Blue_Opossum

Morning of March 8, 1969. Saturday.



Sgt Carter (played by Frank Sutton on “Gomer Pyle”, the television series) is aboard a small airplane (though unrealistically implied to be a jumbo jet) which looks more like the inside of a school bus (which is very typical of my dreams, even years later after I have actually been on airplanes). He is on the right side of my perspective (from the front of the “airplane” as I am “standing” and looking toward the back of the “airplane”) and perhaps on the second row back form the front. I seem to be disembodied or at least not interacting with the situation in any way, though it is not really like watching television because I am “there”.

Frank is suspicious and nervous of a person behind him on the row to my left, probably the very last row. Apparently, the people on the airplane have just escaped the devastation caused by the blob (though the town was not really devastated in the real movie from 1958) and down below are big shadows and small fires, though the other people seem cheerful including an unknown businessman in glasses on the first row to my left. The blob has the ability to change into different things (also unlike the movie where it remained a gelatinous mass). What is first seen as a person reading a newspaper is possibly the blob…that is, the “newspaper” ready to devour that person. For a time he sits in his seat covered by the “newspaper” (which now seems more like a cloth blanket with a newspaper design printed on it), seeming somewhat like a “ghost” wearing a “sheet”, unmoving. Frank does not directly look at any point yet somehow seems aware of what is going on behind him.

The scene is not resolved. Frank (as Sgt Carter) disappears but no explanation is given. The blanket/blob/newspaper, assuming it is “real”, may still be hungry, though it is quite small. For a time, it seems more like seats in a movie theater (though somehow ridiculously a “flying” movie theater - that is, the building with no implied wings) rather than on an airplane - then the “movie theater”/“airplane”/“school bus” is empty. Everything is quiet, though the newspaper is on the floor, fluttering, sticking out slightly to the right of the seat of the original “blanket man” (from my perspective). (From here, things go “frozen” for a time, then abstract hypnopompia.)



Probable influences:

“Peanuts” comic strips where Linus’s blanket is “alive” and attacks Lucy (cutout from 1965 and taped in a notepaper binder collected and owned by my mother)

plus

“Newspaper Blanket” by the Cowsills (I owned the 45 of; flip side of “Indian Lake”)

plus

the episode of “Gomer Pyle” where Sgt Carter acts this way on an airplane (heading towards a nervous breakdown, supposedly)

plus

the movie “The Blob” (1958 version)

equals true weirdness via pop culture overkill perhaps. Being cruelly and surreptitiously dominated by entertainment has never really been my goal; just endless meticulous self-examination. It is good to discover the synthetic sources of your own imagination, or make that, the dream self’s “mind”, which does not even know an airplane from a bus.

Morning of February 20, 1969. Thursday.

Dream #: 794-05. Reading time: 52 sec.



I am at West Elementary as an unseen incorporeal presence as my schoolmates do not acknowledge me. They sit on their knees near the east entrance of the school before dawn.

The students are Robert G. in profile on the left, Brenda on the right, and Tina beyond (but facing me). They are looking at the ground, central to their perimeter. There is a hole that has grown as a small mound and is possibly the beginning of a volcano. Orange light flickers below. They are performing a strange ritual that I do not understand. I think they have herbs and smaller totems or ritualistic objects. They seem involved in a type of prayer, almost like they are worshipping it or waiting for it to grow by way of their attention to it.

I wonder if their ritual will cause the potential volcano to become larger and more active (though I feel no fear). I also consider if it is something that students do once a year. It seems mysterious and vaguely spiritual.

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My dream’s scenario partly comes from the story of Dionisio Pulido and the Paricutin volcano (which coincidentally began on the same date in 1943).

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The causation of this dream correlates with emerging from a deep sleep, occurring near the middle of my sleep cycle.

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Morning of February 15, 1969. Saturday.

Dream #: 789-06. Reading time: 1 min 22 sec. Readability score: 54.



In semi-lucidity at age eight, I find myself sitting on an upright wooden rain barrel next to an old wooden fence in late morning. Beyond the other side is a unique new version of a relative’s farm that exists in real life, but where I have not visited since age four.

Brenda (schoolmate, neighbor, and friend) is also sitting atop the barrel. We are facing each other, cheerfully giggling. I feel the inspiration to kiss her. Our faces move closer, but I am distracted by my awareness of someone beyond the other side of the fence.

Earl (an older half-brother on my mother’s side) walks over to the fence, approaching from my right. I feel very annoyed by his sudden interest in what Brenda and I are doing. I feel imposed upon and so kissing Brenda does not occur. I partially awake in readiness, though still in liminal space, to throw my pillow at the imagined intrusion.

