Dream Journal
January 4, 2024
Context: People have been cutting down massive trees in Decatur.
We’re living in this house with trees around it. Beyond our back yard is a house where our neighbors live. It’s a rectangular plot of land, and beyond it is a forest. I know I’ve been here a few times before. The trees along the neighbor’s house have begun to look scraggly and dead. Every time I go out there, there are fewer of them. Then, as I watch, a towering beautiful tree is cut in half and falls. I don’t see anyone doing this. I tell Rebecca to look as it happens. The back yard is almost entirely treeless at this point. I note that one log in the back yard has a thin ring cut out around it, which is a way to kill a tree. I see similar rings on others.
I considered suing them. Then I thought how awkward it would be suing our actual waking neighbors, seeing them in my mind. But then I realized those were waking-life neighbors, and these neighbors weren’t them. I never actually saw anyone living in that back yard house.
“I’m going to sue them.” I say to Rebecca. “No, you’re not,” she says with finality. I’m put off by her tone. “I am.” I say.
Then Rebecca and I are driving to work. I feel like it’s a good 15-minute drive. I’m mad, thinking about the trees. About 10 minutes in (it seems), I realize I should get pictures of the tree rings before they’re cleared away. I separate off from the main car in my own car and do a U-turn in the road. I unintentionally go up on someone’s lawn and run over a planter and bike. I stop the car, set the planter and bike back in place, then look to the owner of the house, who’s sitting on his lawn. He waves that it’s okay, so I continue on my way back to the house. As I drive, I wish I’d turned around earlier because it’s a long drive back to the house and I’m going to be late for work.
Before long Rebecca is with me in the car again, and she pulls us over, sooner than I expected. We’re apparently at our house, and I stand there, staring. It’s the view out the back of our house, but the field is flooded. When did this happen? My eyes follow the water out to the right. The lake is huge, continuing far in that direction. It’s a lake I know. There are islands and huge machinery parts in the distance, and when I turn back to my original view, there’s no neighbor’s house, no field, just the lake. Gradually my expectation of seeing our back yard was replaced by reality — this wasn’t our house at all. This was. . . . Janice Lake (something like that). “This isn’t our house,” I say angrily to Rebecca. I felt like she’d stopped here to fool me because she didn’t want to go all the way back.
Finally, back to our actual (dream) house, I take pictures of the ring around the log, only it’s branch-sized now (shrinking thought form).
Leaving Group Travel: Interesting! So you can depart from a group travel situation anytime you want. I rationalize a new car as I do so. Shortly after, Rebecca, refocusing on me, rejoins me in my car heading back.
Losing Trees: Our city has been steadily cutting down huge, beautiful trees because, though they look perfectly healthy, they’re “diseased” and may fall some day. It makes me really angry. The day before this dream, they took out several more, so the problem was freshly in my mind.
Never once in this dream did I see a neighbor in the back house. The huge tree that I watched come down came down without any cause — nobody was there. So I’m living out this drama in my dream. I’m projecting this all.
And the logs I saw earlier were branches when I returned — shrinking thought forms as my attention turned to work — another sign that they were my own creation.
Shrinking Logs: As I turned my attention away from the downed trees to go to work, they began to melt and shrink. But not much, as I still remained focused on the tree loss. When I returned, they were branch-sized.
Over the Drama: It’s funny how many times my waking self has gotten wrapped up in some dream drama and Rebecca has (often patiently) dissuaded me of the reality of the situation. She doesn’t often get drawn into my drama.
Heading Back for Work: It’s morning and we’re traveling back “for work”, which is accurate, since it’s a work day for us. This is the first time I remember having a feel for how long the journey back was — 15 minutes in this case.
This is Home?: I’m presented with a scene that’s not my back yard, but I’m expecting to see my back yard. At first I see mostly my back yard — the field, the house, the dead trees — but with the addition of water. It isn’t until I look over to the right, following the water out into the lake scene, and then look back, that my projection of the back yard disappears and I see what’s actually in front of me.
This is incredibly important. This shows the extent to which expectation can overwrite our actual surroundings. In this case, I projected the backyard scene directly ahead of me, with the real scene bleeding in around the edges.
Just Travelin’: I wonder how that time is spent. Do I focus on the journey, talk in the car, or go into a reverie subdream? In this case I remember a subdream of being in Blaine House and having trouble with soap bubbles, but I can’t place when it happened.