memorable

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 September 28, 1965. Tuesday.



In my vivid dream (age 4, originally documented in detail on reel-to-reel, but written in adult grammar here), I am with all of my older brothers and sisters on my mother’s side (Marilyn, Carol, Earl, Dennis, and Jim). My parents are not present at any point. We are walking up an isolated trail on Grandad Bluff in La Crosse, though there are ambiguous associations with Chipmunk Coulee.

Without incident, we come to a large circular clearing deep in the forest where an old log cabin features near its center. I am told to see if anyone is home, so I go onto the porch on my own to look around while my relatives stand near the edge of the clearing (about a quarter of a city block away). I notice an old wooden rocking chair on the porch upon which a tasseled woven cushion sits. Suddenly, I am lying on my back, not remembering having fallen over.

An unfamiliar large white cat, almost as big as me, approaches me and is soon walking on my chest, getting closer and closer to my face. He does not make a sound at any point. Curiously, he has a very long white human-like beard, which almost hangs to the floor. I feel a bit uneasy but I do not call out right away.

Meanwhile, my siblings do not seem to think that I am in danger. They seem to be happy and are smiling and laughing. I remain wary of the cat’s human-like eyes and seemingly superior intelligence as well as its amazing apparent old age, though I am also somewhat annoyed by my physical discomfort and uncertainty of what is going on, so I attempt to call for someone to come and take the cat off me, but they seem to be walking back into the forest, though I get the impression they do not think I am in danger. I cannot call out very loudly anyway.

I am uncertain of what to do or how to respond. I do not want to annoy this “old man” by being mean to him, though he is probably too heavy to push away anyway. I am unsure of the cat’s intentions as they may be meant to be very friendly or even helpful somehow. I get the impression that a lonely old man who had lived in the cabin somehow became one with his pet cat; that the cat and the old man are now the same entity.

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Some basic dream components are rendered here. I had originally been walking, but near the end of my dream, I am lying on my back in the sleeping position my body is in in reality. A porch is autosymbolism for a specific level of unconsciousness of which is closer to the conscious self identity and the waking factor than other typical dream settings, but also hints at an attempt to go back into sleep and lucid dreaming. (This is based on personal experience even in childhood in deliberately using a porch or carport in some dreams to exit a building and enter a more vivid dream state “outside”, which has worked many times as such.)

Some people might assume that this dream was at least partly a result of being exposed to the bizarre ignorant belief of a cat stealing a child’s breath, but there is no way to verify if this was the influence. In reality, I did have a cat walk on my chest a number of times when I was both resting and sleeping. This may be why the transition of the preconscious into the emergent consciousness factor did not seem directly threatening, as well as holding the essence of a friendly old man.

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Ultimately, this remains a personal favorite and was one of many reasons my interest in dreams, including lucid states as here, remained throughout my life.

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Morning of September 13, 1975. Saturday.



Somehow, my best friend Toby T—-r and I end up in a very isolated area of Australia (I do not recall any backstory other than the perception of having walked over an embankment), seemingly far inland, with no towns close by in any direction.

It is apparently an isolated place called the “Boneyard” and is seemingly a special archaeological site relating to Australian Aboriginal rituals as well as lost treasures and gemstones, mostly opals. There are rocky hills in all directions when we explore one area. At one point, it seems like a school field trip even though I feel as if I am an adult. We find ancient artifacts which are supposedly very valuable in addition to various smaller human bones. We do a lot of work and at one point, are trying to interpret carvings on old stones. We put everything in the same large grayish green bag. I am not sure of the material. I do not think it is burlap.

After a time, a dangerous snake shows up (I am unsure of the species, but it is perceived by my dream self as venomous, and is possibly a krait). One of us, I am not sure if it was Toby or me, as there seems to be a jump ahead in time at one point, apparently had trapped the snake in the bag earlier without considering it was what we were using to put the artifacts in.

We later gather several more valuable items to put in the bag. There seems to be some sort of argument (non-violent) about possible translations on some Aboriginal dreaming stones or whether certain ones were made by Aborigines or pirates.

Near the end of my dream, there seems to be some sort of ironic special ending about getting to the valuable artifacts. Because the snake is in the bag, we would not be safe if we put our hands in it. This seems to be some sort of O-Henry-like dream climax, but in reality, there would be a few options to getting the artifacts, yet in my dream they somehow ultimately seem inaccessible.

