Blue_Opossum

Morning of January 1, 1975. Wednesday. (New Year’s Day.)



Summary: Two cats quickly going in opposite directions meet on our Cubitis carport and their movement ceases as they stare at each other until my dream ends. This dream was possibly at least partially influenced by the limerick “There once were two cats of Kilkenny“, as the term “Kilkenny cats” did seem to be in the back of my mind at one point in-dream but was not spoken aloud (though the cats do not fight or even move as in the limerick). A younger neighbor and friend I waited with at the school bus stop on weekday mornings had the first name of Kenny, which may have added to the associations.

It is early morning in Cubitis just prior to the time I would be going out to wait for the school bus on a normal school day and the sun has not fully risen. I become aware that I am going onto our carport at the start of my dream for this reason.

Seemingly out of nowhere, two (unfamiliar to me) cats suddenly approach each other and both assume a stand-off position in our carport near the front entrance of our house, facing north and south. Immediately before I actually see them, I get an uneasy sense of a loud two-layered human-male-like “Ugh!” as if both of the cats had somehow “said” or “exclaimed” it simultaneously, each with a sense of implied disgust at the other, immediately prior to their near-collision.

Time seems “frozen” for seemingly several minutes as the cats stand completely motionless, facing each other from only about an inch apart (nose to nose). I get an eerie feeling that they may somehow have additional human-like attributes (though there is no real evidence for that other than the unvalidated assumption that they spoke).

Soon, at least a dozen (unknown) reporters, both male and female, having donned primarily early 1960s dress styles, appear on our carport as if out of nowhere. They are evenly gathered around, both standing and crouched in a semicircle (open to the driveway), with cameras (a male near the main door seemingly using a Polaroid 185 Land Camera) and yellow notepads with pens (though I briefly notice one female making continuous cursive loops rather than words or sentences). The reporters are gathering around the cats (though not that closely - about a yard or more away) and appear to be ready to plan or begin some sort of television or radio broadcast on the event. The cats do not make any other sounds and continue to remain motionless throughout the rest of my dream. I still feel a growing and somewhat unpleasant eeriness that they are “more than cats” and I almost expect something else to happen but nothing else does. There is a strange mythical awareness that neither cat will ever move again.

Analysis from my primary standpoint: This seems to be a play on the “old year” meeting the “new year” face to face or “blocking” potential progress into the new year with any issues of the previous year, almost in a mythical sense; thus, the in-dream uneasiness and “waiting for something to happen” even though a new year is basically just a continuation of the prior day. My family did not have a Polaroid 185 Land Camera but the camera has a feature that resembles the bellows of an accordion, which my father was well-known for playing and writing popular polkas and waltzes for. The reporters had a very vague association with cartoon characters on “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour” though they did not really appear cartoon-like in any way in my dream. The “reporters” are there perhaps to “record” my progress in my path into the new year and my otherwise blocked passage into the new day, one cat being “of me”, the other a potential rival with opposite opinions, perhaps; likely a classmate I have conflict with.

Analysis from my secondary standpoint: What people have seemingly failed to see throughout the entire history of so-called dream “interpretation” (as I have never seen much evidence of it in commercial publications) is that certain types of dream events often reflect the dreaming process itself. In this case, it would be my dream self being “blocked” from the knowledge of the holiday, part of me wanting to wake up in thinking I have to get up for school (though I do not) and another area of my (dream-self’s) mind saying “Hey, you can sleep longer today, what’s your hurry?”. Of course, dreams are typically multilayered, sometimes with so many layers, it sometimes takes years for certain facets to reveal themselves.

Morning of December 8, 1974. Sunday.



Steve J, a classmate whom I did not dream about very often, is with me on some sort of “quest” that involves the search for a supposedly magical idol of some sort. It is apparently some sort of smaller ancient statue; primarily (tainted) silver, and closely resembling Kali images I have seen.

Not much happens as we search and converse informally. We wander about through a “castle” (or possibly an abandoned temple) which actually seems more like the high school building on the inside (the dream manifests an unfamiliar, or likely fictional, location out of a familiar location - this is a recurring natural aspect of my dreams). Revae M, a female classmate (she was sometimes seen as a “know-it-all snob” as far back as fifth grade and was sometimes perceived as having no sincere friends) ends up in another part of the “castle” (or temple) somehow. Steve makes a joke about her probably thinking she owns the place and suggests we find the idol before she does.

