Lysanderian Dreams
'In dreams, daily life, with its labours and pleasures, its joys and pains, is never repeated. On the contrary, dreams have as their very aim to free us from it. Even when our whole mind has been filled with something, when we are torn by some deep sorrow or when all our intellectual power is absorbed in some problem, a dream will do no more than enter into the tone of our mood and represent reality in symbols.' - Burdach (1838)
Over the centuries many a philosopher, psychologist and physiologist (such as Burdach) have pondered the meanings of dreams. I'm allowing you these glimpses into my subconscious so you can ponder mine:
The Evil Nutcracker - March 26, 1997
I was at a bookstore/library, buying a collection of stories by Voltaire that didn't really exist. I couldn't believe I'd never seen/heard of the stories before, but the reason I hadn't was, of course, because they didn't exist. The woman at the counter gave me a special deal on the book even though she shouldn't (she almost got in trouble with her supervisor) and I headed out into the stores of the town. It was dark and late at night.
I noticed something strange, a wall in town that was composed of shelves with china plates and glass lying on them. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a grinning Nutcracker. I believe it was about 4 feet tall, wearing a trenchcoat, but otherwise looking pretty much exactly like a Nutcracker. In its hand was a gun pointing towards me. Before I could do anything, it shot me and I fell to the ground and was looking at everything sideways.
I came to my senses again at the library/bookstore but at a point in time before I had even bought the book. Instead of buying the book again I headed out to where I found the Nutcracker. Although the point in time which I reached it would have been different, he was still standing there. This time he kept shooting at me but I refused to die. I made it towards him (it was very difficult, because each bullet would push me back and hurt my vision) but was able to grab him. At this point he turned into a 4 foot tall martial artist which I started fighting.
When I defeated him there was a 5 foot (approximately) tall martial artist who appeared behind him. I kept fighting until I made my way to a martial artist MUCH taller than me, probably 7 and a half feet. At this point I was able to see around a corner I couldn't before and I saw a whole ARMY of martial artists (all black belts) just standing there waiting for me to fight them. However, they weren't all so gigantic as the one I was currently fighting (thankfully). Some were even little kids or girls. Just when I was getting worried, 'dangerous'-sounding music started playing in the background and a ninja leaped out of the shadows and started fighting alongside me. Then I got an idea: I started dancing. The music changed into 'YMCA' and me, the ninja, and all of the black belts starting singing. This is when I woke up.
Down the Rabbit Hole - April 22, 1997
Another interesting dream I had last night! It featured a rather strange cast: my best friend from elementary school, who moved away to North Carolina 8 years ago (though he was grown up in my dream), amie's Dad, my mother, and three other guys. I think the three other guys were either people I knew from high school or people that went to my elementary school who I never saw again (after elementary school). Two of them looked the same and I'm kind of thinking the third was Bob (a friend of mine from high school), but I don't really think it was him because he didn't act like Bob.
Anyway, the setting was a school trip of some sort or maybe (some other kind of trip?) and amie's Dad was the driver and my mom was a chaperone. Anyway, I don't remember exactly what happened as to the story of how we got where we were going or where it exactly was. But sometime I was separated from everyone else and I was on a grassy hill that I remember being on before sometime in real life. I can recall what it looks like--but not where it is. Unlike the place that I had visited in real life (at least I THINK I've been there before), this hill featured three rabbit holes, one on top of the hill and two around it. They were really quite small and there was absolutely no way I would be able to pull myself through them, yet somehow I was able to pull myself through the one on the top of the hill.
I ended up in a fenced-in area with lots of people (but the people seemed like two-dimensional sprites to me, like in Doom). In front of me was a gigantic pink mall which appeared rather unrealistic. The rest of the people I was traveling with showed up very suddenly from out of the two-dimensional crowds. For a short time in the story we actually stayed in a group, then amie's Dad and my mother went off their own separate paths.
It was around this time I realized just how very sick I was feeling. Joey (my friend from elementary school) and those three other guys kept looking at things that I was not interested in as I kept getting sicker. My symptoms were sore eyes and a pounding headache which grew dreadfully exaggerated . . . most notably when we entered the light room.