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Familiar dream state components and meaning:

Prescient threads: It is pertinent here to go into the precognitive dynamics of this dream before the usual core symbolism. Although my “mystery girl” (dream girl) is not present in this dream, it does take place in Australia. Not only that, Zsuzsanna, when I learned many years later that she was a real person, had not only been to an area to find opals when she was young, she also has an Aboriginal Churinga dreaming stone of the same appearance as one which featured in this dream. This is especially curious as I had no viable knowledge of such things when this dream occurred (and did not really know much about it until after coming to Australia). Additionally, this dream took place on her birthday, though “mystery girl” dreams certainly were not restricted to literal markers.

RAS symbolism: This dream amused me with the nature of its intriguing ending. There was no real threat, as I had started to enter semi-lucidity in the final stages. A snake is often the core RAS dynamic (likely the oldest waking trigger in all primates, including man). Toby is present for preconscious mediation with only mild conflict relating to reading (translation) skills, which symbolize the emergent consciousness factor (as critical thinking skills normally do not function in dreams). The bag with the snake inside is likely associated with waking space and RAS - analogous to a pillow case, as it was about the same size as one. As such, the bag could be typified as a second-level dream state indicator, that is, residual subliminal memory of having fallen asleep (as it is biologically impossible for the mind to not be aware it is sleeping and dreaming, which is why much dream content is based on the dream state itself in the inherent nature of waking from sleep).

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Morning of September 9, 1965. Thursday.

Unnumbered. 34 sec read.

I wander on my own in a city in daylight after walking with my mother. I remain unconcerned about being on my own.

I join a crowd of unknown adults who have gathered in front of what may be the Madison Capitol Building. They seem to be studying “The Thinker,” a statue by Auguste Rodin. (To me, it is reminiscent of a man sitting on a toilet.)

At times, the statue briefly but minimally moves. More people arrive to see if it will move again. I believe it may stand and walk, though not until people are no longer watching. I think that is how I would react under these circumstances.

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Statues as self-evident in-dream sleep paralysis indicators have occurred in dreaming experiences all my life, and a moving sculpture is a self-evident correlation with waking and anticipation of mobility upon waking.

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Morning of August 10, 1975. Sunday.



Someone is stealing our chickens from our large shed in Cubitis, either late at night or very early in the morning (before dawn) and my father and I go out one night to see if we can catch them. Our orange Turkens (a breed of chicken also known as the Transylvanian Naked Neck) are gone without any visible clues anywhere. Although it is first considered that the thieves are ordinary humans, there is pondering of both alien and supernatural possibilities.

Time passes, and the entire shed and external cages area, ground and all, including us as we are standing, seems to be lifted into the dawn sky by an unknown force as we are facing north. There is a sense of beauty, awe, and wonder but no fear. The sense of movement and changing distance from the rest of the ground near our house is very vivid. We are still not sure if this force is alien or supernatural.

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Morning of August 1, 1965. Sunday.



This was a sparsely recurring early childhood dream. Like a lot of my early childhood dreams, I was not aware of my parents being in the immediate area (and I do not feel close to any implied family home) even though it seems very late at night. I do not really feel in danger or lost even though I am not sure of the area - probably La Crosse (possibly somewhere near Rose Street) or perhaps a part of Minnesota. I also feel quite a bit older in my dream for some reason, so perhaps I do not feel threatened as such.

The main idea is related to going near a closed used car lot (again, always very late at night). There is some confusion related to the strung pennants across two sides of the corner business. At one point, I am fairly certain that kites had been caught up in the area and entangled in the string with the pennants, especially the kite tails. In another version of this dream, there is a concern related to mostly small birds (swallows or sparrows?) somehow becoming entangled and an uncertainty of whether I am looking at hanging (dead) birds or the small pennants at any given time, which seem to be of an almost identical shape from some angles. The flapping sound (of the many pennants) at times makes me think that perhaps a live bird (or several live birds) is being trapped somewhere though I cannot see any live ones. No other person is ever around. The sound is not that frequent or discernible.

Morning of July 12, 1975. Saturday.



This dream is somewhat of a continuation of events I have been involved in in real life, in having a long line of clean jars (which originally contained peanut butter or mustard) sitting across the top of my desk in my Cubitis bedroom. Each jar has a certain amount of water to make a particular pitch and I find it pleasing to play music in this manner. I use a spoon to lightly tap each one to make a particular note and play simple melodies.

