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Old Dreams

EnolaGaia,

..I know they do - but only to the extent you consciously recall the dream upon waking...

This appears to be the crucial thing. You must fix it in your mind the moment you awake.

I dream all the time. But don't often bother remembering what it was about. Often only too glad it is over.

But there is a recurring theme in the stronger dreams.

I lose my car. But not the car I am driving, one of the two that are 'long term rebuilds'.

In the last dream (last night) I went to fuel up the car and when I returned, presumably from paying for the fuel, the car was gone. And the scene had changed into a sort of scrapyard in a desert.
After a lot of wandering around I found the car being re-painted in some kind of garage. When I asked how much it was going to cost I was told, by someone who I recognised but can't put a name to, '£35,000'.
I said that the car isn't worth that much and they had better buy it from me.

Then I woke up.

Maybe there is a sub conscious reason behind this.

When I was in my teens, my brother and I lived with our parents in a largish house. And I had a sort of workshop in the cellar. I also had a couple of cars that I was playing about with, and three motor bikes.

I joined the Army, and during the time I was away (in Germany) the family moved house.

Also very close to where we lived was an old mill village that was completely demolished and apart from the street layout, very little remained. This came as a shock to me when I got of the bus the first time back and it was all gone.
But more to the point, all my possessions had been disposed of when they moved. Not even a spanner was kept.

When I asked my brother about this he shrugged and just said,' Well, you know Dad didn't like you'.


So maybe this lose of everything I had had up to that point is what is the cause of the dream.

INT21
 
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That's a good illustration of the manner in which dream elements and 'real' events seem to correlate if you can remember enough of the dream side to compare with recent events / experiences.

It took a long time for me to see the connections, because they're subtle and often metaphorical rather than literal.

In your description, it does seem as if unexpected loss or disadvantage with respect to tangible assets is the link.

I've come to think about the process not in terms of specific memories in different slots (e.g., conscious vs. dream state vs. subconscious), but rather sets or categories versus specific instances.

To use your example ... I might have a memory of a tangible asset loss which long-term memory had filed under a sort of associative class or set of 'losses that wounded me'. My dreaming self was triggered or somehow drifted into a dream scenario involving loss (at the level of a category), and the dream began displaying elements based on memories within that overall loss category or set.

Loss of car <-------> Loss of possessions
(context / class = loss of something which you'd invested effort to build up or accumulate)

Scrapyard in desert <-------> Demolished village
(context / class = devastation or reduction to 'junk' resulting in desolate landscape)

Person quoting unworkable cost for retrieving your own car <------> Someone putting your stuff out of reach
(context / class = unexpected / unavoidable victim of cheating or betrayal with no recourse)

These are just illustrations playing on the bits you provided. I'm not claiming this does or should represent anything from your perspective.
 
The analysis is pretty good.

Also I find that this particular kind of dream sends you off, when you have thought about it, into past memories of the background around the things that happened at the time.

Often a dark and uncomfortable place.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
... Also I find that this particular kind of dream sends you off, when you have thought about it, into past memories of the background around the things that happened at the time.

Often a dark and uncomfortable place.
Click to expand...

And just as likely (as the earlier dream bits) to trigger further metaphorical or allusive connections.
 
My dreams have lately become banal in an old sense in that my sleeping brain keeps chucking me into 80's movie scenarios which has never happened to me before until recently .. a week or so ago I was rescuing E.T. from some government types for example .. my dreams are normally more abstract and indescribable and also more European location based for a start but almost all take place in a huge building, modern building or ancient mansion but more often a mixture of the two and with hundreds of other people milling about drifting in and out of evolving story lines ..

I've always been fond of large old buildings in waking life, I think the large modern buildings occurring in my dreams are memories of some of my hospital stays where and when I was allowed to wander the corridors at night time on all sorts of mind altering meds .. (no, I wasn't a mental health admission) ..
 
When I wrote..

'This came as a shock to me when I got of the bus the first time back and it was all gone' It sent me down another line of thought.

With the loss of all the possessions and the area where I had grown up, and the breaking away from the fiends I had up to the time I joined the Army, everything related to my childhood had been wiped out.
My brother had got married and moved away to another part of town. There was nothing to come back to.

