Blue_Opossum

Night of December 19, 1970. Saturday.



On the eve of my tenth birthday (December 19, 1970), a rather oddly titled article by John Dart appeared in the “Crossroads” newspaper supplement, that being “Is God A She?” I wonder if anyone else even noticed. More importantly, was God “the queen of outer space” (that afternoon’s movie)? “Obviously not all goddesses one meets…are of this sort,” said Dr. Dornish at the end of the article.

One of my most vivid memories from age five is being in the “Miracle Space Ship” in Copeland Park in La Crosse, especially on the day I slid down the big wavy slide for the first time while there was a light rain beginning and my mother was waiting near the bottom (on the right) with arms akimbo and my father just pulling up in a car on the edge of the road, being apparently annoyed by my tentativeness in getting out of the rocket according to what my mother was saying rather loudly. However, I never developed the courage to go all the way up to the top and mostly stopped about one section above what was at the time, a massive slide “above the world”. I listened to the giggles and the metallic thumps above me, sensing the movement and vibrations in this “rocket”, and thought perhaps the whole structure precarious, and even perhaps the other children floating off into nowhere when reaching the top. (Years later, when I returned to Wisconsin as an older teenager, it was far less intimidating.)

In an adventurous dream, Talleah and Yllana are present. Random male classmates serve the background roles. There was the typical composite confusion found in dreams, where I absentmindedly replaced the new slide in the West Elementary School playground with the rocket slide from Copeland Park. This was not problematic as dream characters sometimes do not care less if a setting is even there, let alone rendered with proper detail.

Talleah (Zsa Zsa Gabor) tells me “You needn’t worry dahlink.”

Queen Yllana: “I’m going to allow myself the exquisite pleasure of watching you while I obliterate the Earth.” (I did not yet know what “exquisite” meant. I thought it might have something to do with pinching someone as they did on St. Patrick’s Day if you were not wearing green regardless of any cultural background or considerations.) John C (classmate) does not seem too impressed and seems to be talking a bit too much. I wish he would just stop before the women get more annoyed or call “dial-a-verse” to keep himself quiet.

The playground is the playground though an outpost on Venus at the same time, perhaps bilocated through typical in-dream layered associations. I need to “escape” by climbing the steps, but they go on forever…

Morning of December 19, 1970. Saturday.



I am performing a magic show on the Cubitis carport, in front of a few friends and classmates (at least five or more) on the day before my birthday. There may be others watching me from behind and to either side, including a couple adults (teachers?).

At the time, this was likely a longer and more eventful dream, but I had originally only recorded some of the main details - though it also “reset” and was recurring (including on the same morning or prior evening), though this is mostly a combination of all versions of my dream.

I have a top hat and a wand, as well as a little table and am directly facing the east end of the carport and standing near the area that is just back from the west end of the carport itself. My classmates are really enjoying the show, it seems.

There is a point at which I throw sparkling confetti into the air. At that same moment, it starts to actually snow (in central Florida, yet) and the audience is amazed. The snow is not falling inside the carport, though, but directly outside, creating a feeling of a pleasant surprise as well as a sense of comfort and peace.

There is another point at which I turn a dove into a very large vulture that sits on my shoulder, but there is no sense of danger or fear (although audience members say “Oooh” out of appreciation and a slight wariness, perhaps).

There is another point at which there is orchestral music seemingly coming from nowhere (just as it does in movies and television shows, really). Also, my magic wand grows small branches and leaves. I remember some joyful conversation, but did not remember it after waking.

I turn a matchbox bus into a real school bus (which appears on the highway in the distance and in a way, seems like an “obvious” deception and the magic act sort of losing cohesion, but only in one version of my dream). Also, at one point, it seems the carport is flying in the sky like it is the large basket of a balloon (recurring). I also do a few simple card tricks.

Morning of November 29, 1970. Sunday. (Last checked and clarified on Friday, 12 January 2018.)



