Blue_Opossum

Morning of October 1, 1982. Friday.



While in the northeast bedroom of the Loomis Street house, I am vaguely aware of the presence of duck hunters. Through the window, I see that the front yard is marshy. The streets are lightly flooded, which seems normal to my dream self, and related to the seasons.

Although there had been no perceived presence of the duck hunters being in the house at any point, there are a number of duck decoys sitting about in the house which they had still somehow apparently set up. I find this annoying and intrusive. I gather a few and place them outside, though remain wary of being shot at if I move a certain way. Curiously though, I soon do not feel that much in danger. I notice there is now less water on the streets (very common waking symbolism). The duck hunters actually seem to be gone. (The hunters in this case are this dream’s preconscious element. There is no “threat” as the waking transition has already activated via RAS.)

While trying to go back to sleep, I falsely recall that one of the wooden duck decoys was mine, having had it since very young, and being fond of it and frustrated about now possibly losing it. I am puzzled by the situation until I wake. (This is likely based on my feelings of nostalgia for the 1960s plastic model kit “The Visible Pigeon”, although I also had a duck decoy catalog as a teenager as I enjoyed collecting mail-order catalogs at that time.)

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This is typified as “failed flight waking symbolism”, a very common waking transition dream component (a perfectly natural unconscious transmutation of the biological falling start, which has nothing to do with waking life or the conscious self as some extremely unintelligent people pretend), not meant to be in a negative context but as a result of a natural transition from sleeping to waking and the temporary puzzlement of being in liminal space and not being fully aware of one’s physical body while semi-conscious. My hypnopompic waking “jolt” is subdued here, which is directly related to the fake ducks, which are neither real nor can fly away (similar to any dream where a person otherwise falls, or an airplane crashes, a meteor is seen, or many other generic analogies to returning to wakeful consciousness, including climbing or using a staircase or a “flight” of stairs). Flight symbols in dreams are typically linked to real-time inner ear dynamics (loosely related to dizziness or falling sensations when awake) and RAS (reticular activating system) in subliminal anticipation of leaving the dream state. Flight symbols as such have occurred in at least one dream per sleeping period for over fifty years, which automatically renders “interpretation” (in the common superstitious usage of the term) as an invalid concept, not however, discounting literal prescience, literal practice events, or literal willful scripting of a dream (including viable healing affirmations).

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