Beekeeper's Adventures in Consciousness

[Beekeeper]

3^rd March, 2012.
Saturday.

“Walking the long trip home.”
I’m walking home from work with my homeroom buddy, Paul. It’s a sunny day and he’s congenial company but we’re only at the beginning of the highway and I think it will take a long time to get back home. We’ve walked a certain distance and Paul asks if I mind stopping at a house where he needs to do something.

We’re at the front of the house where there are repairmen removing a pane of glass. Paul points out a British bulldog to me. It’s eating but it does so by running its mouth over spilled crumbs and vacuuming them up. We are both amused by this. ~

Note: It takes me 35 minutes to drive to and from work at highway speeds for a good part of it.

“To Morocco.”
~ I’m talking to my mother-in-law, Joan. It appears I’m packing for a holiday in Morocco and other places. She says something to me about if she ever should need to go to hospital all she’d want are nice toiletries. I say I’d bring them for her and there’s an exchange of loving feeling between us. ~

Now I’m with my “husband” who appears to be a dark-haired student from last year’s homeroom. He’s quite and shy and I’m being boisterous around him, excited about our upcoming trip. The setting seems to be plastic chairs in a double row, inside a room. It suggests a small assembly for students.~

I’m packing my clothes again. I take a series of unfamiliar tops out of a drawer and fold them for the suitcase. They’re colourful, comfortable and new and I don’t recall buying them but I’m happy to have new things. I search around for shorts and such. There’s a moment I find a scourer and a dishcloth, both of which are a bit damp, and it annoys me that they’ve accidentally gotten in my drawer of clothes. I also find a jar of unfamiliar, colourful toy-like things, small trinkets perhaps. I try to spill the contents of one through a hole in the top* but a little ballet dancer doll lodges in the opening.
* Slip- I initially typed a hole in the “time.”

I worry a little that I haven’t done my homework and I know nothing at all about Morocco. I wonder if I can just wear what I like or if there will be dress codes for women. I contemplate checking the government traveller-warning site online. I know it will come into winter and I may need to pack cold weather clothes as well as warm but I don’t know how cold it gets in Morocco and then I worry that I’ll be there for their winter and return in time for ours.* As I worry, I pull out my favourite black pants that come just past my knee and notice a streak of toothpaste on them. I toss them aside for washing. They seem to turn into an oversized pair of faded shorts as they fly through the air. ~
*I’m not a big fan of winter.

Now I’m with Sofie and Helen, who are also packing for trips. Sofie has a small paper gift bag in her hands and I know it holds cosmetics because I get a wiff of berry. She comments on the smell herself.

Helen seems to know about Morocco and perhaps she tells me some things about getting ready. ~

Note: I can’t remember my sense of smell working in dreams before.

“Ants.”
~ I’m in this house somewhere and I see Bella take her place on the wooden floor. Bella is in the form of a German Shepherd but it’s her nonetheless. As soon as she lies on the floor, ants swarm to the spot and up her paws. I call her away from them and sing out to Harry to bring fly spray but it’s pointless because the ants have disappeared.

[Beekeeper]

4^th March, 2012.
Sunday.

I’m in bed with G and I’m really aroused and trying to initiate sex. The bed is in the middle of a large room, perhaps a hotel room, and in partial view of a door. My sister comes to the door but possibly assesses the situation because she goes away.

Then I try again but three or four handsome, dark haired young men enter the room and G is about to begin chatting to them but I tell them to go away because we want privacy. I begin to wonder if we are in a hotel and regret not putting a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. Then my vision becomes omniscient and I witness a conversation in the kitchens from an aerial perspective. A chef tells a subordinate to make something other than the scheduled Spanish omlette.

Meanwhile, back in bed, the roof has disappeared and we’re now exposed to the neighbours, except for a canopy over the bed that has appeared to replace the ceiling.

Note: The alarm went off. We got up early to travel to Canberra to see F, our son.

[CFTraveler]

Are you staying in a hotel?
Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Beekeeper]

Are you staying in a hotel?
Sorry, couldn't resist.

5^th March, 2012.
Sunday.

"Dangerous Robots"
I’m in the front of a house (possibly the front rooms of the house we built when first married) and assorted robots materialize. They’re only small but they proceed to destroy the electrical parts of the house. I realize that this is the beginning of some kind of attack on the planet.

