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Morning of September 28, 1979. Friday.



This was a long meandering dream that recurred a few times during the same sleeping period. It also has the common dream theme (regarding my time travel or even “different dimension” dreams) of frustrating appearances of anachronisms (such as modern cars seen in an implied 1800s setting), though in this case, there is a specific “explanation” for it all.

A location that “resets” a few times is based on a supposed “time bomb” just under the surface of the ground at an older abandoned football field in a rural area (which in one version is implied to be part of an abandoned city), where shrubs and high weeds and such have grown along the perimeter (though not much in the abandoned football field itself). I and a few others wander around in several different locations. The main later parts of my dream center on Loomis Street, though most of the events take place on the street rather than the Loomis Street house.

This dream basically takes a play from the idea of “time bomb” in that it is a bomb that apparently fractures time. Later, different periods of history are mixed together in the present. I see cars from the 1920s in one area to the west and more modern vehicles elsewhere. Historical figures (from different times periods) are implied to be alive now as well. This is an intriguing idea I think, but probably not “new” (though I did not research the concept). There is also a seeming “hall of mirrors” effect in my perspective near the end of my dream, depending on where I am looking, which seems to mean that different “pieces” of time are not quite fully integrated into the present.

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Night of September 26, 1969. Friday.



I am in some sort of museum or art gallery, seemingly late at night, and no one else is around, not even my parents. I go up to a painting of a colorful landscape and the closer I look, the more “energy” I feel. After a short time, it seems I am moving into the painting and then hovering above a very large crowd of men who all look very similar, all equidistant and uniform - each about a person-width apart from each other, seemingly in a huge featureless room with a smooth white floor. They all seem to step forward and are waving a paintbrush in the air and are singing. Each sweater and beret they are wearing matches the color (or actually is the color when zoomed out) in that supposed “drop of paint” in the original painting - and it is as if I am looking at the painting at a very highly magnified level. Also, it seems this may only happen at night. I feel a sense of peace and joy in seeing this unusual “closeup” of the magnificent painting. It is like a wide miniature parade of living colors and reflects a deep feeling of comfort.

Later, my dream decays (or shifts into a different dream state and awareness) into a scene where I walk around looking at lawn mowers in some sort of large garage, but which still seems to be part of the art gallery or museum.

The original dream journal title for this, even when transferred a few times, was “Picture It Strange”, which was, of course, before I learned more about grammar. There was also a stage where it was titled “Pingere”. I wanted to make this into a story and started to when young, but could not think of a plot foundation to “explain” the main events.

Morning of September 21, 1969. Sunday.



This was a highly annoying dream that seemed to “reset” all night long. There were a couple vaguely interesting parts, but it mostly involved having to sweep outside, in the early morning until late afternoon, the whole area between the cafeteria and the northern side of the main West Elementary school building, not just the sidewalks and portico areas, but the grounds as well. Of course, there was always more sand and a bit of debris to go back to and never actually feel any sense of completion of the required job.

The other students were doing chimney cleaning throughout the neighborhood, apparently. There were not even any actual chimneys to speak of much for such work in reality. In the past (about a year before I finally “got” the real lyrics), I absentmindedly sang “Chin chin chir-ree” (instead of “Chim”) without anyone noticing - I guess because I thought “chin” actually related to the person’s face while doing the cleaning. This was also related to the somewhat precognitive “cat-woman” dream where the girl on the roof at Rose Street was a foreshadowing of an actual school play with the “same” girl (of the sparsely recurring December 20, 1966 dream). I believe there is also a vague association with Mickey Mouse in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and a concern about not getting my job done (the idea of “without magic” is only a very vague thought at one point). Of course, it could also imply an indirect association with the “mystery girl” during this time, in her Wendy persona, as she rode a broom.

In the background, also, is the “Money Cat” association. The eerie black cats, however, are only moving about in sparse patterns of swiftness on the roof of the main school building (the “Mary Poppins” rooftop associations were “perfectly” integrated with the “Gay Purr-ee” rooftop associations for some reason, with that sort of tentative “charcoal”, “submarine periscope chimneys”, and vaguely unpleasant wide-reaching industrial implications). No one else is around and I am close to anger at having to be the only one with the job at hand. The task seems ultimately pointless. The dream drags out in an uncomfortable manner - and, if that were not bad enough, it resets as I have already stated - back to the “beginning”. The cats coming out later, especially as the sun sets, means that I have “failed”, yet I do not see the relevance to my actual school grades.

Relating to this dream and several pleasing ones, there is some sort of odd, layered nostalgic conscious association going back to the “Money Cat” song from “Gay Purr-ee”, the “carrot creature” (what I call “her”) from “Cold Hands, Warm Heart” (“The Outer Limits”), the dance by Nichelle Nichols in “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” (which had alien “cat women”), and the “cat burglar” girl from the 1966 (and later) dreams. I found it interesting how the first viewing of the “Star Trek V” movie triggered what almost amounted to a false and “distant” memory, but was actually a “buried” long-term association with the imagery. It “struck” me at a very deep and personal level.