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It is likely that I was liminally discerning whether Earl was on our carport, to the right of my bed. Additionally, as I sleep on my left side, it is also natural for the waking process to originate from my right as it exposed openly to my environment. The error here is that the setting was the farm in Wisconsin (though Brenda had never been to Wisconsin) and even so, I had to have been liminally aware of where I was. At the time, my bed blocked the door to the carport, and I am sometimes aware of the location of doorways (in my real environment) even in subliminal (non-lucid) dream settings.

Waking process autosymbolism was inclusive as the fence feature, a liminal space divider that represents RAS mediation as the separation between the imaginary dream self and conscious self perception. The rain barrel was a residual factor of water induction, water (melatonin mediation) being my most common autosymbolism for dream state induction, occurring at least once per sleep cycle. The personified preconscious, in this case, Earl, is typically intrusive as the waking alert factor.

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Morning of February 14, 1969. Friday.



It is Christmas in my dream, but not in real life (it is actually the morning of Valentine’s Day). The date is actually February 14, 1969, the morning after the airing of the “Mrs. Stephens, Where Are You?” episode of “Bewitched” (“Serena turns Darrin’s mother into a cat.”) The cat is black and not very large, though an adult female.

Our large (fictional) “real” Christmas tree is in the middle area of the north wall of the Cubitis house living room (where it had never been set up in reality even by 1978, of the three locations being northeast corner, southwest corner, and west wall between my door and the front door). I apparently had received the cat for Christmas (I believe from my mother – although I am not one hundred percent sure; it may also have come from Brenda W, a female classmate, or just mysteriously found its way to my home for some unknown motive - my in-dream back story seems ambiguous).

When I come home from school one afternoon (and as I am just about to walk through the front doorway), the cat’s head seems to float and move up just in front of my face (from where she is in the doorway) in an eerie startling event, but more as if it is some sort of invasive telepathy. There are also scenes where the cat seems to “multiply itself” in unusual, sparse kaleidoscopic vision (but a bit too random to be truly kaleidoscopic). In each facet of the image, the cat seems to be expressing a different human emotion, even with descriptive impressions (for example, “this is Serena when she is annoyed” or “this is Serena when she is puzzled”, being nearly identical to another dream’s event though featuring my mother and only using our surname with “Mrs”).

There is one scene where the cat has made the toy train go around the Christmas tree (the tracks being in a perfect circle around the tree) that I had apparently gotten recently for my birthday or Christmas. (I never had a complete toy train set in real life, but my adult brother did have a model railroad setup after my dream, but it was setup at his house, not mine.) I am somewhat concerned about the “powers” of this cat, but it is not a nightmare. The cat also makes a small toy red alien figure (one of three) walk around, but walking mostly sideways, mostly on the frame of the sofa that had been left open.

Supposedly, the cat is killed when the couch section (in real life, the couch that converted into a bed, by the front lifting up and then the back dropping down, was along the southwest corner of the living room near the entrance to the door of my bedroom) falls onto it when it had been left open in preparation of making it into a bed or when I had accidentally left it open when taking something from the storage area (which I believe was divided into two compartments). However, the cat disappears from my dream after this even though there is an awareness it is still alive or existing somewhere (perhaps in another dimension beyond the living room wall or as a “ghost” – although there is a slight awareness of the idea of nine lives being literally for a cat).

Amusingly, shortly after my dream, I absentmindedly set up the ending of my dream by leaving the sofa section up for a short time. It soon fell, and curiously enough, crushed part of a plastic toy (a cereal prize) which was the small red Martian (or other supposed alien) figure I believe came from Quisp Cereal and described previously (relating to “coming to life” in my dream). I kept it (but had three others that remained in perfect condition) even though the eye area had been flattened. I had absentmindedly left it on the edge of the frame at the time when the section fell. I would not call this precognition though, as I absentmindedly caused the event.

Morning of February 9, 1979. Friday.



This is a recurring dream event of getting off a bus (likely a metaphor for a shift in consciousness). Here, I am with my “mystery girl” (wife Zsuzsanna prior to knowing she was a real person) who is vaguely associated with being a Mouseketeer, though I am not sure of our destination (possibly a television studio?). Though I am living in Wisconsin in reality, my dream’s location may be near Disney World in Florida. As we get off the bus, my mystery girl (I am not certain if it was absentmindedly or on purpose for some reason) drops a snow globe so that it hits the sidewalk near the curb and cracks open.

At the same time, the entire universe is destroyed with a brief soft cracking sound; the fabric of space “cracks” and the stars seemingly float in a liquid (in a similar way as fake “snowflakes” float in the liquid in a snow globe). Oddly, it does not seem that threatening even though it is “the end”.

