Carabas

Answering a queen's summons, I kneel before her throne and wait. Eventually, I realize she's ignoring me. Just wanted to see me kneel. That's fine. I think of an old mentor, a meditation style holding one position for hours, and settle in to be here for a while. I can hear her advisors talking to her, two nervous men with high voices pointing out that I'm waiting, using a title for me. But I'm aware she's angry about her son.

When she finally acknowledges me, she says she wants something I'd once promised her. I tell her she's welcome to it.

I've spent the past few scenes in this huge house, and I'm currently walking through a door that I expect to take me back to a place I'd been in earlier in the dream - there's a character I'd intended to meet up with again. Instead, I find myself in a room I think of as resembling a sanatorium - there are long rows of beds on each side of the room, with a few curtains here and there for privacy. On each bed there's a woman in a hospital gown, writhing like she's in a bad demon possession horror flick.

I go lucid and try to remember if there are any lucid tasks I'd wanted to perform of the ask-a-DC variety - no, there aren't any. But I believe dialogue is the only lucid trick I can do right now. So I ask something of the various women and get short, boring answers - I don't remember what I asked or what those boring answers were. The last one I asked gave me a longer answer involving a reference to an earthworm - I noted her response as nonsensical but phrased poetically, which I thought of as a step up from the straightforward and boring responses from the others. I'm now mentally comparing them less to demon possession horror flicks and more to Greek spirits - Furies or such.

Towards the end of the row of hospital beds, there's a woman who's much older than the others. She objects to me - calls my behavior intrusive. She takes my hand in hers, saying this will help her see me - representing that this should be a two-way conversation, rather than just me one-sidedly questioning them. Closing her eyes for a moment, she asks what's blocking me. My first instinct is that she's referring to meditation, mysticism, that sort of thing. But since she didn't say so specifically, I go with a safe response: I talk about general life concerns. She cuts me off and clarifies that she was indeed asking about meditation and mysticism and such. I, sounding annoyed, say I was getting to that - which is a lie.

But we continued talking about general life concerns anyway - specifically career things. Everything we said on the subject sounded sensible (even after I woke up), and she pointed out a good solution that I disliked - I thought it sounded like more effort than it was worth. She quite reasonably laughed at me for that - for wanting a perfect solution to just come along without any effort.

3rd person, this image of vast blue sky and white clouds, even on the ground, which is perfectly flat and reflective, reminds me of salt flats, and in the distance there's a bed with a body lying on it, and a figure walking towards it. The dream zooms in to follow the figure, a middle-aged man here to return his lover's soul to his body, the man in the bed, 20's/30's ish, curly blonde hair. There's a second body on the bed, a naked woman, and unexpectedly, when the man revives and sits up, the woman sits up too.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

While reading an article on the internet, I start thinking about the symbolism of owls as messengers or representatives of wisdom, and that the information they deliver is always reliable even without knowing the source. After some more internet browsing, ending up looking at TV listings, I decide I need to get away from the tv/internet, I should go meditate, clear my head. (Disappointed I didn't actually get around to meditating before I woke up, I'm curious how that would have gone.)