Morning of September 15, 1969. Monday.



As I ride my crowded southbound school bus on Highway Seventeen in early morning, there is a vague recall (without lucidity) of how I sometimes daydream (in real life) that my school bus is a rocket going to the moon. This becomes the case in my dream, though my school bus remains of the same appearance. I feel the sensation of my school bus moving through the sky.

My classroom is in the same building, yet rendered as being on the moon. I sit in my classroom in the left-most row of desks in about the middle of the row, facing south. Farther to my left is a large singular window (not a real-life feature).

Instead of an outside view, it seems to be a chemistry laboratory (even though I had been vaguely aware of the moon’s surface viewed from this window, the ambiguous change probably a result of a dream reset). The Disney cartoon character Emil Eagle is there, picking up and pouring from test tubes, seemingly planning something questionable, likely with bad intent, perhaps even an intent to poison all the students and my teacher (an unfamiliar female). (However, he may be trying to create a “hair-growing formula”, based on a comic book story I had read a few times. Emil Eagle first appeared in “The Evil Inventor” in May of 1966 as a balding industrial spy that sought to steal Gyro’s hair growth formula.)

My teacher and classmates do not seem to be aware of what he is doing or even that he is present. I eventually discern an unpleasant odor, which is much like asphalt. I consider that the teacher and students might think I had passed wind, with a vague contemplation of the word “asphalt” as “ass fault”. However, I also consider that the odor is real asphalt from outside, unrelated to Emil’s experiment. I worry about the odor and hold onto a concern about possibly being poisoned by noxious gas, yet I do not leave the classroom or express my concern to my teacher, as I might be blamed for disrupting the class.

I still contemplate passively pointing out that Emil Eagle is responsible for the odor (in case someone else says something first). I consider that they might think the odor is caused by smoke from a nearby fire or (as in real life) the supposed factory fumes from Nocatee (which was sarcastically referred to by schoolmates as “Skunkatee”). I neither make the connection that Emil Eagle is only a villainous Disney comic book character, not an entity I would ever see in real life, nor do I consider that being on the moon is unusual.

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Non-lucid dream control is evidenced by the association with daydreaming and my dream self not being surprised by my dream’s otherwise impossible events. Additionally, the main factor of this dream reveals non-lucid dream control in my partial modulation of the liminal space divider’s (the window’s) autosymbolism that is otherwise a result of vestibular system correlation (and liminally anticipating it as a negative consequence as evidenced by an ambiguous sketchy flight symbol rendered as Emil Eagle, as it has always been very common for me to have liminal anticipation of the waking process, typically experienced biologically as a falling sensation, as renderings of birds, airplanes, or related factors). All of the other dynamics, including the odor itself, have literal associations.

Emil Eagle is this dream’s preconscious factor (which is often personified), always uniquely rendered. Non-lucid manipulation of liminal space barriers (or dream state “bulwarks”), the division between dream self and waking self identity, has been a very common factor in my dreams since early childhood, probably the most common form of non-lucid dream control other than generic summoning.

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Years after this dream, in ninth grade in high school, I found myself in a very similar classroom, sitting in the same orientation as I was in this dream (of which at the time did not correlate with real-life orientation of any classroom I had been in). My new homeroom teacher for this term reminded me of the otherwise fictitious teacher of this dream. In real life, this teacher had spent time one morning dramatically complaining before class started, about a bad odor. Considering the hundreds of times when Zsuzsanna and I inexplicably communicated in dreams before we made contact in real life, attributing a factor of this dream to a possibly prescient thread is certainly not unreasonable.

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Night of September 13, 1969. Saturday.



This is one of those “just walking around and looking at stuff” dreams, though not of the admiring perspective as in later lucid dreams. It is also one of my typical childhood dreams where the environment seems only about three-quarters rendered and a light fog eventually flows in from more distant features, yet only about three or four inches high from any implied ground or floor (and as mentioned in other entries, I have never been certain if this was influenced by a staged “dream scene” on a television show, or a natural association representing the dreaming process itself, especially as my dream work began so early in life, I did not note much of what may have influenced particular dreams and only through a lot of extensive research have I been able to validate some very early influences over the last ten years).

I am north of my home in Cubitis seemingly before sunrise, on the east side of the Highway, probably in the same general area on the other side of the highway from the W family house. However, there is a large fictional building which seems to be some sort of store (though designed more like a warehouse). Inside, though no one else is around (I am not certain if it is abandoned or just closed), are wooden shelves, farther north being bags of fertilizer on higher shelves from one to three high, and closer to where I mostly remain being small garden forks, diggers, and trowels, some randomly strewn about on a particular shelf. It occurs to me that some of these garden tools are brand new and others damaged (perhaps returned to the store after long usage). I try to focus on this being fact or not but am not that aware. There is also an extremely vague association with eating utensils (forks and spoons) and their similarity to the garden tools.