In my dream, I become famous for playing glass jars, but seem like someone else at one point. A parade is held in my honor relating to the supposed “revival” of this sort of music. In the most vivid part of my dream, as my perspective is changing, I hear a girl’s chorus sing loudly and clearly (and very cheerfully, almost as if for the final part of a movie), something much like the following:

He likes all kinds of girls

Tall kinds of girls

Short kinds of girls

Dark kinds of girls

Light kinds of girls

Thin kinds of girls

Any girls at all…

The fictional song keeps repeating with various similar lyrics in this same form. The tune is very simple:



As this song is being sung, I see a giant (unknown) hand (as big as a house) in overhead view (while seemingly in my “orb” form) start to “play” a group of roofs on several grass huts (or wooden bark huts) apparently with an equally giant spoon or other utensil - in a row in a small village somewhere on an island in the same manner that glass jars are played and I can even hear the wind-chime like tones. It is a very unusual, yet somehow nostalgic scene. There is also a vague perception that the roofs may be crushed or at least possibly damaged but this only happens during my waking stage (where the grass hut seems to “crack” but not in a seemingly threatening way).

Morning of July 7, 1965. Wednesday.



This was a recurring very early childhood dream. There were a few variations. The main scene involved being in the back seat of a car, on the right-hand side, with my father driving and my mother in the front seat. Somehow, I eventually find myself along the right-hand side of the road with no car in sight and where there are a lot of tall grasses and possibly a trench or ditch. This seems related to my parents stopping for me to relieve myself while they go to a nearby store to come back in a short time. (I get the impression that we had been at a gas station though I could not go because the bathroom doors were locked - this in-dream back story being based on a real-life event.) I soon notice a small green dinosaur on two legs (probably a very small or baby “ostrich dinosaur” or Ornithomimus not quite as tall as I am) that comes out from the tall weeds. In afterthought, I seem taller in my dream, or at least seeing things from a higher perspective. There is sometimes a sense of sadness as if it may be the only one around or the last of its kind. It seems friendly though also somewhat out of place in its surroundings. I am not sure what its fate will be as I usually return to the car when my parents return, though they do not see it and I do not mention it. I may continue to be the only human who ever knows of its existence.

Some of this is based on one of my most vivid real memories. My parents did stop at a gas station and when the attendant said that the doors were locked, I said “That’s okay, I don’t have to use the bathroom anyway” (so as to not be seen as demanding or annoying - I was quite passive and focused when growing up for the most part). My impression of this seemingly very annoyed-looking man towering over me stayed with me. We did stop at a wayside as such a few times (when I had to go to the bathroom), but my parents certainly never drove off for any length of time as in some of my dreams.

Morning of July 5, 1975. Saturday.



This entry relates to a small part of real-life but “dreamlike” events (also experienced by my wife when she was younger long before we met) of water bugs completely vanishing from a sealed glass mason jar I usually had on the left area of the northwestern jalousie window sill over a longer time period as well as touching a kind of seemingly aquatic (either hexagonal or octagonal) orange “accordion-like worm” and watching them “explode” into tiny grain-like and plate-like parts and dissolve within a short time. I was also the only one at the time (and for years after) to fully know about the non-native snakes, including Burmese pythons (one of which went into our large shed, likely with the intent to eat a chicken) “invading” the area - which no one else seemed to believe at all, and yet which is now a recognized problem in that region (even with a related television series) years later (this has remained a common “trend” for me - to be the first or only one to see or experience something years before someone else becomes known for first seeing or knowing of it - something I have grown very used to, in fact).

Based on a dream about a “new” kind of penguin (as in actually “newly evolved” or created from nothing), I had written a story called “Penguin in a Jar”.

I was in my Cubitis home in the living room and there was a large, tall, cylindrical aquarium that held a small penguin that was very aquatic, more adapted to water and the ability of perfect, fast swimming than being suited on land at all. It would swim in spiral-like patterns from top to bottom and then back up near the water’s surface to perform a lot of fancy swimming while eating very small fish when swimming downwards again. This special new species of penguin somehow just appeared on Earth with no explanation other than being a “new creation”. One person who wants to make a lot of money on the discovery does not get anywhere when the penguin somehow becomes invisible or dissolves completely when out of the water for very long.

