A Dream Diary #4 - May 2022
Image by Zoltan Matuska from Pixabay
Dream Diary May 2022
I moved house at the beginning of the month, away from Cambridge for the first time in over fifteen years. There has been much to think about, and little time to spend trying to remember dreams. There’s too much else to remember, all the boring admin of life stuffed into a tiny pocket of time. But even now that I’m settled into my new home, with those worries mostly dealt with, and a new life to look forward to, I’m finding it almost impossible to remember any of my dreams.
And I cannot live without them. They are my peace. Peace, to me, means adventure; infinite variety; never knowing what is about to happen, or whether you can deal with it. Not the drudgery of everyday patterns; the early morning rise, and shower, and getting dressed, and coffee, and work, and break, and work, and lunch, and more work, and exercise, and dinner, and washing up, until at last I can escape for the evening into some other world (be it a book, a game, or a film).
Dreams are an escape into a realm of mystery. A challenge of the unconscious. A chance to test your true self, without the burden of the body’s limitations, against experiences too wild to fathom. We should be eternally grateful for them, above any of the gifts granted by the conscious mind. I cannot do without them, but for some reason, they are becoming rarer every week.
The first of the month was Beltane, a festival heralding the return of the male god, Cern, to the world. The horned god. A hunter, but also a trickster. I mention this only because a Google search on the significance of the 1st of May led me to it - for some reason, it seemed oddly in sync with my current state of mind.
1.5.22
Still nothing
2.5.22
Zero
3.5.22
Diddly squat
4.5.22
Last night, my dreams were visited by demons. Perhaps I invoked them. The first I chased around a hospital, a small childlike creature. When I caught it, it threatened to tell my secrets to the world. I didn’t understand what it meant, but it frightened me anyway, so I let it go. It chased me around the hospital, and outside, where I ran, and ran, and ran. Then, in a front room with other people, I watched a strange ceremony on television. The mood was ritualistic. I went to the kitchen with a friend and the second demon appeared, standing on the draining board next to the sink. I wanted to ask it about my dead father, if he was still suffering or finally at peace. My friend warned me that this demon could not be trusted. It stood there on the drainer, red and bald and thing, a beam of magic shooting from the fingers of one hand up into the ceiling. I did not ask it anything.
5.5.22
Nothing
6.5.22
My dreams are entirely blank…
7.5.22
…a great void of sleep.
8.5.22
Is my unconscious dead?
9.5.22
Or simply cut off?
10.5.22
As if someone is stealing the one place I find peace.
11.5.22
I am in a huge, sprawling castle at night. A great battle rages between two armies, one armoured in red, the other blue. I fight alone, but on the side of the blues. Running and climbing from room to room; hiding behind doorways to spring surprise attacks; leaping from ruined battlements; slipping through orchards and gardens undetected. The tide of the fight shifts constantly; rooms full of reds are soon replaced by blues, but when I return a while later the reds are back again. Then others join in, dressed in grey, also enemies. The war seems eternal, until something changes; in one of the gardens, from up high in the battlements, I see a large creature lumbering around. A werewolf. The soldiers gradually disappear; there are fewer and fewer of them as I move around. I am not sure what has happened to them. Daylight returns, and I am in an abandoned town, hiding and running from werewolves. I climb a ladder in an industrial park to escape them, but they can climb too.
12.5.22
I am lost on a street in a US city. I settle down at a picnic table with a homeless man, next to a concrete overpass. We are watching tv. It is showing the draw for some kind of lottery, which I have entered. I am counting on this result, and desperate to see my numbers come up. I sit there, hands clenched, chanting my numbers at the screen. Then I remember the homeless man, and how my behaviour must appear to him.
11 - 15.5.22
Not a sausage.
16.5.22
No memory of any dreams, other than constant, relentless chewing. I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking I was chewing on gum, but there was far too much of it. Reaching into my mouth, I pulled out what I thought was the gum – the largest piece in among many other fragments – and put it on my bedside cabinet. My mouth was still full, so I turned on the light and spat the contents into my hand, a gooey mass of inedible pellets. An earplug. It had fallen out of my ear as I slept and somehow my hand must have found it and, unconsciously, popped it into my mouth. I can’t think of any other way it would have got in there. Disgusted, I got up, dropped the fragments into the bin, and washed the rest out of my mouth out with a glass of water. This was not a dream.
17.5.22
I’m running from men through small rooms - an extended flat, perhaps. My path is blocked by piles of bags and luggage next to a strange machine. I jump into the machine, and hide, but my consciousness remains outside it, in the room. The men know where I am, but cannot see me. One of them says I can easily get away from them, by swimming away. From where my consciousness is, I cannot see a way forward for my body, or feel any water around it. I try pressing a button on the machine, in the hope it will propel my body forward. I jab it several times, but nothing happens. In the end, I bash the bags out of the way and press forward, leaving my body behind. I enter a room where an old woman is standing in the middle of a ring of cameras, with a man checking them. She is glad I have arrived – apparently I am supposed to be in a film she is shooting. The other men catch up but, hearing that I am supposed to be there, leave me alone. I wake up, and find myself in bed. I am supposed to be getting up and going to work, but I just want to slumber. I can hear someone wandering around the flat – probably my housemate. The doorbell goes and I hear the voice of my friend as the door is answered. He tells my housemate that he has something to give me. I remember I have a present for him too, so get up and hurry round the flat, rummaging through bags to try and find it. I can’t. I tell him I will give it to him next time I see him. I return to bed, with a Chinese woman who seems to be my girlfriend. We cuddle a while, and fool around. I feel at peace.
18-19.5.22
Zero
20.5.22
I am walking round a coastal town with a woman who I sense is supposed to be my girlfriend, one of her male friends and her huge white dog. Her friend tells me he has tried reading my dream diary but didn’t get on with it. I tell him I can understand this, that it’s more a work in progress, but that he should keep reading as things are about to change. I’m not sure what I mean by this. We go to a tiny, empty cinema and watch a film, then to a café. I give the dog a cuddle, then they all leave. It feels like a goodbye.
21.5.22
Nothing
22.5.22
But
23.5.22
The
24.5.22
Void
25.5.22
Diddly squat.
26.5.22
A sense of comfort and old rooms. It’s not enough.
27.5.22
I need to do some film editing, but the studio is being used for an important production. Fortunately, I know the security guard who allows me to enter anyway. I go through the doors, and enter a dim parking-garage style stairwell leading down two flights, then another two identical flights. I go through the doors here into a brightly lit studio. Three figures are waiting in the centre of the room. As I approach I realise they are a young boy, a young girl and a strange metal humanoid, made up of a circular body and square lumpen head. Even closer, I discover the boy and girl are robots as well. They watch me with blank eyes as I walk past them, towards the editing suite.
28-29.5.22
More nothingness.
30.5.22
Jigsaw puzzle pieces. Constantly searching for jigsaw puzzle pieces. Must finish this damned jigsaw.
31.5.22
Blank