Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Bookless Author and Star War

  People can and usually do have multiple dreams per night, they are lucky to remember one, if at all. On rare occasion they will remember multiple dreams as I did on Monday night.

  I was going to a book signing at a small book shop, when I arrived I looked through the large shop window, I could see the author sitting at a small table near the back. I stepped in and smiled at the man. Now I recognized this man, but couldn't place a name, He was a big man with whitening blond hair, cut short. He wore glasses, and was rather pale complected. (I must go look at dust jackets to see if I can't recognize him.) There where few people in the store and I noticed no books on the authors table, I figured well the shop didn't put them out for him, so I went to go find a copy of one of his books. First I went up between the stacks to my left. I soon discovered that all these books where old books, I went around the corner and saw more old used books, some very old. I walked back out into the main section of the shop where the author sat, looked and smiled an nodded at him, he smiled and waved back. I looked around the room and noticed even more antique books, but none where his work. I then remembered that I had a copy of one of his books on the backseat in my car, so I rushed out to get it, so he could sign it. When I came back into the shop the man was gone, and I knew that he had left altogether.


  I was standing in my driveway, star gazing. The sky was partially cloudy, but what stars I could see where bright and clear. Amongst the clouds was a circular patch where I could see a particularly bright star, It was large enough that I new it must be a planet.(which one I do not know) Around this planet where lots of little stars, or so I thought at first. As I watched, the little stars started to move. I thought maybe my eyes had gone out of focus, like when you stare at something to long, but then the stars(?) regained there sharpness and I could see them going back and forth like they where charging each other around this planet. I knew then that it was a war. It scared me, I knew that there was nothing that I could do but sit there and watch and wonder, who and why and would we eventually be next.


  A strange combination of dreams. I could sit here and self analyze and probabley be pretty close to what the "experts" would say. I think I'll let someone else do it if they wish. Pleasant dreams.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Taking The Night Off

  Taking the night off. Hope your dreams are the ones you want, but be careful of what you wish for. Back on Wednesday.
 

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Lucid Dreaming vs. Daydream Believers

  Lucid Dreams are dreams in which you realize that you are dreaming. Not to be confused with daydreaming which occurs during an awake state.
 
  Their are groups of people that practice in controlling there dreams and even having the ability to dream about specific things and remembering it all. here is a link for The Lucidity Institute (Inc.) http://lucidity.com/
 
  Then their are those of us who are much maligned because we are the daydreamers, the artist, musicians, and writers, without whom this world would truly be doomed and damned boring.

Monday, December 20, 2010

A whisper On Your Back

  In the early 1980's I was having a strange problem with my sleep. It wasn't necessarily sleep as much as that period of time that occurs between sleep and being awake. We had moved into a new home and shortly after I was having this strange thing happen to me. I would awake laying on my side and I would hear a whistling noise, like you would hear on an old train, I would hear it from behind my back, like it was far off in the distance. The whistle would gradually get louder and louder as if it was getting closer. I would begin to try and roll over and found I couldn't move. It was like I was tied down. This thing that sounded like a large locomotive was barreling in on me from behind and I couldn't move. I would struggle hard to break free, almost panicking, thinking I'm going to get run over by a train in my own bed, and just as I thought that something inexplicably awful was going to happen to me I would break loose of this bond, roll over and the noise disappears all at once. No train. I would be awake for this every time, and it happened often. At first I thought that it may had been an inner ear problem, but that never explained why it always happened at that strange inbetween time of sleep and wake. Years later I had a coworker come up to me and say that he had had "a whisper on his back". I asked him what that was and he went on to tell me that that had been a term his Grandmother used. What he described was the same thing that I had suffered years before. I finally went on to discover "sleep paralysis" and all the different things that you can experience under its influence. It's actually something that happens to us all. It is your bodies way of protecting itself from harm during dream stages of sleep. Some people have a defect of sorts and doctors say that this causes some people to have hallucinations, such as seeing ghosts, and even experienced auditory hallucinations (hearing sounds and even voices). Whether or not these assumptions by the scientific world are correct is debatable. What I would really like to know is, with the exception of one time why has this occurred to me only during the short time that I lived in one particular house and why was it always a train whistle?

  December 19, 1843 "A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens was first published in England. You don't suppose that old Ebenezer Scrooge suffered sleep paralysis.


