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Morning of June 1, 1988. Friday.



This dream has very strange imagery and seems of the type where I am both disembodied as well as somehow “outside” my dream. I am apparently looking at a magazine (though it seems like a “real” scene as well, eventually), and focusing more and more on it. I see the “Dennis the Menace” character and he appears to be in a store, perhaps in preparation to look at or buy comic books, though his dog Ruff is also in the store and standing to his left (my right in perspective but a bit more in the foreground). I seem to be looking at a large colorful drawing or perhaps a sketchy oil painting by Hank Ketcham. (It somehow does not seem at all like part of a comic strip or comic book.)

The more closely I look over the scene, the more things seem “off” even though it seems “real”. Dennis the Menace has only one large eye on his forehead, which is somewhat dome-like and a sort of “sickly” brownish green. It may also be implied to be somewhat reflective (or mirror-like, though also “dirty” or murky). There are no other eye-like details, just the oval green “blob” on his forehead. This causes me to feel somewhat strange and out-of-place as if I am almost looking at something “wrongfully” otherworldly. I do not become lucid but begin to “understand” that everything is otherwise “normal” about this character’s drawing at this point in time. Prior to waking, it almost seems like the “real” Dennis may have been “taken over” by an alien threat (or at least as such relevant to semiconscious waking thoughts).

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Explanations for this dream are not all that diffciult to determine. Firstly, dreams typically have surreal and bizarre imagery, often incidental, so this could just be a “glitch” as such. However, it could also be a play on the “third eye”. Dennis is not a real character, which could reflect the “unreal” dream state. The “eye” could also represent a “portal” (that is, the return to waking reality as my dream “melts” into one color and with less detail). Because of the color it may relate to looking down into the ground.

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The “Dennis the Menace” comic panel prior to this date was a gag where he said “Guess what, mom! All the mirrors in the house look like ME!” - which may have vaguely influenced my dream on one level (and the one on this date - not yet seen at the time - having him ask Mr. Wilson, who is digging, “Who buries the worms here in the first place?” - nothing I know of relating to any “explanation” for this imagery other than the eye being partly mirror-like relating to a meditation I had been doing). I also had read many of the “Dennis the Menace” digests when younger but this is the only significant dream of this nature ever documented.

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Update: On this date in 2001 (exactly 13 years after this dream), Hank Ketcham passed away. This makes both my dream and his own comic panel published on this date in 1988 seem a bit eerie (no disrespect intended).

Morning of May 11, 1976. Tuesday.



Yes, this is, after all, the original unimaginative dream journal title from age fifteen.

I am at my high school in Arcadia in the lunch break area near the “chuck wagon room”/food purchasing area and I soon see that someone (unknown) had drawn an abstract life-sized asymmetrical picture of a “girl” on the outer wall facing east out into the main open area with the benches, with possibly black chalk on the lighter-colored wall, but the drawing of which is mostly only made up of triangles, rectangles and lines (and likely even distorted handwriting - perhaps implied to be the artist’s signature), but still suggesting a human form overall. Later, it comes to life (after beginning to look a little more like a human form) and I want to catch “her” to get to know her (and perhaps even make love as perhaps she will become more realistic now that she is in the “real” world) but “she” has vanished after running to the north for a time and just as my dream-self starts to attain a clarity bordering on lucidity.

Looking back on this and considering how so many dreams were precognitive of my near-legendary “dream girl destiny” - I now consider that the drawing was additionally inclusive of distorted letters of the alphabet in a very similar way as the Gold Key comic book columns which featured drawings by readers of people’s bodies and faces drawn with a base of letters and numbers (and also inclusive of abstract shapes and “squiggles”). In fact, this now clear strong influence seems irrefutable - as we first made (waking reality) contact with handwritten letters. I now consider this dream fully resolved.

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