lucid

Morning of May 6, 1973. Sunday.



I have had a few dreams (early to mid-1970s) of a miniature but “real” Cape Kennedy / Cape Canaveral being set up in my bedroom, living room, or side-yard to the south. In one, outside, seemingly in late morning in Cubitis, I knock the rocket over that was about to launch (it was about three-quarters my size) and watched the “chaos” below with no regret. Still, even though I am supposedly a “giant” in their eyes, everything else (including the houses) was of correct size and to my scale, though there were also some “miniature trees” in my immediate area, only up to about my ankles or so. It was the area between my house and the neighbor to the south, but oriented more towards my front yard. It seemed very realistic (I was semi-lucid any very aware of the details), and it vaguely reminded me of the “Thunderbirds” television show (although the “real miniatures” were much smaller in my dream and there were larger ant-like signs of people and activity).

Morning of February 8, 1973. Thursday.



There seems to be a (fictional) movie involving a sailor’s romantic relationship (and he is an unknown character to me). I am watching a very large television (perhaps four square feet) and there is a movie on, seemingly oriented on the west side of the room, though I am not sure what building I am in. (It may be from a memory of a motel my parents and I stopped at when traveling to Florida.) There are scenes of the man being intimate with an unknown woman, mostly hugging and talking at first (though followed by kissing and a love-making scene). The scene relates to his leaving America, I believe. (It may be that he has already left America to meet this female in another country, perhaps Europe or Australia, though I am not certain.) I think the movie is called “The Kiss”. Eventually, though starting out as a cutaway view, everything takes on an X-ray appearance at one point and I am watching the insides of their bodies in x-ray. It does not seem that unusual. Later, I notice color variations. The flowers in a vase on a table in the motel room seem to be affected by the colors on the television screen or change accordingly. It is almost as if features of my dream are “leaking” into each other.

This dream seemed a partial result of a less focused “experiment” where I was deliberately trying to dream in black and white. I think the cutaway view may be an influence from looking at cutaway views (side views) of the human reproductive system.

2 minutes and 15 seconds to read.

Friday morning, 13 October 1972.

The Pink Snake that Tried to Follow Me Home

Dream # 2,125-04.

While dreaming, I have dream state awareness, but I do not change the ongoing implication that is only mildly annoying. I occasionally feel vague abdominal cramps through the veil of sleep, aware of my status but without pain.

A small, skinny Pepto Bismol pink snake follows me through the empty halls of my middle school but is always a few feet behind me. I do not attempt to run from it. I perceive it as friendly but annoying. I do not think about whether it is venomous or not.

I look back and see it atop a row of lockers. It almost seems to be grinning, more with friendly curiosity, not a threat. It sometimes hides.

At one point, I wonder if it might be a relative, perhaps an uncle visiting from Wisconsin whom I have not met, or even my grandfather. Its essence is more like part of a cartoon in contrast to being realistic.

I continue to walk north, going home to Cubitis from Arcadia. (I never walked this route in real life as it was too far.) I walk through abstract and undefined spaces (some with indoor-outdoor ambiguity, others merely abstract), though still focused on returning home (even though I am already home and in bed sleeping).

As I think less about the snake and more about walking home, I realize it is probably not following me anymore. I decide to teleport home, which brings about wakefulness as I teleport.

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I have had many dreams where my dream self perceives deliberately waking up as teleporting. This error in thinking (in ambiguous metacognitive or liminal states that most dream writers pretend do not exist) is no different than protoconsciousness referring to a dream as a “movie.” It is flawed dynamic imagination and natural virtual amnesia (incomplete pathways from not being conscious). There is no reason to be stupid about it.

The snake in this dream is Pepto Bismol pink. (I drank a lot of Pepto Bismol when I was a child and did not find out until recently that children under 12 should not drink it.)

Pink is rarely a color that noticeably occurs in my dreams but is more often Pepto Bismol pink - which I always have the dream state awareness of as being so and sometimes become annoyed at how the color is “interfering” with my dream’s narrative, though all pink is not exclusively so. I usually do not put “meaning” into specific colors unless I understand what they “represent” while in the dream state.

