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Dreams (You've Dreamed; Compendium)

Well, Mr. Radio, if I had that dream I know what it would mean. I get that feeling any time I go into a discount book store or library sale when my chemistry isn't quite right. I see all those stacks and stacks of books, written with so much labor, published with so much hope, containing so much that is good and laudable and necessary, going for next to nothing and making their authors no money, and I think - "What the heck am I thinking trying to make my living this way?" There's so little of me - so many of them - what does anybody need one more book by one more middle-class white woman for? I saw The Tale of Despereaux in a 75% off venue less than a year after it won the Newbery, fercryinoutloud!

For someone who reads books rather than attempts to write them for profit, I would expect such imagery to be more of an outcry along the lines of "So many books - so little time!" The necessity of making selections when so much is to be had can be soul-crushing, especially in consideration of all the time that necessarily must be spent doing other things than reading!

Or it could be a random cross-referencing in your brain between the movie in question and books as familiar oblong-shaped objects that are arranged in crowded towers higher than your head. This is especially likely if you use one of those libraries with the central light shaft and the mezzanine floors, so that you can stand by the circulation desk and see books rising into the sky above you. (Like in the film of The Music Man.)
 
Another possible root to my dreams is that during the 41 years I spent working in bookstores I was kept cognizant of the fact that book stores occasionally catch fire. So I always had an escape route in mind, especially when I was working in the basement or on an upper floor.

I remember one store where the route to the nearest window on the third floor (second story, British) would have involved a mad scramble up an ever-growing "landscape" of unsorted books. (We purchased libraries in such volume that the pile continually grew faster than the books could be effectively priced.)

On the other hand, books burn slowly, like logs. Thus really violent book store fires normally occur at night when the place is free of human observers.
 
I wonder if anyone has tried this? I read it in a book years ago, granted it was a book of weird things people write in newspapers, but nevertheless it's an idea.

It goes like this: you know how in nightmares you can feel as if your feet are stuck to the ground when you're trying to get away? What you should do, according to this chap, is to unscrew your feet at the ankle and carry on without them! It's ingenious when you think about it.

Now you'll know what to do next time you get one of those pesky "can't run away" dreams.
 
But wouldn't those dream-stumps then stick to the ground just like the dream-feet did?
 
OldTimeRadio said:
But wouldn't those dream-stumps then stick to the ground just like the dream-feet did?
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Not according to the bloke who wrote the letter, and he would know.
 
He would know about himself, but dream logic is individual.

Last night, I was in a role-playing game with my husband and a friend of ours with whom, much as we love him, we will never play RPGs again. The dream POV was character-level, but I knew we were in a game, as "first-level" characters (though I think, from our abilities, it must have been a point-based system). The setting was Mesopotamian, more or less, and we were three strangers who had been called because of our special powers to be trained to deal with some problem the temple was having. My husband and I, both playing women characters, stuck together, but M, playing a male character, kept himself aloof and kept doing things on his own. He suspected that the problem involved corruption in the temple, and he may have been right.

When our mentor finally came out, trailed by lots of bald attendants, he set up our first training exercise, demonstrating that as long as we two women bore a couple of things in mind, certain spirits would not bother us. He demonstrated this by throwing the spirit at us; it came fast and strong, but we stood firm and it whizzed by without touching us. "But, do not be too confident," he said, as the thing proceeded to turn into a washing machine and swallow M's character.

Neither the mentor nor his attendants reacted to this, so I did. (Telling my husband, out-of-character, that it was probably a test of how we would deal with problems and if it wasn't, screw 'em, we should deal with it anyway.) So I ran over to the washing machine, which was bouncing around agilely for something with no legs, and, assessing our relative sizes, said to my husband's character: "Okay, I'm heavier than you, so I'll hold it down and you get the door off." It was a top-loading washer but it had fallen over in the bouncing around, so I sat on top. As I woke up, I thought: "I need to get the door open and hold it; that way it'll be easier to get off and we can call in and ask M if he can damage it from the inside."

As so often happens when I wake during a story-dream, I spent several minutes after waking trying to work out the next bit of the plot, but I didn't have enough information, not even who was running the game. Then the cat decided it was time for me to wake up and started chewing my face, so I'll never know now.
 
Just remembered a very odd dream I once had. Was in my bed and a parrot flew in the window and started writing something on a piece of paper but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't see what it said.

Shortly after I split up with the girl I was with and started dating my current girlfriend. Not saying there is any connection but always wondered if the parrot had some profound message for me?
 