In my dream, I had been wandering around in my backyard in Cubitis, seemingly around nine o'clock on a clear morning, becoming more and more lucid. I start to think about taking advantage of this state and enjoying physical interaction with Lisa (who is not present in my dream at any time). I marvel at the clarity of my dream’s environment, finding its realism stunning and wondrous.

I am eventually seated on the ground inside an area within the unfinished part of the large cinder block shed (which my father had built and added to over time), which does not have any roof or walls. I am seated near one of the cinder block columns that is to my right (west). As I am sitting here, facing south (looking in the opposite direction as the main part of the shed) and feeling happy and expectant in my anticipatory musings, I turn slightly to my right to look westerly towards the carport and notice an unfamiliar stray dog walking around and sniffing the ground. I believe it is possibly a black Labrador Retriever. The dog huffs upon noticing me, but does not bark.

I become extraordinarily frustrated. “You dogs are always ruining my dreams,” I bravely shout, with the tone of my frustration dominant and echoing throughout the dream space (though still with my young boy’s voice), expressing my irritation at the presence of a dream state distraction and potential virtual threat and as such, my attention drawn from my previously hopeful lucid intent of feminine contact (even though I spent a lot of time with Lisa in real life).

After a menacing deep growl, the dog teleports from just beyond the east end of our carport (a good distance away), to reappear right behind me. The dog jabs me in the small of my back with his hard nose, triggering the deep tickle spasm in my lower back, which causes me to spontaneously jolt awake. I was annoyed at having such a vivid and well-rendered dream truncated.

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Questions Answered:

What does the aggressive unfamiliar dog in this dream symbolize? The dog is this dream’s RAS (Reticular Activating System) factor. RAS is that which is responsible for regulating wakefulness and sleep-wake transitions. (I had no fear or wariness of dogs in real life and no expectation of such an encounter.) On the one hand, the dog’s assumed lack of obedience symbolizes my dream self’s expectancy of my dream’s non-compliance with my conscious self identity’s desires and potential will. On the other hand, by exclaiming, “You dogs are always ruining my dreams”, I lucidly caused the dog to serve my negative expectation of this dream’s outcome so quickly, that the dog teleported and triggered the waking jolt in my lower back.

Why did you shout “You dogs are always ruining my dreams”? The reason for me negatively addressing the RAS factor was that I was already familiar with the nature of the dream state (and its many different levels) at this time - even as a child (though had not mastered it yet as I mostly have now, though it depends on the level of unconsciousness and the particular stage of the sleep cycle). RAS had already been rendered as dogs in a number of dreams by this time, again, symbolizing my dream state not submitting to my will, analogous to an untrained dog. This sort of aggressive RAS symbolism eventually diminished as I got older and learned more about dreams. (In fact, in a number of recent dreams, a passive German Shepherd had appeared, standing near a a thin vertical pole displaying a pennant at the top, symbolizing my dream’s obedient nature within certain levels of unconsciousness.) Still, RAS does get aggressive and dominating at times (though is often personified rather than being rendered as an animal), as waking is a biological necessity.

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Morning of November 7, 1970. Saturday.



Although this was one of my favorite dreams of this time period, I guess I really was not very good at coming up with more precise titles (or even interesting ones) in many cases (the original title, here, had never been changed to any other title in other transcriptions to sometimes allow for more detail with similar dreams). The song from my dream, which I actually recorded a few times when younger (unfortunately, without any sense of musical taste) - brings fond memories of hilarious incompetence. Then again, this was a “movie soundtrack” in a sense (or more of a “dream soundtrack”). It opens with a showing of not-very-realistic stars as if the camera is moving through space at a fairly slow speed. The higher mid-range male voice moans somewhat slowly and sadly, “Thi-yi-yi-yi-yings…from outer spay-yay-yay-yay-yace…may bring truh-uh-uh-ooh-ble…for the human ray-yay-yay-yee-yace…”



June 2015 UPDATE: After all these years, I have decided upon an interesting viable association with the human hand. Apparently, it was a giant land-going cuttlefish.