Snakes (with no “convenient” singular “meaning”) sometimes appear in my dreams when I have abdominal cramps with indigestion. (This causality was more common in childhood.) This factor is not “interpretation” (which I know is an asinine fallacy) but the realization of underlying dream content influence, not opinion or pretending, as so many do. One association I have always had is a snake’s similarity to the human intestine because of its size and shape. There are many dreams more specific under this influence. (An additional factor relates to a boa constrictor squeezing a person’s abdomen.) Ultimately, snakes appear in dreaming experiences for many reasons in the realms of imagination, but the connection to the human intestine remains predominant for me (other than the vivid but generic waking alert/RAS dream outcomes).

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Morning of October 10, 1972. Tuesday. (Resupplemented for clarity on Tuesday, 5 September 2017.)


“Giant” trucks go by our house in Cubitis - as there is apparently a new and bigger highway now. They go fairly fast at times and I watch shingles and tar paper being ripped off the roof by the wind they make in passing, most vehicles heading north. I watch the event from a distance, seemingly from the other side of the highway (the original Highway Seventeen), yet also with the idea I am in my bed and viewing this scene while incorporeal. Our house seems farther south in overall imagery and awareness, though I am still clearly aware that it is our home. I am eventually vaguely lucid and the scene becomes somewhat peaceful.

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My original title for this was “The Martian Highway” even though there was no clearer awareness or idea of aliens being present. However, the trucks did seem to be much larger than normal, though sometimes this seemed more relative to distorted perspective. The idea that they were or could be “Martian giants” was not really defined as such. Later titles for this dream (while I was transferring thousands of my dreams to larger and more convenient binders) were “Thunder Road” and “Thundering Road”.

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The shingles blowing off our roof in the wind may relate to a preconscious factor (though wind usually relates to the passage of time), the roof symbolizing a particular state of consciousness in transition and its cessation. More relevant in this case however, may be the association with my blanket coming off while sleeping, or the need for the blanket to come off before getting ready for the day. This may additionally be validated by the engines of the oversized trucks, which are akin to growing neural and physical energy. Additionally, I was likely subliminally focused on the sound of passing semi-trailer trucks at times.

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Years later, in real life, after we moved, there actually was a very large wide highway that came fairly close to our old home (though on the opposite side), the house still being there. My wife Zsuzsanna, when a child, sometimes had a fear of large trucks.

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2 minute 20 second read.

Saturday morning, 7 October 1972. (Rewritten for clarifications on 21 June 2022.)

The Sally Struthers Autograph

Dream # 2,119-05.



Some people might incorrectly claim the foundation of this dream is a "false awakening," but it originated from semi-conscious summoning and maintaining it with partial lucidness. However, there were sparsely occurring "false awakenings" (but not in the conventional sense) later in this sleep cycle.

To clarify, I thought I had been awake a few times before morning when I was not (though this was more like false memories of brief dreams that did not occur), mistakenly confirming "Sally Struthers" was written on the page. (There was no resemblance to her real-world autograph). The outcome was that it was not her name but "sepia" written in cursive in real life. (Even if it had been her name, it would have been me who had written it.) The word was on the right-hand page, slightly above the center. As a boy, I had written that it might have been confusion with the word "sleepy." Ultimately, trying to remain alert enough throughout the night to write in my dream journal immediately after a dream was something I felt was problematic. I never had trouble recalling multiple dreams in vivid detail every morning, so it was unnecessary.

In my dream, actress Sally Struthers, dressed informally in blue jeans and an orange sweater, visits me around midnight in the darkness of my Cubitis bedroom. She stands in the southwest quadrant of my room near the head of my bed. She seems younger, probably from my associations with her teenage persona of Pebbles in the cartoon.

As she leans over me (as I do not get out of bed), she tells me about the work she will be doing to help people in poverty and her pending activism (Christian Children's Fund, which became a scandalous organization in 1994, and public service announcements). She wants to sign her name on a page of my dream journal (that, in real life, was open on the desk near the head of my bed) to prove to me that she had been here.

I was familiar with her acting in "All in the Family," the movie "Five Easy Pieces," and (as aforementioned) voicing Pebbles in "The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show."

There is unaccountable content here. Sally's appearance and persona are more like Fran Clinton in "The Getaway," but that movie did not come out until December 1972. Odder is how, according to sources, she only became the Christian Children's Fund spokeswoman in 1976.

