vignettes from a different world

i had to put together some christmas-themed gift bags for my classmates. i was walking to the dollar store, which i understood was in downtown toronto although the area seemed more suburban. it was sunny outside and obviously not winter. i entered the dollar store, which was more like a warehouse. i wandered around for a long time looking for gifts. i purchased some small things. i had to be careful because i didn't have much money. one area contained some creepy old dollhouse furniture. i left this area and found out that my boyfriend was here. we looked at stuff together. i found a pair of fleece pants with airbrushed bears, owls and eagles on them and i thought they were amazing, but the tag said 'size 46' and i didn't know if anyone in my class was that large.

there was a 'computer room' in the warehouse and i wanted to use my computer for some reason. i tried to turn it on but the screen was blank. a tall guy was laughing at me.

i decided to leave, so i walked a block over to the other dollar store. i hadn't gone inside when i realized that i didn't tell my boyfriend that i left. i sat down on an outdoor bench outside of a bar and tried to get wifi on my phone. i sent him a message but i wasn't sure if it went through.

then i saw a bus and i got on it for some reason. the bus took me back home in about a minute (it would be at least an hour in real life!) and i felt really bad that i had left my boyfriend in toronto.

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.

lovely, lovely dreams tonight. nothing particularly unpleasant has been going on in waking life as of late, but these dreams showed up anyhow. slept from about 9 to about 6.

i have spoilered the more graphic parts of the molestation dream for those of you who might be disturbed by it.

in the first dream i am driving around my city at twilight. i remember the exact area where i was -- near the intersection of R-----d & R----n.

Spoiler for click to read:

suddenly i feel invisible hands touching me. it is as if i am sitting on someone's lap but there is nobody there. i am greatly disconcerted. suddenly i am in the passenger seat and a teenaged asian boy is driving, while still touching me occasionally. he pulls into my school's parking lot (it is night now). there are 3 other boys waiting for us as well as an old man. i am nervous. the asian boy introduces me to the old man and tells me that he was the one who was touching me. a girl adds that he is 63 years old and a banker, and gives me his full name. she urges me to tell the police.

later i am in a room with blue walls. there are my little pony posters and merchandise everywhere. i am talking to a woman in her 30s about my experience. i want to tell her the man's name, but i cannot remember it. i get frustrated at this and also about the fact that i am discussing my sexual abuse in a my little pony fanclub.

in the second dream i am in an unfamiliar house. i am sitting on the couch and i am shocked to discover that my ex is sitting right beside me. for a moment i consider that this could be a dream, but the vivid and detailed imagery convinces me otherwise. i get extremely angry. i start yelling at him, asking "how did you get here?" "why are you here?" i don't get a straight answer. i begin punching and slapping him. he barely fights back.
i go do something else for a while and i come back to find my ex sitting on a bed crying. i thought he had left and now i get even angrier. i scream at him and throw heavy objects at him. i tell him that i'm going to bed, and if he isn't gone by the time i wake up "something bad will happen".
i go into my bedroom for a while and then come back. my ex is still there, playing a SNES game on a blue tv. again, i physically attack him and threaten that bad things will happen. i'm furious. the tv says "error, zero zero, error" and then i wake up.

i am with two imaginary friends. the dream begins in the park across the street from my school; it is winter and thick snow covers the ground. we are going to go to finland so one of my friends can get a scholarship for music. we have to walk lightly so the police won't be able to track our footprints.

we reach finland in a couple of minutes and enter into a large building with beige stone walls, great windows, and domed ceilings: the university. my one friend goes into the music room, leaving us free to explore other areas. i go into another room and find a shelf that contains papers on the history of finland & what i believe to be the earliest documents written in finnish. next i enter another room whose walls are covered in racks of clothing. i understand that these clothes are being given away for free, so i take some, although it is difficult to find clothes in my size.

later, outside the university, i meet my boyfriend. he jacks off and ejaculates on my thigh. there are no emotions or sexual sensations associated with this.

