non-lucid

Morning of November 2, 1975. Sunday.

Dream #: 3,240-02. Reading time (optimized): 1 min 30 sec.



There is an electrical surge in our kitchen and additional ones through all or most outlets in our house. It creates a “haunting” as well as a “portal” in the southwest bedroom.

I am in the living room when one of the two big brass fly ashtrays my father bought at the local flea market comes to life though is still made of brass. (No one in the house smoked. They were novelty items.) It walks across the ironing board, falls to the floor, and crawls toward the hallway, but is not threatening. It is a minion of the Man-Thing (as in the Marvel comic book) that cannot leave the southwest bedroom (which is across the hallway from our bathroom.)

The ironing board’s cover becomes like frogskin as it gains an artificial life force. It is not able to walk very well. The two human-like eyes on its narrow end, facing up, do not seem alive, making it into an “irony board.”

A portal that has opened in the southwest bedroom (the door remaining closed) has brought forth the swamp creature known as the Man-Thing. He cannot leave the bedroom even though the door is unlocked. (He does not know how to turn a doorknob). Now and then, a small telescopic radio antenna that seems to be a part of his body emerges from the keyhole. (The feature is not in the comic book.) It is dangerous only when a person is near the end of the hallway or in the bathroom. The swamp creature can be sent through the portal back into the radio. Supposedly, the electrical event hit the comic book cover from an outlet and a radio speaker and brought him here.

I wonder if I should use the bathroom or replace the fuse in the fuse box in the hallway. The radio antenna juts from the keyhole a few times (and back behind the closed bedroom door). I consider that if I go into the bathroom, the antenna might get me from the other side of the hallway (even though realistically, I could easily avoid it). As the Man-Thing “feeds on fear,” I do not want to show any apprehension. I sit down in the living room to watch television.

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Morning of October 27, 1965. Wednesday.



In this dream from age four, I had been exploring Myrick Park in La Crosse, seemingly on my own yet without concern. It is different than in reality, probably more influenced from larger zoo features (or perhaps even a jail from a Western) that I might have seen on television.

There is a brick wall that I notice has an open space, as if several bricks had been taken out. I consider the difference between seeing animals, which look like some sort of llamas combined with large dogs, seen through the vertical bars (on my left), and how the animals might eventually be able to escape through the opening in the brick wall (to my right). I consider that I should move away from the brick wall area so as not to encourage the animals to escape. There is not a feeling of fear, only wariness.

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This dream utilizes “wall breach waking symbolism” as a sustained waking transition, which has remained a lesser but consistent type of waking symbolism for over fifty years of devoted dream study and validation. It does not always have implications of possible danger. Still, a far more intense version can be seen with “Look Out for the Bull” from December 12, 1965 (though recurring), where a bull actually crashes through the wall (near a corner) in a relative’s house upon subliminal anticipation of the waking prompt.

Doorway waking symbolism (where a doorway is naturally rendered as the exit point of the dream state) has been far more common since early childhood. I do not think there is much difference between doorway waking symbolism and wall breach waking symbolism (as the dynamics work the same way, though more so with induction by contrast, in apex lucidity and conscious control of the dream state) other than perhaps the reticular activating system functioning with slightly different dynamics, which may be based on how fast or prioritized the preconscious dynamics are, which in turn may relate to how deep (or for how long) I have been sleeping or how loud the real environment’s ambiance is in intruding into the dream state.

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Resupplemented on Monday, 16 October 2017.

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Morning of October 12, 1975. Sunday.

I am in some sort of movie being filmed or perhaps it is actually only a stage drama (although we do seem to be at a real location), which eventually is (or slowly becomes, or with a “reset”?) a real scenario and a real mystery a few people and I are trying to solve. I mostly work with an unknown female around my age. It takes place mostly within a large fancy mansion, but I only remember being on the first floor assuming there was a second floor. It has to do with a count that vanished and was possibly kidnapped. It has a strange and unexpected outcome. We find a message in small handwriting on the back of a painting on the wall (lower left-hand corner) in a large frame and it leads to finding the count’s body still in his bedroom and inside a mattress. It seems to be some sort of strange suicide. Although it is taking place in modern times, he is dressed in a very old-fashioned way, possibly 1700s. There may be a vague association with the Little Blue Boy painting (by Thomas Gainsborough), which my father had a print of, hanging on the west wall of his old room (for the longest period) in Cubitis, though the connection is not certain.

