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Stillwater's Dream Journal

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Stillwater

#25
August 28, 2017:

I am riding in a car down the road, presumably some friend is driving. The 90's song "I'm a B**ch I'm a lover" from Meredith Brooks comes on the radio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ivt_N2Zcts

I'm a b**ch, I'm a lover,
I'm a child, I'm a mother,
I'm a sinner, I'm a saint,
I do not feel ashamed


I immediately think to myself... I hope I get to be so many things in my life  :lol:

It is funny how those years are so clear in my memory... I can recall the chorus of a song I hadn't heard in a decade or more even while asleep...

I think it also has something to do with me wanting to connect to the view of the world I had as a kid. I think when I hear those old songs, I immediately think about the optimism and positivity they represent, and it is like the past reminding me of something?

----------

The next scene is totally different... I am in some sort of chemistry lab, and the powers that be have tasked us with creating new flavors of alcohol spirits. Today's idea is some sort of candy vodka... we are shoveling cups full of candies of separated colors into a crusher to be powdered. This doesn't last very long.

I feel like I think of the job as something someone else would have me do, that I wouldn't do by choice... especially because I don't really drink alcohol.

---------

I am back with university crowd again (third time this month, although otherwise I rarely dream about that period). We are traveling by car through a sort of run-down city, on our way to study a site. The site in question is supposed to be a vast tunnel system, but it will take time to get there. A train will take us there. We arrive, and the train is halfway in the tunnel entrance, and halfway out.

We enter the train from the back facing us. The train cars are organized in a very irregular way inside... the seats aren't evenly spaced or arranged, but rather they are grouped into sections that all face various focal points, like a series of home living rooms that are meant to orient the people in each group together. I pass a series of these arrangements, each with a few people already occupying them, but they don't seem interested in me joining their groups, so I keep moving on.

The train doesn't actually leave... I get to the front of the train, but no one seems to be there anymore. I walk back to the other side of the train again, and exit, and still deserted. Some cars and barricades are overturned, or arranged in a way that suggests some sort of big conflict happened. Then I see a group of cars out in the distance, trying to run people down. It feels like we were led into a trap, and they will try to pick us off now.

I am thinking to myself, "Who set us up like this? Why would they want to harm us?", and then I wake up.
"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic

Stillwater

September 4th, 2017

I am sitting in the middle of a circular platform, roofed by a pavilion. The platform is in the middle of the ocean, about a quarter mile from shore. The water is calm, and I can see out to the horizon. The platform is composed of radiating wooden planks and a painted red hub in the center. I get the distinct impression that the pavilion is meant for meditation, and I get a feeling of "intoxicating wellness". My view shifts to the third person, and I get a sort of documentary explanation of the person who built it and why. Back to first person, and I am back in the pavilion. I take to the water and begin making it back to shore. I alternate between floating on my back, looking up at the sky, and swimming directly to shore. The swim is gentle and I don't have to fight to make pace or stay afloat.

------------

I am walking through a department store with a family member that feels like some sort of aunt I never met. We pass by a rack of blue jackets made out of some sort of synthetic material, and I take one off the shelf, and put it on, over another jacket I am already wearing, as though that is how people shop for clothing, lol. We walk by various mundane aisles for a few minutes, and then the aunt stops and exclaims, seeing something she really connects with in a display. It looks like some sort of wooden rack with a collection of nooks in it. I am sort of puzzled by what so excited her about the item, and ask her about it, but she sort of brushes me off. She stands there for a good long time staring at it, and then tells me that I don't need to stick around if I don't want to. I wander off through the department store, not really connecting with anything around me. I walk into an elevator, and I take it one level up. I get out, and I immediately get the feeling of "this place isn't for you". It is some sort of abstract post-modernist  store front for only one item, a luxury sports car of some kind that strikes me as being only for billionaires. A very stern man curating the scene just sort of glares at me, and I walk back to the elevator, and take it one floor higher. No Luck.... it is a floor a lot like the other one, this time with a giant sign that says "The Puma". Toward the back of the level, is some sort of motorcycle object that looks like a fiberglass lion that a person might ride, but it has feet, instead of wheels; it is completely rigid though, and I get the feeling it is some sort of hoverbike. I continue walking.