The main first scene is a “giant human hand” (the right hand - with bulging but human-like eyes and a crown placed on its “knuckles” with special effects of some kind) that moves from right to left, spider-like (as I have decoded spiders to often represent negative associations with human hands due to their visual matching as even the “Alien” movie did with the “facehugger”, though in a few dreams they had a positive association with human hands in connection with “The Eensy Weensy Spider”), with an eerie stop-motion-like effect on the sand in the area it is “walking” but not quite as much with the “alien monster” itself. The imagery seems to have the same overall mood as the scene from “Dinosaurus” from 1960, where in-dream, I reflect on the sand moving in a similar way as the dinosaur’s body is dragged along the beach (which may be an augmented sense, “amplified” in-dream). The fact that I know this “alien monster” is actually a human hand (moving through a model of the school grounds?) seems to remove all sense of any possible threat from my dream. I find it intriguing how some of my dreams were able to “amplify” the very clear but somewhat artificial feeling of some of these movies from the early 1960s, especially the stop-motion ones like “Mysterious Island” (1961) and “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963), two of my favorites.

Later, however, I am in the high school building where I and other West Elementary students sometimes went to the auditorium in real life to see various shows and such. I am trying to “hide” from a large orange “octopus man” (also with a crown) who is mostly moving around in the dark because of a teacher having sent me to turn the power off to possibly “trap” him due to his supposed poor vision. I am doing this by staying to the right outer side of the doorway as a tentacle moves out from the doorway now and then, moving near me but not touching me. I suppose that I could move to the left and leave the area, but for some reason, I remain near the doorway.

The crowns were quite plain and similar to crowns in several other dreams. Mostly orange-tinted and with a seemingly engraved triangle waveform on the band, similar to the zigzag pattern on Charlie Brown’s shirt, but not quite as thick. Sometimes, I get the sense of two short antennas on either end of the crown, with a lightning bolt moving between them. I had drawn pictures with this feature during this time period.

There are a few other scenes involving Toby T and the fact that we will probably still be going to school even with all these strange creatures moving around town. There are also parts of music playing, from the song “Aquarius” from “Hair” - and I get the sense it is related to “this movie” in-dream. At one point, there is a giant bat and human composite, which was not mentioned in all documentation instances.

New research implies that “Zontar: The Thing from Venus” was also possibly an influence. It had aired after “Dinosaurus” on the previous evening on “Shock Theatre”.

Morning of November 5, 1970. Thursday.

Dream #: 1,417-01. Optimized 2 min 15 sec read.

Using as simple a writing style as I can (using several types of readability software and dream causation maps), this entry looks at an early childhood dream. It had high but passive metacognition and autosymbolic concurrence with dream state awareness and seemed quite long despite its simple theme.

My dream’s location is an isolated river adjacent to woodlands, with a boat ramp on one bank. I remain on the side with the boat ramp in the early morning. It is most reminiscent of Lettuce Lake, a section of Peace River (in Florida), I had frequented in waking life.

Wayne, a chubby Floridian male schoolmate, is present in my dream’s final segment, though I had been in the area for some time before his arrival. The water lowers over time, revealing additional anchors.

There was a storm from the north (though my dream self does not arrive or have physicality until after it occurs). It caused several valuable anchors to wash up over the boat ramp and riverbank. Some are ancient, and some are modern. They have various designs and are made of different materials, though most are metal.

I think of collecting these anchors as a treasure, but Wayne arrives and claims they are his, inferring the “finders keepers losers weepers” cliché, even though I was in the area before him. “I found it,” he says, approaching one of the anchors I had been studying before he arrived.

Later, I am the only one at the location, but I eventually accept it is all imaginary, and I wake for the day.

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From early childhood, in many dreams, there is a dream character who serves as a precursor (or catalyst) to wakefulness as my metacognitive navigation of the dream state reaches its conclusion, primarily from the varying levels of mental and physical duality that only the dream state manifests. (It does not mean the character “represents” me in any way, as it is mainly to differentiate between the fictions of dreaming, sans enigmatic space, and the stability of viable wakefulness and its genuine memory serving as an “anchor.”) I have used many names for this predictable process over the years. Perhaps the “sleep-wake monitor (or mediator)” is one of the better names, as it represents the activity of RAS (Reticular Activating System) and its supraliminal navigation that mediates sleep-wake transitions.