I trip over a shovel (left leg - probably in an attempt to walk southerly back to my house) leaned up against a wall near a doorway and somehow fall through the doorway into a black void (though do get the impression of an empty room with a dirt floor), similar to a hypnagogic jerk (or hypnic jerk) but fully within the dream state - or rather, the very end of the dream state. Interestingly, I can always trace these supposed hypnic jerks to an actual dream (often a vivid or even lucid dream) yet much of the information on the Internet claims that they occur as a person is falling asleep, which does not at all match my own lifelong experiences (then again, hardly anything I ever read ever does, so that is nothing new).

Morning of September 13, 1979. Thursday.



This dream is from 1979; September 13th, wife’s birthday; and of which there are earlier and later versions. My first journal title for this was “I Don’t Wanna Be a Tree!”

Evidence studied and validated as of Sunday, 26 July 2015 shows that the original (prototype version) also fell on the morning of September 13th (1970, coming before my “Tornado” dream) and was apparently influenced by a repeated episode of “My Three Sons” titled “It’s a Woman’s World” during the last part of my last awake period. The following synopsis was given in the newspaper: “Steve find’s himself cast as a tree in Dodie’s school play, more or less proving Robbie’s point that females are instinctive manipulators”. This is somewhat amusing in that I presently have three sons.

My dream primarily involves my best friend Toby T and I mostly mowing or raking leaves in what seems to be a deserted and seemingly isolated area on the top of a hill. At times, though, my “mystery girl” appears in shadow and silhouette in the background. Toby and I seem to be working in the middle of the night at times. It vaguely seems like a version of my sister’s house on Loomis Street where I was staying when my wife and I first made contact, though smaller (although it also seems partly modeled after the Chipmunk Coulee house).

As time passes, Toby makes suggestions that the property is owned by a witch but that she has somehow transformed into a tree (supposedly accidentally).

Eventually, I seem to have strong feelings for the “mystery girl” and am eventually turned into a tree myself, seemingly being at the same location of the original and only tree in the area. Toby does not seem to notice even though I yell for a short time to get his attention. I hope that I will not be “trimmed” or “chopped down” in my future. I seem to be the only tree around for some distance, although there are smaller shrubs and such in the area. It is late fall and there are a lot of leaves everywhere on the ground but I see no leaves on “my” own branches.

Toby sits down and starts reading from a book, “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree”. I become annoyed and try to move, but he takes it as some sort of “haunting” signs and goes elsewhere (but is still working in the general area. Meanwhile, the mystery girl is human and it seems that I have taken her place as a tree (to “free her”) and I wonder what will happen to Toby. She seems to be dressed in a sort of “cavegirl” outfit, or perhaps a bikini made of pieces of bark.

I have changed the status to “precognitive” as it features the “mystery girl” (my yet-to-be wife, with the same appearance as to real life though I had not yet seen her in reality) and it had some valid associations (not all of which are here online) including the area she lived in Nimbin when younger in reality that I could not have known about in any way.

Night of September 13, 1979. Thursday.



I have added some notes (March 2015). The area where I viewed the suit of armor seems much like a place I lived later on and from the same perspective; the northeast room on the King Street boarding house. Dreams typically implement precognition and remote viewing in this manner regardless of other ambiguous plot aspects. On another note, I have discovered that the first episode of “Scooby Doo, Where Are You!“ was “What a Night for a Knight“, which was first aired exactly ten years ago to the date (September 13, 1969).

I apparently am in a supposed (fictional) “horror movie” at the scene in an unknown place (though possibly Connecticut as mentioned below), though no cameras are ever visible. It seems to be a bit mixed up from scene to scene, that is, no coherent plot. The movie is called “Fear Itself” and is not only not nightmarish, it is often entertaining in an eerie sort of way and very vivid. Some sort of ghost or entity comes out of a small framed painting of a windmill that was hanging on the north wall, relating to some sort of “escape”. Later, I watch a “haunted” suit of armor walk around as I feel a sense of awe and pleasant vividness (not quite lucid) while I am watching it through a doorway as it walks past (seemingly from the north concerning my in-dream orientation) while I am seated in an arm chair. I get the sense it will be walking down and up more stairs as possibly some sort of regular routine and may relate to a certain time of night or the moon being full. I am aware that it had gone up steps directly into the hall from where I watch it. This was one of my vivider dreams during this time period. Even the silence in my dream seems to “roar” (perhaps an in-dream rendering of ears ringing) though the suit of armor seems linked to the sound of crickets somehow. It takes place in either a modern castle or a large two or three-storey mansion. (I do not remember seeing the building from the outside.)

