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Dream Diary Part-1 | |
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Home « Hobbies « Lucid Dreaming « Part-1 | |
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This first part of the log commenced during a long period of vivid dreaming in October 1994. After years of vaguely planning to create some kind of Dream Log, I was finally motivated to do so by work colleague Trish Gannon.
1994 October 12 (Wed)
Music in the Supermarket
There is a huge lane beside a supermarket, bright lights, people bustling about with trolleys and parcels. I back a (transparent?) car into it waiting for someone (who?)…GAP… The lane represents an enormous MIDI sequence file of music I have written. Peter and Mareya are there to listen to it, as we travel up the lane/corridor (no-one about now), the music unfolds. It’s a beautiful hypnotic cycle (like glass or Oldfield), but it develops through the various instruments, all the parts are audible, clear trombones in low harmony rising through the complex arpeggios of synth and reeds. Some bad transitions are heard (I turn around and make a screwed up face, everyone chuckles). "Oops" I say.
Chasing Marcia through Hampton
Somewhere in Hampton (similar to Nannies/Ours/Rosewarnes old houses), Marcia and I are travelling between them, and suddenly she turns are rapidly heads back where we came from. I’m furious, I have a bike and follow her, hard work riding up hill. Eventually reach her, furious, and she says she had to go back or she was going to be sick. I’m still angry, "You could have just yelled out "sick" or something - such as waste of time. Where we are now there are animals or various types around, part domestic, part farmyard.
Somewhere in Frankston, my Mum (maybe?) dawdles crossing the highway and gets hit in the backside by a sports car, she doesn’t care, but the driver’s furious. Verbal confrontation, but I bluff him into forgetting it. I wander off…
Some kind of TV mystery. Word has come down that a woman has hung herself in a police station. "She cut strands of her hair and did it that way", someone says. Everyone’s amazed at the ingenuity. We have to find the truth. I’m in a large open office space (like a newspaper), very busy. Some young woman with an oval face and black hair has tried to duplicate the feat and has hacked huge hunks of hair from her now lopsided head, and is knees-up bobbing in mid-air like a bungy jumper, platted hair twice around her neck, grimacing, saying "It doesn’t work very well". Everyone laughs and wanders off "What a dork" we are thinking. I head off to meet for an investigation.
Too many to remember - Only fragments remain…
Orbiting over the moon Miranda, the rocky grey almost SLR like image of the bleak surface reveals a giant artefact of non-human origin in the shape of a giant "staircase" tens of kilometres high, it seems as if giant hands have taken the rock and moulded it rather roughly into steps and banisters, all dark clay like grey. Landing on the surface, many people are there, including Brett. We wander around the rocky steppes, gently hopping from one place to another. Eventually everyone is moving off forming a long line that meanders down a flat path hewn into the sides of the mountains, it’s like a holiday hike. The path leads down and down to an ocean or lake and a small town in the far distance (very un-moon like).
I’m flying in long gentle swoops like superman over the suburbs of Sydney, the houses and roads are like a 3-D road map. I spot a huge bridge that carries road and rail, I bank and glide down along side the bridge, observing the delicate meandering railway tracks and power line that are spun through it. I rise higher and follow the railway line, going faster and faster (like a high-speed motion picture from the front of a train), I try to anticipate the twisting and turning of the tracks as they peel away in unexpected turns, but I manage to keep up. I want to follow them all the way to Melbourne, "great to arrive home" I thought. As the rail crosses another bridge over a wide black river I rise very high and find I can’t fly forward, but fly up and back like a gentle wind is pushing me. "Damn" I think, "why does this keep happening when I’m flying" I ponder (almost lucid here, but don’t reach it). I shrug and fly off.
There’s a group of about a dozen people milling in and around a half-built wreck of a house. It would be quite good if the building was completed (there are open wall frames), and all of the rubble was cleared out of the yards. It’s on an open country property, and seems to belong to a wine maker, he’s busily opening bottles of wine and preparing a delicious salad in a huge round flat tub that reminds me of a butter churn or washing machine. I see smoke coming from the far end of the house upstairs. I rush up and find something smouldering. I think Marcia is there with some others, they shout to get some water or something to put of the fire as it might spread, apparently we all have put our travelling belongings in the same room, so it’s quite urgent. I run downstairs, find hundreds off bottles of wine, grab one a random and as I rush back to the fire I read that it’s a 1985 red wine with a lovely old label. I rip the top off and spill about 1/5th of the wine, I prepare to pour the wine on the fire, but it’s gone out by itself. I go down to the winemaker/owner to complain that he can’t just let fires break in the house, he’s not really concerned, still occupied by preparing food. I’m hiding the bottle from him, I think if he sees it he’ll want it to be added to the other open bottles, I figure I’ll take advantage of the situation and keep the fire extinguishing wine for my private enjoyment.