Eventually, the idol seems to be in the “basement” (or dungeon?). There are some enjoyable scenes which were fairly common at the time. They involved somehow “surfing” down the stairs on our feet (fairly swiftly) without needing to walk down - and the act creates a sort of intense feeling of freedom. I have even done this a few times in recent dreams. In some cases, it seems extremely vivid and realistic (sometimes triggering lucidity) even though it is not really possible in the manner it is done in the dream. I find myself doing this in dreams of my old high school, sometimes swiftly moving past others on the steps, and the boarding house on King Street; I even somehow slide around the ninety-degree turns quite easily in both locations.

In this dream however, it is possible that the presence of the idol is causing us to have the “ability” to slide downward, which has negative connotations, almost as a subtle warning depending on the viewpoint.

We find a small somewhat semicircular nook in the wall and realize that Revae has taken the idol, which is actually quite small if the wall recess is anything to go by, even smaller than a human hand.

We walk around and eventually find the silver idol (which again, looks a bit like Kali) lying on the floor on its side. Over time, we somehow realize that the idol is actually now Revae, or rather, she has been “absorbed” into the idol and trapped. We place the idol back and leave the “castle” (or temple) and the news seems to be shared with other classmates about how Revae is now “gone”. However, there is some ambiguity here (or perhaps a dream “reset” and partial “replay”) whereby, there may have never been an idol in the first place and Revae was the first to become one through some sort of curse by going into a particular room or area or just by thinking a certain way in the particular room.

Revae M seemed to symbolize the “unattainable female” (although it is likely also relative to her status of “unworthy” regarding my general outlook on life, based on her false view of being “superior” as a rule), an aspect that seemed relative to each dream where she appeared.

Using the school building to “define” the castle/temple is not a first-time event. There are several occurrences of this in my early childhood dreams. It is likely relative to attempting to take the mystery out of the ambiguous nature of the public education system and the sometimes both fabricating and condescending nature of authority. The basement classrooms in my school have also been seen in dreams as a castle dungeon with obvious symbolic parallels relative to transient situational perspective (relevant to exaggerating the comparisons).

This dream also appeared to have a precognitive layer:

Morning of December 5, 1974. Thursday.



I am in the Cubitis living room with my father. We are both sitting on chairs. There is an impossibly large accordion near the southwest area of the room, standing upright and slightly taller than a person. The bass section with the bellows is separated from the other part and revealing a sort of eerie “tunnel” or more like a hallway inside the bellows and implied gateway to “another world”. A glow comes from inside the “hallway” which seems longer on the inside than the outside as the bellows are not stretched out that much, probably only about a quarter of the length possible (relative to a real accordion). My father is not speaking. It is more like an unusual contemplation by both of us of this implied “portal”. Nothing else happens though my dream at this point is very vivid. I do not think about going into it or what could come out of it, I am just aware it is there.

Morning of November 30, 1974. Sunday.



I am wandering around in an unfamiliar area yet somehow am also aware it is part of my school. I find a large utility room, seemingly underground, which has a portal into another dimension in a west wall. This portal starts out as a very large, long square tunnel or metallic hall, somewhat like part of a huge ventilation system - yet large enough for a person to stand fully upright within. All of the sides; floor, ceiling, and walls; are like thin aluminum but not as pliant as would be the case in reality. Still, I make a sort of hollow clomping sound (with nuances somewhat like flexing roofing tin) as I walk through the silvery hall towards an unknown destination. At one point I notice a very large pipe with green sludge flowing out.

After seemingly a fair amount of time turning down various identical passageways, I end up in another world, apparently an alien planet. The race of human-like beings are about seven feet tall on average and have striped purple and white skin in a zebra-like pattern. Their features remind me vaguely of a more detailed and “realistic” Doctor Seuss character (such as a hairless Grinch) as previous in-dream aliens have sometimes appeared, but still with that sense of cartoon-like unlikelihood in conscious afterthought.

The dominant focus is of a giant beige-brown cobra (about six feet high when in striking position) that is known as “Terra Cotta”. It is originally kept in a cage of sorts by the “Zebra Men” but gets out shortly after I enter their world. It follows me back into my world (yet does not pose any direct threat at any time). Several friends and I plan to trap it back in its own world again, the main one being Charles D on his bicycle in one scene. There is some discussion of using it as a money-making endeavor with a carnival or some such, and also something about writing a book, but this does not clarify or continue.