                                                         
                                                                Pleasant dreams

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Dreamer In The Wood (A Babe In The Woods)

  I dreamt that I was running through the woods with three or four other people. Something was after us. Some of the people were ahead of us. I was running along side a tall blond girl. that I felt somehow attached to. Suddenly the people ahead of us had split in two directions and I didn't know why til it was to late. There was a large deep drop off in our path. The girl fell into the hole. I felt devastated. I made my way down into the bottom of the pit, all along knowing that we all were still being followed. The others told me to hurry that she was dead and they wanted to get out of there. I told them I didn't care what they wanted. I reached her crumpled body, she was dead, I picked her up as I wept, and began to bring her out of the hole. Some of the people wanted to help me get her out, but I told them no, don't touch her. We started to move again, out of the woods at a pace that was strange, like we weren't touching the ground. Eventually we cleared the woods and came along side of a tall stone and brick church, the girl was still in my arms but her skin had turned an ashen grey. As we rounded the corner of this church a large black car, an old Rolls-Royce (like from the 1930's) pulls up a gravel drive into the church yard. I knew then that these were the people that we had been running from, that in actuality they wanted the now deceased girl, before the men could get out of the vehicle the girls body started to change in my arms. The grey ashen color of her skin darkened then the skin started to sluff off and her body began to shrink. The loose skin blew away exposing new pink skin. The body stopped shrinking. I was left with an infant girl in my arms and she was alive. The men from the car stepped up to us. They looked at the baby in my arms, turned and left. All that was said is, "That's not her." I looked down at this infant in my arms and smiled. I knew it was her, she was safe and I was happy.

  I am not sure what or why, but then sometimes there doesn't need to be a what or a why, just that there is.

                                                                              Sweet Dreams

Monday, December 13, 2010

Dream Home (s)

  A couple of recurring dreams that I have had for some years now both recurred again last night.  
For years now I've wanted to help my closest friend to rebuild his home, a former shotgun style house. He had it moved from it's original site to a new one years ago. It was cut in two and moved about 10 miles to where it sits now. all the walls and ceiling save the framing had been removed so what was left was a raw shell with tons of potential. I have always wanted to see his vision turned into reality. He had passed away three years ago now and I still wish to help to make what he wanted for his family. My dream has always been a sort of fast forward of bringing in a crew and watching the house come together, being filled with furnishings and lived in. Even converting the large attic area into a room for his son. Then watching the decrepit house  that his family had been living in being bulldozed. I hope this does happen someday and soon.

  My second dream which was oddly related to the first, an event that as far as I know rarely happens, was of a personal desire of mine, to design and build my own home.

  A large pine wooded property of  a number of acres and a small lake, full of fish, that I had built, with a pier and a sand beach. the house would overlook the lake. It is partially in ground with the front of the house all in glass, french door entrances to the front facing rooms.Walls at each end curve in to form a courtyard, with various plants and small trees filling the area out. A tall peaked roof that tappers to the left and right with glass panes that can be opened out onto a narrow wrought iron porch where hanging plants could be placed centers the front. On the inside a wrought iron spiral staircase leads to the landing that would allow you to open the windows and allow you to look over the large living room. The ceiling is what looks like exposed oak beams. Across the right side wall are custom bookshelf's. A hall goes off to the right that leads to a restroom and a bedroom, the bedroom is at the front. Towards the back of the living room, a large see through stone fireplace that acts as a wall that separates the living room from a dining area and kitchen a long dining table near the fireplace, lots of cabinet space across the walls. a window stretches across the back wall as well. It looks out into a solarium full of tropical plants and a swimming pool. to the right a door leads to the laundry and utilities with more storage. To the left of the living area a long hall way connects two more bedrooms a bath and an office, at the end of the hall is the master bedroom that stretches the width of  the end of the house. It includes a large bath with garden tub and a private entrance to the solarium.

  Hey, if your going to dream, dream big. I've dreamt of this house so many times that I have plans drawn up for it. Sweet dreams of a home sweet home.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Always Ask

Please be considerate, and remember, plagiarism might be a form of flattery but its also frowned upon. Copyright infringement's are not just frowned upon but they are also illegal. Always ask the author.
Thank You.

