The First Dream

 The other day, at the end of the Big Freeze that we had, I went outside and discovered that the sun had warmed the roof sufficiently to make some melted water run through our drains.  There's a short stretch where the runoff flows out of a gutter and into a drain that (presumably) runs to the sewer.  By this time, the temperatures had been in the teens for about five days, and the most of the water froze along the ground.  The gutter was encased in ice.

When I looked down, the water flowing over the ice and down the drain reminded me of the first dream I ever recalled.  I think I was about four, or maybe three at the time; but a potent sense of dream deja-vu hit me all the same.

In the dream, I'm floating over an icy river that is flowing between snowy banks.  The sound of flowing water is the only sound.  Sometimes I recall that one bank was green and summery.  But the water flows into an icy cave.  Everything by then is in Wintery black-and-white, and the water becomes rapids funneling into an ice-rhimed whirlpool.  I am not sure if I was floating in the water, or hovering above it -- the dream has a disembodied feel to it.  In any case, my four-year-old self did not want to go further into the swirly, icy, darkness, and that's pretty much where the dream ends.

At least it wasn't the reoccuring, never-ending countdown nightmare (no images, just one voice counting down from a random start with random intervals until a second voice yelled "ZERO!" and there'd be a sound like a piano smashing from a great height, accompanied by the knowledge that Something Horrible had happened, -- and then the countdown would start again, and again, and again...)  I used to have until I was about eight (whew).

Dreams of Late

Last night my dreams took a turn for the better, but lately I have been having a series of unpleasant dreams.  

The theme of one dream last week was "The Return of the Old Gods" meets "You Don't Know Who is in the Secret Kabal (Oh, and, everyone who could be on your side hates you)."   Part of the dream must have been inspired by "The Devil-Hound of the Baskervilles," because there was a dog who was conditioned by an evil alien demon.  

At one point Dr. Who was involved.  I really need to understand what the Doctor means in my dreams, because dreams with him in them usually have a feeling of smothering associated with them.  They sometimes have elements of the Labyrinth dreams--where I am usually stuck in a confining, very narrow tangle of passage ways and tunnels.

Then there was the animals dream--where what I thought was a weasel turned out to be a kind of narrow-nosed golden retriever.  It really looked like a weasel, though.  It snuck into our house, and I wasn't pleased in a "Oh great, a wild animal is in our house" kind of way.  Then the dream house--I want to say it was made up of mostly screen doors, but I might be splicing dreams together--turned into a kind of swimming pool and snakes were wriggling out of the faucets, and I wasn't pleased in a "Oh great, water snakes in the pool I'm in."  I was sure they were poisonous.   Luckily, the weasel was a snake-eating weasel.  I'm sure this dream is about my libido, but I just don't know how.

Finally, there are the Child in Peril dreams, which are straight-forward The Child is in Peril.  These usually involve New York City windows and ledges, but the latest one involved balancing along the stair railing in my parents' house.

Last night's dream was relaxing by comparison--for much of the night I was going over my current manuscript and tweaking the text.  In waking life, someone pointed out a way I could tweak the ending, which I like, and I think I was rehearsing adding that part in.  Also, Eric WItchey spoke to the Wordos last night, and I was probably rehashing what he said.

At the end, the editing turned into registering for a convention... and the last scene involved Wonder Woman, Dracula, and a youngish Dick VanDyke as a detective chasing an evil tatoo artist.

Dracula was most likely from the post-Wordos discussion, but in the dream he was a metaphor for writing.