Because the movie ("The Getaway") was already in production when I had this dream, it is demonstrably more from a co-occurrent "non-local" perception rather than "seeing the future." (That is certainly true for my continual "communication" with Zsuzsanna before we learned of each other in waking life.)

The content regarding the Christian Children's Fund and the charity work she became known for is likely from a type of perception people do not fully understand yet. I do not think it is "seeing the future." Because they approached her as such, it must have been for a discernible reason, something I impersonally perceived (for no particular reason for me). With Zsuzsanna, it is different and an unknown factor continually linking us together all our lives on many levels.

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1 minute 10 second read.
Thursday morning, 13 September 1973. (Zsuzsanna's birthday before we made real-world contact.)
The Marble Giant (Statue of Liberty Sinks)
Dream # 2,460-03.




Although, in reality, the Statue of Liberty is iron and copper, my dream mistakenly renders it as being made of lighter-colored marble.

The Statue of Liberty comes to life in a long surreal narrative. At times, I seem to know "her" thoughts. "She" wades through the harbor and, "says goodbye" as she sinks into the water during what is seemingly a deliberate act. My dream's narrative has the essence of a movie, but my dream self is the only human character. (However, there is an occasional association that some people might see her as looming or threatening.)

My dream presents a vague backstory (more as if I am putting a "meaning" into it as I am experiencing it), almost like an obscure second "movie" about Sandra R, a female classmate. I only knew her in one grade in middle school. (Her essence may "be" the statue at one point, though there have been different versions of this dream.)

However (years later), Zsuzsanna told me something that also made me realize the statue might have also been, on one level, a precursor to our meeting in waking life despite the typical causality of this dream's narrative.

Statues have always appeared in my dreams every sleep cycle as a REM atonia indicator (physical immobility while sleeping). As water signifies the dynamics of sleep, a statue coming to life and sinking into the water is merely being vaguely aware of coming to my senses before falling asleep again. Even so, there is possibly an additional spiritual element here because of how my dream self perceives the narrative.

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Morning of August 19, 1972. Saturday.



I am deep within an amazingly vivid lucid dream state and in my Cubitis home’s backyard. It seems to be late morning. Being in this state and knowing I am dreaming, I decide to go and visit Lisa in the house next door, to the immediate south. However, when I near the southeast corner of my house, on my way to cross diagonally to her front yard, a large orange dog, which looks sort of like a Labrador Retriever, emerges from behind the corner and growls menacingly and starts to pounce upon me, waking me up with a bit of stress and frustration, but not quite a full-on nightmare due to the lucidity it was not “real”. For a few years, on and off, many of my lucid dreams as a boy were “interrupted” by black or rust-colored dogs attacking me and it annoyed me more in the long run than bothering me in other ways. I did not experience any trauma with dogs when younger and I was not afraid of them in reality. It was only later when my brother Earl owned a black Lab named “Gypsy”.

Morning of August 13, 1972. Sunday. (Online entry extensively expanded for additional background and clarity and resupplemented on Friday, 1 September 2017.)



This dream, from age eleven and during summer break after completion of fifth grade on June 2nd, occurs in the state of apex lucidity, where my dream self is fully corporeal, including in weight and momentum, with all the physical dynamics and augmented senses as in waking life. In this state, full control can be maintained by the conscious self identity. Since age four, I had been involved in my own continuous experiments with the dream state, including, on some days, several hours of specific affirmations (and other types of preparations) prior to sleep.

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In reality, I am sleeping on my back, my feet southward. The foot and right side of my bed are against walls with tall jalousie windows with the head of my bed being open into my room. The entrance to my room is to my left, on the opposite side of my room. Although it is daylight, my eyes are covered with a pillowcase (of an additional pillow than the one my head is on) from behind my head.

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Surprisingly, there is still some vivid hypnagogia, where I am still able to willingly return to the dream state. The hypnagogic virtual “slideshow” is slow enough to eventually choose the setting that I want to “step into”. However, because it is morning and circadian rhythms dictate that most of my sleep cycle is over, most of the settings (cycling at about one per second) display primarily featureless fields, though there is still the residual essence of water (which symbolizes sleep dynamics and the metaphorical tidal aspects of dreaming that seem to be based more on the glymphatic clearance pathway rather than always correlated with Earth’s tidal dynamics). I step into a setting without surrendering my conscious self identity.

