Morning of June 13, 2020. Saturday. Dream #: 19,535-03. Reading time: 2 min 56 sec. Although parts of this dream have influences from coronavirus associations as read in the media in waking life, there is, as usual, no dream self recall or concern about the pandemic, only three compartmentalized threads unlinked in my dreaming experience. The first is a reference to someone having a sore throat, the second relating to the claim I read in an article that bugs in a dream are “symbolic” of COVID-19 (and yet people have always dreamt of bugs long before this), and the third relating to stores being abandoned and boarded up (associated with media reports about rioting and looting as well as COVID-19). My dream self is a sorcerer in this imaginary scenario. My waking-life identity is absent even though I am in what is possibly a variation of the Hinkler Centre shopping mall though it also has the vague, ambiguous essence of my middle school and a shopping mall in La Crosse. An unfamiliar man and woman approach me. The man claims he got a sore throat from me. I tell him, “I never had a sore throat in my life.” (My dream self has no recall of ever having one, anyway.) I had supposedly been in service to them as a sorcerer, though I am unsure as to what he had wanted from me. He reminds me by giving me a card (about one and a half times bigger than a business card) that supposedly has their requests on it, though I do not read it. Even so, I am annoyed. I do not want to deal with these people, so I summon scarab beetles in their direction, though only a few crawl towards them. (This event is similar to one in a dream from April 14, 2020, though that was with comedic, sarcastic intent with ants.) I decide to leave the scene, now recalling I should be wearing different clothes (instinctual awareness of being undressed as I sleep). I walk out to the parking lot (liminality management) and notice most of the windows of the shopping mall are boarded up (another type of dream state liminality management, though with a more defined division between dream space and wakefulness). I want to get something from a store. I eventually find one store at the other end up the shopping mall that is not boarded up and is open. It is a grocery store with many shoppers. After I go in, I look around and realize I am not here to buy anything but to retrieve my clothes. (It makes no sense other than as specific co-occurrence with preparing to wake by being near a checkout with the association of getting dressed after getting out of bed. Once dreams are understood for what they are, there is no doubt as to their translation.) Instead of waking with this otherwise familiar process, my dream becomes exponentially more vivid. The vestibular-cerebral handshake kicks in to an extreme degree, and I find that I seem to be a young boy scout (and dressed the part, including with khaki shorts) even though I also have the recall I had been a sorcerer in the previous transition. Three men tower over me like giants, though I do not feel threatened or insecure. They are going on a fishing trip and are waiting for the man I wanted to avoid in the first dream segment. He eventually arrives and is huge. However, I summon a fireball and disintegrate him. The other “giants” do not seem to care and behave as if they are glad to be rid of him. Even so, I decide to instinctually initiate the next process. I turn and walk through the wall of a nearby building into a dark bedroom. However, one of the men from the previous scenario walks in, though he is now normal size, as I am. He is thankful for me getting rid of the other man but patronizes me by giving me a card addressing what he wants from me by way of sorcery. Soon, another man comes in and also gives me a card with his requests. I am then on the porch of my present home (liminality management) and wonder if I should wait for the third man to approach me in case he also has a card. Even so, I begin to feel that my dream is too ridiculous to continue, so I wake myself.
