dream fragment

Night of November 13, 1971. Saturday.



Yes, I know, stupid title. It was originally “Haunted House 2” and I think the first title (before copied over into another book) was “The House” (wow…such imagination I had…).

The actress Jocelyn Lane appears as a child around my age, but in the first part of the dream there is a newspaper article that she has gone missing, possibly kidnapped. There is not much to this dream other than wandering around in a mostly featureless house, but it had a very vivid atmosphere and sharp awareness. It copies the “Tickle Me” (1965) scene, though it is me singing through the window (not Elvis) and she is not actually annoyed or scared at any point but hopeful of escaping the house since I am there with her. I do not see any supposed kidnappers at any point.

It turns out that she was taken by a giant hairy white monster, the creature from “I Was a Slave of the Living Titan!” from Marvel’s “Monsters on the Prowl” number 11. What is a bit odd, though, is that the orientation does not make much sense when the monster’s face appears in the window. We are supposedly on the first floor of a building, yet the monster’s face appears directly in the window (as big as the area of the larger sash window) as if he is standing in a deep hole just outside (though this is not implied by the location). Eventually, the house is on fire, but we had already escaped by then. When going back to get something the girl said she lost, there is just bare ground.

The large empty house that this dream supposedly took place at had already burned down in real life (I did have a precognitive dream of this). It was north (by about four or five implied lots) of my Cubitis home and on the other side of the two-lane highway. It was a very strange morning when that happened, watching the huge flames go into the sky while waiting for the school bus in the dark. I used to wait for the bus to go to school (usually with the S family - Lisa M went to a private school - SCA) during one period, just prior to dawn, which, now, seems quite intriguing to me, because in the region I live in now, it is already getting light at 4:30 and fairly bright out by 5:00.

Just out of curiosity and marching on with my meticulous notes on the thousands of childhood dreams I had documented several times over (with the older copies on hand for accuracy), additional research revealed something I was not as aware of when younger in how comic books, television shows, and even movies (though I was aware of some “duplicate” movies which were only different in title and a few edited scenes) were released again in a slightly different form - I am somewhat amused by how often they did this. (See image.) It is funny, because dreams have a tendency to do this as well.

Night of September 21, 1970. Monday.



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

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

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

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

Included in this dream are:

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

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

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

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

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

Morning of June 1, 1970. Monday.



In my dream, I had been on a mid-morning school field trip with classmates in the southeastern side of the main part of Arcadia (and south of my school) but got separated and did not return to the group when I should have. It is at a very small museum (but which is more like a small empty family-run grocery store or knickknack store) with hardly anything in it, one of the only features being a stuffed fox (in the taxidermy sense). It is on a large shelf (like the kind in a grocery store) that faces west, the fox’s head on the south end. At one point no one else is around, not even the people who supposedly own the “museum”. I am trying to work out if perhaps the fox comes to life and prowls the local area to get food to keep it in a more pristine appearance on the shelf but that does not make much sense. I do not see much else at the supposed museum other than a few empty narrow crystal vases and at least one large urn. I should probably go home but do not know if I should go back to school instead though it seems to be on or near the last day for the semester. Nothing threatening happens at any point. There does seem to be some sort of vague mystery associated with the fox. There is a vague idea that I will visit there again soon but will be somehow invisible.

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Although this dream was precisely precognitive, it may have other layers of meaning. (Remember that only the dreamer can viably “interpret” his or her own dream. Do not let people mislead you.)

On June 5, 1970, the following Friday after this Monday morning dream, it was the last day of school prior to summer vacation. My class went to a park as well as a small unusual museum (that looked as if it might have served as a knickknack store in the past) that I did not know existed (especially as it was in an area my parents never drove to south of the school) and I actually did see a small stuffed (real) fox.

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Of another layer, the fox could also represent the red-haired girl who was my close friend and next-door neighbor (also south of where I lived in the same orientation as the museum from the school). Even more obviously, her name was Lisa which actually means “fox” in Russian. She also had a somewhat sly demeanor. The fox was rendered as stuffed because she was not yet in her transitional stage into the teenage years (thus “inactive” at this point relative to a more mature relationship) and on a particular level on the shelf up from the floor as she was neither “beneath” me or “above” me in that sense. On another note, she was the only other one “with” me (in the museum setting), as she did not go to my school or know my classmates at this time, though was someone I spent the most time with otherwise. She primarily faced away from me, though her head was turned to the right to partly acknowledge me even though we were not always “face to face” or seeing “eye to eye” (though we did share dream work at times). This dream also has additional layers of meaning too personal to get into, relating to self-fulfilling prophecy on one level.

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Morning of April 18, 1970. Saturday.



I am at school (West Elementary in Arcadia) and see my (second-best friend after Toby T at this time) friend Danny H. He is high on a scaffold and trying to be friendly with a giant boa constrictor when everyone else has gone into hiding within the school buildings. The snake’s mouth is ready to engulf him - the top of the mouth over him and the bottom part under the part of the scaffold he is standing on. However, nothing happens after this as if it suddenly becomes a “frozen image” from my perspective (as if time had suddenly stopped somehow). (In real life, some classmates made fun of him for being feminine, such as how he carried his books across his chest or how he spoke.) Note that with the term “boa constrictor” - the idea of constricting stomach pain or intestinal constriction are also possible plays (especially as a snake looks like an intestine). Thus the pain of a stomach illness could be a “boy constrictor”. I did not have this at the time - but Danny did in reality.

This dream seems to have two possible layers of composite cause as the dreaming mind cleverly utilizes over time. Because Danny was believed to be on the path to being “too feminine” (which was really no concern for me at all, but I did not like how he was bullied), the snake, being a boa (a play on “boy” as was often used in real life in my school, especially by David K, whereby if someone called him a “boy”, he would angrily state “I ain’t no boy/boa constrictor”!) seemed to grow to bigger-than-life as a sort of threat to see if this would be enough to increase his male nature.

Also, he had a stomach ache (as in real life) at the time and needed to go to the nurse’s station by way of a (fictional) questionable outside entrance that was clearly unsafe. This links to the snake also being a visual symbol of the intestine and the pain of a stomach problem. I was clearly, in both cases of interpretation, dreaming directly about him and not an aspect of myself (especially as I was not the one with a stomach ache in reality - he was).

Update Tuesday, 8 December 2015. There may be another viable “explanation” here. Snakes may also represent umbilical cords. In this case, I may be projecting Danny as being immature as well as not having as much support from other people (who are in the building while he is outside the building on a precarious structure). The “giant umbilical cord” may relate to being “constricted” as such (perhaps by his mother in comparison to my mother, as I view the scene from a distance).

This dream is type ECA (subtype Cbellsub: emergent consciousness bellicosity sublimated to a secondary character). The giant truculent boa constrictor is my emergent consciousness. Danny is the projection of my dream self, therefore the temporary waking self model, but my true dream self watches safely from a distance. Here my conscious self swallows Danny as representing coalescence.