Dream Journal
July 27, 2000
I’m upstairs in a house with Deaner, who’s showing me pictures in his photo album. I spend some time on a Tahiti-like island, which was probably a rote or subdream based on a photo, and return to find Deaner (who looks different) waiting for me. I am trying hard to be entertaining and only sometimes succeeding, but there is friendly chemistry. Their place is out in the country, an old bachelor-type place filled with junk. They describe their house as “apartments” and their friends are always around. [we hang out]
They disappear upstairs and I’m left alone. . . . I call them on a white downstairs phone and talk to them but spill white wax all over my shoes. Then Deaner comes down and we laugh. Soon the boys and I leave, driving along the foresty road. We stop at the side of the road and descend this steep slope to a barren rocky plain that sputters from weird holes. We block the sputtering holes, throw stuff into them, and play about with rocks. Then as we drive off, big rocks start to shoot out of one of the holes, barely missing people. I feel bad for starting such a thing. As we drive away, I realize it’s the Tahiti-like island. There’s a massive fire on the top of the cliffs, threatening to spread downwards. There are lava flows and fireballs as we leave.
There’s a break in memory and we’re back at the forested slope. This time we’re descending with a huge group of Renaissance Festival people into a clearing in a thick forest. Everyone’s dressed up and speaking in accents. I just sort of don my costume by thought as we enter the scene. I choose to be a funny guy and I’m cracking all sorts of jokes. A friend becomes this warrior wearing a helm with detachable bull horns.
Mistaking this as the island from earlier, I remember the danger we were in. I look up to a cliff above us and see a trail of lava coming down. Soon the gully at the bottom is filled with lava. I’m afraid, and I’m having trouble getting up the way we came as the slope has become much steeper, and the vegetation is now just grass — no trees and plants to grab onto. I struggle to climb up and encounter a dull, bug-eyed person calling for help in a weird way — like an inside joke I wasn’t in on. It was a total thought form serving only one purpose.
My attention is unavoidably drawn to the lava below as I wonder if we’ve lost anybody. I find myself hovering above it. There is a little thought-form Gollum down there sinking slowly a bit and jumping periodically, saying “Oww!” like a broken record. A friend, Rebecca I think, is also there, walking on the lava and sinking a little with each step. I explain how it’s impossible to walk on lava like that because you’d burn up. The lava turns out to be red and glowing and pliable but not hot. I see a row of the renaissance people including a queen in pink and a prince sitting on a wooden ornamental bench ON the lava.
Then I had a false awakening where I was writing the dream down, before really waking up.
References: Deaner is from the band Ween.
Dream Friends: For several months in 2000, I had dreams of hanging out with Deaner and Gener of the band Ween. These were fun, social, personable dreams. It’s possible they were about the actual people, but more likely it was two people who reminded me of them, who I took to be them.
Thought Form People: (written at the time) Thought forms of people have lifeless, dry, unintelligent eyes and usually have one thing to depict, one message to give, one purpose, and they fulfill it but don’t stand up to careful scrutiny. You can freshly feed them with your expectations but don’t expect anything novel or surprising from them.
It’s likely Gollum was the same bug-eyed thought form on the slope.
Thought Form Lava: The lava here is very clearly projected by my expectations when I remember it from the previous scene and looked up to the cliff. It seems to have appeared under all the other characters in the scene. But it seems that it only appeared that way to me. Nobody else was acting as if they were standing upon lava.
Renaissance Festival: I’m hanging out with some friends, having fun, and we decide to head out to join up with this Renaissance Festival group. People enjoy their dreamtime as they would in the waking world.
The Unclimbable Slope: Here’s another example of a place that becomes difficult to climb out of. Space bends and works against me, keeping me in.
It’s likely I descended into a rote from the top of the slope, which means I’m physically trying to climb out of a place I just need to pull back from.
In and Out of Multiple Rotes: The real situation (NREM true dream) is that I’m hanging out with someone I take to be Deaner. He’s showing me photos, and I jump into one. This may be a rote or a subdream. I then return from it and continue hanging out.
Then a bunch of us travel a little ways down the road and enter a rote of a barren, rocky volcanic plain on what I take to be the same island. I rationalize this as us “descending” down a steep slope at the side of the road. We exit the rote, rationalized by driving uphill, and we’re back at the side of the road again. I take the transition to be “a break in memory”.
We then enter another rote about a Renaissance Festival, descending once again into the scene. Because spatially we seem to be descending the same slope, I take this to be on the same island, even though it looks very different. Because of that, I bring my expectation of lava with me and project lava into the scene. Everyone is walking around on the earth like normal — only I see the lava.
This is the quintessential dream, a real social dream experience with rotes, rationalizations, confusion, and projection.
Slope and Sky: Here I’m descending into two rotes. In both cases, it’s from the perspective of being on the side of a forested road, so instead of descending from the sky, we’re descending down a steep slope.
Entering Together: Both times, a group of friends including Deaner descend into the rotes together.