Little Dreamings

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Two dreams recalled last night. I didn’t wake after each one, given the fact that I only went to sleep at midnight and had to be woken up at eight….Thought I might do better to just sleep through. Just a bit of a note, my dreams are always quite vivid since I have an almost entirely visual memory with very little sound or scent. Dream One: First of all the dream began with me waiting to cross the streets in front of the court building. Something was telling me to go back into the building, but I was angry at a certain member of my life who works there so I continued on. The lights at the crossing were a little strange – there were more crossings than directions to go in, and that actually did strike me as odd at the time but I let it pass under the assumption that some fairly drastic road works had been going on. Everything was, as my dreams usually are, almost painfully vivid, everyone’s face had a detail and I can recall some of the clothing details off the more generic city-goer outfits. I crossed over the road away from the courts, and found something ‘new’ that really should have alerted me to that fact that I was asleep. It was a garden bed filled with antlers. A fairly grotesque tableaux for sure, but I just ambled on past. As I passed, voiced started narrating inside my head, like the earphones at a museum giving me full history of each pair of antlers, what they meant and who they belonged to. Eventually the garden bed of antlers gave way to an ornamental hedge, it had been clipped on the face of the hedge into a fairly intricate pattern, and I wanted a photo of it. So in accordance with me not recognizing anything weird, I suddenly had my big EOS 50. I couldn’t get a good shot of the hedge, though, because the same voice that had been talking inside my head had materialized as a person giving a lecture of family humour of pride and he was standing right in the side of my shot. I got annoyed, and right then I guess my REM period ended. Dream Two: It was nighttime, another vivid feature of my dreams is that time progresses in the standard linear fashion. The first dream was afternoon, the second is an early night. There were a whole lot of people standing about in a park I didn’t recognize, some of whom were my friends and some of whom were completely random. Apparently we were playing a kind of pseudo-capture-the-flag type game, except people acted as the flag. We were all divided into teams of two by possibly the same lecturing man as in my first dream, though I am unsure of that. I was put with a good friend, and we stood and talked with another pair of girls who were also good friends of our’s until everyone had been paired off. I can’t recall the conversation. Then, we were told the rules by the unidentifiable man. There were two groups, chasers and the chased, and chased pair had a chaser pair assigned to them who had to catch them and bring them back to the park before dawn. We could split up or stay together as we did so desire. At this point we were introduced to the team that would be chasing us. The four guys who were assigned to recapture both my own team and the team we had been talking to should have made me realize I was dreaming – they were the four male characters from the Manga “The Wallflower.” When the game got started, me and my friend split up because we thought we’d have a better chance that way. I’m still not sure what the point of the game was or whether there was any prizes – I don’t think there was point…. But anyway, off we went. I’ve always been a fairly fast runner, so the fact that I was running a bit too fast to be entirely natural didn’t dawn on me. It was scary in the kind of exhilarating-fear way, I went through a few back gardens and over a road before I came to a paddock. It sloped down and away from me, surrounded by houses with big gardens and there was what looked like a small plantation just beyond where the paddock dipped away. The grass was a strange colour, the kind of blue-green that you get in European countries, but still visible even though it was night. Nevertheless, I went into the paddock at a run because I thought one of the guys from the other team was probably right behind me. I hid behind an old, blue ute for a few moment to catch my breath and I was about to go further down the paddock and into the tress when something scared me. I can’t remember what it was, it might have just been the fact that I was already away from everyone else and utterly alone. So, I headed back the way I came. I wonder what would have happened if I’d have decided to keep going anyway, the dream probably would have turned into a nightmare. Whatever. On my way back I was intercepted by one of the guys from my opposing team, the two of them had already caught my team mate and one was escorting her back to the park so she didn’t run off again. (Apparently we were allowed to do that.) I wasn’t particularly disappointed, and my captor and I headed back up a rocky incline to the building that led onto the park. He was telling me that my friend had tried to hide in the building but had been cornered. A little way up the slope I spotted my schoolmate from the other team being chased by two wallflower guys on the ground below, about to be caught by both of the guys when they jumped from the slope. I yelled out to her to run, she laughed and shrieked a bit (sounding EXACTLY how she does in real life! Also, I remember a sound for once!) then took off. Back at the building, I was suddenly and unexplainably at home and talking to the guy who caught me on msn. We were talking about a particular relationship problem in my friendship group, and how one of my friends involved in the game had let herself be caught by a particular guy. Eventually I told him I had to go to bed, signed off and woke up.

