Point unknown

Posted on August 15, 2012 by H

Another night of broken sleep due to incessant dreaming. I’m not enjoying it. Not only am I less rested than I should be, but it also does my head in. I wake occasionally in the midst of it all, silly thoughts revolving around and around in my head as if they are profound truths I need to understand.

It’s disturbing in other ways. For the most part, they are not happy dreams, though they are not nightmares. By themselves, the dreams can seem innocuous, though meaningful. Taken all together themes emerge, and a general sense of sorrow pervades. Last nights dreams seem to be all about grief and loss. It’s getting to the point where I wonder if I should seek some professional help.

Once more I only recall fragments of dreams. What amazes me is how vivid and real they seem. Dreams are often surprising like that, but it has come to the point now that I seriously wonder at their provenance. If they are ours alone then our dreams come from an entirely secret place I think.

Often I dream things that are true but which in my waking life I do not know. They are like plays that have been written off stage and performed live, surprising often with their unexpected twists and turns. They seem foreign like that, not of our doing, not entirely of our own personal agency. Though I participate in my dreams, I have little control over the direction they take. Often I find myself wishing they would go a different way, and dreaming still think that I should be able to influence that – yet rarely is that the case. I am like a performer who does not know his lines until a moment before and knows nothing of what the other actors will say until they are said. Like that performer, I watch sometimes feeling that curling surprise at the quirky interventions, the unlikely intelligence, the surprising revelation. What am I to make of all this?

The first dream I recall featured a handsome, middle-aged man, once a leader or politician of some repute, but now fallen on hard times. He is a good man though, a worthy man. He attempts to arrange some kind of community demonstration of unity and harmony. Slowly it comes together while on the side a cynical journalist (a woman) – like a Greek chorus – looks on derisively. She comments on the futility of the campaign and how this mans time has gone, never to come again. Her inference is that this is a last desperate attempt for relevance. So it might be, but then another character enters the fray, the current leader I think. He rebuts the journalist and highlights the fine qualities and achievements of the man, and concludes with the enigmatic and slightly wistful comment, “if I could use him I would.”

Whilst all this going on in the background there is a flurry of activity and colour, symbolic I think of the success of the man’s campaign.

It seems a hopeful dream in some ways, but I don’t necessarily like what it’s telling me.

Following that there were a lot more dreams, mostly about grief, loss, sorrow it seems. One I remember only the final fragment. There is my grandmother, my mum’s mum, nanny as I use to call her. I loved her, and she adored me – I was always her favourite. She died about 30 years ago. She’s there, smiling at me just as in my memories, “I loved you didn’t I?” she says to me, reaching towards me like a grandmother seeking to comfort a sad child, “didn’t I love you?” she says again. And I, like that child going to her and feeling her comforting arms around me answer, “you did,” I say, sobbing.

I woke at that moment and was full of it. I don’t know what all this means, but feel like everything is now coming to a point.

Could our dreams be a connection to the afterlife? (higherthinkingprimate.wordpress.com)
What Dreams Can’t Do: Another Version (themirrorobscura.com)
Dreams (butcheringsaint.wordpress.com)
Dream reflections (hieronymous.net)

Dream reflections

Posted on August 13, 2012 by H

The older I get the more convinced I am that dreams provide a significant insight to the psyche. Not every dream means something in the normal course of events, but many do. My own experience and perspective on this is that often dreams are a reflection of the feelings and fears and longings not visible to us in our conscious life. They are like mirrors that angled right reveal what might otherwise be hidden.

Last night I dreamt and dreamt. My sleep suffered from it. It was like a film being played through my sleep with barely an interruption in it. From what I remember it was all pretty much about the same things.

The dream that I remember best was one of the earliest. I am there with my sister clearing out mum’s house after her death. It’s a grim business, but you just do it. What made this different was that both mum, and her deceased husband, Fred, were there watching us.

It was not a depressing dream, not as you might think. In fact in ways it was nice to have both of them there, both dearly loved, and now greatly missed. Still, the dream ended and left with it a residue of regret.

The other dream I remember was much less pleasant. Once more I was going through mum’s house looking to set things in order. There seemed great mess and disorganisation, and a looming deadline I feared I would miss. I was clearly stressed, and felt the full burden of managing mum’s affairs squarely on my shoulders alone.

Whilst working frantically to get things in order I felt outside, in the dark, out of sight, that I was being watched, and that every move I made scrutinised and reported on. I had the strong impression that everything I did, and had done, was under the microscope. They wanted an angle, evidence of fault or guilt to leverage against us. I went about my business aware of this, but not in a position to do anything about it.

This second part makes sense. As I write this there are people in Oz looking to find cause why mum’s will should be upturned. That means going through her affairs and, as far as possible, our affairs too. The gloves are off, and there is little we can do but wait for the endgame.

