221 dreams

selected entries from five volumes of my dream journals. If you'd like me to interpret some of your dreams, just ask! ask me anything

[221dreams]

The Carnival

The dream started with me falling through the sky on a sunny, cloudless day. Way down below me was a little town square surrounded by quaint cobblestone streets. People were walking around together, and nearby I could see some kind of fair going on where there were even larger crowds. I knew there was nothing I could do to stop my fall, and so instead of worrying about it I just took in my surroundings and tried to predict where I would hit the ground. As I approached the cobblestone street, I realized I was headed straight for a short little iron fence. I could just picture my neck getting speared by the fence, which seemed really gross, and to make matters worse there was a little family sitting nearby the area. I didn't want to splatter all over them, so I decided to start over.

I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, I was falling at the same height as I had begun, high above the town. This time I was pleased to see that I was heading straight for the middle of a different, somewhat smaller town square. There were no fences or sharp objects here, and no people standing really close to the place I would hit, so I was satisfied. As I fell, I couldn't help but admire the beautiful weather. Once I started getting close I closed my eyes tight, wondering what it would feel like to die. 

When I finally hit the ground, I landed on my back, cracking the cobblestone surface. I lay there for a while with my eyes still closed, wondering if I was dead. But when I opened my eyes, I was just staring up at the beautiful blue sky framed by the quaint little city buildings. I heard someone approaching me but I didn't move until my friend Sara came into view. She was smiling as if nothing was wrong, and she held out a hand to help me up. I reached out and grabbed it, standing up with much effort. Even though the ground was cracked from my impact, I was amazed to see that I wasn't really hurt at all. I had a slight limp, but the more I walked the less it affected me. Sara started walking away and towards a side street, and I followed her.

When we turned the corner, I saw that a bunch of my other friends and people I knew from school were here too. I knew it was a dream and I knew they did too, and because we could do anything everyone was just messing around and having fun. One boy was flying through the air, leaving a burning rocket trail behind him as he did flips and twists. Other people were whooping and cheering him one. Other people were floating around, or leaping incredibly high. It was like a really fun, impromptu block party or something. Suddenly I was holding my mother's camera, and I decided to take pictures of everything happening so I could show her when I woke up. I really wanted her to see it "because then she'd know my dreams were real." (That's what I remember thinking anyway) I snapped lots of photos, and when I looked at them on the viewfinder after, they even had movement to them. I was really excited to have evidence of all this.

Then, I was far away, on a grassy hill at night. There was a carnival set up here, complete with a huge ferris wheel. The bright lights on all the rides were gorgeous, and I felt like I could have stood there and watched them for the entire night. I noticed another glow from farther away, and so I walked over to it. This was a small path of pastel-colored flowers, all emitting some ethereal glow. All around them, pitch black horses stood, bending down to eat the flowers. I watched as they devoured more and more of them, taking away the light gradually, but before they were all gone I decided to go back to the main carnival. Something about the horses made me uneasy. 

Now nobody was at the carnival, although the rides were still going. Wondering where everyone had gone, I wandered over to the edge of the hill (although here it was more like a cliff). There was scaffolding covering the side, so it was easy to climb down. On my way down, I passed some large human-sized thing wrapped up in a cocoon, and when I looked closer I saw that it was a mummy with a sewn-together mouth. But it was clearly dead, so I moved on without getting too  scared. When I reached the bottom of the cliff, I found my parents getting out of the car they had parked there. I was overjoyed to see them, because I wanted to show them all the things that you could do in a dream. I tried to point in the direction of the carnival and get them to go there with me, but when I tried to locate it on the outline of the cliff I saw only the outlines of buildings, popping up everywhere and ruining the skyline. I couldn't even see the silhouette of the ferris wheel anymore.

Then a deep, scratchy voice resounded in all of our minds. It was the mummy, laughing, saying it had gotten free and that we had all better run. Fear shot through me and we all started climbing through the scaffolding as fast as we could, wanting to get onto the hill. Once we made it up, everything looked different. Now it was a town, with rows and rows of houses lit up with red light and bathed in black shadow. No other colors even existed in the town. I heard the laugh again and suddenly my parents were gone. Terrified, I leapt down into the street, then jumped incredibly high again, going over the next row of buildings, and so on. I was moving as fast as I could, so sometimes when I hit the ground I would slip and fall. Gradually it got harder to leap that high, and I had to remind myself that this was a dream and I could do anything. I ran and ran until I couldn't do it anymore--I found a small, somewhat secluded staircase and sat down on it. Nothing happened for a while and then I suddenly noticed that at the very top of the staircase there was a golden light shining. The stairs led up to a black hatch, but the golden light seemed so peaceful.

