The thing I most clearly recall is saying, "I can't do this anymore, it's too much." I was in a house I've dreamed of several times, a big, old, ramshackle place full of dust and discarded items. Even if it was cleared out I know the fabric of the building is rotten beyond repair.
Lifeboat in the desert
A dream journal
Friday 23 February 2024
Tuesday 2 January 2024
Two cars
There are two cars, one with two women in it and another with a man in it. There has been some disagreement and I have to choose who's side I am on. I move towards the car with the women in, at which point the man starts up his car. I turn around and call out for him to wait but he drives away. As I turn back I see the women also start up and drive away. Neither would accept anything other than complete allegiance with their side. I realise that I am going to have to walk a very long way and resent that, I feel that both sides have been unreasonable.
Monday 11 December 2023
The King
I am travelling with someone I think of as the King. A man who seems to embody the role perfectly. This is wonderful but a little disturbing. I don't feel confident to be his companion. However when I catch a glimpse of a reflection I see that I appear to be as much a Queen as he is King. I have just decided to accept my role when I lose sight of him in a crowded place.
Saturday 27 May 2023
Turning back
I am following someone (a mix of several people I find superficially attractive but worryingly arrogant) who is walking too fast for me to keep up with. He does not look back. I come to a junction and do not know which direction he took. I realise that I no longer have some things I had with me when I started out, so I decide to turn back, hoping to find them.
Thursday 16 February 2023
Address not found
An ex-colleague gets off the bus at the same stop as me and I wonder if she is also living here or moving here. I walk through a large open area, like a shopping centre, looking for a flat that I want to view. I have a note of the address but there are no signs showing which way to go to the residential area.
Tuesday 31 January 2023
Submarine training
I was on a submarine as part of a group training session. It occurred to me to wonder what would happen if the sub lost power, would we be in darkness? This worrying thought was quickly followed by a realisation that there must be some kind of emergency lighting.
Thursday 10 November 2022
Impending disaster
Another plane dream. This time we are coming in to land at high speed. There also seems to be a storm force gale blowing. A large piece of metal, maybe torn from a building, hurtles towards us and seems to be on a collision course. Then it hurtles off in another direction. By this time the plane is flying at tree level and a crash seems unavoidable. But it does not happen. Later I am in a large shopping mall. The lights are going out and the shops are closing. It does not appear to be a normal closing down but rushed and people are in a hurry to get away. There is a sense of some impending disaster.
Wednesday 19 October 2022
House party
I was at some kind of large house party, sitting at a table. I stood up to go to the front of the room just as something occurred which I did not really pay attention to. Once at the front of the room it occurred to me that I could pretend to be reacting to the event, even though I had hardly noticed it. I looked around to see how others were responding. I got the impression people were making decisions about what their reactions should be rather than reacting naturally.
Wednesday 24 August 2022
White
A white building, bright, clear water pool reflecting light. I've been here before. But never with so much clarity in the detail. A Greek house, on two levels, with terraces, a beach, an olive grove, People walking, sitting in groups, talking. All very relaxed and calm. Some are naked and some in loose white clothing that looks like it is made from a very light cotton. A sense of it being an educational place but not in any formal way. So much white, the sky is almost white. I want to hear what the people are saying but can't. I am not quite there, although I can see it clearly.
Friday 5 August 2022
Poisoned mind
I was having a conversation with my father who appeared to be deeply suspicious of me, giving me nasty sidelong looks and refusing to believe what I was saying. I denied a few accusations and finally realised that he must have had his mind poisoned against me by a paranoid woman that he knew. They both had the same attitude of not listening to or believing what I said. I gave up trying to defend myself as it was clearly hopeless.
Wednesday 22 June 2022
Missed event
With A on our way to an event. We are travelling by bus and when it makes a stop he goes into a shop and I go with him. He spends a long time fiddling around with things indecisively and I get concerned, go out to check on the bus, and it is gone. I am upset and ask him how we are going to get to the event location now? He mumbles and turns away and evades the question. Instead he shows me how he is going to use all kinds of random items to combine into something. I am angry with him, very angry and his response is rather pathetic. He will not make eye contact.
I give up on ever getting to the event and go to rest in what appears to be my old boss's office. My boss is still there but barely acknowledges me. Again, the lack of eye contact.
Thursday 31 March 2022
Words
I was very pleased with myself having found a way to convince J (someone I find to be extroverted in a particularly infuriating way) that being introverted was not a problem, just a difference, it was a different and equally useful set of skills. Encouraged by this success I went on to lay claim to the description of being 'sensitive' as a positive trait, even though the term is often used in a disparaging way, asking if he really thought that being 'insensitive' was a better way to be than being empathic.
As I was doing this I realised that the words we use carry more or less subtle signals of approval or disapproval as well as meaning, and that we can change our own as well as other people's perceptions by choosing to use different language. Also that what is a strength in one circumstance can be a weakness in different circumstances. For example, being empathic and sensitive might be a useful skill for most doctors in interactions with patients but a disadvantage in a field hospital in a war zone, where being somewhat tough or even callous might get important things done more efficiently.
Thursday 24 March 2022
An abrupt halt
I crossed a road at a run and came to an abrupt halt on the far side where a bank sloped upwards just beyond the kerb. I found that I had stopped close by someone who looked like Z. (Someone who strikes me as speaking with authenticity.) He placed a hand just below my neck, the phrase 'touched my heart' came to mind, then touched my face and nodded to me. I felt a warmth and a kind of restrained power. It was comforting and reassuring.
