I have been keeping a dream journal, sometimes irregularly, for almost two years. The book is nearly full, and so I have felt an nudge to post a few of the best, for some were truly extraordinary. There are alot of dreams, so I’ve decided to split the post up into years. I’ll finish 2009 in January, I think.
Having gone back through the book has revealed a few reoccurring dream “symbols” and themes, which apart from being extremely interesting for their frequency, may contain some message regarding my unconscious and conscious life. Some of the dreams I have posted don’t contain these symbols, as they seem to pop up in more mundane and vague nights. However, I have some ideas regarding these signs, but inevitably, just as the fullness of a dream escapes us most often upon waking, the meanings behind the symbols are difficult to pin. And so in an effort to gain clarity I offer these as well.
My most frequent symbols:
-> Flying, Levitation, Floating. The process of getting airborne is always very involved, however, I have mostly employed the same system since I was a child, which is to hold my arms out and press the air down and away from me, sort of in a flapping motion, until I gain a certain momentum and I am in the air, at which point I can just fly without any movement. Another method I sometimes use is to bounce like a ball along whatever surface I’m on, each time gaining height until I reach a threshold and can just stay in the air. I can remember using both of these methods to just gain a position in the air and stay there, floating.
-> Downhill Skiing, mostly going off huge jumps and performing the most difficult and impossible tricks, always landing just at the right moment
-> Mountain Biking/BMXing, same as above.
-> Finding money on the ground or in other strange places, usually gold coins.
-> Fighting and destroying ferocious wild animals, both large and small, usually with only my bare hands.
-> Water; rivers, oceans, lakes, sailing, boats.
-> Getting harassed by bees or wasps. I haven’t been stung yet, only really annoyed.
-> Wielding power, physical, verbal, emotional or magical, in defense of causes or people.
-> Playing piano or trumpet in front of large live audiences, though usually piano. I often am aware of the fact that I don’t know how to play piano and I’m just putting my hands where I feel they should go. It usually comes out really well.
And now for the dreams. Obviously I’ve only picked a few, and I’ve changed the names where it matters so that nobody gets embarrassed, or uncomfortable. Some of them are actually pretty funny.
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January 4th, 2008
I was in a city in the middle of the night and I walked into a guitar store that was somehow open, although I noticed that they were only letting in certain people, and then one of the employees asked me to guard the door to make sure polar bears didn’t get in. And then later on Oscar was with me in the city rambling around in the cold night feeling extremely dangerous and shadowy.
January 6th, 2008
I dreamt I was in Hawaii, driving up this road that was intensely steep and recently developed because there were basically building houses in the middle of the jungle and on top of a mountain. And at the top of the road was a house in the swampy trees and a strange marsh with a crocodile in it that I had to battle by pushing it back into the swamp until it gave up and I could pass and go about my ramble down the otherside of the mountain.
January 7th, 2008
I was bouncing up and down through a forest, really high and then back to the ground in crazy exaggerated movements, meanwhile thinking about Maria and thinking about how she was so chilled out about everything compared to myself. And then one of the things I needed next was to keep this muffin mix bucket in my hand until finally my bouncing yielded to becoming airborne and at this point I dropped it, and seeing how it took a few seconds to fall I could see I was actually insanely high, above a beautiful open sand beach, almost directly in between the sand and the ocean actually, split. And I passed people who looked up in awe and I heard someone say “Oh he’s one of those people.” And I must have flown off into infinity because I can’t remember what happened next.
January 10th, 2008
I was in a huge dark house and feeling that it was very untidy and that I had to get the hell out. And when I did it was in Redwood by the community centre and I had met some older guy I knew, but there were a bunch of people around the house for some reason, just milling, and then suddenly a wolf came out of nowhere and everyone flipped and I was like “HOLY SHIT call 911″ and more wolves came out of the forest and so we jumped in this guy’s car and drove to his house in Redwood, while I tried to get the cops on his phone but that didn’t work so we went back to where everyone was getting massacred and suddenly I had a gun and it was a war between the grand forces of good and evil and I was shooting at everything. The gun was like an old dixie toy one I used to have, and I was angry because the wolves had killed all my friends and I was out to avenge them, particularly one guy who was my closest friend or something, and so I went on a huge rampage and took a whole bunch of prisoners because I guess the wolves morphed, and then my friend who I thought was dead showed up and we embraced and that was the end and it was epic as hell.
July 10th, 2008
Aaron and I were trying to rob a bank across the river in a dirty southwestern coal town, all grey, and we had been chased by the law and we had a few firefights, but there were other people who were trying to rob the same bank so we had to dodge them and eventually I lost Aaron but found him again as we both had the same idea to pose as engineers and get ferried across the river by one of the security guys for the bank, but then suddenly I was in my room and Aaron told me he was just sick and tired of running from the law and then I awoke.
