Blue_Opossum

Morning of May 16, 2018. Wednesday.



In my dream, I find myself looking at Facebook. The technology is not rendered correctly. There is a monitor at first, but this dream becomes of the usual “paper technology” type.

I notice a comment on my timeline. It reads, “Stop posting fake pictures” - in reference to real photographs that Zsuzsanna and I had posted of our youngest daughter. This annoys me. I respond by writing, in handwriting with a pen, on a page in a spiral notebook, though somehow also going to my Facebook page, “You are a moron” and “That is our daughter, you moron”. I eventually write a number of longer sentences. He is from another site (a music site for musicians) that I used to post on that no longer exists, though in my dream, there is also a vague composite association with a classmate from the 1970s and who is also on my friend’s list.

In actuality, the poster is fictitious and not realistically based on a real person on my friend’s list. His username in my dream is “beasts” (written exactly as such in lowercase and plural for some reason), which I see written clearly several times (even though print is most often not consistent in the dream state). There is a vague association with a real poster by a different name, but he has never been confrontational in this way.

By the end of my dream, it continues to follow the same typical association with computer technology being rendered on paper, yet somehow working with the Internet. I flip through the pages of my spiral notebook, looking at other instances of when he made comments on other people’s posts, and which the paper somehow “refreshes” the comments without my dream self discerning the impossible erroneous association. It also has the usual “activation” by sweeping or pressing my finger on the page as if on an iPhone.

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This is the usual thinking skills correlation as waking process autosymbolism. I even had a carryover to my dream of the next day (“Pet Brontosaurus and Fake Mad Magazine?”), where my subconscious self perceives a Mad Magazine as fake, which, because it is the dream state, is indeed “fake” when compared with the consistent validity of waking life. The influence may also come from the rough association with a real poster calling Facebook “Fakebook”.

Curiously enough, I was, as is often the case, vaguely aware while in my dream of the RAS factor and its personification as the otherwise fictitious Facebook user “beasts” (as the RAS function is often also rendered as a wild animal depending on the dream, its core form being a snake). Somehow though, this unusual type of synaptic gating did not entail lucidity of any kind. In dreams, I am often aware of the presence of RAS or the preconscious (and even the meaning of a dream’s autosymbolism while still in the dream, as distinct from hypnopompic disclosure) and it almost always has the same mood and essence as in early childhood. Yet curiously, this is often not enough to trigger in-dream awareness of the dreaming status itself (though does sometimes serve as such).

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Morning of May 17, 2018. Thursday.



My non-lucid dream self becomes aware of being in a new variation of the southwest bedroom of the Cubitis house (where I have not been since 1978) rather than our own present bedroom. As is most often the case, it is perceived as part of our present home. I am aware of being married and having a family as in real life (even though my family has never been to America). They mostly appear as they do now in reality. My youngest son is the one I am most aware of in this case.

Near the center of the room is a living brontosaurus. It is small; only about three feet long. Our kitten from real life is near it. I eventually notice that the brontosaurus has short fur (which I vividly feel as I pet it), which puzzles me somewhat. I start to consider that it may grow too big to keep as a pet and I wonder what will happen to it or what we will do. This also puzzles me but I think about how it may be genetically engineered and so may not get as big as it would otherwise. I pet it for several minutes as it lies on its left side on the floor.

Something scares it, possibly the kitten, and it gets up and runs to the north side of the room. It hides under a bookshelf (one of the tall cheap plastic ones that have a space underneath, though in reality, there would not be enough space for a small animal). I reach for it but cannot quite get to it at first. I do eventually, and pull it out to calm it.

Later, I notice it is bigger, about the size of a young person. It looks very different and is walking around on its back legs and is wearing clothes. There are a few unknown people in the room, mostly around twelve years old. The brontosaurus looks just like a person at times. I consider how he is able to pull his head down so that his neck is no longer than that of a normal person. He talks at times. A girl calls him a “funny looking person” and the brontosaurus says, “I’m not a person”.

My youngest son has about five Mad Magazines, which I had not seen before. They may be recent issues. “Are these from the library?” I ask. Apparently, they are ours. I sit on the middle of the couch on the south side of the room. My son is to my right. My memory of our brontosaurus pet and its transformation is no longer present. I look at the cover of one issue and it is a painting of Alfred E. Newman’s head. Looking more closely, I see that the painted image has a very strange texture, like woven wicker. The paper itself seems to also hold this pattern. I decide that this means it may be counterfeit. “This looks like it might be a fake,” I say.

I look through the issue and see that from about halfway through the pages, the texture of the page seems normal. I notice a four-panel black-and-white Don Martin gag, featuring a man and woman walking around in a city, though I do not read it. I look at several other pages without really attempting to read anything. I decide that the unusual nature of the cover and first pages may mean that it was only a misprint.

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This dreaming and waking process is more specific to the last dream of a sleep cycle and it even begins in a thread that already establishes the subliminal awareness of being asleep (bedroom setting). The final scene renders very common autosymbolism that establishes an association with thinking skills correlation, a required precursor for actual reading. This is because the subconscious self cannot perform viably due to its dynamic nature and illusory nature of the dream state. (Writing or print in non-lucid dreams often changes when reading it again and it is often random gibberish. Temporality and discernment cannot be sustained in an illusory state of unconsciousness). This is used in the waking process quite often, several times a week for over fifty years in my case, though it is not as common as autosymbolism for vestibular system correlation.

Note how the brontosaurus, as an animal and illusory pet, hid under the bookshelf, which contained books. After this scene, coming out from under the bookshelf, it became more like a “person”, as human consciousness is required to read with viable discernment in waking life. This is the autosymbolic nature of the waking process that correlates to the last part of my dream, that is, being less of an illusion by way of initiating waking consciousness for reading and thinking skills, which the subconscious (analogous to a “primitive brontosaurus”) does not have. The analogy is duplicated by first perceiving the magazine as “fake”, which it is, as it exists only in the dream. Thus, it cannot be fully read and discerned (and it is even a composite of sorts, as it has the texture of our wicker bookshelf from real life), though from here, thinking skills correlation kicks in and I slowly wake. My son is on my right, the usual waking autosymbolism orientation, as I sleep on my left side (and left-side orientation would naturally imply the return to deeper sleep).

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