Late afternoon I was walking outside some hotel building, looking for restaurants, I think, but then I start to walk back inside the hotel, thinking I’d just pick a restaurant in there. I pass one inside by the hotel entrance, which was like a bridge with fountains around and water underneath. The place didn’t look too fancy, sort of like an Applebee or a TGIF with booths or nook-type tables, but it was called something like Lakeside restaurant. I remember thinking I didn’t pick this dining place first because it was expensive, but it didn’t look it. It wasn’t well lit and didn’t look very busy with people.
And then it seemed like I was inside the restaurant, except also not inside, but underground in the basement of the hotel, not quite the parking area, but maybe on the way there. The booths were closed and situated in the center of the basement. I’m not sure if they’re actually bathroom stalls. I walk around and around this center. There were people walking around, too, some coming out of the booths/stalls, but the place wasn’t crowded. I passed by an exit and decide to take it on my next pass around. I walk by a group of people, two black women and a black man. The man was saying something about how he’s 25 years old. He didn’t look it, I thought, but he wasn’t much older than 25, maybe like 32. One of the women couldn’t believe him, I think, but she seemed happy to find out they’re around the same age, or that he’s making himself younger to be closer to her age. The women seemed to be around 25 years old, maybe even younger. I tried to move away from the group so I wouldn’t hear their conversation. But I think I caught their attention and we started talking, I’m not sure. When we were outside the building it was night, the one woman that seemed interested in the black man realized he was gone. She ran ahead of us looking for him, calling out to him. The other woman stayed with me, looked at me and smiled. I realized the two women were probably twins.
Couldn’t remember dreams this morning, so here’s an entry from 02 Sep 2019, Monday:
Dream yesterday, the part I can remember, was that I was at some wedding, a wedding ceremony outdoors, in a garden. I get up to leave before the ceremony starts, I think because I didn’t want to see, or I know I didn’t get to see the bride and groom come out. My younger brother is there when I get up to leave and he’s leaving with me. I see our car parked nearby the ceremony on the gravel path. It’s a blue lamborghini. I sensed it was my brother’s car and expect him to drive as I go to the passenger side. But when I got in, the steering wheel was in front of me. I get back out and switch with my brother.
Dream today (02 Sep): it’s a bit of a jumble, but the first part I can remember is petting a brown/black puppy. He seemed to like getting his back petted, rubbed. He was sleepy, and chubby, but cute.
Next part I remember is me being in an apartment, I don’t know whose, but my parents and my younger brother were there, with his daughter, my niece. We’re sitting on a couch and she’s lively and I ask her what she’s been up to. She seems happy to see me. Then my brother who is sitting on my left side on the couch, we start talking. Our parents want us to make some call, but my brother said he couldn’t reach whoever it was, so I tried calling whoever it was. . . It was a female call center agent that answered and I pass the phone to my brother. My brother then puts his smaller phone on top of my flat smartphone and speaks to both phones at the same time. I get the sense that I’m there to attend a funeral, but everyone seemed ok and happy. I said my parents were there, but I only saw my father in the dream. . .
Couldn’t remember any dreams this morning, so here are a couple entries never posted before from the end of August 2019:
29 Aug 2019 Thursday.
I dreamt I was devouring this grilled fish. A dourada, or golden bream. But I wasn’t eating the whole thing, I was just focusing on the fatty parts. But I couldn’t seem to find those parts, or I couldn’t get them or couldn’t be satiated by them.
31 Aug 2019 Saturday.
Dream yesterday was me running through a dry rocky valley. It was hot, sun high up in the middle of the day. A fleet of jet fighters up in the sky. Had the impression they were hunting me. . . I didn’t really feel in danger or afraid in the dream, though. I wouldn’t say I was hiding exactly, but I was sort of bouldering through the dry river valley in stealth.
Dream today was me in NYC, at some busy intersection, Times Square maybe. It was about to rain. I carry or have with me an American flag. I try to put it up a flagpole before the rain starts. I reach up, thunder and lightning crack through the sky and skyscrapers. I realize the lightning could hit the pole and electricute me. The slippery half of the top of the flagpole fell, but I pick it up and reach back up to put it on the standing pole. A cop across the street yells at me, I guess telling me not to put it up due to the storm. He was holding an AK-47 rifle, or one of those military-grade automatic rifles. He starts to shoot up at the sky. There’s another cop behind me, I sense, though I don’t see him in the dark. No one tries to stop me as I reach up to raise the flag. . .
