Dreams

Since I have no juicy details to share from waking life (unless I describe the succulence of the Afghani dumplings I've been cooking for myself, the smooth slitheryness of the leeks inside them, the tart creaminess of the yoghurt on top, the warming essence of the oils from the fresh-ground, sacred seeds of cumin and coriander - AH, decadence! Eaten alone in candlelight, after some stretching and a bit of reading . . . it was Neruda's poems on love. He calls love a "purple premonition" and says to his wife "O my heart, my own, since before silence, from the uplands ruled by tangling vines, to the desolate platinum prairies: in every pure landscape, the earth has imitated you.") But I digress. . . .yes, this is actually what lovely lonely women do in their inner sanctum, waiting patiently for their man, forgetting about him, then remembering again.

Do not be deceived by this calm picture. My dreams of late may be more telling. I mentioned awhile back that one of my new year's intentions is to become more aware of my dreams and see if I can wake up in them. So far I have succeeded in doing this once, and the techniques reccomended of looking at my hands and rubbing them together did temporarily work to stabilize the room as I realized I was dreaming and it began to dissolve. Having stabilized the dream I found myself in a simple square room with no windows, perhaps subterranean, and a single door. I perceived there was a drop off in space behind that door, and I felt that I would wake up if I tried to do anything lucidly there that I wanted, nor had I decided what I wanted to do once I became lucid. I did not open the door but instead awoke.

It's been a long and tedious task of recording dreams every night since once you start to pay attention to them they are not difficult to remember. To wake up and record four or five dreams first thing each morning is becoming a lengthy process. When I first write them, they feel nonsensical, when I read them back, stained with meaning.

Thought a few recent ones might interest some of you. Cute boys (and some sketchy men) abound. Some of the following themse seen in these dreams also seem to surface in many of my other dreams: the intentional community, the hippies, the deep river, the improved hometown, the tour, the teacher/teaching, the sisters, taking care of someone else's baby, a baby that often gets lost, the (sometimes sinister) lover. Other dreamsigns I've noticed that are cropping up a lot: the map, the inward, downward spiralling garden, school, being pregnant, the coming war, jewelry, giving a massage, dancing . . . etc.

Dreamsigns can aide in waking up in a dream. You realize that this thing is a sign and so you ask yourself if you are awake or dreaming and do a "reality check." It is also encouraged that this be done throughout the day so the mind gets used to asking it and looking for verifiable clues one way or the other. Especially when you encounter a dreamsign in waking life, ask yourself if you are awake or dreaming. However, it was not through this method that I woke up in the forementioned dream. I simply realized it.

Welcome to the virtual reality of my mind . . . . I won't claim any of these dreams to to be sexy, some are only mildly entertaining - others mundane, strange, american, human, girly, womanly, personally random and meaningful flotsam. This a sampling from this morning.

- I am wandering around with my family in a big hippy colony with stores made of logs and wood. I get separated from my parents and am trying to make a choice among different kinds of natural chocolate brownies. There are too many choices so I get help from one of the shopkeepers. I realize eventually that I've walked out without paying, but a shopkeeper has followed me and I pay him.

- I am on a playground with some kids in suburbia, feeling bad for them because they don't have any nature to play in. A few pithy trees block the highway. There is some kind of a toy that allows you to jump high in the air like a spider. Later I end up in a house with "Spider Man" - a long haired gothic dude who is my lover. We have sex numerous times but it is only the third time that I have actually turned into a spider woman and am ravenous and demanding as he has been trying to convince me to be. I feel posessed by something flowing in my blood which he helped to put there. He comes almost immediately and barely gets out of me before releasing his sperm. I go to the shower to wash it off. I've got a huge pill, chalky, stuck in my mouth. My childhood friend Rose (who later became a Meth addict and nearly killed herself from bulimia) comes up to me and asks me what's in my mouth. I show it to her and she asks for it - she's addicted to these.

- I'm walking around a more upbeat version of the town I grew up an hour away from. I have someone's baby. I sit down for awhile next to a guitarist and a singer from the valley. We are joined by three handsome brothers. I'm happy to be around such hotties. The baby conveniently dissapears and the rest of us are being given a tour by a local of the wildlife areas in Portland. We can see an interactive map of the city with various waterways and marshes highlighted. I am with the cute boys, and others. We're walking around one particular marshy river - the water is deep and filled with clear water and many fat fish. I find a strange golden barnacle and when I look closer at it I see that it is very finely and intricately crafted of gold. The husky old man who knows this land says it was a barnacle that was once the body part (here he gestures down to his balls) of a very special underwater creature he's farmiliar with.

Earlier in the night: vague dream. I'm on some kind of intentional community and there's an attractive but inflicted/conflicted/afflicted man who's trying to share something with me. I go to sleep in a room with two friends (in real life, one is a former stripper turned celibate, the other is her beautiful husky roommate who makes organic chocolate for a living). It's a sister's type of room, no men allowed. I somehow know that he's going to sneak into the room, and sure enough he does. He has a beautiful body and a huge penis and ends up having sex with all three of us. The scene shifts just to an obscuration of him doing this to us, I am not experiencing it firsthand. . . .
_____

Whoa, trip out! Was that an orgy or a flashback from when I was imprisoned in a Harem! No wonder I don't trust men, he snuck into our room, the bugger. 'Least he was cute, eh? Little eye candy to forgive the intrusion?

All the things you weren't always sure you wanted to know about yourself . . . well, and now YOU know.

Insights welcome. Why did I let myself become posessed by the spider man? What was the pill that my addictive friend took from my mouth? Why did I go out of my body when the sneaky stud came into the sister's room? What kind of creature was it who had lost its golden barnacle?