So it was a new start.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
EnolaGaia,

..I know they do - but only to the extent you consciously recall the dream upon waking...

This appears to be the crucial thing. You must fix it in your mind the moment you awake.

I dream all the time. But don't often bother remembering what it was about. Often only too glad it is over.

But there is a recurring theme in the stronger dreams.

I lose my car. But not the car I am driving, one of the two that are 'long term rebuilds'.

In the last dream (last night) I went to fuel up the car and when I returned, presumably from paying for the fuel, the car was gone. And the scene had changed into a sort of scrapyard in a desert.
After a lot of wandering around I found the car being re-painted in some kind of garage. When I asked how much it was going to cost I was told, by someone who I recognised but can't put a name to, '£35,000'.
I said that the car isn't worth that much and they had better buy it from me.

Then I woke up.

Maybe there is a sub conscious reason behind this.

When I was in my teens, my brother and I lived with our parents in a largish house. And I had a sort of workshop in the cellar. I also had a couple of cars that I was playing about with, and three motor bikes.

I joined the Army, and during the time I was away (in Germany) the family moved house.

Also very close to where we lived was an old mill village that was completely demolished and apart from the street layout, very little remained. This came as a shock to me when I got of the bus the first time back and it was all gone.
But more to the point, all my possessions had been disposed of when they moved. Not even a spanner was kept.

When I asked my brother about this he shrugged and just said,' Well, you know Dad didn't like you'.


So maybe this lose of everything I had had up to that point is what is the cause of the dream.

INT21
Click to expand...

Funny that - I also dream of losing long term car rebuilds. These seem to be the only dreams I can remember apart from the ones mentioned in other threads. In my dreams I "remember" cars I own but don't know where they are. I think Enola has hit the nail on the head there though.
 
My most haunting dream (and I don't mean in a frightening sense, but that it has stayed with me since) came in the 90's.

In the dream, I am young, maybe 7 or 8 years. It's morning, and I am in my cousin's house at the seaside, a house with a strange and mysterious atmosphere. I hear the distant sound of a door closing and I know my aunt and cousin have gone out and I am alone.

There's a door in the bedroom that leads outside (which did not exist in real life). I open it and step outside. It's a windy autumn day and there are leaves blowing all around. There's the sort of light grey sky you find on the Gulf coast and I can smell the salt air.

I'm standing on the doorstep - a cement slab, really, which is covered in leaves. I look down at my feet and notice I'm wearing Mary Jane shoes (which I really did have back then). A whirlwind blows the leaves on the paving stone and I see there is something painted there. I crouch down to look and see two faces. Both girls. One face is smaller, sort of looking over the shoulder of the other. Neither one is anyone I recognize, but I feel sure I should recognize them. The paint is pastel colored, but I'm reminded of the Belmez faces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bélmez_Faces

In the dream, I know I must go to school, so I leave the house. I begin to grow up as I'm walking.

Suddenly the dream jumps ahead many years, and I'm walking along a sidewalk near a school in the town where I lived with that same cousin as an adult. Again it's a windy day and the sidewalk is covered with autumn leaves. The leaves blow away and I see the same painting on the concrete. It's old and faded, but it's definitely there.

That's the point at which I wake up.

The feeling this dream caused was so strong that it lasted for days, and would sometimes come back - still does, actually - so strong it did feel like being haunted. The feeling was very similar to the sort of atmosphere of my cousin's house - which was spooky in a (usually) pleasant way - and the sense we'd get as both children and adults when we'd read tarot together.

Well, you can imagine my psyche had a field day with this dream. I tried the most obvious interpretations - that it was about my cousin's and my relationship, leaving childhood behind, etc, and none of them fit. Even more abstract interpretations failed. I tried to figure it out for 17 blessed years, and never succeeded. It all just felt wrong.

Finally, a few years ago, I pulled my cousin aside at a family reunion and brought it up. Not that I expected her to interpret my dream - after all, that was my mind's own creation - but I did ask about the strange atmosphere that permeated her parent's house and that seemed to surround her even as an adult. She laughed and said, "oh yes, it's called being haunted."

