Thursday, February 05, 2015

Dream: Otherworld Reversals

I was in a very large house with relatives.  I think they were the cousins on my dad's side.  There were a lot of empty rooms, and it was almost as if we were staing in a half-empty hotel.   The house had three stories.  Some of us were staying on the second story, which was a bunch of rooms connected to a central kitchen or dining room area.  I remember the sun was rising (I think) and the ruddy light came through some of the windows.

Then J. N. (not a relative) was there and she was complaining that she was stuck in one of the room on the brick third story.  "Oh I know nobody will believe me," she said.  "But the stairwell to my room is haunted."  She was going on to no one in particular.  "One night I got stuck.  I was on the stair and I couldn't move."  

I'd say half of us believed some supernatural force had rooted her to the stair, half through she'd somehow hypnotized herself or something, and half though she'd dreamed the whole thing.

--

There was a break.  The house was an old monastery.  The setting had changed to England.  The haunted stair / room was the room that the monks, who had been doing inner-city work, would store confiscated guns from the youth they helped.  One night there was a terrible shoot-out in the monastery, and (at least) two monks were killed.

A voice-over narrated while a lone monk, standing by the back-side of the house, pensively looked at black smoke rising from an industrial complex across a dark river.  "...After that, the brothers were forced to make a living at the very same nuclear power plant they despised."  The monk turned and began climbing either stairs or an embankment.  It was dark, and his hands glowed green.  

"Oh, come on," I said out loud to myself.  "Glowing green hands?"  And I was watching the monks on TV.

--

There was another break.  A famous actor, like Hugh Grant or Beckham, was noticing that young girls were in an area where there was a gun deal or a drug deal going on, and he got them away.  This might have been a prelude to the monk section.  

--

There was a break.  I was standing on the corner of Willamette and Broadway in Eugene.  Only it was a junction where gleaming, silver, double-decker trains/subway cars converged.  Four story department stores stood on every corner.  

I got onto a car, which had a layout like a bus, and had wide benches to accommodate three or four people.  The train pulled away and onto a looping turnpike, as if it were travelling on an interstate highway.  There were a bunch of other commuters in the car.  We went over some marshland, and had somehow gotten to the outskirts of New York City.  Suddenly, a policewoman appeared at the head of the car on a big black horse.  The horse slowly clomped down the aisle, and stopped at my seat, and began to sniff my up-reached hand.  Then it wanted its nose rubbed.  

The policewoman got off her horse and sat down with some people behind me.   She pulled out a small round flask, the size of a pocket-watch, and took a sip of something alcoholic.  The she passed it around to the passengers next to her, explaining that it was an herbal extract (chamomile, I think) and that it helped her condition (or to feel better or her cold or something).  

--

I'm not sure if I got off the car or if there was another transition.  I was in a castle or small European village.  I think it might have been a documentary, because the narrator would say some short small fact about the season life of a medieval / renaissance village.  

--

The Child and I had gone for a short walk along a path which ran through the woods and by a stream.  In waking life it was very much like the Reed College canyon, especially the more wooded east end.   I had a slight sense of something malicious in the slow, stagnant stream.  I also had a sense that I was lying under the quilts and blankets on my bed, and the carpet of small, red-brown leaves underneath the trees took on a dual, blanket appearance.  

"Let's race back home," I said.  "I'll give you a 30 second head-start."  He ran along the curving, wooded path while I stayed behind at the water.  (In waking life, I'm not sure why I thought splitting up would be a good idea... although I wanted to make sure nothing was coming up behind us.)  Then I quickly and cautiously followed.  I thought I'd catch up to him, but when I got back to the castle, The Child wasn't there.  I went back along the path, carefully looking for small arms or legs under the leaves or the water plants, thinking I'd have to save him from a Kelpie at any moment, and kicking myself for letting him get away from me.  

A bunch of other folks were also searching, but then the dream shifted again, and the narrator said, "In late October, the villagers set out at night with small lights."  I and the other searching villagers were scrambling around a hill with three-inch diameter pumpkins stuck on our index fingers.  Insert grinning, finger-sized jack-o-lanterns floating in a dark forest here. 

It was dark.  I was climbing a hill with a lit finger pumpkin.  At the top of the hill, there were a bunch of people standing in a line in front of a bright light.  One of them was the policewoman, only now she was a a policeman.  I rushed up the hill with a sudden desire to kiss the policeman.  Just as I reached the crest of the hill a furry head interposed itself between me and the policeman -- at first I thought it was the horse, but the horse had turned into a kind of black panther.   (Possibly the cat, who sleeps with us, was nuzzling me in real life, but I don't know.)

We'd come to a concession stand at a train station or a highway rest stop.  It was Halloween night, and the policeman was selling snacks.  

--

I'm not entirely sure what's prompting this dream.  I've been having some stomach issues, which typically give me anxiety dreams -- but I've been careful to remind myself as I sleep that I've had an upset stomach and not to respond with a Never Reaching the Airport Anxiety Dream.  I'm guessing it was several dreams, and I've scrambled the sequence a bit.  

There were lots of reversals in this sequence.  Meeting my cousins in a labyrinthine house isn't new, but usually it's my mom's side of the family who meets, not my dad's.

The horse and crossing a river is a typical motif, usually signalling that I'm operating in an otherworld.  This is the first time that I've had any interaction with the horse's rider, usually it's a knight, not a New York Horse Policewoman.  And usually the horse is white, not black.  This is also the first time the horse has transformed into the black panther, which is usually associated with erotic desire and thoughts.  

I'm guessing the monks may be related somehow to the techno-monks in Girl Genius, but aside from being monks, the similarity ends, as these weren't train-running techno-monks, but rather, inner-city monks working with troubled youth (and nuclear power plants as construction workers)

The Child in Peril is a typical anxiety dream, although this is the first time The Child has been in supernatural peril from a Kelpie; usually, it's physical danger, like falling out a window or over a railing.  

Watching the dream on TV is a typical dream shift motif, but this is one of the few, if not the first, times that watching hasn't been literally "and then I was watching it on TV" instead of a narrator's voice-over providing summary.

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