Water lowering over time, as I approach wakefulness, has occurred in thousands of dreams since childhood. (I do not even include the otherwise predictable process in many online entries.) This attribute correlates with acknowledging water bodies as REM sleep and has an association with ultradian rhythm. As I wake, the dynamics of sleep lower and fade. I used to view it as somewhat of a tidal analogy. Even so, I have found that moon phases in real life appear with a different phasing pattern in dreams.

Finally, the anchors are this dream’s representation of my metacognitive awareness of REM atonia. Chains also correspond with such recognition. (An anchor is also otherwise found on the end of a chain, though not in this dream.)

To clarify what this dream “means,” it corresponds with the same phasing responses as many of my dreams.

Wayne claims “I found it” as a preconscious pathway to viable conscious thinking above the imaginary dream self. This function also increases my metacognitive awareness of dreaming. It is not a factor resulting from waking life.

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Night of October 30, 1970. Friday.



There is a knock at the front door of my Cubitis home seemingly at night, which may be a trick-or-treater regardless of the possible later time (and the implied in-dream date may be a day later). My mother answers (I may have been doing something earlier in my dream but I do not recall that part). It is an allover short-haired orange monster standing there in our carport (but otherwise has all the anatomical form of a human). However, it soon turns out to be my older brother Jim, holding the full-head mask in the bend of his left arm like a helmet after removing it (and I also have a vague idea that it actually is a motorcycle helmet, though he did not have a motorcycle in real life until much later). He seems happy and optimistic. (I had not seen him for some time in real life, since living at North Monroe Street.) In real life, he was jovial and never “monster-like” in any way in my perspective, though he was overweight most of his life.

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This rather short dream had two precognitive layers. You might find it strange that saying a visitor showing up on Halloween after my dream was precognitive. However, this really was the first and only time we ever had a trick-or-treater (and it was after dark) while living in Cubitis for nearly ten years - and my mother answered the door. Not only that, it was an older and stockier teenager (high school student) who neither my mother nor myself knew the identify of, but he was wearing a homemade paper mask and not a costume of any kind. It seemed a bit eerie (and of the same slightly anxious mood as the door was answered while I had been in the same location as in my dream). The second facet was that my older brother Jim came to visit us later, which was the first and only time he had been in Cubitis. We did not know at the time that he would be visiting as such.

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Night of October 19, 1970. Monday.



I am at a cocktail party very late at night on our carport at Cubitis even though I am only a young child. It may be around two o'clock in the morning. I had been playing with a friend (Eddie from my class), with a large, rubbery and mostly hollow all-orange toy racing car with driver (the “midget” kind that looks a bit like a shoe and the person leans way back to drive them). I clearly hear the glasses and ice-cubes clinking and party chatter, and see that everyone is fancily dressed. Suddenly, there is a much enhanced silence as I suddenly feel lucid. My dream becomes extremely vivid, of the “like real life” perception, even after waking. The silence ends with a few whispers and talk of the ghost of a wolf that haunts the railroad tracks just beyond our back yard beyond the usually weedy area. Soon, there is an eerie howl, and the white, glowing wolf moves quickly down the railroad tracks, going south. For a moment, he seems frozen in time in mid-leap. This is not nightmarish at all, but very enjoyable in its intense eeriness and nonthreatening event.

This dream is type EC2. The orange (associated with October, the month of this dream) toy racing car seen at the adult cocktail party on my carport (while fully in-body throughout as a remarkably stable dream self) foreshadows the waking transition as a downsized conduit symbol. The train coming down the track is my emergent consciousness. The ghost wolf that could be perceived as either “leading” the train, or being “chased” by the train is the hybridization of my temporary waking self (a ghost almost always being a thread of the “incomplete” conscious self in the dream state) and sublimated dream self, offset from the adult cocktail party as reflecting the “pack” - yet as a singular ghost wolf. The imagery is beautiful and extremely vivid and seems to occur in infinite night. The transition echoes as an eerie, but beautiful and very “familiar” howling sound.