There is also something about a large rooster (likely a New Hampshire Red - in fact, at one point, my dream seems to be set in isolated areas of New Hampshire and Connecticut for some reason - perhaps related to “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, which also seems to relate to the “empty” suit of armor in afterthought) - the rooster moving through the hallway as possibly some sort of spirit or force - something about an embroidery pattern “coming to life” from a couch cushion relating to a curse regarding a wealthy family. This scene also seems somewhat associated with having left the chicken farm in Florida in late June 1978 (though because of it being unnaturally large may also have influence from a trailer for “The Food of the Gods” from 1976).

There is a later part that seems less focused (regarding my “role” in the “movie”) about an older woman looking for her lost children and a scene where she is riding in a taxi when she suddenly screams “those are my children back there” and I am aware that the “movie script” has all of the words running together like “thosearemychildrenbackthere” (which also seems written as such in a novelized version of the movie). It turns out, though, after the authorities and various members of the public had searched for a long time, that the woman is insane and actually does not even have any children - but is another “victim” of the haunted house (or castle?), which somehow creates imaginary scenarios and associated fears depending on the person.

Morning of September 11, 1969. Thursday.



My dream starts with an atypical unseen narrator who says, without emotion: “New York Harbor 1969. The city is a mess”.

I am flying over Manhattan in the first scene. I am semi-lucid and vividly aware of curious saxophone and xylophone music (never heard in real life); a series of repeated staccato notes. My sheet music image (only available on some websites with this entry) is close to what I heard in my dream. There is a later version where the third set of eighth notes in each motif is removed, giving a sense of anticipation.



On websites where the image is not available, the eighth notes (except for the last C, a quarter note) are: C C C C, C D C D, C D C D, E E E E, E F E F, E F E F, G G G G, G A G A, G A G A, A G G F, F E E D, C. The tempo is about 84 at first, though is accelerando. The music becomes a bit more intense yet with a less audible orchestral sound in the background, as if the volume is turned down though later up again. (This effect has happened in other dreams, usually when the level of dream state awareness changes, as sometimes the closer I am to waking, the less number of instruments are heard.)

Looking directly down as I fly, I watch a giant snake swim through the water, moving along on the water’s surface. (As such, my dream’s foundation is the most common form; water induction, as water symbolizes sleep dynamics in real time.) The snake is so large that it knocks aside boats (mostly tugboats) as it moves. However, there is also a brief awareness that the snake is of normal size and the debris is more like small pieces of bark, leaves, and twigs as I seemingly watch the “same” scene much closer to the water’s surface (as if of a small lake) before the implication changes again. At this point I also get the distinct impression that I am standing or hovering in my orb form (while incorporeal) to the left of the doorway in the southwest bedroom (not where I slept) at the same time I am dreaming this (with a vague association with having looked into our full bathtub and toilet while somehow sleepwalking, though I had not been). This bilocated impression (typical of a lot of my childhood dreams) does not continue. Helicopters fly over the Statue of Liberty and there is more news about the attack on Manhattan as apparently giant snakes came from a crashed flying saucer (as if perhaps manlike aliens, though unseen, and possibly from two different planets, lost control of their spacecraft for an unknown reason). There are two kinds of giant snakes that fight each other. One kind seems friendlier to humans. I watch a lot of the monster-movie-like battles though my dream eventually shifts to my home in Cubitis, and my previous lucid threads fade.

I am chasing a baby giant snake (which is my height in its upright “S” form) in a southerly direction, from the end of our driveway, near Highway Seventeen, and moving past the west side of our large culvert. The snake is the recurring Pepto Bismol pink that was fairly common in my dreams around this time period (after my mother had me drink it in real life). It is somehow quickly slithering upright like a standing (vertical) letter S and moving much like a swan. I am fearlessly chasing it, to make it leave the area so that bigger snakes do not eventually come by to investigate. Suddenly, when I get past the neighbor’s house a short distance, the snake looks “confused” (and I get the impression of an actual question mark floating in the air over its head very briefly, a curious feature of other childhood dreams, likely influenced by comic strips) and it turns around to start chasing me. I raise my arms up and out as I am now running away, but as if the scene is meant to be comedic or playful.

This continues for a short time when suddenly, the snake and I are very good friends. We are now at the end of the driveway, where I first found myself chasing it. I am holding the large snake in my arms like a baby, which is eventually even wearing an old-fashioned pale blue baby bonnet and held within a white baby blanket and is now going to sleep.

I am aware that the War of the Serpents will continue, possibly to the point where a lot more regions will be damaged. My parents do not appear at any point, and in fact, I do not interact with anyone I know in real life. Later, I am calm in the presence of a few giant black snakes (though my dream fades when I start flying again). This likely relates to the fact that black snakes were considered good due to a reputation where I lived of them supposedly chasing off rattlesnakes, which seems the main origin of my dream’s otherwise science-fiction theme.

