memorable

Morning of September 11, 1969. Thursday.



My dream starts with an atypical unseen narrator who says, without emotion: “New York Harbor 1969. The city is a mess”.

I am flying over Manhattan in the first scene. I am semi-lucid and vividly aware of curious saxophone and xylophone music (never heard in real life); a series of repeated staccato notes. My sheet music image (only available on some websites with this entry) is close to what I heard in my dream. There is a later version where the third set of eighth notes in each motif is removed, giving a sense of anticipation.



On websites where the image is not available, the eighth notes (except for the last C, a quarter note) are: C C C C, C D C D, C D C D, E E E E, E F E F, E F E F, G G G G, G A G A, G A G A, A G G F, F E E D, C. The tempo is about 84 at first, though is accelerando. The music becomes a bit more intense yet with a less audible orchestral sound in the background, as if the volume is turned down though later up again. (This effect has happened in other dreams, usually when the level of dream state awareness changes, as sometimes the closer I am to waking, the less number of instruments are heard.)

Looking directly down as I fly, I watch a giant snake swim through the water, moving along on the water’s surface. (As such, my dream’s foundation is the most common form; water induction, as water symbolizes sleep dynamics in real time.) The snake is so large that it knocks aside boats (mostly tugboats) as it moves. However, there is also a brief awareness that the snake is of normal size and the debris is more like small pieces of bark, leaves, and twigs as I seemingly watch the “same” scene much closer to the water’s surface (as if of a small lake) before the implication changes again. At this point I also get the distinct impression that I am standing or hovering in my orb form (while incorporeal) to the left of the doorway in the southwest bedroom (not where I slept) at the same time I am dreaming this (with a vague association with having looked into our full bathtub and toilet while somehow sleepwalking, though I had not been). This bilocated impression (typical of a lot of my childhood dreams) does not continue. Helicopters fly over the Statue of Liberty and there is more news about the attack on Manhattan as apparently giant snakes came from a crashed flying saucer (as if perhaps manlike aliens, though unseen, and possibly from two different planets, lost control of their spacecraft for an unknown reason). There are two kinds of giant snakes that fight each other. One kind seems friendlier to humans. I watch a lot of the monster-movie-like battles though my dream eventually shifts to my home in Cubitis, and my previous lucid threads fade.

I am chasing a baby giant snake (which is my height in its upright “S” form) in a southerly direction, from the end of our driveway, near Highway Seventeen, and moving past the west side of our large culvert. The snake is the recurring Pepto Bismol pink that was fairly common in my dreams around this time period (after my mother had me drink it in real life). It is somehow quickly slithering upright like a standing (vertical) letter S and moving much like a swan. I am fearlessly chasing it, to make it leave the area so that bigger snakes do not eventually come by to investigate. Suddenly, when I get past the neighbor’s house a short distance, the snake looks “confused” (and I get the impression of an actual question mark floating in the air over its head very briefly, a curious feature of other childhood dreams, likely influenced by comic strips) and it turns around to start chasing me. I raise my arms up and out as I am now running away, but as if the scene is meant to be comedic or playful.

This continues for a short time when suddenly, the snake and I are very good friends. We are now at the end of the driveway, where I first found myself chasing it. I am holding the large snake in my arms like a baby, which is eventually even wearing an old-fashioned pale blue baby bonnet and held within a white baby blanket and is now going to sleep.

I am aware that the War of the Serpents will continue, possibly to the point where a lot more regions will be damaged. My parents do not appear at any point, and in fact, I do not interact with anyone I know in real life. Later, I am calm in the presence of a few giant black snakes (though my dream fades when I start flying again). This likely relates to the fact that black snakes were considered good due to a reputation where I lived of them supposedly chasing off rattlesnakes, which seems the main origin of my dream’s otherwise science-fiction theme.

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This dream has two discernible attempts at subliminal reinduction (a non-lucid attempt to vivify or extend the dream state, though I am semi-lucid when my dream begins). Firstly, my dream begins with typical water induction (my most common form of dream state initiation). A snake is the primary (biological) reticular activating system symbol (RAS mechanism), due to having evolved out of the natural fear that primates have of snakes, and thus RAS renders it as the potential waking trigger (in generating enough emotion as an “alert” for the purpose of waking the dreamer to attend to real physical needs), though a snake will sometimes relate to different factors (sometimes literal) and symbolism depending on the dream type, which only the dreamer could understand the origin and validation of in any case.