------------

I am walking with a group of 2 unspecified family down a nondescript street. Suddenly a group of 3 people come running to meet us, one of them an Asian woman wielding a meat cleaver menacingly. I immediately realize I need to arm us somehow, and I dash into a small outbuilding that contains a pile of wrecked junk. I decide the choicest of weapons in the pile are a collection of bicycle handlebars (3 of them, from 3 different bikes). I run back with the handlebars, and throw one to a female relative, while the other relative refuses to fight, leaving me with the other two handlebar sets in either hand. The other assailants have left for some reason, but the woman with the meat cleaver is charging now. She dashes to the armed relative, and she fights off her strikes with the handlebars, knocking the meat cleaver toward me some distance. The woman then charges toward me, retrieving her cleaver on the way. She lunges toward me, striking out again, and I deflect her strikes with one of the handle bars. She swings again and again, and I can't disarm her, so I strike her smartly across the side of her head with the other set of handlebars, and she slumps down. I do not stop to see what state she is in, crumpled on the ground. We just rush on to get out of the situation.

------------

Later that day, we are walking through another street. A woman in a high window calls down to us, and one of the relatives tells her about the day. She then asks me to recount the story of the attack, as though it were any other part of the day. I begin telling the story, but the woman in the window gets bored of the story 1/3 of the way in. She sweeps her hand to dismiss me, sort of displeased with it all, and I walk on again, down another street.
"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic

Stillwater

September 7, 2017

There is a particularly interesting element to this one- it may possibly be an example of access to information my conscious mind doesn't have.


I am sitting in a hotel room with a woman. She is asking me the Italian names for various nouns. I have basic knowledge of the Italian language as a result of study and living there for a couple years. We go through about 20 words... mundane things like silverware, animals and the like. She asks me the word for "motorcycle". I say that I don't really know it. I say that I know the name for motorbike / scooter (which are of course very common there): "motorino / motorini". She then informs me the word is "Motocicletta". This is especially interesting... because I am sure this is a word I wasn't familiar with. I later looked up the word once I was awake, and it is indeed the right word. I can see a few possibilities:

1) I heard the word at some point, but didn't recall it consciously. My subconscious mind did remember it though

2) My sleeping mind was able to combine bicycle (bicicletta) and motorbike (motorino) accidentally into the actual word

3) I was in contact with some intelligence that was better at Italian than I am

------------

The second half of the dream is rather silly.

I am walking down a street in America, in a small city someplace. The buildings are moderately tall... around 5-6 stories maybe. I pass a group of people having a conversation on the sidewalk. A woman dressed in business casual clothing faces another person, and then somehow explosively urinates through her clothing toward the other person, presumably unintentionally. This causes quite a commotion, and medical help and police are quickly called to the scene. There is pandemonium taking place that is far out of proportion to the actual disturbance I witnessed. Police soon have the street on lockdown. I casually climb up a drain pipe to the roof of a third story building, and watch the scene from the rooftop. There are actually police up here as well, but they don't see me. They are speaking to the crowd, telling them that everything is under control. One of them is actually about to climb down the same drainpipe, but sees me up there as he turns around, and glances at me menacingly with a look of evil intent, and tells me, "You're finished, you piece of garbage".

Oddly enough, I wake up just a bit later.

It is actually a similar encounter to the dream I had walking down the beach, where the police also referred to me as trash, with ill intent. I think they are echoes of an actual experience I had a few years back where I was crossing at a crosswalk, and was nearly struck by a police car. I am probably extrapolating a mindset for the officer in question.
"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic

Stillwater

Sept. 29, 2017

We are walking through a medium-sized Belgian city late at night; the buildings are around 3-4 stories tall, with an 18th / 19th century character, in modern day. I need to be at a particular place in the city, but there is no fast way to get there using only the streets. There is, however a way to get there which involves walking through back alleyways and cutting through buildings. After crossing a couple corner shops and a few piazza-like spaces, we come to the final leg. We enter a building which has half the feeling of a museum, and half the feeling of a department store. Displays are arranged in a maze-like fashion, so getting through this building quickly is dependent on prior knowledge of the spaces. Some of the spaces are moderately lit, others are a bit dimmer. We probably travel around 150 yards through these spaces when we emerge back into another courtyard, which then opens into a fairly large square, basilican-type space.