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This dream has two discernible attempts at subliminal reinduction (a non-lucid attempt to vivify or extend the dream state, though I am semi-lucid when my dream begins). Firstly, my dream begins with typical water induction (my most common form of dream state initiation). A snake is the primary (biological) reticular activating system symbol (RAS mechanism), due to having evolved out of the natural fear that primates have of snakes, and thus RAS renders it as the potential waking trigger (in generating enough emotion as an “alert” for the purpose of waking the dreamer to attend to real physical needs), though a snake will sometimes relate to different factors (sometimes literal) and symbolism depending on the dream type, which only the dreamer could understand the origin and validation of in any case.

My first attempt at reinduction (even though I am still in the water as sleep initiation stage, though already with the snake as a potential RAS factor) is evidenced by the music having a similar essence as snake-charming music, to delay RAS waking dynamics. The second attempt is far more obvious and easier to validate. I succeed in harmoniously putting the snake to sleep (which represents willfully though subliminally decreasing RAS dynamics that might otherwise wake me up) at the end of the driveway, which symbolizes the subliminal awareness of eventually needing to wake up and stand at the end of my driveway to wait for the school bus. Dreams are very easy to understand once ignorant superstition and “interpretation” is cast aside in the acknowledgement of what dreams actually are. It should be emphasized that this dream began with conscious choice of first deliberately “stepping into” (and then flying within) my dream’s water-based environment (as I have done thousands of times since childhood and for over fifty years), which is also why the bilocated essence regarding another bedroom (obvious dream state indicator) in our house came into focus. (It should also be obvious that the baby snake additionally symbolizes a mild stomach ache, and the RAS “taming” of it for a few reasons; one, actually being the color of stomach ache medicine, two, being shaped like a human intestine, and three, stomach pain associated with a snake that squeezes its prey.)

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Edited for clarity and resupplemented on Sunday, 29 October 2017.

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Morning of September 11, 1979. Tuesday.



There were other versions of this dream but this is the most detailed version (not necessarily the longest) from September 1979. I had not seen Ann L (who I do not see in my dream much) for a few years. Ann L was the only familiar character (other than my “dream girl” of whom turned out to be real years later) from real life in most of my dream. She was a classmate for only a couple grades in middle school and high school. I did not really know her very well or interact with her that much. She was a mousy bookish type. This in fact, is one of my only dreams where she appeared and long after I had last seen her in waking life.

My dream’s plot vaguely resembles a Harvey comic book story of which I was familiar with (with Casper and Wendy as the main characters). It involves a ship that is similar to the Pacific Princess on “Love Boat” (which I have a false memory of having “seen” at a much earlier age which is likely associated with “Love American Style” from 1969 instead). However, there is also something about it that is also very military-like and the ship itself is greenish-gray, at least later on. Instead of moving normally across the ocean, it floats about three feet or so above the water’s surface (using some sort of advanced technology which America supposedly did not have in my dream), which seems slightly ominous (but still leaves a wake at times). The captain is Captain Badheart as in the comic story, which changes from Captain Goodheart.

There is something about Ann having a baby (not by me; possibly Barry R or the captain) as well as being locked in the captain’s cabin, but I do not follow her status that closely. It is almost like a secondary movie within my dream that is happening on the sidelines. I know the ship was designed to change after people boarded and kidnap them to keep them out at sea and serve the interests of a (fictional) small country or dictatorship. There is an original reference that I noted in which there is some association with “air ship”. There is a slight awareness of the “mystery girl” even from the beginning, but not quite as much as a much earlier dream of the liner. I now see a connection between “Pacific Princess”, “Love Boat”, and the fact that Australia is near the South Pacific.

The ship also has advanced weapons, some sort of multiple laser cannons in a series, something I might have associated with the original (1978-1979) Battlestar Galactica (especially as the ship seems to be called the Celestra at one point - the plot of that episode with that name is: “During a celebration honoring Commander Kronus, Starbuck recognizes an old flame of his, Aurora and breaks off a date with Cassiopeia to follow his lost love to the Celestra. On their arrival, Starbuck and Apollo find themselves in the midst of a mutiny” - IMDb), giving my dream a science-fiction-like atmosphere in the main scenes. There is a battle with the United States Air Force at one point. There is a precognitive layer (not quite as clear or multilayered as the liner dream of childhood) referencing my yet-to-experience journey to Australia and a loose connection to “The Man Without a Country”, which I saw in middle school. It has a similar mood.

The “mystery girl” still remains mostly in the background. I look for her during the troubles on board and I am frustrated at not finding her. Perhaps she has magic that will protect her from the foreign soldiers, but I still want us to get off the ship and back to civilization. At one point the ship is on the water when another ship is in the area so that no attention will be brought on to this strange ship that otherwise eerily floats above the ocean’s surface.

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A singular ship in a dream is an autosymbolic extension of the physical body and linked to a specific level of unconsciousness. This is made clearer here by the additional vestibular system correlation - the fact the ship is floating. Additionally, this (the military association) augments RAS mediation in this case, making my dream into an interesting adventure, but ultimately unrelated to waking life other than the prescient thread relating to my “mystery girl” (Zsuzsanna).