Morning of June 13, 2020. Saturday. Dream #: 19,535-07. Reading time (optimized): 2 min. My dream self maintains the instinctual awareness I am dreaming (after dropping back from post-liminal mode to pre-liminal) by becoming more aware while sitting in a bed near the ocean (potential reinduction). There is the typical indoor-outdoor ambiguity, with my bed in this instance being near a harbor in Antissa, Lesbos, though the setting does not have a more discernible definition. My waking-life identity is absent. I am listening to an operatic aria (fictitious, I assume) sung by Luciano Pavarotti about Antissa. (I do not listen to opera in waking life.) I am unsure of the source of the music, but it is probably from a cassette (as my dream self has no recall of what a CD is). The sleep-wake manager eventually appears as an unknown male, but he is in passive mode (non-RAS; non-cerebral.) I sit down and watch him create a painting. It features a black oval as a scene of outer space. (This feature represents a higher level of sleep atonia, which may be why somatosensory kicks in as the trigger in the last scene rather than a vestibular event.) There are sparse red and blue ovular arcs around the “egg.” I absentmindedly add a blue ovular arc to the image’s right side with a felt-tip pen. Almost immediately, I feel as if I may have been intrusive in doing this. I start praising his art, focusing the most on the outer space rendering within the oval. He does not seem angry or annoyed. A reporter approaches and wants to interview the unknown artist. There is still indoor-outdoor ambiguity, though the setting has more outside dynamics at this point. The two men stand and face each other, about ten feet away from me. The reporter says he is interviewing “the aggressor.” I am puzzled by this and state that he is not an “aggressor,” though I do not know his history. I hope I did not embarrass him by saying this. Soon, a sun spider (camel spider), as long as the reporter’s head, crawls around from behind his head and covers his right ear. I am amused, as neither man seems to know it is there. Another sun spider of about the same size as the first crawls from behind the reporter’s head but goes around to the other man’s right ear. The man ignores it despite being aware of it. There is no sense of a threat, as my dream self considers them harmless. I wake at this point with a sense of great amusement. A vestibular-cerebral handshake did not occur as the waking process in this instance (as the result of greater sleep atonia but with a directive toward hand myoclonus), so it was somatosensory in this case. In other words, I sleep on my left side, with my right ear more exposed to my waking-life environment. The somatosensory focus was liminally drawn to that factor, especially as a spider often represents the human hand and its somatosensory arousal (though a sun spider is not a true spider).
I am ascending some type of rock formation. It seems to be a tall (hundreds of feet?) spire of sedimentary rock. It is probably only ten feet or so wide. It definitely feels very vertical, yet there is a dirt path that leads up the thing. I hear voices nearing a pause. A group of two or so is coming down. The first is a paunchy older middle aged white man with shorts, maroon t-shirt, a mustache, and what looks like a safari hat. He is nonchalantly sliding down on his ass, bracing with hands and feet. He stops and begins telling us (I think there are about two others with me) a story. I think he is Doc Watson. He’s slightly below me, and I rest my left arm on a rocky protrusion jutting out from under some sand. Some displaced sand begins to fall off, taking more and more with it, falling down close to his face. I tell him to watch out, telling him it was my mistake for doing that. Now, enough sand has fallen away that the spot I needed to continue on has vanished. There is a large cavity now, encased by only stone, beyond which I see the ground vertiginously and frighteningly far below. It seems that the only routes left are to climb this cave roof (brave and perilous) or to mantle this stone above me. I test the holds, a slight edge, and a slight block, and they do not give me much confidence. I keep gripping and re-gripping until my hands sweat, causing me to slightly panic. I am acutely aware of the fact that if I fall I will die and so the only way to survive this is to not fall at any cost. There is now a girl, slightly younger than me and wearing black leggings and a grey shirt, on the rock slightly above me. She might have a harness on? Her underwear, a thin, black thong with thicker straps, is sticking up above the leggings, and I grab onto them like a hold. She has me go first, probably aware that this is going to expose her. Finally, we have summited this spire. The top of it is flat and maybe 20 or so feet across. There are a few artificial climbing walls. I think we’re about to start on them, but her grandma is here now and putting some cash in my left pocket for a gift card. I already have a similar amount of cash in there and wonder about it. There is a very slabby wall, a vertical one with a lot of crimps, and one with large, circular, inflated holds that must be for grip strength. They all seem easy and the walls are just barely taller than bouldering height. Looking past them, there seems to be no background, just an empty space/void. I now realize and dread that I have to go back down. I think of any other way, like getting picked up by a helicopter. I am outside somewhere by or on a two lane asphalt highway. Suddenly the earth shakes - an earthquake, I realize. It’s steady in intensity, not enough to knock us off our feet, but enough to seemingly keep us magnetized down. It ruptures the highway in a fairly clean split.
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