She went on to describe her ghostly experiences in that house that had troubled her since she was a child. Of course I knew some of these things from back in the day, but she gave much more detail. She said she felt as if the ghost had clung to her because it had been someone who had been afraid to die. If it clung to her, it could continue to have some sort of life. When she'd left her parents house, the ghost had come too. It was this constant presence, even if it would recede into the background sometimes, it was there.

Indeed, the feeling I'm trying to describe was like having an unseen person in the room, watching with a sort of protectiveness and affection. Though admittedly it could become uncomfortably intense at times.

She told me in recent years she'd found a way to keep it at bay, though she had to work at it. It might have felt like something pleasantly mysterious to me, but her own experience was quite a bit more harrowing.

Anyway, the point of all this is that finally - with absolute certainty, too - I knew what the dream had meant.
It had been pretty much to the point. There had been a ghost hovering over my cousin's shoulder the whole time. Even years later. And if the dream was haunting it's because it was about a haunting. I just didn't see it.

I may not be the most skeptical person on this board, but even I look for the non-ghostly explanations first. :p
It was a relief to have it figured out at last.

I tried to recreate the dream faces in pastels once. It's not exact but it gets the idea across.
sidewalkghosts.jpg
 
What a very pleasing and magical image Ulalume! Presumably the pastels were applied to some cement/stone base and leaves/debris added? The subtle shading and highlighting, choice of colour and what appears almost as sunlight to the top right create a very striking and yes, haunting impression.
Reading your account caused me to remember a fragment of a dream I once had, there is no real detail or narrative and yet within this "snapshot" the experience was complete. I was on a grassy verge within a fairly anonymous small town, the feel was autumnal, mid afternoon and it was very windy. Leaves were blowing around but also various bits of litter (garbage?) I remember there were tall fixed chromed wire litter bins and paper and rubbish was swirling around inside them in the wind. there were also a couple of empty wooden park benches. I was alone, in fact I don't remember seeing another person but inside me I felt alone, melancholy, forlorn...forsaken even. I had lost someone...not as in a bereavement, rather as in the ending of a romantic and meaningful relationship and now the world was empty. Now I'm not aware that it reflected or even foretold anything from the real events in my life, it may not have even been "me" in the dream, but the depth of emotion was so powerful, and the realisation of just how significant and precious human relationships can be was so poignant. And this is what I think dreams do best, articulate feelings/moods/emotions which are often far more concentrated...more undiluted than in waking life. Perhaps subjecting them to the rational pursuit of ascribing a meaning to them (which I'm sure can be done) is maybe asking them to speak a language which is not their mother tongue, so to speak, yet dreams speak so fluently in the language of feelings.
 
One part of my dream last night was so strange, I'm going to share it with you. My two lower front teeth were made of blood and they were kept in place with thin layers of ice, front and back. I had to peel each layer of ice off to let the blood out and then my teeth were there again.
 
Back sometimes in 2014, I dreamed I was an Atlantean 13 years girl appearing in the jungle of Borneo. I walked to a white road, when a car approached, I didn't bulge, not knowing what it was and the car stopped. In my mind, I was the one who made it stopped, because I had 'magical' powers or had a defense shield around me or both. People arrived and tried to talk to me, but I couldn't understand.
That was when the dream stopped and I woke up, laughing, because for me there was nothing more woo-woo and ridiculous than Atlantis. It was a week-end morning. It stayed with me and I even wrote stories or plots around that dream. Also, I often dream of floods or more drastically, being swepped to sea. I often have these when I'm not doing enough creative work. I call them my Atlantean dreams and these are not as pleasant as the one as a 13 years old.
 
I dream about tidal waves ALL the time. I'm usually terrified (in the dream) but even though I'm swept up in the waves, I never get hurt (or wet, in fact). Weird.
 
Tolkien wrote about it in his letters, specifically letter #163. His son also had the same dream, apparently. He further wrote that after he wrote the "myth" of Númenor (part of the backstory of the Lord of the Rings saga) he stopped having the dream.