For some reason, “Terra Cotta” seems a very familiar titular form in-dream at one point, apparently via a false memory, of being the name of a well-known war movie; I think about Pearl Harbor. In real life, after my dream, I mentioned it to my best friend Toby T on the school bus and he apparently had a similar association.

A partial influence of this dream may very loosely be based on the terra cotta warriors (also written as terracotta and terra-cotta) which I had not really known much about at this time. There is a terra cotta “monk with cobra” in Mianyang, China.

Morning of November 23, 1974. Saturday.



This was not that clear of a dream (that is, not that vivid regarding dream self awareness). I wander into an area near a small city in possibly another country (possibly in the Middle East though this is not certain) and it is very narrow even though there are many tall commercial buildings. Everything, including every building and structure, is “unrealistically” narrow, almost as if it was purposely designed to be about half the size of a typical alley width. There is at least one outdoor area that seems to be selling clothes but with the seeming essence of a magazine vendor. I see a jetliner fly overhead (from my left to my right) at one point in the final moments (with even a vague awareness of white noise), and I see several people walking around. However, just on the outskirts of the main part of town, I am somehow aware that there may not be enough space for me to even walk down the street or sidewalk. I do not really feel trapped, just puzzled and slightly annoyed.

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This short dream, though somewhat unique in my own lifelong dreaming history (though there have been other settings with limited space, sometimes relating to narrowing or truncation leading to instigation of the waking process), follows the same generic pattern in meaning as hundreds of other dreams.

Typically, coming out of an alley in a dream brings on astounding vividness. That does not happen here as I remain in the same general area for the most part.

Anything relating to the selling of clothing relates to the waking transition and "preparing” the temporary waking self (even though this form is sometimes incorporeal or hybridized into unusual forms, not necessarily even human).

The typical waking sign of the airplane flight (sometimes rendered as a flying bird or other feature including a model airplane or very distorted airplane parts) is seen here near the ending.

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2 minutes 30 seconds to read.

Saturday morning, 16 November 1974. (Reviewed Sunday morning, 28 August 2022.)

"Hot Stuff's Day Out"

Dream # 2,889-01.



My dream begins in an unrealistic version of my Cubitis bedroom. There is no west wall, so the room is open to the outside. The house sits atop a hill that overlooks a forest in an unknown region in daylight under a blue sky.

I walk to where the floor ends. Instead of my feet slipping forward with me falling backward (as occurs in the first post-hypnagogic dream of every sleep cycle), REM atonia results in vivid vestibular-motor phasing with the blissful sensation of somersaulting down the hillside over the tall grass. The event has the essence of slow motion.

After I stop somersaulting upon reaching the foot of the hill, my dream self’s imaginary body temporarily modeling my sleeping position at this point, auditory phasing initiates as one of the only “narrators” I have experienced in the dream state. (Otherwise, such a transition is typical, as vivid phasing responses often occur with linearity. For example, hallucinatory vestibular-motor phasing triggers hallucinatory auditory phasing here.)

The unseen narrator, speaking in a loud unfamiliar voice with a British, Australian, or New Zealand accent coming from an unknown overhead source, does not express awareness of my presence. He seems to be engaged in a formal voice-over for a PBS documentary. I look up and see a statue several feet away that resembles an Easter Island statue, except it is only about eight feet high. The narrator talks about “African gods.” (Yes, I know Easter Island and Africa are in different regions of the world, but dreams often render falsehoods to prevent confusing dream content with real-world aspects.)

In my dream’s final scene, I watch three unfamiliar male explorers (probably in their forties) ascend the hillside. They are wearing beige safari outfits. I am on a cliff without the implication of having climbed up (no slope navigation, otherwise regular in my dreams). I enter a cave with the men, though they seem unaware of my presence. (One of the men vaguely reminds me of Abel from DC’s “House of Secrets.”)

An adult version of Hot Stuff the Little Devil (a Harvey comic book character) walks out from a deeper part of the cave to greet the men. The men appear terrified, remaining motionless, but I find the situation hilarious. The amusing “devil” wears a diaper (as in the comic book). There seems to be no threat, only a curious comedic essence. (A demon or devil would not otherwise appear in a lucid dream or most dream states with any level of self-awareness because of conscious bias, that is because I know they do not exist.)

My vestibular-motor phasing response resulting from REM atonia has occurred throughout every sleep cycle since childhood. Managing this physiological event or integrating spontaneously into the phasing effect is unrelated to the misconception of “astral projection,” a term that a legitimate lucid dreamer would never use.