There is a huge rock pool full of clear water. Some people are blocking the two entrances to the natural pool to trap fish inside. The trapped fish are mainly beautifully coloured tropical fish and various shapes and patterns. "You not going to eat these" I exclaim (to the invisible people around me), I glide amongst the fish, observing their colours and shapes, then I see a dolphin (but it seems almost human), "okay, open up the pool again" I demand.
There is a classroom full of people, as I wander through them, two pairs of people try to attract my attention to help them, "these guys are closer, so they’re first" I say. I think that they are going to ask me computer related questions, so I’m quite eager, then I see they are doing maths problems of frightening complexity, I can read the pages quite clearly. One problem has a huge radical in an integral, whew! But then I see that some of the terms under the radical are the Abelian elliptic functions sn() and cn(). "Shit a brick, where’d you get these from?" I ask.
As I wander through a huge exposition-like hall full of bustling people and stalls, a young lady at a JAL (I think) stand explains how if I can give proof I can play the drums then I can win a discount holiday. I know I can’t really play the drum-kit, but I bluff her by saying I can play practically every instrument, mostly orchestral ones, does that count? She muses and says it would be okay. I watch a skilled person play the drum-kit in the dream, but they have nothing to do with what’s going on (I feel I’m running simultaneous dreams), I try to think of all the orchestral percussion instruments I can play that don’t require actual drumming skills - tubular bells, xylophone and glockenspiel, etc.
Really jumbled and hard to remember…
Out in the back yard, it’s sunny and hot, large birds arrive, I want to feed them.
In the kitchen, I’m unwrapping newly purchased food from gladwrap, there’s a slice of cheesecake or quiche, but it’s all tangled up. I go and sit on the toilet and continue trying to untangle the wrapping (shades of Monty Python). Eventually it unwraps and crumbles everywhere, I cradle all the bits and return to the kitchen without using the loo. The plastic wrapping also reveals a pasticci and one other item of food. The food falls onto the surface of the open oven door (the oven is where the sink should be), I’ll put it into the fridge.
I am on what appears to be the Star Ship Enterprise, on its way to find the core of a supernova that recently exploded. As we accelerate through space I’m looking forward as if my eyes are the part of the ship. There’s nothing solid around me. We dive down and down into the expanding clouds of a stellar debris, further and further, like diving into a fractal. As we pass through clouds of gas, the ship (myself) shudders slightly like a car driving into a pool of water. The ship’s power pushes through the resistance down into the centre of the supernova. The centre is surrounded by brilliant white bubbles that form clusters like soap bubbles or grapes. They are so bright I can hardly look directly at them. In amongst the drifting clouds of gas I see the face of an elderly man form, observe us, then dissolve. I’m on the ship now lying on a medical examination table, the staff are threatening me with some medical instruments. They want proof of who I am, "Obviously it’s me" I exclaim, but they’re not satisfied. Apparently something has happened to upset the stability of everybody’s identity. We seem to have stumbled into a war, there are cylindrical transparent tubes containing real soldiers in powerful (Robocop like) fighting armour, although they might be models.
I’m walking along with some friends, another chap’s holding a guitar, and so am I. I suggest we have a "jam & doodle". I ask him to play the slow background riff to Wish You Were Here, and he starts, at the right point I interject with the acoustic lead intro, but he’s not keeping the beat steady.
I’m driving up on over the crest of a hill on the large freeway with tram tracks in the middle, it’s clear and warm. I’m stopped by a crowd and a traffic jam where hundreds and hundreds of magpies are covering the road. Suddenly they rise into the air like a black and white wave; the air is filled with clouds of beating silent wings. The road is not clear yet, the magpies have left behind tens of thousands of small crawling animals, like lemmings these small dark creates are migrating en masse down the freeway heading away from us, people are watching, amazed.