This space, as opposed to the contemporary design of the displays, feels more like the 1650's... Jacobean in character. The room is two levels, and we are located on the balcony level which over-looks a lower open level. At the head of the lower space sit two figures. The figure on the right is a young woman dressed as a harlequin. She has a heart-shaped paddle with some message scrawled across it in black script; she is fairly full of figure. The man beside her is dressed as a medieval catholic pardoner, with a crucifix-topped staff; he feels very grave in disposition. There is a full court before them, engaged in conversation amongst themselves. The entire space is lit by dim, flickering candlelight. The walls are composed of densely-packed wooden millwork, laden with cloth banners which draped down from the higher levels. The floor of the space is composed of masonic figures of checkers in black, white, and red patterns, but only barely discernable for color in the light. I walked around the perimeter of this room along the balcony, passing behind the two presiding figures, and gazing down at them. 

As I entered another room just beside this one, my sight blacked out briefly and then I faded back in immediately. I was staring at the same room, but now much darker, and in a hazier state of mind. I felt the room being pulled into a frame at the opposite end of the room. A bell beside the frame began to toll, and suddenly the frame seemed to contain a "hungry portal", that sucked the image of the back of the room into itself. I saw the bell stretching out to infinity as its tolls bent in tone, from full-sounding to something like muffled by water. Another figure beside me shouted to me, as he held onto a column engaged to a wall; his clothing was being whipped around, apparently by the winds created by the vortex ahead of us. He told me that this portal would "lead us to new lifetimes, if we chose it". He let go, and I saw him pulled into the portal, melting into infinity like an object accelerating to the speed of light...an ever-elongating line.

I black out again, and when I came to again, I was back in the same room, the storm over. I reason that I must have been through the portal a time or few... some indeterminate number? The room beside, where the harlequin and pardoner presided earlier was now lit by a bit of light entering from outside, rather than candlelight. It was completely empty. I saw the paddle of the harlequin to remind me they were once there. I passed through the open courtyards, and back through the building that previously held the displays... it was now rundown, and contained furniture from a much earlier age. I passed through a good portion of the city, now completely empty. Eventually a street opened up to a bigger boulevard, and I walked into a corner salon. A few people were there, sitting quietly together. Most of them exuded this feeling of having very little "life force"... like they were not whole people, with conscious experiences, but rather wooden beings. A woman sat with her back to the boulevard windows, with a little light streaming over her. I had the feeling that she in particular was a real, conscious being. She looked on with a stoic, unchanging expression, which none-the-less had a small note of serenity to it. I noted her hair was cut in a medium-length bob- fairly straight and without much extra volume. I asked her how long she had been there. I said... "it must be lifetimes?" She nodded, and said, "yes, 300 years have gone by here." I got the impression the people around her didn't change their situation very often, and that she had spent a good portion of that time sitting here in this same position, engaged in no activity. I asked her if she would like to come away and leave with me... telling her that there were other things to see and do out there, and that she could be happy enough, more than here. She made the smallest of smiles, and agreed to leave with me, and it felt like a massive gesture... like that miniscule emotion was multiplied many-fold by intent and depth of feeling. I remember feeling glad, and remarking that she had quite a pleasant face afterall.

The light from the corner salon seemed to come with her, and enter the spaces we passed through. It felt like she was seeing these places just outside her previous setting for the very first time, and was in awe that there were other places that existed that were so different from the salon.  I took her back to the harlequin's court, and she looked down at the space, seeing the same paddle there. We walked around again to the same room with the portal, and we both faded out again.
"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic

Stillwater

Feb. 5 2018

Hi all! Haven't made an entry in a while, since I have been pretty pre-occupied, so here is a neat one I remember very vividly this past night!

