Dream Journal
September 16, 2010
Rebecca and I had gone to the top of this snow-covered mountain overlooking a wide, open valley. Down in the valley was a small town, and I think this may have been Jackson Hole, which I’d been talking about with Rox and Jess lately, but never been to. It was night, and the entire landscape was covered in snow, several feet deep. Rebecca and I had a plan to roll a snowball down the mountain and watch as it got bigger and bigger and then go find it. We packed a small snowball and sent it down the mountainside. It went about 10 feet and then disappeared off an edge down a steeper slope. We listened and could hear it rolling and making sounds for a while. As I stepped forward, I realized how steep the mountain was and how we’d never be able to get down safely OR find the snowball in this dim light. Everything was as if bathed in dim moonlight, and it was hard to discern slopes and edges. After getting a little panicky about being too close to the edge, we decided we’d have to stay the night up there. I wasn’t afraid of the cold, however, and I burrowed a little hole in the snow. I tried to get Rebecca to join me but she didn’t. My little burrow was cozy and I think reflected the shape of the comforter and blankets around me.
After drifting in and out of sleep here, a woman came by and we talked to her briefly. I think she had a baby with her. Then we noticed an asphalt path running right next to us and down the mountain. We wondered if it had been there all along. Then I looked up and saw a cable car above the trees a little ways behind us. An even easier way down! Then I heard this drumming and this music and realized there must be some kind of village behind where we were. I followed the music and came to this charming summery village at the top of the mountain. There was a sunken area made of stone tiles with raised walls around it. People were drumming on huge drums on the far wall. Lots of people were watching, and some had brought their own large drums. It was a show of some sort. To the right, nearer the village, was a cluster of buildings with shops and tourist-type stuff, and a new performance was beginning there. It was a bunch of Japanese people dressed in these elaborate transformer costumes. They had truck parts, and at one point a few of them got down on their bellies and “transformed” to truck mode. It was very impressive.
But something about the layout of this sunken tile area reminded me of Starcraft 2, which I’m currently playing, and my perspective rose up to the 3/4 view like in the game and before long the scene was entirely a Starcraft 2 game. The sunken tile area was exactly the layout of some of the multiplayer maps, and soon I’m playing Zerg and training units. There were these units I haven’t seen before — black beetle-like things in our bases. I was controlling one base and there was another friendly Zerg player on the platform, but I got confused between the two and was switching back and forth, trying to control them both and getting confused by the unknown beetle units and unfamiliar way things were progressing.
References: StarCraft is a video game with a top-down perspective. Zerg are an alien species in that game.
Scene and Context Transformation: Did the sunken stone tile area simply remind me of Starcraft, or was Starcraft somehow suggesting its shape when I first arrived? I wish I remembered the transition more clearly, but the Starcraft version of the scene eventually took over completely. I didn’t appear to be on top of a mountain or near the tourist village, and none of the drummers or actors were anywhere around.
Waking Shape: The shape of the burrow I dug seemed to take the form of the blankets wrapped around me. This seemed to be a different part of the dream, where I was partially aware of the waking world, maybe thinking more than dreaming. Some time passed here where my focus was not fully with my dream body.
Asleep, Dreaming of Sleeping: It’s not unusual at times to dream of going to sleep. In this case, as my attention was on going to sleep, I think my awareness moved towards the physical a bit, as my burrowed hole was the shape of the blankets around me.
A New Scene: It seems that upon talking with the woman, the scene changed around us, possibly to her dream environment. Both were at the top of the mountain, but mine was an endless expanse of snow and hers was a well-defined summery village full of people having a celebration.
I think a lot of times our dreams shift when we meet someone and simply walk into their environment.
The Snowy Mountain: Here we are in a vague white astral environment, which we take to be a snowy mountaintop. When the woman joins us, we see physical elements that weren’t there before, and she leads us into the more physical environment of the little village.