Lucid and Silly and a Blue House
“Massageâ€
I wake at 4.13am because G is snoring. I’ve been dreaming that I’m out with a group of friends (recurring lately) and we have to separate. A woman (very like my friend Ruth from my former work) asks which of us wants to go with her for a massage. I volunteer enthusiastically and the rest of my friends go off where they were going – school, I think. Ruth and I walk up a few steps and into what feels like a hair saloon. She begins the massage, which is nice. When the snoring wakes me and I decide that, since I'm awake anyway, I’ll try the wake-back-to-bed method of lucid dreaming. I read for about an hour and then fell asleep on the lounge.
“Silliness and the Blue House.â€
I have a false awakening type experience where my family seems to have woken up for the day. I’m pretty sure my niece, M, is present and maybe my sister J. They emerge from the bedroom areas of the house into the room where I’m sleeping.
My youngest son and I seem to be downstairs in the yoga room for a while and I explain that I’m lucid inside a dream. I don’t recall a lot about this part.
Then F and I sit outside on the front porch, still downstairs. A car pulls in next-door and two men hop out. I notice one is about 40, thin and bald. He looks at me oddly. F says hi to them, addressing them by name. In a moment of less lucidity, I’m slightly puzzled by how he knows their names, as I’ve never seen them before. Then I become clear again.
Now I find myself upstairs back on the lounge and again think I’m awake. Bella (my dog) comes into my room carrying one of the old barstools from the breaky-bar. I’m stunned to see her doing this and know again that I’m still dreaming. She climbs up on it and somehow falls asleep on it, although she’s much too big for that. I notice with curiosity that her rump seems to have lost its hair.
Now I’m in another scenario as the room fills up with neatly dressed, middle-class women, all about my age, as if for some sort of social gathering. I’m not at all confused about the fact I’m dreaming and I even wonder if it will be some sort of simulation. I decide to have some fun with it anyway. I run around pulling each woman by her feet onto the floor. None of them resists or protests. I sit on the floor with them and I’m still feeling somewhat mischievous so I try to get them to play pat a cake. They comply but, like children, they don’t know what rhyme they should use. I try to get them to use something rude and silly but it goes over their heads, as does my attempt to get them to use a more complicated type of hand pattern for the game, so we stick to basics. Even then I have trouble co-ordinating with the women either side of me.
It switches again and I’m by my computer now. There’s a complex document on my screen I haven’t seen before. I suspect the sound should be working but it’s not turned up. There’s the image of a man who appears to be an authority in the top right hand corner.
The scene alters again. I’m walking on a suburban road now. I feel briefly guilty for having so much fun, being silly in my lucid dreams which, to be honest, is a nice antidote for being serious and responsible so much of the time! Nonetheless, when I went to sleep there was a hurricane warning for North Queensland and poor Queensland really has had enough with the recent flooding. Subsequently, I found myself wondering if they were all right. While I’m in this thought, a person inside a blue house calls to me from the balcony. He invites me up and I’m delighted at the opportunity to fly.
I take off, totally exhilarated; really making sure I enjoy the sensation. I fly through their doorway. I’m going pretty fast and I know I should slow down if I want to appreciate what the interior of the house looks like but I’m just enjoying the freedom so much that I don’t. The interior is essentially a single, spiralling hallway of a deep cobalt blue. I zoom past occasional pieces of furniture placed against the walls and it’s quite dizzying. I start to realise how many components this dream has had and how, if I don’t wake up now, I’ll forget it. As it happens, G comes into the lounge room anyway and wakes me.
"A dream is a question, not an answer."
(Therapist and dreamworker Strephon Kaplan
Williams)
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