It has lots of themes which have come up in previous dreams in this list, including being back in University, and losing shoes!

-------------------------------------

So the first thing I remember is that I am walking through the streets of my old university, which are fairly different from what they are in real life. I am walking for around 20 minutes, and the sun is showing signs of setting, and it gets slightly foggy / hazy. I walk alongside a pitch for playing sports, which is lined with dim lights, and throngs of people. When I am closer, I can see that there are pillars of water jetting out of the ground for 30 feet into the air, at regular intervals, maybe 20 feet apart in a row. There are people shouting and panicing, and someone says, "The power is out, the poweplant must be venting! That is the water from the powerplant, nothing is holding it back now!" I recall for a moment that my university is run by a nuclear power plant (it isn't in real life, it is coal-powered, lol), and that this water is irradiated. I continue walking away from this scene a a fairly fast pace, not really wanting to be around the irradiated water.

I continue walking down the path, and it sort of meanders down a scraggly coastline. The skies are darkening, and there are dark clouds that signal a storm. People are rushing by me on the path, and the wind begins to pick up. People are carrying articles with them as they run past. One person was carrying what I guess was a guitar. Somehow I am not so phased by all of the commotion.

Something that regularly happens to me in dreams is that I will do this sort of "bunny hopping" flight technique, where I can hop into the air, and the wind takes me up with it, and I glide down with fair control after that. The way the wind is picking me up reminds me of that, and I start doing that again immediately. I do some short hops (for this technique) of about 8-10 feet into the air, testing it out again. Someone walks by and says, "Heh, you can do that too?" I nod and smile to him.

The wind is really picking up now, like tropical storm force. I have a little apprehension, thinking that the wind make "take me" far higher than I wanted to go, but I keep hopping anyhow. I give a big 12 foot hop, and indeed it has me. I am being pulled backwards now, and get quickly elevated to around 200 feet in the air, and then put out my arms, which have broad, invisible surfaces that resist the air like wings, and begin gliding along the coast. It is sort of like... I lift through the other scene like it was just a local haze, and things are getting brighter now.

At this point I think I gained full lucidity.

The scene has changed a lot in character. I am gliding down a midday coastline, about 80-120 feet in the air. I am in full control of my flight now, and I feel an ownership over it, like it is something that is my natural vocation. It feels like the thing that I ought to be doing, and everything is well because I am doing it now. The intensity of colors in the scene has really magnified, like they tend to in that lucid state. There is a rolling beach to my left, bordered by a red coastal cliff that goes on in patches to the horizon. The water isn't very deep, it is maybe 10-15 feet, and I can see the red of the sand below mixing with the color of the water. The water itself has a blue-green tint, and has regular white lines of peaks over it like a net. The whites in against the green in particular really evoke a painterly quality.

I am looking out at the whole scene, and I am remarking how much it feels like a painting brought to life... like the patterns feel just a tiny bit abstracted, everything feels idealized, like it was a carefully composed scene where everything was placed to be perfect. I am infatuated with the water and how perfect it is... it has a certain character that I am struggling to verbalize. When we paint, we sometimes capture these symbols from the natural world which say something to us... like the symbol of light rays falling through trees. This water felt like such a symbol, like it was both water, and a symbol of profound ease and well-being that was both real and a perfected abstraction. All the while through this the wind is whipping through my wings and hair, and filling me with a sense of exhileration that is mingling with the sense of ease and well being. 

I am thinking to myself that I can go on for quite a while like this. It is a perfect moment I don't need to leave in a hurry. A sort of funny thing happen then, where I begin to think about my shoes. I am wearing slip-on shoes which are a bit loose. The wind is tugging at them too, and one of them just manages to slip off of my heel, and plunge down into the water and sink. I circle around it, and see it down there through the crystal water, maybe 12 feet down. I feel pretty confident I can retrieve it. I dive down like a streamlined bird through the water, and cut through about 9 feet. I can just about reach the shoe, but I somehow run short of air... maybe the impact knocked some out of me. I swim back up to the surface and ready to try for another dive, confident I will get it this time. But I wake up now, and never get the try, hehe.


