More Violent Dreams.

8/26/23

While I was busy doing something else, someone — I think it turned out to be dad — took my car in and got it fixed. Under the hood, it looked too clean and spacious, which made me nervous. When I put the key into the ignition, the truck sounded too quiet, and it drove perfectly. There were huge holes in the pavement right before I got onto the road — more like huge, gaping cracks in the pavement than potholes — and I almost fell in one but got to the road okay.

8/30/23

Dad had wrapped up a dead body in white sheets, put it in a wheelbarrow, and asked me to put the corpse in the shed. Out there by the shed, I decided to have a cigarette before moving the body. As I smoked, I wondered how it made him feel, wrapping up the body — if it disturbed him. I wondered if he was traumatized by it or was okay with it. I knew he hadn’t killed the person himself. I think it may have been me. I also wondered about it stinking up the barn, and knew that putting it in there couldn’t be the final solution. Eventually, I ended back at house only to realize I’d forgotten to put the body in the shed. I had just left it in the wheel barrow by the shed door and realized I should take care of that before someone sees it and starts asking questions.

Evidently, dreaming of hiding a dead body may suggest you’re attempting to hide something — potentially aspects of yourself — from others in response to overwhelming guilt and you’re terrified of being found out. In general, it’s thought to represent fears of criticism and judgment.

In general, fathers represent wisdom, and we often dream of them when feeling lost. This may suggest I don’t know how to handle these aspects of myself. Wheelbarrows represent hard work, which perhaps suggests the degree of effort I put into hiding aspects of myself, and sheds represent shelter and protection — though the dream suggests I nonetheless failed to accomplish sheltering and protecting these aspects.

9/1/23

The cute, red-headed twins from work were going to a place they called by name, though I can’t remember the name, and asked the manager if I could come along with them and the others. They got permission and began walking down the sidewalk, with the others and I following behind. We came to the place, which turned out to be a restaraunt inside a larger building. As they went to sit down, I decided to go out to smoke, as the urge was intense, but I realized I couldn’t smoke just outside the restaraunt, but had to go outside the larger building it was within. It was difficult pushing the doors open, as there were things pushed against it from the outside.

Also, maybe in the same dream, I was inside a boat on land that was attached to a building in such a way that it constituted a singular structure, though not an entirely stable one.

Buildings are supposed to represent some aspect of the self; our inner architecture. Public buildings specifically reference social aspects of ourselves and our social relations, perhaps as it pertains to our job. The Russian Doll theme of a building within a building could reference how I compartmentalize myself, and my desire to relax and enjoy myself requires effort in escaping the social situation. As for the boat attached to a building, it may suggest my attempt to bring my intellectual inclinations to explore and grow into the social sphere and my external life in general and how unstable that feels.

9/2/23

I think others and I were on the run from someone. We visited a house with multiple stories, on big plot of land, owned by an old lady and occupied by her and others. She was very protective of her land. I had gone there for third time with friends of mine for a specific purpose, hoping she wouldn’t remember me, and trying to elicit sympathy in an effort to manipulate her for what we believed to be a good cause. She acted as though she didn’t recognize me at first, then ultimately surprised us all by shooting at us. I felt a rain of bullets pierce my skin but somehow survived. I briefly woke up in bed out of the dream and I could still feel where I had been shot in my side. Elsewhere in dream, after recovering, I was graduating in some way and moving away, secretly gathering up things — documents, I think — that I had hidden so as to take them with me.

9/3/23

I don’t know if I got in a fight or what exactly happened, but my face was banged up and swollen when I looked in the mirror.

UFO Dreams & the Seneca Stones.

8/20/23

I’m sitting with a small group of people on a very small porch or set of stairs that hardly has enough room for all of us. It vaguely reminds me of the steps just outside the residence of the parents of two friends of mine from high school. We’re all looking up into the night sky, beautifully splattered with stars, and I become fixated on a few dimly-lit, colored “stars” moving back and fourth across the heavens above us in erratic paths. No one else says anything and I wonder if I’m the only one that sees them.

The dream leaves me with the same general emotional state these dreams, which have been recurring for three decades now, always leave me with: a sense of awe tinged with fear that lingers for the rest of the day.

8/25/23

Luminescent tube-like objects, each slightly twisted in a different manner, appear all over in the dark night sky. They don’t move, but simply hover there. No one knows what they are and everyone seems to be simultaneously awed and frightened by them. I appear to be living with my parents, or at least my mother, and I watch the glowing sky-tubes in wonder from my bedroom window, curious as to what they are and why they’re here.

The next day, a guy comes to visit and shows me a stone he found in his yard that morning. It’s a flat stone into which an elaborate design has been carved and for some reason he wonders if I know anything about it. He had a similar stone that was stolen from his house sometime the previous night, and I immedeately jump in and tell him that I had mysteriously found it lying on my bed that morning. He explains that they’re both from the Seneca Indians, which I know to be my ancestors from my father’s side, though I don’t tell him.

It’s been some time since I’ve had one of these dreams, and I find it curious that I suddenly had two of them in the space of a single week. I have, of course, been following the UFO subject in the news quite closely and watched the sky from my apartment window last night during a severe storm and tornado warning in which the power went out, so perhaps that in part accounts for last night’s dream.

Immedeately upon awakening I looked up the Seneca Native American tribe to see if they actually existed, and they do indeed. While my father’s mother always insisted she was part Native American, she was a rather strange lady and my father always doubted it, and his results from Ancestry.com revealed no indications of any natives in our bloodline. Why the dream chose Seneca specifically makes me curious…

Dream Summoning Maria Cox.