My first attempt at reinduction (even though I am still in the water as sleep initiation stage, though already with the snake as a potential RAS factor) is evidenced by the music having a similar essence as snake-charming music, to delay RAS waking dynamics. The second attempt is far more obvious and easier to validate. I succeed in harmoniously putting the snake to sleep (which represents willfully though subliminally decreasing RAS dynamics that might otherwise wake me up) at the end of the driveway, which symbolizes the subliminal awareness of eventually needing to wake up and stand at the end of my driveway to wait for the school bus. Dreams are very easy to understand once ignorant superstition and “interpretation” is cast aside in the acknowledgement of what dreams actually are. It should be emphasized that this dream began with conscious choice of first deliberately “stepping into” (and then flying within) my dream’s water-based environment (as I have done thousands of times since childhood and for over fifty years), which is also why the bilocated essence regarding another bedroom (obvious dream state indicator) in our house came into focus. (It should also be obvious that the baby snake additionally symbolizes a mild stomach ache, and the RAS “taming” of it for a few reasons; one, actually being the color of stomach ache medicine, two, being shaped like a human intestine, and three, stomach pain associated with a snake that squeezes its prey.)

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Edited for clarity and resupplemented on Sunday, 29 October 2017.

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Morning of September 6, 1969. Saturday.



I am floating through the jungle in my “orb” form but still seem fully in-dream regarding dimensionality and perspective even though much of the scenery reminds me of more detailed paintings from certain animated movies.

I move into a clearing and seem to be with a body at this point, but still hovering somewhat. I see the ruins of a large castle. (It is probably illogical to think of it as a castle deep in the jungle - as it could have been some other sort of ancient ruins, yet still of the kind typical of Tarzan movies - this is just how I “saw” it at the time).

There is a large group of tigers inside a large, mostly featureless room of the ruins when I look through the window, which is rectangular but with a semi-circular top. These tigers do not see me at any point. They are sitting with their back legs down, like with the typical domestic cat position. Even though they are all tigers, I see or sense unique characteristics and subtle color differences in each. One tiger is sitting before the group (seemingly facing south in my in-dream perspective only) and lifting his right leg in the air as if to make a point. They are planning on taking over the world and I contemplate who I should tell about this “secret” plan. The tigers actually look friendly, though, with a sort of animated appearance. In some ways, there is a resemblance to certain art-like aspects of the Walt Disney movie “The Jungle Book” (from 1967), but I had not yet seen it all at this time, only shorter clips.

In real life around this time, there was something about curfews, the idea of which I do not think I fully grasped. There was also gunfire and arrests based on the “failure to disperse” (as well as “sit-ins” by another group). Even though I am not threatened in my dream, I do get the feeling I am “not supposed to be there” perhaps because of a curfew set by the very slightly anthropomorphic, animated tigers. The speaking “leader” is not necessarily Shere Khan - I get the impression he is friendlier.

When I wrote a story from this dream much later on, I used a fictional name - “Rufus Yohort”, which my brother Jim thought was hilarious.

Morning of August 7, 1969. Thursday.



I am in the backyard of my Cubitis home at some time during late morning. The sun is shining and the weather seems fine overhead. However, to the east, beyond the railroad tracks and the expansive farmland, is a tornado, heading straight towards my home. In the area farther out towards the tracks and where we usually burn rubbish in real life, is what looks like an old worn plaid blanket (which is dirty and with a few holes) within the unburnt trash and ashes. There are at least six or seven recently born kittens on the blanket squirming around, a few noticeably calico. I do not know where they came from, but they seem to be my responsibility. There is an ambiguous awareness of being indoors looking down at a bed, even though I am also aware of being outside in a different location at the same time.

“You can’t die,” I say fairly softly and mournfully (though without any perceived personal worry), hearing my own young voice very clearly and vividly. I plan to take them from the area with no thought of anything else. I am almost lucid, but slowly wake.

