non-lucid

Morning of October 13, 1969. Monday.



This is titled “The Three Lives of my Dream Girl” not because the precognitive rendering of my wife Zsuzsanna has three lives in it but because it was directly influenced by “The Three Lives of Thomasina”.

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I find myself in what seems like an indoor intersection where four staircases go upwards from each direction (yet seems bilocated within the Cubitis living room yet has the typical feeling of being inside and outside at the same time). I follow a black cat that seems a bit familiar (though actually is not in reality as we had a white cat called Snowball). I do not reach the top of the stairs but I do reach an isolated mezzanine that I am aware of by looking over the top step from about the sixth step down. My mystery girl is sleeping on her back. There is a pale orange glow.

I am wary about bothering her so I turn and crawl across some sort of monkey-bars-like structure. I find “my” staircase and begin to look for my bed to make sure I am in it. Looking back, I see a two-dimensional giant orange tabby cat head just beginning to peak over the implied skirting of the odd adjacent mezzanine (from wherever I now am) and behind the head of the mystery girl’s bed, the floor of the mezzanine (or loft) which now seems hexagonal. I get a vague impression of the oversized black cat statues being alive (though they never actually move) and I hear a vague buzzing sound, like crickets but lower in pitch.

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• I have come to realize that an intersection may be some sort of real-time artifact indicating shared dreaming.
• A staircase is a real-time symbol of the dream’s status and relates to a potential shift in consciousness, including waking.
• Zsuzsanna was a cat breeder who went to cat shows when we first wrote, making this dream precognitive in an additional secondary way.
• A statue coming to life (which does not fully unfold here) is a waking metaphor (waking precursor) that symbolizes the conscious mind becoming more active.
• A black cat is a circadian rhythms factor (cats being typically perceived as nocturnal) and signifies threads of dawning consciousness in liminal space. In my case, the recurring black cat, or in some cases “shadow cat” or humanlike panther, is a variation of the preconscious personification, though ironically is typically more helpful than when in human form.
• This is a common daybreak dream (which are about as common as return flight dreams - which represent about twenty percent of all dreams), validated by the presence of the color orange (moderate waking priority) and the giant cat head (almost like a flat stage prop) coming up over the head of the bed as being analogous to sunrise and the emerging conscious self.

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Morning of October 6, 1969. Monday.

Dream #: 1,022-02. Reading time: 1 min 40 sec.



Five or six schoolmates and I slowly become aware of, and choose to investigate, another part of our school in Arcadia that most people supposedly do not usually go to on the east side of the high school building (even though we are in elementary school, though we did have classes in the high school building).

Bossy schoolmate Susan C is present. She is the authority for our tentative exploration. It is seemingly very early in the morning before sunrise. At one point, she lifts her finger to her lips in a “shush” gesture. (I consider this a dream sign as people sometimes do this when someone else is sleeping.)

We arrive at a staircase behind a doorway, directly accessible from the outside of the building. It leads to the highest floor, to a big bedroom where a possibly dangerous male giant is sleeping. (There is never a sense of impending danger.) I get the impression he is about four times larger than a normal human being. We all walk up the steps slowly and cautiously, Susan in the lead. Eventually, everything starts shaking. The giant is possibly slowly waking for the day, but there is no immediate danger. We ascend the steps with curiosity and caution. Perhaps the shaking of the school building is only caused by the giant’s snoring, and he may not wake after all. We do not reach the top before I wake, yet I visualize him in my mind’s eye. He is asleep in his bed on his back kitty-corner from the doorway I peer through, his head in the opposite direction of my viewpoint, the soles of his feet facing me and uncovered (by the bed sheet) with one sock half-off.

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Here, the preconscious, as my classmate Susan, serves as the transitional vestibular system simulacrum as I remain passive to the dreaming process. She is guiding my infra-self into the subception that my conscious self is sleeping. The top of the stairs is a precursory factor that correlates with the extent of my readiness for getting out of bed and going to school. However, in this case, it is nowhere near the time to wake up for the day. That is why Susan “shushed” my infra-self, despite the incidental emergence of vestibular system awareness. It serves as a reinduction process rather than consciousness initiation. This shaking effect occurs in the first part of the sleep cycle.

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See my series, “Staircase Autosymbolism and Dream State Mediation” for important revelatory notes on dreams of this nature.