Years ago, even before my older dream journal entry on this, there were no other online matches for “penguin in a jar” - now there are many (Google) matches of this phrase - which I originally personally used to connect to the real-life vanishing water bug enigma. Also, to give a little more detail to all the odd coincidental connections to the much later movie “The Gate” (1987) as partly mentioned in another entry, I forgot to point out how the jar in the movie (that the moths vanish into thin air from at one point) was the same orientation (relative to where it was kept by the window and the orientation of the room) as my real-life experiences from years prior (mid 1970s).

Also see: “The New Life”.

Morning of May 29, 1965. Saturday. (Memorial Day weekend - age four.)



In an odd “twist” on comical partial precognition (which has been very common for me throughout my life), I dreamt (semi-lucid) at age four, in Chipmunk Coulee in Wisconsin, that my father drove us to the “edge of the world” just beyond the end of a road that just stopped. There, a thin red devil (with a narrow beard) danced with a pitchfork in an almost comical way (as in the “Hot Stuff” comic book with “Grandpa Blaze”, who often looked different, though), but there was concern that nothing else existed beyond that area beyond the fence and gate (assumed in my dream), where he lived in a grass hut or haystack? or some such, that was always catching on fire and needed to be put out by a team of chipmunks somehow (water-filled nut-shells?). The world would have just a smooth cliff-like drop and nothing beyond.

In real life, the same afternoon as the morning of this dream, my father got directions from someone mixed up, and ended up driving down a road that actually did come to a sudden end and he talked about the “end of the road” - which, in my young mind, caused me to contemplate that it was as far as one could travel in that direction (south). A thin farmer with a pitchfork approached our car, giving me a somewhat uneasy feeling (thinking of my dream) of being near the “edge of the world”. The seemingly annoyed farmer looked at us suspiciously at first but gave my father instructions on what roads to take from there.

Note to self: I see that I still have the bad habit of writing “chimpmunk” instead of chipmunk, even after all these years.

Morning of February 14, 1965. Sunday.



This was a very long early childhood dream with “resets” - and it also recurred later, though the main longer-lasting and more vivid and emotional one was on that cold Sunday in Chipmunk Coulee. I had been able to determine the exact model of the car as I grew older. It was a red 1922 Phaeton in the dream. Although I had at times associated it with a Ford, the actual proper term is apparently “1922 Lincoln Phaeton”. In this early childhood dream, one of the most vivid of this time period, my father somehow “was” the car. The car becomes involved in an accident somehow (or goes off the road) which I do not actually see occur (but does not really show more obvious damage in-dream) and is apparently red because that is the color of the blood that was from my father which supposedly “painted” the car - being a melancholy perspective rather than more macabre. Interestingly, there were no other cars in the dreams, so one assumption, in having a clear understanding in-dream that the car “was” my father, I thought maybe the car had just stopped working rather than being in an implied accident - and there was also something regarding the thickness (or “wearing down” by the environment) of the car body’s coat of paint. I see it parked in the middle of an old back road in the coulee region at different points near mostly dense forests. My father did not have any health problems at this time. Actual health problems were not more apparent until 1969 and into the 1970s when we once again lived in Florida. Because we had moved between Wisconsin and Florida a couple of times, there was also a problem at one point with my father’s blood circulation and blood thickness relative to climate adjustment later on.

My father actually died on February fourteenth of 1979 (from blood clots) - Valentine’s Day (and I have had dreams on other Valentine’s Days involving parental loss and such), but that is not the main unusual aspect of this. After his death, when I lived on King Street (on my own for the first time) I was given a couple special edition car magazines discarded from a local book store on the south-side of La Crosse. Interestingly, there was a larger fold-out in the middle of one - of the “same” red 1922 Phaeton. I had it on my wall for several years, which sort of created an unusual “retroactive” mood and “continuity” at the same time, regarding the dream. It really made an impact on the nature of my life and personal path, almost like giving me more “grounding”.

That is not all of course. I also consider this a type of “artifact” event, which happened with a couple other patterns (including a light green pendulum-shaped wall clock), and with another one (relative to the mole cricket/lobster “hybrid symbolism” seemingly coming out more or on the horizon so to speak). The 1922 red Phaeton appeared in other dreams in my youth (even before I had the poster). It became the in-dream “car of choice” in some dreams involving the “other” (a female classmate that seemed “in competition” on the spiritual plane with my wife-to-be, before I knew the mystery girl was actually a real person).

