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Morning of October 19, 1975. Sunday.



I would not call this a nightmare even though the physical awareness and changes were quite extraordinary and somewhat unnerving. I wanted to wait a bit before posting this, until I was able to locate some of the older photos, but will post it now.

It is based on a cypress knee my father retrieved from a deeper area of the Florida swamps in 1967, I think. The intriguing thing about cypress knees is that they often take on amazingly lifelike but grotesque anthropomorphic forms. My father used to gather very large numbers of these cypress knees from deep swampy areas. He mostly only used either the anthropomorphic ones to make mostly lamps - ones that usually looked like arms with five-fingered hands in various positions, large “hands” on their own, legs with knees or “feet”, and so on, or ones that were really surreal-looking. He said he found one once that looked just like a pregnant woman standing in the reeds but was too big to retrieve. Apparently there are people who carve cypress knees, but many already look weird enough (my father never carved any, he just used them as they were with a bit of sanding and varnish and installed the wiring and sockets).

What annoyed me later on was that he painted the cypress knee he found which was so close to a ghoulish human-like head (not in exact shape, but with all the main features) that it was hard to believe it was a natural formation (unless you had the experiences of learning how fairly common anthropomorphic cypress knees were or how weird they were in general), but it was. He did this to bring out the startling “features” more from a distance. This cypress knee had two “bulging eyes” in the correct location, with even the seeming lid detail and the two irises, even. It also had two nearly perfect “ears” but which were mostly inward implied “ears”. It also had a raised triangular but skeletal-like nose formation, and two human-like “lips” (partly open) - and all of this was in the “correct” location when seen as a “head”. He made a lamp from it like everything else he found, but when it was returned by a person who was supposedly terrified by it (it was a gift I guess), he decided to keep it after taking the wiring out (which was just inserted through a small tunnel made by hand drilling) and jokingly called it a “Martian head” or “ghoul’s head” at times. It was also about the right size for a human head. A lot of people could not believe their eyes when they saw it (mostly unlearned city people, though, who had not been around nature much - and who to this day often think anything they had not seen in the city is unusual or actually “alien” - it boggles my mind, frankly).

My dream related to having fallen asleep on the bed in my father’s music room where he kept the knee on a dresser at the time. He had painted it white with other colors given to the detail of the “eyes”, “nose”, “lips”, and “ears”, mostly. (We never gave it a name, by the way). In my dream I am looking at it “face on”. I eventually feel myself rise up into the air and move towards it, sort of hovering. I then feel myself “splitting apart” into thousands of tiny gnat-sized pieces - an extremely strange awareness. I still would not call it a nightmare, as I did not panic as with actual nightmares. There was a sort of higher-pitched “buzzing”. This was not relative to sleep paralysis and was not as vivid as similar dreams of hovering and physically changing. This was much like an OBE I had heard people talk about but it did not have the “magnetic displacement” sensations that I had in events I considered to be actual out-of-body events (in terms of actual waking nerve energy perception - where I was awake with my eyes open and could see my limbs but only be able to move a “ghost limb” for a time).

I eventually got rid of it, although a relative may now have it (from retrieving it from things I had placed for removal - people did get things from there - but I am not certain of everything that people got). There are hundreds of other cypress lamps my father made out there somewhere. He retrieved and made more than most people in the 60s and 70s. A few of my relatives have older photos of the “head” somewhere (both originally unpainted and painted); I will try to post an image or two one day.

Morning of October 12, 1975. Sunday.

I am in some sort of movie being filmed or perhaps it is actually only a stage drama (although we do seem to be at a real location), which eventually is (or slowly becomes, or with a “reset”?) a real scenario and a real mystery a few people and I are trying to solve. I mostly work with an unknown female around my age. It takes place mostly within a large fancy mansion, but I only remember being on the first floor assuming there was a second floor. It has to do with a count that vanished and was possibly kidnapped. It has a strange and unexpected outcome. We find a message in small handwriting on the back of a painting on the wall (lower left-hand corner) in a large frame and it leads to finding the count’s body still in his bedroom and inside a mattress. It seems to be some sort of strange suicide. Although it is taking place in modern times, he is dressed in a very old-fashioned way, possibly 1700s. There may be a vague association with the Little Blue Boy painting (by Thomas Gainsborough), which my father had a print of, hanging on the west wall of his old room (for the longest period) in Cubitis, though the connection is not certain.