Now I’m slightly further back in time. There are people in the back rooms, which are darkened, and some feel an impending sense of doom. This alerts me to what is about to occur as I recall the earlier scenario and I begin to warn people that there is something coming but it happens too quickly for a response of any kind to be possible.

The scenario from the start repeats. The small robots are there again and there are small explosions that weaken the wall to my right side. I push through it.

The scene has changed and I watch the remaking of the humans who have been taken. Among a group of people I notice a teen boy drinking milk from a plate or a tube. I get the impression that this person has either been totally created by the beings or reprogrammed. The milk signifies that he’s in his infancy.

I see my grandmother in the room and I remember she has died and know it can’t be her. Her face isn’t right: it’s too young (even though it’s not actually young) and her chin is too square. She seems to think she is Josie in any case.

Now there are large numbers of us heading back to our homes to resume our lives. I listen to my grandmother and another woman talking about cake they have baked. My grandmother seems to be carrying hers and somehow it comes about that the other woman eats some and dies. No one, including me, reacts but I note it and understand this is how it will be.

A woman hails me and others (G and the boys?) from behind a tall mesh fence. We run towards it and easily leap it. She looks like Sharon Stone* and is dressed in a long gown. I sense that her intentions aren’t good and somehow I know that poison is her modus operandi, so I’m careful with what I touch. I notice a wet mop and know instantly that she’ll deliver the poison by wetting the floor. I pick it up and touch her with the end of the mop and she expires.

*Watched a few minutes of Total Recall on TV a couple of days ago.

Fragment: A man who lies on shelves and tables of deformed children. He wriggles about in order to bring them joy and all of them laugh with infectious baby laughter.

[Beekeeper]

8^th March, 2012.
Thursday.

“Holding onto Zoe”
Too busy to record the last couple of days, which involved amorous dreams.

I’m in the back seat of car, holding Zoe on my lap. Carmen’s in the front. The car stops suddenly and Carmen turns around to check on Zoe’s welfare. I pull a seatbelt around us but realize when I go to click it in that there’s already one there. I realize that and pull in the belt over my shoulder, noticing there isn’t already one there.

“Man-child.”
I’m looking after a grown man with a child’s mind. The context is upstairs in a fairly plush environment and G is conducting a party, making punch and seeing that people are given food. A child asks me if I know anything about Custer’s last stand and I tell him about a video I showed in a class once where the researchers tested the Native American account against the claims of the American soldiers. I try doing an internet search for him. ~

I hear some people talking about a certain period in Greece. IWR, I’m not very knowledgeable about ancient Greece but in the dream I make a comment about the subsequent period being a more secular age and the two women correct me, saying that’s just a generalisation.

I’m outside now sitting with people on the nature strip beside a car. I feel a bit guilty for not helping G inside with the party but I’m also interacting with and protecting the simple man~

Sofie walks slightly ahead of me, looking over her shoulder and commenting that my sons have acne* because of my mother’s genes. I disagree but say nothing. I’m following her because I think there’s something I need to do for work. My sons follow. We get in a car with Sofie and she drives.

* This is something of an overstatement.

[Beekeeper]

9^th March, 2012.
Friday

“Robyn”
I’m with Robyn, with whom I went to school, catching up. She’s telling me about the trains she caught to catch up with me again and as she narrates, I see what she’s talking about. She writes down her address and I read it, noticing that her postcode is 1111.

Note: Robyn belonged to the self-appointed “popular” group at school. They tended to be the girl-jocks and the more Anglo-Australians. Robyn herself, however, was pretty nice and I recently caught up with her on FB.

“The Tale of the Dancer and the Jealous Wife.”
I enter a café, looking for something for H. The man who serves me is dark haired and possibly Greek. I see some toast with jam on it and order that, initially a little disappointed because it seems he’ll give me the soggy toast on display. He doesn’t though, and while he makes a fresh slice he tells me about his first wife, a dancer who committed suicide (because she couldn’t perfect the dance?) His current wife buzzes around him, annoyed at his talk, and says something disparaging about the way he must always talk about his first wife.

“The Popular Ones”
This is one of those weird, musical number type dreams. I’m a boy and part of a mixed troupe of young performers. While I’m very talented, I feel ostracized somehow. The others are mean and think themselves superior. So, I break into a song and dance, satirizing their shallowness. It’s pretty entertaining stuff in its way and, while it proceeds, I’m totally enjoying the way ad-libbed lyrics are flowing:

There’s no doubt about it, it’s a state of putrefaction
Still it’s best I live without it - no need for this reaction.