Morning of October 17, 1970. Saturday.



It seems to be late morning. I have two small pet bats and I am walking around otherwise on my own in the main part of Arcadia. They are on my arm shooting small but long and forking lightning bolts at each other from their mouths. They express various funny faces when the lightning hits their eyes, mouth, nose, or ears, and eventually even a public US mailbox (which seems important for some reason). There is a vague feeling that I may become embarrassed if this continues in public, but only based on the idea that someone could come along and accidentally get struck by the tiny lighting bolts and blame me. At one point, they sit on my left shoulder (and now it seems as if I am seeing myself while incorporeal) and one licks its “lips” as small lightning bolts from the other bat hit it near the mouth.

As I start to focus more on the mailbox than my pet bats (though I am unsure if I have a letter to mail, though perhaps one my mother gave me to mail for her - though in reality at this time, it was usually my mother that mailed my letters), I begin to wake.

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Note One: The mailbox “seems important” to my mostly non-lucid dream self because it is a symbol for a sustained conscious intent for dream self communication with my conscious self identity to trigger lucidity and augment awareness (first put into practice in December 1966, around age six), though never intended to be rendered literally as here. However, there is duality in this dream (the two bats). This makes me suspect that I am in communication with someone in addition to myself.

Note Two: Lightning is often a real-time dream state metaphor that represents increasing neural activity (dendrite synapse analogy) as a RAS precursor as well as an associated play of the same symbolism based on lightning supposedly “bringing something back to life” (as in the movies “Dinosaurus” and various Frankenstein movies) simply (and obviously) analogous to waking up. (Though in some cases, it reflects physical pain or the residual memory of physical pain.)

Note Three: The very common (over one in five of my dreams) “return flight” waking symbolism factor is here, as the two bats (though they had not been seen flying). In this case, they seem more of an induction remnant, as bats are nocturnal and a symbol of being unconscious. (They are also a circadian rhythms factor which seems out of phase here as my dream’s setting is late morning, probably because of sleeping later on a Saturday yet still focused on the wonder of nighttime.)

Note Four: When Zsuzsanna was a child, her father caught bats in a large jar. Additionally, as there is duality in this dream, I feel that the mailbox is prescient of the fact Zsuzsanna and I wrote to each other before meeting and marrying, especially as bats also symbolize prescience (as in a few other dreams, especially the recurring “Patches” series, which had very detailed long-term prescience relating to Zsuzsanna before I met her or even knew of her real-life existence).

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Resupplemented on Sunday, 8 October 2017.

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Morning of October 11, 1970. Sunday.

Dream #: 1,392-02. Reading time (optimized): 1 min.



“The Visitor” is my original dream journal title from childhood.

There is a house with a supposedly haunted kitchen. I am unsure whose house it is or where it is, though it could be a sister’s house even though there is a commercial venue association at one point, vaguely causing me to think of the Coney Island restaurant in La Crosse where I had not been since 1967, though the rest of the house seems residential. (Houses with commercial features are not uncommon in my dreams.)

People believe in the haunting due to reports of a ghost drinking a glass of root beer from a straw. No one saw a ghost, but other people and I saw root beer lower in a glass until it was gone.

I eventually see that the “haunting” is the result of a daddy-long-legs spider at the top of a drinking straw. It is somehow drinking a full glass of root beer but never grows bigger. Seeing this amusing event creates a cheerful mood. There were resets of my dream, but this final scene was silly. (At one point, the spider seems to have a cartoon face.)

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My dream has subliminal associations with perseverance (as with the “Eensy Weensy Spider” song and fingerplay, the drinking straw being analogous to a water spout). I was unafraid of looking more closely at the presumed haunting. “Out came the sun and dried up all the rain” is another association with water (melatonin) lowering over time (though root beer in this case).