The King of Nightmares

  Earlier this evening I had the wonderful opportunity to be part of a group that was invited to a video chat with the literary (literally) King of nightmares, Stephen King. The chat was basically questions and answers about his newly released book, "Full Dark, No Stars", but there where other unrelated questions as well. One of these was what childhood books did Mr. King like. His first answer was a Dr. Seuss book called "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins", about a boy who must remove his hat before the King, but every time he does another hat takes its place. Bartholomew is taken away to the castle for not showing respect to the King. He tries and tries and is threatened with death he gets down to 451st hat and the hats begin to change, he is being taken to the highest tower to be thrown off as they are about to toss him to his death he pulls off the 499th hat and the 500th hat is the most magnificent thing the King has ever seen, so Bartholomew is spared and paid 500 gold pieces by the King for the hat. After that last hat Bartholomew's head is bare. I can see why that and things like "Little Red Riding Hood" (for  the gobbling up of Grand mama and the blood and gore the woodsman causes) would cause King to be a bit twisted.
In my child hood I can recall my father sitting in the family car, and while we waited for my mother to finish the grocery shopping, he would tell us fairy tales of  the Brothers Grimm variety, but the one story that was just for me, I remember being told in the summers when we would go too visit my Grandmother who lived in a large old Farmhouse, that quite frankly kind of scared me sometimes. The story was printed in the 1930's and was called "The Little White Bed That Ran Away". About a small boy who never wanted to go to bed, but instead lay on the floor in front of the fireplace downstairs reading. The bed became dejected and so decided to run away from home because the little boy didn't want him, He put on some shoes and walked down the stairs, thump thump, thump thump, thump thump, thump thump and out the screen door. The little boy who was getting cold went after his little bed and begged and begged for it to come back home. The bed finally said yes and returned with the little boy. My father would tell this story to me, showing me the illustrations and making the sounds of the bed thumping its way downstairs and out the screen door, and I would be absolutely terrified. Its a wonder I ever slept. My father was not all to blame though, oh no, thanks to early cartoonists like Disney and Tex Avery with there animated furniture and there big slobbery jawed wolves wearing zuit suits there was no place safe to hide, especially in my dreams. May yours be sweet unless your as twisted as I or the King. Night

The Dreamer

December 8, 2010 Let there be peace on earth and good will towards men.
He Imagined it.

Monday, December 6, 2010

John Lennon

  On December 8, 1980 the world lost one of it's greatest dreamers, John Winston Lennon. It's now been thirty years without the man who came to represent a generation of people who all dreamed of a better world. In so many ways we need him more now then ever. He helped to inspire and lead through the music that he wrote. I was devastated like so many others by his loss. A few weeks after his death I had a dream that helped me through this loss.

  I dreamt that I was walking through a suburban neighborhood, it was a sunny afternoon. My surroundings seemed familiar, I walked down the street and cut across yards like I had done it all my life, like it was the neighborhood of my youth. I knew where I was headed but not where I was going to. I felt good as I cut across a freshly cut yard and up to a house that seemed familiar. I knocked on the door and a dark haired oriental lady answered the door she smiled at me like an old friend and asked me in. "John's in the living room.", she said, and then asked if I had had lunch yet. I said no, and then she went off towards the kitchen. The house had a short entry hall that led to the right, a kitchen and then forward and down two or three steps to an open living room. Sitting on a couch on the right side of the room was John Lennon. He looked up at me, smiled, and said hello. He offered me a chair near him. I could hear Yoko asked if we wanted a chicken sandwich for lunch. I turned to look the kitchen was on the raised floor at the front of the house and had a sort of long island that she was standing behind. the kitchen paralleled a room that was on the left of the living room. It was a gaming room. It mostly contained pinball machines. John asked if I wanted to play a game, so we played some pinball, then lunch was ready and the three of us went out onto the patio in the backyard to eat. There were a couple of young boys out laughing and playing around under a hose. We sat on lawn chairs holding paper plates in our laps, eating watching the boys play and just talking about stuff. (I do not remember specifics about what we talked about, but I do know that it was just about family, life, just regular stuff that you would talk about with friends or family. Nothing about his work or anything about the other "Lads". Just happy small talk.) We sat for awhile and enjoyed the day. He was my friend. I told John and Yoko goodbye and they waved me off as I walked out and across the yard to the street.