I walked up cautiously, but was too afraid to actually enter the golden light. So I sat right next to it, close enough to feel comforted by it but not actually touching it. Sitting there alone, I was finally able to calm down a little bit. But then I heard voices approaching, saying things like "catch it!" "Come on, just a little further," and "Lift! Lift it up!" Three of my best friends came into view, carrying what looked like a thick pillow with them. But as they got closer I saw that there was a pair of severed human legs, still bleeding, attached to the pillowcase. They dropped it right on the first step of the stairs and now I knew I was trapped here. Obviously it was a trap to keep me from going down the stairs, and I was too afraid to enter the golden light too. I put my head on my knees, feeling like I was going to cry, and wondered what I could possibly do now.

Then I woke up.

[221dreams]

Send in your dreams!

Hey, everyone! Sorry I've been so inactive on this blog lately. I'm in the process of packing everything up and getting ready to go to Tokyo for a year. Since my dreams are pretty long it takes a while to put them up :P But, if you are so inclined, feel free to send in your own dreams and I'll interpret them to the best of my ability. I'm obviously not a professional or anything, but I have been doing it for a long time and I have a feel for it. I'll be publishing the whole post on my blog, so feel free to post anonymously or not, either way is fine.

The only guidelines I have are: try to be as detailed as possible. Colors and strong feelings in particular are useful. Also make note of any things in your dream that really stuck out to you, because those are more important. 

Thanks!

[221dreams]

The Mechanical Unicorn and the Dance of the Monsters

In the beginning of this dream, I was wandering around alone in a large but somewhat sparse forest. I had been walking for a while when I suddenly came upon a salesman dressed in a black business suit. He was alone, and he had a briefcase with him. In a secretive manner, he beckoned me closer to him and opened it. A small, white, mechanical unicorn was inside, and as he took it out and assembled it I couldn't help but be amazed with the intricacy of the machinery. Its joints looked as functional as the joints of a real animal, and its clockwork eyes were just beautiful. Once the man had it standing up, he pulled a string attached to its neck and started to run with it like you might with a kite. As soon as he pulled the string, the machinery whirred to life and began to move, galloping like a real creature, keeping pace with him. It struck me as odd that something so high-tech wouldn't be able to move without something pulling it. As they ran farther and farther off into the forest, I noticed that the businessman's black suit was blending in with the black tree trunks, making him invisible. The unicorn, however, stood out in bright white and appeared to be running by itself after all. I watched as its white shape met up with two other small unicorns, and they joined together and disappeared into the trees.

I stood there alone for a long time, and I gradually noticed that the bare trees were sprouting long, green leaves. When the trees were fully leaved, the leaves curled and twisted around, slowly changing into small fairies. Once they had all transformed, the fairies lifted off the branched and flew into the sky, leaving the tree branches black and stark again.

Then, I was suddenly in a different part of the forest. Now I was a monster, a huge towering hairy beast, and all around me were other monsters. We all shared some characteristics--like scraggly fur, round faces, and sharp claws--but at the same time, we were all individuals. One looked like a Chinese Dragon, with a red fringe around his head and crazy eyes. Another had long ears that twitched back and forth like a goat's. But even with our differences, I had a feeling that we were a family-like group.

Another group of monsters was standing opposite us. Unlike our group, these monsters all appeared identical. They all had stringy hair covering their whole bodies, so you couldn't see their faces that well. They really reminded me of spaghetti, I remember. I could feel a type of animosity between our groups, and as they approached us we all split off from each other. The other monsters seemed to know what to do, so I just followed them.

All the monsters formed a six-pointed star (like an asterisk), with each arm of it being composed nine monsters of one exclusive group (so the two groups alternated). They were all facing the same direction in the formation, and once they were all in place they started to rotate around. A drum beat started, and as they started to move faster I understood this was some type of pre-war ritual. I panicked, wondering if it was too late for me to enter it. All the lines had equal numbers in them now, but I felt awkward just standing off to the side, so I tried to add myself on to the end of one of the lines where my monster family was marching. In front of me, one of the spaghetti monsters turned its head around and glared at me before turning back around. I knew the monsters were mad because I had made the formation unbalanced, but I didn't know what else to do.

Then, suddenly time jumped forward. The battle had taken place, and the spaghetti monsters had won easily. There was blood covering the ground, and bodies of monsters everywhere. Every one of my type of monster had been slaughtered, and their heads were now arranged in a circle on the ground. When I saw the red Chinese dragon's head, eyes still staring crazily at nothing, I felt like crying. Out of all of them, that one had been my friend. 