Statues are a fundamental response to my intuitive, metacognitive, or lucid recognition of REM atonia that occurs throughout all dreams in healthy people. This attribute was one of the first natural and self-evident properties I recognized about “lucid dreaming” (or any mode of dreaming) at age 4, long before I heard the term. (On a side note, someone who “interprets” dreams in contrast to recognizing causality could not be a lucid dreamer despite any claims they might otherwise make.)


In addition to statues being an intuitive or lucid response to REM atonia, caves also regularly appear. However, it is often in induction rather than an outcome (as in this instance). Caves are how I intuitively (or lucidly in hypnagogia or post-hypnagogia) perceive my entry into a deeper sleep.

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Morning of December 15, 1974. Sunday.



“Doom (Ab Initio)” - my original dream journal title (age 13) - was a sort of movie-like dream relating to the end of the world, as “doom” was set forth (as a “seed”) in the very beginning of mankind (whether by intent or some sort of “divine logic”) - related to the term “void ab initio” somehow, as there is a link between space and it being another kind of “void” (the original meaning being “of no legal effect” rather than a great, open, “empty” expanse - of course space is not empty in entirety). The term “ad astra per aspera” in my dream, which I think is related to the name of the rocket which friends and I travel on (and linked to a different dream from 1979 with a similar scenario), is translated as “to the stars through difficulties” (although there are numerous variations of this phrase in English, including such as “through adversity to the stars” and “a rough road leads to the stars”). Even though mankind supposedly “ends” in my dream, a type of man will exist in other parts of the universe much later on, after centuries pass. (Some sort of changed DNA?) My dream seemingly implied that modern man was never meant to be a “real” creation of God, using the term “to be treated as invalid from the outset” (void ab initio).

Even though this dream seemed somewhat like a “normal” science-fiction story dream (far more common around this time period, I would say) there were also other reflections on a more philosophical level, many ideas of which did not survive the journey into waking up…or maybe the forgotten bits were just gibberish.

Morning of November 9, 1974. Saturday.



Two small creatures are arguing, but it seems more like I am hearing or reading a script at times. They are in my father’s old room (south end of the house) in the dark under a bed that is aligned along the west windows. One is like a small lobster or crawdad (a play on “father” and his comedic routines or “crawl dad”?), the other like a small crab. I am mostly only aware of their odd shadowy forms at one point. One is a “gig”, the other a “wag” (not sure which is which - probably the lobster is the “wag”, as a lobster has a tail).

They argue about which one of them is better at various things, including standup comedy and what seems like an old Vaudeville (“Vaude” rhymes with “Claude”, both my father’s first name and mine) routine with each blaming the other about the end of Vaudeville. Not much happens. There is a point where they mostly end up only saying “…but I’m a gig” and “…but I’m a wag”. (“Gig” is the first part of “giggle” which relates to comedy and laughing, and “wag” is also short for “waggle” with the same last four letters as “giggle”.)

I try to think of what the term “Gigs and Wags” means, and think “wigs and gags” after waking. I Googled the term “Gigs and Wags” but only got one match - a typo in a 1925 newspaper ad that reads “Gigs and Wags gons renovated” when it was supposed to be “Gigs and Wagons”, I think.

I think this relates to plays on “Vaude”, “giggle” (again, for “gig”), “crawDAD”, and “crab” (in that my mother sometimes called herself a “crab” and was also a Cancer by the so-called zodiac sign). It may be a comedic or “downplayed” dream restaging of a lesser argument between my parents (which was in the back of my mind later on) as well as relate to my father’s celebrity status, though he was not primarily a comedian but a musician/singer (also in reference to “craw” for throat as he actually used that word to mean throat at times). It also relates, outside of the actual conversation (where the sex of the voices was not quite ascertained) the difference between male (lobster or crawdad in this case - and with a “tail” - which in Latin becomes the term for the male reproductive organ) and female (crab - some of which have a somewhat oval body and no “tail”).

Morning of November 9, 1974. Saturday.



This is perhaps one of my funniest early teenage dreams (firstly at 13) that there were a few versions of (eventually “practiced” lucidly into a fully comedic dream ending the same way as the original) and which I also wrote a detailed story of years ago including additional elements which different dream versions manifested randomly.