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Morning of September 21, 1969. Sunday.



This was a highly annoying dream that seemed to “reset” all night long. There were a couple vaguely interesting parts, but it mostly involved having to sweep outside, in the early morning until late afternoon, the whole area between the cafeteria and the northern side of the main West Elementary school building, not just the sidewalks and portico areas, but the grounds as well. Of course, there was always more sand and a bit of debris to go back to and never actually feel any sense of completion of the required job.

The other students were doing chimney cleaning throughout the neighborhood, apparently. There were not even any actual chimneys to speak of much for such work in reality. In the past (about a year before I finally “got” the real lyrics), I absentmindedly sang “Chin chin chir-ree” (instead of “Chim”) without anyone noticing - I guess because I thought “chin” actually related to the person’s face while doing the cleaning. This was also related to the somewhat precognitive “cat-woman” dream where the girl on the roof at Rose Street was a foreshadowing of an actual school play with the “same” girl (of the sparsely recurring December 20, 1966 dream). I believe there is also a vague association with Mickey Mouse in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and a concern about not getting my job done (the idea of “without magic” is only a very vague thought at one point). Of course, it could also imply an indirect association with the “mystery girl” during this time, in her Wendy persona, as she rode a broom.

In the background, also, is the “Money Cat” association. The eerie black cats, however, are only moving about in sparse patterns of swiftness on the roof of the main school building (the “Mary Poppins” rooftop associations were “perfectly” integrated with the “Gay Purr-ee” rooftop associations for some reason, with that sort of tentative “charcoal”, “submarine periscope chimneys”, and vaguely unpleasant wide-reaching industrial implications). No one else is around and I am close to anger at having to be the only one with the job at hand. The task seems ultimately pointless. The dream drags out in an uncomfortable manner - and, if that were not bad enough, it resets as I have already stated - back to the “beginning”. The cats coming out later, especially as the sun sets, means that I have “failed”, yet I do not see the relevance to my actual school grades.

Relating to this dream and several pleasing ones, there is some sort of odd, layered nostalgic conscious association going back to the “Money Cat” song from “Gay Purr-ee”, the “carrot creature” (what I call “her”) from “Cold Hands, Warm Heart” (“The Outer Limits”), the dance by Nichelle Nichols in “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” (which had alien “cat women”), and the “cat burglar” girl from the 1966 (and later) dreams. I found it interesting how the first viewing of the “Star Trek V” movie triggered what almost amounted to a false and “distant” memory, but was actually a “buried” long-term association with the imagery. It “struck” me at a very deep and personal level.

Morning of September 11, 1979. Tuesday.



There were other versions of this dream but this is the most detailed version (not necessarily the longest) from September 1979. I had not seen Ann L (who I do not see in my dream much) for a few years. Ann L was the only familiar character (other than my “dream girl” of whom turned out to be real years later) from real life in most of my dream. She was a classmate for only a couple grades in middle school and high school. I did not really know her very well or interact with her that much. She was a mousy bookish type. This in fact, is one of my only dreams where she appeared and long after I had last seen her in waking life.

My dream’s plot vaguely resembles a Harvey comic book story of which I was familiar with (with Casper and Wendy as the main characters). It involves a ship that is similar to the Pacific Princess on “Love Boat” (which I have a false memory of having “seen” at a much earlier age which is likely associated with “Love American Style” from 1969 instead). However, there is also something about it that is also very military-like and the ship itself is greenish-gray, at least later on. Instead of moving normally across the ocean, it floats about three feet or so above the water’s surface (using some sort of advanced technology which America supposedly did not have in my dream), which seems slightly ominous (but still leaves a wake at times). The captain is Captain Badheart as in the comic story, which changes from Captain Goodheart.

There is something about Ann having a baby (not by me; possibly Barry R or the captain) as well as being locked in the captain’s cabin, but I do not follow her status that closely. It is almost like a secondary movie within my dream that is happening on the sidelines. I know the ship was designed to change after people boarded and kidnap them to keep them out at sea and serve the interests of a (fictional) small country or dictatorship. There is an original reference that I noted in which there is some association with “air ship”. There is a slight awareness of the “mystery girl” even from the beginning, but not quite as much as a much earlier dream of the liner. I now see a connection between “Pacific Princess”, “Love Boat”, and the fact that Australia is near the South Pacific.