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School has sucessfully screwed my ability to recall over. I haven't remenbered a thing since school started on Monday, and I've been trying harder than normal because I assumed being back would have some effect. But still, nothing. Things I'm Going to Try: + Not eating for a few hours before sleep. + Going to bed about half an hour earlier and just lie in the dark listening to music. + Stop reading TIME before I go to sleep. I'd like to say that I can sort out all the things that bug me before I go to sleep, but that's fairly impossible, so I'll just have to go with what's there. If that doesn't work...well, I don't know.

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Proud of myself, despite the fact that school has managed to completely destroy my sleeping patterns furthers I actually remembered two dreams last night. They were very fragmented, but still! This is progress. Dream One: This dream was basically my mind revisiting Reverse Garbage from that afternoon, except with a few differences. The sale was mostly books, and I was there with my boyfriend and my friend. I found some manga I wanted to buy, and for some reason I was carrying around a cane. Dream Two: Random paranoia about school subjects, I was seeing each subject with a life-bar like in the Sims that indicated how well I was doing. They were all going down and I was freaking out because I thought I wasn't doing enough work. Love and Such.

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More progress! Even with terrible school hours, last night I managed to recall one dream in fairly concise detail. ...Then I had to leave for school before I could write it down, and a lot of it has gone. But here's the gist of it: For the most part I was a participating observer of this dream, like I was following characters around but they couldn't see me, or the didn't care about me. It was basically the story of a young man who was trying to help his ailing father reclaim what he saw as his 'honour' by breaking into a house that he had attempted to enter years ago for some purpose which I can't remember. I can recall a big house with a dark garden, and standing outside with the young man whilst his father attempted to break in. I saw a figure from the house opposite watching us, then rushing back inside. The young man in the garden with me saw the figure also, and ran. I followed him down the garden and through the yard belonging to the figure, over a fence and across a dirt road to a park. I can't recall what happened to the man's father, or anything after that. But I'm proud of myself! Progress is progress.

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No dreams recalled last night, but I blame that on roughly seven double shots of vodka. Did, however, encounter some things that made me perform reality checks just to make sure I hadn't passed out and was in the middle of a weird dream. I say damn. It was a fun night overall, except for one shithouse incident and one fucking confusing one. My head hurts.

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It's been extremely difficult for me to get online lately, due to schoolwork and general stress mounting up. I'm keeping my most recent dreams in a hardcopy journal, since all of them have been fairly horrific nightmares and I don't particularly feel comfortable sharing all the details. Plus, there are some things that are better forgotten when it comes to dreams.