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Here, I once again subliminally seek the status of my real physical body. The count’s corpse being found inside the mattress is of course an obvious dream sign. The count’s corpse is obviously a subliminal distorted perception of my sleeping body (a dream sign of the first level).

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Morning of October 2, 1965. Saturday.



My dream contains scenes of a red anglerfish of which I mostly perceive as just below the surface of the water each time. I am walking in Pettibone Park with Marilyn (an older half-sister on my mother’s side) and her husband Bob, mostly going southeast, from the Barron Island area. They do not seem to notice the fish or show any concern. I do not feel threatened at any point, only somewhat wary of being near the particular area of water it is in at different times.

I am aware that this ugly fish is possibly a threat to nature in that it is apparently eating all the fish in a smaller pond. There is one point where it appears to be the only fish left. There is also an idea that it may be drinking all the water that it is in, although I also consider that the water is lowering naturally (though in real life, it is mostly only one main body of water in the area, though the water did rise and lower based on another area being used for barge traffic). There are scenes where the fish seems to teleport to different bodies of water ahead of us as we walk through the park, including a rut that I reason was made by a tractor, the rut having been filled with rain a day or two earlier. I also get the impression at one point that it can breathe out of water, at least for a short time.

There is a thought that it has certain human characteristics and perhaps can speak, though it never speaks in my dream. Still, I consider that it may be able to communicate by thought with its “antenna” (esca). There is an expectant awareness when there seems to be a “channel open” in a similar way as a radio being on a station without an audible broadcast (a sparsely recurring dream state awareness caused by being subliminally aware of being in the dream state). This scene occurs while we all stand on a small bridge, which is an altered version of the South Pettibone Drive bridge in that it curves upward towards the middle (the alteration being a result of biological vestibular system dynamics).

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Key factors:

• Water lowering waking symbolism, common autosymbolism for the cessation of the dream state, unrelated to waking life. Water otherwise symbolizes the absence of emotion and the essence of sleep and unconsciousness.
• Bridge, autosymbolism for the imminent return to consciousness, unrelated to waking life.
• Anglerfish as emergent consciousness autosymbolism whereas fish and other water denizens as emergent consciousness autosymbolism is otherwise very common.
• This dream was primarily influenced by “The Outer Limits” episode “Tourist Attraction”, seen just prior to sleep. However, the fish-like creatures in “The Outer Limits” episode had arms and legs.
• Some deep-sea anglerfish emit light from their esca. While this may simply be autosymbolism for the increase of neural energy in the waking transition, it may also hint at transpersonal communication in liminal space and what later in my life became the Blue Flame Event with Zsuzsanna. This is despite the influence of “Tourist Attraction” with the fish-like creatures emitting ultrasonic pulses.
• The color red typically only becomes a factor of dream-self focus when I have slept too long.
• My original childhood dream journal title was “The Devilfish”, not because I had any concern or belief in any “devil” but because it was red and additionally vaguely associated with Hot Stuff, the Harvey Comics character.
• Obviously, there were no anglerfish in the region in real life.
• To see the location of my dream’s last scene, Google “310 south pettibone drive la crosse wi” in quotes and select “Street View”, though the area has changed somewhat since the 1960s.

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Morning of August 13, 1975. Wednesday.



This dream was strongly influenced by a random symmetrical inkblot I made (at age fourteen) that looked much like a more detailed version in my dream’s outcome. I am not a main character and seem to be watching as if it is a movie. (Some of the inkblots I made as a teenager, as well as numerous other things I made, including comic strips and short stories, are possibly with relatives and stored away somewhere.)

Two astronauts land on a planet, which, over time, begins to shrink. Not much happens other than the (unknown and male) astronauts reacting to land features that are smaller and closer together than previously. For some reason, their rocket-ship also shrinks, apparently to the same continual proportions of the planet, but they do not. There does not seem to be any in-dream back story over why the planet is shrinking.

In the end, they are seen hanging off the planet from each side, hanging in outer space, almost looking as if they are pressing a beach ball above their heads and the image is perfectly symmetrical.

Morning of July 6, 1975. Sunday.