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Understanding the dream state and the biological nature of RAS mediation will help in understanding a dream’s real meaning to rise above the erroneous concept of “interpretation” in the popular misuse of the term. There are obvious clues here.

Firstly, a tornado is a common dream feature for me, not always threatening, and was validated in childhood to be, at the mundane level (though there is also the spiritual association regarding the Merkaba), autosymbolism based on the naturally ambiguous dynamics of the vestibular system loosely associated with the dizziness of spinning even when this is not a direct factor, though of course avoiding a tornado is related to avoiding the faux vertigo of liminal space. This means that my dream self has a subliminal awareness of being in the dream state. What are some other clues? The kittens in the blanket are another clue. A blanket being rendered means I am probably subliminally aware I am asleep (without my conscious self identity being within the dream state itself).

Additionally, saying “You can’t die” is another dream state indicator from “If I die before I wake”, from a “prayer” that I never even considered uttering at any point in my childhood (even though some children supposedly utter this “prayer” prior to sleep, but what kind of a parent would allow this, I cannot even imagine it), though I had heard about it around the time of this dream. Thank goodness I was born into a family that did not practice such a grim ritual.

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Morning of July 19, 1969. Saturday.



This dream, looking over notes and doing a bit more research, seems to have been influenced by the following real-life events and associations:

1. “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (original movie from 1951).

2. Visits to a parking lot near a store at an early age (not sure where, somewhere near Port Charlotte, I think) where an elephant would perform tricks near our car. It terrified me when I was much younger, but as I got a older, the fear subsided. My mother had said that I had yelled for them (my parents) to roll up the windows of the car when we first went there when I was really young. An older sister still has photographs of these events.

3. Movies in the earlier grades in school about Pompeii and volcanoes in general. My wife said she had dream influences from such movies as well. I dreamed of volcanoes fairly often during my early years and once in real life, was startled by a sudden hailstorm which I thought was lava and volcanic rocks pouring down on our roof (this was a few years after this entry’s dream) and so I ran and hid in the closet until I realized what it was. Due to the fact that there was a large rutted metal section as the roof over most of our carport, it was really loud.

4. The “Uhny Uftz” episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, first seen September 29, 1965.

Contrary to what my dreams sometimes presented, I was never alone in a car at an early age.

My dream begins with my becoming aware of being in the middle of my backyard and assuming it is Sunday, late morning, perhaps around ten. A shadow appears on the ground, which is perfectly round, moving southward over our neighbor’s house. Perhaps it is a cloud, but perhaps not, so I go inside. I get a very vague sense of a “poisonous cloud”. Inside, in the living room, a man on a news report is talking rather unemotionally about a flying saucer having been sighted.

I am slightly lucid, so I decide that I will take control for a time and visit Brenda W, a female classmate who lives north of me. We go back to my house and I notice the news reader is still talking about the flying saucer and some sort of (I think) toxic gas or some such. Brenda is laughing because when the man is speaking on the television, certain things he is saying seem to be going on outside in the backyard at the same time as each spoken reference (round shadow, flashing light, strange hum…).

Later, Brenda seems to have gone home and I am seriously annoyed at this, as I want to spend the day playing with her (more like “playing house” even though I was quite young at the time). I decide to go back to her house. Soon, though, the round shadow appears on the ground, but I do not really look up. I start walking faster and faster, first trying to hide under trees, but eventually I start running and turn to go south towards town where there may be bigger and safer buildings and more people - and I have a vague idea that Brenda may also have gone there instead of going home.

Amazingly, I run so fast and “perfectly” that I manage to run straight down the wall of a gulley, then turning about at fully ninety degrees upright again, treading effortlessly and swiftly over the surface of the deeper stream - only lightly splashing the surface, and turning my entire body again at ninety degrees and going straight up the wall on the other side - and then continue on as if nothing strange had happened, my only concern being that I had wasted a few seconds by not running in a straight, horizontal path!

Eventually I am in town (Arcadia) and I do not notice any people around. Even though it seems to be the weekend, I notice a few cars in the elementary school’s parking lot and think it may be a meeting of the teachers - or perhaps a few alarmed people did not know where else to go for safety.