It was about this time that the spaghetti monsters noticed me. They were just starting their victory dance, however, and they seemed annoyed that I had made them interrupt it. I got the feeling that they normally would have killed me on the spot, but because they wanted to hurry up and not delay the dance anymore, they just buried me in the ground up to my head. This way, it at least looked like I had been beheaded from their point of view.

Satisfied, they returned to their victory dance, leaping around and celebrating. They had buried me right next to the Chinese dragon's head, and I couldn't help but keep looking over at its eyes. I couldn't do anything except stay there, buried in the ground, and do nothing as the monsters celebrated the slaughter of my friends. It was scary and sad, but mostly I felt it was degrading.

Then I woke up.

[221dreams]

Preparing for the End of the World

Usually I don't have much of a problem interpreting my own dreams. Even if they're pretty complicated, I can make some sense out of them. This one, however, is one of the few dreams that is completely incomprehensible to me.

It began at night, with me in my room and my parents in the living room watching TV. They were watching the news, and because the two rooms were right next to each other, I could hear everything. The newscasters were talking about the end of the world, fairly calmly, discussing how it was coming soon and what it would be like. It didn't exactly scare me to hear them talk about it, but it did make me feel a kind of dull hopelessness. 

Suddenly, my old toy box in the corner of the room started moving. Stuffed animals, dozens of them, came crawling out of it and made their way across my floor. They pushed open the door and went into the living room. I hastily got up and ran after them, only to see mom and dad still watching the TV and not paying any attention to the stuffed animal procession. The TV was flashing, making a kind of strobe light effect on the shuffling stuffed animals. After about a minute of crawling around, they suddenly all became still again. I scooped them all up in my arms and took them back to my room, throwing them back in the toy box. On my second trip to make sure I hadn't left any, I noticed something moving in my parents' room. When I looked closer, I saw a stuffed blue elephant that had gotten two of its feet stuck in an old tissue box on a dresser. Unlike the other stuffed animals, it was still struggling, trying to get free. Suddenly angry, I lifted it up and whacked it on the wooden dresser a couple times, trying to "kill" it. I had to do this several times but eventually it fell still too. I took it back to my room and closed the toy box, then went back out to the living room.

My parents weren't here anymore, though, and even the light of the TV was off. But moonlight streamed in through the big bay window, so I could see just fine. Wanting to find my parents, I went into the kitchen but was immediately distracted by our annoying redneck neighbor mowing our lawn. He must have had the blade on the wrong setting, because instead of cutting the grass he was just making a huge rut in our yard. I knew mom would be furious so I ran outside to tell him to leave, but right as I stepped through the door my mom appeared. She told me she had already told him to go home and that there was nothing to worry about. I felt reassured, but because the moonlight was so beautiful I decided to go outside anyway.

Our house was close to the ocean, and I could dimly see two people standing by the shore. Curious, I walked over to find a two teenagers about my age: a dark-haired boy and a blonde girl. They saw me approach but made no move to leave or to explain themselves. I stood next to the boy for a minute, looking at the moonlit waves, and then without a word we all three joined hands and lifted off the ground. We soared into the air, over the dark ocean, looking down at the waves below us. For a long while we flew in a peaceful silence, then we started talking about the end of the world together. We told stories about signs of the apocalypse that we'd seen or heard about. The boy mentioned one story he'd heard of a girl who "cut out her own heart and then ate it." The blonde girl freaked out, saying "No way! That's so creepy!" I thought she was probably a little bit of a ditz, to tell the truth. We flew a while more in silence and then we noticed a huge cruise ship sailing beneath us. It looked almost as big as the Titanic. Then without warning, all the lights on the ship flickered and went out, and the whole ship curved under itself and dove like a whale into the depths of the ocean. 

We decided to head back before we got too far out, so we turned around and flew back towards my house. As we approached it, I noticed that our yard was full of flashing red and blue lights--police cars. In the front of our yard (which was now a marsh) there was some huge monster, like a small whale, frozen in mid-leap. I broke off from the boy and girl and floated down to the ground as fast as I could manage, starting to panic. When I landed, I marched over to the leaping monster and found one of my classmates, Heather, standing right in front of it, looking up into its face. There were also cops everywhere.

Up close I could see the monster a lot better. It was like a black baluga whale, except that it had odd square lumps on its back and its eyes were a cold, metallic blue. They were almost like the eyes of a robot or other non-sentient creature. The beast was frozen in mid-leap, right down to the droplets of water clinging to the air around it. Its jaw, filled with jagged sharp teeth, was tightly clenched.