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Morning of October 3, 1970. Saturday. (Original date validated.)



Brenda W (female classmate and friend, as well as an in-dream precognitive “stand-in” for my wife-to-be) is supposedly kidnapped by aliens. I go to find her (somewhere in Arcadia on or near Imogene Street) and “wake up” within my dream to discover that I am aboard a spacecraft and had also been kidnapped. It is apparently the one from the movie “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster” from 1965 (often misremembered as a child as “Frankenstein Vs. the Space Monster”) but looks a little more like the one from the original “The Day the Earth Stood Still” on the outside. The “space monster” is also the same (but is somewhat orange), but is kept in a cage next to Brenda. She is still threatened by the creature as he reaches through the bars of his cage and through the bars of her cage.

The “aliens” (who appear mostly human as in the movie and are basically the “same” ones) attempt to render me unconscious again, trying to get to me when they see that I am awake and walking around. However, I “defeat” them by waving my arms about and somehow outrunning them in the fairly small room. The “monster” somehow escapes from his cage, but I chase him around in a circular comedic scene so that it is not obvious who is chasing whom (much like a scene from the little “magical” walking cane dream relating to the two escaped prisoners). Eventually, he jumps from the spaceship (which is seemingly flying fairly high in the sky above a forest) through a wide doorway. The other “aliens” have also apparently left the spacecraft. I wonder about how to fly the spacecraft for a time and worry about crashing. I look more closely at the forest below. I let Brenda out of the cage and think about jumping.

We do jump - I go first, but I quickly and safely land on the ground - a sidewalk, actually. The forest was a small-scale miniature fake forest and the “spaceship” was only a few feet from the ground and held up near the center by a large post. I then motion for Brenda to jump out as she looks down curiously and with a bit of dawning amusement. It turns out we are near an entrance of the shared (elementary and high school) large cafeteria; the middle area near the longer covered sidewalk that extends over the school grounds. The “aliens” and “monster” were kidnappers in costume and makeup it then seems, but rather of an elaborate setup - perhaps being a part of some sort of hidden camera show, but I still sense they were criminals with intent to do harm. I do not see anyone anywhere and we are apparently safe from further confrontations as my dream eventually fades.

This was a very amusing DDR experience. Brenda was kidnapped, followed by my own kidnapping. Here, my emergent consciousness is associated with the “solving” of the alien event as a mundane fake created and utilized by the kidnappers. It was only a short jump to the ground (rather than the falling transition in many dreams). This is one I made into a story, though from an adult’s point of view, it was probably obvious from the beginning.

Night of September 25, 1970. Friday.



There is apparently a dangerous mostly black (with rust-colored nuances) dog (possibly with rabies) loose in the area, supposedly a Mastiff (or part Mastiff) wandering around in Cubitis, said to only make an appearance and be a threat when there is fog in the area (curiously enough, “something in the fog” is a recurring aspect in some of my more “threatening” dreams - starting with a giant caterpillar “prototype” - or “dogerpillar” - as a toddler). It may be that the atypical or “special” fog itself is making the dog dangerous. (Oddly, as a child, I did not even make the rhyming play of “dog in the fog” as I can clearly see now.) However, it is not certain if he is able to bite or not.

In-dream, I am still somewhat confused over the nature of the “Hounds of the Baskervilles” movie. (It was written as “Hounds” in the newspaper relative to the 1959 Peter Cushing movie, but I have also seen it as “Hound”, which seems to be the valid title according to IMDb.) I am wondering if the “wild” dog is in a muzzle and therefore not as dangerous as implied. I see him through a fog (in the middle of the backyard from the carport), just on the perimeter of the mist, but I run into the house (without taking the time to verify if there is a muzzle or not - as the weight upon me would also be problematic) with a sense my legs will be vulnerable and “feet left behind” (implying I may still live without my feet).