In my dream, I am with my best friend Toby on some sort of excursion of which I am not sure of the nature of. I believe the word play, “Safari, so good” (so far, so good) is suggested by Toby. We actually seem to be in Africa (or a reconstruction of certain features of one area) at one point, but I do not have a clear memory of how we got there, although the idea of a school bus having taken us there comes into mind very briefly, which suggests that we got left behind on some sort of field trip, perhaps to Busch Gardens at Tampa Bay. Somehow, as we walk around with no particular implied destination, we end up going into another world through an unseen or unrecognized portal.

After a time, we end up being chased by several mythological creatures, including a minotaur and a centaur. We are not caught or directly threatened at any point, but the landscape and the creatures become more unusual over time.

Eventually, without realizing it, after being chased by surreal mythological beasts on several different occasions, we seem to be back in our own world in the same area from where we started, just prior to entering the other world.

Nearby, a lion watches us from tall grasses and soon roars with the idea he may start to chase us. Even though we start running to escape from the potentially threatening situation, Toby starts laughing, saying rather loudly and somewhat happily under the circumstances, “A good ol’ Earth lion!” which means he is glad to be out of the other world, though he lags behind me. There is no fear at this point; but almost a strange sense of relief and appreciated familiarity of the potential to return home.

This is a fairly straightforward dream-as-a-dream event (as many are, even many of which people try to “interpret”, which in the first place, is something only the dreamer can do, as the dreamer is the only one with the relevant memory of the previous experiences and associations that build the dream in the first place). The lion in the last segment is my emergent consciousness rendered as the waking transition’s symbol of coalescence. This is because a lion in the dream state represents the ability to consume the dream self, since that is always the ultimate fate of the dream self (to coalesce into whole consciousness) even after being in the “alternate world of mythology” (the dream state itself). The implied swallowing is not seen in this dream (and in fact, is not even needed to be rendered since the transition has already developed). Waking transitions of this type are often achieved without any need for disturbing imagery (and again, it was even amusing in this case, which happily colored my mood for the day).

Morning of July 4, 1975. Friday.



I have an old leather-bound book that is entitled “The Annelid War”. In some ways I think it may be science fiction, but in other ways it also seems to relate to a soon-to-air television documentary about an upcoming event. Supposedly, various species of worms become gigantic and fight each other, causing earthquakes. One rises up from the ground at a distance. I am not sure if this is a natural event or related to mutations caused by radiation or environmental pollution. My dream is mostly set outside in my backyard in Cubitis. It seems these giant worms can manifest purple lightning or perhaps draw lightning to a particular area of the ground to manipulate it.

Because of their shape, both snakes and worms have associations with the human intestine and the human spine. Because lightning resembles the human nervous system, this one probably relates to conflicting thoughts, the worms, to me, associated with spinal energy.

Morning of June 14, 1975. Saturday.



This dream scenario takes place mostly in the living room in our Cubitis home and everything is mostly the same as it is in reality. My father seems to be the only other character in my dream. (I believe there is a subtle association with Father’s Day, which would be the day after this date, though I am the one who gets a gift.) I am on the couch - and this was the time when visitors used it for sleeping. It is in its normal place in the southwest corner of the living room, lengthwise to the south wall.

I have been given a plastic model kit from Revell, I believe. It is a cobra, the snake kind, not the car model. It is black and has a couple interchangeable pieces for the final version. (I have not seen this kit in real life if there is one like it.) The finished plastic model has hinges in one section that allow it to sway side to side like a real cobra. I do not think I have finished putting the model together before my dream finally fades.

It is possible that my dream self in this case associated the Cobra Car with the cobra snake. However, I had a very early childhood dream of a cobra in the hayloft and deliberately trying to “create” it within my lucid dream in one clearer version, which can also be found in this journal (Link). There may be a connection or association, in this case, “creating” a cobra with a model rather than as a tulpa.

In real life (prior to this dream), I had gotten a large number of plastic model kits from sister Carol, for my birthday (December 20th) and Christmas, that were of animals such as a bear, deer, a couple horses (including a rather large black stallion), and so on. My mother had gotten me mostly only car models, but also a few dinosaur models later.

Morning of May 25, 1975. Sunday.