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For the first time in about a week, I've managed to remember a dream that doesn't make me cringe when I look back on it. I think I've figured out something more about my dreams - even though it seems like I can only remember one long, vivid dream I think what may be happening is my mind makes at least a small connection between each one so the process appears linear. Anyway. It began with me coming out of a big house that was roughly based upon my real home, to find a whole lot of my friends in the fron yard. The front yeard and the street were exactly the same as one of my good friend's, but beyond the road was a sparse winter forest with dull grey, leafless trees on a bed of dead leaves. In the front yard, my mother showed me a newspaper clipping of a friend's mother with a group of children, two of them her own. The article read "Greek mum opens her heart." The photo was obviously from a number of years ago, as the twins (my friends) were only about four, maybe younger. Ally was being held by her mother, and waving at the camera, and Elaina was crouched on the ground with the other children, looking at the camera with a stunned expression. I laughed with mum, then went over to where the twins were sitting. I asked them if they had seen the article, and Ally said they said. Elaina laughed and said "It's a terrible photo of me!" I responded by telling her it was cute. After I left the twins, I went into the forest across the road. None of my friends were in there yet, but there was something odd going on. I've seen this somewhere before, maybe in another dream, but I can't place it. It was about five tall, thin englishmen standing around doing a mony-pyhton type sketch of just talking. Then along comes the spanish inquisition, hunts them down, and takes off with them. ...That really should have alerted me to the fact I was dreaming. But, it didn't. I went back to the edge of the forest to sit on some kind of ledge with two of my other friends. Matt was pleading with Katie to get her to sing a comedy song from who's line is it anyway because she was the only one who knew it off by heart. Eventually, he won and Katie sang it for us. By that time, a whole lot of other people had turned up and were milling around. Someone asked when we were going out, and I said as soon as I go have a shower and finish getting ready. The guy nodded, and I went back into the house. There was a whole collection of people in my bathroom, mainly girls going through my makeup for things to wear out. I didn't mind, because I always tell my friends to borrow stuff. The bathroom was exactly the same as my real one, which meant that there wasn't exactly much space, so I shooed everyone out to have a shower. After my shower, I went down to my room wrapped in a towel. Before I got dressed, I did my usual check of the windows to make sure no-one was standing in next door's garden and would see me. I saw a few people there, so I ducked under the window and pulled the blinds closed. Just before I shut them, another dream sign I totally missed. I thought I saw a guy I know called Adam standing at the neighbour's fence, I looked away for a second to find the cord for the blinds, and when I looked back he had been totally replaced by a larger man who. again, I'm sure I've seen before. I actually thought "Now, wasn't Adam standing there just before?" But I brushed it off, thinking he had just walked away. After that, we all started to head out to a massive shopping center. (For any Queenslanders, it was like a cross between the myer center and inderopilly.) Before we got there, another friend approached me and told me one of my good friends had said he was 'going for a walk.' I won't supply the long and truely annoying back story to all this, but 'going for a walk' was his way of saying 'I'm drunk, I'm going out to walk somewhere and get more drunk.' I was worried about him, so I said to Ash I'd look for him when we got to the shopping center, because that was where he'd probably go. When we got to the shopping center, I noticed my friend on the escalators, which had morphed into something remeniscent of a carriage car, or whatever those tram things are that carry you up and down mountains. So you could either stand or sit. He was sitting on sone of the little benches, bottle of rum in his hand. Ash and I looked at each other, a kind of 'I told you so' thing. I didn't sit down with him as we went up the escalator, because I had this absurd idea that he'd get off before I could reach him so I may as well wait for him and meet him at wherever he was walking to. At the top of the escalator, a whole bunch of my friends went off to do something, me and Ash stayed to resume looking for my friend (even though we'd already found him.....) and a couple of people stayed with us. After having a quick scout around we went back to the escalators, which somehow manage to go in their loop without killing whoever's still sitting on the bottom at the end. He was still there, so we went down to him. I sat in the spare seat next to him, Ash and someone else (I didn't turn to see) sat a few seats behind. I was talking to him about a lot of things that we usually discuss when he's drunk, and I was worried Ash would hear him and be upset, so I kept telling him to be quiet. One of the escalator ushers stopped the thing, and holding up what at first looked like a taser said "Alright, who wants to stay and help me clean out my machine?" In other words, it was closing time, so get the hell out. We scattered, a little nervous because we thought the usher had a taser. When he got down to the bottom with us, he showed us it was just a torch. We laughed, and the small group of us headed back out into the open again. I said I'd walk my drunk friend home, but as we started to disperse dad woke me up.

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I'm back in business, it seems. Last night I had another two extremely vivid dreams in which eventually ran together into one, exhausting night. First (or what I think was first, I can't remember which order the dreams came in) I was in the car going to uni, when it occurred to me that I'd left my laptop, and therefore the 50% assignment I was meant to hand in, at home. I flipped out and almost crashed the car, before ringing home and screaming at whoever picked up. Second dream, and I was the youngest daughter of a family that lived in the woods. Really nightmarish woods, dead and pale trees and whatnot. I don't remember much, just a lot of visual impressions of me and an older brother fleeing from something through the forest, eventually hiding in the trees before I woke up. I had been screaming at my family before that, which is probably where the dreams ran together. I don't need any interpretation for these two, unfortunately. I know what they mean. In the first one, the forgetting something is that good old indicator of stress and the feeling that whatever I do, it's not enough and I have to do more. I've been having it in waking too, that thought that you've forgotten something horribly important. The screaming at people I love is another thing altogether, it relates to something to do with my waking life and the abandonement I've been feeling from a lot of my friends and how I've been reaching out to my family instead, to find them not who I thought they were. Running away from something with a brother is my regret that I never had an older brother to look after me, and the expectation of having younger siblings out in the world somewhere whom I shall soon be meeting. I..think that's about it.

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Last night I had a wonderful dream about...books. Of course, the detail was as true to life as ever, but I currently lack the energy to write it all down. Basically, big store, massive book sale. My dream reminded me of a series of books I have been wanting to read, so I went out and bought them day. Thanks, subconscious. I owe you one.