This seems to have been an earlier “prototype” dream for the more vivid and detailed “Dogpile” dream from over a year later, but I had many similar dreams, including lucid ones with this theme. As I have written before, most dogs in dreams of this time period (mostly 1970-1973) were either black or rust-colored and an in-dream threat. There seemed to be no real-life association with this theme.

Night of September 21, 1970. Monday.



This is a long repetitive dream relating to a search (by unknown people, mostly) for Lucille Ball from the “Here’s Lucy” television show. This is the episode where she is skydiving and there is ambiguity in my dream of whether she is still in the air somewhere somehow (not logical of course) or had crashed through a roof.

Lucy herself does not even appear at any point in my dream. Instead, there are several scenes where I am on the roofs of buildings, somehow floating over roofs, and one scene where I am hanging from the ceiling after apparently crashing through the roof in a parachute, though this also seems like some sort of odd pretense (solely using some sort of mental power instead of by physical effort to suddenly establish the scene and setup and my placement, though without lucidity) in attempting to show others what might have happened to Lucy.

In a few segments of my dream, I am only seeing the eaves of roofs and there is also something about television antennas that do not seem to be working correctly (and a few people are even using their televisions to help to find Lucy as if a television had built-in “radar” or a way of scanning the sky). Most of the imagery of the roofs becomes a bit convoluted (almost like a flight of steps in a couple areas) but there is eventually mist and oversimplified (unrealistic) buildings as the main form of the setting.

Update Saturday, 26 March 2016: I can now look at this dream and decode it fully, as I see that it has the same basic metaphorical meanings of the dream state itself that is found in hundreds if not thousands of other dreams.

Included in this dream are:

The “failed flight” metaphor (or “something coming down from the sky”) that is not a negative implication at all but which simply represents the end of the dream (since flying itself - or in fact, contemplating or being aware of anything that flies or floats or is in the air - represents the dream state).

The mist has been a common feature in my dreams though mostly when I was younger. A mist or fog relates to the dream state itself which seems metaphorical for a dream being “not as clear as reality”.

The roofs that have somewhat of a staircase appearance in silhouette are a double play on “coming down”, as a staircase also relates to waking from a dream and whether or not you are closer to waking by going up or down depends on the dream self placement and perspective.

Breaking through a roof (or even parts of a roof being blown away as in a few other dreams) is also related to the waking stage as is breaking through a wall (more so a window) or even coming through a door (which usually creates a shift in awareness for me, though not always related to waking - but is sometimes a transition within the dream as it continues, making a dream much more vivid in many cases).

Antennas also relate to the dream state and the communication of dream self from threads of the conscious self, almost implying a dream being built in the manner of a television broadcast from the conscious self. A television is also a downsizing of the dream itself to distance the dreamer from direct involvement in a scene for whatever reason (and focus on a television seems to serve as both induction and waking preparation).

Sunday, 13 September 1970. 1,364-M1. 1 min 11 sec read.



A tornado approaches Arcadia, Florida, from the southwest in the morning. I do not consider it a threat to my Cubitis home about four miles north of Arcadia, but I wonder if it will reach my school.

At the end of the driveway of Kenny and Karen’s home; is an elevated podium where an unfamiliar dark-haired man of about 30 gives a cheerful lecture about tornadoes. He faces Highway Seventeen. A small crowd stands on the wayside. The man’s head and shoulders are about three feet above the audience as I watch from my bedroom windows. I zoom in on the scene. He uses a pointer stick on a picture of the “tornado” on an easel to his left.

The “tornado’s anatomy” picture is only a series of sparse horizontal lines on a white background. The simple diagram suggests a tornado’s shape, but I am puzzled by its lack of detail.

I think about how the tornado will affect my school. I find myself in my school’s playground. The tornado arrives but is only as high as a single-storey house. I neither feel its wind nor sense peril. I stand on the south side of the hexagonal merry-go-round, thinking I could save my schoolmates.

I grab the merry-go-round’s metal bar and run in a circle to counteract the tornado.

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Note: The end of Kenny and Karen’s driveway is where we waited for the school bus in some semesters.