Although the majority of my dreams were precognitive in highly precise ways, often in ridiculous, impersonal, and trivial ways (such as dreaming detailed Harvey comic book plots just prior to seeing and reading them in real life, as well as new television commercials), I consider this dream element more of a personal and paranormal nature because of the lifelong time period involved and because of the several layers. Another layer was that a slightly similar reddish antique car appeared in the movie “Fear No Evil” from 1969 and it went off the road, crashing - which actually strangely tied into my dream themes regarding the “mystery girl” and the “other”.

Most mainstream people or westerners would likely find it amusing how I believe certain movies (certainly not all - it depends on the person regarding their associations) have such a strong influence on dreams and even the nature of precognition and self-fulfilling prophecy, almost like a cycle of liminal associations “feeding off each other” - after all, imagery is an extraordinarily powerful force regardless of the source (and of course I remain perplexed at why so many people dream about zombies when this aspect is completely lacking from my dream life and always has been other than one or two comedic ones in my lifetime regarding the old-school aspect of so-called zombies). I have seen amazing examples of self-fulfilling prophecy in movie associations, often absentminded reenactments by other people, sometimes somewhat startling. People sometimes dismiss the paranormal nature of certain types of dreams because they claim people seek and find patterns where there is no actual connection, which is ridiculous because of the very nature of fractals in all things, something humanity seems to only be learning about now (but which I knew of as a young child). I do not look for patterns; patterns find me.

Although other types of cars have featured in my dreams later on, including the red 1958 Plymouth Fury (“Christine”), none have held such a dominating place and seeming importance as the red 1922 Phaeton. This was solely a “dream car”. I never had close contact with one in real life.

Morning of January 1, 1975. Wednesday. (New Year’s Day.)



Summary: Two cats quickly going in opposite directions meet on our Cubitis carport and their movement ceases as they stare at each other until my dream ends. This dream was possibly at least partially influenced by the limerick “There once were two cats of Kilkenny“, as the term “Kilkenny cats” did seem to be in the back of my mind at one point in-dream but was not spoken aloud (though the cats do not fight or even move as in the limerick). A younger neighbor and friend I waited with at the school bus stop on weekday mornings had the first name of Kenny, which may have added to the associations.

It is early morning in Cubitis just prior to the time I would be going out to wait for the school bus on a normal school day and the sun has not fully risen. I become aware that I am going onto our carport at the start of my dream for this reason.

Seemingly out of nowhere, two (unfamiliar to me) cats suddenly approach each other and both assume a stand-off position in our carport near the front entrance of our house, facing north and south. Immediately before I actually see them, I get an uneasy sense of a loud two-layered human-male-like “Ugh!” as if both of the cats had somehow “said” or “exclaimed” it simultaneously, each with a sense of implied disgust at the other, immediately prior to their near-collision.

Time seems “frozen” for seemingly several minutes as the cats stand completely motionless, facing each other from only about an inch apart (nose to nose). I get an eerie feeling that they may somehow have additional human-like attributes (though there is no real evidence for that other than the unvalidated assumption that they spoke).

Soon, at least a dozen (unknown) reporters, both male and female, having donned primarily early 1960s dress styles, appear on our carport as if out of nowhere. They are evenly gathered around, both standing and crouched in a semicircle (open to the driveway), with cameras (a male near the main door seemingly using a Polaroid 185 Land Camera) and yellow notepads with pens (though I briefly notice one female making continuous cursive loops rather than words or sentences). The reporters are gathering around the cats (though not that closely - about a yard or more away) and appear to be ready to plan or begin some sort of television or radio broadcast on the event. The cats do not make any other sounds and continue to remain motionless throughout the rest of my dream. I still feel a growing and somewhat unpleasant eeriness that they are “more than cats” and I almost expect something else to happen but nothing else does. There is a strange mythical awareness that neither cat will ever move again.

Analysis from my primary standpoint: This seems to be a play on the “old year” meeting the “new year” face to face or “blocking” potential progress into the new year with any issues of the previous year, almost in a mythical sense; thus, the in-dream uneasiness and “waiting for something to happen” even though a new year is basically just a continuation of the prior day. My family did not have a Polaroid 185 Land Camera but the camera has a feature that resembles the bellows of an accordion, which my father was well-known for playing and writing popular polkas and waltzes for. The reporters had a very vague association with cartoon characters on “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour” though they did not really appear cartoon-like in any way in my dream. The “reporters” are there perhaps to “record” my progress in my path into the new year and my otherwise blocked passage into the new day, one cat being “of me”, the other a potential rival with opposite opinions, perhaps; likely a classmate I have conflict with.