The ship also has advanced weapons, some sort of multiple laser cannons in a series, something I might have associated with the original (1978-1979) Battlestar Galactica (especially as the ship seems to be called the Celestra at one point - the plot of that episode with that name is: “During a celebration honoring Commander Kronus, Starbuck recognizes an old flame of his, Aurora and breaks off a date with Cassiopeia to follow his lost love to the Celestra. On their arrival, Starbuck and Apollo find themselves in the midst of a mutiny” - IMDb), giving my dream a science-fiction-like atmosphere in the main scenes. There is a battle with the United States Air Force at one point. There is a precognitive layer (not quite as clear or multilayered as the liner dream of childhood) referencing my yet-to-experience journey to Australia and a loose connection to “The Man Without a Country”, which I saw in middle school. It has a similar mood.

The “mystery girl” still remains mostly in the background. I look for her during the troubles on board and I am frustrated at not finding her. Perhaps she has magic that will protect her from the foreign soldiers, but I still want us to get off the ship and back to civilization. At one point the ship is on the water when another ship is in the area so that no attention will be brought on to this strange ship that otherwise eerily floats above the ocean’s surface.

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A singular ship in a dream is an autosymbolic extension of the physical body and linked to a specific level of unconsciousness. This is made clearer here by the additional vestibular system correlation - the fact the ship is floating. Additionally, this (the military association) augments RAS mediation in this case, making my dream into an interesting adventure, but ultimately unrelated to waking life other than the prescient thread relating to my “mystery girl” (Zsuzsanna).

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Morning of August 31, 1969. Sunday.



I am possibly in an unknown region of southwest Florida near a smaller lake, though it could also be inclusive of partly distorted (memories of) areas of Chipmunk Coulee where I had moved from in Wisconsin (though I had lived in Florida before, prior to that first move as well, until around three years of age). There are not many events; mostly just shifts of mood regarding the vivid imagery over time. Regarding this dream, I had written a story (a few versions over several years, in fact), but the later utilized implications were not known at the time of my dream. Thus, my dream was seemingly sending a rather ambiguous message, or so it seemed at the time, if you consider I did not consciously “grasp” the main scenario of “surrender” vs. “stay away from my territory”.

As well as the somewhat familiar lake scenery, I am also on the outskirts of town and in a clearing near the perimeter of a dense forest. There is some sort of local legend of a witch living deep in the forest, likely near the center of it. A large shrub has a white flag tied to it seemingly to indicate that the witch claims the forest as hers. It is on the edge of the forest and to the right of a tree.

Later on, the meaning seems to be different and I then get the idea that the white flag means that the witch is “surrendering” to progress and encroaching property developers. (I never actually see the witch; I only hear friends speaking about her and her flag - and I assume her to be of the Halloween-associated “bad witch” type.) I probably had developed the idea of the white flag from movies, but perhaps I did not perceive it as meaning to surrender. In fact, again, in my dream, it seemed a bit ominous as a sort of “obvious” visual warning (and perimeter marker) to “keep away” at first - the opposite of the “real” meaning. I see the outcome as obviously incongruous, perhaps during a time of slower learning processes where dreams are often inherently wrong about real-life associations due to not yet knowing societal associations or certain word meanings. One possible association from years ago related to occultism and superstition “surrendering” to consensus or modern mainstream society.

Some of the imaginative detail seems to have come from the idea of playing golf, oddly enough. (I did not really watch golf on any regular basis, however.) The flag in my dream was, at one point, vaguely similar in appearance and orientation as in golf (though with no number and not a pennant as in some cases with golf). You also see people hit a ball into the woods (or just on the perimeter) in some golf games.

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Update Wednesday, 20 January 2016: This dream is of the liminality type because the main theme is relative to a perimeter, or implied barrier on level ground (in contrast to lower or higher “barriers” or setting features). This is a lifelong but sparsely recurring dream design and type of setting. It seems to be relevant to metaphorical divisions of consciousness concerning the dream self’s level of access and other aspects of consciousness in the dream state. The forest here is the “Enchanted Forest” of the deepest imaginative state of the dream self (my most desired dream setting), where “magic still works” - “magic”, here, being analogous to apex lucidity. The white flag first implies “do not go in”, later to imply “I surrender”. It is almost as if the power of creativity and imagination, along with individuality (here presented as a form of isolation) is succumbing to consensus, or more specifically, the fully conscious self. On a much simpler level of possible meaning, it may represent the state between waking and sleeping (the clearing representing wakefulness and the forest representing the dream state).