July 12th, 2008
It was a crazy battle scene between huge machine guns and my band of men and we pulled ourselves out of this situation in which we were cornered just by talking to the machine gun operators about how we had time and love on our side and not to mention the fact that we ate our apple cores, etc, and eventually they surrendered against all odds and we took the main mastermind hostage.
July 30th, 2008
I was protecting Wayne’s brother from getting attacked by these kids by throwing shoes at them. It was in the street, on a corner and in a tiny little rural town in England, and the people who were supposed to be taking care of his brother had just fucked off and left him down to get lynched basically, and yet it was sort of a game, almost like a pack of mischievous coyotes vs. a bear or something.
Earlier I had been a great commander in a war and we were sending off all these troops to battle at night on little convoys on a river, with tiny little lights only to let us see them go off in the dark and to their fate, and I wished that I could lead them all off myself but if I had gotten killed it would be the end of it all, because I was the planner and had to lead from the base, or so I felt.
Later I watched what seemed like some amateur pornography as the situation was that I was watching myself get together with this woman on the back of a truck that was half immersed in the water of a lake in the summer and it was totally illogical.
September 28th, 2008
I dreamt that there was a crashed BF-109 airplane from the second world war in the back of the disco and Henderson and Flint were there and I was saying actually boys this is a Henkel-111 which I guess is a different German airplane, but Henderson had a model of it in his hand and he clearly demonstrated that it was a BF-109 after all with a serious of complicated hand movements and so yes I had to agree in the end, but then we had to decide what to do with this crashed airplane because obviously it couldn’t stay there, as Flint pointed out, and we considered scrapping it and selling the metal or alternatively rebuilding it and getting out of Fredericton that way.
I also dreamt that I had somehow ended up in an island country that was a combination of Alberta and Scotand, ‘cept it hadn’t been discovered yet and this was mainly because they were the height of technology and intelligence and had eluded everyone, but were just about ready to reveal themselves to everyone and become the forefront of society.
October 7th
I dreamt that Henderson and Flint and I were taking a road trip in an absolutely ancient black car, like those gangster cars from Chicago in the 30’s. Henderson’s Grandma had given it to him, and we were going through the Northern Midwest US prairie towns. We passed into Wyoming right after sneaking by a gigantic pack of coyotes who were attacking a smoking and inflamed amusement park like Calaway. I remember thinking we were damn lucky to get into Wyoming, the safest place in the world, apparently.
October 9th, 2008
Early this morning I was in a small field encircled by medium sized hedges and fences. The energy of the place was extremely negative and I felt it was in need of clearing, so I mustered up all my energy because I guess I was a sorcerer of some sort, and then I cast a bright green mist from my hands all over the field, with me flying around the circumference of the field, as it was sort of a circular shape, and just flowing this energy and purifying the place.
November 5th, 2008
I was on a field somewhere, in a normal city, kinda in a park with homes and fences around, and I received a message that going to Haida Gwaii and meeting the elders would be fine as long as we had our protection stones and so then we began to prepare and Henderson and some other kids were hanging off some huge balloon that was whipping around and all was chaos. Later I was in a tiny, bavarian-styled convenience store in the Bragg Creek Shell and the man behind the counter was having extreme difficulty understanding what I was buying, as if there was some haze in between the counter and our eyes, and so it took like 15 years to check out but all the people behind me were surprisingly calm somehow, but anyway finally I got all my items whatever they were all bought and the guy said I had to take some loonies and put them under the newspaper racks to raise them up but I rejected this preposterous idea. And then my grandfather showed up and was being all boisterous and chummy with everyone, but I was engrossed in this show that was on the radio about Feist while I snooped around the side of the counter where I found a huge bundle of old army and civilian vintage patches, and I was amazed by these and wished for them in real life, for somehow I knew I was in an “other” state. Just then I turned around and there was a giant polar bear sniffing me, pearly white and terrifying, right in the shop, and I flipped out inside and tiptoed away, which it didn’t seem to mind, and I faded away into the night.
November 7th, 2009
I had a conversation with my father’s parents and it was all about what I was going to do with my precious life, and basically I got them to understand somehow or at least begin to understand where I was coming from with music and what it means to me. I said some inspirational thing and Grandpa actually wrote it down, and it was huge in the dream but now it just seems obvious – “you have to know who you are and exactly what you want to be successful.”
