All DJ Entries

Morning of December 25, 2009. Friday.



I am in the backyard of our present address. Although there is not that much of a focus on this morning being Christmas (especially as my dream self is only rarely aware of what year it is, let alone the date), I see Christmas ornaments protruding about a quarter up from where there is only dirt in the far backyard. Most of them are spherical and of one color, though I find more detailed ones when I dig more. I consider that it is an unusual place to store ornaments as such, as they will require cleaning each year.

Eventually, I also start to discover and uncover a few gold and silver coins as I dig (though remaining uncertain of the value or country of origin), some of which have a few holes in them, as if eroded. At this point, there is ambiguity. It now seems I am digging in dirt beneath the floorboards of our lounge room (though this occurs ambiguously, while I still perceive myself as being outside). (In reality however, this would not be possible, as our house is suspended above the ground on stumps.)

---

Morning of December 25, 1999. Saturday.

Reading time: 1 min 9 sec. Readability score: 55.



In a semi-lucid state, I allow myself to move into a desert landscape, with a focus on Christmas. I allow myself to correlate with my dream self’s illusory physicality. Zsuzsanna walks ahead of me, to my left (our sleeping orientation). A star also shines in the evening sky, representing the essence of my conscious self identity that is still extant in sleep.

I contemplate the story of the three wise men. However, only a couple of camels appear later. The Christmas story is skewed, and we are trekking to the Roman Coliseum instead of the traditional Nativity scene. I do not attempt to fix the reactive representations of my vague thoughts.

Three tortoises are slowly crawling on their journey. I consider this is an interesting story but then decide it does not make much sense. I contemplate how the tortoises may have appeared to represent my slower biological processes as I sleep.

They reach the Roman Coliseum. One of the tortoises lifts their head to study the height of the Roman Coliseum, and a question mark appears above its head. (The curious impossibility of a question mark suddenly floating above a character’s head, as if in a comic strip, has occurred in previous dreams. I call this the contemplation of the liminal space enigma, which is autosymbolism for the dream self questioning its separation from the waking life identity. It occurs in many other forms, such as jigsaw puzzle pieces near a doorway or the presence of spies or detectives as preconscious or emerging consciousness avatars.)

I walk around a wall and vaguely discern the Nativity scene as I wake. (Walking around a wall was a more common factor in the waking process when I was very young.)

---

Morning of August 16, 1981. Sunday.



This was a somewhat disturbing dream (in some ways) that related to Santa Claus, strangely enough. However, it all led up to one obvious pun in the end. I sometimes wonder about these “building up” pun dreams. What if you wake up before the outcome or “intended ending”? I suppose this means that the pun is never heard or realized, but what if the very reason for the longer aspects was to prepare for something that my dream did not finish, such as the “punch line” so to speak? I am sure that happens all the time regarding any setup that is not resolved before waking - thus many dreams remain “unfinished” for many different reasons (for example, when you wake from environmental noise, physical discomfort, change in consciousness, etc.).

In my dream, Santa Claus is after some sort of new element that will enable him to fly his sled faster and without reindeer. This is a rather strange juvenile dream, I suppose, for a young adult to ponder, and not even anywhere around Christmastime as it is.

The element is called Saturnium. He uses his elf minions and sycophants to hunt down any trace of the element. He gets closer and closer to attaining enough and at a later point, I enter into the actual scenario and I am then seen as “physically present” for the first time. I approach him and sort of break into the flow of the (implied) “movie” and I ask him what he will do with all that Saturnium. I ask specifically, “What will you use it for?”

He grins in a menacing manner, sitting on his throne (with gold backing) in some sort of large seemingly commercial business building or warehouse where he apparently lives. He responds by saying “My sleighing (slaying) will soon begin”; meaning to kill, rather than for a Christmas “sleigh” - all this dreaming for one bad pun in the end. There was even a different “broken” dream (a partial “reset” from around the same time period) where this whole thing repeats - but it is me who answers my own question with a question relative to the play on slay/sleigh and Santa does not speak; he only smiles menacingly to confirm that the answer is “yes”. One comment I make, “to build your slay?”, does not really make that much sense as the implied pun.

Night of December 20, 1980. Saturday. (My 20th birthday.)



There is a lot of clarity and vividness but I have only a semi-lucid awareness. I am traveling on a mostly enclosed rollercoaster and going up but eventually I am horizontally riding through what is almost like a car wash. This dream is somewhat glitchy in its augmented energy as undefined forms move about and I can almost make out waveforms moving in the air in some areas or detached miniature wings (that move on their own with no implied body, bird or otherwise).

After I move through a doorway (consciousness shift) that still has the essence of a car wash, my dream becomes astoundingly vivid though still glitchy and with an odd ambiance. I look to my right and see a sparse Christmas scene. Santa Claus is seated on a thrown. He leans forward and opens his mouth fairly wide in an odd “silent bark” at me. I am vaguely aware of a very slight sound which is only slightly like a lip-smacking sound. I feel vaguely threatened but he remains sitting, looking a bit crazed.

