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"It's A Year Since It Happened": Dreamstuff

gattino

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
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A peculiar pair of dreams this week with a thematic connection that intrigues me.

About 3 nights ago I had a dream which is a standard and (in the course of a life time) recurring dream, that I understand many people have (in the same way as flying and teeth falling out are meant to be universal). That is one in which I am though my current age still at school and the end of term exams are coming up for which i have done no study or preparation etc. This is usually explained as an anxiety dream but since there is absolutely nothing going on in my life or on the horizon to which i can attach that sentiment I'll leave such psychology to one side. The point here is only the school setting. Perhaps in the assembly hall i say to someone, or they to me, "can you believe its a year since it happened"..and then I woke with the knowledge that "it" involved a drowning incident and it had happened to Emily. (The additional name Plunkett or Blunkett was in my waking mind too, but i dismissed this as i could attach it to nothing)

I know no one called Emily.

Waking with an unknown name or word in my head always sets me wondering if something out of the ordinary just happened, and so i found myself googling to see if there were any news stories online about an Emily drowning. I found nothing under a cursory search and so just left it at that, but continued to wonder.

Well last night/this morning another dream. It started off as one thing, as dreams often do - playing with a dog in the garden - then morphed into a different plot and setting entirely. The garden was now a lake or body of water and I was - i assume - a teacher of some kind as I clearly had the authority to direct maybe 3 teenagers to get in a small boat with me to go and fetch something on the water. Almost immediately the boat began filling with water as we slowly sank. So we have the school and drowning themes again, but the element that made the dream so notable was that everything was depicted in first person Point Of View. That is I saw the whole story through my eyes..i didn't see myself in the story. I saw the water rising up to my eye level, the objects floating on the surface of the water...a turd, and a long branch. ..and the young men on the platform outside a lakeside house to whom i was waving and trying to call out to indicate we were in trouble. At first they didn't understand we needed help, and my voice was drowned out by the water.

You'll be happy to know we didn't drown, we got to the edge and they pulled us out. More than that the reason for our sinking became apparent..some boxes these young men had given us had contained solid metal items instead of light wooden versions. Was there an Emily? I don't know but one of those in the boat with me, perceived only from behind , was a somewhat tubby girl.

The repetition of the school drowning incident and the first person point of view have me very very curious as to whether i was picking up something from somewhere. You may suggest the theme of drowning is clearly also symbolism for anxiety and being in over your head etc..but as I say there is bugger all going on in real life now or in the foreseeable future which would account for any such feelings.
 
as I say there is bugger all going on in real life now or in the foreseeable future which would account for any such feelings.
I'm very struck by the title you chose, and the phrase you mention in your first paragraph, since you do not refer to it again in the rest of your recount. So when I encounter those six words which I bolded in your concluding paragraph, there's an obvious question: what was happening for you a year ago?
 
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Ah...good point. *thinks*. Um..nothing..run up to Christmas, no major life events or developments. Last significant life event was my mother dying, but that was in April 2017.
 
since you do not refer to it again in the rest of your recount.
in case ive misunderstood and you simply missed it, the title refers to what was said to me in the school hall in the first dream in seeming relation to the drowning/sinking/lake incident.

It should be said with hindsight that I can't say for sure that the implication of hte first story was that someone actually died. It may have been a more lighthearted experience of a memorable drama of "that time we fell in the water". Certainly if the two dreams ARE related no one appears to have actually died in the second one.
 
I have started having 'anxiety' dreams just lately but with no real significant things to be massively anxious about. I've put it down to the added slight stresses of Christmas (plus we had to have our little old dog put to sleep yesterday, but that was a sudden decision and not something that's been making me anxious on a daily basis). So maybe it's just the general hustle and bustle and business of the time of year, Gattino? Emily Plunkett seems to be a well known photographer, so perhaps you registered the name in something you'd been reading, and it's all become amalgamated...
 
No doubt..though the name has no conscious relevance to me.

I should rule out instantly any suggestion that I think my dreams describe in factual detail an actual incident of say some dead person or even my own future, but there is something out the ordinary about them as if the information or imagery belongs to someone other than me. Maybe its just the whole POV perception that left me with that.

A couple of years ago i had two dreams in which i was a young black man....in one of those I actually leapt as myself into the light over some balcony or other and landed on my feed on solid ground, now in this other person's body. In all other dreams im presumably me in unusual circumstances. But here i was suddenly and physically another person, or at any rate occupying the body of one. That had the same "this isn't an ordinary dream" quality to it.
 
I have started having 'anxiety' dreams just lately but with no real significant things to be massively anxious about. I've put it down to the added slight stresses of Christmas (plus we had to have our little old dog put to sleep yesterday, but that was a sudden decision and not something that's been making me anxious on a daily basis). So maybe it's just the general hustle and bustle and business of the time of year, Gattino? Emily Plunkett seems to be a well known photographer, so perhaps you registered the name in something you'd been reading, and it's all become amalgamated...

Sorry to hear about your dog. Lavender tablets from Kalms are really good for anxiety.
 
Ok, a suitably weird twist to my original post. It's now two weeks later. I've been in the habit of watching old movies on youtube in the evenings, instead of regular TV. Watch one thing and it starts suggesting related things. Tonight it included a 1975 movie called The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. Sounds interesting, so I put it on.....

Opening scene is a man in a lake , water lapping his face, swimming towards a house on the shore..a row boat comes up to him with a young woman in it, his wife, she kills him...Different man wakes up in bed. It's been a vivid dream ( you can see where the plot is going from the title). He, the protagonist, is a teacher...
 
Morning Gattino, maybe you saved Emily, as she must be the tubby girl you mentioned that was in the boat with you??!!!
 
Probably apropos of nothing, but the name you dreamt immediately put me in mind of the actress, Emily Blunt. Blunt stared in the film version of the book, The Girl on a Train, by Paula Hawkins. Hawkins next book was entitled, Into the Water. I haven't read that, but I believe it was about a drowning that took place in a village pool.

Read any of Hawkins' books, Gattino?
 
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