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Here, I once again subliminally seek the status of my real physical body. The count’s corpse being found inside the mattress is of course an obvious dream sign. The count’s corpse is obviously a subliminal distorted perception of my sleeping body (a dream sign of the first level).

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Night of October 10, 1965. Sunday.



This dream is not very complex, but is one of thousands that has been revelatory and proven to be of a long-term precognitive nature. In this case, however, it related to Susan R as the “other” rather than my yet-to-be wife. I believe this is relative to a deliberate play on “branching” from a so-called destiny point prior to becoming aware of it.

In my dream, I am not sure of the exact location. It is possibly based on an area near Chipmunk Coulee, but not higher on a bluff. There is a seemingly abandoned house which I believe faces east, with an older one-lane road running north/south. The large front yard is filled with several old, gnarled trees (not sure of the type, but possibly oak). I am not exactly sure if the house has a real-life version. It seems mostly unfamiliar - or at least I thought so at the time.

Over time, I learn that the trees were actually people who had been transformed by possibly a witch. These people were the family that had lived in the isolated abandoned house. They were of various ages even though they are now seemingly very old trees. They have large human-like faces, about double or more the size of a person’s (but still with all the characteristics of wood and bark). There is a slight similarity to the “I do not think that I want to be a tree” dream which actually did relate to the “mystery girl” (future wife).

I seem to be given the task of going into the house to find a cure or to give them some sort of (commercial?) medicine, which, while perhaps not making them human (although they can still seemingly talk and interact, just not uproot themselves and “walk” or move much at all), will still help them somehow. This theme repeated in a similar way (going to get medicine to help someone) in several other dreams - including the one with several short and long-term precognitive layers regarding my yet-to-be wife (regarding “The Tired Queen”). Over time, however, the mood and level of awareness changes, and I become aware that it is unlikely that the trees are actually human-like in any way. Nothing much happens after this. I have left out some personal information regarding connected scenes.

The long-term precognitive aspect of this is quite intriguing. This was one of the only, more precise dreams related directly to Susan R (the “other”) in its implications. In fifth grade, an unfriendly classmate, Bobby G (I believe the son of the school principal or boy’s dean), had (during the task given for each student to write stories for the lower grades), written his story about a “family of trees” (with the same title as my original dream summary at age four) that had human qualities, and one of the last parts being “had one tree” (meaning a “baby”) and living happily ever-after. My story was “King of the Birds”. The strange thing was, he bullied me the whole time on “birds can’t talk” while his story was about human-like trees having a human-like life (and also apparently talking in one way or another). This was so hilarious, I held no anger, as it made him appear quite idiotic (especially as there are certain types of birds that can “talk”, and the stories were “just stories” for younger students at that, some others of which also had the essence of fables).

During the same day, Susan first made it known (more clearly and seriously, anyway) we had some sort of “connection” (and this was long before I read anything on soul mates). She asked me to sign my name on her copy of my story. Bobby G asked if she wanted his and she made a negative sarcastic comment. This was one of those days that become “fixed” in my memory. I knew there was something unusual (and “unseen”, but more powerful and important than mankind in my view) going on but I could not understand it. Susan was one of only two people I was absolutely certain of a clearer “unexplainable” link (the other being my wife). I was the only one whose signature she wanted on her copy of a story.

Morning of October 10, 1975. Friday…and on.



Fairly common, but also non-eventful dreams for the most part, involved going around in mostly unfamiliar areas of town and going into clothing stores (often seemingly for women only) as well as grocery stores and stores like K-Mart and such. A fairly common event (but not a part of all similar dreams) was not being able to find the correct exit from the store and feeling a bit annoyed. I would think I found the exit and just end up back in another part of the same store (or sometimes inside a different store, sometimes closed). One dream, involving an IGA grocery store (that existed in real life), had various different copies of “The Romeo Error” (by Lyall Watson), a book I read a few times as a boy. It was sitting on various shelves and eventually seemed to be all that they were selling. I would sometimes purchase food items (especially cereal) only to wonder where they went later on. What is interesting is that some of these dreams had a long-term precise mapping that never seemed to change. I was even aware of how to get to certain stores that did not exist at all in real life relative to location. A couple of these dreams turned out to be precisely precognitive (relative to location and store type) several years ahead of time.

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 September 8, 1975. Monday.