In the course of my life, I’ve had a lot of odd and intense dreams, false awakenings, episodes of sleep paralysis, and other profound nocturnal experiences that most would undoubtedly relegate to this general category — and despite my passionate objections in some cases, I might add.

Typically, however, I only have dreams regarding people I know fairly well. They may be people I haven’t encountered in the flesh in decades, but I’ve known them well enough to justify their inclusion in my nocturnal, allegedly private, and (presumably) solely subjective and natural neurological simulations.

Occasionally, a person I’ve met only recently will pop up in a dream, that’s true, but it’s always a fleeting one-off. Never are they recurring, central characters.

And I almost never have dreams regarding an individual with whom I was associated with in the past only peripherally, merely second hand, and haven’t been in close proximity to, corporeally-speaking, for roughly two decades.

This amazing bitch, though?

She is a persistent anomaly. A chronic curiosity. An unprecedented, recurring character. Never do these dreams involve anything overtly sexual, unfortunately, but the connection I feel towards her in these dreams is so intense it’s absurd.

Out of curiosity, I just checked my dream logs. Since March of 2021, I’ve recalled at least four dreams regarding her, the most recent on June 14th — only yesterday.

Most recently, it involved only conversations and affectionate interactions, and though the details elude me, throughout the night I kept begging myself that, even if I failed to recall the details upon awakening, to please remember, at the very least, that I’d dreamed of her again.

Previously? She wore a leather coat and we had an enlivening hug. We had illuminating conversations that, for the fucking life of me, I can’t recall the details of. And also a dream of mine that echoed a dream of her own that she reported publicly on social media.

And yes, she’s blazing hot. Yes, I find her an incredibly interesting individual. But I barely know this dark beauty, and while her persistent presence in my dream life is certainly welcome, it continues to perplex the everliving fuck out of me.

How I wish there was wise man — or woman, or sexless being for all I care — residing upon a mountain I could climb to recieve much-desired answers.

Truth be known, though, I probably wouldn’t be able to find it in myself to believe the bastard’s revelations anyway.

So I remain perplexed. This here? This is my fucking lot in life.

Am I obsessed with her on a subliminal level, and it’s as simple as that? Does she represent something buried within me, striving to rise to consciousness? Is she an unintentional, unconscious telepath? Is this sexy soul an adept witch hellbent on being my dream invader?

I’m not confident enough to be sure in any case, but as I now drift towards sleep, let it be known: I officially place a welcome mat at the door of my dreams for you, m’lady.

No pressure. But be aware, let it be known, that you’re always free to visit.

G’nite, fellow insomniac bitches.

Roots of My Distance (9/11/22 Dream).

My mother, who is sitting down around the corner and just out of view, tells me that she had found a letter I wrote to Jimmy in his bedroom. “You mean MY bedroom,” I said, correcting her angrily, and it wasn’t in the tone of a question. I felt possessive of my room and angry that she’d intruded and read the letter. She leans from around the corner to look at me, sort of smiling but saying nothing, as if I’d given her the reaction she was after. So I go into my old bedroom (at my parents house), and some things are still in there. An old dresser with drawers missing and a lot of old writings that I stuff into my book bag to take with me.

It may or may not have been part of this particular dream, but at some point I’m kissing a girl — or rather, what we’re doing would be kissing if either of us had opened our mouths in the midst of our face-mashing. It was “dry-kissing,” I suppose, which would be the lip equivalent to dry-humping. I used to have dry-humping dreams quite frequently, and over time I came to the conclusion that it signified my fears of intimacy despite my simultaneous desperation for it.

Interestingly, interpretations of the more detailed dream resonated with the apparent meaning of this one.

My mother may represent the Jungian anima, the feminine aspect of the male psyche who traditionally guides us through difficult periods. Given the rest of the dream, however, it may have more to do with the fact that my mother and I didn’t really bond in my youth, and in fact fought fairly consistently.

Bedrooms allegedly represent aspects of ourselves that are private and hidden — personal thoughts, emotions, and issues we don’t wish to reveal or discuss. With respect to our childhood bedroom specifically, this suggests that something in our current waking circumstances triggered hidden memories from our childhood.

Understandably, a bedroom intruder is supposed to symbolize a sense of insecurity or fear of trusting people. Given a lot of my insecurity and trust issues likely originated with my relationship with my mother, this may be quite fitting.

While writing in general represents, for me, trapping a moment in amber through self-expression as well as catharsis and psychological alchemy, writing a letter is supposed to represent the desire to establish a connection with someone — Jimmy, my childhood friend, apparently. Yet I didn’t send the letter, but rather left it in my old bedroom, which again, suggests a fear of making such a connection. So again, all signs point to: trust issues and fears of intimacy.

One element of the dream I have yet to understand, however, is why she called my bedroom Jimmy’s bedroom — and why I so angrily corrected her, feeling so possessive of it. My only thought is that she was implying that I was taking on his pain as my own, and so the private, secret, childhood matters my bedroom represented were more his than mine despite the fact that I’d taken them on.

Actually, having written that out, it makes a good deal of sense.

I met Jimmy when I was maybe five years of age. Our mothers worked together at a day care and given we were both the same age and both rather shy, they thought we would hit it off as friends. And we did: in no time I came to consider him the brother I never had.