then i am working at a "record store" - a large, disorganized shop that seems to sell everything except records. nicki minaj comes in and asks for some vodka. i cannot serve her because i don't have a license: i feel awkward and incompetent. however a man who works at the store ends up serving her for me.

finally my two friends and i decide to visit thailand. thailand, evidently, is a large country home owned by an old lady. we are hungry, but the food here is strange. after several unappetizing choices the lady offers me a dish of fruit pieces and flowers in clear jelly, which i gladly consume: it has a delicate, sweet and light taste.

i enter into a bedroom in the house. it has blue walls and the layout is similar to my bedroom in real life. there is a sunflower on a yellow vase in my dresser. i have several vials of chemicals. i want to use a chemical that causes genetic mutations on the sunflower so that i can grow different varieties. i have to be very careful while handling this chemical because if it makes contact with my skin i will get cancer. i empty the vial into the sunflower pot but then i look at the label and realize i have just poured a great amount of acetic acid into the soil. i do not want to kill the plant so i use a vial of ammonium chloride to 'neutralize' the acid (dream self is not good at chemistry). however i quickly realize that this reaction produces chlorine gas (again... terrible chemistry...). i freak out. i get short of breath, light-headed and my vision begins to fade.

i wake up.

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.

terrible recall tonight

1. i am working on a group project with unfamiliar people. we are in the auditorium of my elementary school. we are on laptops and we are running a program with a neon green and red on black colour scheme. there is some anxiety associated with this dream.

2. i am waiting for the bus in the snow with an unfamiliar girl. the atmosphere is very bleak.

3. i cannot remember anything about this dream except that i became lucid at one point! i simply realized that the circumstances of the situation were unrealistic and deduced that it was a dream. sadly my lucidity faded very quickly -- before i could do anything of interest.

4. false awakening. i am in bed in my room: very tired and disoriented. windows 7 error messages pop up and disappear constantly, obstructing my vision. i wonder if i am dreaming but decide that i am not. i am afraid that i am going insane.

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.

1. i had stolen four pieces of chocolate from somewhere. i was in a bedroom with blue walls (distorted version of real life). i set the chocolate down on the bed but it was soon covered with ants. i put two towels on the bed and some sort of leather tarp to prevent the ants from getting at it. then i was in an unfinished basement and my mother was arguing with another woman? i think i traded the chocolate for some kind of educational children's toy -- it was a transparent model of a head with an open top, you could stick your hand into the "brain" which was a bunch of tiny blue gears...

2. i am at school and i am given an opportunity to study different ecosystems. i choose to study one with a chinese name. i am given a large petri dish. it contains murky green water with small white particulates swirling around the centre in a floral pattern. however, goopy orange and white organic growths begin to appear in the petri dish and ruin the pattern. i try to remove the slimy growths but they keep forming. at one point my ex starts working on the same project beside me. he is doing even worse than i am. i am angry at him and i get second-hand embarrassment at his failure.

dreams tonight were very mundane, can't recall much of them

i had a very long dream about being in a public outdoor swimming pool. there was a girl there who was making sexual advances on me, and later an autistic boy who was trying to show me pictures of a tv show or something? also a blonde guy who i think was antagonizing me. at one point i sustained an injury to my leg and i was afraid that the pool water would infect my open wounds.

then i was at school. the entirety of this dream took place in one room, with grey floors, white walls and harsh fluorescent lighting. a tall middle-aged woman with red hair, ostensibly a teacher, was berating me for not finishing an assignment.

finally i was walking through a distorted version of downtown with two rappers. they were talking about their lives and i found it very inspiring although i can no longer remember what they said. the weather was dreary: overcast & slushy. we walked together for a long time; at one point i became separated from them and was attacked by a group of kids who threw rocks at me from across the street. it was painful. one rock was very large and hit me on the head; in the dream i could feel my consciousness slipping away and my body collapsing. i came close to fainting but i recovered. after that they left me alone and i regrouped with the rappers.

then we parted and i was sitting in deep, fresh snow on the side of the street. i was with some other people & we were telling jokes and laughing with each other.