The main characters are me, my best friend Toby T, and a version of Brenda W who looks and sounds quite different and seems to be a symbol of my unknown wife-to-be as with most dreams she featured in (but not all). It starts out in my bedroom in Cubitis, sometime in the morning around nine o'clock, and on a Saturday. Toby and Brenda had both walked from their houses, which are not all that far from mine but did not see anything unusual, apparently.

There is a smaller orange spacecraft that is mottled with a darker brownish orange in a sort of fancy “rounded flame” design. It is to the southernmost edge of my house, on my side (east) of the highway. The spacecraft looks much like a larger Volkswagen Beetle without wheels and is facing north. The two “aliens” that walk about, seemingly looking for certain kinds of flowers or weeds, seem very mysterious in a way, but actually look mostly like thinner “lighter” versions of the Apollo astronauts and their faces are not visible through the helmet. Looking at the “face” of their helmets, I am reminded much of the screen of an Etch-a-Sketch but with a more mysterious “glow” somehow.

The “V” of the Volkswagen symbol may be relevant here due to my life-long layered associations with this special letter (relating to higher levels or a play on “higher planes” as well as the formation birds fly in). Also, at the time in real life, I had a large orange model Volkswagen Beetle (remote-control, and which ran on real fuel - it made a lot of noise, somewhat like a miniature lawn mower) that my father had gotten me for a Christmas and birthday combo, but I had not played with it for awhile at that point.

The three of us talk for awhile about the possible intent of these aliens. They otherwise move and walk about just like normal men. We consider how one of us should hide on the spacecraft to see where they go from here or maybe even see where they came from. I decide to volunteer for the mission. Eventually, something interesting happens in which this dream references a past dream as if it really happened (recurring). Brenda is able to help me become invisible with some sort of witchcraft (Wendy reference likely linked to the “Casper Spaceship” series) so that I will be able to hide on the spacecraft prior to their leaving. (This comes from a much older dream where I became invisible through the power of a smaller candy-cane-shaped walking cane and was able to help her marionette play be the most successful at the school.) She is also able to somehow hypnotize the aliens from a distance as an additional precaution that they will not be able to see me at any point. She plays around by creating a simple “happy face” (eyes and mouth only) on the front of the helmet/visor of the supposed aliens in an Etch-a-Sketch-like fashion.

I eventually go outside and into the backseat of the spacecraft, on the right side. There is no fear or concern, but there is a very strange emotion of leaving my home and not seeing it again as well as an odd feeling of being ready to leave the planet itself but still with a strange sadness. (The mood and sensations of this entire dream event in the last section was somewhat precognitive in the exact way I felt in real life upon riding an airplane the first time, something I physically had not experienced but which was correctly represented in my dream somehow; emotionally, mentally, and physically; yet also precognitive to the closer upcoming time of our actual move from that location in Cubitis by car.) The two aliens come into the craft from both sides at the same time, the inside being mostly just like an actual Volkswagen Beetle with a few additional airplane-like indicators. They do not notice me. We start to ride along (somewhat like a hovercraft at first) and eventually rise into the air, going faster and faster. It is a strange sensation. However, Brenda’s hypnosis seems to have worked too well and they seem unsure of what to do. In fact, they just sort of sit for awhile as if forgetting what some of the controls are for, mostly seeming stupefied at their predicament. Although I cannot see their faces, I see them turn to look at each other a couple times (though seeing only the sides of their helmets).

Soon, the telephone lines become a potential hazard and the craft rocks and dodges them somewhat randomly with a few near-misses. Eventually the craft goes really fast but slows again, seemingly over southern Mexico or the northern area of South America (although I get the impression of Cleveland, Ohio for some reason, but that seems illogical in light of the residents and general look - although we were supposedly going north, not south or west). I notice that the two aliens/Apollo astronauts have vanished completely (apparently from Brenda’s magic being too powerful), both becoming a small pile of silvery dust in their seats (my Etch-a-Sketch had leaked silver dust in real life - I even ended up cracking it open to look inside but of course I immediately threw it out worrying about being poisoned). The spacecraft plunges downward, landing “perfectly” on the top of a merry-go-round in a playground or park (I am aware it is a Saturday) with a large number of Mexican or Brazilian children running about, some playing in sprinklers and laughing loudly at the spacecraft. I am aware that none of them speak English, yet I still feel a compulsion to ask in English (more to the implied unseen “hidden cameras”) “Hey, anyone know how to fly this thing?” A Latino boy of about nine jumps into the front looking around curiously and laughing in a cheerful way (Interestingly, I sense his name is Lorenzo, which I realize at this point is now the name of my next-youngest son but named after a grandfather). I get a slight impression of the song “Saturday in the Park” (1972 album Chicago V - another “V”). Thus it ends as a comedy farce which seems to color my day in a humorous, useful way regardless of the “failed” outcome.