Background information: This dream seemed to relate to simultaneous associations of seeing razor blades as primarily dangerous combined with a concern about becoming ill from mosquito bites as well as leeches. There was also a brief incident at Lake Katherine where a few other teenagers (at least one wearing a razor blade as a pendant), walking by when our class was on a field trip, made threats about using a razor blade to slice up our backsides. The female teacher looked worried but did not react and the others just kept walking. I am not aware of anyone being killed in this dream, though the idea seems very plausible. My concern is possibly minimal due to wearing a repellent (such as “Off”) of some kind, though I believe it is a special type of “cologne” in my dream (and even this potential was possibly influenced from a television commercial about “Off”).

This is not a more pronounced nightmare (I am not fully active in it nor emotionally bothered in any sense, although I am actually fully in-body in my Cubitis front yard for the most part, near the culverts that are about one-third filled with water), but it is a somewhat negative dream about a type of “giant flying one-celled animal” like a protozoa (though they are about the size of large moths and likely not one-celled relative to real-life logic), that attack and supposedly somehow eat people when rising out of culvert water and flying in groups of twenty or more (and it seems they live mostly in the water of the culverts or ponds as well as slightly flooded areas of parts of lawns). They have one maneuver where they tip sideways, mostly on the diagonal and moving about in a horizontal semicircular arc as such.

I am not entirely sure why I decided to call this dream “Diamond Crawlers” back in the mid-1970s in my original dream journal entry, as they never crawled anywhere much; they mostly just rose from shallow water (when people were around) and flew around in a diamond-shape formation and were vaguely reminiscent of a diamond in form and body appearance. They resemble a transparent leech, shaped somewhat like a rounded-off truncated plus sign, but longer along the length than the winglike protruding sides (which is akin to an airplane having very short wings and is not realistically feasible), with the mostly translucent pattern of a glass-like razor blade in mid-body. Calling this dream “Razor Blade Flyers” would have made more sense, I suppose, but sounds ridiculous in afterthought. It is possible I was thinking of diamondback snakes at the time and just threw that absentmindedly into my dream’s title.

The new image I made does not do justice to their transparent nature, but is fairly close otherwise.

Morning of April 18, 1965. Easter Sunday.



I am lying in my bed in the morning, seemingly just prior to dawn, but not certain of the date, thinking it may be a day or two before Easter. The Easter Bunny (not seen directly but mentally perceived as an ordinary brown rabbit) had somehow brought me a glass of root beer and heart-shaped cookies with pink frosting. (My unconsciousness is confusing Valentine’s Day with Easter to a certain extent. This has happened in other dreams.)

The Shobijin (miniature twin girls from the 1961 movie “Mothra”) walk across my bed towards where my head is (left side). (I have a sheet over most of my body.) It seems as if they think that I cannot see them. Still, they soon look directly at me and warily watch me drink my root beer and eat a cookie, which tastes sweet.

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For some reason, since early childhood, the appearance of miniature people usually creates a vivid and very lifelike level of awareness (compared to other non-lucid dreams), despite the impossibility and how it does not trigger lucidity.

The Mothra egg (as an underlying influence which did not appear in this dream) is likely associated with Easter eggs. I had seen the movie in February of this year, on the sixth according to research.

My father had a rabbit farm, although rabbits are also associated with being unconscious and dreaming (as in “Alice in Wonderland”) due to most species living underground in burrows. Thus, they can be typified as an induction factor (as here in being the foundation of the apparent backstory) and a second-level dream sign or dream state indicator.

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Although Mothra is a flight symbol, I have not typified the waking symbolism as such despite the appearance of the Shobijin. Still, that is the primary connection of the shift back into consciousness (which is otherwise directly flight-related in over one in five of my dreams, based on RAS and inner ear dynamics while returning to consciousness).

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Morning of April 4, 1975. Friday.



Stanley Livingston, some sort of explorer (relative to my dream, fictional, but more likely influenced by the actor name) and archaeologist, is traveling in an “unexplored” land (with at least four other people including me), which, in my dream, happens to be the area behind the large shed of my Cubitis home and near the railroad tracks, but on the eastern side of the tracks. The area is a bit different. I am traveling with him, but mostly as a seeming secondary character of no direct influence.

Instead of the railroad tracks, there is a shallow river in that area in my dream (an interesting changeover, I think, but which has occurred before) running south to north. Stanley finds several unusually shaped stones with interesting textures. Over time, he concludes that they show signs of being some sort of “message”, as they have tool marks, although one person says they are some sort of arrowhead.