Eventually, I climb down from the mostly enclosed rollercoaster as if climbing down over a stack of broken bed frames (dream sign).

---

There are a few typical generic dreaming metaphors here, including detached wings (this dream’s flight symbol), which here actually relate to the incorporeal essence of the dreamer (even though I do have a “dream body” in this particular dream), and the rollercoaster (also a form of “flight” since it is metaphorical for the consciousness shifts that occur in the dream state), which becomes a stack of “broken bed frames”, which is analogous to the dissolution of my dream in addition to a play on “climbing out of bed” after my dream ends. I have only had a few “bad Santa” dreams. In most of these dreams (including a few where I was either the “real” Santa, implied to be a temporary stand-in, or where I wore the outfit) there is either a sense of great joy or no particular dominant emotion. The car wash aspect may relate to cellular functions or other bodily functions (related to cleansing, such as especially with the liver or kidneys) while in the dream state though on another level is another form of water induction which is very common in my dreams.

Morning of December 23, 1969. Tuesday.



Sometimes a wrongful association stays with you as a sort of symbolic memory that is triggered by later recall. Dreams have a lot of “power” (or rather influence) at times, especially childhood dreams that seem “practiced” into a new (distorted) idea. In this case, the Christmas song “The Holly and the Ivy” is portrayed as something completely different than what the song is about - and this is likely unique to my own personal view and way of thinking. Instead of about plants, it is about a bloody battle between the lion and the unicorn.

The reasons for this are not entirely illogical in my opinion. There is a line in the song that is “the holly bears the crown”, which makes me think of “king” and of course the lion (especially as it seems impossible for me to associate a plant with a crown - even “crown of thorns”, sometimes changed to “crown of nails” depending on which story you go by, is something that does not immediately come to mind), and as there is also the line “and the running of the deer” which probably aided in creating this fictional representation of the song, as a deer is an animal with a very vague association with a unicorn. The fact that I did not understand hardly anything in the song (and the fact that it is somewhat meandering and incoherent as it is) at the time did not help either. Thus, dreams often “experiment” with potential interpretations of real life - just as in real life, you interpret aspects of dreams. A full circle, it seems. The inside and outside “worlds” are always trying to resolve things not yet understood. Dreams seem a large part of that cycle, which means some aspects of dreams are far less meaningful than conscious learning, contrary to what some people seem to believe, but there are many different types and states, of course - and dreams resulting from meditation, affirmation, and projection have different properties than those trying to resolve something not understood from real life.

The words themselves are also tricky. “Holly” can be altered to “holy” and “ivy” to “ivory”, thus adding to the idea that a mythical unicorn is more along the concept of an “ivory tower” which I have also associated with “castle in the air”. At any rate, this incorrect association is probably with me for life, even now in August of 2014.

Morning of February 14, 1969. Friday.



It is Christmas in my dream, but not in real life (it is actually the morning of Valentine’s Day). The date is actually February 14, 1969, the morning after the airing of the “Mrs. Stephens, Where Are You?” episode of “Bewitched” (“Serena turns Darrin’s mother into a cat.”) The cat is black and not very large, though an adult female.

Our large (fictional) “real” Christmas tree is in the middle area of the north wall of the Cubitis house living room (where it had never been set up in reality even by 1978, of the three locations being northeast corner, southwest corner, and west wall between my door and the front door). I apparently had received the cat for Christmas (I believe from my mother – although I am not one hundred percent sure; it may also have come from Brenda W, a female classmate, or just mysteriously found its way to my home for some unknown motive - my in-dream back story seems ambiguous).

When I come home from school one afternoon (and as I am just about to walk through the front doorway), the cat’s head seems to float and move up just in front of my face (from where she is in the doorway) in an eerie startling event, but more as if it is some sort of invasive telepathy. There are also scenes where the cat seems to “multiply itself” in unusual, sparse kaleidoscopic vision (but a bit too random to be truly kaleidoscopic). In each facet of the image, the cat seems to be expressing a different human emotion, even with descriptive impressions (for example, “this is Serena when she is annoyed” or “this is Serena when she is puzzled”, being nearly identical to another dream’s event though featuring my mother and only using our surname with “Mrs”).

There is one scene where the cat has made the toy train go around the Christmas tree (the tracks being in a perfect circle around the tree) that I had apparently gotten recently for my birthday or Christmas. (I never had a complete toy train set in real life, but my adult brother did have a model railroad setup after my dream, but it was setup at his house, not mine.) I am somewhat concerned about the “powers” of this cat, but it is not a nightmare. The cat also makes a small toy red alien figure (one of three) walk around, but walking mostly sideways, mostly on the frame of the sofa that had been left open.

