A Dream Diary #5 - June 2022
How is it possible to feel so tired without ever missing a night’s sleep? It’s as if the fewer dreams I have, the more tired I become. Perhaps it’s only my imagination; a fixation with the absence of my nightly adventures bearing down on me mentally. But can you really feel the absence of something you don’t remember experiencing? After all, I don’t remember suffering a single nightmare the whole time I have been keeping this diary. Is it only the more horrific dreams I do not remember, that my brain is somehow protecting me from?
On a walk the other day, around the third week of the month, I came across a group of magpies flapping around beneath some trees. I could not remember seeing so many clustered together ever before. I took a quick count, and there seemed to be as many as seven. Seven for secrets to never be told. The old nursery rhyme seemed oddly appropriate – was my brain hiding secrets from me? But as I stood watching their squawking delights, another hopped out from behind a tree trunk and, as I made to walk on, cawed at me relentlessly, as if awaiting instruction.
Eight for a wish.
But what should I wish for? I was reticent to ask for anything at all, knowing how such fairy tales usually panned out. Perhaps something cliched but safely unselfish like ‘world peace’ or an ‘end to hunger? But playing with such huge issues might only make the potential risks greater. In truth, there was only thing I could think of that I wanted for myself, and it seemed harmless enough. I wished for my dreams to return, for my mind to allow me access to them, as adventurous, memorable, and strikingly detailed as those I remembered from childhood.
Nothing more than a harmless fancy, I’m sure, and as yet I haven’t noticed any effect. I don’t suppose I ever will.
1.6.22
I’m in an ice cave, trying to rescue a creature that is trapped inside. The cave is too low to stand up. I have to wriggle through it to get to the back, where the creature is. There is someone else helping me, I’m not sure who they are. We reach the creature – a small brown thing, like a cross between a duck and a dog – and my companion gathers it up. As we wriggle our way out, many green, diamond-shaped spiders appear, blocking our escape. They look dangerous, but then spiders always look dangerous to me. I pull out a long metal ruler and batter them away, squashing many. Reaching the exit, we swim upwards, emerging in a large lake. The creature seems fine, and swims off to its mate on the shoreline.
2.6.22
A brown tree with orange leaves on a white background, almost cartoon-like. It bends its branches towards me. It wants me to feed it. I pour some kind of vapour from my hands into its canopy. It seems to grow taller.
3.6.22
Nothing
4.6.22
Something about a dog, or maybe a large black bird? A redhaired woman and a code? A jumbled mess. Did I ever finish that jigsaw?
5.6.22
Nothing. Again.
6.6.22
I am outside more ice caves, much larger than before. Every time I try to run inside an immense red and orange dragon swoops down to block the entrance. I learn to time my runs, and finally make it inside before it can stop me. But now I am trapped inside.
7.6.22
Emptiness.
8.6.22
Darkness.
9.6.22
Nothingness.
10.6.22
Hollowness.
11.6.22
Vacuousness.
12.6.22
Blankness.
13.6.22
I am in a large pub with a group of people I don’t recognise, but who seem to know me. Entering the toilet, I am ambushed by a gang of strange men. They pin me to the wall and, holding odd little pen-like knives to my stomach, tell me to stop doing what I am doing. I do not know what they are talking about, but they refuse to let me go until I have promised. As I leave the toilet I have the curious sense that, despite my escape, I have made my promise too late.
14.6.22
Barrenness.
15.6.22
A strange, distant glimmer.
16.6.22
A magpie. Male. Sitting on grass. Chirping at me, persistent. Perhaps the same one I saw in the woods? Ridiculous. After all, they are virtually indistinguishable from each other. I watch it for some time. Words begin to appear below it, like subtitles, but I cannot understand them. No - not words. Symbols. Squirls and sigils. But I still do not understand.
17.6.22
I am wandering around a town with a woman I once knew; we seem to be attracted to each other and, as we walk, it becomes clear we are in an intimate relationship. We reach a bus stop, and she sits down on the bench. She is going to take the bus home, while I cycle back to my own place. I pedal away down a hill, then realise I have left my ID with her, so take a couple of left turns and cycle back up the hill to the bus stop. She is still there, waiting for the bus. I ask her to return my ID, and she does. We laugh, and kiss. But something is wrong in this town, and we are both now aware of it. Instead of going home, we visit a huge complex, many floors high, and made of steel and glass. I realise that this is where we work, and we are here to do something important. We split up. I take an escalator to a laboratory, where I copy vital information from one of the computers onto an external drive. The moment I remove the drive, alarms sound; red warning lights flash. Hurrying from the lab, I look down from a balcony on the floor below. People are rushing from the building. Armoured soldiers with advanced weaponry guard the corridors and exits. My partner finds me and grabs my hand. She knows a secret way out. Leading me down a fire escape, then through a sewer tunnel, she brings us out into a war-torn township of grey and pink ruined buildings. We stop at one – it is her house, I know. Before we enter, another male friend arrives, asking for help. She wants to protect him, but I do not want him to come in – his presence makes me feel jealous, as if my relationship with this woman is under threat. But if we leave him, I know he will be found and either killed or imprisoned, so I agree. We hurry up an internal staircase into her flat, where we hide under duvets and sheets, and wait for the alarms to stop. Finally, the world falls silent, but the moment we emerge from the bedding the door flies open, and a troop of soldiers enters. The commander asks for our IDs. We hand them over. He checks them, seems satisfied. The soldiers leave, and all three of us feel a wave of relief - though we know this is only the start.