I turned to Heather and asked her what she was doing here. Without breaking her eye contact with the beast, she answered, "I'm just making sure it's still dead." Then I heard a deep, scratchy, terrifying voice that I knew was coming from the beast even though its jaw was still shut. In a somewhat petulant tone, the beast said, "Well, I'm just making sure you're still dead."

Then I woke up.

[221dreams]

Gallery of Greatest Fears

This is actually a dream I had quite recently. I was thinking I'd start with earlier ones, but this one is still really fresh in my mind.

When it began, I was on a tour of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory with all the other kids (I was in the place of Charlie). We were coming to the end of the tour now, and Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder version) led us up to the entrance to an empty art gallery. Right before we walked in, he spun around and looked at us very seriously for a minute, holding his arms out so we couldn't go past him into the gallery. He explained to us that this was the last room of the factory tour, and it was the most dangerous. Even though all the canvases inside it were white and empty now, he told us that when we entered the gallery they would change and show us our greatest fears. He seemed really agitated and nervous as he told us all this, yet somehow he also seemed like he was just itching to run into the gallery. He was practically shaking.

We all got ready, and on the count of three, we ran forward into the gallery. It was a lot bigger on the inside, with walls jutting out everywhere, and it was almost like a maze. As soon as we set foot inside, pictures started blooming on the empty canvases and exhibits started growing up from the ground. Because we had entered together, all our greatest fears were being put on exhibit at once, so it took a little guesswork to see which paintings and pictures belonged to who. We were all running frantically as fast as we could, trying to get through the gallery as quickly as possible, but there were so many things appearing in the galley it was impossible not to see them and try to figure out whose fears they were.  One exhibit began with small objects like watches and nice silverware, then escalated  to fancy cars and houses, then eventually to weapons and a huge painting of an atomic bomb. I figured these ones were the rich spoiled girl's fears, because they were all things that she had the power to buy and to abuse. Meanwhile, chocolate bars were piling up all over the floor and paintings of piles and piles of chocolate made me thing of Augustus Gloop, although I wasn't sure exactly what his fear was. I thought maybe it was the fear that he would never be able to eat all the chocolate in the world. As for my own fears, they were all paintings of homeless people, standing in soup kitchen lines or shuffling around in the snow. The scariest ones were the ones relating to Willy Wonka himself. They either showed him with the heads of various animals, or the bodies of furry beasts with his own head (and top hat, oddly enough). Some had ripped canvasses. I saw the real Willy Wonka running frantically through the gallery, and he himself was like the paintings: sometimes his head would be a beast's, and other times he would be some other mishmash of human and animals. He was laughing wildly as he ran, seeming scared and excited at the same time.

When we finally got to the end, we emerged into a huge wide open space. It was still in the factory, but the room was so large we couldn't see the far end of it. The floor was milky white and reflective, and the walls were slightly translucent and shiny. In one section of the wall, a part was cut away and we could see that nothing except stars in a black sky lay on the other side. It was peaceful in that room, and I wanted to stay there forever. But then Willy Wonka told us that we actually had to go through the gallery once more in order to leave the factory. Wanting to get it over as quickly as possible, we all rushed back in. This time, though, I saw different images bloom on the canvases.

Mine were all images of a little pig-tailed girl. She would appear, and then a multitude of black hands would appear, grabbing at her, tearing her apart until nothing was left. There were small mountains of drawings and figurines of her piling up in the rooms, and all over I saw her image appear and reappear again. It was even more disturbing than the images I'd seen before.

Then I woke up.

This was one of the first in a string of nightmares I've had this summer for seemingly no reason. I can't think of anything scary or unsettling in my life right now, but even so I've had nothing but nightmares since summer began. I don't particularly mind nightmares because they're at least interesting to write about, though. :)

[221dreams]

What this blog is all about

First of all, let me just say hello to everyone in the Tumblr universe. I'm glad to be here :)

I just want to give people an idea of what this blog is going to be like....basically this is going to be a dream blog, pure and simple. I've always been fascinated by dreams and I've been keeping detailed dream journals since I was 10 years old, so by now I have a grand total of 221 dreams written down and a lot more coming. I don't write down all my dreams, just the ones I find particularly interesting. Many of my dreams are very detailed and long, and many include embedded dreams. I have only ever experienced one recurring dream.

I've also experimented and had some success with lucid dreaming, which is really amazing. The only thing I don't like about it is that when you're in control of the dream I don't think you can really find a deeper meaning in it like you can with regular dreams. Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent, aren't I?

I hope you enjoy reading my posts and can use them to help remember your own dreams. It's a fact that when you've been thinking about dreams, even if they're not your own, you'll be more likely to remember yours. I will also be willing to answer any questions, dream-related or not, that you might have for me. 

Thank you!