Analysis from my secondary standpoint: What people have seemingly failed to see throughout the entire history of so-called dream “interpretation” (as I have never seen much evidence of it in commercial publications) is that certain types of dream events often reflect the dreaming process itself. In this case, it would be my dream self being “blocked” from the knowledge of the holiday, part of me wanting to wake up in thinking I have to get up for school (though I do not) and another area of my (dream-self’s) mind saying “Hey, you can sleep longer today, what’s your hurry?”. Of course, dreams are typically multilayered, sometimes with so many layers, it sometimes takes years for certain facets to reveal themselves.

Morning of November 30, 1974. Sunday.



I am wandering around in an unfamiliar area yet somehow am also aware it is part of my school. I find a large utility room, seemingly underground, which has a portal into another dimension in a west wall. This portal starts out as a very large, long square tunnel or metallic hall, somewhat like part of a huge ventilation system - yet large enough for a person to stand fully upright within. All of the sides; floor, ceiling, and walls; are like thin aluminum but not as pliant as would be the case in reality. Still, I make a sort of hollow clomping sound (with nuances somewhat like flexing roofing tin) as I walk through the silvery hall towards an unknown destination. At one point I notice a very large pipe with green sludge flowing out.

After seemingly a fair amount of time turning down various identical passageways, I end up in another world, apparently an alien planet. The race of human-like beings are about seven feet tall on average and have striped purple and white skin in a zebra-like pattern. Their features remind me vaguely of a more detailed and “realistic” Doctor Seuss character (such as a hairless Grinch) as previous in-dream aliens have sometimes appeared, but still with that sense of cartoon-like unlikelihood in conscious afterthought.

The dominant focus is of a giant beige-brown cobra (about six feet high when in striking position) that is known as “Terra Cotta”. It is originally kept in a cage of sorts by the “Zebra Men” but gets out shortly after I enter their world. It follows me back into my world (yet does not pose any direct threat at any time). Several friends and I plan to trap it back in its own world again, the main one being Charles D on his bicycle in one scene. There is some discussion of using it as a money-making endeavor with a carnival or some such, and also something about writing a book, but this does not clarify or continue.

For some reason, “Terra Cotta” seems a very familiar titular form in-dream at one point, apparently via a false memory, of being the name of a well-known war movie; I think about Pearl Harbor. In real life, after my dream, I mentioned it to my best friend Toby T on the school bus and he apparently had a similar association.

A partial influence of this dream may very loosely be based on the terra cotta warriors (also written as terracotta and terra-cotta) which I had not really known much about at this time. There is a terra cotta “monk with cobra” in Mianyang, China.

Morning of November 9, 1974. Saturday.



This is perhaps one of my funniest early teenage dreams (firstly at 13) that there were a few versions of (eventually “practiced” lucidly into a fully comedic dream ending the same way as the original) and which I also wrote a detailed story of years ago including additional elements which different dream versions manifested randomly.

The main characters are me, my best friend Toby T, and a version of Brenda W who looks and sounds quite different and seems to be a symbol of my unknown wife-to-be as with most dreams she featured in (but not all). It starts out in my bedroom in Cubitis, sometime in the morning around nine o'clock, and on a Saturday. Toby and Brenda had both walked from their houses, which are not all that far from mine but did not see anything unusual, apparently.

There is a smaller orange spacecraft that is mottled with a darker brownish orange in a sort of fancy “rounded flame” design. It is to the southernmost edge of my house, on my side (east) of the highway. The spacecraft looks much like a larger Volkswagen Beetle without wheels and is facing north. The two “aliens” that walk about, seemingly looking for certain kinds of flowers or weeds, seem very mysterious in a way, but actually look mostly like thinner “lighter” versions of the Apollo astronauts and their faces are not visible through the helmet. Looking at the “face” of their helmets, I am reminded much of the screen of an Etch-a-Sketch but with a more mysterious “glow” somehow.

