Posts Tagged dreams

Keeping Me Up

Had another strange dream a few nights ago (my blog posts are being published with a bit of a delay on them, at the moment, for reasons I might discuss in another blog post!) that I thought I’d share, before waking up early and being unable to get back to sleep.

Dream – Putting a Cap on Liz and I

I was out at a pub with my friend Liz, her partner Simon, and a load of other people, mostly the old Abnib/”Chess Club” crowd. The pub was noisy, and I felt a little claustrophobic, so I excused myself and went and sat in the deserted beer garden at one of the wooden benches. I was also hoping that Liz would pick up on something I’d said earlier in the evening and come and join me where we could talk privately, and sure enough, she did – she came out and sat next to me on the bench.

She and I had had an evening some months prior in which we’d gotten drunk, confessed an attraction for one another, and ended up kissing, which had led to a not-insignificant number of awkwardnesses within our social circle. From some hidden pocket within the table I produced a battered (yet somehow, also laminated and pristine) sheet of A4 paper on which we’d written down, that night, how we felt about one another. My bits were typed in Javascript using Courier New; hers were handwritten in a cursive type. We both sat closely and re-read our words.

A young man we didn’t know came and sat on the bench opposite us, asking only half-politely if the seat was free (despite there being many completely free benches). We ignored him and tried to make it obvious that we were involved in a private conversation which he was not welcome to join, but he didn’t take the hint: he just sat there and lit up his cigarette.

Liz and I reminisced about our flirtatious evening together and talked about it. Realising that neither of us wanted to make anything more of it than had already happened, we decided that “that was that”, and we’d put and end to whatever romantic inklings either of us might have had. We hugged, and there was a brief moment during which we looked at one another, undecided about whether or not we should kiss, but then we didn’t, and instead exchanged a glance of agreement, and walked back inside to our friends.

Significance:

  • The kisses and snuggles with my friend Liz happened only in the dream, in case anybody’s unclear. Not that I wouldn’t – Liz is hot! – but I think Liz represents any number of other things going on in my life right now, as discussed below. Just thought I’d clear that up, not least because she’s likely to read this!
  • The pub was reminiscent of The Cambrian, in Aberystwyth, but the beer garden (accessible through a door where the door to the toilets ought to be in The Cambrian) was very similar to the one that nobody seems to know about out the back of The Fountain.
  • I was recently in a pub in which it was too loud to reasonably talk. I was told at the time that the noisy groups near us had only first appeared right after I did.
  • I’ve been perhaps working a little too hard of late, including writing a lot of Javascript, which is probably why it made an appearance in my dream. Seeing my code was when I realised that I was dreaming: not because I’d written about my intimate feelings in a web-centric scripting language (though unlikely), but because the appearance of writing is often a dead giveaway to me that I’m actually asleep (a so-called “dream sign“). Like many people, if I look at a piece of writing twice in succession in a dream, it’s appearance changes. Through a combination of self-awareness and making a habit during my waking life of often glancing twice at any writing I see (thereby increasing the chance that in my dreams I will do the same), I’m often able to notice that I’m dreaming through making this observation.
  • I recently crossed paths with somebody with whom I once (well, okay, perhaps twice) had a brief sexual fling, after which I insisted that that would be the end of it, and there was no chance of a relationship of any sort other than “just friends” thereafter.
  • I’ve also recently spoken to somebody (else) with whom I’ve always been somewhat flirtatious, and who has once or twice reciprocated, but of which nothing has ever come.
  • I was quite horny when I went to sleep.
  • I have no idea what the table-slot nor the stranger on the other side of the bench are all about.

Sometimes sharing what I’m dreaming about with you guys leaves me with the maybes. I record virtually every dream that I remember, but I only blog about the ones that I don’t think will make anybody who reads my blog feel uncomfortable. When I first wrote about this dream, I thought twice. Let me know if I thought wrong!

Right, now I’d better get on with some of that work I’ve been doing too much of!