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Morning of September 6, 1969. Saturday.



I am floating through the jungle in my “orb” form but still seem fully in-dream regarding dimensionality and perspective even though much of the scenery reminds me of more detailed paintings from certain animated movies.

I move into a clearing and seem to be with a body at this point, but still hovering somewhat. I see the ruins of a large castle. (It is probably illogical to think of it as a castle deep in the jungle - as it could have been some other sort of ancient ruins, yet still of the kind typical of Tarzan movies - this is just how I “saw” it at the time).

There is a large group of tigers inside a large, mostly featureless room of the ruins when I look through the window, which is rectangular but with a semi-circular top. These tigers do not see me at any point. They are sitting with their back legs down, like with the typical domestic cat position. Even though they are all tigers, I see or sense unique characteristics and subtle color differences in each. One tiger is sitting before the group (seemingly facing south in my in-dream perspective only) and lifting his right leg in the air as if to make a point. They are planning on taking over the world and I contemplate who I should tell about this “secret” plan. The tigers actually look friendly, though, with a sort of animated appearance. In some ways, there is a resemblance to certain art-like aspects of the Walt Disney movie “The Jungle Book” (from 1967), but I had not yet seen it all at this time, only shorter clips.

In real life around this time, there was something about curfews, the idea of which I do not think I fully grasped. There was also gunfire and arrests based on the “failure to disperse” (as well as “sit-ins” by another group). Even though I am not threatened in my dream, I do get the feeling I am “not supposed to be there” perhaps because of a curfew set by the very slightly anthropomorphic, animated tigers. The speaking “leader” is not necessarily Shere Khan - I get the impression he is friendlier.

When I wrote a story from this dream much later on, I used a fictional name - “Rufus Yohort”, which my brother Jim thought was hilarious.

Morning of August 31, 1969. Sunday.



I am possibly in an unknown region of southwest Florida near a smaller lake, though it could also be inclusive of partly distorted (memories of) areas of Chipmunk Coulee where I had moved from in Wisconsin (though I had lived in Florida before, prior to that first move as well, until around three years of age). There are not many events; mostly just shifts of mood regarding the vivid imagery over time. Regarding this dream, I had written a story (a few versions over several years, in fact), but the later utilized implications were not known at the time of my dream. Thus, my dream was seemingly sending a rather ambiguous message, or so it seemed at the time, if you consider I did not consciously “grasp” the main scenario of “surrender” vs. “stay away from my territory”.

As well as the somewhat familiar lake scenery, I am also on the outskirts of town and in a clearing near the perimeter of a dense forest. There is some sort of local legend of a witch living deep in the forest, likely near the center of it. A large shrub has a white flag tied to it seemingly to indicate that the witch claims the forest as hers. It is on the edge of the forest and to the right of a tree.

Later on, the meaning seems to be different and I then get the idea that the white flag means that the witch is “surrendering” to progress and encroaching property developers. (I never actually see the witch; I only hear friends speaking about her and her flag - and I assume her to be of the Halloween-associated “bad witch” type.) I probably had developed the idea of the white flag from movies, but perhaps I did not perceive it as meaning to surrender. In fact, again, in my dream, it seemed a bit ominous as a sort of “obvious” visual warning (and perimeter marker) to “keep away” at first - the opposite of the “real” meaning. I see the outcome as obviously incongruous, perhaps during a time of slower learning processes where dreams are often inherently wrong about real-life associations due to not yet knowing societal associations or certain word meanings. One possible association from years ago related to occultism and superstition “surrendering” to consensus or modern mainstream society.

Some of the imaginative detail seems to have come from the idea of playing golf, oddly enough. (I did not really watch golf on any regular basis, however.) The flag in my dream was, at one point, vaguely similar in appearance and orientation as in golf (though with no number and not a pennant as in some cases with golf). You also see people hit a ball into the woods (or just on the perimeter) in some golf games.

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Update Wednesday, 20 January 2016: This dream is of the liminality type because the main theme is relative to a perimeter, or implied barrier on level ground (in contrast to lower or higher “barriers” or setting features). This is a lifelong but sparsely recurring dream design and type of setting. It seems to be relevant to metaphorical divisions of consciousness concerning the dream self’s level of access and other aspects of consciousness in the dream state. The forest here is the “Enchanted Forest” of the deepest imaginative state of the dream self (my most desired dream setting), where “magic still works” - “magic”, here, being analogous to apex lucidity. The white flag first implies “do not go in”, later to imply “I surrender”. It is almost as if the power of creativity and imagination, along with individuality (here presented as a form of isolation) is succumbing to consensus, or more specifically, the fully conscious self. On a much simpler level of possible meaning, it may represent the state between waking and sleeping (the clearing representing wakefulness and the forest representing the dream state).

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Morning of August 12, 1979. Sunday.