A dream chronicled in my actual journal from 28 Aug 2019, Wednesday:
I was in my old apartment bathroom back in Montechoro. Washing my hands, I hear my flatmate’s daughter outside. She greeted me, I think, and at first I didn’t recognize her voice, but when I turned around to the door I see her and was glad to see her, or glad that it was her outside and not someone else, or I was just glad that she approached and greeted me. . . Or all of the above, I guess. I greet her back and we exchange pleasantries. But then she starts to tear up and cry. I wonder what’s wrong. She explains some hardship she has with her mom. She starts to weep more and her face becomes deformed. I try to step out to comfort her, to embrace her. But something held me back, like a hand holding my shoulder, keeping me inside the bathroom. I push forward and step out and into the hallway. As I did so, the daughter stepped back away from me. At first I think she was just startled at my sudden stumbling out of the bathroom, but then when I tried to approach her again, I noticed she moved away from me again. I see behind her to the kitchen, or maybe the living room, where her brother is at and I sense there’s some other person out of sight behind the wall. I was seeing through the doorway and notice they’re preparing something or preparing for something, come celebration. Along the hallway wrapped gifts were lined up. The girl/daughter seemed still in distress. I didn’t come closer to her. She told me she really tried to make things better with her mom. I said to her I’m really sorry she’s feeling this way. Behind me I could hear her mom in her bedroom talking to someone on the phone. I said to the daughter I thought they’re celebrating some birthday party, but, looking at the gifts wrapped in red, white, and maybe a little green, it’s like they’re celebrating Christmas.
It was daytime and bright in the hallway apartment, and the next scene I remember is me walking down the street, still daytime, still bright, I guess outside of our apartment, but the streets remind me of Heidelberg, Germany. I guess I was heading to work because I have my satchel with me that I usually bring. Along the way I see two women get out of their apartment, one was local, a co-worker, I think, but now that I try to remember her or who she was, I don’t know. The other woman I do recognize as one of the Peace Corps volunteers I met back in Mozambique. She had on a sort of big, childish-cute, animal hat, like the face or head of a grey fox, or maybe a bear. I ask her what she’s doing here, in a polite way, if she’s visiting someone, my co-worker I guess. She doesn’t reply, she doesn’t even really acknowledge me. She was on her phone, texting, and she mumbled something to me which I didn’t understand. I thought it important not to react impolitely, not to return I guess the disrespect, and I was already on my way somewhere, like the two of them who were getting into their car. So I just say to her, Good to see you Dr. E (I remembered in the dream that she’s now a physician in ‘real’ life). And to my co-worker I say, See you at work. I pass by them and their car. When I turn a corner I think to myself, where am I going? To the municipal pools? This second part of the dream I thought was the clearest, but now I’m not so sure. It’s definitely the easiest to remember, as I almost forgot the first part.
I remembered more of the dream this morning, but because I had to get going with my day with an early appointment, I didn’t jot it down straightaway, and so now only scarcely remember the ending of the dream:
I walk into a cafe and put a book down on a table. Someone is there already sitting, we’re meeting up and the cafe for me is associated with this place I used to go to in Heidelberg, Germany, the woman across the table I associate with a former classmate. The focus is then on the book, the cover of the book. It’s familiar to me, as if I’ve read it before, or am currently reading it, but now I don’t recall the title, nor even the letters on the cover of the book. And then I wake up.
Can’t remember any dreams last night, so here’s a never-been-posted, past entry from back on 27 August 2019:
In a house that’s been converted into a hostel, there’s a woman just arrived from a hike. She doesn’t look like anyone I know, but she reminds me of someone I hiked with in the past. I go upstairs to follow her, climbing the stairs behind her. I don’t think she sees me. Either she doesn’t recognize me, or she’s deliberately ignoring me. Or I’m just plain invisible in the dream. . . I say something to her, speaking to her like she’s familiar to me, like we’ve known each other for some time and we’re friends staying in the same hostel together, but she says nothing. She’s silent, keeps going up the stairs. She enters a room and I see she takes off her hiking shirt, a bright-sky blue or neon blue polyester. I try to enter the room but couldn’t because the passageway was too narrow, or had narrowed after she entered. I stepped back and saw the passageway was the shape of an “S.” I think to myself I could still get in the room if I bend my body like a snake to fit in the shape, but before I try bending myself I look in. She walks past the passageway, I see her without a top and see her belly. I ask if she’s “expecting.” Again she doesn’t reply but just pass by. I wondered if she understood that expression, to be “expecting.” She passes by the passageway again, but this time she bends over and shows (displays?) her vagina through the passageway. She’s getting ready to shower.