He had two brothers and a little sister and, at least for awhile, I would often visit him at his house, even sleep over on occasion. The way they lived was quite different than in my own family. All the kids lived in the same room, took showers together. For a time, they had no television, and only had so many toys that they could store in a relatively small chest. Most of all, his parents were insanely religious — and the father was incredibly abusive. I would hide beneath a bed or behind a door, unable to defend my friend and his siblings from their father, who would beat them right in front of me. Most haunting of all was the image of the young sister, a blond and petite girl, face red, wet, and twisted into an expression of absolute terror. It’s haunted me for years.

For years I had buried all memories of Jimmy, and when they emerged in flashbacks back in high school (along with many other, far more bizarre memories), I even questioned if I had made him and those circumstances up.

As it turns out, I had not.

One of the questions that plagued me and, honesty, made me feel guilty and ashamed since remembering it all is why it should effect me so strongly. After all, it didn’t happen to me, so what right do I have being traumatized? It was similar to how I felt regarding how I felt about my relationship with my mother in childhood: I was never physically or sexually abused, so many others have been, so what right did I have to complain about how cold and dismissive my mother was towards me in my youth?

Only when I deduced that I was a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) prone to involuntary empathy did it begin to make sense to me. How I’d described myself as an “emotional sponge” all those years finally had some rational footing.

When I met Angela in my twenties in the fast food joint where we worked, I was quite taken by her, and when I learned of the abuse and mindfuckery inflicted upon her by her parents — really, her fucking family as a whole — I became very emotionally involved. I began having haunting dreams about Jimmy, his family, and most specifically his father around that period and it was all too clear to me what triggered it.

So what triggered this most recent dream?

Well, the evening before the dream was the birthday of my ex-girlfriend, Claire, who I stopped talking to a few years ago. After getting drunk, I started having a text conversation with Angela, who I associate with Claire (which was also revealed in the dreams I had when still working with Angela) as well as Jimmy.

So Claire’s birthday likely triggered me texting Angela, which in turn triggered the dream regarding Jimmy.

In addition, either yesterday or the day before, I considered adding the story of Jimmy to my book on strange, often apparently paranormal experiences. He was associated with at least two strange experiences in my childhood, though we never talked about it and those particular memories, unlike the others regarding him, are nearly impossible to verify as accurate. As it turns out, Angela has also had strange experiences all throughout her life, but like so many, she chooses to ignore them.

In any case, the dream seems to have been exploring why I keep my distance from people and remain afraid of nurturing connections despite my desire to.

A Haunting, Evening Stroll.

10/22/21

It took me forever today to stop watching YouTube videos, get up off my ass, and do some grocery shopping, but I finally got motivated around seven thirty. Rather than drive the truck the short distance, I decided to walk there and enjoy the cool, evening air, which I supposed I needed.

Taking a right out the parking lot of my apartment complex, I walked down the sidewalk, passed by some houses, then the cemetery. As I was approaching the short tunnel beneath the bridge, I looked across the street at a house that had put up some pretty cool Halloween decorations, but I kept getting distracted by an elderly, roundish fellow headed in my direction on the sidewalk, carrying grocery bags. At first I thought maybe he was having an aggressive talk with someone on the phone, but as I came closer, it became apparent this was not the case. He was holding a conversation with someone who wasn’t there — or some disembodied being I couldn’t see, for all I fucking know, but it didn’t seem to me that he was merely talking aloud to himself. As I got within a foot or two of him, he finally seemed to notice me, or so I thought he did, and I greeted him with a warm smile, a nod of the head, and a “how you doing?” He said, “oh!” as he stepped aside, returned my smile, nodded, and said, “thank you.”

‘Twas a little strange, but given the town I work in and the strange people that inhabit it, I am well-adapted to such encounters at this point.

So I proceeded to enter the short, dark tunnel, and as I do so I hear something buzzing, like electricity. I continue to walk my way through it and suddenly, out of nowhere, as I’m about two-thirds the way through, my adrenile surges, my anxiety heightens, and I get the overwhelming, terrifying feeling that someone is right behind me. I actually turn around and look over my shoulder just as I exit the tunnel, but no one is there. Until I cross the street, however, that sense that someone is tailing me still lingers nonetheless.

I get my groceries and then begin the walk back, entering the tunnel yet again just as a train begins to go over the bridge above. All is well until, yet again, I’m about two thirds the way through, when the same thing happens. Adrenaline surges. Anxiety breaks through the ceiling. Someone is behind me, following me, and the sense is remarkably intense. I don’t remember if I bothered looking behind me as I did on the first occasion, but the feeling of being followed remained with me for most of the way home this time.

I know of the hypothesis that electromagnetic fields (EMF) and infrasound may explain many ghost sightings, as being sensitive to such fields can cause, for instance, the sense that one is being watched. Perhaps the electric buzzing I heard on my first walk through the tunnel — and likely also on my way back, though I didn’t notice it over the sound of the train plowing by on the bridge above me — may suggest one or the other was the true culprit here. After all, I am reasonably convinced that I constitute what is known as a Hypersensitive Person (HSP), as I’m hypersensitive in nearly every conceivable respect, so perhaps EMF hypersensitivity is just one more aspect of that.

Fucked if I know.

And maybe the two dreams as of late that I’ve had regarding dead people, the most recent of which was this morning, provided a context that led me to interpret the sensations I had when walking through the tunnel in just the way that I did. Not to mention that its Halloween season.

Even so, I find it curious that on both occasions the sensation came on abruptly and amazingly strong only when I was about two-thirds the way through the tunnel, yet it wasn’t in the same area within the tunnel, but rather at equal distance from opposite ends. I find it hard to believe that the source of the EMF would be moving, particularly in that specific fashion.