…I walk back down the freeway to my VW parked by the side of the road. Someone driving a tram has placed a parking ticket on it…it’s for $250! I’m flabbergasted! I shout to the tram driver that he has no right to fine me. The inside of my VW has been expanded like the TARDIS to contain huge bucket seats and a wall separating the front and back seats. I don’t drive the VW.
I wander off and help some one unravel a long tangled hose by the side of the road, it’s not really a hose, it’s some sort of computer cable being run through a building or house nearby. I enter the building to find it’s part house and part office, the floors doors and walls are arranged in a non-rectangular way, the corridors pass over and through other rooms, intersecting and overlapping to form a shape like a partly dismantled rubics cube. I stop with some others at a large automatic glass door, the person in front of me is playing open-shut-open-shut with, juvenile I think, we pass through out into a large clear courtyard.
I’m wandering around my old school in Frankston, I know I don’t go there any more, I catch a glimpse of some girls lined up militarily outside in the pouring rain, very uncharacteristic I think, perhaps they’re being punished. I walk up through the office area and find the old small courtyard has been replaced with an enormous exposition hall, filled with a meandering crowd that flows pass the various expositions, pausing to look at those of interest. It’s very much like The Great Australian Science Show. Exhibits in vast glass cases from major companies like Telecom and BHP. Down the back is a display from Indonesia of lines of curving pipes exiting from the sides of a model supertanker, also in a huge glass case, the ship and pipes are painted soft jungle colours, from certain angles you can see the pointillist image a tiger amongst the jungle. Far down at the rear of the Expo I come out into an open farmyard with animal pens and sheds. Someone is following me, a teacher or the headmaster I think, he’s keen to tell me about the farmyard, I don’t want to talk to anyone, I walk faster but he catches up and starts explaining it to me, I feign interest for him.
Part of a much larger forgotten dream, I find I have a scar with stitches under my left breast, It must be some kind of heart operation, I can’t get anyone to explain what has happened (shades of Ray’s cyst removal, and Picard’s artificial heart).
I am in small but happy crowd at some sort of comedy club, the small faded wooden stage is occupied by a very weird bunch of people in stupid clown-like costumes performing a bizarre slapstick pantomime. The actors move among the audience. As I walk over to the edge of the hall to make (or answer) a phone call, one of the actors removes a huge mask in the shape of a mouse head, and inside sitting merrily is a real small white mouse, it’s whiskers twitching. This seems actually very funny at the time. I finally starting talking on a mobile phone to someone about MIDI music and composition via computers, we seem to be agreeing about how great it is, I tell him I’ve got a copy of Musicator, does he know of it?
I have been awake for some time since dawn, I have nothing urgent for today so I try and relax and doze off, apparently I do, because I dream that I’m in bed trying to get to sleep. In the dream I put on my blinkers and feel the tangled sheets and try to straighten them out, Marcia comes in and closes the blinds to help me, the room is filled with a suffuse sepia glow (I can see through the blinkers). I am really asleep now, another dream starts…
I’m examining a tall native tree, bark seems to be peeling off it. I poke the crusty bark with a long pole to see if the tree is healthy.
A dream of such staggering complexity that it could be made into a feature film.
I’m walking through the City streets to return to my car which I left in an underground car park. As I approach the block where the car park was, I find that a couple of city blocks are occupied by a vast construction site and everything is coated in pale shitty colored mud. The mud is so thick on the ground in parts that I can hardly walk, I see other disgusted people slogging through the mud also. The mud also drips from building ledges and planks of wood and building materiel piled all around, I wrap my thick jumper and coat tightly around me to keep warm. I find that the car park has been turned into a vast control centre of construction, occupied by busy and official looking people, there are armed and uniformed guards snooping around for civilian intruders, I see an unfortunate victim collared and dragged off by two burly guards. I don’t to get caught, I seriously doubt if they could detain you or charge you with anything, but for some reason I don’t want to be intimidated by them, it’s a matter of pride to outwit them. I hate uniformed gooks! At first I walk around trying to blend in with the real workers and staff there, my clothes have a slightly bedraggled look which helps me appear like a supervisor. At first I try to hide behind stanchions from the guards and officials, and look for a clever way out, but the place is enormous. I decide to blend in, I walk diagonally right through a path of concrete that is being laid, I pretend to be examining the work. Everyone ignores me (it’s very James Bondish). I navigate my way to the exit doors, manned by guards and reception staff who are distributing passes, outside the exit doors I can see normal city streets, I don’t know why but I want to leave (I don’t seem to worry about retrieving my car any more). I walk straight up to the reception desk and staff, I’m just about to explain confidently that I’m from interstate and make up some story like that, but one of the staff (who doesn’t seem very bright) says "Do you want to take a lunch break?". "Sure" he says and pushes a tiered tray of identification tags towards me. Apparently I’ll have to pick mine out. I pretend to browse through them, I either say it’s not there because of some interstate foul up, or, YES…I see one that hasn’t been completely signed, or the signature is very small. I complete my name, making the pen stroke continue from the previous ones. I complete my name Greg Keogh, giving a flowery flourish to the gh so it seems similar to the previous one. The previous pen was dark blue, mine is black, I hope they won’t notice. So they don’t examine it, I place it on my chest and say "Do I wear it here?". "Nup" he says and puts his hand out for it. I hand it to him and turn to walk briskly through the open security exit doors, knowing that by the time he finds anything wrong with it, I will be through the doors, and I know they have no authority outside of those doors. I take a large confident stride to the exit…I wake up.