The light room was filled with blinding bright lights. I think it was supposed to be like a sauna but instead of being based around water this was based upon light. amie's Dad and my mom were here. At this point I became blinded by the bright lights and could only see faint fuzzy things. My eyes were really pained and my headache kept pounding. When I could no longer take it I wandered off on my own.
My sight got better when everything I was seeing switched out of first-person and I had a bird's eye view of the situation. However, my head was still pounding and I had to close my eyes otherwise my eyes would fly out of my head the next pounding. They came very close to flying out before I decided to close them.
I was much better when I made it out of the mall. Going off in a random direction, I came across a bridge which I visited sometime before in the same dream. (Though I'm not sure when) Next thing I knew, I was wearing a handglider. So I took a running jump . . .
A swarm of orcs was right below me. But they weren't really orcs, they were very LARGE butterflies in a big swarm like you see in National Geographic. (Only the National Geographic ones are normal-sized) Yet instead of butterfly heads they had heads that were most definitely orcish. Pig snouts, orange faces, huge tusks. Very scary. They were straining to get up at me but I managed to just barely avoid them.
I finally came to a landing on a beach were I was attacked by zombies. (This is the third-or maybe the fourth!-dream with killer zombies in it this month.) So I ran away and climbed up a stone wall. This is how I escaped from the mall. I forget the rest of the terrain between this and the car . . .
So finally I met up with the rest of the group I had arrived with but we found out that my mom was still back and the pink mall shopping at one of those stupid stores she likes to shop at. amie's Dad wanted to leave without her but I was like, 'No way!' . . . at this point I had to go back to the rabbit holes yet another time, to look for my mom. amie's Dad tried to drive the car away anyway but I knocked it over with telekinesis.
For some reason my mom could escape from the mall much easily than I could, and I headed back to that bridge yet another time in a race against the clock (I had to reach it before amie's dad got the car right-side up again). I had a discussion with someone (not sure who it was) about the bridge. They said something to the effect of, "Oh! You did it the hard away. You're supposed to burn the bridge and let the water wash away the orc butterflies." (None of this makes any sense, does it? Oh well, the bridge didn't make too much sense in the first place and this all took place in a dream, anyway.)
Suddenly I realized it was not a bridge but a dam. The dream ended just about there.
I thought about this dream for a long while after I woke up, so there's more details than usual . . . there's more I remember!
The Responsibility of Omnipotence - May 26, 1997
I had a rather interesting dream last night, it was weird and rather realistic. How long I slept probably had something to do with it's content (about 11-so hours). Don't know how I managed to sleep that long because I wasn't really tired, but, anyway, on to the dream content: In this dream I was a central figure and I was pretty much omnipotent. The entire galaxy had gathered together because we were facing a force even more powerful than me and the final battle was approaching the next morning (the whole dream took place at night). More powerful than all-powerful? Don't ask me, but it seemed that there was a power coming that was beyond even my comprehension (in the dream). I had a feeling I was going to win anyway, if the appropriate preparations were made that night.
The most interesting elements of the dream were the diversity and personalities of the characters assembled and the powers which I had inherited. Whatever I thought pretty much happened. There was a great deal of telekinesis and corporeal into incorporeal phasing and vice-versa going on. I was glowing throughout the dream and was able to be in quite a few places at once (just a few minutes were hours for me) as I had to see the leader of each division of our camp (and there were millions of just our camp, every species in the galaxy). I can't say that I was completely godlike, because I did feel that I had certain vulnerabilities, but it didn't seem that I would be able to die. Still it seems that my personal character in this dream was more powerful than any other one in a dream I ever had. The eventual battle never came in the dream - it was just the night before. In some ways it reminded me of Suikoden, a story from Japanese mythology in which the 108 "stars of destiny" gather under star of destiny #1 to unite in a final battle. Perhaps it could have influenced my dream. I know it seems egotistical that I was able to play such an important role, but hey, it was my dream, and I don't have conscious control over my dream. But I guess you can blame my subconscious, but not really, because it's not my subconscious that is writing this.
This dream does give me some ideas for a story I was thinking about writing--somewhat influenced by personalities from Suikoden.
Giant Robots and Water Mice - June 1, 1997
Early on this dream I was somehow controlling a robot similar to the style of those in Virtual On (the video game by Sega) and fighting another robot. This part of the dream was not in first person but zoomed out from a bird's eye side view (also like in Virtual On, only the camera in the dream was much farther away. At times the two robots appeared as about maybe 4 or 5 pixels only.)