The “V” of the Volkswagen symbol may be relevant here due to my life-long layered associations with this special letter (relating to higher levels or a play on “higher planes” as well as the formation birds fly in). Also, at the time in real life, I had a large orange model Volkswagen Beetle (remote-control, and which ran on real fuel - it made a lot of noise, somewhat like a miniature lawn mower) that my father had gotten me for a Christmas and birthday combo, but I had not played with it for awhile at that point.

The three of us talk for awhile about the possible intent of these aliens. They otherwise move and walk about just like normal men. We consider how one of us should hide on the spacecraft to see where they go from here or maybe even see where they came from. I decide to volunteer for the mission. Eventually, something interesting happens in which this dream references a past dream as if it really happened (recurring). Brenda is able to help me become invisible with some sort of witchcraft (Wendy reference likely linked to the “Casper Spaceship” series) so that I will be able to hide on the spacecraft prior to their leaving. (This comes from a much older dream where I became invisible through the power of a smaller candy-cane-shaped walking cane and was able to help her marionette play be the most successful at the school.) She is also able to somehow hypnotize the aliens from a distance as an additional precaution that they will not be able to see me at any point. She plays around by creating a simple “happy face” (eyes and mouth only) on the front of the helmet/visor of the supposed aliens in an Etch-a-Sketch-like fashion.

I eventually go outside and into the backseat of the spacecraft, on the right side. There is no fear or concern, but there is a very strange emotion of leaving my home and not seeing it again as well as an odd feeling of being ready to leave the planet itself but still with a strange sadness. (The mood and sensations of this entire dream event in the last section was somewhat precognitive in the exact way I felt in real life upon riding an airplane the first time, something I physically had not experienced but which was correctly represented in my dream somehow; emotionally, mentally, and physically; yet also precognitive to the closer upcoming time of our actual move from that location in Cubitis by car.) The two aliens come into the craft from both sides at the same time, the inside being mostly just like an actual Volkswagen Beetle with a few additional airplane-like indicators. They do not notice me. We start to ride along (somewhat like a hovercraft at first) and eventually rise into the air, going faster and faster. It is a strange sensation. However, Brenda’s hypnosis seems to have worked too well and they seem unsure of what to do. In fact, they just sort of sit for awhile as if forgetting what some of the controls are for, mostly seeming stupefied at their predicament. Although I cannot see their faces, I see them turn to look at each other a couple times (though seeing only the sides of their helmets).

Soon, the telephone lines become a potential hazard and the craft rocks and dodges them somewhat randomly with a few near-misses. Eventually the craft goes really fast but slows again, seemingly over southern Mexico or the northern area of South America (although I get the impression of Cleveland, Ohio for some reason, but that seems illogical in light of the residents and general look - although we were supposedly going north, not south or west). I notice that the two aliens/Apollo astronauts have vanished completely (apparently from Brenda’s magic being too powerful), both becoming a small pile of silvery dust in their seats (my Etch-a-Sketch had leaked silver dust in real life - I even ended up cracking it open to look inside but of course I immediately threw it out worrying about being poisoned). The spacecraft plunges downward, landing “perfectly” on the top of a merry-go-round in a playground or park (I am aware it is a Saturday) with a large number of Mexican or Brazilian children running about, some playing in sprinklers and laughing loudly at the spacecraft. I am aware that none of them speak English, yet I still feel a compulsion to ask in English (more to the implied unseen “hidden cameras”) “Hey, anyone know how to fly this thing?” A Latino boy of about nine jumps into the front looking around curiously and laughing in a cheerful way (Interestingly, I sense his name is Lorenzo, which I realize at this point is now the name of my next-youngest son but named after a grandfather). I get a slight impression of the song “Saturday in the Park” (1972 album Chicago V - another “V”). Thus it ends as a comedy farce which seems to color my day in a humorous, useful way regardless of the “failed” outcome.

There are a few precognitive layers in this as is often the case. One, the appearance of Brenda with a different personality representing my not-yet-known wife. Two, the feelings of leaving our home in Cubitis to move to Wisconsin when at the time of this dream, I did not know we would be moving and I had not even considered it (as well as the later airplane ride nuances). Three, the orange colors of the “spaceship” remind me of the U-Haul trailer my father got during that same move later in real life. Four, the recurring idea of “getting past Mexico” to continue on across the ocean to be with my soulmate in Australia. Five, the young boy named Lorenzo - my future son at the time?

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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