On another level of course, this dream merely represents the waking mechanism - the “destruction” of my dream.

The snowflake (which also represents the Star of David and as such, also a two-dimensional view of the Merkaba) relates directly to my wife Zsuzsanna (and was also precognitive of the “I am fragile, I am avalanche” B.C. strip becoming one of my favorites), but seems to be shown here as a chaotic “flurry of stars”, linking the concept of a blizzard with stars randomly “falling” and moving, something I had not (prior to this) made any connection to before regardless of the obvious imagery. (However, when I was five years of age, I did made a cutout picture of a winter scene which actually confused snowflakes with stars.)

Additionally, I get the impression that a crack, which otherwise expresses fragility, also looks like a lightning bolt, implying the opposite (as well as representing the potential to grow severed nerves and tendons back again as I did from July 1962 on). This in turn is likely an association with my accident as a toddler, which caused my brain to be “rewired” through the retraining of my “dead” hand, allowing the usage of parts of the mind that people otherwise would never know about.

Update Monday, 28 December 2015. I should probably include a couple more details relating to how I know this dream was precognitive. Not only did it include my lifelong “mystery girl” (of consistent appearance and of Zsuzsanna’s unlikely mixed heritage), there is the connection to the snow globe and the song “Suzi Snowflake” (“Suzi” is the anglicized shortened form of my wife’s first name). Additionally, my brother Earl recorded “Hey Hey Hey Snowflake” directly after his marriage.

Morning of February 5, 1969. Wednesday.



There have been numerous dreams throughout my life which featured ambiguous modes of transportation; for example, of being on a flying school bus which is also somehow an airplane in my dream (yet has the appearance of the inside of a school bus, with the same orientation of the driver and such). There is sometimes a lack of clarity (based on scenes outside the windows, typically) on whether I am on a bus, train, airplane, or even a boat, which of course, sometimes changes (the “morphing” so common in dreams being only one of many reasons why “dream dictionaries” mean nothing to real dream-workers). Also, windows become paintings or vice versa.

In this case, I seem to be “rising” in being on an aircraft, but no, I realize it is likely a bus, which then resolves as a boat, as we seem to be on water (with no awareness of a road). However, just because there is no hint of a road and we are on water does not mean it cannot be a bus (faux dream “logic”). For example, it may be an extremely narrow road over water.

At any rate, I am somehow with a larger rock (which I first take to be a turtle but then it is a rock but which then starts to “wiggle” again), which has somehow come to me through a solid glass (closed) window. There is something in the back of my mind about “The Ugly Duckling” but it is not that clear. Also, there is some sort of fairy tale, I reason, where a swan is actually a girl. Being a black swan, it represents my future wife, as I was familiar with the stamp. There is a “strange tickle” of a type that occurred in other dreams, in my lower stomach area and as the swan wiggles a bit, which may prove to be problematic.

Curiously, the scene with rocks in the water from the “window” then turns out to be a painting (typical of mixed two-dimensional and three-dimensional in-dream elements which other people have told me is fairly common in their own dreams) and I am sitting in a museum after all. However, the “painting” is then that of “The Birth of Venus” (Sandro Botticelli) though she has dark hair and the “angels” are replaced by a white swan and a black swan.

“She’s HERE!” yells a thin old man, seeming terrified and running from the area, going around a corner. The painting starts to glow blue (mostly around the head and shoulders of the dark-haired “mystery girl”) and I fall back empty-handed with a strange “comfortable” oscillation in my ears (always the exact same pitch throughout my life for the most part), falling into nothing, “falling” into my bed awake.

Curiously, shortly before my wife first wrote me in 1991, a new black swan stamp (43 cents) was apparently issued on Valentine’s Day…

Morning of January 22, 1969. Wednesday.



A “wild weasel” is running around in the city. I am with Brenda W (a female classmate) at a large business building (seemingly G. Heileman Brewery in La Crosse even though I am living In Florida here). We can see him seemingly spin around and beat at the frosted glass part of the door like the Tasmanian devil would do in the cartoon though there is no weird growling. (Later on, I found out the animal in my dream could have possibly been a real Tasmanian devil instead of a weasel, as I had not seen a photo of one before). We hide behind various desks in different offices. Brenda says that it is getting late…“Nine thirteen” (my wife’s actual birth date) - this being a false in-dream “memory” of Brenda’s “wait for me” clock as the purse’s clasp (the purse design of which I have been unsuccessful in finding online anywhere or I would post it).

In most scenes, it is semi-dark, though I am not sure if it is day or night outside. Brenda W and I mostly hide behind desks. There is no cartoon-like feature anywhere in my dream. The shadow of the animal and the environment does seem “real”.