This dream was much as if I was watching some sort of strange “wavy” cartoon yet with a rendering that made it seem at least ninety percent “real” or live-action regarding the vivid imagery. A Saint Bernard appears and ends up in a cave full of bats, where he is bitten a few times - though sometimes it seems to be in an underground chamber where the dog then emerges from near the roots of a tree. He then either gets rabies or becomes vampiric and attacks his family (where there is at least one young boy). I do not see much happening and my dream seems to “reset” several times, sometimes with the events not rendered very well and sped up a bit, yet almost seeming like an “old memory” at times and bilocated in my Cubitis living room where I also seem to be “sleeping” in the northwest corner - though I am actually in my bed in reality. I am aware of a name that is like “Cool Joe” (after Snoopy from the “Peanuts” comic strip, a reversal of “Joe Cool” and first seen May 27, 1971).

In my dream, I was also aware of the name Castle Rock, which is interestingly the name of the fictional town in the novel. The dog also seems to be a sheepdog at one point after one “reset”. This has subtle links to my “Time Divergence” dream (July 4, 1976) and a strange repeating dream experience (and my perception of time extremely altered) related to “Hardcastle and Mccormick”, which I almost always misremembered as “Hardcastle and Rock”. As I have noted before, sometimes these experiences seem more related to incidental word associations through a “higher source” at times, rather than having any real meaning, almost as if the Source is playing some sort of “trick” to see if people are paying attention.

This was surely precognitive with quite a detailed perspective (though there are significant differences in my dream and the actual novel and movie), though rather pointless as with much precognition. The novel apparently did not come out until 1981 (which still feels extraordinarily odd to me as I still feel and “remember” that it came out years before that, before I moved from Florida in 1978), though it is perhaps not impossible that there was talk of it beforehand, though I do not recall reading anything on this and I really did not have access to much news when living in Cubitis during this time. Oddly, I also dreamt about scenes from the movie “Firestarter” (as well as many other movies) before the novel even came out. I have never been sure of why this happens or what the connections (if any) are. Also, it is one of hundreds of more detailed precognitive dreams I did not really think about until several years later. I did not even realize when I saw “Cujo” in real life that it had actually come much later than my dream details. On a side note, Stephen King discusses “Cujo” in “On Writing”, referring to it as a novel he “barely remembers writing at all”.

Morning of August 24, 1975. Sunday (the day before starting 9th grade).



This dream is like an O. Henry tale and as such, is more like an amusing (but nonsensical) ”story” than many of my other dreams. There was a time when I titled it “The Smallest Giant” to have a titular relationship with other (though unrelated) dreams such as “The Smallest Rabbit” and “The Smallest Ghost”.

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In my dream, a fictitious family lives directly south of us and seemingly shares their house with another family, or perhaps they are only visiting them or staying with them for a time during the upcoming school year.

A fictitious wooden fence, much like an old cattle fence (but of only two separated narrower boards high), runs east and west at the southernmost end of our house all the way out to the train tracks. The grass is also longer in our backyard than it had ever been in real life.

The main idea is that there is a “giant” living next door. I think the giant’s name may be John but I am unsure. (There is only a vague awareness at one point of the Edward G. Robinson movie “The Little Giant” from 1933.)

However, the male that had been thought by others to be a giant is eventually seen to not be very tall at all, but he is chubby, and at one point, seemingly only a little taller than the average height for an adult male. He seems mentally “slow”, though. He vaguely reminds me of Kenneth W, a classmate and friend from the year before.

I play a few games with him and Kenny and Karen (neighbors, schoolmates, and friends in real life, though Lisa is not present), mainly with a Frisbee, and some other events take place related to the “giant” making a few odd mistakes in judgement (mostly regarding distance orientation). Near the end of my dream, there is an idea that it is foolish for people to call him a giant.

During the clearest segment of my dream, I call over the fence to him, “hey” and his first name, saying “…Kindergarten starts tomorrow!” Of course, this is a “twist ending” and implies that he actually is a giant but only four or five years of age. I am almost laughing as I wake, being aware of the apparent “cleverness” of my dream.

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This dream has been used here for part 3 of my “Fence Autosymbolism” series. Here, the fence is a main feature of which does not exist in reality. However, in this case, there is a degree of correlation with waking life. It is important to understand that dreams are typically an ambiguous mix of literal factors and autosymbolic factors, sometimes with conscious self correlation.

This dream was, on one level, temporarily making light of my conscious self’s discomfort and uncertainty over the idea of going to high school for the first time, as ninth grade was to start for me on the twenty-fifth of August (on the morning after this dream). My dream colored my mood from mostly negative to somewhat cheerful, at least during this day.