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Uncommon Occurances

I didn’t sleep well; I woke up several times throughout the night. On the upside, I have a strong recollection of three distinct yet inter-related dreams:

Dream I: Alex and the Accident

I came into work as normal and spoke to Alex, my co-worker. He’d been in some sort of car accident in which he’d hit and killed a man in an electric scooter. There was a lot of ambiguity about whose fault it was – the man had apparently accelerated his scooter right out into traffic… but Alex had been driving too fast at the time.

Significance:

  • My mum’s partner’s son, I recently learned, was in a car crash a week ago.
  • At work yesterday my boss was telling me about expensive repairs to his car.
  • I re-watched the shocking new don’t text and drive video yesterday.

Dream II – In The Red

I was a Western spy during the Cold War, attempting to infiltrate a Soviet University. With some difficulty, I was able to become enrolled at the University, but soon came under suspicion from the administrative management (all Party members, of course) after my luggage was found to contain a British newspaper. The newspaper contained details of Alex’s car crash, from Dream I, and this was later re-printed in the local newspapers, but with a suitably communist spin.

Later, after my cover was blown, I made plans to flee the country and return to the West.

Significance:

  • Second dream references the first dream.
  • The University campus was familiar; it was a little reminiscent of the University Of Worcester campus where I was at BiCon almost three weeks ago.

Dream III – Going To Work

I woke up, got dressed, and went to work. I discussed with co-workers Alex and Gareth a dream I’d had the previous night, in which Alex had crashed his car (as per Dream I) and about a film I’d seen the previous evening, about the infiltration of a Soviet University by a Western agent (as per Dream II). I explained that apparently the film was supposed to be about drugs, but maybe I’d failed to understand it because I didn’t see how it was supposed to be about drugs at all.

A client of ours paid a deposit on a reasonably-large job we’d quoted for, and I begun laying the foundations of the work as described in our technical specification.

Significance:

  • Third dream references the first two dreams, but as different media: one as a dream, the other as a film!
  • I’m expecting to get started on a new contract within the next couple of weeks, similar to the one referenced by the dream.

It was quite disappointing to be woken by my alarm and to discover that I still had to get up and go to work. While I’m usually quite aware that I’m dreaming when I’m dreaming, I somehow got suckered in by Dream III and had really got into the groove of going to work and getting on with my day, probably because I’d so readily assumed that Dream I was the dream and therefore that the same mundane things happening again must have been real life.

I was prompted to wonder, momentarily, if I might still be dreaming, when an unusual thing happened on the way to work. Just after I passed the site of the old post office sorting yard, about a third of the way to the office, I came across a woman crouched in a doorway, reaching out to a blue tit which was sat quite still in the middle of the pavement. Still half-asleep, I only barely noticed them in time to not walk right through them.

The bird must be injured, I thought, to not be flying away, as the woman managed to reach around it and pick it up. I stopped and waited to see if I could be of any use. Seconds later, the little creature wriggled free and flew off to perch on top of a nearby fence: it was perfectly fine!

The woman seemed as perplexed at this as I was: perhaps we both just found the world’s stupidest blue tit. I double-checked the clock on my phone (this is a reasonably-good “am I dreaming?” check for me, personally, as is re-reading text and using light switches) – but no, this was real. Just weird.

Edit: changed “Callbacks:” to “Significance:”. This is the format in which I’ll be blogging about the dreams I share with you now, I’ve decided.

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Two Recent Dreams

Summaries of two dreams I’ve had recently:

The Parrot

Faye was moving out of her family home and into a flat of her own, and as it was small, she wasn’t able to provide sufficient space for all of her many critters, so she rehomed a parrot (a Scarlet Macaw, although I’m pretty sure she only has an African Grey in real life). Having heard about this from my mum and on Faye’s blog, I visited Preston and met the parrot, who turned out to be a remarkably intelligent “talker,” – even for a parrot in general – capable even of understanding some particularly complex linguistic constructions like rhyming.

