DarkestDarkness

2022 May 2nd

Note to self, at this point I started recording dreams with year first, month second and day third, because as I was archiving dream notes from my old phone, I realised just how much of a mess day first was causing me and it was something I had not given any thought when I first started recording them in that way. In the future, it will be easier to maintain an organised record by using year first, as I already do for some other things.

Some in-line notes.


Dream (Fragmented):

I'm at my old bedroom. Dad is here visiting or something. For some reason, there are some sex toys out in my room and dad grabs them and piles them on top of an old computer desk I used to have in waking life. (The plastic "veneered" one)

Dad doesn't comment much of anything about the sex toys, but I feel embarrassed. He talks to me about something completely unrelated.

(recall gap)

I'm swimming out of a body of water into a stairwell. I can't see the bottom of the water and as I climb out of the water, I'm soaked and dripping. I don't feel cold or hot. My hair is somewhat long and I see it in front of me and feel water dripping off it. The place looks like a school of some kind.

I get up to the first mid-landing of these stairs and then climb some more steps up to a second landing. There are no more stairs after this point, as if they're missing, and so this landing just leads over back into the water again, from a higher point.

(The preceding segment was recalled while dreaming the next segment)

I'm in a field, walking along with two people. One of them is a local, the other someone I know (from the dream?). This field is strange, as it is made up of "strips" about one yard wide of specific plants, which all just seem rather wild and not at all cultivated, despite the organised strip logic going on.

As a result, there's a varied array of colours, ranging from a nearly blue-green to a dry yellow-green or maybe brown. The local man is slim and on the older side. He tells me something about how they have no choice and how this is all they can afford to do. I understand "they" as their people, as if I'm visiting somewhere that I'm foreign to.

Then, as we walk off the slightly sloped field area and starting down on a slightly steeper slope, I notice a small lizard, about a foot long counting the tail. Its on the side of a plant or a piece of dry/dead wood. It has a black scaled body interrupted by fluorescent yellow chevron stripes. The tail is flat and spiney, almost beaver-like.

Then we're walking into a road and I worry about traffic but it doesn't look like there's any, it looks kind of desolate or calm. It's day time, the sun is low but it's not sunset yet and it's half cloudy but it appears bright. There's a road for each direction and they're about twenty to thirty feet away from the other, one of them being on a lower bit, as this whole area is a sort of downwards-sloping cliff seaside cliff area, to the end of which we're walking towards.

As we get closer, even though the lowest point of the cliff is only about one yard up from sea level, I feel afraid I might drop or be pushed into the sea (on accident or otherwise). (It's at this point I recall the previous segment, I think the water must trigger the memory, though I don't think I "live" the memory in the dream at this point)

Then, I'm at a house that looks like old home. Some part of recall is missing, weirdly I seem to have slept on the sofa and it's as if I was really asleep in the dream, for a time. I grab something I'd apparently left on the sofa. I see the old man from before and say "morning" to him. I feel a little disoriented and think to myself that I didn't mean to fall asleep and yet I did somehow.

Then, I'm at an ALDI with H. We drove in in a sporty car. We pretend we're only friends and H says to a checkout person he has to get a massage coupon thing for his partner. The person at the checkout asks "what would she like?" and meanwhile I'm looking for three two-litre bottles of some soft drink, though I can only find one bottle. This ALDI feels more like a tiny service station shop and I think to myself we should have gone to our usual place. (This segment had something to do with the previous one, but I could not retain recall of what or how)

(recall gap)

Something about playing a game with a demon, and needing to do this to release an angel or something. The game doesn't make much sense at all and I can't think of how to describe it; in any case I struggle with this game in the dream. This takes place at some big/vast house, or some kind of palace.


Notes:

- Although I'd normally make this dream only visible to myself and DV contacts and so on, I feel that part of me has done that far too often of late, out of some sense of lack of confidence, an aspect I've been struggling with (again) in waking life.