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My dream begins with the physiological influence of vestibular-motor sensations (from REM atonia). It changes from spontaneous vestibular-motor responses to controlled and more defined.

A tornado approaches, but I know it will dissipate when I spin the merry-go-round. Also, I associate the area where we waited for the bus with expecting the vestibular-motor sensations of riding a bus.

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Morning of September 7, 1970. Monday.



A giant lobster is approaching my school from the west and we all have to leave (I had been in a class on the second floor). When I am outside, east of the building and at a fair distance from it, the giant red lobster approaches from the other side, but the scene does not look right. It is as if the school is now only one large wall with windows (and perhaps now implied as four storeys high), since I can see everything supposedly on the other side rather clearly as the creature bashes his claws on the building. Realistically, I should only have seen the building and not what was behind it through any windows to the other side, as I was down on the ground.

Not only that, the movement in each window seems to be the exact same partial scene and movement somewhat like a fly’s eye view, including what is seemingly duplicated sections of the same pieces of blue sky and arc of lobster claw in the background in each and every window. The simultaneous imagery and movement in each window is almost ominous in itself. Still, I actually enjoyed this dream because of its unusual “rare” nature. Although the “fly’s eye view” has occurred in other dreams (this being only one of two more vivid instances over a lifetime), it seems very rare.



This dream, I think, amusingly enough, was perhaps more influenced by the restaurant commercials shown during “Shock Theatre” than by any monster movies at the time, though “The Black Scorpion” (from 1957) might have had an influence.

Morning of August 29, 1970. Saturday.



In a number of repeating similar scenes throughout what seems a very long dreaming period, I find myself somehow arriving on an island very early in the morning before sunrise, each time for “the first time”, though the repetitive nature of the “resets” is not monotonous or of any type of negative effect. I seem incorporeal for the most part, though sometimes standing on the beach in my physical body. Regardless of my mainly unresolved redundant arrivals, I do not become impatient. There is mainly a feeling of perfection, happiness, and timelessness. I have a vague sense of my “mystery girl” (who may be living near the central area of the island) but I do not see her at any point.

Always in the distance no closer than thirty feet away, is a shadow in the form of a man but is also implied to be feline, with cat ears, and I sense it may be half panther and half man. There is no threat or negative emotion. The overall feeling the character is mostly projecting is neutral though seems to imply a beneficial future and even nostalgia (which seems unusual from a child’s point of view but has happened often with me as a boy). It seems like the creature is somehow always walking along the beach at this time on this seemingly isolated island. There are times when I more vividly perceive that this entity is my own shadow somehow cast from where I am standing on the beach (sparsely recurring including in much later dreams).

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Entry and additional notes confirmed and updated Wednesday, 26 October 2016.

• Mainly influenced by the movie “Terror Is a Man” (November 1959) though again, completely lacking in anything either frightening or threatening.
• Additionally influenced by the Money Cat scene from the animated movie “Gay-Purr-ee” (October 1962).
• Additionally influenced from a previous dream from the night of Friday, December 23, 1966 (“Money Cat” minion saves me).
• As of this writing, my last dream to feature an association with the Shadow Cat as the preconscious essence was “Catlike Shadow Creature and Shopping” from Saturday, September 10, 2016, though it has appeared in a number of other dreams, typically in a dream’s final minutes.
• A beach in a dream represents liminal space and in fact is the most powerful setting of this nature. (See off-site link: The Beach, part 3 - Liminal Space.)
• A cat (or in this case, a panther) mainly symbolizes the nocturnal form of the preconscious (especially in this shadow form), where its origin seems to be (even though cats are active during the day).
• Shadow forms in my dreams are often friendly, helpful, and even radiate love, the opposite of what the majority of other people claim.
• This form of the preconscious sometimes seems to be my own shadow, but in this case, I do not consider that a shadow could not appear in this way (for example, with no wall behind it for it to be logically cast upon), the same fallacy that has occurred in a number of other dreams since early childhood.