-------------------------------------

A few images can almost describe the scene, if you think of qualities from each of them. The first image really captures the shape and color of the cliffs, and the way the red of the sand came through the water. The second image describes the color of most of the water, and how luminous white peaks netted over it all. The image of the painting sort of describes what I mean by the water having this painting-like character to it, like it was almost on a canvas or a watercolor, with some abstraction to the massings of the water... plus the colors were even more vivid than what appears in any of these images.






"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic

Nameless

Wow, those are the kind of LDs that make it all worth it!!

Selski

Hi Stillwater *waves*

I've missed your dreams.  :wink:

That latest one sounds so wonderful and relaxing. Those kinds of dreams are probably my favourite, where I'm on my own, admiring the landscape and totally content.
We all find nonsenses to believe in; it's part of being alive.

Stillwater

Yeah it is nice to have those every once in a while! Being lucid through such an experience makes it even better! I never really tire of these flying experiences, and this one was particularly memorable!
"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic

Stillwater

May 18, 2018

Hi all!  Not so many dreams lately... maybe I have been a bit stressed by allergies and work.

This dream was pretty vivid though, and I remember it clearly. It is another of these university dreams I have had a lot lately, which seem to be crowding out the common "lost class" Highschool dream that I and a lot of others get.

-----------------------

I am sitting in the studio in Rome finishing up some of our final assignments. The studio is an open floor covered in rows of large desks with occasional aisles cutting across the rows. The desks are littered with work from the following weeks, and the studio is lit by dim evening light. The windows are open and a welcome background breeze is livening things up a bit, and bringing in some damp air from outside. It is a lot like the studio was that year, but the arrangement of everything is a bit different.

Most of the students have left... maybe 20% of people are still around. I have a mind to be gone from here pretty soon as well. I am walking through the aisles, looking over at the work some other people are doing. They glance over at me as I pass, but don't really say anything or express any emotion. It is nearing dinner time, and I am also looking around for someone to go eat with tonight. I ask one of my friends, but she says she is busy. I ask another young lady I know less well, but she is also not interested. I continue looking over some of the work and books people have left out. I see another young lady out at the other side of the room, and I have a funny feeling she has a kind of contempt for me as a person somehow, and always has, but I look at her turned back, and think to myself that I will invite her anyhow, because I don't particularly dislike her. I stand behind her for about 8 seconds, wondering if I really ought to ask her, but I do. She makes some sort of excuse about meeting other friends that is clearly a poorly improvised lie. I resign to just go out alone instead.

I was thinking about getting a rather large meal, since I haven't eaten in about a day or so, but I have no one to really go with tonight, and as I am leaving the building, I pass through a small open-air cafe. I pick out a pre-made salad meal that is neatly packaged, and read out the price, which says 14.69 Euro. This seems quite high to me, but I get it anyhow. I bring it up to the Cashier, who is a bitter sort of old guy who looks like he wants some fun harrassing foreigners, and uses an aggressive Italian dialiect, but my Italian is fairly good this year, so I am able to follow him well. He tells me the price, and I fish around in a small basket for some money. I see I have a 20 Euro note, a room key, and a bank card. That year we also had to purchase some voucher tickets from the university, so they could be assured none of the students would starve, hehe. Since they are the least valuable form of currency we have, and only good for food purchases across the city, we would prioritize spending them first, but oddly I don't see any in my basket when I look. I think to myself, this 20 just barely covers the Salad. What if we had gone out, would I have had enough to cover dinner that night? There would be plenty still left on my bank card, but then what if the bank card didn't work at that establishment?

The cashier completes the exchange, and says something cheeky. I ask if everything is good now, and he says, "No, you haven't taken your change back." I take the change, and walk off.