I have had a tidal wave dream several times but not since I was a teenager. I believe it was when I mentioned to my mother that I had had such a dream several times that she told me about Tolkien having had that dream, which caused me to read up about it.
 
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Isn't the dream of tidal waves or just being swept out to sea supposed to be something to do with lack of control in real life?
 
Gloucestrian said:
Tolkien wrote about it in his letters, specifically letter #163. His son also had the same dream, apparently. He further wrote that after he wrote the "myth" of Númenor (part of the backstory of the Lord of the Rings saga) he stopped having the dream.

I have had a tidal wave dream several times but not since I was a teenager. I believe it was when I mentioned to my mother that I had had such a dream several times that she told me about Tolkien having had that dream, which caused me to read up about it.
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I had those dreams from teenage years and still got them, from time to time and I'm 50. That's strange how you write or talk about the dreams and that make them stop. So, I'm might not have those dreams anymore, since I told you about it.:)
 
catseye said:
Isn't the dream of tidal waves or just being swept out to sea supposed to be something to do with lack of control in real life?
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Either that, or I think water is supposed to represent the emotions. And given that I spend HUGE amounts of my waking life not screaming at people for being so bloody stupid, this would make sense. :p
 
I used to dream a lot about standing on a beach (usually holding a treasured pet) and watching a huge wave approaching - the panic and trying to get to high ground, plus keeping hold of the pet in question which always escaped...

then I found myself single and in total charge of myself and my destiny. I don't have those dreams any more. It does make me wonder why I never dreamed of trying to keep my children safe, it was always an animal. However, it has made me subscribe to the 'huge wave in danger of sweeping you away representing a feeling of powerlessness in real life' theory.

I suppose lack of control and emotions are very linked though, so it could be both.
 
I think it's very telling that I don't get wet in my dreams. If this is about suppressing the emotions, then perhaps it's suggesting that if I didn't, things would still be okay. If it's about feeling a lack of control, staying dry would also suggest that I might feel like I don't have any control, but I do and that's okay too.

Interesting stuff.
 
henry said:
dream substitution
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True. And I had animals way before I had children, so it's a more enduring archetype.

Plus my children were capable of taking care of themselves from a very early age. Any attempts made by me to shepherd them to safety would have been met with much arguing and the dream would have gone in a different direction!
 
Firstly, apologies - I thought this thread was about odd dreams, not old, but there we go.

Secondly, I had the tidal wave dream again last night but, interestingly and unusually, my sister was in it and was right next to me (we were actually holding hands) when the wave hit. She's got a horrible and upsetting day ahead of her today so it does seem that the sea, in my case, is to do with emotional turmoil.
 
PeteS said:
I previously described a 20 something girl I dreamed of regularly many years ago but could not recognise. "Heard" nothing further from her in years, but she reappeared suddenly last night out of nowhere. Looked identical to previously except her hair was longer.
She: Hi I've come back to see you.
Hugs me (never touched me before)
Me: Hello - your hair's grown.
She smiles.
Me: Tell me who you are .
She: You know who. I'm 32 - think hard.
Suddenly it all fitted. Her looks, her accent her name everything.
She: You know now - sorry I couldn't make it.
Hugs me so tightly I couldn't breathe.
She don't worry I'm fine. Really. I'll see you when the time comes.
Smiles and disappears.
I wake up sobbing. Finally mystery solved. It was my unborn daughter.
Click to expand...

This is possibly the saddest, most wonderful, heartbreakingly unfair and joyfully amazing post I have read here. Whether it was just your rmind or a true glimpse of something else, it has affected me deeply.

I am being deadly serious when I say it makes me long to find religion. I have feared for years that I am missing a spiritual fulfillment in my life - be it organised or self-governed. What a strange mindset your post has created for me. Wonderful. Thank you.
 
Once, while still living in France, I had an incredible dream of time and space travelling. I remember being in some type of lift which was shaking and then stepping out of it and being in a strange and interesting place. Then, I wanted to come back but the box wasn't shaking and I stayed there, then woke up. At breakfast, my mum told me there had been a earthquake, which is very rare in South West France. I think I felt the slight tremor and interpreted it as a time-space machine.
 
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