is listed. she explains that this is an entire roast pig and due to the quality of the meat and the preparation time it costs around 900 dollars. she gives me a meatball from it as a sample. it tastes nice. there is a tripadvisor rating in the window of the restaurant: 5.0/10.

later i am walking through downtown with my red-haired imaginary friend from a previous dream. i complain that i am sick. she tells me i probably have problems with my liver and i disagree with some recondite explanation involving the amount of water in my body. as i discuss water the windows of an adjacent skyscraper seem to turn to segmented/striated bodies of water.

finally i am walking behind two men and overhearing their conversation. they are talking about a man who was found murdered in a dilapidated house. an old woman found him, rebuilt the house and made it amazingly beautiful, but she had left his corpse in its original position. these men had been hired to clean corpse secretions off of the furniture so the house could be sold.


9-10 am
i am in a large, disorganized country house in which the dominant hue is deep yellow. several teenage boys live here. at some point i begin writing a short story about living in this place. as i write the story, by narrating it in my head, the scenes play out in my vision.

the opening scene is rendered in Poser-style primitive CGI. a generic model of a man -- hairless, no identifiable facial features, no genitalia -- jerks around erratically within a cubic matrix formed by grey rods which connect red, yellow and blue spheres to each other (think of a 3d molecular model). the background is blank white. there is a soundtrack of erratic, metallic electronic music, something like aphex twin, but more aggressive.

the next scene takes place within the country home and involves the boys. i cannot remember specific events, besides one where a boy accidentally burned my arm with a cigarette and i punched him in the face, but i recall that this scene was very long and involved a great deal of violence + homoeroticism.

the final scene is staged in a massive, darkened room. there are two glowing crystals here, one green and one blue; i understand that these represent Zeus and Hera. one of the boys is here too, floating naked in midair and dwarfed by the dimensions of the room. the crystal discuss various things. at one point a thunderbolt strikes. there is no definitive conclusion to this scene.

the story replays over and over in my head, at least 5 times, in the perseverative manner of some fever dreams. i am very proud of the story i have written -- to me it seems to address lofty, complex themes and it takes me on an emotional journey; i recall being impressed by the complex syntax and clever wordplay of my writing. my story, i believe, transgresses and deconstructs the entire institution of contemporary western literature...

in another dream i am at a swimming contest of some sort. i need id to enter the changing rooms and i do not have id. i try to sneak in through the back door, and i succeed, but i become lost in the maze of changing rooms: there are dozens of different rooms, separated by ages as well as by gender. i eventually find the correct one. i get changed, go into the pool and begin the contest which apparently involves me tackling people while demanding they tell me what subgenre a random metal band belongs to.

the winners of the contest are me & my friend M.M. the prizes are books -- a compilation of Hesse's Siddhartha & Steppenwolf and some imaginary tome of Faulkner's. (my subconscious loves namedropping, apparently.) M. chooses the Hesse book and I am a bit disappointed because I had wanted it (in real life i would have preferred faulkner!). i look inside the Faulkner book and there is a picture of a beautiful blue-walled estate with exquisite Gothic architecture, which takes up the majority of a small island. i am awed at its beauty. this is Faulkner's home, I understand; the island has some absurdly long and comically French name.

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.