Strange Dreams

I dreamed I was a grim reaper — not the Grim Reaper, but a grim reaper, as there was a different Death for every possible way to die.  Ironically, I stood accused of a person's demise, but I didn't fear capital punishment as I knew I was the personification of death and, besides, I could slip away from the rigmarole at any moment.  Exactly which sort of death I personified as I can't recall.

In the wee hours of January 17, 2013, I dreamed of writing to Larry Hass.  He had requested the template from a printing company that I use (full of cut lines and bleeding, come to think of it!).  I noticed on my laptop screen that the file of Larry's request had surprisingly disappeared once I'd printed out the template.  (Behest and fruition adding up to one, not two?)  As I began to handwrite a cover letter for the printout, I noticed that the paper was unusually fibrous (papyrus?), the back being somewhat smoother than the front.  Within mid-sentence (asking "Did you request this?" since I had no evidence of a request), I noticed that I'd inexplicably switched to the back of the page.  (When front and back merge, aren't we in Möbius territory?)  This happened twice, and I crumpled up the very crisp pages with divided sentences.  On my third try, I decided to begin on the smoother side to see if my pen would stay there.  (Apparently it worked.)  As I wrote, I was aware of three mismatched clocks.  (A fullness of time?  A three-in-one mystery?)  When I set off to mail the letter, my feet ran in place like Fred Flintstone.  (Motion/stillness? Point B indistinguishable from point A? "Modern stone age"?)  After I dreamed this, as I remained asleep, I lucidly recalled the details and dream-typed this transcript to Larry three different times, as if the message were so important that I mustn't forget anything upon waking!

Our friend KC shared this dream from 1999:

I was with Craig C. and a few other people on an exploratory voyage.  It seemed like we were on a spaceship, but there wasn't much sense of it being that physical.  We were exploring different levels of reality, and discovered that to go from one level to the next higher, we had to place our attention on the sun of the nearest solar system, and once we focused on it, we would awaken in the next higher reality.  But each level was different enough that the technique had to be altered for each level.

We so often assume that our waking life influences our dreams, but Jeff Hawkins knows it's the other way around.  He notes: "Funny that my dreams can so powerfully influence my waking life, while my waking life has so little influence over my dreams."  We couldn't resist a diagram.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

An illustration from an 1891 issue of The Strand magazine.  The caption reads: "Wake up, wake up!"

Our friend Ken shares a nesting box of a dream:

In the dream, you told me that you really liked a word I had coined. I responded that I wasn't surprised, because you'd actually coined the word yourself, in a dream I had (which was a dream within the dream I was in).

Here's a list of the levels:

1) Ken writing this e-mail to Craig describing
2) A dream I had, where you were impressed with the word I'd coined, where I said that
3) I'd had a dream where you had coined the word, and told it to me.

Make sense?

Unfortunately, I don't remember what the word was...

If I find a faint shadow of hands on a wall and the memory of a rabbit in white chalk, I may recall that all dreaming is a kind of living where you cannot die no matter how many times you fall from the building.
—Geof Huth (see his entire piece here.)

Chalk rabbit underfoot by tech wizard Gordon Meyer.

Inspired by and for Gary Barwin.

Here's a fun dream anecdote over at Futility Closet.

Do you remember,
when you were a child,
the animals used to call your name?
And you knew in the dark
when the others were dreaming
and you could never get to sleep.
—Cat People (1982)

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

"Behind the dark masonry of the forehead there must be enigmas sleeping such as Amsterdam had never imagined in its wildest dreams.”
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

We're so often mesmerized by rows of asterisks twinkling on pages of old books.  Here's an especially dreamy example from Wilfred Montressor: or, The Secret Order of the Seven (1865).

Friedrich Nietzsche suggests:


However, Vladimir Nabokov notes:

I dreamed I was being tested on Shakespeare's "Withdrawn," but I couldn't remember if it was a comedy, tragedy, or history.

"In dreams, I use my hands to propel myself through the dense atmosphere. I am heavy; I am unable to move quickly in the viscosity of the place. I pull myself forward with my fingertips, but not along the ground. A tapestry of woven strands lies below me and stretches out in front. This is how I move.

"In dreams, I negotiate a labyrinth. My mazes are open fields and dark interior spaces. They are inhabited, but no one is like me. They are obstacles and distractions, and I move past them on my way to freedom.

"In dreams, I don't remember the dull slumber of my waking hours."

—Jeff, Omegaword