The policeman and the poet

A house on two levels. On the ground floor level - a policeman. On the upper level - a poet. They appear to be working together in some obscure way. They don't speak but communicate with each other by glances, raising an eyebrow, smiling. I'm looking at them from a short distance away, across the street. I find them both very attractive and admirable. The policeman is outward looking, assertive, strong, protective. The poet more reserved, reclusive, cerebral, creative.

This dream seems to me to be a significant one.

Grand hotel

I was in a car. B was driving. He was driving confidently on a busy road with lots of intersections. Even so he took a wrong turn. I could tell, but didn't say. We ended up in front of a grand hotel. I realised that I was wearing just a nightdress and my feet were bare. I wondered how I could go into the hotel so inadequately dressed. Then I decided that I should just walk in as if I was completely confident.

A house at night

Coming out of a house at night, against the advice of a woman who stays inside. The woman in the house looks to an older woman who says nothing but watches from a window. Met by a man who comes out of another house and agreeing to go and spend some time talking with him. He seems to be putting himself in a position of taking responsibility or care. After a while leaving his house. The woman appears distressed but the older woman again just watches. The man follows out of the house. It's still dark but birds are beginning to sing.

Unsecure

This is a house I seem vaguely familiar with, as if I lived here long ago. The rooms are large and it is elegantly decorated in pale colours. Then I notice a hole in the floorboards over in the corner, moving closer I see that it goes right through to the room below. Going downstairs I find that part of the ground floor wall by the back door is down, leaving a gaping hole. Clearly it would be impossible to secure the house in the state it's in. I get the feeling that it's beyond repair.

The Queen

After the Queen's wedding a meal of, surprisingly, only one course. After this was served the Queen, who appeared to be impatient, rose and left. I followed her at a discreet distance down the broad stairs and through the wide corridors of a half-familiar house and saw her march out of the front door.

Upper and lower class

The university had built a theatre. There was one entrance within the main university building that led directly into the plush circle level and a street entrance from a run-down part of town into the stalls.

A note in the hall

Having written the last entry another dream came back to me that I'd previously forgotten. One of the rented flat series. This time I am finally able to return to my flat after some time when I have not been able to get there. I go in the street door which is not locked, but not into my flat as I don't have the key with me. Pinned inside the front door is a note with my name on it. I read the note.

Clearing out a house.

In room after room so much to sort out and move. At last its done. I decline the option of using a strange curve-bladed tool to straighten the edges once the room is cleared. It looks dangerous to me and I don't know how to operate it. Then opening the door to a kind of inner room that was over-looked. Not sure what to expect here. I know that this is where I would have put away all the worst things. But when the door opens it's dusty and almost bare.

Communication Conference

I was at a conference. Well, not exactly. I was conferencing. It was one that did not depend on location. You could participate anywhere. I had gone to a central location of some sort where there were rooms, screens and other facilities. It wasn't too easy to move around as I had several items of luggage and equipment with me. I might be presenting, but it was possible that my collaborator might be doing it, in which case I wouldn't be actively doing anything. I stopped in a room that was off to the side area to sort out some of the equipment. I began watching or more acurately absorbing, in several rather difuse ways, one of the early presentations. After a while I found it hard to follow. I explained to the presenter that I was leaving as I was unable to understand but I had to do it by scratching a message in the bed of some kind of shallow, silty water. I decided to move to a more central location and see if there were other delegates there. Someone was explaining that communication was in fact not at all as we thought of it. It was much more fluent but less well understood than language, and that our attempts to render it in language were always a poor translation. In fact we are communicating fluently all of the time in ways that we can't articulate. It had a lot to do with proximity and colour. The relationships between spaces and things in them and the colour of them. Orange and white, in certain proportions, could be used very effectively to communicate certain things that were demonstrated.

Dream pun

About a week ago, a fragment in which I saw a room that had no colour in it, all was in shades of white, and I wondered aloud who's it was. The answer? It's not Hugh's (hues). Why the pun?

A rented flat

It's nagging at me again. The unconscious or whatever it is that nags at you through dreams. I get the impression that it wants me to pay attention to something when a thread or theme runs through several dreams, but all I can recall are fragments.

A rented flat featured in a couple. Not a flat that I've ever actually lived in but a mean and shabby little bolt-hole with unfamiliar things in it. I had a suitcase with me and was annoyed to find I'd brought an inappropriate selection of clothing so it's clear I wasn't living there. In a more recent dream I had trouble pronouncing my own name which had changed for no reason that I knew of. It had a similar feel to the flat dreams, a sense of dislocation.

Cube library

It's like a cross between a Borg cube and a library. Each of the small cube shaped rooms that make up the whole is lined with books. I'm in the central cube, it's not well lit, the books appear to be old.

Red room

A red room. Red carpet, walls, curtains, ceiling. Even the air seems tinged with it.

When I noted this down I didn't recall the HG Wells story, but I think I must have read it. Reading it now it seems very familiar so I would not be surprised if there is a connection.

Desert ship

A high, narrow wooden walkway led to an old wooden structure, perhaps a ship. It seemed to be beside the sea or the sand but it was very bright and it was hard to see for all the light. The tide may have been out, or it may have been in the desert. I couldn't be sure if the inhabitants were lawyers or lifeboatmen. They gave the impression of carrying on an ancient, venerable tradition. Something more than just their lifetimes had been dedicated to this. Someone described it to me as a world apart. I was unsure what to do, or how to behave. It was very dry and hot and there were drinks on the table - orange juice and something that looked like beer. I didn't know which, if any, to take. It wasn't a matter of following specific set rules, but of finding how to live in the right way, and I didn't know how. I moved from the brightness a little into the shade. I realised that the knowledge I had was of very little use here. The inhabitants continued with their business in the area where I was sitting and in an area below two of them were discussing an arcane point that I couldn't understand. They were polite but took very little notice of my presence among them.

This dream seemed significant enough to make me start recording my dreams.

Stone slide

I'm thinking about the speaker who referred to a building with a long slide in it, put there to encourage a playful, creative environment. I'm surprised to remember that our building has a slide, and I go to look for it. The floors are all empty and it's very quiet as I make my way up the stairs. I find the entrance to the top of the slide and it's not a shiny metal tube, like the one the speaker showed, it looks like smooth, pale stone with very large sculptural curves. It goes right through the centre of the building. I slide down it and find that I can easily control my speed by making very slight movements.

Something nasty

On the steps of a rather grand town house a man with a bucket pours something congealed and nasty down the steps into the basement.

A mad scene where the congealed and nasty stuff has flooded out everywhere and people are slipping and sliding in it. A man is very angry and shouting, insisting that someone be employed to shovel it away and clean it up. No one would want to do it but he rants that you should look for someone with no other option, someone with this issue or that. He lists several. Someone nods and winks and says 'Or someone with ALL of those issues!

The office

I haven't had any flying dreams lately. I'm having a different kind now. I'm going to work in a new town. I don't know my way around and I don't know the people. I know the name of the company and manage to find the building but once inside there is nothing I recognise. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but I know that admitting to that would not be good. I have to carry on as if I have no doubts at all. I avoid talking to anyone but when I listen l notice that all the conversations are evasive, sliding away from specifics, avoiding the definite. No one makes eye contact.

Going... down?

"Do I have to go down to go up?" That's what I remember thinking. The lift was an open platform, suspended on the side of the building. It was quite a way below the floor I was on and I was trying to judge if it was safe to jump down. I thought it was, but I clearly wouldn't be able to climb or jump back up again once down there. I'd have to trust the lift to bring me up. There was no other way to get to the floors above.