vignettes from a different world

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.

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.

i am lying on the couch in the living room of the old townhouse. it is night and the room is lit by lamps. i feel very ill and feverish. my mother is here. she tells me to get up and go to school. i reply that i can't, i have meningitis and i should be in the hospital. she screams at me and we have a long argument. i am intensely angry. later i wonder if i am going to die and think about what my boyfriend would do if i did. (i was violently ill before i fell asleep which probably accounts for the focus on illness here).

in the next scene i am walking to my high school. it is snowy and i am with my father. i find an iphone sticking out of a snowbank. i ask my father if it's ok to take it. he says yes, so i do. then i am inside the library at my elementary school with some other people. we are watching a movie on a projector screen. at one point there is some starbucks product placement in the movie and starbucks gift cards pop out of the screen and onto the floor. the other people and i scramble to grab them up. they keep coming, along with some lollipops and -- hydrocodone pills... i grab several pills and remark to C.W. that i'm surprised it was legal for the filmmakers to do this.

then i am working at a daycare for disabled children. i am standing on a large circular mezzanine in a domed wooden building with a rustic/old-fashioned atmosphere. there is a matronly black woman here. later i am taking a bath while covered by a white canopy to research therapies for autism?

finally i am outside, on a beautiful rocky coastline. i am listening to a lecture about canadian geography from a disembodied voice. i sprinkle green powder onto a moss-covered slope which i recognize to be british columbia. the voice is now talking about aboriginal tribes: "our friends, the mogwai, are dead..." finally the subject of the lecture changes to buddhism. i don't recall what the voice said.

the general atmosphere of these dreams is unpleasant.

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.

slept from about 9pm - 6:30 am, longer than usual

i have created a picture of a landscape. it is idyllic: soft rolling hills and cliffs covered in green grass and criscrossed by wide blue rivers. the sky is black. i decide to post it on my tumblr. someone on tumblr whom i admire is with me and she encourages me to submit it to a popular art tumblr (god, this dream is embarassing). the picture i have made merges with other similar pictures to form a vast landscape. suddenly i enter into the landscape. it's very beautiful. the green land slopes down to an open sea, with cliffs and high hills far behind and many small rivers and lakes. the area is populated with thousands of teenagers. one of them comes up to me and informs me that this is "teen world". the teens are now deciding on how to govern their country. a guy goes around asking different teens their opinion. they all give noncommittal answers: "uh, can't we just do regular stuff? lets just chill."

then i am in the townhouse kitchen. i open the fridge and there are many different types of popsicles: cyclones, chocolate ones, and creamsicles. i decide to eat a chocolate popsicle even though they are my least favourite popsicle in real life. it tastes delicious.

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.

very interesting dream phenomena tonight. slept from about 12 pm to 9:30 am and had normal dreams, was awake for about half an hour, and fell back asleep from 10 - 11 am which is when the interesting stuff started...

midnight - 9:30 am

i was looking at clothes in a large department store. i wanted to buy a dress. the dresses i wanted (one black dress and one light blue dress with dark turquoise polka dots) were in the children's section, but i figured i could fit into them anyway since i'm petite.

the next dream began in my grade 9 drama classroom. i was talking to an attractive girl with long black hair and pale skin. i believe her name was nadia and i understood that she was russian. i felt intense feelings of love and tenderness for her. there was a bed in the classroom, and we wanted to sleep together, but we were afraid other people would see and judge us. at some point the classroom morphed into a bedroom. i remember nothing else.

