The Fourth Factor

The dream seemed to begin like some sort of flight simulator game, but—after a series of events I can no longer remember—I realize I’m dreaming.

I’m in an unfamiliar city. It’s a place with a charming atmosphere—lots of greenery and a small harbor that almost divides it in two, with the main part of the city built on a hill with a steep incline. I fly—without my customary wings, since I was already flying to begin with—enjoying my surroundings. Every corner I turn results in a new, interesting view as I circle around, gradually moving up the hill.

At one point, I notice a series of staircases to my right leading directly to the hilltop. It reminds me a little of the Bergpark—and that gives me an idea. I could find the Herkules statue and have a conversation with him. That would be an interesting thing to do in a dream.

I fly up the staircases and find myself in a small park where a number of people are walking around. There is no Herkules Statue, but I do see a statue slightly off to the left—although monument might be the better word since it’s basically just a bronze head on a pedestal, a man wearing what looks like a conquistador helmet.

I walk over to it, look at the head and ask: “So, is there anything you want to say to me?”

The head comes to life. It says: “What the f*** are you doing here?” in what is quite possibly a Cockney accent. I’m a bit taken aback but still proceed to have a conversation with him—as best I can. I’m finding the accent difficult, and the background noise from the other people here isn’t helping.

After a bit, three young women come up and join in the conversation. I recognize them the way one normally recognizes people in non-lucid dreams, although none of them seem to be people familiar to me in waking life. The only one whose appearance I can remember was a middle-eastern looking woman with thick, dark hair going down a little past her shoulders. Unfortunately, pretty much everything we said there faded from memory by the time I woke up.

As the conversation ends, the bronze head offers to kiss a coin for each of us—this seems to be a good luck ritual of the sort that often develops around statues. The others produce coins, and I figure I’ll go along with it, too. Without looking, I stick my hand into a pocket which I expect I have—even though I don’t ordinarily wear clothing with pockets where this would be possible, it’s a pretty reliable method of materializing objects that might conceivably be in one. I feel around the various objects there for a coin. As I do, I recall the Soviet Kopeck that mysteriously turned up in my last batch of laundry—my aunt had been washing some really old stuff, I guess—and, unsurprisingly, that’s what the coin I eventually find turns out to be.

Once that’s over, I’m once again faced with the decision of what to do. As I fly back down the hillside, it occurs to me that this might be a good opportunity to find some people I'd like to speak to. I fly all the way down to the harbor and, since the ground is flat here, I land and walk. I call out their names and try to find them among the crowd, or among the people on the boats. But I don’t see them there, and before long, I wake up.

(3.7.18)

I’m driving in an unfamiliar town, where I’m going to attend an event of some kind. I have the impression it has something to do with Kyabje Düd’jom Rinpoche? At first, I’m trying to find a parking spot near a junction, but all the spots there seem to belong to the nearby buildings, so I turn the car around and head towards the waterfront, closer to where the event will actually be held. It’s a long, straight street with small, gray paving stones and narrow, wooden houses painted light colors on either side. At one end of it, I can see boats, their masts blocking the view further out—to the harbor itself, presumably.

I look around for house no. 11, which is where the event will take place, so I can park nearby. The address plates are large and clearly display the numbers, rather like the Prague address plates do. The plates seem to be in the right general order, and so I don’t have trouble finding it—but there do seem to be both odd and even numbers on a single side. I’m not sure whether it was this that clued me into the fact that I was dreaming, but it definitely happened right around then.

This is a dream: what will I do? Checking out no. 11 still seems like a pretty good idea, but first, I decide to take a look around the area. I walk along the street, towards the harbor—but as I walk, it seems to change from a street to an underground tunnel, and when I reach the end, I’m not by the open sea, but looking into a square room full of water. It seems completely closed off and is made of some yellow-red stone, mossy where it's close to the waterline. The water is packed with boats—not big ones like I saw before, but little ones, more on the order of rowboats.

There’s something a little ominous about this place; it’s impossible to imagine what purpose it could possibly be serving. If this were a Zelda game, I’d fully expect the door to slam behind me and some giant monster to rise up out of the water and attack. I wait. The water seems to be rippling in a rather odd way. After a little while, a couple of larger waves swell up, rolling beneath the layer of boats. But they just die down again, and the water becomes perfectly still. I watch for a little while longer, but it looks as if that’s all that’s going to happen, and so I head back towards the house—now, an entrance partway along the tunnel. I open the door and step in.

An Asian woman greets me: it seems I’ve been expected, although there doesn’t seem to be any kind of a gathering here as I thought. The woman also seems to be expecting me to have a female friend along. I consider telling her that I’m here alone, but actually, there’s no reason I can’t invite someone else. I tell the woman I’ll send them a text message and they should be here shortly.

I pull my iPhone out of my pocket. But somehow, all the people I can think to invite are male. An idea occurs to me: I start spelling out A-N-I-M-A using the numbers which correspond to those letters. The phone is a bit shifty, as such devices often are in dreams, but not enough to impede me. But partway through, I remember that I’m not supposed to have an anima, being female and all. So I make it end U-S instead and send the ‘coded’ message off. Well, I guess I’ll see what happens. I put the phone back in my pocket and we sit down at the table in the next room to eat.

The table is a large one, but there are only three places set—hers, mine and the empty one. We have some kind of fish dish, which tastes good. Not much in the way of conversation is happening, and so I’m mostly focusing on remaining aware, making sure I don’t forget this is a dream. It’s an interesting feeling, being here in this place, which feels so real and yet so unreal. I could get up and do something else, but I want to see where this is going.

But at some point, I wake up—due to some environmental noise, possibly. But it’s only a short time before I fall asleep again, and find myself back in the house, in an upstairs bedroom this time.

Through a window, I see branch falls onto the roof of a neighboring building—a large, blocky structure. The roof looks like it’s in bad shape, with large chunks of tile missing—this place must have got hit by the storm too, I figure.

I’m eating a cup of yogurt there. It’s chalky and bland. Probably low-fat. Why am I eating this awful stuff? This is a dream, I don’t have to eat it. I place the cup on a dresser or some similar piece of furniture. Downstairs, I hear the door of the house opening, voices in conversation—somebody has arrived. Maybe it’s the person I invited in the earlier part of the dream. I’ll go down and check. But right now I’m wearing a nightgown, so I ought to put something else on first.

I step over to the full-length mirror, which is standing near the door, and look at my reflection. I’m wearing a plain nightgown, like a short dress with spaghetti straps. Oddly, I don’t seem to look quite like myself—my face is different, though not completely different, and my eyes seem to be the usual color. I step back. It’s been a while since I’ve done this—and actually, I’ve never done exactly what I’m about to try, but it doesn’t seem like it should be too hard. I’ll create myself something more appropriate to wear. I extend my hands, palms upward, feeling energy gathering.

But it doesn’t feel right—there’s some kind of a resistance there. As I notice that, I also see something standing behind me in the mirror—a furious-looking panda bear approaching me. I turn around, looking into the room—but it's empty. There's nothing there. I look back at the mirror: furious panda. Well, this is a little creepy. But because it’s a panda, being furious just makes it look ridiculous rather than menacing. I step backwards into the room with one hand behind me, feeling for the spot where the panda ought to be based on its reflection—but I wake up before I can get to it.

6.3.18