The “giant” was not the preconscious factor in this dream (and not all dreams have a personified preconscious either), but my emergent consciousness. Again, it was making light of an upcoming transition, that for some, might instead have been rendered as a nightmare or at best an unpleasant dream. In reality, I was no longer in the lower grades. I was no longer a child. The fictitious fence appeared in my dream as both a liminal space divider (which was not present in later dreams) and because contact with our real neighbors was nearing an end as was the previous openness with Lisa as had existed in our childhood and early teenage years.

This validates that some dream content comes from current (though liminal) deliberate conscious thought (while other content seems to have no recent source). This is important to understand, as fences which already existed, the ones in part 1 and part 2 of this series, were solely autosymbolic of the dream state and waking process only, and they did not imply creating a new fence in a real-life setting by way of liminal dream control (dream control without lucidity).

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Morning of August 17, 1975. Sunday.



In my dream, I am in the middle school building (DMS), probably implied to be in eighth grade, though I will be going to ninth grade in a different building on August 25, 1975. There is a vague lucidity, enough to use my dream to focus within in expectation of something new, curious, or interesting, in this case, finding a secret passageway as I have often utilized in both liminal dream control and lucidity.

I insert some coins into a seldom-used commercial vending machine (against the north wall in the hall, probably somewhere near the middle of the building) to get a soft drink. However, there is a different response, which I had seemingly been at least partly expecting - based on, I believe, a recent student rumor. You had to put the right combinations of coins in and press the correct product-select buttons to activate and allow entry into a secret area or apparently another world.

The soda vending machine slides over (in the manner of a sliding door) to reveal a secret passageway behind the wall. I soon find myself climbing horizontally on a giant rose plant that winds horizontally through a long large metallic tunnel. This becomes sort of frustrating and boring over time, but I do not seem to be in that much danger (probably because of the usual liminal dream state awareness). Near the end of my dream, I look far down and see the lost city (from “Land of the Lost”, the original television series) but I only see Enik standing around, though he does not notice me. I do not see much potential in exploring a city of Sleestaks at this point and I am unsure how to get down to the area anyway. It is now as if I am looking at the area from a very high cliff.

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Vestibular system correlation (what the majority of my dreams have at one point or another since earliest memory) kicked in fairly quickly, though without fully waking me or even more dominant waking autosymbolism, though there were vague partial awakenings while I was climbing the horizontally-oriented vine, horizontal of course, because of my liminal awareness of how my body was oriented in sleep.

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Morning of August 13, 1975. Wednesday.



This dream was strongly influenced by a random symmetrical inkblot I made (at age fourteen) that looked much like a more detailed version in my dream’s outcome. I am not a main character and seem to be watching as if it is a movie. (Some of the inkblots I made as a teenager, as well as numerous other things I made, including comic strips and short stories, are possibly with relatives and stored away somewhere.)

Two astronauts land on a planet, which, over time, begins to shrink. Not much happens other than the (unknown and male) astronauts reacting to land features that are smaller and closer together than previously. For some reason, their rocket-ship also shrinks, apparently to the same continual proportions of the planet, but they do not. There does not seem to be any in-dream back story over why the planet is shrinking.

In the end, they are seen hanging off the planet from each side, hanging in outer space, almost looking as if they are pressing a beach ball above their heads and the image is perfectly symmetrical.

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 19, 1975. Saturday.

Dream #: 3,134-02. Reading time: 50 sec.



My imaginary dream self becomes aware of being in an alternate (erroneously detailed) version of our backyard in Cubitis. It seems to be in the late morning. I am aware of my father standing near the back of our chicken shed and digging, but this is not a defined focus.

My attention is mainly on a giant onion that is growing in our garden in the area west of the railroad tracks. The top part of it that is exposed is about three feet in diameter. I do not consider its presence unusual.

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How to understand dreams in my online dream journal: This dream is mainly a result of instinctual sleep-wake mediation and inherently unrelated to my waking-life status other than with partial literal threads (for example, we had a garden in this location in real life but did not grow giant onions).

A feature coming out of the ground is instinctual autosymbolism for emergence from slow-wave sleep. Dreams exhibit co-occurrence with the waking transition as a preparatory function of achieving consciousness.

The top part of the onion in this dreaming experience, being above ground, confirms to me that accessible layers of memory only exist with the emergence of cognizance and consciousness during the beginning of liminality (increasing lucidity) to viable wakefulness.

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