The Moped

I was driving a moped, with Claire riding on the back (she commented that I was doing a better job of it than she would, reminiscent a real-life skidooing incident). We were travelling at speed around the hilly, cobbled streets of a distinctly-Mediterranean city. We were dodging traffic and in an obvious hurry when I was rudely woken by the telephone.

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Mi Parolas Esperanton! (Apenaŭ)

Antaŭ pluraj semajnoj, mi havis sonĝo. Mi sonĝis de mi parolas Esperanton. Neniu rajtas diri mi ne postiras mia sonĝoj, ĉar mi komencis lerni la lingvo!

(sed mi bezonis vortaron por skribis jenon)

Translation of my very rough-and-ready multilingual work, above: Several weeks ago, I had a dream. I dreamt that I spoke Esperanto. Nobody may say I don’t follow my dreams, because I’ve begun learning the language. (although I required a dictionary to write this)

That’s the short and long of it, really. Thanks to Lernu!’s online “audiobook”-like tutorials and Project Gutenberg and a half-dozen other sites, I’ve now got a basic grasp of Esperanto. I can say who I am and how I am and ask the same of you, tell you what I do for a living, conjugate a variety of verbs (actually, any verb – the structure of the language is so thoughtfully put-together that the rules for using it are logical and exception-free).

Why am I learning a language that I know no other speakers of? Well, it gives me something new to think about on my lunch breaks, but I’m afraid the best reason is the one detailed (bilingually) above: I dreamt I could, so I wanted to find out if I was able to. I’ve always been particularly bad at picking up human languages (programming languages, by comparison, I’m tend to learn very fast), and as I’m not quite mad enough yet to learn Lojban, I guess Esperanto’s the next-best thing.

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Vanilla Sky, A Letter, And A Trip

VANILLA SKY

Perhaps Vanilla Sky wasn’t the best choice of film to finish Troma Night last night on, based on the dream I had:

I dreamt that I was dreaming, and that during that inner dream I became lucid [not so hard, actually, and something I periodically do normally]. In the inner dream, I’d broken my phone while snowboarding, and needed to replace the battery, and so, in a test of dream control, I simply made a new battery materialise and installed it. However aware I was that I was in a dream, however, I didn’t come to realise that I was dreaming that I was dreaming – I was convinced that I was aware of my waking life as the one that I had in the first-level dream – until I “woke up” and, a few minutes later, achieved lucidity again.

Strange, but not really unexpected: mixing my head with films that have themes of altered states of conciousness almost invariably gives these kinds of results.

A LETTER

We’ve got a letter here addressed to Bryn – it came through the letterbox yesterday evening at some point. If you’d like to pick it up, Bryn, we’ll be around all morning and then we’re disappearing (see below).

A TRIP

Claire and I are off to Preston this afternoon to visit my family before moving on to Manchester tomorrow, where we’re seeing Foo Fighters. We’re back late on Monday night/early Tuesday morning. I gather that Geek Night B is taking place at Rory’s tonight, if anybody’s that way inclined, but I’m afraid you can’t have Pandemic, because I’ve promised to play it with my family. Next week!

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How To Make Money, You Hobo – A Cautionary Tale

Last night I had a particularly vivid and unusual dream:

JTA and I were homeless and living on the streets of some foreign city (it was somewhat reminiscent of London, but most folks spoke French, so I guess it wasn’t); jobless, hungry, and generally sleeping in the central railway station, except when the police or station staff moved us on.

In order to make some money – and as much to give us something to do with our time and to keep our spirits up – we decided to put together a piece of musical street theatre. For some reason I was carrying a concertina (Claire’s?) and was quite able to play it, and JTA had a reasonable singing voice, so we began to put together a cautionary tale that we would perform, telling the story of JTA’s life and how he got into the unfortunate position that we were now in.

In our story, JTA was bullied into going out and getting a job by his mother and sister in order to bring money into the family house, but he is lazy and he cannot hold down a job. Looking for a quick (and easy) solution, he turns to crime, and, after he accidentally murders a man he intended to rob, he flees the country to escape arrest.