I’m jogging along the grassy side of a road with a beach on my right. Rain is driving in from the ocean, but it’s partly sunny, this is just a passing light storm. Further down the road is a shop, I want to stop for a drink or snack, but there are several people clustered around it’s locked front door. Someone complains about them shutting the shop in the middle of the day, the shop owners can clearly be seen out in their back yard setting up for a relaxing afternoon.
A Party with the Rich & Famous
I’m at a huge party attended by the rich and famous, and lots of politicians. Dozens of us a milling pleasantly around what seems to be a hotel with lots of mezzanine floors and balconies. Someone is giving party secrets always by talking loudly about how much some Liberal politician was drinking.
In a partly lucid dream, some other people are dying and passing into a ghost like afterworld. Nobody seems concerned. I know I’ve recreated a part of the movie Ghost that really irritated me—all that afterlife crap. One girl in the afterlife with us says the shadow creatures will come and get her. "Why, have you been bad" I ask. Then her ghostly body turns liquid and is drawn through the window, I fly alongside her to see what happens, she metamorphoses into a fish, and someone is pouring clear cold liquid into her fish head throat.
There is a large dinner and all my in-laws and relations are there, I don’t know what’s going on.
Driving to Canberra with Big Pus
I’m looking though a vast set of photographs in a folding envelope, as I focus on one, I become a part of it and am reliving it or recreating it like a documentary. Many of the photos are of my 6 months living in Canberra (I actually don’t have any photos of Canberra). Some photos recreate my drive up there. I stop the VW by the ocean, I’m really hot in all of the photos and seem to be trying to cool off by lying back in various places around my flat, or, in one of them I’m in mid-leap jumping into the surf to cool off. The photo collection is extensive and shows almost every aspect of the (fictional) time I spent in Canberra. I’m driving down along highways that stretch to the horizon. I stop to rest and rearrange all of my belongings that are piled up in the back of the car (the back bench-seat has been removed as in real life). For some reason I know, I’ve brought some of the cats with me, I call "pus pus" to see who’s in the far back of the car. A black cat timidly peeps out, is it Ratbag? No it’s Big Pus (who died in late 1990). I look closely at him as he approaches, looking for the triangular white patch under his chin. It’s him. I become LUCID…nI think "It’s a wonderful to be alive in my dreams", I known I’ll lose lucidity soon or wake up, and where I’d normally fly off or modify the dream, now I want to pat Big Pus and enjoy his presence that I have accidentally conjured up. I look around and savour the feeling of knowing I’m dreaming. The air is thick warm and sweet and I wonder why I would dream of such a strange environment, being in my car with my belongings and Big Pus, stopped by the side of the road on the way the Canberra, and it’s all happening inside a photograph. I pat Big Pus under the chin, he sits and rolls slightly with my scratching, then gently bites the inside edge of my hand playfully like he used to. I’m amazed at the fidelity of my dream. It’s gone.
Too many to remember them all…
I am standing at the base of a large and beautifully structured tree, I think I’m with Gaye who my neighbour in Canberra, she wants to climb up the tree as far as possible to enjoy the view and proximity to one of natures works. I want to "hang on" as I’m still eating, and I’m into the best part, desert, A rich and delicious chocolate basket or cup with cream inside (there’s too much cream for my liking actually). I want to climb with her so I cram the last piece of desert into my mouth, cream is bulging out of my mouth, it’s hilarious.