I notice that the flying saucer seems to be landing, so I go to duck down near a car (but do not yet get into the car). It lands and looks just like the spacecraft from “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The “door” of the flying saucer opens and…as I start to climb into the front seat of the car to hide…

Out walks a large elephant…

The elephant lifts its trunk straight into the air and out sprays a massive amount of lava and volcanic rocks. I jump into the car, but I notice the volcanic rocks quickly stacking up over the front window of the car (almost in “fast motion” animation) and so…it is the end of everything.

Morning of July 5, 1969. Saturday.



I go to Waikiki in Hawaii, or so it seems (I had not been there in real life). However, it is seemingly called “Waikikiki” in my dream (unless that came from a musical repetition of the last syllable) and is more like an island on its own (perhaps it is a play on “Waikiki Key” as with the Florida Keys). As my dream is ending, mostly seemingly in hypnopompia, a slower fictional song comes into play as I wake (though came back in a later “reset” version of my dream), which seems to be a warning for tourists not to cause problems for the local wildlife, though more as self-advice rather than receiving the message from elsewhere. It is sung (by a group of men and women, though in my own young voice in one version) as “Neh-ver go…to the EYE-eye-land…of Wah-ka-KEE-kee again!” The tune is fairly simple and I have included the sheet music here. Curiously, this totally fictional song replayed in my head every now and then for years after (even more than actual commercial music) and I can still imagine it now fairly accurately.

My dream is quite long but mostly involves just exploring the landscape, such as riding in an open train car (that reminds me of a roller coaster car though it does not have challenging events during the trip) and seeing a pterodactyl and nonthreatening volcano. Parts of the region I visit are seemingly “still” prehistoric, or it may be related to the train itself that goes through certain areas and goes through time. The Smothers Brothers are there planning to kill or knock out a triceratops for posterity (or perhaps because they feel threatened by it). However, the triceratops charges at them near boxes of dynamite near a cave and everything blows up as they gawk in fear, side by side, prior to their end…I wake just prior to the implied moment of impact but also get an impression of a cartoon-like jagged “ka-boom” balloon.

I now think that it is likely that this last scene was influenced from a “Road Runner” cartoon (where Wile E. Coyote is hit by a train) though I cannot be certain if that was the sole influence here. I did not really much care for the Smothers Brothers routines (and did not like Rowan and Martin either) so this is probably a form of wish fulfillment at one level. (I only watched their shows because of the guests they had on.)

Morning of June 2, 1979. Saturday.



This is a much longer, almost movie-like dream in some ways. The main idea is that I have two very friendly and faithful pet wolves. They are both males (perhaps twin males), I assume, and their names are Lupus and Lee. They save me from problematic events a few times, sometimes from just standing around, based on how potentially trouble-making people react to their presence. At one point, I am in the hospital, which seems like some sort of “replay” of when I had the surgery on my right hand back in 1976. They somehow end up in my room in the hospital and I eventually leave with them a bit earlier than I am supposed to, I think, but I am very healthy later on, and for some reason, apparently had recovered more quickly from being out of the hospital sooner.

They save me from drowning when higher waves rush in when I “fall asleep” on an isolated beach. They are even allowed to be on a city bus and travel with me at one point. Their presence is very vivid and “realistic” and even though I feel like my “true self”, the unlikelihood of having two pet wolves never dawns on me.

There is a seemingly unrelated scene with my best friend making a response of why he supposedly does not have to listen to the teacher. This is the ninth grade class we actually went to (northwest corner of the main high school building), and my last full year of public school. His reply to her is “Because my father is Lucas Taylor, that’s why”. (This was actually not his father’s name in real life.)

This is a time period where I had first begun to find it curious that dogs had usually been more threatening in dreams than wolves and coyotes. In this particular dream, it seems that Lupus and Lee will be my companions and helpers for life - the idea seems very clear and almost like a long-term false memory (even for a brief time after waking).

Morning of April 9, 1969. Wednesday.