The rain is coming down gently. I am walking a broad cobblestoned street with sidewalks in the historic district. The buildings are about 4-6 levels tall. The streets are mostly empty of cars, but a few still pass by here or there. There is a great big puddle coming up that covers the sidewalk and part of the street. It is about 150 feet across, and I judge it must be a foot or more deep at its center. A few people are trying to cross it regardless, but I decide I will cross the street to avoid it. I look out to make sure there are no cars coming. There are some, but they are quite far away. As I am crossing, I reflect on how the cars in this city will not stop if they see a pedestrian, but just continue without regard. As I am almost to the other sidewalk, I ask myself if I should be running, since the cars cannot be counted on to stop. I decide I have enough time and don't run.

I think about how I will just wander the city aimlessly through the rain for the next few hours. I think about all the slightly damp places I will see, and the spectacle of it all... the small dramas I will witness. I get caught up in this reverie and it takes me out of the scene, and I sort of fade away.

"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic

Nameless

Your clarity was amazing as seen in your thought processes. I wanted your story to go on as I was enjoying it so much. :-(

Stillwater

It was very much a scene that could have happened in the physical world. It was completely consistent, and didn't contain any rogue elements or the normal dream weirdnesses. It was like a slice from my earlier life, with just the arrangements of things slightly different. Like the studio was the same, except a different floor plan. The people were the same but with different faces or names. I'd definitely met that cashier someplace in a different form.

Usually my dreams are less straightforward and accurate than that.

Rome seems to be a favorite dream location lately! Must be the 5th dream I have had set in that time and place, and they are usually pretty vivid.
"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic

Stillwater

July 23, 2018:


I am sitting with some sort of old historian type. He is giving a long private talk about the history of some ancient weapons. The major point of interest is that the weapons of the distant past are still immediately near to us. They were the fruits of history's ultimate victors, and were everything short of indestructible. He is now describing the last of these... a series of attack ships which were the focal hubs of these ancient weapons. After going through a list of the final 8, and showing holographic images of that lot, he introduces the showstoppers: two hovering attack ships, roughly 200 feet long, impervious to anything that could be done to them by humans, and a platform to around two dozen weapons systems.

The discussion takes an immediate departure at this point. He explains that not only are they still with us, but he personally commands them, and owns the controls. He asks my help to fulfill his mission. He tells me that "these two ships can 'end the war' in a single day". Somehow I am onboard without a single question asked.

About an hour later, the ships are arriving from the sky. I am told that they were living deep underground for eons. I climb into the small cockpit of one (relative to the immense size of the ship), and am handed a small trinket. I am told that this object is the control interface.

The "historian" prepares to climb aboard the other ship, and tells me to only use a small fraction of what the ship is capable of, as this will be more than enough. As the cockpit closes, I realize that the control interface is some sort of neurological link. In my mind's eye, I see sense readouts of the ship's major systems and status points. I also have a god's eye perspective of the ship and surroundings. I see the ship from inside and from a point in the air far off. I see visions of places far away on the ground, and the stirrings of military vehicles in far off places. I see all of this at once, but my focus shifts from one set of data to another fluidly. I can immediately feel a series of weapon systems I am now in contact with, and grasp their capabilities. Some of these are integrated into the ship itself... air to air defensive weapons, and ground attack options, and some are in distant locations, such as orbital platforms.

We have been in the air for a few moments, and the historian tells me that we are nearing our targets. I protest sharply, remarking that we haven't even really left home... these are our own people. His response is, "Our people, theirs, it doesn't matter. There are no good guys in a war." I protest further, asking how we are going to win by sabotaging our own side. He simply retorts that winning isn't about strength so much as perception.

We begin our attacks. The historian is far away now, and I am flying at 10,000 feet above a sort of fairground on the outskirts of a small city. I fire pulses of energy from the ship at the fairground, and get distant visions of some carnival structures collapsing, and a parking lot where some cars are exploding, and I think I may just see little people running away in horror. I continue bombarding the ground below, hitting roads and buildings, seeing massive fires billow out smoke. Nearing the city center, I fire out broad bolts of energy, which pierce through entire blocks of buildings and bore deep into the ground. This continues for about 10 minutes, and I conclude by calling upon an orbital system to fire an immense beam into the heart of the city. half of the city is destroyed in an instant, as waves of energy cascade from the point of contact on the ground, and I see a molten hole 30 meters wide, which has bored straight into the earth.

