Dream Journal
Summer, 1994
Night 4: I try to incubate a dream about Bethany, but no luck. Instead I dream of a friend and I walking to this Nazi death camp to try and free as many people as possible. We encounter cops on the way, but talk our way out of each situation. We end up at a mental home and meet some girls, who we talk with. They’re amazed at how far we’ve walked. We walk around with them and visit someone. Then we arrive at this campus and have to avoid these robot guards. X-Force shows up and saves us. It’s hundreds of years in the future now, yet they’re all still alive. I do some computer work.
Wait wait wait! I forgot the coolest of all dreams! An hour later something reminded me of it. I did connect with Bethany! We were canoeing in the boundary waters with some friends, surrounded by a pine forest and clear water, watching the stars. The whole dream took place just after the sun went down and there were stars above in the clear sky. I saw a really big turtle surface and go down again. The turtle surfaced again in the dark water and I knew it was calling for me, so I jumped in and grabbed hold of it. My other friends jumped in behind me and swam along, following the turtle and me. As the turtle took me under the surface, it kept turning and nipping at me, but it never hurt me. It brought me to the bottom. I was breathing just fine and floating along with it. I could still see the starry sky up above. It was truly beautiful. Then the turtle took me and the others into this cave underneath the rock. Somehow it was lit up and easy to see. The turtle went back to its swimming and surfaced while me and my friends spent time in the underwater cave.
Meanwhile, some others were up above, looking down into the water, thinking us dead. Rather than show myself, I thought “If only they knew.” The others climbed out and up the rock cliff a ways. I exited the cave and went to the surface. Then I floated back down. Suddenly I wondered if I’d land on any weird sea-stuff, and I looked frantically around. A black eel-thing swam at me and attached to my leg. I poked it sharply with a stick and it partly came loose. I went to the surface and climbed onto the rocks. An orange cat bit the eel and pulled it off me. It ate half while the other half attached to its side. I tried to get it off the cat, but the cat wouldn’t let me near it.
References: X-Force is a super-hero group. The boundary waters are the lakes at the border of Minnesota and Canada.
Dream Beings: This turtle and cat seemed to be separate entities with their own missions and purposes. Yet the eel was certainly created by my fear of scary sea beasties.
Remembering Dreams: Here’s a good example of how I remember dreams. Sometimes I’ll awaken with a memory still in my mind — a single character or scene usually, and then I sort of unwind the memory from there. Often this is done in reverse, as the most recent dream is the clearest in my head. Later in the day, certain things might trigger memories of other dreams, but by this time, some details may have faded.
Fear Expectations: My fear of unseen sea creatures created the eel thought form. The orange cat might have been a guardian spirit of some sort, protecting me from it.