I had a very clear dream the other night. I was moving into a new halls of residence, everything in the room was in grey and beige tones, big windows, just your average dorm. Except I also had a puppy. He was just IN the room, like he came included. I fell in love with him and played with him, he looked like a french bulldog but grey, and VERY new, like almost not old enough to be away from mum. I started looking up on the internet what breed he might be when one of my colleagues came into the room and started yelling at me that it was her puppy and I wasn't allowed to touch it!

When I told her about it the next day she got really weirded out, as she had bought a kitten on a whim the previous day, her first ever pet.
 
I had another beautiful dream last night, that I met the boy of my dreams! He was just perfect, not in an unatainable way, just te perfect looking guy for me. He said something adorable to the effect of "so are we a couple now?" but he worded it in a really strange old fashioned way, I remember jokingly saying "what like, courting? You speak so quaintly!". The love I felt for this boy was insane, I tried to force myself to go back to sleep so I could try and carry on the dream but it was gone. It makes me sad to think I will never be as happy in the real world as I am in my sleep.
 
A week ago I dreamt that I looked toward the horizon and there I saw two atomic bombs (I just knew that they were ) slowly falling downward. They had the shape of a V1-rocket / torpedo. I just saw their black outlines against the sky, seeing how big they looked at that distance (as far as the horizon) they must have been huge.

Strangely enough, I was intrigued and not frightened at all.
 
uair01 said:
A week ago I dreamt that I looked toward the horizon and there I saw two atomic bombs (I just knew that they were ) slowly falling downward. They had the shape of a V1-rocket / torpedo. I just saw their black outlines against the sky, seeing how big they looked at that distance (as far as the horizon) they must have been huge.

Strangely enough, I was intrigued and not frightened at all.
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I've dreamt nuclear weapons for the last two nights, and I am still scared. (Details are in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) thread so I won't repeat them here.)
 
It's a long time since I had a dream about nuclear annihilation but the worst and most vivid was back in the eighties.

I was in my bedroom as the window lit up with what I knew was a close nuclear strike. I fell to the floor and could smell the carpet burning around my face. As the heat grew ever more intense, I became aware that the marrow* in my backbone was melting. I lay there wondering why it didn't hurt more and whether I might already be dead. The worst dream I have ever had!

In another one, I was mysteriously left in charge of an old people's home as the first bombs began to fall. I busied myself in making the old folks comfortable and trying not to betray what I knew. I was giving out pills but someone had run off with the euthanasia ones so I hoped that aspirin might deaden the pain a little. The sky was filled with these rather beautiful UFOs which the residents were admiring but which I knew were bathing us in deadly waves of radiation.




*I should never have taken that marrow to bed. :shock:
 
It's interesting to see so many people having UFO/invasion type dreams. I thought I was going nuts as I have a recurring dream about being outside, quite often in my mothers garden and watching an object in the sky. I then realise its coming down and soon its joined by other craft all zig zagging about and generally looking terrifying.

My instincts are that this is still a throwback to one of the first science fiction novels and indeed the first paperback book I ever bought. The Palace of Eternity, by Bob Shaw. His imagery of the Syccan warships and the Syccan's gave me the heebee jeebee's for ages, and I suspect its now deep seated in me.
 
Sweet smells foster sweet dreams

Sleep with flowers in your bedroom if you want sweet dreams, work suggests.

When the smell of roses had been wafted under the noses of slumbering volunteers they reported experiencing pleasant emotions in their dreams.

An odour of rotten eggs had the opposite effect on the 15 sleeping women, the German scientists found.

They told a Chicago meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology that they now plan to study people who suffer from nightmares.

Sweet dreams

It is possible that exposure to smells might help make their dreams more pleasant, believe Professor Boris Stuck and his team from the University Hospital Mannheim.

They waited until their subjects had entered the REM phase of sleep, the stage at which most dreams occur, and then exposed them to a high dose of smelly air for 10 seconds before waking them up one minute later.

The volunteers were then quizzed about the content of their dreams and asked how it made them feel.

The sleeping women hardly ever dreamed of smelling something. Nevertheless, the emotional tone of the dream did change depending on the stimulation.

Previous research has shown that other types of stimulation, such as sound, pressure or vibration, can influence the content and the emotional tone of dreams.

Dr Irshaad Ebrahim of The London Sleep Centre said: "The relationship between external stimuli and dreaming is something we are all at some level aware of.

"This initial research is a step in the direction towards clarifying these questions and may well lead to therapeutic benefits."

