A Dream Diary #3 - April 2022
It seems quite definite now – the more I try to remember my dreams, the harder it becomes. I can feel the threads of them in my mind; images of places and people; hints of sensations, feelings, emotions. But any details of events or motivations are hidden beneath. Most of the time, no matter how much I claw at my memories, I can pull nothing from them.
It’s as if my unconscious is preventing me from accessing them. Like it’s made the walls thicker between ‘me’ and my dreams. Like there’s something in them it doesn’t want me to find. But I love my dreams. I need them. They’re the one place I feel truly at home, and at peace.
I repotted some aloe vera babies last weekend, using an old plant pot someone left in the shared garden years ago, still full of potting compost. As I moved the soil, I discovered it was full of earthworms. I tried to transfer them to the soil in the garden, but every time my fingers came close they would squirm away, deeper into the pot. This is what it feels like, trying to remember my dreams now. Every time I grab at their loose ends, they burrow deeper into my unconscious, and my mind is thick mud I can no longer penetrate.
1-4.4.22
No memories
5.4.22
There is a woman I am seeing. We are in her home. She is trying to get me to do something, but I don’t quite understand what. I am in a scrapyard, looking for something, but I don’t know what, and I can’t find it. Back in her house, she is not happy with me. She wishes I could have found whatever it was. We are preparing for some big event, but I’m not sure what. The rest of her family are there too – her son and daughter and a few other people I don’t know, all wandering round the place. I try to help get things ready, but just seem to make the situation worse.
6.4.22
I am staying in a mobile home, a stationary one, in a park with a group of people I do not know, or don’t remember knowing. We are outside in the sunny apple orchard that surrounds our caravan. I pick up an apple and start eating it. Inside it are several bulbous growths, grey and pink. They look a bit like tiny vital organs. I take it over to the others, and ask one of them, a woman, if she thinks it is ripe. She looks at it, but isn’t really paying attention. She seems more interested in talking to the others. She says it isn’t quite ripe, but I should be ok to eat it, so I do, but I’m careful to avoid the growths. I walk to the other side of the caravan, and climb up into the branches of a tree, looking around for danger. I can see a path way off through the trees, with people walking on it. I try to cycle somewhere, passing by some of the group I am with in a large bed before finding myself on a busy cycle path/pavement. It is snowing, and the surface is slippery. The other cyclists all have very squat and sturdy bikes with large, gripped tyres. I almost hit one of them as I struggle to keep my bike upright, then fall onto my side. I get up, pick the bike up, and try again, but the same thing happens. I give up and walk. Back at the mobile home, I find three of the women in our group having a chat in the lounge. I join them, but don’t say much – I am busy tidying. They go back to their bedroom, while I continue to tidy. Then I realise that one of them is my girlfriend, and it would be nice to spend a bit of time in bed together before we have to get up. I go to their room, which is down a small staircase in the basement of the caravan. All three of them are sleeping in sleeping bags or chairs though, and the room is an absolute mess – there are tissues trampled into the floor, and clothes and bedding everywhere. I tell them they need to tidy up, but only one is awake. She protests that it isn’t that bad, and curling up her legs in the sleeping bag, picks up a few tissues from the floor and chucks them aside. I give up and leave.
7.4.22
No memories
8.4.22
I’m in London, on a bus, trying to get home to Cambridge. I know I need to get the next train to be back in time, but I can’t remember which station I need to go from, or where it is, or where the bus is either. I don’t recognise the area outside at all, but I think it’s somewhere on the outskirts. I decide to stay on the bus until it arrives at the station I need, and hope I will recognise it when it does. We pass through a very built up area with lots of shops and neon signs which, for some reason, I think is on the outskirts. Then we arrive at a station – a small, white building that looks more like an old fashioned post office from the outside. A wooden sign over the door show the name, Pembroke Gate, and I think that sounds about right, so get off the bus and enter. The inside looks just like an old fashioned post office as well: a small room with four ticket sellers sat behind a small counter, and a small queue of people lined up in front of it, which seems odd as only one of the ticket sellers is currently dealing with anyone. I join the queue anyway, then realise I don’t have my luggage with me. Vic Reeves is in the queue, so I ask him if he has seen my luggage. He tells me it is outside, so I leave again, and find myself in a stream of water below a bridge. There is a crocodile here as well, and a few human corpses. I quickly swim deeper under the water in the bridge to avoid the crocodile, and find my luggage at the bottom of the stream. I grab it, then swim out, and return to the ticket office, where I join the back of the queue again. As I wait, I realise that the people coming in after me are forming different queues, and getting served before me. Two more people come in, and join the queue behind me. They are two women that I work with. I ask them what they have been doing in London, and they say they were attending a trade show. I tell them it doesn’t seem fair that other people are forming different queues, and getting served before us, but they have no opinion on this. Annoyed, I walk up to one of the ticket sellers who aren’t serving anyone and ask if I have the right station. They don’t know, but I buy a ticket anyway and get on the train.
