vignettes from a different world

i am in a house with M., S. and A. the house is located in a clearing in a coniferous forest. the scene is generally dark. the house has wood floors and a warm colour scheme.

then my friends and i are in my elementary school gymnasium. we are playing a game in which the goal is to guess what the other person is thinking of. the theme in this round is fetishes. i come up with an idea which turns into an entire dream scene:
this scene is in the style of a documentary and it is presented by a man whose appearance and mannerisms recall louis theroux. several muscular men wearing leather bdsm outfits sre gathered together in a field. on the edge of the field stand rows of huge metal bows (about twice the height of a person) which are anchored to the ground. "louis" interviews one of the men who tells him that this is a fetish. participants obtain satisfaction by being fired from the bow as if they were an arrow. louis chooses to undergo this process. an arrowhead attached to a short length of shaft is glued onto his forehead and he is placed into some kind of leather bondage contraption which keeps his legs together and his arms at his sides. the man pulls the bow back, releases it and louis flies straight through the air.
afterwards we are in a classroom with the lights off. some blue-white light filters through the window. we are discussing sexuality with a teacher figure who is male and in his mid-20s.

the scene returns to my elementary gymnasium but now there is a war going on. the tile floor has become bumpy and ragged, unevenly painted with blue, yellow and green stripes. i am talking to a tall, thin man in a suit who has unruly black hair about the war. i understand this man is jean-paul sartre. sartre complains that another writer's books are racist and colonialist and tosses them onto the ground.

next i am inside some kind of professional building with wooden doors and blue glass walls. a man is advertising his book on quantum physics. the cover photo of the book is a ripple in multicoloured liquid. i open the book. there is a grid on one page and each cell contains a line drawing of a person. on the opposite page the author derides all of these people, complaining that the men are "assholes" and the women are "sluts". on another page, there is a large circle labeled "A" to the left of a small circle labeled "B". the book describes how the larger circle represents the immediate effects of a quantum process while the smaller circle represents the other effects. the example he uses to elucidate this theory is that if you consumed lead atoms, you would experience mild symptoms immediately, while the rest of your family would become severely ill and mentally retarded but this would occur over a long course of time. (that's dream logic for you). when these two circles intersect, they supposedly create a ripple pattern.

finally I am wandering through the hallways of my elementary school. they actually look more like the hallways on the 3rd floor of the hospital but in the dream i believe it is school. the walls, floor and ceiling are flat white. the hallways are very narrow and take strange zig-zag courses, which is disorienting. someone tells me that there is a fire in the school. i am not concerned until i see brushed metal cylindrical objects careening through the hallways and spraying water, ostensibly to fight the fire. these 'robots' frighten me slightly.

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.

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.

fell asleep around 12, woke up around 3, went back to bed, finally woke up around 7

12am - 3am
a long and complicated dream about a tall girl with red hair. in the dream we were good friends. there was a very jovial atmosphere, unlike most of my dreams.

then a dream where i discussed lucid dreaming at length -- without actually becoming lucid.

3am-7am

i am at a strange clothes store with my boyfriend. the store mainly sells lolita dresses but contains a large variety of different clothing items as well as miscellaneous objects. at the far end of the room there is a passage to a second room which is brightly lit with many large windows. the store owners, a middle-aged asian woman and her teenage daughter, work here, making all the clothes from scratch. we talk to the two women for a while. there are many items of clothing hanging on racks here and i discover a finely crafted leather jacket with luxurious fur trim; i ask the younger woman how much it would cost and she tells me "about a month's salary". we leave this room and return to the main part of the store. there is a dress i would like to buy here, but it is too expensive. instead, my boyfriend and i decide to buy two dvds. these "dvds" come in vhs cases with elaborate box art; the one my boyfriend buys has art that's a slightly altered version of the dark side of the moon cover, and mine is a complex pattern of organic plantlike shapes. we understand that these movies are beautiful works of art and that watching them will change our lives. we trade the shop owners a large pyramidal prism for the dvds.

then i leave the store and enter into a shady urban area at night. i am now running away from three young white men who want to mug me. i see my dad's car parked on the side of the street: i get in and we drive away.

i was at my grandmother's house & my dad told me that the "liberty tank" had arrived in our yard. i went to look at it: it was a tank with red and blue stripes on the side, and the part where you sit was made of glass. there was a crash test dummy inside and at first i thought it was a real person: it was a young boy with striking blue eyes, slumped over as if dead. i remember thinking he looked russian. my dad removed it and assured me that it wasn't real. we climbed into the tank (the interior was just like the interior of a car) and began driving around. i noticed many people clothed in military uniform and i mentioned that i'd like one of those outfits. my father was driving recklessly and i remarked that he was going 80kmh in the middle of downtown; he disregarded this. we got out of the tank and entered an orange silk tent where there were many foreign people clothed in furs. i remember nothing else.

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.