  When I awoke the next morning I felt good. I felt like John had come to me and said it's OK, now go live your life. I had only told this dream to one person and that had been my best friend, thirty years ago.
  Joe I miss you my friend. I wish you would come to me in a dream and tell me that it's OK, that you are better and happy now and for me to get on with living, bring my Dad with you.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Animal Dreams

The thesaurus gives "woolgather" as an alternative to the word dream. It's appropriate I think, for a dream about animals.

  In the first of the two animal dreams that I had had  I was walking up a country road, it was familiar to me as I had driven it many times when I had lived in Missouri, there were scraggely trees and brush along the sides of the road. I came upon an iguana sitting on a bare branch it was frowning at me allmost like it was disgusted. I had a long stick in my hand and began to poke at the lizard and saying to it, "cheer up Mr. Lizard, smile." The iguana began to smile, as it did an alligator came into view from behind the brush that grew on one side of the tree. It was coming at me with its jaws wide open into one of those evil alligator smiles. (crocodiles aren't the only reptile that smiles at you) I turned to get away and my feet were tangled, they were like rubber and didn't want to cooperate with me. I bent to straighten my tangled feet so I could run, but it was like being in thick mud. I turned to face what I thought was the inevitable. The croc had stopped, its mouth still wide the corners still turned up in that hideous reptilian smile, then I awoke...

  ... Shortly after I fell back to sleep again and had the second animal dream.
I was standing in the driveway of the house I had grown up in (I have not lived there in over 30 years), edging the grass with one of those old style edgers that sort of look like a spur on a stick (God I hated those things). There was a hedge that had seperated our property from the neighbors. I heard a noise and a pig comes rushing out at me. I fend it off with the edger. Looking around I find an old metal garbage can lid and use it as a sheild. The pig comes at me again and I get it on the snout with my spur on a stick. It squeels and runs back through the shrubs into the neighbors yard. I pick up a quartz stone and go to throw it at the pig, as I am throwing the rock in its direction I notice that in the middle of the neighbors yard is a big mud waller full of pigs. (dureing this time the sun is begining to set, turning the sky into a strange orange color) The pig comes back once more, charging at me, I hit it hard again with my strange yard implement lance and once again it squeels away back towards the rest of the pigs. As it approaches them wings sprout out of his body and he takes flight. The rest of the pigs follow, all sprouting wings and flying off. From out of the direction that the swine flew came a site as unbelievable as the first. Through the darkening orange sky a small heard of pegasus' flew past. I stood and stared in disbelief untill they were out of site. I ran into the house to tell my parents, looking for them upstairs (which is odd for a one story house) I tried and tried to tell them but they wouldn't listen. I wasn't sure if they didn't care or didn't believe. I awoke.

I'm not quite sure as to what to think of dreams like these. I don't even know what would trigger such dreams. They say all dreams have a purpose and a meaning, but I'll be damned if I know what these were about. My Grandmother used to tell me not to eat pickles before bed, that they would give me nightmares, fortunately I have grown to look forward to nightmares. They give me something to write about.

                                                                 Pleasant dreams

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Meaning Of Our Dreams

http://petrix.com/dreams/

This is a link to a nice little site that is a sort of Dream Dictionary. Recommended in an article written in the Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2001, "Of Dreams and Nightmares.

  Tomorrow I will relate two of my animal dreams.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Living Nightmare

  I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. that's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and surviving.
                                                                                Col. Walter E. Kurtz  (Apocalypse Now 1979)

  Was the snail Kurtz dreamt of our American men who had been sent to a foreign land, a "Green Hell", where they pressed there luck, trusting in the judgment of men who knew little to nothing of the land or the people that they were up against. Crawling along that proverbial straight razor and praying to survive through to next day in a strange nightmare of a land. Was the snail really the Vietcong and NVA who were one with their land, in the trees and under the ground, crawling and slithering on their bellies, living on the edge of the razor to chase out foreign invaders to their land. In the end they survived.
  Vietnam was said to have ended at the end of April of 1975. Just how many men still have nightmares about that place? Just how many men and women have and will be coming home to relive there own personal horrors from this present war?

The horror... the horror.
 

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Deja Vu and Dreaming

According to Websters New World Dictionary: deja vu - (n) a feeling that one has had an experience before, although the experience is actually new.

Deja vu: French for already considering or already seen.