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I step onto slightly damp ground, somewhat marshy and squashy. The grass is nearly up to my knees, though sparse in some areas. I decide to see what would happen if I run with my eyes closed. Would my dream change?

I start happily running barefoot and I feel as if I have a lot of energy. I keep my eyes open for a few minutes. The open field is slightly less marshy over time (the “water lowering” waking symbolism precursor, which has been documented hundreds of times since childhood and still works as such over fifty years later).

I continue to run, now with my eyes deliberately closed, through the slightly muddy grassy field. The marshy ground is bordered by drier ground with denser and shorter grass as I run joyfully, with an incredible sense of freedom and appreciation. The sound changes slowly over time, from my footfalls producing shallow splashes of water (which I find wonderful) to the slaps of drier ground. There are no buildings visible anywhere, including in the distance.

Eventually, I decide to open my dream self’s eyes to see where I am now. Despite the continuous vivid perception up until now of cheerfully running through an open field in mid-afternoon, I now suddenly find myself at the top of a tall ivory tower, looking out over mostly featureless grassy ground. (The tower mostly resembles the Sather Tower, which I have never been inside in reality.) I puzzle over this change. I do not recall running up a winding staircase (or changing direction as such, which would have been required in the implied smaller area) which my present location would seem to indicate (though I do not know what the inside of the Sather Tower is like).

My puzzlement increases and I decide to leave my dream (though remaining curious about the results of my experiment), which I do deliberately by phasing out of my dream self’s body, phasing through the wall of the tower behind my dream self’s body, and flying up and out of my dream (a recurring way I deliberately left the dream state by way of my conscious self identity, more so in my childhood and teenage years).

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In post-hypnopompia, I realize that the tower was the rendering of my emergent consciousness, the symbol of my growing conscious self identity (which is sometimes personified as another character just as the preconscious sometimes is though I was the only dream character in this case), watching over the dream state, which relates to the experiment analogy (just as a person would look over the setup of their experiment). Additionally, there was an influence from Cathy Carr’s recording of “Ivory Tower” (from 1956). I actually feel as if I had been running for a long time, as my legs feel slightly tired (though there is no evidence I had been moving my legs or moving at all in reality).

Despite this dream being a result of apex lucidity, I can relate it to some waking life elements, one prescient. I began sixth grade August 28th (which was to be held in a different building), about two weeks after this dream, thus there may be a “testing” of seeing myself in a higher position. However, there is ambiguity with that concept in that, although my three middle school years (fall 1972-summer 1975) took place in a one-storey building, my earlier grade classes took place on the second floor (though that relates to physical dynamics, not emotional).

In terms of prescience, the specific date marker (which remains unexplainable in terms of what people understand about the perception of time, as same-date prescience occurs far too often to be coincidental) was based on never having been in a tower in real life until much later during a middle school summer break, with my sister Carol (older half-sister on my mother’s side) and her husband Mel, which I had never expected. (I did not even know they would be coming to Florida until about a week before their visit.) This was a journey to the top of the Lake Placid Tower in Florida, which was a wonderful day for me.

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Morning of April 9, 1972. Sunday.



Whenever it starts to rain, or especially hail, I feel a bit strange and then notice it is not rain, but a volcano erupting in the distance (always south of my Cubitis home) and little bits of lava or perhaps small volcanic rocks hitting the roof. This volcano seems to be in a similar location as another later volcano dream - “Heart of a Volcano”. I leave the house and start to run north (I almost always ran north in dreams when living in Florida, even though the main town itself, including schools and stores, was to the south, because I think I was somehow aware that Florida eventually came to an end if I went too far south though I had moved from the north as well - though there are exceptions regarding dreams where I was looking for a partner of the “mystery girl”). I suddenly find myself stuck inside a tumbleweed-like bush and cannot move much (no bushes or larger plants were anywhere in that area in real life). I just somehow sort of “popped” into it, as if I was just suddenly there as I was running. Later on, I am designing a coloring book (with me as the main character on many of the pages) with this scene as one of the pages (recurring), the line underneath reading “trapped in the bush”. The threat from the volcano at the point is almost nonexistent.