I took refuge from laser-fire inside of a blue wire/chip-textured cave (all of the textures were very Transformers-esque). I was walking further inside the cave when I came upon a blue gate. Part of the gate was transparent and I could see water on the other side. Either my opponent or someone else sent a signal to open the gate, and water began to gush out.
I turned my robot around immediately and ran out, just barely escaping the deluge. At this point in time I realized that I had actually just walked in the mouth of a gigantic robot, and that was a throat gate (don't know what water was doing inside of him). In fact, the whole battle had taken place on top of the robot. It would have taken forever to walk from one shoulder of the robot to another one.
Realizing that it was a giant robot, it could have been that the gigantic robot himself had just decided to open his mouth. However, that wasn't important now, I had a rather nasty large missile headed my way as soon as I made it out of the mouth. I dodged and counter-attacked. The battle went on and on until eventually I fell off the gigantic robot along with my opponent (I think it started moving).
It took quite a long time before I reached the ground, but when I did, it wasn't actually ground, it was a lake with tremendously large lilypads. I was back to just being a human and felt really tired.
Looking at my watch, I saw that it was very late at night. I felt like I should be sleeping but I was bothered by something and I could not. Then Jason, a kid I went to elementary school to middle school to high school to college with, suddenly appeared out of nowhere and exclaimed that he was having a hard time staying awake and he had just fell asleep for 2 hours or so on a lilypad.
Some lilypads were like staircases ascending up into the dark night then descending down into the water again. Nothing was holding in them in place but air. There were grassy reeds all about as well as holes in the ground (very similar to the holes in my 'Down the Rabbit Hole' dream, actually, only these holes were filled with water.) To get from one place to another was very difficult, especially because there was no way to access some places other than taking one of the holes. When I did so I had a very hard time squeezing through them and holding my breath at the same time. I had to be quick about it otherwise I'd run out of air.
I came across some person who demanded I participate in a race around the area. They pulled in someone else, too, and I think it was someone I knew but I'm not sure anymore.
"But how am I going to make it through those water holes?", I inquired.
"Oh," said the race official. He handed us a ceramic dog/cat type thing with springs on it. "This thing will tell you how to change into water mice or fish, whichever one you wish."
It made perfect sense to me, though I wasn't exactly familiar with water mice.
So me and the other race were playing with the ceramic toy, trying to make it talk. When we took its mouth and pulled on it back and forth, it made screechy sounds and when I used my imagination I could think of things it could possibly be saying. After I gave up on it I suddenly turned into a water mouse. Not sure what the other racer turned into, but I'm guessing it was a fish.
Everything got even bigger, and considering just how big it was to begin with (remember the huge lilypads?) it took forever just to get anywhere. Making it through the water holes, however, was much easier.
Then I made it to a long line of people which I had to wait in. I think it was a some sort of a toll booth. Ice Cube (the rapper) was taking our tolls. Weird, having to stand in line to pay tolls in the middle of a race, huh? The other racer was standing right behind me. When it was my turn to pay, Ice Cube gave me a major discount because I was a mouse. If I remember correctly, I'd actually been through the area before in the dream, and that time Ice Cube made me pay in full.
Throughout the rest of the race, the other racer was always one step behind me--but I maintained my position. Before I crossed over the finish line, I woke up. Guess I'll never get to see what I would have won.
Character Instability - March 17,1997
I was taking on a new persona almost every 10 seconds to every few minutes. So I'd be talking to the phone to somebody, suddenly blip into a completely different person and they wouldn't understand why my voice changed. The same thing also happened while I was in the middle of having important conversations/walks with other people. The actions I took under each persona also seemed to have a pretty important effect in this world this dream took place in. In one part of the team I turned into some sort of tall, evil military figure which caused many problems that my following personas had to sort out. Most of the personas were male but I remember being a dark-haired girl in a green robe for a while during the dream.
Assault on Utopia - January 26, 1997
I had been the ruler of a utopian-like society for many years and I wanted to retire. Just when I was handing the empire over a scout reported a ridiculously large army approaching our main city out of nowhere. The weirdness of this part of the dream was I was not seeing out of my own eyes but zooming in and out on the surroundings like one would in a video game. (Most of the dream was like this). The army was composed of legion after legion of knight in green and black armor. Minutes were just spent as I passed by each armor pattern (each helmet on every soldier had a different design, very intricate). Such as snowflakes, not one was the same as another. The elaboration was somewhat pretty, yet strangely evil.