This is one of many recurring vivid and more defined dream types that “introduced” me to my soulmate long before it dawned on me that the majority of my dreams (the ones that were not immediately precognitive or remote-viewing composites or of certain other types and layers) were related intricately to my distant future. Although certain facets were established even before my wife-to-be was born, this was one of the clearest at this time. I suppose some would think it strange to dream of someone all their life, eventually discover that the person and all prior in-dream nuances and parallels were real, then actually “live the dream”. I have never cared what other people think of this reality of mine, especially as I have only seen deceit and distraction and “cop-out” mentality regarding the unexplained.

This dream scene always took place in one of two areas of the West Elementary School playground. One area was near the north edge of the playground, about the middle section, and just west of the large banyan tree. The other area was more near the south end of the playground, just north of the seesaws.

Other than I, the only other in-dream character was a mysterious dark-haired gypsy girl (seemingly of about seventeen to eighteen or so, no older than twenty) of an olive complexion who spoke with a very unusual accent, which was mixed ethnic (Romani) Hungarian and Australian - something I had never even actually heard in real life. Although she wore black she sometimes also wore pink. Her name was usually Susannah or sometimes Savannah (although that may be a perceived distortion). Later, I came to learn of the Hathor patterns and her actual maiden name and various seeming “codes” throughout history, one set related to the Vaudois, where at least one non-native ancestor was linked to.

These dreams were different in that it often felt as if I was going to sleep within my dream itself (a rather odd awareness). I would be lying on the ground (as a child) and she would be stroking my hair and intoning “sleep…sleep”. She would usually be seated and facing west, my head (to the east) in her lap. She would “confide” in me and say that it would be a long time but that I would eventually live with her (she even said how she was only a baby at the time - which proved to be literal). Of course, I had different associations because I was not sure what this could mean, mostly due to her somewhat motherly nature at times (though she was not like my actual mother). I had been aware of this “mystery girl” before and her first presence was as the large green “animated” eyes only - the earlier Rose Street dreams (which I wrote of in older entries on one site). Also, a classmate and friend, Brenda W, became part of a composite archetype that also represented her in numerous dreams and parallel associations.

The birthplace of this “mystery girl” (Port Kembla) was also directly inverted to my birthplace across the ocean in America. Event after event and “coincidence” after “coincidence”; even though I was aware of certain patterns, I was not aware of the more extreme Pascal-Triangle-like layers until after 1991.

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 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 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 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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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”.

Morning of November 17, 1968. Sunday.



In my dream, I am mostly wandering around in a composite location that combines features of West Elementary school in Florida and the Rose Street apartments in Wisconsin.

My school’s hallways have areas that are much like the doorways with the transoms from Rose Street (which did have wooden doors into the next room). These “doorways” are oriented mostly east and west and only go from the same general area of the hall into the next area of the hall but there are no actual doors - just the transom area and the implied “doorway” a short distance out from each implied division of the hallway. There is a slowly dawning realization that hidden treasures are on the ledge of each transom, mostly out of sight when viewed while walking (though realistically, some would be visible when farther away). These treasures include small jewelry boxes full of valuable gems and such, smaller books which include older science-fiction digest magazines from the 1950s and possibly even the newest comic books, as well as American and Canadian coins.

Later, the idea and realization changes, even though I had apparently kept some of these treasures (and had hidden them from others). The items which I had not gotten to yet somehow turn out later to be cleaning items that the janitor had put there, such as a bottle of window cleaner and just a cleaning cloth or rag and such. There is also a distorted scene where I actually seem to be back in sister Marilyn’s apartment on Rose Street, yet also a very large “closet” or school maintenance room at the same time. I am not sure if this is some sort of temporary series of events regarding the cleaning supplies, or if the transom “treasures” themselves were only temporary. This is similar in mood to other dreams of finding treasures in square column-like areas under floor tiles in my Cubitis home, finding secret areas under roof shingles, and finding buttons or small levers that open previously hidden doors into secret rooms.

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The composite settings specific to my Rose Street apartment (as well as my sister’s) and West Elementary was mostly limited to dreams from around 1967 to 1968 when I guess I was still adjusting to the move from Wisconsin to Florida.)

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