The carnage continues on for hours, as we employ these systems against a dozen other cities. I see wings of fighters (F18s and F22s, or something similar) out hundreds of miles away, but nothing ever gets close, because I fire out seeker charges from the ship, which find these distant pursuers in an instant, and I watch them fizzle out a moment later. The same for ground-based defenses. As the sun is setting, we are preparing to retire these weapons. We land on a distant shore, disembark, and the ships fly off on their own back into the sky.

I walk back home for hours in the dark, walking through woods, fields, and along roads. It is quite a long journey back home. I finally get home the next day, and there is a feeling of horrible tension in the air. Everyone is glued to news programs which details reel upon reel of shots from the ground of the past day's events. 200,000 civilian and military dead. Endless shots of horrors upon horrors  and misery in high definition. Two unknown craft are featured at the center of everything. I suddenly feel a wave of immense guilt, as somehow I hadn't pictured everything as it really had been. Somehow there is no mention of me or the historian anywhere in the newscasts, and I am not about to disabuse anyone of any ignorances. The war is over. Both sides have vowed to unite against the threat of the unknown alien forces. Maybe it was worth it afterall?

I walk back to my bedroom, and find my shoes. Oddly, they are changed. They were previously a red fabric and rubber combination, but all of the red fabric has been replaced by a transparent plastic material. I have this feeling that someone has "taken" the fabric from the shoes in small retribution. I don't know fully how to take this, but shoes, and things happening to my shoes has been an ongoing theme for the past couple years in my dreams. Several other references to this trend appear in the other dream posts in this thread.

I vow to take the controls to the weapon ship, and hide them someplace far away no one will ever find them. I take them in a small satchel bag with me on a trip across the countryside. It is something like the forests and fields of Belgium. I feel like an exile from my own culture, but the natural world welcomes me. I wander over  field and fens. I swim across gentle streams, and feel the water embrace me, like a friend. An hour later, I am swimming through a sedate marsh, as the sun is drawing low again. I dive down into the water and plant the controls under some rocks there. The feeling of finality there somehow causes the dream to conclude and I wake up. 

"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic

Stillwater

August 24, 2018

I am sort of in a kind of headspace without a setting, where I am worrying about "exams". It is a time in my life where I have 6-8 of them stacked up in a two week period, and they absolutely dominate my life. I am thinking of ways to schedule the studying, essays, and attending the exams themselves, and I am underwater every time... no matter what, even if I schedule the whole two weeks full, I only have time for 60% of what needs to be done. I don't look forward to the pain of overexerting myself to that degree, and for something that brings me no happiness. The perspective shifts a bit, and I am back in a biology class. Incidentally, it is the same biology class as in one of the earliest logged dreams here, but the scene doesn't last long. The instructor is berating the students, and explaining that most people don't really deserve to pass, and won't.

I leave this setting, and walk out into the hall, and I just seem to wander like a loose leaf. I walk for ages down the halls, and look into empty classrooms, and just sort of change direction from time to time, with no real destination. I wander into my old high school calculus teacher, and a couple girls I knew in highschool, one of whom was my best friend. This particular calculus teacher was known even at that time for being an ancient person, so by now he has probably moved on from this life. We walk just outside. It is well past sundown, and an early winter night, so maybe 40 F (5 C) degrees outside. We walk out and sit in a sort of open wooden structure, that is like a gazebo, but with walls, and open windows, dark inside, but with a great view. Out the windows... it is sort of hard to describe what I see exactly... it is like they are vignette landscapes that are illuminated by distant shimmering lights... they are distant and unreachable, but incredibly alluring in the night setting. They are like some kind of ephemoral paradise that can't be attained by simply walking there. We all are seated against a couple walls inside the wooden structure now, and our calculus teacher is telling us about his childhood. It is sometime in the mid 1760's. He tells us all about the people he knew there, and how they behaved and dressed, and about how his head was full of entirely different sorts of thoughts and desires in that place. It is a place lost to him, and there is no way to return, because he has seen too many things since then to be blank enough to experience it in that pure way again.