And then there was that roundish, elderly fellow arguing with someone that wasn’t there — or someone I couldn’t see — just as he was walking towards me from the direction of the tunnel. Did he experience it, too, perhaps more profoundly than I, and was he seeing and talking to an entity I only felt, however profoundly? Or was he even more sensitive to EMF or infrasound than I was, and so his experience was more multifaceted and intense than my own?

On Whack-a-Mole Memories.

On December 5th, I awoke with a short, final scene from a dream in my head. I was walking passed a table of three in a crowded restaurant and heard a familiar voice. I turn and discover its Mickey and Channing, two friends of mine from high school that I recently learned have a child on the way. We all hug warmly and I congratulate them.

As of late, for whatever reason, I’ve been spontaneously remembering and thinking about a lot of people from my past. Most notably, however, are the memories dealing with Anne, an exgirlfriend, as they keep popping up in my mind. Its like there’s a frustrating insistence behind it, too, as if some part of my mind keeps trying to remind me of these moments.

I don’t dwell on these memories as I used to, having made a deliberate attempt to stop. When it comes to my more anomalous experiences, that is a different matter, but in that case it isn’t about emotional reminiscing, but a desire for greater understanding, and I try to do this in tandem with research that expands beyond my own, personal memories. Unless it ties to something in my present, be it a real-life experience or a dream, or at the very least brings something new to the table, I try to avoid mulling over the same old memories. I want to move forward, not drift backward.

At least with respect to Anne, however, the thoughts and memories keep recurring. Its always along different avenues of thought, too, and its beginning to bother me. I thought I was done with this, done living in the past, but the present keeps opening doorways that lead me back there.

The past is always present, this I know, and I’m not one of those people that constantly blasts others for focusing too much on what’s behind them or trying to look too far ahead of themselves. Its important to remember, it pays to anticipate, and given the time lag inherent in our sensory perceptions, we never experience the objective “here and now” anyway.

Sorry, Buddhists. Facts are facts.

Even so, on a personal level, I’ve spent a good deal of my life thinking back, looking into the past, and its long overdue that I focus on moving forward in my life. I don’t want to get distracted or hung up on things, good or bad, that happened years ago, decades ago, lifetimes ago.

Now I’m forced to wonder why I keep getting led back to her. Yes, I realized relatively recently that if I should have stayed with anyone and actually nurtured an intimate relationship, for countless reasons it should have been her, but that is long since over and done with, dead and gone. And unless it relates to something at present or presents something that will help me build a better future, I can’t waste my time and energy digging into it. Yet she keeps popping up. Its like I’m playing some psychological game of Whack-a-Mole, or like I’m Bill Murray’s character Carl, fighting that goddamned gopher in the movie, Caddyshack.

In either case, I realize, that rodent of a thought inevitably wins.

Awake, Yet Mistaking Dream for Reality.

10/9/20

Though I had hoped I would remember at least some part of a dream upon waking up today, I recalled nothing. As I was drinking java and smoking a cigarette maybe a half an hour later, however, I was watching a YouTube video regarding the inaccurate ways to draw a human face. As the woman in the video was providing commentary on her example of doing this wrong, she pointed out the differences between the eyes in her drawing — and that triggered a memory of a dream scene.

I was sitting at a table with a group of people when, upon looking at someone’s eyes — and though I believe it was someone I know in waking life, I can’t quite remember who it was — it looks as if one eye was gray while the other was blue. I noticed this just before she turned her head to my right, and in such a way that I could only see the most-certainly-blue eye.

Without a second thought, I focused in on her face and asked, like a curious child, “Are your eyes different colors?”

Almost immediately after saying that, she turned her head back to an angle where I could see both eyes again, and now I could clearly see that both eyes were blue. I was confused, as I felt certain one was gray just a moment ago, though it nonetheless appeared clear now that I was wrong. It also came to my attention that something akin to this had happened earlier, that I had made a similar mistake just a short time ago, and though I have now forgotten what it was I think it may have also involved someone’s face.

It dawned on me that the others around me might feel that I’m acting weird and I suddenly feared that not only was I likely insane, but I was making this apparent fact pretty fucking obvious to everyone around me. In frustration, fear, and embarassment, I closed my eyes, sighing in frustration to myself as I placed my face down on the table in a sense of defeat.

In retrospect, it seems that I was to some degree awake within the dream and my attentiveness to details in my surroundings betrayed the fluid nature of the environment. The issue was that I interpreted this fluidity, this sudden change of detail in the dream, not as evidence that I was in fact in a dream but, assuming this was the waking world, as evidence suggesting my brain or mind was malfunctioning, that it was not a glitch in the world around me but a glitch in myself.

And yes, assuming dreams are subliminally-governed, internally-generated simulations of the mind, I suppose a more accurate interpretation would be that it was a glitch in myself and the world around me, as they are syonymous, but you know what I mean.

In any case, in the act of prematurely dismissing myself as insane, I unknowingly dodged another opportunity to become fully lucid in the context of a dream. This has certainly happened before, even in a recent dream (9/28/20), when I stepped into my father’s truck (which I’ve been driving in waking life) and became lucid. In the dream, I interpreted this sudden, altered state of heightened awareness to suggest that I was high and drunk, however, and so also missed the opportunity to become fully awake.

This sort of thing has happened to me so often in dreams that I feel a term must exist for it somewhere, though if such a term exists I’ve been unable to find it.