Later, we went back and made some artistic adjustments to the story, in order to hammer some extra morals home – our adaptations included JTA’s introduction to a life of crime being through a shady character who accosted him on his way back from his first stable job (a cleaner at a zoo), and tempting him with “easier work,” and a change to the story of his family to make them seem less demanding and more tolerant (making his inability to support them comeacross as more shocking).

Through a variety of makeshift costume changes, I would play a number of secondary parts  – JTA’s mother (who didn’t look anything like his mother actually does, and even less so when played by me), an employer, the shady character – and narrate his downfall, while JTA would play himself: initially a cheery but lazy “country bumpkin” character who feels wronged by his bad luck and eventually comes to resent the world around him.

At the point I woke up, we were still tweaking songs and hadn’t actually performed it. But it had cheered us up no end.

There was a particular song I’ve been trying to remember a line from all morning. Early on, after JTA has “lost yet another job” and is walking home, we had a line that made a clever pun on English pronounciation of the French word emploi (employment) -much of the play was done bilingually – but all I can remember is the time signature of the song and the general theme. I remember that when I woke up, I knew what it was and thought “Wow; that’s brilliant – when I blog about this dream, I must include that!” But by the time I got to a computer I’d forgotten it. Ah well.

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Curry And Penny

Went out last night for curry and beer to celebrate Paul’s birthday (yes, we’re all well aware that Paul’s birthday was almost a month ago, but this was the first chance we’d had to really get together and make an ocassion of it). It was great to get together with a handful of folks rarely seen in the same place outside of Troma Night – and in some cases, recently, not even then – and have a good night out.

At the end of the evening I was quite tipsy; a direct result of the fact that or a few hours before the curry I’d been “warming up” with ales in the Ship & Castle with Matt P. And, as you may have noticed by now, there’s a strong correlation between me going to bed drunk and me blogging about particularly unusual dreams. I skipped a dream that I couldn’t be arsed to blog about, near the end of last month, under similar intoxication. I’d made some notes on it, as I try to with everything I dream about, but never found time to write it up to standards of internet legibility (whatever that can be taken as meaning).

In any case, last night was a classic example of me dreaming within-a-dream, which I gather is something a lot of people haven’t experienced (for me, while not commonplace, it’s not terribly rare, either, for me to “wake up” within a dream, or to remember previous dreams as dreams within the one I’m currently ‘in’). Note the double-indentation to ease understanding of which dream I’m referring to:

I had been hosting a house party of some variety, in a somewhat larger (and significantly tidier) version of The Cottage, and it was beginning to wind up – most of the guests had gone home, except for a few small, scattered groups in different parts of the building (I mentioned that it was bigger than The Cottage usually is, right? – there are times that the word “mansion” could have come to hand). JTA, Claire and Ruth were somewhere upstairs; Bryn was talking to Andrew Rawlins (!) in a kitchen reminiscent of my dad’s house; and I was in the living room, talking to Penny.

If I remember rightly we were talking about oral sex technique. So, just a regular conversation for me, you’re probably thinking. And that’s about the time that we kissed.

We hid that we’d been kissing from Bryn and Andrew as they came through the living room, said goodbye, got their coats and left. And again, when Gareth, Penny’s partner, arrived by car to pick her up. And then I went to bed.

And then I woke up. I don’t specifically remember waking up, but I remember having a moment of realisation that everything that had just happened was a dream. It was an unusual dream, sure (although not entirely unpleasant: Penny’s pretty hot), but just a dream, and so I got on with my day. Leaving Claire in bed, I went to work, and I remember thinking about the fact that I would undoubtedly blog about the dream I’d had, and that I hoped I wouldn’t alarm or embarrass Penny by doing so!

And then I woke up. Actually, this time, and there was a moment of confusion as I remembered that it was Ruth I’d spent the night with last night, not Claire at all, and I spent the first few minutes of the morning trying to work out where the dreams began and ended. Perhaps more confusingly, I discovered when I woke up that I’d somehow, in the night, managed to cut my hand and I was bleeding all over the place. I snapped the following photo after I’d cleaned it up a bit.