Professor Tim Jacob, an expert in smell and taste at Cardiff University, said: "Smell is the only sense that doesn't 'sleep'. Information continues to reach the limbic system of the brain and that includes the hippocampus, or memory area and the amygdala, that is involved with emotional response.

"Other senses have to pass through the 'gate' of the thalamus, which is closed when we sleep."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7628744.stm
 
Sounds right to me. A few years ago, on a diet of offal-rich butcher scraps, my two dogs farted so rankly one night that I dreamed I was drowning in an open sewer. :shock:
 
escargot1 said:
Sounds right to me. A few years ago, on a diet of offal-rich butcher scraps, my two dogs farted so rankly one night that I dreamed I was drowning in an open sewer. :shock:
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That's the best tonic for an otherwise piss poor morning, I had to laugh out loud
:lol:
 
I had a dream just last week where I spent the entire damn episode promenading around downtown Cincinnati covered with pig manure. And I was wearing my best necktie!

Trust me, that one's not in the dream books.
 
I'd arranged to pop over to my mate's tonight for tea. At about 6:40 this morning she texted me, saying, oops, I've just remembered, we're off to see Steve Coogan tonight at the Vic Hall in Hanley, can we re-schedule tea for Monday?

The text alert woke me from a dream in which I'd been charging up the stairs at the Vic to a gig. :shock:
 
Can't remember last nights dream, but the night before I had a beautiful dream. I can't remember if I was in a harbour or on the shores of a lake, but everything seemed icy cold, maybe I was somewhere north, in a fjord or something. I could see evergreen trees, and mountains, and eveything felt......fragile. Like it was made of crystal and just moving, even breathing, would destroy it. Then I saw the sky, which was full of rainbows, maybe 8 or 9 in formation. As soon as one faded, another appeared, some bigger, some smaller, some upside down or complete circles. I was amazed, and tried to take a photo, but as I did the landscape changed into corn fields. I dream of this place a lot, golden rolling corn fields, rickety bleached broken fences, scarecrows, with long winding dirt track paths. The rainbows faded, and I ended up at the other end of one of these long paths, me on one end, and the rainbow lake on the other.
 
I had an unusual dream last night. There was a blond girl in my house upset because I'd stolen her boyfriend or something of that ilk. She kept saying 'what am I going to do about my underwear?!' and trying to pour saucepans full of hot water on my head.

Anyway, I ran to my parent's room and then she started trying to set my house on fire by dousing the outside of the house with oil, all the while screaming about her undies. Beats me what that was about.......
 
Some dreams you just don't want to be prophetic!

Last night I had one of those seemingly long dreams that, although you realise they are dreams feel so real. I was in an art deco office building walking along a long corridor. The detail was amazing, right down to the sound of my footsteps on the wooden floor. I knew that I was going somewhere in the building to meet up with my husband.

At the end of the corridor there was a left turn which opened out into a refreshment area. The windows were floor to ceiling on the left and forward walls, in the far corner to my right there was a bar set out for morning coffee with cakes, pastries and other snacks. The small of the coffee was strong.

As I walked in I noticed that the floor, which was of white glass lit up under each foot, the lights changed colour as they faded. There were round glass tables about the room, their tops coloured like archery targets. The chairs around them were made of glass but with woven rattan backs and leather seats. There were a lot of waiters and waitresses standing about wearing 1930's style uniforms, but there were no other customers.

I went up to the bar and a waitress asked me what I would like. I knew I had no money and began to say that I was waiting for my husband. She seemed to understand my problem as she reassured me that the food was complimentary. She told me to take a seat and she would send a waiter over with a selection of food on a trolly.

I went to a table and sat down with my back to the window as the view made me giddy, it was very high up, way above the other buildings. I was facing the entrance. A tall slim man entered wearing traditional Eastern Mediterranean clothing ( I think the robe is called a thobe and the hat a kufi) He was blonde with very pale blue eyes. He looked troubled. He walked over to where I was sitting and asked if he could join me. I felt embarrased and replied that I was waiting for my husband but he sat down next to me.

He said that he had to tell some body what he knew. He said that with all the economic crisis nobody was worrying about the real crisis looming up. I asked him what he was talking about and he pointed out of the window behind me. I turned to look and saw a cloud moving torwards the city. It was moving rapidly, blotting out everything as it moved towards the city. I heard the mans voice saying that the cloud was a flu epidemic like that after WW1 and that these epidemics always followed a manmade crisis.

I knew I had to find my husband, being with him was all that mattered, as I got up out of the chair I woke up.