Supposedly, the cat is killed when the couch section (in real life, the couch that converted into a bed, by the front lifting up and then the back dropping down, was along the southwest corner of the living room near the entrance to the door of my bedroom) falls onto it when it had been left open in preparation of making it into a bed or when I had accidentally left it open when taking something from the storage area (which I believe was divided into two compartments). However, the cat disappears from my dream after this even though there is an awareness it is still alive or existing somewhere (perhaps in another dimension beyond the living room wall or as a “ghost” – although there is a slight awareness of the idea of nine lives being literally for a cat).

Amusingly, shortly after my dream, I absentmindedly set up the ending of my dream by leaving the sofa section up for a short time. It soon fell, and curiously enough, crushed part of a plastic toy (a cereal prize) which was the small red Martian (or other supposed alien) figure I believe came from Quisp Cereal and described previously (relating to “coming to life” in my dream). I kept it (but had three others that remained in perfect condition) even though the eye area had been flattened. I had absentmindedly left it on the edge of the frame at the time when the section fell. I would not call this precognition though, as I absentmindedly caused the event.

Night of December 24, 1966. Saturday. (Christmas Eve.) Original date and other data validated and corrected.



A girl older than me (about nine) is dressed in a cat suit (like Catwoman from “Batman”) with the smaller eye mask. I confront her after she seems to not know someone is out on the roof (Rose Street apartments in La Crosse, Wisconsin). I think it is just before midnight and it is cold and very quiet otherwise and there is a bit of snow on the roof (more-so the recessed areas on either side of the walkway). She is surprised by me prior to going through the window into my sister Marilyn’s apartment and claims to be one of Santa’s elves (though it is not Christmas eve and I inform her of this in a somewhat patronizing yet friendly way). I am not sure what to think. She is carrying a green, lumpy bag which seems to contain a fair amount of unknown items (possibly some soda/pop bottles), but is seemingly not that heavy for her. (In the original, I had noted a possible set of holes with a fork partially protruding near the top.)

There was also a scene of a partial hypnopompic unfolding where paw prints are noted on the roof instead of human ones and I am considered to be “telling a story” regarding the incident later on in a false awakening.

This is a recurring theme of catlike people or beings being on the Rose Street roof late at night, often shadowy or mysterious forms; a likely influence - the animated movie “Gay Purr-ee” from 1962 (which I first saw on the 23rd of December, 1966) and the short-lived TV series “T.H.E. Cat”. In fact, an episode of “T.H.E. Cat” played during the next television airing of “Gay Purr-ee” (also written as “Gay Purree”) on a different channel.

This dream did have precognitive nuances as usual, but not that multilayered. A few years later, I saw the girl who seemed like the one in this dream (with the exact same details in the costume and same manner and movement) in real life. She was a classmate who had dressed up as “Catwoman” (not the exact character, but for some other story) for the school Halloween play.

Several years later, in 1971, the song where they sang “the Candy Man can” was sometimes "automatically" mentally “replaced” by “the Money Cat can” - which has a vaguely similar style and the same number of syllables in parts. I thought as a child that they were perhaps influenced by the “Money Cat” song, which would not be the first time one song influenced another commercially. In fact, I made a note of this to a few classmates, but they ignored the idea completely. This was one of the few times during that period I mentioned anything dream-related.

Morning of December 23, 1970. Wednesday. (Original data and date validated.)



Recurring over Christmas holidays during fourth grade. I am at school for some reason during the weekend starting Christmas break. A very short man/elf (who is very old) - or possibly a dressed-up dwarf or midget more “realistically” - is singing “Jingle Bells” very mournfully (dragging out “way” with a very melancholy flow with about three syllables). He used to sing it with great cheer, but his wife, who was three times taller than him (a blue Christmas fairy or whoever) had died the year before. However, in one part of my dream it seems her “spirit” is present and in a happy mood watching him and there seem to be a few other “woodland characters” in the background, possibly to later participate or remain an audience. (The idea for the “blue fairy” as a dream influence may have come from “Pinocchio”.)

In real life, I had gotten a really long candy-cane-striped pencil with an elf head on the end - not an eraser though, it was made of plastic and cloth - from school as a gift from a teacher. I actually had it for many years, unused.

Also in real life, I had exchanged gifts at school with Morris E based on name draws in school. I had given him (bought by my mother) a small spinner game with tiny pegs in a plastic box about the size of a deck of cards, and he gave me a pair of very cheap toy plastic handcuffs. However, the handcuffs broke after a very short time before school was out that day (and during the so-called Christmas party). The teacher made us switch back to where we kept our “own” gifts and of course, this made Morris E more of my nemesis than he already was, blaming me for “ruining his Christmas”, something I did not take all that seriously, though. My mother seemed vaguely annoyed at me keeping the gift as well. It is possible the mournful singing dwarf was some sort of representation of Morris in one layer, as he was a “dwarf” of sorts, that is, his growth was stunted and he remained very short as he got older.

This dream colored my mood, but not in a negative way. It just felt “right” at the time, almost nostalgic (even for a child). I did make the stronger association with a “Christmas dwarf” rather than a Christmas elf.