The Fourth Factor

I’m staying in a house with a group of people. It’s late at night, and the host tells me a person we’re all here to meet will be here at 5am, which isn’t far off. I get ready - or try to, anyway. I can’t find the clothing I’m looking for. The clothing I brought along seems to have gotten mixed up with everyone else’s clothing and piled indiscriminately on the floor. Eventually, I stop trying to find the specific shirt I had in mind and just look for something that will work, but nothing seems right. In the meantime, it seems that everyone else has gone out already to meet the person we’re waiting for.

Then, out the window, I see a commotion outside, and people running - something is happening out there, something unexpected and possibly dangerous. I decide to go down to the basement, where I won’t be visible to anyone out there, but someone is already inside the house. He’s an Asian man, maybe in his 40s, wearing a martial arts uniform - white, I think. He heads for me, and I prepare to meet him.

As soon as we make physical contact, though, I can tell I don’t have a chance. I can feel it in his hands. I know enough myself to be sure I’m dealing with someone who’s achieved complete mastery. I stop and back off. Naturally, he can also tell where the situation stands and feel that I’ve sensed this. He smiles and beckons me to keep going, as if we were just sparring. But while he doesn’t actually seem aggressive, as if he’d hurt me just because he could, under the circumstances, I still don’t trust him enough to want to use force on him that I know he’d be able to turn back against me more effectively.

“I’m a musician,” I say. There is no point getting in a useless fight that could result in getting my hands messed up. I repeat it to make sure he understands, as I have the impression that English probably isn’t his first language.

But something is happening outside requiring his attention, and he leaves me to go deal with that, so I take the chance to go down to the basement.

27.10.24


A group of people are standing in a room. I’m identified with a young woman there, but seeing things play out in 3rd person. They seem to be an extended family with an upper-class vibe, in a large, old-fashioned house, and everybody is wearing elaborate clothing reminiscent of Japanese traditional dress. I can’t remember what the conversation taking place there was about, but it was fraught and unpleasant.

In the next scene, I’m experiencing things in 1st person as the woman. I’m in the kitchen as the back door opens, and in walks the ghost of Madame Mambeau, muttering to herself in French. There is nothing particularly ghostly-looking about her, but I recognize her clearly from stories others have told, from when she was alive. She’s a short, sturdily built middle-age woman with wild grey hair, and wearing a black T-shirt and shorts. She’s closely followed by a man who seems to be some kind of attendant. He’s very tall and fat, with thinning hair pulled back in a short ponytail. They ignore us completely - my father is in the room as well - and walk past us to the table in the dining area, where the man proceeds to serve up the contents of the compost bowl for the two of them.

I watch as they eat - at first in horror, but it is already starting to turn into curiosity. My father also stands and watches. My brothers’ voices and the sounds of Super Mario Bros drift in from a neighboring room. I’m sure this situation represents some kind of calamity that has befallen us, but at the same time, the damage is already done, and there’s probably no further harm in playing host to the two of them and seeing what will happen next. Knowing my father, I’m sure it won’t be long before curiosity gets the better of him too.

5.11.24


In a city, probably in the afternoon. I’ve arrived with a group of people onto a bustling street where a lot of preparations seem to be taking place. We enter a building - it mostly seems to be row houses here - and enter a large, undifferentiated space with a raised area like a stage in back. While they get things ready, I go out to explore the city.

I’ve been here before, maybe just once, to go to a restaurant with others. I recognize it as I walk past it on a nearby street. This seems to be a hilly, well-kept area with a view of the sea, but oddly deserted other than the street from the beginning. At some point, though, I realize I need to be getting back, and I have no idea where I am. I stop in the middle of a broad stone staircase to get my phone out and pull up a map. But nearby, I can hear a police officer telling somebody else on the other end of a walky-talky that I’m here, as I guess this counts as loitering. Yeah, I don’t want to draw too much attention to myself, so I just move on.

But it turns out I was just around the corner from the street I started out on anyway. A couple of the people from before are standing just inside the doorway and beckon me to come in. They close the door behind us. It looks like everything is ready to start now: people are sitting on the floor, with someone standing in the middle about to speak to them. I sit down as well.

A lot happened after that, but I don’t remember much of the details, except that at one point, the dream’s entire visual field is white and filled with colorful geometric shapes reminiscent of confetti moving past. I’m not present in the scene, but am aware of my right hand near the arrow keys of a keyboard, which I can use to have some control of the sequence of events I’m in the middle of, which is part of what the people from before have prepared.

20.11.24


Some other people and I have moved into a house in the fairly recent past. From an upper story balcony overlooking the city street below, I watch as a group of people sets up what appears to be a spontaneous picnic on the roof of their car. Then NS drives up and parks behind them. I call down to her. She was taking the household laundry out to be cleaned and has been gone an unexpectedly long time. She tells me there was an unfortunate incident involving a robin right as she was exiting the laundromat. “I hope it wasn’t my laundry,” I say. She says it wasn’t.

In what was probably a distinct dream later in the night, I’m in a school. I’m in the office, waiting for one of my students to arrive. It seems he accidentally left on the bus when school ended but soon realized his mistake and is on his way back.

When he arrives, he immediately runs off to where the others are. I start to follow. A woman is standing nearby - someone who seems to be a well-known figure in some way. There’s a whole lot of unspoken subtext as we exchange glances. Aren’t you going to ask me, the way so many people do? No? Well, this is interesting enough to where I’m just going to tell you anyway.

She says that I have a fire inside of me, and that it needs to be concentrated and refined before I can bring it out into the world.

I wake up.

(After thinking the dream over, I remembered that I’d been looking through the first couple lucid dreams included in the appendix of Charlie Morley’s Dreams of Awakening a couple days previously, and one of those had probably inspired the turn this one took. That dream was also set in an office, although a different kind of office. The woman is a representative of my subconscious mind, like the figure he summoned once he’d remembered what he’d planned to do in the dream. That explains some of those otherwise puzzling details.)

26.11.24