Morning (and afternoon) of February 14, 1972. Monday. Valentine’s Day. (Last resupplemented for clarity on Friday, 1 September 2017.)



A stomach virus had rendered me very ill. I had severe stomach pain and my dreams were, as can be imagined, rather unusual.

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My main dream involved me being in surgery at an unknown hospital. A bright light overhead sometimes seemed to make my head hurt slightly. Over time, there were at least six doctors of both sexes working on me from both sides of the cold metal table I was lying on.

Over time, I seemed to be “pregnant”. I am not sure how I, as an eleven-year-old boy, could be pregnant, but this seems to be the case or at least the association. The surgery I am undergoing seems to be related to my apparent “cesarean”. I am somewhat wary of what is to come as I lie on my back hoping the pain will ease off.

Later, I look down at my navel as I feel my pain defined more densely in one area of my abdomen. From out of my belly button emerges a large mole cricket. (Mole crickets were common where I lived and I used to pick them up a lot and let them tickle me by trying to “dig” between my fingers though it was never painful). As I watch, there is a bit of blood and sand around my belly button as it crawls out. Apparently, I will not need surgery now, as the “birth” unfolded without a need for a cesarean. I am not quite sure what to make of it all. Congratulations to me, I gave birth to a mole cricket. Intriguingly, the pain was gone in real life after this dream.

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An earlier part of another dream of this date was also odd. It involves some sort of thin wooden female idol about eleven inches high (somewhat African in appearance, but also somewhat Maori-like) that is continuously moving about, rotating and bending (vaguely reminding me of mosquito larvae in water). It seems to only be able to bend at the waist. It seems to be “dancing” to a reggae instrumental version of “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, sometimes with an “uh uh uh” human chorus. (It was at least partly but loosely based on the “Sesame Street” cartoon “Water!”, which, at the time of this writing, has the YouTube ID of LEoy_Kaglxc). It soothed me over time, almost like a healing ritual. (There was an association with the “Water!” cartoon possibly due to being partly dehydrated, though I seem to recall an additional similar short film which I cannot trace.)

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In another previous dream, there was also a concern for the imaginary loss of my father (who seemed to be missing but actually was there when I was ill), who actually did die on Valentine’s Day, though years later in 1979. I had also been thinking a lot of my sister Marilyn who died on the 13th but Valentine’s Day in 2014 in Australia where I live now. (I had an unlikely idea all my life that my sister Marilyn and my father would die on Valentine’s Day but probably in different years and this idea became oddly enhanced when it was her that first told me of my father’s death in the middle of the night, waking me from sleep, though I had certainly never told anyone about this idea.)

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In real life, my teacher came by after school (I had not gone due to my illness) and gave me a large cardboard box full of Valentine’s Day cards from nearly everyone in the whole school (including from schoolmates of whom I am sure did not even like me).

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2 minutes 12 seconds to read.

Sunday morning, 6 February 1972.

A Rose Encased in Glass

Dream # 1,875-04.


I am standing at the front of my fifth-grade classroom in the late morning, to the left of the teacher's desk and facing the seated students. My classmates are gazing toward the front of the room. However, no one acknowledges my presence or seems to see me. There is a sense that it is the last day of school. Danny Hollingsworth is standing on my right, closer to the other students. He seems very happy.

An unfamiliar male teacher gives him an award for an unknown accomplishment. It is a red rose in a rectangular prism made of glass. Despite his gratitude upon receiving the award, I recognize that it is an act of mockery. I sense a couple of classmates (including John Cavas) snickering at Danny's "award."

"Thank you," Danny cheerfully says.

"It's dusty," he says without changing his happy mood.

He blows on the top of the rectangular prism. An overpowering wind carries dust that covers the other students. Time seems to flow rapidly, 50 years swirling by in a second, to present a scene of old business people (seemingly close to death) seated around a large rectangular table (still in the classroom but with a sense of bilocation). (They eventually seem mummified.) The event had not affected me. I am only a spectator. I sense Susan Cavas had been a real estate agent.

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Dream Content Errors:

Danny was not in my fifth-grade class, only in previous grades.