18.6.22
I’m in a bedroom, getting ready for work, but having a hard time finding clothes to wear. I can’t remember which ones I’ve already worn, or for how long. In the end I bung something on, then pile a few more things into the back of a red Dormobile, which I’ve borrowed from a friend. I’m a bit nervous as it’s the first time I’ve driven a vehicle this big. I check over the controls, making sure I know where they all are. Everything seems fine, although the gear stick is massive, and the shape of an upturned golf club. It does at least have the normal amount of gears though, so I start up the engine and set off. The journey is surprisingly event-free. I am lying on a sofa in our shared lounge, looking at the ceiling. I mention to my friend that the ceiling could do with grouting in places. They say yes, but they have to choose carefully which bits to have repaired. Directly above me, in the darkest corner of a very dark corner, is a tiny box-like alcove covered in webs. “How about the spider trap?” I say. “I’m not sure they will like that,” my friend replies. “Let’s ask them,’ I suggest. “Do you think they can hear us?” As she asks this, a small, brown spider lowers itself quickly down on a strand of web. “Yes,” I tell her. I blow gently on the dangling spider, to keep it away from me, then realise it was a stupid thing to do – the spider swings straight back into my face.
19.6.22
I am running round a post-apocalyptic desert township, shooting bandits, collecting ammo, and shooting more bandits. Suddenly, I run out of ammo. Looking round the battlefield, I realise someone else is collecting it and running away. I realise it is Grayson Perry. He is collecting it for an art installation. I give up on my violence, and the setting changes to a normal English town.
20.6.22
I’m visiting a family I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’m doing there, but think it’s supposed to be some kind of job. The father reminds me of William Hurt. He seems very uptight, and not very happy with me being there. The mother is quite short, and attractive, despite being a bit older than me. They have two teenagers, a boy and a girl. We play some kind of board game, then they get ready to go out. As they are about to leave, the mother decides not to go, leaving the two of us alone. We do some washing up, then start kissing. Her children come back and catch us. The mother tells her children that she is leaving their father to live with me. This is the first I have heard of it, but I say nothing. The children are very upset, but she is more worried about her husband. When he returns, she leads him into another room to tell him. I hear some very loud thuds and bangs, then decide it is probably time to leave.
21.6.22
Danish comedian Lasser Rimmer trying to download antonyms for words to judge a task on Stormester (Taskmaster Denmark).
22.6.22
I am lost on a street in a US city. Settling down at a picnic table next to a concrete overpass, opposite a man in a fine suit, I watch a puppet show. It seems to be a property auction. I am counting on winning the current lot, and desperate to beat the other unseen bidders. I sit there, hands clenched, shouting my bids at the tiny theatre. Then I remember the man in the suit, and how desperate my behaviour must appear to him.
23.6.22
I am in a building that seems to be both a dump and a library, carrying a massive bundle of plastic bags. I empty the bags into a skip, and find inside them a rucksack I don’t remember owning. Reaching inside, I pull out a porcelain model the size of my hand, in the shape of a man with a strange fantastical creature at his feet. The base of the porcelain is jagged, as if broken off from a larger piece. I remember then that I had knocked it off a friend’s toilet some weeks ago. I must have kept it to give back to them, but put it in the rucksack and forgotten. I am tempted to visit the library to look for books, DVDs or games I might want, but decide instead to return the porcelain chunk to my friend.
24.6.22
I’m in an abandoned workshop, greatly dilapidated, with the long-crushed up remains of stuff and things piled against the walls and heaped upon the floor, creating a new layer to it. I’m working alone, on a small workbench set against the wall, creating implants to put in people. They won’t mind. I will turn them into heroes.
25.6.22
I am at university taking part in an outdoors parkour obstacle course with friends. I am in the lead for most of the race, hurdling the picnic tables and knee-high hedges. As I jump onto the last platform, all my friends overtake me, leaving me to struggle over the line in last place. I am happy to have led for a while, but annoyed I could not see it through. We sit around a table with other people playing a quiz game. I am much more in my element now, but find it difficult to enjoy because the others find it so difficult.
26.6.22
Nebulous scenes of characters in the hospital from the TV series House. No specifics of story or action, just Gregory House being Gregory House really.
27.6.22
I am writing a short story on my smartphone about the needless animosity between two men. It is almost finished, and I am quite happy with it - I just have to come up with a closing line. I type in a first version of this, and it works well enough, but isn’t quite right, so I delete it. But then I can’t remember what I had typed, and a female colleague next to me (perhaps my boss), won’t stop talking while I try to remember it. I know I will have to read the whole story again to figure out what I should write, so I scroll up the page, arriving at my original notes. I realise they are completely different to the story I wrote. At one point they mention Lasse Rimmer – one of the characters had originally been based on him.
28.6.22
I am in a supermarket, with a huge display of chocolate bars. Many people are gathered around the display, taking all the bars they want and scooping them into their trolleys. The chocolate bars are being pushed up into the display one by one, by hand, through a hole in the bottom. A woman points out a bar that she thinks I would like, but it is one I have many times before, and have become tired of.
29.6.22
I’ve made lots of small paper aeroplanes but I need decals to complete their design. I wander round a garden looking at the stickers attached to the plants, but they would not suit my aeroplanes. The other people in the garden refuse to help.
30.6.22
I am running through a city full of large grey buildings, all squashed together, trying to find anything that will tell me where I am or where I should be going. Everything looks distinctly familiar, but not quite right. There is supposed to be a police station somewhere nearby, I am certain. They might be able to help, but I fail to find that as well. The buildings fade, and I am in a local football stadium, but one used by a rival team. There is a game underway, so I stand on the side-lines watching for a while, but the players just seem to be doing warm-ups and training exercises. I get bored and leave.