Strange dreams

: Rested

Two nights ago, I dreamt of vampires fighting in a world that was never day, always seemed to be raining, on streets where no one who could avoid being out would be. The night before last, I dreamt of nuclear armageddon, a group of mis-matched people trying to survive an attack in a series of connected warehouses that become a warren of hiding places far enough from the epicentre to have survived the immediate issues of radiation but without supplies, where roving bands of other survivors fight for what few resources remain. The dream seemed to last all night, in full cinematic experience, with children being born, only to find that at the end of 25 years or so a new world had been built above them that they never knew, and that it hadn't been a nuclear exchange but some other mysterious weapon, and at the end, the survivors managed to get into a balloon craft and sail away to a new life. I also remember a woman whose main goal was to preserve her collection of memorabilia of the royal family of Sweden. There was also a young man who had never seen the world outside.

As I've mentioned before, when I dream, my dreams are generally more coherent than fragmentary--they seem to play out all around the consciousness with a hyper-reality that seems like a combination of living real life and that intense feeling you have when you've let yourself become part of a movie or a book; there's just enough surreal quality to keep you from thinking you're just living life, especially since the perspective changes, as if going to different camera angles, sometimes with touch and scent as well as image and sound. I've never been aware of dreaming in anything but colour, although sometimes it's deliberately bleached, like in the Goth views of the vampire world. My mind is the director, and I'm usually either a participant (sometimes taking various roles in the same dream) or sometimes it's as if I'm watching unseen by the players. I wonder if that's a product of a more visual society, with our TV and movies? Or maybe it has something to do with how deep I can go into a movie or book, to the point of not noticing the world around me. Hmmm....

Last night I was having a series of shorter dreams, the type that are not so vivid, which actually tends to be a little more restful. I mean, how are you supposed to get rest if you're struggling and fighting for survival in your dreams all night? Maybe they're repressed fears and struggles coming out at night, after all, with the layoff, the price of acting rationally the rest of the time. I woke up at one point to find that the night had turned a little chill, with a wind shift blowing into the open windows. I went back to sleep and dreamt that I was on a bus with my ex and his boyfriend going to a Christian conference, which makes no sense, really. One, I don't have anything to do with them and haven't for years--they're both particularly nasty characters. Two, I'm pagan, the boyfriend is as well, and the ex is a framer of the Path of the Personal Divine. But we were going with a lot of others to a place that doesn't really exist on the river between Louisville and Cincinnati). They'd given everyone brown shirts with Jesus slogans on them. We got to the motel, and I found this ice cream that was Asian that was supposed to be sort of regular ice cream around a softer cream, and there was a slogan that compared it to a feeling of riding horses swiftly or a woman who has been raped to softeness. I know that makes no sense whatsoever. The point is, this latest statement infuriated me, and I refused to stay in a place that would sell this stuff. I confronted the management but they brushed me off, so after making a very public stink, I left to try to find either another place to stay or a way home. At some point, I found a woman having a large tattoo put on her back because her lover wanted her to do it. They had put an inscription and a woman's face, but there was still a lot to do, and she asked them to stop, and he pressured her to continue and she caved in. They finally finished I talked to her and she gave some excuse of 'so and so' wanted her to do it and he wouldn't think he loved her, and they'd said it wouldn't look right otherwise. I told her they'd been at a point where they could have just finished off the girl's hair and it would have looked fine, and that she should never let someone pressure her into anything she didn't want to do. I don't think it's coincidence that my ex was in that same dream. But I don't get why I'm dreaming this sort of stuff now. I feel much more like I did in the dream...the one who would not hesitate to do something because it is right rather than because someone wants me to. I used to be very much like that girl. It was an interesting juxtaposition of personality. But it's odd timing, and I haven't really been thinking of my past so much as my future lately. But for what it's worth, that's what percolated out of my subconscious.
:3