Oddly enough, Stanley determines that each stone is about half a letter of the English alphabet (as seemingly some edges perfectly fit together), although one seems like a complete uppercase letter “E”. A member of the team says that it is probably the remaining part of a fork-like tool, as it has a hole in the main stem that indicates it could have been used as a sort of fork if a stick had been inserted.

Stanley insists that the stones were left there for someone to purposely find. He arranges the stones in order based on subtle color variation and size. It turns out that they seem to spell “HELP”. He then feels it is the duty of the exploration team to cross the river and find the person or persons apparently in need of help even though it is not known how long the supposed message had been there.

Eventually, we are confronted by menacing human-like apes on horseback that resemble the gorillas in the original “Planet of the Apes” movies. Their clothing looks like that from “Planet of the Apes” as well. They are angry that we are in the “Forbidden Zone”, which was supposedly why the stones were placed there (which had since shifted from the flow of the river), the original pattern being “HELL”. They take us to some sort of building that looks like an old abandoned warehouse (liminal space), but which may be implied to be in the location of our Cubitis shed (though the distance orientation based on the first part of my dream would not be correct as such), though not much happens after this.

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Last update Friday, 16 September 2016: This dream has features that have appeared in other dreams, mainly the explorer or archaeologist in the beige safari outfit in my backyard as well as the idea of the area near the railroad tracks (especially more easterly) being “forbidden” (as with the “Forbidden Land” dream from 1973 that featured a giant horse). Other subliminal associations with this could be related to “living stone” and “Chip Douglas” (as in “chipped” rock).

Morning of February 9, 1975. Sunday.



The original 1975 title for this was “It Didn’t Work”. This is the first time I have changed the title since then to be more descriptive.

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I travel with a friend and schoolmate, Kenneth Hill, to find my “mystery girl” who I am supposed to marry in Australia in a couple months. I keep going as far as I can to the southwest, thinking it is a short walk from my home, sometimes going southeast, such as towards where the train tracks and farms beyond are in real life (although some scenes and changes of direction seem like typical dream “resets”).

Along the way, his foot gets stuck under a railroad track rail, but I save him by pulling on his arms to help him get free prior to the train arriving. It seems to be afternoon at this point. (This actually seems to be just beyond my backyard, though I pull him westerly back towards the backyard, so our implied direction keeps changing.)

Time passes. We reach a door. Kenneth stands directly to my right. I open the door in a hallway - as it now seems as if we are still in my Cubitis home, the fictional door being on the west wall (but seemingly in a different area than the hallway closet door, more to the south) and I only see the ocean beyond, starting directly from the doorway.

“It didn’t work,” I tell him sadly as my dream fades.

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This dream occurred years before I knew my “mystery girl” existed in real life. This was also the date (in 1994) when I arrived in Australia. We married on April 9th, 1994 in the Hervey Bay Botanic Gardens in Queensland.

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• This dream is of the threshold type, which was more common in my childhood and young adult years. This type renders a doorway as a dream’s implied exit symbolism. (It may be less common now due to the fact that our bedroom does not have a doorway, being partly open to the kitchen and lounge room, though with a curtain over the kitchen side.)
• The other side of the fictional doorway in real life would have been the southwest bedroom. Although I had been “blocked” from my “mystery girl” by the ocean in other dreams (though not as a general occurrence) as an association with her being on the other side of the world, because water symbolizes the dynamics of sleep in real time, this seems like a logical ending (though typically, water lowers when waking, though the ocean being implied to be inside a house would make it not very deep other than relating to its seeming bilocated nature).
• The threshold dream type often renders my emergent consciousness as a different character or feature (though seemingly still linked to the preconscious factor). In this case, Kenneth seems to be the passive preconscious factor while it is my dream self that initiates the final symbolism. (The preconscious usually only dominates the dream’s last segment when there is no first-level dream sign or waking indicator, confirming one of the main dynamics and actual purposes of dreams.)
• Last check and update on Monday, 17 July 2017.

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Morning of November 23, 1974. Saturday.



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

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

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

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

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

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Morning of December 15, 1974. Sunday.



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

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

Morning of November 3, 1974. Sunday.

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



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

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

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

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

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