The first part of the dream makes less sense. For a start I believe everything has been managed as it should be to this point, that everything is organised and nothing overlooked. I am conscious of doing much of this myself – my sister chooses not to get directly involved – but it does not feel a burden. At times, perhaps, I wish I could defer some part of it – but at the same time want to do it my way, as always, so it’s best to manage it myself.

The remaining dreams were some variation on these. What do they tell me? That these things are on my mind, even if only sub-consciously. And that I have fears and concerns. Fair enough I guess, but I wish it wasn’t the case.

I dream of fears (autumnusetmatutinus.wordpress.com)

Carried away on dreams

Posted on May 24, 2012 by H

I’m in the middle of a heavy dream cycle period. Seems to be the case that for a bit I’ll likely have dreams, but never remember a moment of them. Then, abruptly it seems, I’ll begin dreaming and recall them. I may not dream any more at that stage than at any other, but it seems to me in the cold light of day that my dreams are fertile and surreptitiously meaningful – and right now, quite creative.

The last couple of nights have seemed full of dreams. Doubtless it’s an illusion, but it seems I dream from the moment I shut my eyes to the moment I open them. I remember most as I wake, but many fade through the day. That seems a normal circumstance. What I remember are the dreams that have impressed me most.

I dreamt in one case that I’d boarded a plane for destinations unknown. I was in a different seat from normal, perhaps in first class where I had many more options available than I was used to in an economy seat – but then, this is a dream. I remember I sat by the window as the plane took off. It was an unusually swift take-off, and there was the sense that the pilot had jumped the queue and taken off out of sequence. He seemed in a hurry. We flew low, so low that it felt like we skimmed the tops of trees, a little above the cars on the road beneath us. At one point we flew under a bridge, and never once did we seem to gain much altitude. It was scary I guess, but also thrilling. It felt as if we were in the hands of a maverick individual.

The other dream was more out there. There I was transported into a strange world were the city had a roof atop it. The tallest of the buildings, all graceful and futuristic with tapering curves, would join up to the roof like columns supporting it. The roof itself – or the ceiling on the underside of it – was painted. Each day a team of artists would hang from the ceiling re-painting it to depict the stated weather of the day as seen from below. Some days might be clear, blue sky perhaps with a smattering of happy clouds. On other days it might be overcast, or even stormy, and so the artists would paint that. The world the citizens of this city saw was artificial and manufactured. Essentially they lived in a bubble.

What’s to be made of that? Open to ideas.

Wikipedia: The future is the indefinite time period after the present. →

February dreams

Posted on February 20, 2012 by H

Like I’m always saying I hardly ever remember my dreams, but when I do I seem to write about them here. Lucky you reading about them. (I think dreams are fascinating to the people having them, but otherwise are generally boring as shit to everyone else. read on, or not, your call – but you’ve been warned.)

Everyone wonders where dreams come from. And what they mean, or if they mean anything, and if it matters what they mean, or if they do. I don’t know, but I tend to believe there is some sense in the reason why we dream, and that in the mysteries presented to us there might be something worth knowing. Problem is finding that, and understanding it. So in the meantime I write my dreams hoping one day I’ll look back and know exactly what was meant. Too late, no doubt.

So last night I dreamt about Amy. Like many dreams there seemed no real beginning, like walking into a play in the middle of the first act. We were together talking, having met again somewhere in the portion of the dream I had missed. She was happy to see me, which surprised me. There was almost a sense of why didn’t you come to me sooner? The surprise was present in me, the viewer of the dream, and also in me the player. I went along with it then tentatively, happy, and somewhat relieved to discover I wasn’t quite Toad of Toad Hall, listening as Amy spoke half a dozen words for every one of mine. She seemed relieved too, like a burden had been taken from her. I looked at her in the dream wondering what it meant. Then as I listened and watched I began to see the differences in her from the Amy I had known and loved. Somehow she seemed a paler version of the whip smart girl I remembered. There was not that sizzle and wit, and but a fraction of that confidence that had me smiling or laughing or even quietly admiring her back in the day. There seemed something drawn about her, even desperate, as if she had endured hard times that had left her feeling wan.

I knew hard times too. Perhaps she could see it in me. In me it was a form of weariness I bottled up and hid from view. It was there, but I refused to bow to it. In her now, the relief she felt took the form of words. In my turn I smiled back and replied, but in me it was in the form of silent acceptance. Sometime after that the dream ended.

No, I don’t know.

Alluring daughters

Posted on November 12, 2011 by H

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I had a dream last night that I went to some sort of gathering with people I didn’t know and a few that I had not seen for many years. I found myself the centre of attention and the focus of much romantic ardour. There were women I had known who were now mothers who were keen to know me again. They were older, as I guess I was also, but while they had been settling down becoming mothers I had been out in the world somewhere. It seemed I was physically attractive to these women, which I took in my stride; and fascinating because of my absence, and perhaps even my mysterious exploits, though they were never elucidated. One or another of the older women made a play for me, but I was uninterested. I remember in the dream one took her clothes off revealing her body naked to me while her daughter was there. She asked me to massage her for she had a sore back. I did so, reluctantly, while the daughter looked on.