- This entire dream was very peculiar. I feel I could make this remark about so many dreams. In particular however, this dream felt especially switched on in terms of symbolic representation. When recalling the dream, it feels like some part of me was aware of this. Everything about it feels organised and metaphorical in a deeper way than usual, though I think some of it may be inexpressible through words. The dream itself in parts felt like one of those dreams that feels just like life in the sense of "this is how things are, this is my life". This dream would benefit greatly from a fuller exploration on paper that is not constrained to words alone and that can make directed (lines/arrows) associative links between elements.

- I suspect that dad was representative of false expectations in some sense, because in the dream my embarrassment and the sex toy context were in fact irrelevant to our conversation about whatever else dad talked about. I am not certain what the significance of that desk specifically might be, but I must have been around 8 or 9 years of age when we had that desk, and the computer used communally with my siblings was on top of it, under one of the bunk beds.
-- In a sense, the sex toys are also likely representative of the other side of false expectation; what my mind or feelings give importance to often has nothing to do with how others are perceiving me and if anything, I end up being bound or imprisoned by my own false notions of what others think.
-- The other aspect to this is that family (represented by dad) are something that I keep entirely separate from sexual contexts as far as mental constructs go, I feel more so than most other people do, though that may be a result of upbringing; here, the two contexts meet but are essentially ignored by one another, as dad makes no remark and pays no mind, other than some sort of strange "tidying out of the way", and the toys themselves are inert objects that cannot on their own express anything except via context. This makes me think about how Jung defined libido as "psychic energy" as opposed to "sexual energy" as Freud probably did and it seems like the sex toys can also be representative of a transformation of my point of view on said energies. Again, I cannot fully form thoughts on this via text alone, this requires diagrammatic and drawn exploration that can show links and associations in a way that text can't.

- The flooded school bit was odd because of how vivid it felt in terms of sensations, regarding swimming and water. I don't remember any specific emotions, but the school was an unknown place that I've never visited and which only vaguely conformed to some constructs of schools, none of which I've ever encountered myself.

- I can't help but feel that I associate the encounters with water in this dream as being some kind of metaphor relating to collectives, more so than an unconsciousness. In a sense, the stairs were exactly about this; I can leave a collective but on the way up and out, there's actually no way out, and all I can see again is the collective, despite whatever other aspiration I might have had. There was a (somehow neutral) sense of hopelessness to this in the dream.

- The strange field feels like it was about my whole Self. The locals, i.e. my non-conscious elements, do their best to cultivate other non-conscious elements and so on (the plants) but they are constrained by what they can afford to do. I am not sure what "afford to do" could mean in a sense of personality. The land felt inhospitable to cultivation and taming, and perhaps these non-conscious elements actively taking part in growing and tending to things, are actually unwelcome by the rest of the unconscious landscape. I am checking in on them, but I seem to be there in a capacity that cannot act or make changes to the situation at present, and that any changes would have to be future, such as based on a report or the like.
-- In a sense, the plants felt very much foreign to the land as I did, even if the locals themselves just seemed... Well, local.

- Despite the small size, the lizard felt instantly appealing to look at, to be interested in. The black scaled body felt immediately relatable to what I have wanted to portray in my alter-ego for some time. The chevron striped pattern seemed unique to me. And in some sense I always find myself relating to reptiles though I have seldom spent time near them, perhaps because they have a tendency to run away from humans and to be solitary, which may be part of the appeal in itself. The lizard's tail appeared dangerous but as the lizard was most likely not aggressive, it seemed like an aspect of self-defence only. Curiously, I am now recalling that the lizard seemed to be in shade rather than in sunlight, and it's the only wild animal I recall seeing in the dream.

- The part with H at the service station ALDI definitely feels related to how perceptions are so based on physical appearances and how it's very difficult to move on from this, in cultural terms.

- The game with the demon felt like some kind of mix between Tetris, cards and other games of chance. I really can't describe it, especially for how little visual recall I have left of it. I just remember a somewhat dark and red-hued room, and a cloth-draped table.