There are a few precognitive layers in this as is often the case. One, the appearance of Brenda with a different personality representing my not-yet-known wife. Two, the feelings of leaving our home in Cubitis to move to Wisconsin when at the time of this dream, I did not know we would be moving and I had not even considered it (as well as the later airplane ride nuances). Three, the orange colors of the “spaceship” remind me of the U-Haul trailer my father got during that same move later in real life. Four, the recurring idea of “getting past Mexico” to continue on across the ocean to be with my soulmate in Australia. Five, the young boy named Lorenzo - my future son at the time?

Morning of November 3, 1974. Sunday.

Dream #: 2,876-07. Reading time: 52 sec.



In my dream, Susan R is sitting outside on a brick fence in Arcadia late at night, and I am standing, facing her. She tells me that something will eventually be happening to take me on a different path, away from her (implying destiny, with a sense of finality and certainty).

On cue, a Catherine wheel detaches, or someone throws it from somewhere unknown in the distance (perhaps three or four blocks away), and it moves high up into the sky. I think of shooting stars (even though the feature is first going upward before arcing downward). I am unsure what could have propelled it like this. Susan tells me that I will hear my name in a song relative to this event. My “dream girl” (Zsuzsanna before we met) connects to my destiny.

Though there is the essence of eeriness, it is not ominous. I watch the small and distant object on an arced curve, soon resembling a glowing pinwheel. (The scenario seems partly influenced by reel three of a “Casper the Friendly Ghost” View-Master pack, titled “The Falling Star,” where an anthropomorphic five-pointed star befriends Casper.)

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The song “Catherine Wheels” (by Crowded House, 1993) uses my first name (Claude). Zsuzsanna and Paul Hester shared a brief correspondence, and he hugged her once in waking life.

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Morning of November 1, 1974. Friday.



Note that this dream journal title came long before any other associated names which I have since learned of (though I have never seen anything related to the “Dinosaucer” series that apparently first aired in 1987 and do not know much about it at all).

This dream ends a little like the flying saucer dream from my childhood, though a brontosaurus emerges in this one (somewhat snake-like) instead of the apocalyptic elephant. This dream is much shorter than the elephant version and is not as emotional upon ending (and does not directly imply the end of the world as in the elephant dream).

After hearing about reports of a possible alien invasion in my dream (from my mother’s large pale green radio), I find myself near my school. The single flying saucer that eventually lands looks like the one from the original “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (from 1951). I do not recall much vivid detail other than the brontosaurus neck and head emerging from the door of the flying saucer. (I never see the body at any point.) There seems to be an eerie (though unrealistic) contrast between the dinosaur’s head and neck and the shadow it casts near the outer area of the spacecraft.

It is possible that there is an association with a cereal prize/premium that was called “Noggin Nodders” (from Kellogg’s). I had several of every piece in the set in different colors. The one that seemingly influenced this dream in part was a snake head emerging/wobbling from a log.

Night of October 23, 1974. Wednesday.



I am in my middle school library, in eighth grade, the middle area of the first aisle, and it seems an atypical time for being there, perhaps even at night. There are two girls together at another large table, south of me, facing me (though I originally seemed to be seated facing north; my dream apparently “jumping” into a different orientation). I ignore their presence for a time (one being Patty A, which is not feasible, as she would have been in high school this year). I get the strong impression that the very large boa constrictor (which was killed in real life during a break-in with much other damage to my school, by continuously being struck against the wall) is in a vivarium about halfway up on a long bookcase, between rows of books. There is a sort of vague dream within a dream (more like a daydream within my dream) that I somehow indirectly protect the girls from the escaped snake and also an impression that it crawled near their feet without them realizing it. This also seems like some sort of brief “reset” in a typical dream “replay” at one level. (Regarding the antique car in the next paragraph - “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” - there is an odd association with Patty’s friend Olga, regarding the sound of the name being similar to the car horn sound “ooga”.) Nevertheless, I could not imagine what kind of person or persons would indulge in such activity regarding the real-life events concerning the break-in, especially in thoughtlessly killing the pet snake. There were also bomb scares in real life (especially in May of 1974), and evacuations that year.

