Blue_Opossum

Night of December 6, 2017. Wednesday.



Fading into semi-lucidity after typical hypnagogic lucidity, I go beyond a stream surrounded by rock faces into an open area. This shifts into an idea to manifest a perfect combination of sensuality and eeriness. I decide to integrate Zsuzsanna into the role of Mary Medina as in the Grimm Fairy Tales 2017 Halloween Special, but I mostly let it flow on its own without in-dream control (by way of spoken affirmations by my dream self as in some apex lucidity states). There is a sustained event with an incompetent makeup artist. Zsuzsanna ends up with only white face paint on her forehead. This scene seems to repeat after a reset.

Although some of the setting looks somewhat like a sketchy version of New Orleans, some of the buildings appear as if they are cardboard facades about a block or two away. I ignore this feature and focus on intensifying the nature of my dream. Ghosts wander about, but there is not much eeriness or plot.

The outcome is in a large dining room. About seven ghosts (in Victorian clothes) play Musical Chairs with six gold chairs with red velvet seats and backs. As they are ghosts, there can be no winners or losers as they just phase into and out of each other when trying to sit and stay on the chairs (and for example, two taking up the same space on the same chair). This scenario is so amusing, it pulls me out of the dream state with an almost audible laugh.

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Morning December 7, 2017. Thursday.



With water induction, I find myself walking over a walkway made up of boards of various lengths. It is also implied to be a road (or low-set bridge) for cars (though only one passes from the opposite direction at times to where I move out of the way a short distance), over water (either the ocean or a large lake), though I remain unsure of the location. Walking with me to my immediate left is an unknown male in his late twenties. He reminds me of an otherwise younger John Leguizamo (though I seem to be much younger as well).

“Be careful, it’s a pigeon,” he tells me. A mostly black pigeon walks across the walkway, perpendicular to us, and from my left to my right. John’s spoken statement causes me to become a bit more aware, but I do not understand the relevance.

Looking at him, his face seems to remain frozen, with an annoying grin. “Is it now?” I say, but he does not respond.

I am trying to grasp the situation when I realize that it has something to do with “not letting a pigeon cross your path”, though this is otherwise distorted from the nonsensical “black cat” superstition.

Looking at him again, his face is in a different annoying expression, also somewhat like a grin.

I decide to “not let the pigeon cross my path” by turning right and following the pigeon, as it had apparently stopped and is walking slowly. Still, this will lead me off the side of the walkway if I continue. Instead, I find myself walking on my bed. There is a strange falling sensation as if my body was not fully perceived. I am concerned that I fell atop Zsuzsanna, but this is only a false awakening.

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Decoding template follows:

• Dream type and explanation: This dream uses “return flight waking symbolism”, which is created when the physicality of the conscious self identity is ambiguously perceived prior to the RAS (reticular activating system) neural gating that regulates the sleep-wake transition. Consequently, the dream self identity subliminally anticipates falling, rising, sustained flight, or other illusory movement based on the misperception of the vestibular system’s equilibrium dynamics.
• Dream state induction type: Water (most common, at least once per sleeping period).
• Dream state indicators: The bed (in the false awakening).
• Liminal space symbol: The walkway over the water and the false awakening setting.
• Preconscious factor: John Leguizamo.
• Liminal space cessation trigger: Contemplating illusory nonsense while in the dream state itself (yet not realizing it).
• Flight symbol to dream exit point (symbolic waking transition): The pigeon as “returning” me to my bed, symbolized in my dream by the false awakening. (Typically, the preconscious points out this dream feature as such, which here, I become annoyed at, probably out of liminal dream state awareness in not wanting to wake yet.)
• Liminal dream control seems to be a partial element, evidenced by my “freezing” (and sustaining) of the preconscious and implementing my own focus of choice, even though it otherwise manifests my false awakening into the offset dream.
• “And they try to pigeon hole in you in hollywouldnt but dont u let them!” - John Leguizamo.

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Morning December 7, 2017. Thursday.



I am seemingly at our present address, though it is distorted. There are two main parts to my dream.

One part involves Jim (August 1, 1947-June 10, 2008, half-brother on my mother’s side). He is sitting next to me on a bench, to my left. A doctor is also present. My dream self is unaware that he had died. However, the doctor is talking about Jim’s overweight physicality. (This was more relevant to the 1980s, before he lost a lot of weight.) There seem to be other people present at times. There is some sort of surreal concept relating to individual internal body parts relating to being fat and which one is affected first, with some sort of odd association with stencils. Jim does not speak but the doctor does, touching Jim’s shoulders and arms at times.

This eventually shifts into a different dream scenario. It relates to also being at our present address. However, there is apparently a train, designed like a subway train, which seemingly goes north to south near where our bed is in reality. I stand in the semidarkness looking at this setup, though I do not consider it strange or intrusive.

Two men who work for this subway system, formally dressed, though reminding me also of movie ushers based on their uniforms, are performing an unusual task while moving out from and back into the different train cars. They are working from north to south, putting some sort of small metal hanging objects over the door handles. Some of the hanging objects are different but some resemble a smaller detached handle of some kind, though each reminds me vaguely of a broken handcuff (though not seen as such by my dream self). However, I realize that they relate to some sort of signifying of a particular subway car’s status, possibly relating to how many passengers are allowed in the next journey or which cars can be used in what way.

Next, there is a pointless and contradictory conversation where I tell them that one of the handles does not need the marker as such (as there is already one on the adjacent handle of the same set of doors), even though I am not certain of the purpose of their job. They say that it does not matter how many of the objects are used but then soon contradict themselves by implying that there is only a limited number of these objects and that all must go where they should. I do not say anything or even fully notice this contradiction for a few seconds, then I wake in realization that their comments made no sense.

Decoding template follows:

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• Dream type and explanation: Doorway waking symbolism; with emergent consciousness triggered by illogical contradiction (liminal space cessation trigger), as intelligence is not typically extant in the dream state.
• RAS symbol to dream exit point: Our sleeping area was replaced by a train, symbolizing the return to waking life and oriented north to south as how we rise from bed in reality (that is, our feet are oriented south).
• Preconscious factor: The subway workers as ambiguously associated with movie ushers (as a movie theater symbolizes detachment from the real world; that is, symbolizes the dream state itself).
• Additionally, the otherwise unknown act seems associated with setting up rope barriers (as in a movie theater) yet without the rope, and yet also implying “release” from the dream state (broken handcuffs on door handles, a door representing a dream’s exit point).
• The first part of my dream relates to a desire to remain healthy, though I am not obese (as Jim was throughout the 1980s).

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