Ruth theorised that she attacked me in my sleep because she was jealous that I was kissing Penny in my dreams, going on to add that she wanted to be dreaming of kissing Penny. But I’m not sure if she’d approve of me blogging that, so you should pretend that I didn’t.

Do you or anybody you know routinely dream that you are dreaming? Or wake up from a dream with an unusual injury? Or have dreams that involve your friends cheating on their partners with you?

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Further Disturbances From Dan’s Sleepy Head

Two more particularly strange dreams last night, probably owing at least slightly by the amount I drank at the SmartData Christmas meal, beforehand… and perhaps owing more to the phase I’ve been going though of consistently remembering what are usually quite trippy dreams. I’ve not been blogging them all (I had a dream the night before last, or thereabouts, in which both my grandfathers [actually already dead] died in quick succession, which was a bit odd) because I’ve not had much spare time in which to blog at all, but I can’t really not share the unusual stories my brain was telling me last night.

The Company Picnic Dream

The first of these dreams I remember because I woke up parched at about 3am, having not had quite enough water between stopping drinking alcohol and going to bed. It’s very obviously inspired quite heavily by the SmartData Christmas meal:

Simon, Alex, Gareth and I – everybody present at the Christmas dinner earlier in the evening – were having a picnic on the Aber promenade. We’d laid out a picnic rug right at the edge of the prom, where the drop-off to the beach begins, and we were eating soup from bowls. The tide was in and it was getting dark, and occasional waves would crash against the prom and splash us, so we all got off the picnic rug and dragged it further away from the sea. We were still getting sprayed and our soup was getting cold, so I suggested that we go to Paul’s flat, nearby, where we could re-heat it.

When we got to Paul’s flat he wasn’t there, but Ruth was. She said that Paul wouldn’t mind us using his oven [!] to re-heat our soup, so we put our bowls in the oven and turned it on. Paul’s living room had distinct elements of The Flat and The Cottage to it, but the staircase downstairs was the one from my dad’s house. After a while, people started to arrive for Geek Night – just the usual people one would expect, but also two women I didn’t recognise. I went down the stairs to collect a box full of board games, and the stairs looked a lot like those at my dad’s house, but with the carpet we had when I was young.

I picked up the blue plastic box of board games [the same one that, in real life, has been used for months to transport games to and from Rory's place], but it was overfilled and hard to control, so I asked JTA to carry some of the games, which he did. Later, I persuaded Claire to carry some, too, although she objected to having to help. The box for the Friends & Foes expansion pack to Lord Of The Rings fell open, and I had to pick up all the pieces.

The Animated Cat Dream

The second dream of last night is far more weird and convoluted. It’s all-too-easy to find meaning in it relating to my life and the people in it, but I can assure you that if that appears to be the case, it’s coincidental – large segments of it are from a recurring dream I’ve had several times in the last seven or eight years. This doesn’t help my case for not being a fruitcake, though, I suppose. In any case:

The dream is told from a perspective in which I am an observer – like watching a film – rather than something of which I am part of with which I can interact. During the dream, I was aware that the story I was following was something I had seen before (previous occurrences of dreaming this, which is one of the far-less-frequent recurring stories I find in my dreams). Like previous times, however, I’ve had a sensation of "seeing more" in it this time around than any previous time [another common theme in several of my recurring dreams is a feeling that I'm being told a story in fragments, seeing a bigger picture every time]: a clearer picture, a more-understandable plot, and a longer and better-planned tale.

The dream is also always told through the medium of animation, and the animation style in itself is worthy of mention. It has a particularly hand-drawn feel to it, uses very strong blocks of colour, a slightly-too-small frame rate, and it is animated entirely without outlines around the characters and their features. It’s very slightly glossy, like poster paint. Those "common" bits aside, here’s the dream:

An anthropomorphic black tom cat walks up a stairwell, as seen from a "floating camera" ascending the stairs ahead of him, in a grubby, run-down old house. He has a cheeky grin on his face as he reaches the top of the stairs and enters what appears to be his bedroom, and makes the bed, while we hear his voice as a voice-over monologue. He’s trying to impress a woman he lives with in order to sleep with her. He gets into the bed.