From to my left on the shelf, midway up, I pull out a very large, heavily annotated edition of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” which also oddly seems to be Bible-like (possibly because of the serpent association). I get the impression that the library is also an airport - in that there is a larger airport within the library rather than the other way around. I contemplate the possible likelihood of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” actually being one of the vehicles used in flight to and form the supposed airport. Not much else happens, although I sense I am supposed to be in a classroom at the time but am not due to stubbornness and disinterest (and I am also somewhat concerned about not being dressed appropriately and seemingly wearing light blue and white vertically striped pajamas at one point).

There seems to be a lot of strange criticism of the book in the annotations (with various notes on how unlikely or ambiguous each paragraph’s events are), and implying the author (Ian Fleming) was in a psychiatric hospital at the time he wrote it as well as unable to walk or move much. I also wonder if any of the airplanes from this place would be safe to travel on, also contemplating my leave of school with no plan to come back because of the possible lack of safety, as I falsely recall that flying in a poorly maintained aircraft is how I get to and from school. I do not question any of the various errors in my dream scene perspective (such as school-library-airport composites). Supposedly “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” in-dream is considered the worst book ever written according to critics, also wrongfully implying it being solely for ages four and under. In reality, I really liked the movie (and the book was not bad in my opinion, either) though never took critics seriously in any way as it is, though as can be expected the name “Chitty” was altered to its expletive form by classmates and even kids from the elementary school.

Night of October 18, 1974. Friday.



This dream was mostly influenced by a movie I had finished watching prior to going to bed. It involved being on a submarine, though my imaginary dream body is implied to be phased out of the dream itself so that nothing threatens me despite the three-dimensional visual quality of the imagery and the realistic varying distance orientation of the different audio sources.

I mostly only see close-up images of snakes. Their heads rise up at times as if they are aware of me, but I am never touched or threatened.

I seem to be lying on a bunk-bed at one point, which is a bit uncomfortable. I can clearly hear the snakes hissing. What is unusual is that the hissing of the snakes eventually seems to be caused by some sort of electricity that is somehow “melting” them. I see liquorice-like sections drip slightly and fall from a horizontal metal grill. (This is not the first time when electricity has seemingly melted features in a dream, which is autosymbolism for the neural energy of the conscious self identity by way of the preconscious in dissolving the illusion of a dream.) I do not see any other people at any time.

Eventually, I become aware that this “electricity” also sounds like Alka-Seltzer fizzing in a glass of water. I watch a few more snakes hang by their heads and melt, reminding me of the human intestine, though a few are also lying on the floor. There is eventually a vague eeriness of the semi-lucid realization of bilocation, though first in thinking of not being in my Cubitis bedroom (the bed longways along the north wall with the head at the west area at the time in reality) but instead, being deep under the ocean, not quite claustrophobic, though this awareness transforms into the ambiguity of liminal space, where I become semi-lucid just prior to waking, deciding not to reenter my dream. Additionally, the point at which I was on a bunk bed was an obvious dream state indicator, the subliminal awareness that I am asleep in bed.

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Firstly, there was primary influence from “Fer-de-Lance”, the 1974 TV movie. Secondly, I typically associate snakes with the human intestine, and taking Alka-Seltzer prior to sleeping augmented this association.

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Night of October 15, 1974. Tuesday.



The companion to this entry can be found here: “The Gate” connection

This was another dream about being underground and near a “gate” to an “underworld” - a very long sparsely recurring dream that I had also written as a longer story, called “Diamond Cave” - which had a large number of different ideas and imagery, a few having been similar to the later movie “The Gate” (but with far more additional mixed elements) - including the “eye on the palm of the hand” symbol. The diamond-like patterns through much of it was a type of in-dream hypnagogic-like imagery that was also common at that time. I had also illustrated some of the easier-to-illustrate parts, such as the “flatworm demons” seen at the end of my dream.

There is a scene near the beginning of several of my friends (including Toby T and Johnny C). They are sleeping (or in suspended animation?) in five mostly transparent coffins made of diamonds and turning about in an implied pentagon shape, floating in the air in the semidarkness in an undefined area.