They aren’t exactly lucid dreams or waking dreams, which is to say dreams in which you’re awake and know that you’re dreaming, as despite being awake I don’t know that I’m dreaming. They aren’t exactly false awakenings, either, though I’ve had false awakenings before — and even worse, a false awakening loop. False awakenings are dreams in which you dream you’ve woken up in the “real” world despite the fact that you’re still dreaming. You wake up in bed, go about your morning routine, and then at some point it dawns on you that you’re actually still dreaming — often the result of noticing some mismatch between the real world and the dreamscape.

False awakenings are distinct from lucid dreams in that while you are awake within them, you don’t know you’re dreaming, which is why I’ve elected to use the term “false awakening” over “lucid dreaming” when slapping a title on dreams I wake up within.

The issues are that these dreams don’t start off with me waking up in bed and going about my morning routine. To the contrary, as with typical dreams, they seemingly start in medias res; in addition, the dream narrative may have little to no relation to the circumstances of my waking life, yet this never tips me off to the fact that I’m dreaming. However awake I am, I presume the world around me is the “real” world. I am nonetheless awake within these dreams, however: I am aware in a way comparable to the state of consciousness I experience in waking life or the “real” world (both of which you should take to be synonymous terms, and both of which I use interchangably, if you haven’t noticed, for lack of a better, or at least less-misleading term).

In these dreams I have even fought against waking up into the real world as from within the context of the dream I seem to be doing the opposite, which is to say falling asleep — particularly nerve-wracking when I happen to be driving in the dream, which is often enough the case.

The issue preventing me from realizing I’m in a dream is not awareness, I have deduced, but access to relevant memories. Even in my more mundane, typical dreams I have noticed that the dreams often provides its own history, my own backstory, often one so elaborate that I feel certain I must have had countless dreams within this particular “dream world” before and have consequently build up a set of memories through experience specific to it. Remembering such memories are dependent upon me being in that dreamworld in question, too — unless, of course, I’m able to remember it upon awakening in the real world and write it down, though such memories still remain inaccessible in dreams other than those taking place in that specific dreamworld.

I accept the dream world as real, perhaps, because my compartmentalized dream memories support that delusion and that gets in the way of me accessing my real-world memories.

None of these sorta-lucid dreams, sorta-false-awakenings appear to be absurd in comparison to the laws governing the real world, however. This may mean that the typical techniques recommended for Dream-Induced Lucid Dreaming (DILDS) may prove effective should I decide to start practicing them. Such techniques teach one to question whether or not they’re dreaming by means of two distinct sets of strategies.

One strategy under this banner involves keeping a dream diary and identifying recurring elements in your dreams — “dreamsigns” — by studying your dreams and noting recurring themes, images, or absurd elements (talking animals, etc) and learning to question your reality (“Am I dreaming?”) every time you come across them in the real world. Once the pattern is established, so the hypothesis goes, you’ll start doing this in dreams as well.

Another involves learning to regularly commit behaviors that have distinct results depending on what world you’re in, which is to say the dreamscape or the real world. Lets say, for instance, that every two hours throughout the day you condition yourself to jump upward a few times in the sincere attempt to fly, or push your finger into your palm in the transient yet sincere expectation that your finger will penetrate your palm with ease and come out the other side. Its also been suggested that you routinely check digital clocks or try to flip light switches on and off, as for whatever reason numbers and text change every time you look at them (and numbers on digital clocks become meaningless lines, or disappear altogether, leaving behind either a steady or blinking colon, at least in my experience) in a dream, and light, to the contrary, fails to change at all when utilizing light switches.

The consequence of these perceptual triggers (dreamsigns) and conditioned behaviors (reality-checks) could therefore provide a way for you to distinguish between the two worlds, whichever one you happen to be in at the time.

Even better, you can condition the perceptual triggers of dreamsigns to in turn trigger your reality-check behaviors. For instance, I often become awake within a dream when I’m in the driver seat of a car, truck, or some other vehicle, probably as a result of my real-life anxiety in that context. While that circumstance is by no means specific to dreams, then, it is a recurring element in both my sorta-lucid dreams and daily real life. On average, I get into my vehicle at least twice a day, five days out of the week. It still constitutes a dream sign, however, and one I’ve already identified. Given that, I could take up the practice of trying to push my finger through my palm every time I sit in the driver seat of whatever vehicle I happen to be driving at the time.

If I’m not awake, that may ignite memories that conjure my lucidity. If I am awake, it may trigger memories that enlighten me to the fact that despite being awake, I’m nonetheless in the dreamscape.

Anxiety Dreams (9/26/20 & 9/28/20).

9/26/20,
7:02 PM.

It appeared that I was in an apartment kind of like mine with at least three people very close to me. There was a lot of discussion and moving about. Someone had given me amnesia and those around me seemed to be acting as if it hadn’t happened, though I’m not certain they were in on it. I played dumb, pretending that I remembered even less than I did, however, and even pretended that I didn’t know that I’d had amnesia. At one point, I even falsely claimed to be confused about what day it was.

I wasn’t entirely sure where this dream came from. My parents had come up earlier that day and I’d gotten insufficient sleep, hence the nap afterward that gave birth to this dream. They visited to drop off their truck, which they’re letting me use until either they purchase a vehicle for me or one for themselves, at which point I’ll inherit the truck. I was driving the cursed car Friday, the previous day, when the brake pedal went to the floor.

In any case, perhaps they were represented by two of the three people in the dream, but damned if I know who the third person was supposed to be.