An unknown mentor and myself are abseiling down the outside of mirrored office building or hotel. He is showing me how to dangle this thick strand of oozing rubbery blue substance down the side of the windows below me, then when it sticks several floors below, to drop down and dangle under it and repeat the process, thereby lowering ourselves to the ground. At the ground, it seems to be outside the elegant foyer of a large hotel, and I believe we have just performed a daring robbery. There is some commotion inside, so we may have been discovered. I rush over to a black Porsche and jump in, it’s hard to steer past the parked cars, but I’m off and away down a long winding road.
I am watching (and sometimes inside) a documentary, it looks a bit like Papillon. There is a race of noble natives living in a forest, they have roads strung amongst the trees and are busy going about their business. Suddenly poisonous darts start flying into them, the whole tribe is being killed where they stand, I see the blackened faces of the evil killers, it’s another Indian tribe, they must in the employee of some higher evil western company. One old man survives by hiding inside a tank of water and breathing through a straw. The evil natives jab spears into the water in case someone is there, but they miss him. He is the only survivor, there is no one to pass on the stories and history of his culture. He has no dignity now.
I’m inside a vast bustling office that seems to be the home of the Melbourne PC User Group, but it’s as busy and chaotic as a public service department. I’m typing requests into a strange screen that is attached to the wall, I manage to retrieve some e-mail, and I’m pleased to find someone has finally responded to the letter is posted in the Star Trek interest area a few weeks ago. The first mail item is not about Star Trek though, he’s asking a stupid question about having multiple drive letters. I want to be able to move the mail from Unix back to my PC but I don’t know the correct commands. There is a softly spoken bearded chap sitting nearby who tells me some commands to enter, I can hardly hear him, the commands are long and cryptic, I think he’s drawing out the lesson to show off, and he’s not explaining the point of these commands. I want to tell him I’m not a dummy, I just want to know about the mail commands. A train line seems to run behind the wall containing the screen I’m using, and as a train goes past, the surface of the screen starts to peel off like gladwrap due to the vibrations. This is useless…I wander off in disgust.
I’m in a changing booth taking off my bulky clothes, there are other friends doing the same around me, I can clearly see a young lady nearby, and she can she me getting undressed, but we don’t care. Finally, we’ve all changed and retreated into a comfortable lounge room for some sort of drinks and snacks, I don’t know what the occasion is. I take some of the other people’s clothes upstairs to keep of out the way.
Four major dreams, I can only remember two of them. Much forgotten. In June 1998 I attempt to complete the shorthand descriptions I’ve left from 1994.
A long dream of amazing clarity, colour and complexity. It’s a shame I didn’t complete the description, I guess it would have been too time consuming.
I’m at Paul Foulstone’s house in Williamstown (it’s not really his house). I’m wandering around the sun roof which has a cast iron fence around it. Below I can see a swimming pool and a BBQ under way. While chatting to a neighbour a Police helicopter drifts down from the sky and has a spectacular crash in front of us, blades whirring to a stop as the front undercarriage is crushed flat. No one seems to be hurt or particularly concerned. I walk out of the house and through narrow streets into the centre of town. I’m walking the wrong way against a crowd. Some kids dressed like 1970s punks try to annoy me, I beat them off without effort. There seems to be a mass exodus out of town, I decide to get in a car and drive off, but it won’t start. I see a small girl who seems troubled, I invite her into the car and we drive off.
Huge trees removed, Marcia negotiating, ask workers, research buildings. Over hill, crawl across sand (Dune), reach stone maze, strange races arriving as workers, guards weak, super strength, more guards in bizarre uniforms.
I see some huge trees being removed. Marcia is negotiating with the worker as I walk toward some research buildings in the distance. The scene around me is like a quarry full of sand dunes with scattered small buildings and groups of tall trees. As I come over a hill I see a vast rolling desert of cavernous sand dunes stretch out before me (I’m reminded of the move Dune). I’m crawling through the desert across the dunes. Remaining hidden, I see various strange races of humanoid creatures arriving as workers. I go down to find out what’s going on, suspecting they need help. The evil looking guards approach me, but despite their intimidating appearance they are so weak that I’m like Superman and can easily brush them aside. More guards arrive in bizarre uniforms.