Do you ever try to remember numbers or words in your dreams? They're usually really difficult for me to hold on to unless I write them down immediately after waking up. I don't know what they mean, but I'm always hopeful that I'll be able to look back at them later and suddenly understand.
In this case, I still don't understand the numbers. I don't understand the word, "Heritage." I don't know if I explored that further in the dream or not; I never mentioned it again. But there's a lot to say for the rest of the entry.
7.27.2005 __wednesday____
Hahaha oh my gosh
This morning I woke up a few minutes before 9, so I went back to sleep and I had a dream that seemed really long (woke up again around 9:20)..
It was about going back to school
First off, I didn't have a roster, so I didn't know what classes I had to go to, and Prendie was different. I was in this place in another dream, but I don't know if it was "Prendie" in that one. Anyway, it had two wings, and the hall connecting it looked like a ballroom. One wing's rooms were numbered 1/17, 1/18, 1/19, etc. And the other wing was numbered 208, 209, 210, etc. Above the doorway to the second hall was the word "Heritage" - I don't know if there was a word above the other passageway to the opposite wing.
I was in a room watching Channel One, before classes started - it was like a bedroom, even with a carpeted floor and a bed, and everything was cluttered. I picked up my books in a hurry to find my roster and left the room. I asked Evie to help me, and she brought me to a room next door. And there I saw Mr. Kornaki from St. Clement, and he gave me two papers. And then I dropped my books and picked them up again. And I noticed as I was walking hurriedly that I was holding a book that said something like "St. Clement Plays."
I looked at my roster, but I couldn't remember where I was going or where I even was. And then I ended up in the main hall - but nothing was in the main hall, just a huge empty room lined with tiles or something that was made to look like several doors. Everything was old and brown. And the ceiling was high. Then a woman came in from the hallway behind me and started dancing and singing. And for a moment I was shown a close-up of her feet, and as she danced like a graceful ballerina, she leaned on her toes and reminded me of a swan. Then she led me into a library and showed me around. And pulled back a curtain (I could still hear a song in the background) to show a wall lined with books. And around, on tables and all over the floor piled on each other, more books. I saw chairs and recognized them immediately - I even knew that some tables were missing, and that furniture was being moved.
Then I dropped my books again, and so I picked them up. She smiled at me, and then Anjel came in to help me gather them. I looked more closely at them to see that they weren't at all the books I needed with me. The ones I'd been carrying had titles containing the words "Gnomes" and "Gargoyles" and "Dwarves" - faerie tale books, mythical creatures. I panicked, but I couldn't seem to get myself together, partially because I knew I wouldn't get through the first day of school.. I would be marked absent because I wasn't in homeroom. "What is my homeroom, anyway?" I wondered - it was Mr. Masluk's room xD and then I got excited and wanted to tell Mary. But then I finally realized that I hadn't seen Mary at all, or any other of my friends.
So. In a summary - I had a nightmare about the first day of school as a Sophomore. lol
It's true, of course, that dream time is different from real time. I've had dreams that lasted hours or days, only to wake up and see that 1 hour has passed by (it's a great feeling). Also, the opposite has happened: I've slept for a full 8 hours and dreamt of nothing but a face and a voice. As we all know, anything can change in dreams. Time is no exception.
This is the first time I read this entry in a few years. I completely forgot about this, but reading it again brought back clear pictures, especially the main hall of Prendie. More than once or twice, I've dreamt of Prendie's hallways and classrooms....but merged with other settings, such as bedrooms, living rooms, or something similar to a convention center.
Architecturally, in real life, the combination of many settings more than defeats the purpose of a place. Can you imagine if life was full of classrooms sometimes furnished with old couches, worn beds, or kitchen counters? Of course, there are instances in which these are acceptable: culinary schools, for instance, have kitchen counters all over the place. But you would never walk into a study hall to sit on top of a small refrigerator and work on math assignments.
In dreams, though, it makes perfect sense at the time. Nothing is really too out of the ordinary, is it? So the place can be whatever you want it to be; it's anywhere. And if you keep that mentality (or at least keep yourself ignoring the rules and logic of the waking world), then you can become a lucid dreamer. Build your own world. That's just something I like to think about.
Sometimes, there is a smooth transition from one setting to another in my dreams, such as a carpet in the main hall of Prendie instead of the hard stone floors. It's not a very sudden change, but more gradual as I walk along on my way to the Old Library that has replaced the cafeteria. And in the carpeted library, once I walk through the heavy doors, all the walls and bookshelves are made of some kind of dark cherry wood. Another example of smooth transitioning is seeing a person, such as Mr. Kornacki (someone I knew from my grade school), who reminds me of another place or time that later makes its way into the dream.
Other times, the change is more sudden, like the bed in the middle of the classroom. When I dream of things like this now, I know enough that it's out of the ordinary that I feel a little strange while I'm still asleep. Like I can almost feel myself lying in bed. But I've trained myself not to linger around that idea, or else I'll lose my slight lucidity and wake up (this morning, actually, I had a dream in which I became lucid enough to project Matt as a character, completely taking the place of another person who previously stood where he was).... And if I don't notice these oddities? Well, then I keep dreaming, as I did in this 2005 dream. And I can't bring in people, objects, or places.
This dream -- a conglomeration of settings, memories, and passive associations -- screams for me to see with a lucid eye. Passive associations, by the way, are (to me) exactly that: something we associate with another, without making an effort to do so. Maybe I associate "Prendie" with "home," thus the random array of bedroom furniture and casual clutter. Or the ballerina reminded me so much of some fantasical creature that the books I was carrying suddenly had titles or key words on them: "Gnomes," "Gargoyles," and "Dwarves."
But as I was saying:
Those types of things, all those details, urge me to think of what they mean to me in real life, so that I can realize I'm in a dream. A lot of times, it's too late for me to hold on to the dream once I snap out of that puppet dreamer phase and actively take control of myself again. My heart rate goes up with excitement, and I can feel it. There are only a few seconds for me to calm down enough to stay in control; if I miss that window, I often find myself staring at my own eyelids with my eyebrows furrowed. Too much effort and awareness. I lose it. And I'm awake.
I think you're waiting for me to talk about Inception. I wish you knew how much I would love to talk about that movie and integrate the concept of familiar places with what was explained in the movie, or even to talk about time. Or, I don't know, how about dreams within dreams (the most I've had was 3)...?
But for the sake of people who have not yet seen the movie, I shall refrain from doing so. Because if I do discuss the movie, I would go into much detail.
So, there you have it. My "nightmare," going by the name for this dream as many people would describe it, was more or less a messy file cabinet of memories. It was a wonderland of triggers for lucid dreaming, but I was blind.
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