More recent notes on this and another dream can be found here: http://blue-opossum.tumblr.com/post/...asel-revisited

My wife and I saw a real Tasmanian devil together during our first year of marriage and as stated before, Brenda W was proven to be a yet-to-be wife archetype. Also, I worked at G. Heileman Brewery in La Crosse a few years after my family moved back to Wisconsin again (something I could not have known at this time), and as a cleaner, going from office to office as in my dream.

Morning of January 18, 1969. Saturday.



I am apparently in Africa and it is mostly early in the morning in the several scenes. The landscape does not have many features; mostly tall grasses in sparse areas and slightly muddy both brown and gray ground areas and a small pond or two. There is a dirt road (rut road, mostly) that winds through some areas. A few rusty old abandoned jeeps are sitting around in random locations, one on its side. There seems to be at least two villages in the region, although a bit more like ghost towns and with only a few people. At one point, there is a slight concern about, when driving a jeep, how would you know about a lion coming out from one side of the tall grasses? But that is not really a strong focus for any part. There is also a point at which one road suddenly cuts off just prior to an embankment with a drop of several feet (as such, how could a rut road have developed there - or perhaps that explains some of the wrecked jeeps).

There is something about Erin Moran (seemingly older in my dream) having “two lives” or two separate identities in a sort of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” fashion; one as the young daughter of the veterinarian (“Daktari”), the other as a “frog queen” or even “were-frog” of sorts. I think I see her as such at one point (in silhouette only). No one else knows her secret but me. The frogs are many but not that threatening and mostly seem to cause problems relative to the maintenance of the road somehow (that is, leaving extra “potholes” from their movement over the soft ground). I ride in a jeep and a greenish gray Land Rover (which I never saw one of in real life until coming to Australia in 1994). There is evidence and concern regarding rain causing jeep engine problems and “more frogs coming out” which apparently like to live in the engines when leaving their pond. (It is as if it is “normal” for a few frogs to be in a jeep engine, but a lot more will cause problems. Since frogs hop, this is likely an odd distortion of a hamster wheel upsized to imply running an engine.) Eventually it seems like the towns are completely deserted.

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Key points:

An anagram (though I am not implying that anagrams always mean something) of “Erin Moran” is “Inner Roma”. (My “mystery girl”, who was an exact copy down to the smallest detail, from heritage to appearance to unusual mixed accent, of my real-life wife Zsuzsanna long before I met her, was and is Roma.)

Additionally, to augment the above point, Erin Moran, though a very rare character in my dreams, seemed to be a “stand-in” for Brenda W, who, in turn, was a precognitive “stand-in” for my wife-to-be. Brenda was the only sincere friend (and only mutually intimate one) who remained as such from early childhood on until my move back to Wisconsin (as even my best friend Toby and I had falling-outs at times). Zsuzsanna in fact, wrote a story in her childhood called W’s Dream (using Brenda’s actual last name without knowing of her - in addition to the identical drawing of Susan R’s).

I have already explained the frog theme in another entry to a greater extent but will simply repeat here that it seems some sort of reversal of (certain versions of) “The Frog Prince” story. However, because most features in dreams symbolically or metaphorically represent the concurrent level of consciousness, frogs are also a waking precursor and symbol of the preconscious (unlike fish, which would be the deeper unconscious unless near the surface) because they start out as tadpoles but then emerge onto land, consequentially symbolizing the dreamer leaving the dream state. “Frogs in the engine” validate this, as an engine represents dawning consciousness and the power of critical thinking.

After consideration over a number of years, I have decided that the position of a vehicle in a dream may be a subtle play on physical position in bed though not necessarily concurrent, a jeep on its side being an interesting possible play on spooning (and was validated as such regarding at least a few of my own dreams). Also, I have noted that a car accident in a dream sometimes is a metaphor for a person rolling over in their sleep (which has occurred and been validated in several of my own dreams).

Rust is one of those dream features that is quite rare. Presently I assume it refers to the passage of time or even the decay of the dream state in its last segment as it was as such in metaphor in at least one dream (that being “Wool Into Rusty Iron“, which represented waking from the dream state as most final segments do with multiplicity-based scenarios).

A lion, which there was only a very vague concern about here (and no imagery of one), represents coalescence (as does anything that can either cover up or swallow the dreamer, including sand but mostly excluding water in my case) and the return to whole consciousness. However, the mechanism here did not manifest and my dream became a bit more vivid at that point as a result (that is, higher up into preconsciousness, also represented by the presence of more and more frogs, which has occurred in several other dreams in the same way, one of them becoming fully lucid).

