Mr. Thompson

When I was sick last week, I noticed my dreams took on a detached structure, even more so than regular dreams. They weren't so much dreams as a series of vignettes of horrible images. I don't remember much, but some images I remember are:
-Being in a casino full of snakes
-Being trapped in a trailer park, being shot at by bikers
-Being trapped in a dark room, trying to call for help on my cell phone but not being able to see the numbers on the keypad to dial.
-Being at my friends house at Christmas, once again trying to dial a number to call my family, but always screwing up the last digit in the number and having to continually redial.
The salient emotion in all of these dreams was fear. Go figure.

I had a dream not too long ago, but I can't remember anything about it other than the end: I'm on a ship in the middle of a humongous aquarium, apparently giving some type of lecture/tour to customers about sea life. All of a sudden I'm in the water swimming with various types of large sea creatures. Though I'm afraid of sea creatures, which is a recurring theme in my dreams, there is oddly placid background music playing the hole time. The music is very elegant and orchestral, like Mozart. The creatures and I swim very gracefully.

Once, at the end of a dream, I remember someone telling me, "You have a crazy face. The oddest crazy face." The funnu thing was, the person who said it to me was Elton John, and he was sitting at a piano and singing it to me in a very calming manner. It was the 1970s version of Elton John, with long hair and big boots. I don't rememver the rest of the dream, but when I woke up I searched my music collection and found an Elton John song called "Razor Face," which sort of resembled the tune of my dream but not quite. I'll never forget the tune in the dream, accompanied by some of his piano playing.

Ancient Greece. Fountains. I walk with someone I went to elementary school with. He carries a bag on his back and he's crying. I am looking for a bathroom and cannot find one. Night alternates to day almost arbitrarily. I want to leave but the people tell me to stay for "the end." Then I am in a strange palace. It seems dirty even though it is lavish. The fountains in it are moldy. Someone says its Christmas and I feel bad when no gifts are brought out. My parents show up and say they loved their vacation. My aunt is there, but shes not my aunt; she has the face of another woman, a very attractive woman. They serve a very Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom-type dinner. It gets dark and I awaken.

This is "Primordial Venus" by Marcia Stafsky, shown at the 2001 ASD Dream Art Exhibition in Santa Cruz, California. I love the light and dark elements and the sense of a shroud between the figure and the outside world. It's like the figure is screaming to awaken, or trying to.

My experiences with lucid dreaming have been somewhat unsatisfying. Usually, when I realize, at least to some degree, that I have control over the dream, I wake up against my will. How much control is that? Oddly enough, though--or perhaps not so oddly--my first instinct upon learning I am lucidly dreaming is to seek sex. It never works, though. Usually I'm on my way and I feel myself waking up and I'm like "oh come on."

I wish I could have more lucid dreams. I want to read more of that book to train myself. I found the accounts of the lucid dreams in that book to be rather boring; I'm more interested in my being able to actually do it than reading about it. It is a strange phenomenon. What is amazing too is that many lucid dreams I've heard or know, both from others and myself, are decidedly sexual. No one seems in pursuit of anything else. Maybe Freud was right about all of us.

I haven't dreamt in about a week or so. It's frustrating in a sense; I don't have much to write about. It's also refreshing, though: I feel like sometimes dreams can bog me down emotionally and control me in ways I don't wish to be controlled. Being dream free for a few days gives me a chance to start over mentally. I don't feel as preoccupied and it's good.

Speaking of lucid dreaming, I have had PLENTY of dreams in the past where I was able to wake myself up. Although I didn't know I was dreaming per se, if the dream was scary there have been times when I've said: "OK I want to wake up now." And, in the dream, I've closed my eyes tight and tensed my muscles really hard and I woke up. I wouldn't classify it as lucid dreaming, though...maybe it was just a defense mechanism for nightmares.