The rose and prism were of an unrealistic size, at least a foot high, perhaps caused by a zoomed-in superimposition that my dreams often provide.

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Causality and Meaning:

Wind often implies the passage of time and a "glimpse into the future" (as here), depending on other content.

The rose encased in glass; and the immobile business people are indicators of intuitive, metacognitive, or lucid associations with REM atonia (the natural paralysis while sleeping that occurs throughout all dreaming). This fundamental causality of dream narratives occurs whether or not there is any other related factor.

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Influences:

One influence was the joke where a teacher asks a student what their favorite flower is. They respond with, "chrysanthemum." When the teacher asks them to spell it, they say they like "roses" more. Another dream integrated this gag and included the ending line without the joke's inference.

Danny had a feminine personality and manner, and other classmates sometimes teased him for it.

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Enigmatic Content:

In the next grade (in middle school in a different building), a female classmate, Lorilee, mocked me by giving me baby blocks and other baby toys tied together with string for the classroom's Christmas gift exchange (where students had randomly drawn names). (It was because she was obsessed with my "oversized baby teeth," and ironically, she was in dentistry years later.) When she was about fifty, she claimed to have no memory of her life until recently (though because of trauma and drugs, apparently). To read a strange news story regarding that classmate, use the Google search for "A dilemma carved in wood" in quotes.

Years after this dream (after I had lived in Wisconsin for years), I learned that Susan (who remained in Florida) had become a real estate agent.

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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.

Morning of October 3, 1971. Sunday.



“The Staged Bull”, regardless of its nightmarish essence (though I felt no direct threat as a result of being in the state of apex lucidity) was one of my most fascinating childhood dreams and also of which contained intriguing redundant symbolism (or “multiplicity” of the type which many dreams have). The level of extreme vividness was nearly indistinguishable from wakefulness, even my body awareness and sense of weight and movement as well as the incredibly realistic ambiance that many dreams lack.

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At the beginning of my dream, I am in my bed in Cubitis and the time seems to be around nine o'clock in the morning. During the process of a false awakening and “getting out of bed” (in my dream), I enter the state of apex lucidity and as a result I am already astounded by my fully aware perspective before I even make my way into our living room to go out the front door, into the carport, and into our front yard, and from there, I expectantly contemplate intimacy with the neighbor girl which basically, as young as I was, reflected my real-life attitude (though our relationship was mostly innocent; that is, mostly only hand-holding, hugging, spooning, and kissing at this time).

In my dream, the setting was a very nice and sunny day and I could even feel the fresh warm air on my body and in my lungs, and the distance orientation to other areas of the yard and orange groves was all perfect, as were the smooth walking movements and an almost overwhelming joy and sense of freedom, but there was soon something else, some sort of “higher authority” perhaps, and a menacing presence in my dream (a preconscious thread most likely), almost as if I was being stopped from exploring beyond my large front yard. There were three menacing dogs growling at me shortly after that otherwise beautiful feeling of freedom, my sense of freedom lowering somewhat, but I was not attacked in any way. The dogs never moved from their positions on the front lawn.

There was also another vivid but surreal menacing presence, which was an animal that was moving about in our yard looking much like a bull ready to charge. His front legs and feet seemed a bit too thin. He was mostly facing towards my home and near the largest tree between our front yard and our neighbor’s front yard. My first thought was that it was a bull that had somehow gotten a puppet stage stuck on his head (and in the back of my mind I was contemplating what could have happened to the teachers and students watching the show and although I am fully lucid I still do not consider that an outdoor puppet show near my home would have been highly unlikely, though bulls have gotten out from nearby farms) and as a result was likely very agitated by not being able to see where he was. Upon looking more closely though, it seemed that the bull’s head actually was a puppet stage, with a small, red, velvety curtain continuously swaying outward and inward to where the bull’s face would have been. I clearly hear the strange breathing. puffing, and snorting as he moves one front leg about (reminding me of a chicken scratching for food), and I feel a sense of augmented awe and potential danger, but nothing threatening happens other than an eerie feeling that my dream is not really my own, which causes me to decide to just wake up on my own, albeit frustrated at the missed opportunity to explore a dream of this “impossible” level of clarity.