The “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” theme is an obvious play on unconscious vs. conscious or dream “reality” vs. waking reality.

A town becoming less populated or deserted over time is an obvious play on the waking transition.

Morning of January 6, 1969. Monday. (This is the newly researched and corrected first version of a briefly recurring “set” as of May 30, 2015.)



On a prologued side note, I cannot believe it took me nearly fifty years to make the connection of this dream with the “Hippocratic Oath” - an oath historically taken by physicians, especially considering my meticulous focus on dream research since very young. (There may also be a vague association with “hypocrite” as well, though that is not certain.)

This was a short-term recurring vivid childhood dream of a cartoon-like hippopotamus that walked upright, directly influenced by the “Peter Potamus” cartoon character and firstly called Doctor Hippogippus to be later associated as Doctor Hippocampus in less vivid versions.

In my dream, he is apparently a “real” doctor (though still appears as cartoon-like) who makes house calls for people. He walks into the backyard of Cubitis neighbor Lisa M, walking upright and approaching from the east, from where the railroad tracks and mostly only weeds are in real life and carrying a black medical bag (with the initials M.D.) in his left “hand”. She stands with arms akimbo facing him as a large red question mark materializes over her head in a comic-strip like thought-balloon. Even though this scene is impossible in at least two ways, I do not even react to the thought balloon appearing over her head as a trigger for either doubt or lucidity - not to mention the cartoon somewhat anthropomorphic hippopotamus (everything else is rendered “realistically”).

He holds out his right “hand” to her as an offer to shake her hand and introduce himself. I am not sure how I know that his name is Hippogippus (in the first version of my dream) but it is just there in my false back story “memory”. I also am not sure of why my dream would have him come from the weedy area near the train tracks at first, though he does approach from the highway later on.

There are a few other scenes related to her being ill (possibly measles or chicken pox) and a scene where he walks into my carport from the driveway, though I never directly meet him in-dream to my knowledge. There is a vague in-dream focus on having to get up for school yet this still does not alert me to the fact I am dreaming.

In a later version of my dream (a few weeks later), the name turned into “Hippocampus” (the real name for an actual part of the human brain in the temporal lobe) and he was then a professor from a (assumed fictional) college (obvious play on “campus”) though he still seemed to have doctor-like attributes. This was possibly a more conscious focus to alter the original dream’s form (as “Hippogippus” made no sense to me) from having seen “Monster on the Campus” (1958) as well as talk in school of the intriguing coelacanth (a rediscovered “prehistoric” fish that also features as the plot device in the aforementioned movie).

The only existence of the word “Hippogippus” that I could find on the Internet was related to a poem by William Henry Furness in a possibly rare book from 1874. If I had seen this around that time, I do not recall it, though it is still possible there was a copy in my house. The related lines (apparently from “Tetra-chordon: A Pot Pourri of Rhythms and Prose”) are:

"For all good society is always on its very best behavior, sure.
For there was no concern whether your grey mare was black or sorrel,
So long as she had not the hippogippus, for that you cannot cure.
So well engaged that time passed away like a charm ;
There was nobody hurt, there was nobody to weep.“

Morning of January 4, 1969. Saturday.



This childhood dream journal entry has been revised on Friday 20 October 2017 to complete and clarify revelatory dynamics to more coherently define the meaning. This dream occurred about 3:30 in the morning. Sunrise was not until about 7:20 a.m. I had attempted to watch the 1942 black-and-white movie “Cat People” (which started around one a.m. on this Saturday morning), though our television was black-and-white anyway, but I slept through most of it, though I did not go to my bed until about 3:15 in the morning.

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In my dream, as I am walking out from the front of our Cubitis carport (after deliberately “stepping into” the stabilized hypnagogic “portal” rendered as the unlit carport area), seemingly only about three-thirty to four o'clock in the morning, and walking in a northwesterly direction towards our neighbor’s orange grove, I maintain my lucidity.

Even though I am lucid, I feel somewhat vulnerable when I find myself walking into the opening of a fictional feature. It is a hallway in which the walls are seemingly made of fog, yet with a suggestion of at least partial solidity. This eerie hallway starts from between the middle area of the driveway and the neighbor’s orange grove, and runs from east to west towards Highway Seventeen (and is perpendicular to it). I do not perceive the potential length of this hallway or clearly discern a door or doorway on the opposite side, which makes me hesitant in continuing.