In my dream, I am walking southward in a grassy area near a large stream with very high banks. I seem to be in Veteran’s Memorial Park in West Salem, Wisconsin. Floating in the stream in the same direction I am walking is a large grayish and mossy-green alligator with unnaturally large yellowish-orange eyes which are also somewhat dome-like. Eventually, a laser beam slowly emerges from its left eye and starts moving towards me, but also slowly sweeping the area. Several unfamiliar people who were in different areas along the edge of the bank are now either running or cautiously walking from the area. This “laser” seems to be the only way that the alligator is able to find people, though it does not swim or attempt to leave the stream yet or attack at any point. It seems threatening but it is not a direct threat. It remains slowly moving from behind me to my right. As I eventually wake I see a beautifully rendered image of sunrise.

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Resupplemented on Thursday, 31 August 2017.

Hypnagogic foundation: I do not really feel like waking up and getting out of bed yet. As with many of my dreams, the essence of water is focused upon due to the fact that water symbolizes sleep (partly based on the fact that the first nine months of life are spent sleeping in the water of the womb) and the real-time dynamics of sleep while in the dream state (possibly due to subliminal awareness of the flow of glymphatic fluid increasing during sleep). I had focused on the Beatles song “Tomorrow Never Knows”: “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying.”

Hypnopompic resolution: Sunrise is inevitable. Waking is a necessity.

A similar but shorter version of this dream (with a fatter alligator and a head of a more surreal appearance) occurred on August 8th. Apparently, “Tomorrow Never Knows” was released on August 8th in America in 1966 (which is not possible to confirm as either postcognition or a typical unconscious marker though it is more likely I saw the date somewhere years ago).

The unusual detail of the overly large eyes symbolizes the subliminal awareness of being in REM sleep.

The alligator does not emerge from the stream due to my subliminal attention to being in the dream state. The alligator floating downstream represents my emergent consciousness precursor remaining asleep.

Additionally, the alligator is also based on potentially aggressive coalescence waking symbolism, where a dream character, including the dream self, is swallowed or perceived as being swallowed back into whole consciousness as neural energy increases in the waking transition.

The laser from the alligator’s eye is a distorted rendering of daylight being perceived through my eyelids while slowly waking. The sunrise imagery in the final scene confirms this.

Waking symbolism is often oriented to the right, which is the case with this dream. There are many possible reasons for this, which are too numerous to get into here.

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Morning of August 7, 1969. Thursday.



I am in the backyard of my Cubitis home at some time during late morning. The sun is shining and the weather seems fine overhead. However, to the east, beyond the railroad tracks and the expansive farmland, is a tornado, heading straight towards my home. In the area farther out towards the tracks and where we usually burn rubbish in real life, is what looks like an old worn plaid blanket (which is dirty and with a few holes) within the unburnt trash and ashes. There are at least six or seven recently born kittens on the blanket squirming around, a few noticeably calico. I do not know where they came from, but they seem to be my responsibility. There is an ambiguous awareness of being indoors looking down at a bed, even though I am also aware of being outside in a different location at the same time.

“You can’t die,” I say fairly softly and mournfully (though without any perceived personal worry), hearing my own young voice very clearly and vividly. I plan to take them from the area with no thought of anything else. I am almost lucid, but slowly wake.

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Understanding the dream state and the biological nature of RAS mediation will help in understanding a dream’s real meaning to rise above the erroneous concept of “interpretation” in the popular misuse of the term. There are obvious clues here.

Firstly, a tornado is a common dream feature for me, not always threatening, and was validated in childhood to be, at the mundane level (though there is also the spiritual association regarding the Merkaba), autosymbolism based on the naturally ambiguous dynamics of the vestibular system loosely associated with the dizziness of spinning even when this is not a direct factor, though of course avoiding a tornado is related to avoiding the faux vertigo of liminal space. This means that my dream self has a subliminal awareness of being in the dream state. What are some other clues? The kittens in the blanket are another clue. A blanket being rendered means I am probably subliminally aware I am asleep (without my conscious self identity being within the dream state itself).

Additionally, saying “You can’t die” is another dream state indicator from “If I die before I wake”, from a “prayer” that I never even considered uttering at any point in my childhood (even though some children supposedly utter this “prayer” prior to sleep, but what kind of a parent would allow this, I cannot even imagine it), though I had heard about it around the time of this dream. Thank goodness I was born into a family that did not practice such a grim ritual.

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Morning of July 19, 1969. Saturday.



This dream, looking over notes and doing a bit more research, seems to have been influenced by the following real-life events and associations:

1. “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (original movie from 1951).

2. Visits to a parking lot near a store at an early age (not sure where, somewhere near Port Charlotte, I think) where an elephant would perform tricks near our car. It terrified me when I was much younger, but as I got a older, the fear subsided. My mother had said that I had yelled for them (my parents) to roll up the windows of the car when we first went there when I was really young. An older sister still has photographs of these events.