9/28/20

Its dark out. I’m walking down the sidewalk passed countless people going in the other direction, and evidently I was heading to work (though its not nearly close enough in real life for me to walk there). I suddenly realize that I forgot my bookbag, however, and at that point the scene abruptly changes.

I’m now suddenly at work. I’m standing just outside the open driver side door of the truck, which is running, and its parked at the side of the dumpster closest to the building with the truck pointing toward road. I decide to move the truck, to back it into a parking space so I can just pull out when I leave. The parking spaces by the dumpster are arranged differently, however, with a set arranged in front of the corral doors and a set facing the corral doors. There are other cars parked in some of the spaces. I decide to back into one of the spaces facing the corral.

When I step into the truck and sit down in the driver seat, that’s when the lucidity abruptly kicks in. Everything seems hyperreal and my consciousness is very acute. In the context of the dream, I’m confused, wondering if my consciousness felt so altered because I was drunk and high, which would clearly indicate I shouldn’t drive. I try to convince myself that I’m just moving the vehicle a bit, that i,should be able to manage it, but I suddenly feel very resistant. Then the alarm goes off and yanks me out of the dream.

Forgetting things is supposedly a telltale sign of an anxiety dream. Though its not exactly amnesia, as in the first dream, forgetting my book bag and suddenly remembering it as I walked to work could be a different manifestation of the same thing: losing memories, losing baggage.

As for my lucidity, it tends to happen (and I’m more apt to remember dreams I’d had in general) when I have broken sleep, and I certainly did this morning. In this case it seemed to kick into gear when I sat down in the truck and I felt some anxiety.

Is adrenaline what triggers my lucidity, or does it stand at least as one of my triggers? Is that why it happens so often when I’m inside a car in my dreams — as driving causes so much anxiety in waking life? Or why real-life anxiety, often enough about my car, often seems to trigger my lucid dreams and false awakenings?

The Cursed Car Meets Roly-Poly Trash Panda.

After I called off work on Monday, Tracy texts me, unprompted, asking if I needed a ride Tuesday, the following day. I accepted and she dropped me off at the shop, where the car was done and waiting, even paid for thanks to my parents — though this added weight to my guilt. The mechanic, Lex, I’ve known for a while now, and I’ve always found him a kind, trustworthy guy, and his wife is an incredibly sweet lady. As she handed me the keys from across the counter, I said to her, “As much as I like seeing you guys, hopefully, I won’t be back soon.”

Finally, it was over. At least for a while, so I hoped. Happy to have my car back, I start it up and turn out if the parking space and approach the exit of the small lot, and as I do, I hear a haunting, familiar sound. A cracking sound. Convinced I was being paranoid, that it was all a product of my overactive imagination, I continued onward to the exit and then had precisely the same experience that I had had on that Sunday. I put my foot on the brake and though the car stopped, it went to the floor — just as I had experienced when the brake line busted some time ago.

In disbelief, I open my car door and look to confirm. All too easily confirmed. Lex must have heard it all the way from the garage, too, as he came running up, a look of panic, frustration, and embarrassment on his face. He drops down to the ground, takes a look at it, asks me for the keys, and then drives it back into the garage.

Back in the office, his wife asks when I start work, and I tell her in about twenty minutes. She drove me to work and we decided that when the car was done she’d park it at my work and leave the keys under the seat. I tried to relax over a cigarette before going inside, taking my temperature with the third-eye gun and waiting by the time clock.

Two minutes before I’m to clock in, my phone starts vibrating. Its Lex. I pick up.

“Bad news buddy,” he says. “When it happened again, it cracked the frame.”

He explained that when the frame cracked, the break line had also busted, which was why the peddal went to the floor. He said he was fixing the brake line right now, and he should have the frame by tomorrow — and assured me, with apparent emphasis, that it would be done by tomorrow. The part would cost 250$.

At this point, I felt exhausted, furious, drawn into that all-too-familiar dark well within my psyche. After I clocked in, I went about my usual — gathering trash, collecting them in the gondola, and then rolling it out to,the corral to,the side if the store, which housed the dumpsters. There, I made another call to my parents. I’m almost thankful I got the answering machine. I gave them the rundown. Later, my father texts me, referring to the “cursed car” and how he thought we should start looking around for a new vehicle for me.

So I was back to my parents rescuing me financially. Back to relying on friends for rides. Back to feeling ashamed for not being able to stand on my own, thankful for the friends and family I am lucky enough to have, but feeling guilty for taking advantage, no matter how necessary that was, given my pathetic, stagnant lot in life. A lot which I was stuck in because I was apparently incapable — due to lack of focus, lack of ambition, and an incredible reservoir of ceaseless anxiety — to overcome; to rise above.

After texting Moe, he agreed to pick me up and drive me home after work, and we bullshitted a bit in my apartment, which certainly helped my mood. I then had to call my dad the following morning to take him up again on his offer to drive me to work. He picked me up at 2 and, on the way, spoke to me of the plan him and mom had put together.

My parents had just sold their truck, as they had inherited the truck of my uncle, who had passed away. Their thought was to sell my car, get me that truck, and that they would buy a new truck. Despite the guilt, it was a relief. I never thought that I would feel so happy at the prospect of getting this car out of my life, but here I was. The thought was that this would happen in a month or two; the car only had to last me that long.

Despite the fact that Lex had yet to call me back, my father drove us not to my fast food place of employment, but to the shop instead, where Lex said he was about done with the car. My father paid (again), we said our goodbyes, and I waited a short time inside.