From here, I see various domestic cats (at least fifteen) in various positions throughout the hallway ahead. Some cats are sitting or standing on tables (one near a vase on a table) and some are sitting or standing on the implied hallway’s floor. One cat jumps down from a table (or simple platform) on the left side in this scene and walks toward me though never gets very close or attacks. An unknown male narrator’s voice (seeming to come from above and to my left and as if from a loudspeaker with slightly fuzzy audio) only says “cats” in a very informal way and without emotion. I feel that he may not be speaking to me as it may be a voice that was recorded years ago. There is also the vague idea that I may not be fully in the setting but looking at a realistic three-dimensional movie scene either superimposed or bilocated into the front yard area. Despite my lucidity, I feel somewhat wary, uncertain, and passive to what I am seeing even though there is no discernible threat. Soon, with deliberate intent (lucid choice), I fade from my dream with a soft awakening. (The liminal space transition is also softer than usual.)

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Following is an extensive and highly revelatory explanation of the most likely factors and personal history responsible for this dream along with their related meanings. I have recorded this dream as of the doorway waking symbolism type.

It was obvious to me at the time (despite being only eight years old), that my dream was trying to fill in missing details from “Cat People” even though that was not my original dream entry intent (which was to visit my younger neighbor and friend, Brenda, who lived north of me). However, my dream was completely unrelated to the movie’s plot as my distorted memory implied that the movie was about an older woman with a fear of domestic cats.

The otherwise ambiguous hallway setting is modeled after two common real-life locations and progressions, one, walking through the hallway in my Cubitis home, and two, walking down our Cubitis driveway (as the fictional hallway was rendered as just north of it and parallel to it) to wait for the school bus on week day mornings. The possibly implied exit of the fictional foggy hallway would be at the east wayside of Highway Seventeen and it should also be mentioned that while waiting for the bus on week days in this time period, there was sometimes dense fog. Fog was far more common as a dream feature during the time periods there was fog in the mornings in real life, although fog also seems to be a factor of the dream state itself, possibly influenced by dream scenes in movies that include fog (to represent that it is a dream), though is also a natural association with dreaming.

There is also an association with Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog”; the line “The fog comes on little cat feet” (which was silently integrated into my dream near the last moments). The poem was first published in 1916 and my mother was born in 1916. This seems to be the association with the “old woman” (my mother) with a supposed fear of domestic cats (again, not what 1942’s “Cat People” was about). However, neither my mother nor I had any trepidation relating to cats. In fact, my mother had a pet gray tabby named Dewey at this time. The mild trepidation in my dream was more about my lucidity being intruded upon by the absentminded association with the movie that I had not even seen much of, based on my earlier wondering about it (but not consciously intending for it to be carried into the dream state as it was).

There is one more relevant commonly recurring factor I should include here. The doorway waking symbolism and other types that sometimes include the liminal space cat symbolism (in addition to the term “putting the cat out for the night” as subliminally relating to shifts in unconsciousness and waking symbolism itself) curiously was validated to have come from having seen the ending credits of “The Flintstones” (an animated television series) so many times. A domesticated saber-toothed cat is seen throwing Fred out of his house (after Fred firstly put the cat out) during the end credits, resulting in Fred pounding on his front door and yelling “Wilma!”, waking the whole neighborhood. This also established not only the relevant waking symbolism but additionally established this symbolism as a more influential dream state end marker in many examples throughout my fifty years of dream journaling. There are additional reasons for liminal space cat symbolism, one being an influence from the 1962 animated movie “Gay Purr-ee”, another with my childhood association of a cat sitting on a fence as existing between dreaming and waking (that is, a fence as the liminal space divider between dreaming and waking). Additionally, I think of cats as being more active at night or while people are sleeping and dreaming, thus a natural symbol of the dream state itself.

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Morning of January 2, 1969. Thursday.



This is a very vivid dream, though at one point it seems I am watching myself from a few paces south around the middle of the Cubitis hallway while disembodied; the other me looking in awe at the coat that is suspended in air (in the same area and position as if it were otherwise hung by a hanger).

I am looking at a coat in the hall closet of my Cubitis home. It is my winter coat, but it is eerily floating in the air with no hanger (though it does not seem to be worn or held up by an invisible entity at any point - the “magic” is in the coat itself). There are only a few other clothes on each side of it (but pushed to the side against the closet walls). My father is making references to this in a sort of narrative manner (seemingly only vaguely wary of the coat’s dimly glowing essence of a very pale green) as if it is important for me to learn about (he did used to tell me ghost stories in real life but I am not sure if this coat is purely “haunted” or is to be useful with its special powers). It seems to be in the middle of the night or very early morning an hour or two before sunrise. My father and I are the only two characters in this dream. I do not sense or perceive any other being.