Since this army (which appeared out of nowhere) was coming to destroy my utopian society, I had to postpone my retirement. In all my dreams I have a slight idea that I am actually in a dream and cannot be harmed, so I headed out to face this army by myself. The dream started losing its coherence shortly after my leave.
Somehow I ended up in the costume of one of the enemy soldiers and was lystening to their leader give a speech about loyalty to their cause. There was such a great number of them and they all seemed very competent, and I had no idea at that time how I was going to stop them. I was discovered in the midst of the crowd and exiled to the future, however my being stayed behind in the present (they hadn't intended that). So I could take no physical actions because I was formless and could only observe. I was carrying on a conversation with a man in blue about waiting til the future came and then travelling back in time, but he said it wouldn't work because of the time loop it would cause. I didn't understand this part; even in the dream.
The last part of the dream I remember in detail is a very strange man I saw near the end. Only part of his lips were there (the other half was the same color/texture as the rest of the face of his skin) and the other half seemed applied by makeup (he only had lips if he created an illusion of them through makeup?) He wore large gold hoop earrings. His eyebrows created the illusion of anger, his expression changing in folds. I think his skin might have been grey (this texture was changing, somehwat undefined). Peculiar enough to remember, though his signifance is quizzical. While I was looking at this man I could hear the army moving forwards behind me, and the dream ended.
Towers and Ladders - March 5, 1997
I woke up at 3 AM remembering this one vividly. I went over it in my head as much as I could so I would remember it after I woke up the second time. It was intense and very realistic. Outlandish architecture . . . I visited a woman's house, which was only 10 X 10 ft but the heighth of the structure was of proportions similar to the Tower of Babylon. Yet there was only one floor . . . and there were 2 rooms only accessible by climbing the wall. I remember seeing the room spinning around in my mind, then in first person. There were grips on the wall that I had to use to make my way up to the first room (which was only 1/3 of the way up, the other one was an alcove off of the very top of the building) and a treasure chest inside. Clothes were scattered about and I remember seeing a very strange, scary-looking face. I retrieved something from the room and started climbing up towards the very top of the tower, where I had to meet her . . . I know there was something special I was getting, and a special reason I was taking it to her. Unfortunately I cannot remember details as the plot as much as the visuals.
Another puzzling part of the dream which I remember was a gathering of which I could not tell was a birthday party, funeral, or wedding. Perhaps a mixture of all three. Strange mouse-people wearing black suits were just standing there squealing at me. I couldn't make any sense of them. But it was not just possible to leave this building, a rather complex maze was built around it. Reflecting back on it now, I think it might have been a rat maze, which would have made more sense.
I was going to high school, but it was completely different. I was living in a dystopian society (think 1984). I had been sitting in my seat in a class in which the teacher was going on and on about how great the military was. Bob was sitting in the seat next to me.
There were two major military factions, the Order of the Red and the Order of the White. The uniforms of both factions were from the post-Napoleonic era. The Red Order felt inferior because the White were supposedly better . . . but the White was told that the Red was better than them. Henceforth they both put all the effort they could into being their best. The government kept their hold on people through the army and the propaganda taught in classrooms.
I wrote down on a piece of paper about everyone else being in the dark about this situation (which they were, except me and Bob) and about how much I thoroughly despised the way things were. I left the piece of paper in my desk.
Coming back to the school after some sort of break, I suddenly remembered the piece of paper which I had left in my desk, and when I took a look at it I found something the teacher wrote in the upper corner of it, something about how the Military controller of the area was going to be very displeased with me when he found out . . . and that he would find out. When I finished reading the paper, I looked up at the teacher (who was still talking) and around at the class. Everyone was staring at me, and Bob had disappeared.
I stood up and walked towards the door of the classroom. No one tried to stop me, strangely enough. The teacher stopped talking, but all they did was look at me. When I went to open the door, I found that it had no handle. I had no choice but to bash it down and walk through. I walked past several people in the hall--none of which tried to stop me. Then I came accross a plan which had been developed to rid the Academy of a good teacher who wasn't a slave of the head controller. They made it look like he slept with some other teacher by putting a wig his wig in her room. (The good teacher was bald, and he wore a wig to cover it up.) And if they could get him in enough trouble that way, they could get rid of him.
