DarkestDarkness

4th June

Dream:

Me, H and some other hundred workmen were redoing tiles, mostly on walls, of some cathedral/palace place.

There was a Lord Durnstam, who had a black and gold crown. He was king of the local region. During a break, which had no set time, I wandered the main where most of the workmen were. Many walls had enormous and ornate wooden bookcases and in some vaulted alcoves there were a number of great paintings all sort of a standard size. The themes were mostly random, but pertaining to Durnstam. They were all privately commissioned by him and I wondered who the artist was.

When I started working on the tiles at the start of the dream, the place seemed moodier and poorly lit. There was this contractor next to me, a woman with faded blonde hair which was tied back, though her hair wasn't that long anyway. She had cream colour pants and a white tank top.

I didn't know what to do for whatever reason, or I was confused; so she started sort of poking fun about it but in a playful way. In any case I left this small room and turned around the corner looking for H, finding H immediately.

I asked for help and he sort of rolled his eyes but got up and followed me. We went back to that small room with the lady, who was still there and working. H gave me a bit flat screwdriver to remove the mortar with. I said it wouldn't do, and asked where the electrician's chisel was. H said it would be too vicious but I didn't believe so. In any case, I started to remove mortar. But it wasn't like proper mortar, it was brittle yes, but also sort of soft. Part of me wondered how it was working at all or how it had remained in place undisturbed.

Then the hall scene, while walking around, I was holding the screwdriver or maybe a big steel crowbar. It felt heavy but both not enough and too much to actually be either of those items; I don't remember my clothes.

By the end of the dream I was in some side wing of the place. There were modern windows, big and plain. But the light mood was again poor and dark. The worker woman had followed for some time but H wasn't around anymore, having returned to working elsewhere. Then my old friend Da replaced the woman at some point and he was eating a sandwich, which he then passed me and then I had one of my own. I tried doing work while eating but it wasn't going to do, so I stopped trying to multitask like this and just held his sandwich and ate mine.

Then at some point there was a big black man, sitting somewhere on the other side of the room, by the windows. He got up and started singing as he did. It was Gregory Porter and in the dream I heard the lyrics clearly, but I don't remember them anymore. They were some sort of comment on society as a whole.

Earlier I remember on this side wing hall there were miniscule 1cm tiles all along the wall, making one long continuous mosaic. I thought I'd start on that wall from the bottom and said I was wanting to do these. Some worker walked past and almost laughed. The woman was still with me and pointed out it would be a nightmare to redo because I'd have to do the whole lot once I started. I was confused and up to that point hadn't realised the mosaic was proper tiles, explaining that I thought it was vinyl (lino cover).

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Notes:
- Although this dream wasn't super vivid, some of the recall was quite detailed. The whole dream was quite long and felt like it took a while.
- In reality there is no such place as Durnstam so there couldn't possibly be a Lord Durnstam.
- The guy that sang like Gregory Porter, I don't remember him looking like the actual person; I remember the dream character as being a bit bigger and more athletic. Curiously enough this seems to relate to something I read only recently about gymnasts and musicians.
- Unfortunately, song and lyrics and generally speaking, harmony and music, tend to be some of the first things I lose memory of on awakening.
- The whole dream probably came about as we had recently been doing some tile-related work in our home.
- I seem to remember the Lord was present in the main hall, but I may have just seen a portrait of him.

1st June

Dream:

I was on a country road with H. We were walking along it when the road curved towards a big estate. There were tall and trimmed hedged along either side of the road. On the right side were some bushes partially under the shade of an oak. The bushes had bright cobalt-blue fruits. On closer inspection they looked like strawberries, in shape.

I took one and ate it and it was sweet. I then told H I wanted to make jam with these cobalt berries and H said we couldn't take many but I started to pick the large berries into my pockets until I couldn't take any more.

Some bit of the dream is missing, or there is a transition.

Then we're inside the big estate place, but it was just like our home with a bigger scale for the rooms. I remember being in the kitchen and it looked regal or something.

Dream Fragment:

In some kind of museum or gallery, there were many objects on display, everything was lit from underneath. I remember there was this wide trunk or stump and I smashed it's side somehow. Its core was crystalline and I pulled out one piece.

It was shaped like an amorphous animal. I suddenly had a long knife, and started carving it to look like a dog. It felt more like wood than crystal.

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Notes:
- The second dream may have just been a run-on sequence from the first.
- In the first dream, I remember it was sunny and it felt like it was a quiet road. I remember that the cobalt colour of the berries was particularly vivid.
- At the time I think I had started making jam more often, a habit I have kept a bit by now. I like to make jam or jelly out of fruits other people might not consider, so maybe the exotic character of the berries and my desire to turn them into a jam might be interconnected.
- I still have some visual memory of the second dream which allows me to make note that it looked a bit like that place in space odyssey, with the white floors and rooms at the end. It was darker than that because the light was focused on the displays though.
- Looking back on this dream, I quite like the idea of the crystal and of carving it. To me, quite a while now since I had this dream, it feels analogous to some of my inner concepts around transformation and undefined forms, shapeshifting and so on. The carving is significant as a whole because carving and sculpting as a whole are of major interest to me but they aren't activities I've had much chance to work in. On top of that it deals with the subject of controlling matter and changing it.