The above childhood dream, upon present reflection for some reason, now brings back a very vivid memory of going to get my coat in the school closet in real life (kindergarten) on the last day of school, and there was one other winter coat that a chubby male student (Robert, I think) had left behind, so I informed the female teacher (“Yandell” or something like that - but I mentally changed her name to “Yardstick” in my dreams). I remember the eerie sense of “finality” and the false sense as if the coat was “hovering” there “without the boy in it”. Both the childhood real-life event and this later very vivid dream of my later childhood seemed to hold a similar mood, and the real-life memory may have been the “trigger” (though there are likely other factors). For some reason, my memories of each last day of school (regardless of the grade) seem to be much more vivid and clearer than the memories of other days, even if nothing significant happened.

See also: “Empty Boots”

Morning of December 31, 1978. Wednesday.



This dream from age eighteen (after moving back to Wisconsin during the last days of June 1978) is very similar in some ways to an early childhood dream of the same date (so therefore seems like some sort of “anniversary” layer - Return of the “cat girl”), though the implied submarine is not actually part of any real building’s lower level that I know of (or reminiscent of any). There have not been any other dreams of this particular mood and nature (that is, with a basement or lower level of a building as a faux submarine) that I know of other than this and the 1966 one.

In my dream, I am supposedly in a feasible “submarine” and carry the idea that I may be being filmed as part of some sort of big-budget movie. This makes me feel as if my privacy is being violated even though I do not fully feel at home in this setting or even know much about it (or any back story). That is mostly because I want to find a girl to interact with although I seem to be the only one “on board the submarine”. This faux submarine, even though I seem to see it from the outside at times (possibly via some sort of view screen or short-term in-dream disembodiment) and even stationary in the waters of the ocean (though seemingly not that far below the surface), I am also aware of its “real” location. Its “real” location is on the east side of Highway Seventeen, oriented north to south, underground by about ten feet (so that apparently a flight of steps leads up and out on at least the two ends), and on the perimeter of our neighbor Harold’s orange grove (though the orange grove does not exist any more and thus is not in the image with this entry). The inside of the “submarine” is more like a large but narrow underground warehouse or appliance storage area made up of two separate halls and at least two sections, somewhat suggestive of the letter “H”, each lined with a number of ovens and probably washing machines, refrigerators, and other larger furnishings and such including large antique wooden tables and not-so-fancy table lamps.

Even though I seem to be a part of this scene as in a movie, nothing happens at all except for me wandering about and looking for a girl to be with - most seemingly, the “mystery girl” (wife-to-be character). Other than that, I have no strong focus or awareness of the real world - only where I am in placement and orientation of the fictional setting. This could be an extreme variation of my much older school bus dreams, when I used to “see” my bus as a “submarine”. The underground location is the general area near where the bus stopped regularly during one semester. It does not dawn on me at any point that we do not live right near the ocean, and I do not come to recognize that a submarine cannot travel through solid ground, especially while remaining motionless (such is the “logic” of dreams) - the same failed comprehension from age six.

Relative to the unusual fictional setting, see also the following dreams:

Hall Kitchens?

Short dream of a house of mystery

Morning of December 9, 1978. Saturday.



This was a strange dream that I was not really a direct part of, though I do see everything from a seemingly local three-dimensional perspective (but as if I am invisible to all the characters of my dream and there is never any perceived threat to me).

There is a woman living on an island. I believe her name is Diane or Diana. Over time, she somehow lures various men to her island, in some cases taking them to her home from social venues. Each man is then turned into a different farm animal and kept locked up in a large barn some distance from her house.

One night, about six or seven animals, including a horse, a donkey, a goat, and a chicken - and I think maybe a duck and a cat, plan to escape together. However, I am not sure if they will be turned back into their original form or if the spell will wear off once they leave the island, though they do plan on confronting her, I think. Also, all of the creatures seem to have an unusual sort of shaggy or stringy hair (even the chicken) with a sort of light brownish orange or darker golden tint. Each one of them has a certain task. It is the donkey’s job to kick the barn door out as I watch the scene late at night. The rooster is apparently supposed to distract the woman while another possibly gets keys to her boat (and it seems their plan is to trap her in a room, though I do not really see the story play out). I am not sure what happens next but it seems like some sort of actual well-known story or fable or even an older movie. I do not hear them talk at any point - their apparent conversations and planning seems to work on another level, perhaps telepathy or some sort of universal “animal language”, as I do hear combinations of some odd and loud farm animal sounds a couple times.

At the point where they are escaping from the barn, it seems to be a bilocated setting where they are in the “junk room” (my sister’s name for it) of the Loomis Street house, with the barn door simultaneously leading to the Loomis Street kitchen (rather than outside). This odd unresolved sense of bilocation has occurred in many of my dreams throughout my life.

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Night of November 29, 1968. Friday.