3. Movies in the earlier grades in school about Pompeii and volcanoes in general. My wife said she had dream influences from such movies as well. I dreamed of volcanoes fairly often during my early years and once in real life, was startled by a sudden hailstorm which I thought was lava and volcanic rocks pouring down on our roof (this was a few years after this entry’s dream) and so I ran and hid in the closet until I realized what it was. Due to the fact that there was a large rutted metal section as the roof over most of our carport, it was really loud.

4. The “Uhny Uftz” episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, first seen September 29, 1965.

Contrary to what my dreams sometimes presented, I was never alone in a car at an early age.

My dream begins with my becoming aware of being in the middle of my backyard and assuming it is Sunday, late morning, perhaps around ten. A shadow appears on the ground, which is perfectly round, moving southward over our neighbor’s house. Perhaps it is a cloud, but perhaps not, so I go inside. I get a very vague sense of a “poisonous cloud”. Inside, in the living room, a man on a news report is talking rather unemotionally about a flying saucer having been sighted.

I am slightly lucid, so I decide that I will take control for a time and visit Brenda W, a female classmate who lives north of me. We go back to my house and I notice the news reader is still talking about the flying saucer and some sort of (I think) toxic gas or some such. Brenda is laughing because when the man is speaking on the television, certain things he is saying seem to be going on outside in the backyard at the same time as each spoken reference (round shadow, flashing light, strange hum…).

Later, Brenda seems to have gone home and I am seriously annoyed at this, as I want to spend the day playing with her (more like “playing house” even though I was quite young at the time). I decide to go back to her house. Soon, though, the round shadow appears on the ground, but I do not really look up. I start walking faster and faster, first trying to hide under trees, but eventually I start running and turn to go south towards town where there may be bigger and safer buildings and more people - and I have a vague idea that Brenda may also have gone there instead of going home.

Amazingly, I run so fast and “perfectly” that I manage to run straight down the wall of a gulley, then turning about at fully ninety degrees upright again, treading effortlessly and swiftly over the surface of the deeper stream - only lightly splashing the surface, and turning my entire body again at ninety degrees and going straight up the wall on the other side - and then continue on as if nothing strange had happened, my only concern being that I had wasted a few seconds by not running in a straight, horizontal path!

Eventually I am in town (Arcadia) and I do not notice any people around. Even though it seems to be the weekend, I notice a few cars in the elementary school’s parking lot and think it may be a meeting of the teachers - or perhaps a few alarmed people did not know where else to go for safety.

I notice that the flying saucer seems to be landing, so I go to duck down near a car (but do not yet get into the car). It lands and looks just like the spacecraft from “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The “door” of the flying saucer opens and…as I start to climb into the front seat of the car to hide…

Out walks a large elephant…

The elephant lifts its trunk straight into the air and out sprays a massive amount of lava and volcanic rocks. I jump into the car, but I notice the volcanic rocks quickly stacking up over the front window of the car (almost in “fast motion” animation) and so…it is the end of everything.

Morning of July 5, 1969. Saturday.



I go to Waikiki in Hawaii, or so it seems (I had not been there in real life). However, it is seemingly called “Waikikiki” in my dream (unless that came from a musical repetition of the last syllable) and is more like an island on its own (perhaps it is a play on “Waikiki Key” as with the Florida Keys). As my dream is ending, mostly seemingly in hypnopompia, a slower fictional song comes into play as I wake (though came back in a later “reset” version of my dream), which seems to be a warning for tourists not to cause problems for the local wildlife, though more as self-advice rather than receiving the message from elsewhere. It is sung (by a group of men and women, though in my own young voice in one version) as “Neh-ver go…to the EYE-eye-land…of Wah-ka-KEE-kee again!” The tune is fairly simple and I have included the sheet music here. Curiously, this totally fictional song replayed in my head every now and then for years after (even more than actual commercial music) and I can still imagine it now fairly accurately.

My dream is quite long but mostly involves just exploring the landscape, such as riding in an open train car (that reminds me of a roller coaster car though it does not have challenging events during the trip) and seeing a pterodactyl and nonthreatening volcano. Parts of the region I visit are seemingly “still” prehistoric, or it may be related to the train itself that goes through certain areas and goes through time. The Smothers Brothers are there planning to kill or knock out a triceratops for posterity (or perhaps because they feel threatened by it). However, the triceratops charges at them near boxes of dynamite near a cave and everything blows up as they gawk in fear, side by side, prior to their end…I wake just prior to the implied moment of impact but also get an impression of a cartoon-like jagged “ka-boom” balloon.

I now think that it is likely that this last scene was influenced from a “Road Runner” cartoon (where Wile E. Coyote is hit by a train) though I cannot be certain if that was the sole influence here. I did not really much care for the Smothers Brothers routines (and did not like Rowan and Martin either) so this is probably a form of wish fulfillment at one level. (I only watched their shows because of the guests they had on.)