Meanwhile, I was trying to escape from the maze of corridors which was the Academy. Many places didn't even have doors, so I had to bash down entire walls. (I seemed to have almost unlimited physical power in this dream, but I was still limited in speed). Finally I came accross a spaceship in the Principal's office--an escape pod. I hopped inside and was off into the atmosphere. I fell out, a parachute easing my fall. However, when I landed, I was still in the school. Going on a rampage of destruction, I eventually tore up enough of the school that I could find a way out. (Note I didn't harm any people, I just knocked down architecture. The inhabitants never paid any attention to me, they just sort of walked around like zombies. Well--every once in a while they would make an apathetic comment about my actions.
When I finally made it outside, there was a forest to my right and a desert to the left. In the middle of everything there was this fountain . . . and an almost endless staircase. Going off into this mountain in the distance. There was a huge crowd of people outside smoking, standing around everywhere, even concealing my view of the horizons in some places. While the inhabitants of the Academy just ignored me, the smokers outside didn't even know I was there. Kind of as if they were stoned (and they all smelled bad too). It took forever to get anywhere because I had to walk around and squeeze through them--they never bothered to get out of my way. I was also trying to decide which way to go--which was difficult--because the deeper I got into the crowd the less I could see. The cigarette clouds formed a fog all over the area.
When I made it through to the fountain, I met an old woman there which wasn't anything like the other people in the dream--an actual person, not a zombie or a smoker. Stopping to talk to her, she told me that I was walking about the wrong way. When I changed the position of my legs, I woke up--I'd been all curled up.
Andy (a friend of mine from middle school to high school, also a friend of Bob's) and I were travelling when we stopped to look at a bird, then we left and went driving around in an area which was familiar to me. Later we made a discovery of a car which looked almost exactly like Andy's car (Andy had been doing the driving) had been destroyed. Somehow this had made us wanted criminals. Apparently we had been someplace we weren't supposed to have been and the bird we saw earlier had given us away by repeating everything we had said.
Then I was in a self-contained society of my own creation lying on a bed inside of Tyler (a long blonde-haired boy I went to high school with)'s home. I was talking to a black woman about something of importance when Tyler came in with a lover who looked much like him only smaller with brown hair.
Adventuring through this society, I came across my classmates as well as people from TV and imaginary identities. I came to a residential area which I passed through to an arcade/amusement park, then a grocery store, finally a restaurant. All of these buildings were in the corner of the dream.
Beyond, up on a hill, I heard tales of a spectacular swimming pool. The swimming pool with guarded by a barbed write fence which I tried to fly over. However, I got stuck in mid-air above it and the substance of the air was not unlike molasses . . .
A monstrous car, the size of the entire valley in which the society existed, was headed my way. I feared it would crush me. I struggled and the whole scenario began to loop.
I did eventually break out of the loop, reaching the swimming pool. Feeling a strange urge to "save my game" before moving on (video game players will know what I mean) I woke up when my neighbor caused a disturbance in the space-time-dream continum shoveling snow outside my window.
(Note: This is a most interesting dream, but all I have left concerning it are a few sketchy notes about it in a notebook. I tried to take a good guess at the date by what else was in the notebook. It's almost certainly from '95. I tried to recreate the dream from my notes as much as I possibly could.)
I was adventuring around in this dream as a man with long blond hair (think the Avatar of the Ultima series). The arch-villian of the dream (at least in the beginning) was a man in red rags. Everywhere he went he spreaded a disease at an alarming rate. The disease caused anyone who was infected by it to not only transform into a hideous monster but also to lose their mortality. Basically they became a monster that would never die . . . living out their torments for all of eternity. The avatar was shining, a paladin. He was able to cure those who believed in him, and he only appeared real if one were to believe in him . . .
The end of the dream took place in an arena of machinery. An imp cloaked in green served a powerful master (I think it was someone much higher up than the man in red rags.) There was a huge clock in the arena counting down to Doom . . . and as more humanity was drained from the world, more pieces of the clock appeared . . .
Check out the dream page of my friend Kendal.
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