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Important key points, including multiplicity; that is, two or more symbols that represent the same concept:

Firstly, the three aggressive dogs represent an invitation to control my dream, as dogs typically symbolize obedience. Their positions on our front lawn symbolize my physical day-to-day reality. Standing, sitting in a chair, and lying in bed. Dream-self role: potential dog-trainer (analogous to dream control).

Secondly, the bull also represents an invitation to control my dream, the red curtain symbolizing that the bull, on some levels, is already under my conscious control (though I unfortunately do not realize this while in my dream) as it is apparently preventing him from seeing me and thus knowing where to charge (and, although he is directly pointing towards our open carport entrance, does not change his position when I walk past him and more towards the highway). (One of my vividest recurring childhood dreams of a much earlier time period than this dream involved a bull crashing through the wall of the living room of our house near Mohawk Valley.) Dream-self role: potential bullfighter (analogous to dream control).

Thirdly, a puppet stage also obviously represents an invitation to control my dream. It is modeled after the high school auditorium stage, which my elementary school also used at the time. Dream-self role: potential puppet master (analogous to dream control).

Saturday, 26 June 1971. 1,650-M2. 48 second read.



I soar through the blue sky alongside an American black vulture, but I am unwary.

He flies on my left until he dives. I expect him to attack the townspeople below. (There is a vague association with Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”)

The mood becomes cheerful. The “palace” far below appears to be the DeSoto County Courthouse. I hear people cheering and see a ticker-tape parade.

I see people carry the vulture down the building’s outer steps in a palanquin, as he immediately becomes their king. “Pomp and Circumstance” (“Graduation March Song”) plays.

I zoom in. From the left, I see the vulture sitting inside the palanquin. The bird has knees like a human instead of bird legs and wears a crown.

I rise into the blue sky as I wake up laughing aloud.

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Note: People called vultures “buzzards” when I lived in Florida, thus my original title.

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

The vulture’s flying and diving transitions to his non-flight (becoming more human-like) and descending a staircase.

A crown appears with increased dream state awareness. It reveals higher metacognitive management of the dream state.

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Morning of April 11, 1971. Sunday.

Dream #: 1,574-02. Reading time: 1 min 50 sec.



My best friend Toby Taylor and I enter a castle, though it becomes a hall of our school in appearance. No one else is around.

A narrative begins, implying each of us has to choose a different door. The inference is that one of us will win a valuable prize, and the other will gain nothing and may die.

Eventually, I pick the door on the left (with the number 1 on it), and Toby chooses the door on the right (that features the number 2).

After I open the door, I immediately find myself sliding down a big pile of gold coins. I feel happy as I look to my right and see Toby also cheerfully sliding down the same hill of gold coins at about the same speed I am. We excitedly grab clusters of them as we are sliding and let them flow between our fingers.

Eventually, from below us, there is a sound like a lion’s roar. I realize we are both sliding toward what may be the open mouth of a dragon. (Even so, the element of fear and surprise is minimal.) I start to wake around this time and consider that instead of a dragon, it may be a furnace or fireplace in a basement or boiler room. I also sense it is perpendicular to the direction we are sliding rather than in our path.

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This dream interprets my status of seeking somatosensory awareness while I sleep - to progress toward either achieving consciousness or greater awareness for vivifying and sustaining my dreaming experience. My instinctual and liminal summoning of coins began in early childhood.

Sliding, usually a vivid sensation, is a typical form of imaginary kinaesthesia (caused by the lack of discernibility of my physical body while sleeping). Sliding (as with other kinaesthetic events such as floating, falling, or flying) has nothing to do with symbolism or wordplay.

Using a door in the dream state is an activity I instinctually or liminally bring about to concurrently vivify or change a dream’s narrative upon stepping through the doorway.

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There is more to the history behind the causation of this dream. It ties in with loose associations with incidental sleep apnea. I include this because I mentally summon and light a candle (a source of fire as is a dragon) when in undefined liminal space. Additionally, there is likely an association with the heater I sometimes had near the center of my bedroom. Its noise would sometimes wake me in the middle of the night.

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After this dream, I read a Harvey comic book (with Casper the Friendly Ghost) that involved characters deciding which of two doors to open and ending up as mindless servants when they touched both doorknobs at the same time.

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