This (in quotes) is the original title and has remained so. I had entitled this as such due to there already being a story I was familiar with called “The Grasshopper and the Ants” (However, the Wikipedia entry is entitled “The Ant and the Grasshopper” - a variation I had never heard of before). This dream was one of many at a very early age that was very vivid and unforgettable in scenery and “momentum”. I am not even “in” this one. It is more like I am floating and viewing things in another world.

In my dream, there is a young female ant named Susanna (a variation of my wife Zsuzsanna’s name interestingly enough but pronounced without the “zhu” and “zha” sound although I did originally call her Susanna at times), possibly influenced by the Stephen Foster song “Oh! Susanna“. In that song, there is the line “The sun so hot I froze to death” and the grasshopper in the original story will supposedly starve in the winter or possibly freeze to death.

I have accepted the precognitive implications for four reasons; the bride’s name being Susanna, my wife being petite (thus much smaller than I), and the nature of our mixed marriage. She also has more than three younger brothers. Also, the building in this dream was similar to the one I first stayed at with my wife - even called Clarence (my middle name) House. There is also the association with “clodhopper” and “grasshopper” as detailed below. Though I was not certain of the grasshopper’s name, there was a vague association with Marco Polo.

This was a long dream, but I only summarized the main scenes originally. It involves the female ant being “courted” romantically and secretly in a “jungle” - or rather, an area with more grass and stones and such, a fair distance from her home. The female ant’s younger brothers were like composites of three Hot Stuffs and Huey, Dewey, and Louie - but with ant-like features. The scenes were not that cartoon-like at times, but rather like an animated painting. The ants seem to live in a scaled-down condominium rather than an anthill though, so it is kind of funny. There was also some sort of implied practical joke routine related to “condominium pandemonium”. I was not even quite sure what the words meant. I do not think I heard this exact term in real life, or maybe it had been a newspaper headline or some such.

Her rather mean-looking brothers do not want her involved with the grasshopper or any chance for a “mixed marriage” (which is rather a self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose, as I have been technically in a mixed marriage all these years - even though one man, a Jehovah’s Witness, thought we were brother and sister).

The main, most vivid scene has an interesting meeting between the female ant and the male grasshopper (and note the play on my first name of Claude - I was actually called “Clodhopper” in real life for a short time by at least two classmates as well as “Kadiddlehopper” - from Red Skelton’s fictional comedic character Clem Kadiddlehopper).

I can sense or hear romantic music playing. The grasshopper offers his love a rose. She accepts it but says “Thank you, but I like dandelions much better” in the voice of a (unknown) human female. There is not much drama after this. I am not certain what happens, but I do know the three brothers will be bothersome to both their ant sister and their grasshopper brother-in-law.

The real-life joke has a couple variations, but only one relevant to the reversal of the romantic scene from my dream. A teacher asks a child what her favorite flower is and she says “dandelion” (or “chrysanthemum”). The teacher asks “Can you spell that?” and the child says, “Actually, I like roses much better”.

Night of November 25, 1978. Saturday.



I am back in the living room in Cubitis, seemingly very late at night, at a table near the northeast corner near where the chimney my father had built was in real life. There is an older cigar box with about twenty or more stamps at the bottom, near one corner. The cover of the cigar box actually looks more like the back of an American one dollar bill, with the eye above the pyramid part, except that it has a sort of sepia and orange tint instead of being greenish.

Marilyn and Carol (two of my half-sisters on my mother’s side) are in the room. There seems to be an unusual energy, almost like a “dark force” or suggested evil presence. The stamps rise in the air and hover above the bottom of the cigar box and there is a slightly uncomfortable sense of our home now being haunted (although I was no longer living there in real life).

Looking at this dream record now on Monday, 18 January 2016, it seems very straightforward and easy to interpret. A box or container in a dream symbolically represents the non-lucid dream self’s attempt to quantize the dream (or dream state) - in other words, to “contain” and define the level of awareness or “world” the dream self finds itself in. In this case the box contains haunted stamps as stamps represent communications “between two selves” (yet within the same container). Each stamp is a (incomplete) two-dimensional form of conscious thought potential (or the essence of the waking self as different from both the fully conscious self and the dream self incarnation). This - the flat stamps and static imagery of each stamp - is with regard to the “other-dimensional” nature of dreams. Many of the stamps feature human head profiles, giving more evidence to this concept. The eye above the pyramid symbol represents the full conscious self (or perhaps even the Source). In fact, most “haunting” dreams seem to be subtle links between the conscious self and the dream self while in the dream state. This is a little similar to my lifelong recurring dream scenario (since around age twelve) of being worried about someone finding a human skull hidden in a box of books under my bed or buried.