November 9th, 2008
I was on a jungle canoe trip through a strange rainforest marsh that had trees growing out of the water, huge straight green things, and we were navigating through these in a sort of a convoy, and I was steering our canoe with Penelope in the front and something was definitely going on between us but it was unclear. When we reached our destination however, which was just a takeout in the jungle, things became very strangely toned and I was suddenly on an undercover starwars mission because I had to avoid all these aliens and there was this hollow in the ground by an old fallen tree where they were hiding out and I had to penetrate it somehow.
I also dreamt about Clara again.
November 28th, 2008
I was crossing a street in a huge metropolis with Aaron and his father and when we got to the other side I found a toonie on the sidewalk which lead me to look over to the left where there was a stretch of grass in between the sidewalk and the road and there were piles of coins in there, strewn across of the grass, so I collected it all and I seemed to be aware that this was some kind of trend lately and Aaron’s father actually commented on this and said how strange and auspicious it was. After some more walking we arrived at a place where we would be settling for the night, and it seemed that I actually had been leading a group much larger than just the previous two, and all the women were preparing a feast while the men set up the defences and the sleeping areas. Tanya’s mother was there and she was one of the food leaders and was organizing everything extremely well. I don’t know what I did with all the money.
December 12th, 2009 – **Dream of the year**
I met Bob Dylan. He was on a bus with me as we rode around in a summer city somewhere in the states. He got off at my stop and so I figured I should talk to him and so I said excuse me Mr. Dylan and then I asked him whether I could talk to him and he said sure thing. So as we walked along this long road that ended in a cul-de-sac of sorts, which was apparently where I lived and close to where he was staying for the night, I asked him how he wrote his songs and what he did to make them so good and he said that he looked for “the spark” and then tried to encompass that spark in the whole song. When he got to his house I said thanks quickly and peeled out ’cause he was with a girl and I figured he’d been extremely gracious in talking to me. Later on in the night I found a whole bunch more money.
December 13th, 2009
Feist was in my living room showing me how to play her songs on my mother’s guitar, except that sometimes she sang in Spanish and also made all kinds of jokes that went completely over my head. I asked her why she did that and she apologized and said it was a habit from her dad, and then started playing “So Sorry” and the music continued into the next scene of the dream, in which I was walking up a stream that came from a hot spring somewhere further up in the mountains, so it was warm, but it was winter and at night, so the big old pines were covered in snow and I was naked to boot. I was walking up this stream in order to get back to where I had been before, which I guess I thought was some gymnasium, and I decided that the best way to get there was just to follow the stream and eventually it started sloping upward until I came to a room/hallway lit by candles and with bamboo walls, which was very familiar, and then I tried to kiss this girl but she declined politely, and I figured I should probably ask next time since these people were actually real somewhere. Anyway somehow I got back to the gym, where I had left my keys and my clothes, as I was still naked, but then I figured I didn’t really need them after all, as I’d be waking up soon anyway, and then sure enough I did.
December 14th, 2008
I was in Italy in an extraordinarily beautiful area. I was walking down a small set of shops by a quiet country mountain road with a baby in my arms, which I suppose belonged to me. We walked into the last shop and this tired looking American started asking me frantically whether I wanted to rent an orange convertible on special. I said I needed to think about it, thank you, and the my baby said “Hello!” to me as if it had grown instantaneously which surprised me, but I said hello back, and then he started talking like a 10 year old, so I was all parently and said I needed for him to be quiet just for now and he seemed to understand in a really mature way.
December 19th, 2008
I was on a tropical beach in a foreign land and was living in a little shack there with Clara, but then I had to leave on a boat that I didn’t want to go on, but she sent with me a picture of her smiling in the water. Luckily I was able to get on a different boat by hopping across a gap between the first and the second and then navigated all through the inside bowels of this thing, and it took forever but eventually I ended up back on the beach with her somehow.
December 22nd, 2008
I was at the high school and met Devon’s mother and Devon was scheduled to play a big gig in the gym and they wanted me to play the drums so I had to hang around until everything was ready. I was waiting around in the bathroom like we used to do when Milo pulled the fire alarm falsely which fucked up the whole setup of the band, so I had to wait even longer. All my stuff had been strewn around the halls anyway by this event so I went and gathered it all together and found my wallet by somebody else’s bag that had money falling out of it which I considered stealing but then thought the better of it and also saw that there was a whole lot more money in my wallet than I had thought to begin with. So I walked back toward the gym where Devon was playing and got in line with Anna and had a playful tender moment and then we kissed and then went in to the gym. Except it seemed everyone had different songs to listen to and dance with after a preliminary first song for everyone that had turned the gym into a big green field on which everyone gradually spread out on in anticipation of the next song which would take them on their own paths and journeys. My second song was Buddy Holly’s “It doesn’t matter anymore” and it was accompanied by me walking up a forested hill with seniors sitting on the slope singing along and clapping and shaking my hand as I passed.