The door between the lobby, office, waiting room — whatever you want to call it — and the garage was open, and from that perspective I saw them take my car for a test drive. I’m not sure this was a typical proceedure, but felt even if it was, Lex felt it necessary to do it this way on this particular occasion due to what had formerly happened. Evidently it was a good thing, too, as the car came back shortly thereafter and whoever it was that had done the test drive said something to Lex regarding something about the transmission, something they had failed to do, which Lex sounded frustrated about.

A few moments later, I was told the work on the car was finished. I went outside and the car was already running, driver side door open and waiting. I adjusted the seat settings and nervously backed up and approached the exit. Aside from what was clearly an entirely fucked up alignment, which I believe I then and there decided to have some other shop align, all appeared to be fine and fucking dandy, though given experience, an undercurrent if skepticism remained that I was utterly unable to shake. I made it passed the exit this time — at last, success! — and made it to work, in fact, with no other issue along the way.

I at first decided to get an alignment at a shop in the town I live in on Friday, the first day of my weekend, but discovered upon calling them on Friday that they — of course, of course — don’t do alignments. Trying to control my frustration, and determined not to return to Lex’s shop so soon, I figured I would bring it to another shop, this one in the town where I work, early on Monday, the second day of my work week. After consulting with a friend of mine at work, whom I will call Jiffy, as well as Moe, both suggested another shop in town — even closer to work than Lex’s shop, which was already incredibly close, and essentially on the same road. I decided to go there for an alignment the following Monday.

Before I was able to do so, Sunday evening happened.

As I’m leaving work at 11, I’m going back and forth about stopping at Circle K to get a lemonade and some bean dip for the big bag of tortilla chips I still have at home. I feel this strange fear telling me not to stop, to just drive straight home, but I decide to ignore that gut feeling and stop at Circle K anyway. I park, leave the car on, take my other set of keys, and lock it. I go inside, get a lemonade and settle on a jar of Salsa Con Queso. Once back in car, put it in reverse, stop, and put it in drive.

I step on the gas — and I’m still going backward.

Did my dumbass not put it in drive? I check. Its certainly in drive. I step lightly on the gas again: I’m still going in reverse. The shifter is all loosy goosey, too. Frustrated, I drive it in reverse to back of the lot, my door still open, and put my foot on the brake a short distance from one gas pump. I’m still screaming fuck and other obscenities, and in the process I think scared some little kids in the back seat of the car at pump. Guilt on top of rage now. I can’t put it in park at first and I can’t just keep my foot on the peddal, so I use the emergency brake. Then I turned off the car.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Try to breathe deep.

I get out and look under the car, then pop the hood and look down into its guts, as if I would even know what I’m looking for or would even know if something was out of place. Then I sit in back in the car and try to start it again.

Nothing. It wouldn’t start. Lights on the dash lit up, but nothing else, not the faintest noise.

I take out my phone. Should I try to secure a ride home or call AAA first? I saw that Sean had sent me a meme over messenger. Without commenting, I bitched about my car having issues again. I felt bad asking him to drive me home yet again, so I looked on the messenger list, and Steve was recently on. I asked him if he was busy. He said he was picking up Ronnie, a kid who I often close with. I asked if he could drive me home. I didn’t get an answer before I decided to call AAA, and I was on the phone with them with when Steve arrived at Circle K with Gus, Ronnie, and Sean.

After talking with the woman on the other end of the line, she said the tow was on its way — and I was the same tow company that had cone for me a week earlier, when the car took a shit by the exit at work. ETA was circa an hour.

Sean got his girlfriend to come up with the car and Steve took Ronnie and Gus home. As we waited, Sean said how it would be funny if it was the exact same guy that towed by car from before, too.

It fucking was.

And so they drive me home, with Sean offering a few hits from the pot-pen on the way. It was like pouring water on a fire.

Even as we were still waiting for the tow truck to arrive, I realized something: my car had essentially lost power. Unlike that dream I had, there were actual lights on the dash when I turned the key, but just like in the dream, it made no sound when I did it.

Was that dream really a preminatory one? Not an exact flashforward, of course, but a mishmash of happenings-to-be involving my cursed car? Or am I looking too deeply, seeing what isn’t there?

And of all things, why have premonition involving this goddamned car as opposed to something, anything else? Because it serves as an effective metaphor for other things, simply because its an emotionally-impactful circumstance, or because its the point at which every thing in my life goes downhill and embeds itself deeply in a mound of shit, potentially ending with my life in ruins, even my death?

Carl Jung seemed to cradle the idea that if we repress some issue — an internal, psychological issue — and we are adamant in ignoring it, it will manifest as an objective circumstance in a concerted effort to grab our intention and force us to face it once and for all. He also wrote that:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

I’m powerless, I can’t move forward in my life, I’m stuck in reverse…

If this isn’t all superficial bullshit, if the dark of my mind, my unconscious, is truly striving to drive in a message to me, why can’t it just state it blatantly, directly? Why must it be in words I could never hope to misunderstand or, as the case seems to be, in symbols and metaphors I could misinterpret and perhaps only see the significance of in retrospect? And where is the guidance? Not merely what fucked up and endlessly frustrating things are going to happen, but what I might do about it? Not merely signs as to what will go wrong, but what reaction is most appropriate, what the most promising path to follow might be?

I felt so stuck and fucked, and not in the good way.