All of the mothers had different memories of me which they shared with their daughters while I was in their presence. I don’t remember the stories, but in every one of them I came off looking good, a man of wit and adventure.

I watched as their daughters, beautiful all, though different in nature, turned to me in the course of these tales and looked at me with the same desire as their mothers did. I was much more interested in them. Strangely, I was the only male figure in the dream.

I had another after taking the events of the dream before and turning it into a story. It was as if there was a clear follow-on from the previous dream where I stayed overnight enjoying the hospitality of the house. I did not dream this directly, but as a story I wrote in my dream. In the story I was woken in the middle of the night when a naked woman slipped into my bed in the darkness. There we made love though I did not know who she was. In the morning she was gone. I went out and the joined the other’s wondering who of the women there it might have been. There seemed to be three contenders, two of them younger women, and a third being the most attractive and alluring of the mothers. I looked for signs in the women to indicate who it might be. I saw things in each and realised if I looked long enough I would find anything. I tried then to assess who it might be from my experiences with her in the night, my hand upon her skin, the curve of her body beneath me, the heft of her breasts, the wetness between her legs, her murmurings to me. But that gave me no greater inkling. I wondered finally if it might not be a case of mistaken identity. By now another man had appeared, and it was possible I supposed, though unlikely, that my visitor had intended to be with him.

I woke happy to have had these dreams. Dreams such as this are always fun. Strange as it may seem I found myself believing that the desire these women had for me in the dream was not an unreasonable reflection of reality. Perhaps it was time I simply accepted that. And of course I thought of Chekhov, and his famous story The Kiss, which shares a similar plot to my seconmd dream of the story.

In my dreams

Posted on August 29, 2010 by H

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The other night I had a particularly vivid sexual dream. For all my focus on it my sexual dreams are surprisingly few and far between. That was one reason this one seemed so different.

The other reason was that it was fun. I didn't know the woman in the dream but she was clearly into me. I was hardly passive, but she took the lead, pressing herself onto me, suggesting things as if she wanted to prove her attachment to me. It was fun in all the ways you can imagine, and after I woke the residue stayed with me for hours after. It was nice, I felt alert and alive and even more switched on than usual.

The dream was interesting in other ways. The woman was younger than me, attractive and firm in body. She was not someone I recognised, but she had a resemblance to a woman I know. I thought about that after I woke. I wondered if there were a message in that for me.

The woman in question has a boyfriend she proclaims to be in love with. We get on very well, hitting it off naturally. I don't think much more of it than that, though I like her as a person and find her fun, and maybe a little sexy. Nothing out of the usual there though.

On her side I know she likes me and finds me interesting and fun and a little provocative. I'm different to what she's used to. I've sensed for quite a while some attraction in her for me, and have felt flattered in a way though I haven't taken it seriously.

After I woke from my dream I associated the unknown woman in my dream with her. Physically they were very close without being the same, and the attitude and cheek were similar. Later I thought the dream was the reflection of something I already knew inside me: that she is tempted.

A week before I had another, much gentler dream. This dream was of Jen, and of her child. Whether she has a child by now in real life I do not know, though it wouldn't surprise me. She looked upon me. There seemed something sad in her, as if the recent past had been imperfect. She was happy to see me though in her quiet way. I was a reminder of other times, and perhaps of an alternate future she might have taken up. I can't remember if we spoke. I remember her explaining to her child of me. And I remember the sense of reconciliation in our meeting.

It was a good dream, and like many times before I woke thinking that it was a kind of sign. Nothing deep or remarkable. I considered maybe far away over the seas Jen had thought of me, and somehow her thoughts had made it to me in the shape of a dream. That's the sort of thing I believe in.

Then last Friday on the train to work I saw at the end of the carriage Paige's boyfriend. I see him from time to time loping around the streets with a dumb, drug-fucked smile on his face. Once or twice I have seen her. On this occasion he was with someone else.

I had to look hard to prove it wasn't Paige, but though while she had a vague resemblance to her this one was shorter, her hair longer, and she did not have the strong build of Paige. I wondered at that, looking from the corner of my eye. While they were not intimate they were close, and they got off together at Richmond to catch a loop train. I concluded that Paige had finally dumped Paul, and he had taken up with someone else much like her.

Later I mentioned it to Becky. Becky was part of the fall-out when Paige went ballistic. "Do you think it might be a good time to email her again" Becky asked. "Maybe for you", I said. "Not me". I didn't say it, but it was in my head: too long, and too much has happened since. we've moved along.