Later, the woman comes home. She’s tall with long unkempt blonde hair, and she’s wearing a black dress, and she’s animated in the same style as the cat (although she’s the most human-looking character in the entire story). She goes to the bedroom, and it becomes apparent [from the voiceover? I don't remember] that it’s her room, not the cat’s. She appears to be angry that the cat has crept in to her bed, and she sternly demands that he returns to his own room. He slinks out, and she follows him, watching him skulk back to his own room, where she insists that she must punish him for his impertinence. A series of kinky games ensue, and it’s obvious that what I’m now seeing is the true nature of the relationship between the cat and this woman: one based on cheeky misbehaviour, control, sex, and sadomasochism. She threatens him, and slaps him, and makes him sit bare-bottomed on a hot radiator, and as the camera pulls away from the scene we see some text appear that for some reason tell us their "safe word" (well, a "safe phrase", really): it begins "I wish I knew the name of…" and finishes with a monicker by which we know the woman. [but since waking, I don't remember what it is]

The dream shows another two inhabitants of the house [only one of which I can recall well enough to describe] – one of these has distinctly pig-like features. He’s excitable and slightly nervous and talks with a stutter, but he’s likable and gets on well with the other people he lives with, including the other one in this scene. The two talk [but I don't recall about what] as the opening credits begin to appear (large, serifed white letters) and the view explores the house, seeing a great deal of filth and squalor and a generally disturbing level of decay. At one point, we see an ill and dying rat bite off and eat the eye (and surrounding face) of a dead and decomposing rat.

Some time later [there's a huge plot hole here, and I'm convinced my brain simply hasn't seen fit to fill it in yet], a black bakelite telephone rings at the house, and the woman answers it. We hear the voice on the other end of the phone threaten [perhaps blackmailing] her, and she appears genuinely scared. She tries to respond, boldly, to hide her fear, but the voice on the phone is being played from an old-fashioned record turntable in a car parked over the street, connected to a car-phone. The cat, the woman, the pig-man, and the fourth housemate gather to discus what to do about this threat.

New aspects in this dream since the last time I had it include: a great deal more clarity on the animation style of the cat (and the woman, to a lesser extent), the discovery that the woman and the cat have a "safe word," the dead rat (the other rat has always featured, but it’s new to see it being cannibalistic), and the woman’s face while she is being threatened (previously, I’ve "been looking at" the record player at the time).

So, that’s another episode in one of my more-unusual recurring dreams (and not a common one; I’ve only had that particular dream about four times so far, as far as I can tell). Interpretations, as always, welcome, but if you’d prefer to just sit quietly and think, "wow, that guy’s fucked up," that’s cool too.

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Another Strange Dream

Well, I’m in Derby (after a hideously long and complicated journey involving long train delays, diversions, and a taxi ride – lost – around the middle of Derby city centre) visiting my friend Katie.

And another strange dream for my collection. But this one isn’t suitable for print (no, not in that way), so you’ll have to wait and ask about it.

Back in Aber tomorrow afternoon. Have a great Troma Night 200!

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We’re Going Down

Another strange dream last night:

I was in a small aircraft (one aisle, two seats either side, about 80 seats in total, two jet engines, for those who feel the need to identify the aircraft in my dreams), sat by a window on the left hand-side, when the right-hand engine caught fire. The plane was forced to make an emergency water landing somewhere off the coast of India. The other passengers and I were all instructed to put on our life-jackets, fasten our seat belts, and brace for impact, but as the plane went down, I suddenly came to an understanding that we were all going to be okay. I took off my seatbelt and stood up moments before the plane hit the water, and (despite a little juddering) I was perfectly okay. Around me people were panicking, but I was completely calm.

Read into that whatever you like.

Suppose I’d better start my Christmas shopping, today.

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