I suddenly find myself wanting to go to the bathroom, not necessarily the one in her bedroom though, because that one was hard to reach, so I just go to the one in the hallway. Someone had already used the toilet when I get there. A number one, luckily, so I just flush it. I try to avoid the puddles of water on the floor. I see there’s another toilet closer to the door, so I go to that one, thinking I might use that one instead. It’s closer to the door, which I discover keeps coming ajar without a lock, or the lock being broken. I flush this second toilet which was empty, but someone had used it for number two, clearly, but I decide to still use it so I can sit by the door and hold it closed. As I get ready, I look through the gap, the opening of the door ajar and see there are a couple of people waiting, a woman, whom I don’t know and am not reminded of anyone (not the same woman as in the first part of the dream), and then I sense there’s a guy there too, though I didn’t see him, but I still recognized him as someone I hiked with in the past also. Through all this I don’t really even need to use the bathroom, but I decide to go downstairs thinking I might have more peace in the downstairs bathroom. . .
The next scene in the dream I’m outdoors, it’s night time, I’m walking down a familiar path, a path or hike I’d taken before but can’t seem to remember where. I associate this path now to a hike I did once in San Bruno, California. I look up at the night sky and marvel at the stars, wondering if I might see them better if I go further down the hill, away from all the light pollution behind me.
Can’t remember any dreams last night, so here’s a never-been-posted, past entry from back on 26 August 2019:
I was pushing a sort of raft or tire tube, like a swimming pool floatie, down a water slide. There was a young girl on the raft, a blonde white girl, though I got the sense I was related to her, like she was my niece. I guess I’m ambivalent as to my relationship to her, that a part of me also felt unrelated to this blonde girl, that I didn’t really know her, so when I was pushing her raft down the slide I wasn’t sure about jumping in the raft to join her. I decide too late to join and jump into the slide following her slide down. We reach a pool at the bottom. There was something else that happened but I don’t remember now. But I think we were to slide down to another lower pool but got stuck. The girl seemed to know what to do. She went or swam to another place, another part of the water slide. I followed her at that other section of the water park and she fixed the mechanism of the pool by hammering a rock onto a sort of large totem or rock peg. I wondered how she knew how to do this. Marveled at her, I think she tried to explain to me how it worked, but I didn’t really understand her. I think I tried helping her, but not sure if I was really very helpful. She got the slides unblocked, and so we the lower pool, but there was some other problem with the lights this time, that the lights of the pools were disconnected. Was I supposed to connect them? She tried to help me, I think. . . There were other parts of the dream I don’t recall. It shifted also to another scene after the water park, but I don’t remember it now. . .
The beginning was blurry, but there were maybe 3 girls in one car of a train. . . I guess they were running or being chased, and they crash into the following carriage. The girls reminded me of the characters from the new netflix series Dias de Navidad.
The second scene was more memorable. I’m at the bottom of a stairwell, looked like the stairs in my current flat going up to my room. An old friend of mine who died in 2011 was walking half-way up the stairs. . . In slow motion, he falls to the side–there are no railings on the stairs in my dream. I run up and get a hold of him by the leg somehow, but couldn’t hold his weight so he just sort of slides down. He looks up at me, tells me I should’ve just let him fall. . .
Third scene seemed like from a comedy series: two middle-aged black men naked with big bellies in the middle of some living room had their arms around each other and were sort of dance-humping each other in tune to music. They embraced each other like it was a slow dance, but the guy on the left starts humping hard in earnest, and then the camera focuses on the other bald guy on the right, his face bewildered, but he then goes along with it and starts humping hard himself. The guy on the left who had a thick head of hair and mustache was looking down at his humping action and slowly looks up when the other guy reciprocated. He smiles a big smile with his mustache.