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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 2, 1979. Monday.



I am seemingly back in Florida, somewhere near Lakeland (possibly the front central area of Southgate Shopping Center), with no memory of having moved back to Wisconsin. There is some sort of ability I have to give trees the ability to grab people or even grow larger and stretch horizontally to capture someone (briefly recurring event during this year). This is related to trying to escape from several unknown males; either gangsters or the authorities (uncertain of which). I know that I have done nothing wrong, but there is a vague association with someone I knew who became a killer. This in turn, with only partial memory, places me in a “maze” of trailers in a large trailer park. The “maze” is probably only about three (trailers) by six or seven, though.

At one point, I have this strange “realization” that I should lead them into a television - and inside of it - to trap them within the television. This may work when used in combination with the trees blocking them or grabbing them and throwing them elsewhere.

After a time, everything becomes less problematic. I find myself in a field, though I am aware there are still people around. I eventually notice strange “lines” (about nine feet long) floating in the air horizontally and seeming like lines on a television. There is a vague association with snow on a television (relative to static) in a possible link with Winter Haven (and even an odd uncomfortable link to “Heaven”).

I am trying to gather my thoughts but something is not quite right. Static and horizontal distortions cannot exist in a real environment - only on television (or in the case of static, a radio as well). I become semi-lucid. I realize that I must somehow be “inside” a television that is on. I even hear more short bursts of static from an undefined direction and more lines in the air to confirm my suspicions. I am somewhat wary of remaining where I am - thinking that if someone turns off the television I may cease to exist. There is a “reset” and a false awakening, but I eventually “escape”.

It seems to be that anyone (even a figure of authority) who spends too much time looking at a screen (without a real-life passionate relationship to ground them) will face a future of “static” and little else. Life is vision. Love is life. An older person without a meaningful relationship is like a mirror without a reflection. Plus, the horizontal hold is wack.

Morning of March 8, 1969. Saturday.



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

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

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



Probable influences:

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

plus

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

plus

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

plus

the movie “The Blob” (1958 version)

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

Morning of March 8, 1969. Saturday.



Curiously, this was a bit like one of those modern reality shows long before they existed, but I do not consider it precognitive. The in-dream fictional television game show (which is apparently titled “Are They Dead or Are They Alive?”) has a seemingly very gruesome premise yet also seems to relate to a genuine news story as well (possibly due to a dream “reset” or partial replay). In one version, there was eventually a newspaper that proclaimed the “victims” (Brenda W and I) being found alive (near the front of the castle).

Brenda (a female classmate) and I are a part of I believe the first or one of the first episodes. A male announcer (or narrator) dramatically and slowly asks the viewing (television) audience…“Are they dead…or are they alive?” Brenda and I are held in a castle and there is some sort of vague awareness in the background relating to the “Dark Shadows” television series. Vaguely, there is an awareness of some sort of connection with Collinwood and D Hollingsworth, a male classmate whose name is only vaguely similar. Mostly, we are inside caskets (in two different faraway areas of the large halls) which cannot be opened from the inside, but oddly enough there is not the slightest nightmarish or threatening aspect, just the sense of annoyingly having to wait for someone or something. The “castle” seems at least partly modeled after our school (West Elementary).

Brenda actually seems cheerful throughout (considering the circumstances of the setting), though there is not much interaction or eventful purpose to my dream, it seems. I seem to perceive myself from my own supposed perspective as a dream character as well as from another (camera view?) location at times. I am the one that somehow gets out and rescues Brenda, but we still seem to wander about in the halls, supposedly for days.

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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 18, 1969. Saturday.



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

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

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Key points:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morning of December 31, 1978. Wednesday.



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

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

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

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

Hall Kitchens?

Short dream of a house of mystery

Morning of December 9, 1978. Saturday.



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

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

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

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

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Night of November 29, 1968. Friday.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Night of November 25, 1978. Saturday.



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

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

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