Sorry this is so long.
 
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 70926.html

Robbie Williams plagued by Little and Large dreams
Thursday, 23 October 2008

Robbie Williams has been plagued by recurring dreams about comedy duo Little and Large, according to Syd Little.

Little, 65, once got in touch with Williams through their mutual friend Jonathan Wilkes after meeting an ill girl who was a fan of the ex-Take That star.

Williams told Little he would sign signed CDs for her - and then went on to explain how he dreamt about the 1980s comedy duo, Little said.

Speaking on Lancashire station 106.5 Central Radio, Little said: "I couldn't believe it when Robbie rang me up and I just thought it was Bobby Davro winding me up doing an impression.

"But then he explained that he'd been talking to Jonathan Wilkes and I realised the call was genuine.

"Robbie then went on to say that he had recurring dreams, almost nightmares, which involved Little and Large but, now that he'd spoken to me, the dream had been broken."

Comics Little and Eddie Large have enjoyed a career together spanning nearly 50 years.

They hit the big time in the late 1970s and regularly appeared on prime time TV in the 1980s.
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Pity he didn't go into more detail, sounds very strange. Maybe someone was trying to tell him something? I think I'd prefer Morecambe and Wise, though.
 
On Friday night, I found a vinyl disc and photographs in which Paul Simon set forth the evidence that he had been to the inhabited portions of Mars and lived with the inhabitants. The details are fuzzy now, but in-dream they convinced me. However, I found myself having to break the truth of Fortean evidence to him. If he published it now, no matter how good it was, people would assume he was crazy and spend all their time decrying the improbability of his information and explaining how he could have faked the photos; while, if he waited until NASA finally reached the inhabited portion of Mars, people would say that all the unique and unpredictable information was cobbled together after the fact and would spend all their time explaining how he had faked it all. This information upset him so much that he wept.

I woke up before I could figure out how to use my NASA contacts (thanks to the children's book community, I am two degrees of separation from Buzz Aldrin) to help him, which I am sure now I could do.
 
I really should have posted this when it happened, otherwise it has no impact but I thought just for completions sake I'll add it anyway. About a week before the US elections, I dreamed that Barak Obama won it. It was one of those totally realistic dreams and I saw a big newspaper headline. No more. When I woke up I was even confused because I thought it had already happened and I had read it somewhere. I also didn't pick it up deliberately from reading about it as I didn't read a word about the election as it bored me sh*tless. I couldn't have cared less who won or didn't.
Of course there are many explanation and it was only a 50/50 "premonition" [if you can call it that]. So basically anyone could have dreamed it. However I'd like to mention again that it was one of "those" dreams, where I just know they are different. So there, just to have it written down somewhere. Sorry about the boringness of this post.
;)
 
Homer Simpson was in my dream recently. Not so strange, you might say, but he appeared as though he were not a cartoon character, but a real live person. He was a fat, bald man with a five o'clock shadow, but completely yellow. I don't think I would have recognised him if he hadn't been yellow, now I think of it.
 
I had one of those long, complex dreams from which it's hard to remember any but random images and an emotion or two. This afternoon in the library, a dream dictionary fell off the shelf when I pulled out the book next to it, and I thought, well, why not look up the most vivid image in the dream? So I looked under "Dragon." I found a number of motifs under that heading, some specific - running from, flying over the garden, slaying, rescuing a maiden from - but nothing addressing my image. So I put it back as obviously bogus.

What kind of dream dictionary doesn't define "Dragon in a wheelchair?" I ask you! :p

(It was a small dragon, mostly humanoform, but its feet were too big to walk with and it had no wings. I was going to have to install a ramp so it could go outside while I was away adventuring. It was there to cook with its breath weapon.)
 
I dreamt that I was at a computer / hacker conference and I very much wanted to buy one of those stuffed Linux penguins. I also was looking for a Debian system T-shirt. But strangely enough most of the stalls had Swarovki glass beads.

Next day I talked to a colleague and he said: "That's nothing, I had times when I woke up at night and would be seeing hexadecimal numbers."
 
I had a series of very vivid dreams last night, and none of the places or experiences seemed very connected with real life.

One image involved a multistory building (built mainly of wood) which was about to collapse into a road. This was supposed to have been in Edinburgh.

Another image involved a half-bottle of scotch, a brand I've not heard of, which was "Thumb(size?)". It included the word thumb, anyhow.

How great it would be to have a Dream Recorder, so that you could replay and analyse your dreams when awake! :D
 
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