I was in an REI like store. There were a couple of other guys there, otherwise the store seemed empty, dimly lit, as if it was still closed or just about to open in the morning. But the guys were shopping I think for a camping pad. One guy, the one I could see because the other I couldn’t, pulled out from a shelf what I thought was a camping pad, though it looked too big, it was more like the size of a tent ground-cover, but it was thicker than ground cover and made of less durable material. . . so really it was more like a blanket of synthetic fabric. I asked the guy if this was to be his camping pad, and he said no, he’d put the camping pad on top of it. I then commented on how the rating, the seasonal/temperature rating of pads and sleeping bags are sometimes very inaccurate, especially, or more often so with the less expensive brands from companies that don’t really test their products. I gave the example of one sleeping bag I have which is rated a 3 season bag at 20 degrees Celsius. But really it’s just a 2 or even 1 season bag, only good for the summer or late spring, early fall. . . The dream scene previous to this one was set in cold weather and snow, but it’s now all blurred and forgot. . .
The “About” page already briefly introduces this blog, but let me do a bit more of an introduction here before I get into chronicling a dream from this morning.
Unlike my other blogs past or current, this one is not so anonymous. If you follow me on social media, then you’ll know it’s also me here authoring this digital chronicle. Now, whether you actually really do know me is a-whole-nother, philosophical (maybe biblical) matter; point is that you can probably place a name and maybe even a face to the person typing right now. But just because this blog is a bit more public or less private than my other ones does not necessarily mean you get to play voyeur into my sordid life. . . Not that I live sordidly. You could also point out that voyeurism is already a given on the internet anyway, most of us just accept it, or play (along) with it rather than get played by it. I wouldn’t disagree with that point, but just add that “playing with it” online, trying to game the system, also risks, quite gravely, I think, getting played by it.
But whatevs, it’s a risk I’m willing to take. Maybe I’m being naïve, but I believe the benefits of maintaining this public blog are greater than the risks. Literalism seems to be on the rise, and the in-depth reading of dreams/symbols is not common practice. . . Come to think of it though, when has literalism ever not been on the rise? And in-depth reading of dreams/symbols has never been common, everyday practice, probably not since antiquity when ancients had fewer distractions, entertainments, smartphones =). I myself have not been so consistent with my dream journal, and so that’s part of the reason I’m here: to be more consistent. I actually started this literal (non-digital) dream journal four months ago, but since the beginning of last month, November, I hardly wrote anything in my journal, and I’ve also been finding it much more difficult to remember my dreams in the morning because I’ve been so out of practice. I do have some good reasons for not keeping up on my journal: I had to move to a new flat last month; I’ve been sick this past week and am currently on some strong antibiotics which disrupt my sleep.
Still, I want to sustain a chronicle of my dreams, and maybe, hopefully, get into lucid dreaming, which I experienced only once, when I was a kid, at about eight or nine years old. A long time ago, but I remember that lucid dream so vividly to this day. I’ll post it here on this blog some day. I guess you could say that lucid dreaming is the ultimate goal, but really my purpose here is the chronicling of dreams itself, the daily practice of remembering dreams and writing them down. I probably won’t post them daily; I’m hoping to post them weekly. But posting or “publishing” them is my way of committing to the practice with a sort of social contract. We are, after all, on social media.
This first post offers much commentary, background, and context. The others that follow will mainly consist of detailed accounts of dreams, and a few will comment or respond to episodes of the podcast This Jungian Life. The opacity or even just bizarreness of the dreams without context will, I hope, provide some cover of privacy. Most of you, if you actually do read an entry or two, will discover me a weirdo. Whatevs. We’re all weirdos in our own ways. If you were to keep your own dream journal, you yourself would find how much of a weirdo you truly are, and, more importantly, learn that that’s okay, even normal. Most probably won’t take the time and effort to sustain a journal. I myself am not sure how I would sustain multiple blogs long term. But this promise I make to myself. You may read this for entertainment or to satisfy voyeuristic tendencies; probably most times you’ll just find an entry odd, meaningless or incomprehensible. Again, whatevs. I may be judged and mocked more harshly than a weirdo, but this I bear in mind: I know more about the background and context of the dreams than any of you, and so I am my only judge. Aside from the gods, the fates and the furies, of course.
P.S. The pictures attached may or may not be related to the dream.
P.P.S. I know I foreshadow negative blowback above, but perhaps there’ll also be some positive feedback. What I’d appreciate most is if you yourself shared a dream or two. Each and every writer is a lone writer, but social media can make writing more communal.
dream chronicles 