9.4.22
I am in a team of three spies gathered beneath a huge, towering communications mast on the edge of a town. We have kidnapped two officials and are holding them hostage beneath its metal struts, while one of our team hacks into its machinery using a mobile phone. We know the police, and possibly the military, are on their way. We can hear the sirens, coming closer. On the phone’s screen, a timer is displayed, counting down from one minute. Once it hits zero, our job is done, and we can escape. I watch the digits, trying to contain my panic… Four, Three, Two…
(Real life note – at this point I was woken up by someone walking heavily on the floor above my room. I shouted as loud as I could for them to shut up, then lay awake trying to remember the dream, then tried to get back to sleep so I could find out how it finished. This never happened).
10-11.4.22
No memories
12.4.22
I’m working in a team of people who create small, discreet technology; tiny circuit boards, possibly implants. We go to a convention, which is also very small and discreet; just a row of tables outside on a paved-over area. There are quite a few other teams there, most of them people I know. I sit at a table with one of them, still working at the same time as I try to talk to them, but we are all under pressure to finish our projects by the end of the day.
13-6.4.22
No memories
17.4.22
Another workshop. Things and stuff everywhere, piled up and scattered over tables. I’m working with another team of people, creating implants and putting them in people. They don’t mind. We’re making heroes.
18.4.22
I’m on a coach trip with a lot of people I don’t know, but somewhere on the coach are some friends. We stop in a town, and I get off the coach, but in the small corridor outside I have a coughing fit and fall to my knees, leaning on a square pouffe to recover. I realise I am dying – whatever I have is terminal. Nobody else seems to care – they just swarm around me on their way out of the station. I finally recover, and walk into town to find my friends, but can’t remember where we were supposed to meet.
19.4.22
No memories
20.4.22
Something about trying to get back an old flying V guitar that I had given away. Something about being at a party at an ex’s house, and having to interrupt her conversation to ask for another pair of trousers, as the ones I was wearing were too smart to go outside in. And the usual of course, about being part of a team of cybernetically-enhanced spies hunting down enemies, this time around a huge industrial reservoir surrounded by towering scaffolding. All of it muddled, unentangleable.
21.4.22
Out of bounds. None shall pass. This dream was private. For me and me alone. Waking from it only made the sunlight weaker, and the torpor of reality more oppressive. Why must we wake, when dreams alone are where we truly feel alive? Is there no way to stay in them forever?
22.4.22 -23.4.22
No memories
24.4.22
I’m on some kind of ship, or possibly an airship, which is actually a university. Everyone onboard is an academic. We have recently overthrown the leadership, a turn of events that some see as mutinous, and that I played a key part in. At least one member of the crew appears to harbour resentment over this, particularly towards me. He is a small blonde young man and, as I give a presentation in a spacious art deco hall on an old fashioned slide projector, I notice him in the audience, sneering at me, and wonder what he has planned. One of my slides fails to load properly. I realise he has sabotaged the presentation, but manage to resolve the issue quite easily and continue talking. He looks very disappointed. I am then in a multi-storey car park taking part in a race. Myself and two women, who I used to be in a band with, are all riding in a team on advanced-looking pogo sticks. The other racers are in a variety of vehicles, but mostly cars. I wonder how we can win as we hop around the track, but much of the course is comprised of stairs rather than ramps, and the other vehicles struggle to negotiate them. We storm into the lead, taking out many of the other racers using non-lethal weapons, and win the race easily.
25-26.4.22
No memories
27.4.22
I’ve made lots of small paper models but they need colouring in. I wander round a strange landscape looking for pens, but find only people, who cannot help me.
28.4.22
Nothing
29.4.22
Nada
30.4.22
Zilch