I called the shop the following day, feeling embarrassed, frustrated, but, most of all, depressed as shit. I called just to ensure they got the note I’d left on the front seat of the car. They had. His wife, who picked up the phone, went and got Lex, and he seemed deeply sympathetic. “One thing after another with this thing, huh?” I couldn’t help but agree. Apparently, it was just something to do with the shifter, some little, cheap piece I can’t remember the name of but looked up online later. He said he thought he had one laying around and could have it done by the end of the day.

I called off that day, a Monday, just as I had the previous Monday, and for the same reason — because my car had to be towed Sunday, albeit a different Sunday, and I was tired of having to ask people for rides. I didn’t tell my parents because they’re worried enough about me and this car lately, have done more than enough for me lately, and now that I had my check deposited I thought I could actually pay for however much this was going to be. I did need a ride to the shop the following day, however, so I called Moe again. He dropped me off the following day, and I just made it up the steps to the shop before the door opened and Lex’s wife was waiting there, keys in hand. He didn’t even charge me. I was incredibly thankful for that.

All was well by Wednesday, which is today at the time of this writing — for the next fourteen minutes, anyway. As I was driving home from work this evening, I suddenly saw something moving in the road up ahead. A raccoon. The biggest, fattest trash panda I’ve ever seen in my fucking life, munching on something — something cast out of a car window by some pathetic litterbug, no doubt. I swerved to the right to miss him, he moved to the right to dodge me, but my car and the obese fuzzball were evidently destined to meet with an impact that made me wince.

The car appears to be fine for once — time tends to fucking tell — but as for roly-poly trash panda, I’m not at all confident. If he isn’t dead, he’s hurting like hell and probably wishes he was.

Yay for more guilt. There’s always room for more guilt. Its like fucking Jello.

At some point, the apparent bad luck, rage, anxiety, guilt, depression — it becomes so absurd that even as my blood boils, I have to just laugh and shake my head. And then go home and channel my boiling blood through my fingers as a means of catharsis.

Until this fucking car is out of my life, I hope this is the last chapter with respect to its constant need of repairs. When this began, I was so happy to have this car. I never thought I’d be so happy to see the end of the road with respect to my relationship with it.

On Drinking, Dreaming, & Suffocating Masks.

Masks can be suffocating — and I’m not just talking about the practice the more responsible individuals in our society have taken up during this pandemic, but the psychological masks we donn throughout our lives. Sometimes I’m just tired of being me, or at least this version of me. I’m just so over myself. It reminds me of something Chad Gray wrote and sang in one of his songs, though I’ve forgotten if it was under the banner of Mudvayne or Hellyeah. In any case, essentially, he wrote, “I’m so tired of existing.”

I’ve often felt this way, and I think its a feeling I’ve tried to satisfy through drinking the last few plus years. I’ve found that sleeping and dreaming offer the same thing, and in many ways, its even better. And, yeah, its clearly more healthy, too. Both offer a temporary escape from the prisons of the Jungian persona and ego and give the shadow that resides behind them a little liberty, a little sunlight — or moonlight, as the case may be.

In a recent article I read regarding a study on the effects of alcohol, it was revealed that people are just as aware of the consequences of their actions while drunk as they are when they’re sober. The difference is that when people are drunk, they simply don’t give a damn about the consequences. It also reminds me of an article I read some time ago in which it alleged that our drunk selves are our true selves. It is akin to what I’ve heard regarding our dream self, specifically that the part of us that we assume in dreams is a part that is unrestrained by laws and social conventions, liberated by cultural conditioning and what we like to think of ourselves and how we wish others to see us.

Dreams, like booze, free us from our masks and gives us some much-needed breathing room.

The similarities between drinking and dreaming don’t end there, either; there’s also the amnesia that often accompanies both. As was talked about on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast with guest Malcolm Gladwell, the reason we begin to forget things and ultimately black out has to do with how alcohol effects the hippocampus. Booze begins to shut it down until that part of our brain is entirely offline. No new memories can be stored until the bubbly beverage content in our system begins to deplete.

As Gladwell explained, the frightening part of this is that other parts of the brain are not necessarily effected. As a consequence, the blackout individual can seem otherwise normal. The only way to tell is to ask them a question, wait a few moments, and ask them the same question again. If they can’t tell you’re repeating yourself, that they’re repeating themselves, then they’re in a state of blackout.

At the very least, the blackout memories — at least explicit memories — don’t retain themselves and so clearly couldn’t add up, which is to say that the amnesia here doesn’t provide some psychological compartment where something akin to an alternate personality could blossom. The feeling that you’re some alter while you’re drunk, I imagine, comes from the fact that you’re free of inhibitions and care far less about consequences, regardless as to whether such a state truly constitutes your “true self.”

With respect to one’s dream self, however, experience has indeed suggested that memories add up in secret compartments of the mind. I’ve come into dreams that come equipped with their own set of memories, suggesting I’ve either been in this dream setting before or it somehow provided for itself and my character within it an elaborate backstory.

So there do indeed seem to be clear differences.

It also makes me think of a Jim Carrey quote regarding depression that I recently saw. Though I liked the meme and saved it on my phone, I did so rather than share it on social media because I wasn’t entirely certain it was true, or at the very least always true. It has continued to hang with me, however, and I keep looking back on the meme, contemplating it:

“Depression is your mind telling you its tired of being the character you’re trying to play.”

And when you find it so bloody difficult to change yourself and your life, as it is in my case, perhaps — and I say this to provide explanation, mind you, not justification — tools like drinking and dreaming can provide a temporary vacation.