Thursday 4 November 2021
Another not nightmare
I look in the mirror and my face, especially around the right eye, distorts as if some weird filter is being applied. It's grotesque but the feeling I have is one of interest. I discover that if I move my hands in front of my face in a certain way, without actually touching it, I can guide it back to a normal appearance. (Something about distorted perception?)
Friday 8 October 2021
P and the extremists
P (someone who I have mixed feelings about - an intellectual with unresolved emotional issues) was in the house. To begin with we were alone together, and it seemed that we were communicating well and building trust. There was a softening in his usually serious attitude.
Later there were other shadowy figures around who were not clearly visible, but seemed to be potentially violent extremists. There was a growing sense of danger of some kind of violent outburst or event. I was unsure what connection P and these figures had.
At one point I was approaching the house with a female friend, cautiously, warning her of the situation. The sense of there being potential danger had grown.
Tuesday 2 March 2021
A garment
I have a diaphanous white garment (that specific word is how I think of it.) It is very light but capable of covering me completely. I am holding it up, working out how to put it on. It's going to take some time and has to be done carefully. (I wonder if it is immunity?)
Saturday 26 December 2020
Not nightmares
I haven't been sure how to record the dreams I've had lately. They have consisted of disjointed images and sequences that made little or no sense in narrative terms. Most of these images and sequences were the sort of things that would occur in nightmares but my reaction to them was not fear but a sort of ridicule and disbelief.
I was being pursued but then turned and looked back and dared the pursuer to catch up with me, which they did not. I left a place where I had been an actor playing a part and turned back to discuss the part with a character who also appeared to be playing that same part, getting the sense that I was being drawn into a web of uncertainty about who and what was real, and yet I was able to walk away from it with no difficulty. A cat was being subjected to some kind of experiment, its head in a vice and very little left of its body, I was initially disturbed but then there was the realisation that no animal could possibly survive in such circumstances and it was clearly alive so what I was being presented with was simply impossible. There was a notice pinned to the wall beside my front door which I tore off to reveal a hole gouged into the wall, my feeling was that this was an attempt to mark my location but still I went inside and quite casually took a shower, and only after emerging from it I realised that the front door wouldn't shut properly but my reaction was mild irritation rather than fear. At one point in one of the dreams a figure appeared and reminded me that all confusion and fear was self-generated and could be made to disappear simply by remembering that fact.
Sunday 29 November 2020
Making progress
I am trying to make my way forward but my companion keeps either grabbing and pulling my arm or leaning against me so that we stumble along like a couple of drunks. I am finding it increasingly irritating to be pushed and pulled this way.
Cold
Friday 6 November 2020
Slow motion
I'm having a memory replayed for me in slow motion. It is a memory of an earlier one of my series of plane dreams. The one in which another plane is passing far too close to the one I am in. As I watch I can see how it happened. Two other planes are on a collision course, as they make contact one is sent hurtling towards the one I am in. It passes very close by and my plane has to make sudden manoeuvres to avoid it just as we are coming in to land. Once on the ground we overshoot the runway and stop, remarkably, with the nose just at the borderline of the runway and a road. I reflect that all this must have happened so fast in the original experience that I was unable to register the details.
Tuesday 15 September 2020
Unrest
A house dream. The house is large and has many open areas and some smaller rooms. I have some kind of ownership in the place but its not quite clear what form that takes and which areas I have a right to inhabit. There are many other people in the house, mostly sleeping. In the bedroom area that feels most familiar, and that I believe is most likely to be mine, someone is already asleep in the bed. I don't want to disturb them, so I go to sleep on the stairs. This is uncomfortable and I don't sleep well. I get up and walk around and look into some of the smaller rooms and see unmade beds, heaps of discarded clothing and other disarray. I feel that the arrangements are unsatisfactory, I feel like I can't find rest in this sleeping house.
Wednesday 29 April 2020
A disappointing experience
Saturday 11 April 2020
The dream I didn't record - end of the road
Monday 3 February 2020
Crash
Gorilla
Tuesday 24 December 2019
Play
Monday 11 November 2019
Communication frustration
Sunday 14 July 2019
Under the skin
Sunday 3 March 2019
The devil in the library
Wednesday 26 December 2018
A white world
Saturday 27 October 2018
Spike's house
Friday 26 October 2018
New job
Monday 8 October 2018
Untidy bedroom
Thursday 4 October 2018
Landing
Friday 28 September 2018
A new flat
Saturday 11 August 2018
On the couch
Wednesday 8 August 2018
Grenade games
Monday 18 June 2018
In the station
Monday 28 May 2018
The game 2
Thursday 26 April 2018
A white garment
Monday 23 April 2018
Concrete protest
Sunday 8 April 2018
An accident
Later I found I was wearing a garment that was a silvery colour and somehow knew that it was made out of the same material as the stars.
Thursday 8 March 2018
Letting people in
Sunday 7 January 2018
A hotel and a new cozy house
The house was of an unusual design, round and sunken slightly into the ground with windows facing inward overlooking a central courtyard that was designed to receive the maximum amount of natural light. I was in one of the furthest rooms from the entrance with my male friend and we were watching the progress of a group of visitors from a window with some amusement. They were commenting that you could use the room that was set out as a lounge as an extra bedroom if you wanted to. They also noted that the kitchen was well stocked with preserved fruits and other foods in glass jars. As the visiting group came closer I was measuring a cupboard and joking with my friend about how much space we would need to hide in. He commented on the fact that one of the visiting group was his wife.