I interject that the buildings must have been beautiful (what an odd comment to such a profound story, hehe). He said that they were indeed, but then he moved on to "Fort Lauderdale" (which was to say that there they were not). I knew this to be a place in Florida. As I was gazing out the window again, I could see the buildings and towns of ancient Fort Lauderdale out in the distance forming before me. I commented that "they must have all been heavily water-damaged and storm-stricken". He sort of half nodded in affirmation. I sat a little while longer, and just felt the cold on my face. I had enough clothing that it was managable. I stood up, and the two girls were each seated on a bench along one of the walls, both asleep now. I walked over to them and was sort of captivated by how peaceful and at ease they both appeared. I gently felt each of their noses to make sure they weren't suffering any ill effects or damage from the cold (it felt like the way to do that for some reason), and just let them continue to sleep, as I sat back down. A while later, we all went back inside.

After passing through a single hall, we walked through a heavy-looking door. It was wider than a normal door, and required a lot of heft to move. It had a little window in the top middle. After shutting it on the other side, I noticed another of my good friends was waiting on the other side now, so we reopen the door to let her pass. After that, I notice that written on this side of the door is a message in bold white text, that said something to the effect of "Always open this door for others to pass. You have been warned, and next time will be punished". What an odd thing to be written there...

We climb up through a series of stairs and ramps, sometimes through spaces that were school-like, and other times more like a sort of commercial shopping space, like a closed-down mall after hours. One of the girls breaks off to leave and go to her "dorm", wherever that was. My friend and I continue on to the roof level, which is a place I have never been.

It is hard to really describe it, because it seems to have contradictory qualities. It is open to the night sky above at the beginning portion, but later portions are covered by more levels, sort of like a parking garage, where you feel like you are outside in a sense, even though you are fully enclosed. It is mostly quite dark, but it is also full of these various lights and wonders. There is somehow a rollercoaster track that is snaking along through the various spaces, and shortly after noticing it, a cart rattles by at high speed. I turn to my friend and say, "I didn't know you guys had a 'devastor' up here!" (which must have been some special kind of rollercoaster since we both understood the term naturally). We walk a bit deeper. This place feels like it is her domain rather than mine, since this is the area her own dorm is located, and I think that is where we are headed. Out to the right, the there is some sort of magnificent garden embedded in a sunken space, complete with geometric formations and plant-finials reaching up like spires. It echoes the gardens that stretch out over the landscape at the ground level.

We walk a bit further yet, and now we are under one of the upper floor levels I mentioned before. There are some people queued up to enter an elevator, so we wait in line. The line progresses quickly enough, and we enter it. There seem to be about 4 people there already. The elevator door closes, as someone tries to get inside, but it shuts on their sleeve. We push the open button again to free the person, and he waits outside as the elevator closes again. The elevator rises a couple floors, but then just seems to stop, and I get the feeling we are waiting for something. The elevator is quite a bit larger now, and there are more people here than before, maybe 15, but I don't really notice. Everyone's attention is drawn to the one corner, of the elevator, where some folks are engaged in some sex acts, fully derobed. People don't really react with outrage, so much as curiosity, and more people join in, in participation. I look over at my friend and laugh, sort of thinking about how this is awkward and funny at the same time. She seems encouraged, and joins in herself. So I am standing there at this moment, thinking... "well isn't this a situation", when a woman walks up to me and lovingly beckons for me to participate as well, and I am drawn in also. There are folks engaged in every orientation's version of sexual acts, and it feels like a strange expression of community in a way. The intense revelry continues for a few minutes before I ultimately wake up.
"The Gardener is but a dream of the Garden."

-Unattributed Zen monastic