10-11 am

hypnagogia

after a short period of wakefulness i lay back down in bed and shifted into a half-aware state. i was still environmentally oriented - i opened my eyes a few times to see my bedroom as it normally is - but i was experiencing the involuntary associative thought that accompanies the hypnagogic state. generally i enter directly into sleep shortly after experiencing this "hypnagogic thought" but in this case it was not so. i began to have what i now realize were auditory hallucinations. at first i believed i was listening to a podcast on my laptop, which i often do before falling asleep. the audio was very distinct and i could identify the different people's voices although i was not able to make out the content of their speech (it was a little quiet.) then music began to play: specifically, the songs neutral milk hotel - oh comely and the gerbils - glue. i remember being puzzled about how these songs were playing without me interacting w/ the laptop but i believed they were not hallucinations because the audio was so clear and the songs were so perfectly reproduced -- and after all, i was not dreaming!

i am able to tell that this was a hypnagogic state and not a dream of being in bed because at one point my roommate knocked on my door to tell me that she was leaving for school -- this occured at the appropriate time (around quarter after ten) & i responded appropriately. during the time that the hallucinatory music was playing i decided i should try to get to sleep and so i used some basic relaxation techniques (relaxing the body from the toes to the head).

dreams

the relaxation technique fades into a dream wherein i am sliding down the stairs to the basement of the old townhouse. i repeat this a few times. i am aware that this is a dream and i believe that sliding down the stairs will metaphorically allow me to 'slide' deeper into the dream state as well as 'lower' me into a state of sexual disinhibition. it seems to do both.

i enter into a dream where... well, in the interests of full disclosure, i am an underage (~12-13 y/o) girl partaking in various sex acts with a nondescript college-age boy. the perspective is quite interesting here: i am watching the dream unfold in third person, but i am experiencing the sensations that my dream-self would experience in the depicted situation. i am able to control the dream by willing certain situations to happen.

my dream-self has red hair with bangs and pigtails and green eyes. her outfit changes many times over the course of the dream. the male character has short black hair and glasses; he is tall and thin. the dream varies between realism and an anime-esque style (i very rarely dream in a non-realistic style; i can probably count the number of such dreams i've had on one hand.)

this dream is divided into multiple different scenes. each scene begins with me meeting the boy in his college classroom (large and crowded, with metal walls; he sat near the door) at the end of class. we have to be discreet, as i am underage. after we leave the classroom, the sexual activities ensue. a full description of everything that transpired in this dream would be frankly pornographic, and i have no need to write it all down here as i'll be able to remember it without epistolary assistance. what's important about these scenes is that the sexual sensations i experienced in the dream are far, far more intense than anything i have ever experienced in waking life. i attribute this to a release phenomenon engendered by the downregulation of activity in certain brain structures during REM sleep which causes disinhibition and consequent overexcitation in various other areas; there could also be a psychological component to it. nonetheless it never fails to amaze me when i experience it.

after many "scenes" the sexual dream ends, along with the lucidity. i find myself in a washroom stall, and there is a copy of a manga that contains illustrations of the previous dream on the floor. i am afraid that other people using the washroom will see it on the floor and think i am perverted. i try to find somewhere to hide it but i cannot. later i am wandering through a dark maze of strangely-proportioned washroom stalls, trying to find a normal one: i understand that they are all weirdly shaped because i am in germany.

at some point i find myself atop a large warp pipe from the mario series. i am in the middle of a great sea and i can see a small island close to me. the colours here are somewhat muted/desaturated but still quite pleasing to the eye. i go to the island, which is very small and covered in yellow-brown dead grass; there is a quaint stone hut with a thatched roof here, where there lives a young woman with long blonde hair and a weathered but beautiful face. she wears a simple cotton gown. i gather blackberries and other fruits with her in front of the hut; i understand from the local flora that i am in scandinavia. i also understand that i am inside of the video game animal crossing.

my perspective later becomes detached -- moreso playing a video game than being inside of it. it gets dark and the sea becomes stormy. i understand that the woman is the "lifeguard" of the sea and i decide to drown her as an ironic joke. i pick her up through the game's interface and drop her in the sea, but she will not drown. i do not remember anything else.

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a lot to analyze here, but i'm far too lazy. it was a pleasant experience nonetheless.

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.

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.