The Garfield Bird

Date: 08/06/2021
Bedtime: 2am
Awakening: 7.15am
Return to bed: 9am
Awakening: 11.50am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Phase experience: The Garfield bird
Duration: 40 seconds

DREAM STATE

I'm riding my bicycle with my youngest son Alfie on my back with his arms wrapped around my torso. As I ride on a pavement, my son begins to loosen his grip and wobbles unsteadily on the seat before falling off and hitting the ground. 'Ow!' Alfie shrieks as I immediately stop and get off the bike to see if my son is okay. He struggles to get up, trips over his own footing, and lands headfirst under a car parked next to the pavement. 'Ow!' Alfie shrieks again as he pushes himself up with both hands on the floor. Just as I approach my son to lend him a hand, he reaches for the vehicle's chassis and cuts his finger on something sharp. 'Ow! Ow! Ow!' Alfie cries out even more distressed than before as blood spews from his index. 'So much bad luck!' I think to myself, noticing that I do not recognise the environment. Despair quickly turns into suspicion about the circumstances: 'Am I dreaming?'

PHASE STATE

The surroundings are out of focus so I rub my hands together whilst wishing for visual clarity. The summery weather is marvellous and I'm standing on the side of a dirt road with green vegetation and trees cropping a vivid blue sky. (Realism: 100%) There is no pavement, no bicycle nor parked vehicles, and my son is no longer present. I turn around to see where I had originally travelled from in my dream and find a mansion a few yards away from me on the same side of the road.

I remember Project Elijah's cat experiment and immediately make a dash to the front garden of the palatial house ahead. As I turn the corner of a grey brick wall, I imagine that, on the floor immediately behind it, I'll find a piece of paper with the picture of a cat on it; but all I see is an outdoor, patterned tiling. I turn around to find a metal letterbox next to a white picket fence and immediately check its contents, expecting to find the cat picture.

I reach inside the object and pull out a folded sheet of paper with the pencilled words 'It's time to be creative' on the side that's directly visible. I stay on the move and enter the mansion whilst unfolding the paper. The sombre interior of the house doesn't seem to match its grand external appearance, and the vividly orange form that marks the sheet of paper in my hands is far more captivating: it's a cartoon somewhat resembling Garfield by Jim Davis, but this character appears to be a cross between a cat and a bird—where its head and cheeks are mostly feline, but its bright yellow upper lip ends up taking the shape of a cute beak.

I find the image inspirational and don't really care that it does not resemble Project Elijah's cat in the slightest; it is a finished piece of comic art! When I review the text, I find that it has changed to an italicised, 'We are creative'. As I enter a dark room barely lit by sunbeams coming from a curtained background, the environment collapses and I'm back in bed.

WAKING STATE

My wife is urging me to get up as we have work to do. I jot down my sleep experiences and reflect on them, realising that the dream I had was playing out my fears associated with giving my son a lift to school on my bike; I had, after all, taken him to school just before returning home for a nap. Those fears were psychologically brought to the fore with hyperbole during REM sleep. The brief phase experience served as a reminder that there is no such thing as an artist's creative block with lucid dreaming available for inspiration.