There are later - geodes with diamond-like light patterns that glow and “dance” with various holographic light patterns (mostly bluish), like a swaying curtain that also crosses over itself. This was possibly inspired by a Donald Duck comic book story that implies meteorites are filled with precious jewels like diamonds, opals, and rubies - which was a recurring theme for a few weeks when much younger - something I even believed for a short time. Also, it seems as if the “diamond coffins” are some form of large casket-shaped transparent geodes kept afloat by magnetism.

There is a long-lasting scene of running through a very long hall or underground tunnel (or a fancy marble hall built into the underground tunnel, yet with imposing tree roots near divided larger doorway-like sections). I am moving past endless statues on each side of me that represent Greek gods and goddesses, mostly “good”, a few “demonic” or less human-like in anatomy. There is a sort of teal hue in parts of the imagery.

My dream’s last scene is of a larger “conference room” in an underground cave. It is filled to capacity with arrow-headed flatworm-like “demons” of perfectly alternating black and white figures, “standing”/upright, and turning (slightly twisting around) to look at me, each, either white with black eyes, or black with white eyes, similar to an M.C. Escher picture expressing perfect or near-perfect contrast of these “demonic flatworm” figures. There is one figure that seems to be addressing the rest on some sort of podium or lectern. There is no sound or speaking by them (and no perceived threat).

Looking over notes and doing more research, I have decided to consider this as lightly (impersonally) precognitive, because of the elements matching the later movie’s elements only for these connections (and not as precise in imagery or more multiple-layered details as other precognitive events have typically been):

1. The glowing geodes relating to opening an underground “gate” and being part of the overall theme.

2. Groups of “small demons” seeming to be in “conference” underground (though not of similar appearance).

3. Underground scenes with tree roots very much like my dream in distance, size, and depth orientation.

4. The eerie apocalyptic tree house scene (creating a very pure sense of time displacement), which also goes farther back in other dreams.

5. The fact that in the actual movie, it shows the imp’s arm (after being severed by the door) fall and turn into scattering worm-like creatures.

6. The movie also included a levitation scene.

There are also elements from other recurring childhood dreams that are vaguely similar, such as the idea of “saving the world” by firing a rocket (from “The Day There Was No Sun”).

Another loosely related link is of insects vanishing from a jar - such as the moths in the jar in the movie (but relating to a recurring real-life experience). Both my wife and I when fairly young used to collect smaller water bugs (in my case, smaller water-boatman beetles - the larvae which coincidentally resemble the “worms” in the movie) in glass jars with lids. We both experienced how the beetles (usually around seven or eight or more) seemed to have completely vanished from the sealed jar after only one night. In my case, I simply attributed it to microbes or some such eating them - or maybe weird properties of the ditch water (such as too much acidity), but was never certain of what really happened. There was hardly ever any sediment left in the water or residue at the bottom, either.

There were also a couple times in real life when I went to touch an (aquatic?) orange worm-like thing (that looked and moved somewhat like an accordion) in a puddle (left after a long rain) that mostly vanished after touching, leaving only a few particles and broken pieces within only a few seconds. This also puzzled me and even triggered several dreams about “ongoing creation of life”, such as “Niemeyer’s Penguin” (or “Penguin in a Jar”) and The New Life.

Morning of September 22, 1974. Sunday.

Dream #: 2,834-02. Reading time (optimized): 1 min.



My dream self becomes aware of imaginary kinaesthesia (as a result of vestibular system ambiguity during sleep atonia) before the illusion of riding in a vehicle begins to compensate for my status of being in REM sleep. (There is no “interpretation” in this as it is how my dream originates.)

I am riding in the back seat of a taxi on Highway 17 in Florida in the late morning. It is going south to Arcadia instead of north to my home in Cubitis.

The driver is an elderly black male (who had driven the taxi I had taken in real life a few days previously except that it was to ride home from school).

The overpass crumbles and collapses when the vehicle is at the highest point, and the taxi plummets.

However, as a result of being aware I am in the dream state, I simultaneously phase through the roof of the taxi and fly above the scene without concern. As I look at the setting below, the overpass has become rubble. The landscape seems miniaturized, and the taxi is now the size of a Matchbox Car. This viewpoint is not a result of flying high above the scene, as the distance is seemingly minimal.

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PRECOGNITIVE: Despite this dream resulting from the usual sleep atonia to myoclonus compensation, they dynamited this overpass on October 25, 1988, in real life, and removed the rubble. (Construction began in 1937. See the image if available.) I left Cubitis in 1978 to live in Wisconsin.

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