  Recently a friend posed the question, "What is actually happening when we experience deja vu? Are our lives actually deeply predestined?"
  One person answered, "Neurological short circuit. Our brains are similar to our computers. We have short term easy access memory, and then at the end of the day, when we dream, we process the days data into long term memory. A "deja vu" is when a short term memory (what just happened a moment ago) is immediately written into long term memory and when retrieved a moment later it feels like it happened ages ago and was pre-seen."
  Another had said that they had been told , "deja vu is a sign that you are on the right path."
  Both interesting replies.

  Sigmund Freud believed the feeling corresponded to the memory of an unconscious daydream.
  Freud in a partial summary of authors who had discussed the issue, separated them into "believers" (who thought that deja vu was proof of a previous existence.), and "non believers", who regard such events as false memories. Freud himself assumes a different position, by believing in the reality of the representative content but associated this with the reactivation of an older unconscious impression.
[ answer.com - S. Mijolla-Mellor]

  Fulfillment of a prior premonition of a forthcoming event.
  According to Arthur and Joyce Berger " The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research", (It's) connected to experiences of reincarnation when a feeling of prior knowledge is so strong that people feel it must come from a former incarnation. The case of a young girl, Shanti Devi, born in Delhi, India in 1926. She had claimed to live elsewhere in a former life and had gone on to be taken to this place where she identified places, the house, family, and other circumstantial details. There have been other similar circumstances over the years.

  Deja vu and dreaming seem to come together quite often. My own personal experience with a dream precognition had nothing to do with me and has always upset me due to the circumstances so I have only mentioned it once to one other person. The dream was a recurring one ( I had had it 2 or 3 times). I was walking through the streets of a large city of glass buildings, everything was in black and white like an old film from the 40's. I was dressed in the style of that era, as was everyone else (all hats and ties, business dresses and silk stockings). I heard the sound of a large airplane and looked up to see it flying low between the giant glass skyscrapers. The plane slams into a building with  the loud sound of shattering glass. Giant pieces and glass dust falling everywhere. People running and screaming. I just keep staring up at the scene. Many, many months after I had had the dreams (all of which seemed identical to me) the unfathomable happened and causing me my deja vu and causing a war which we still fight. Now you know why I kept my mouth shut about this dream.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

The Problem With Dreams

The problem with dreams is that you don't always remember them or you don't remember enough to make sense of what you have. Some dreams seem to come in short flashes, like a very poorly edited European film. Some dreams are right there when you wake up but disappear in seconds, like spontaneous combustion, you just don't know what hits you. Sometimes you have repeated dreams but don't realize it until it happens three or four times. I believe these to be prophetic in nature, but you rarely realize it until whatever it is the dream is telling you has passed.
I have in the past attempted to keep a notebook next to the bed. This can work, but allot of times you go back, read what you wrote, and say to yourself, "What the hell?"
Keep trying though.
Sweet dreams, unless your like me and have grown to like the nightmares better.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

What Dreams May Come

A look inside my dreaming world. Sometimes frightening, other times indesipherabely ridiculous.
The true question is what does it really mean? What do you think it means?

A recent dream, speaking of ridiculous.

I meet and become acquainted with a man who is rather hard to get close to as he is very standoffish, cranky, and a bit angry. He looks like Anthony Bourdain  We eventually become close friends. Soon a new person enters, a beautiful and kind woman. She is red headed and resembles Ann Margret. We all become close and Anthony and I both fall in love with her. Then Ann develops some form of cancer and becomes very ill. We both watch over her, at one point she appears as a small child, and completely helpless, at this point Tony Bourdain begins to be around less and less, almost as if he is fading. As he disappears Ann becomes her normal full grown self again and she is free of the cancer. I find a note from Anthony. It says She is yours now. I am gone. That ends the dream.

What does this mean? Yes I've had a sometimes cranky but much loved friend, who has passed away because of a tumor and cancer. I dreamt of him the night he passed. He looked nothing like Tony Bourdain. I think Ann Margret is one of the most beautiful women on this planet, but I have never sat and fantasized about her, though she was pretty damn hot in Tommy. That white outfit and all those baked beans :)
In the end I have no clue as to what may had triggered this rather strange but interesting occurrence.

( I have no clue as to why these two people show up in my dream. It is very rare that I dream of people that I don't have some relation to. My dream of John Lennon and his family are the only other non-relative dream I can recall. Write about that one later.)