The dance moves take me from one character to the next as I address their individual foibles. I remember taking the hand of an attractive dark-skinned girl and my lyrics at the time mention the unfaithfulness of her boyfriend in the group, to which she looks at me with a resigned, knowing expression.

Note: Some of last night’s dreaming is probably related to some of the playground politics I encountered on duty yesterday. I’ll relate a little more later as I don’t have time now.

[Beekeeper]

10th March, 2012.
Saturday.

“The Simple Man again”
The mentally retarded man reappeared last night. This time he is being looked after by a group of people at a church. I think the priest, in particular, takes care of him. He’s a very big person, very tall but also gentle and he loves the daily mass. He loves his food too. I feel tremendous affection for him in this dream.

“Test and Assignment”

I have submitted a math test and I’m really confident I’ve done well. It seems I’m ahead of the work and the test was essentially on work I’d already done, so it was just a matter of copying out my answers.

I receive the work back and I notice that the paper has been laminated. I wonder if this is so you cannot alter what was there and claim the marker made a mistake. I see that there are a lot of blank spots where I would expect my answers to be but this suddenly makes sense and I arrive at an understanding that where the places are blank is where my answers are right. I look through the paper for where they aren’t blank and discover that all my answers must be correct but then I see my mark is 88 and I wonder why it’s not 100. It occurs to me then that I must have missed the last page of questions, thinking the test shorter than it was. I’m fairly neutral about my mistake and satisfied with the mark.

Now I’m opening a package that is wrapped in brown paper and held together with string. Inside, I know I’ll find an essay I wrote for a competition. I plan to reuse it for something else. Clearly, I never ascertained how it was received the first time. When I open it, I find first some typed sheets, which I believe are my own work. Then I find a glossy brochure that is something to do with travel and art. A scene in the brochure comes alive momentarily and I see several performance artists outside a restaurant with a Tudor style facade in brown and white. They are arranged artfully, some of them suspended above street level in slings attached to the front of the building, and look like puppets with limbs at different angles and akimbo. They’re faces are disinterested.

I return to the package contents. Now I find a handwritten section. It’s not my writing but more like my younger sister’s. Here I see ticks but no comments. It occurs to me somehow that I have misremembered what was done when I entered this competition. It seems I did much of the work for my sister but the only work that counted was what she did for herself. I feel a little miffed that my efforts weren’t in any way validated but also accept that this is naturally what must be so.

Note: I guess the first dream is advising me about a situation where I’ve missed some information. Perhaps the second one is a warning about not doing too much of the work for my students – that only what they do for themselves will ultimately be valid. This may be why there was a reference to “disinterested performance artists” and puppets. Hmm, useful dream.

[Beekeeper]

11^th March, 2012.
Sunday

Difficulty recalling.

I’m letting M drive my new car but she’s speeding and I don’t like it. I know it’s a great car and handles well but I feel that if she damages it she won’t have the money to repair it.

Something about a group of us involved in a performance. We stand outside a wall made of grey stone blocks, like a castle wall. I’m feeling negative, not wanting to take part in the performance.

Fragment for a larger dream: a house with bulging walls. The base is too small and I wonder if there’s a new kind of renovation technique where one expands from the top down.

12^th March, 2012.
Monday.

“Hair”
I had a haircut in WR but in the dream it has disappeared and become long and straggly. I have a performance coming, something with a band, and I want my hair to look better. I search through the long bit to find some evidence of the recent haircut but can’t. I decide I’ll tie it in a ponytail.
Louise is there, kind of in a facilitator’s role: she’s the one who announced the coming performance. There’s more about her but I cannot recall it ~

Wolfgang arrives. He needs to do some secret experiment in the old garage outside the building where Louise and I have been. He’s mixing something together.


“The Cousin”
There’s a boy who is supposed to be my cousin and son to my Aunty Mary and Uncle Paul. He doesn’t look anything like them or like my actual cousins from that family. He sits between me and my Aunty Tess in church and he’s working on some kind of assignment where he keeps pasting little animals onto a piece of paper. I watch him paste on a tiny rubber seal and I like the way it sits with its head up. I suggest he leave it that way but then I think he won’t be able because he plans to paste to both sides of the sheet and it won’t lie flat. He tells me he will leave it that way anyway.

Tess and I begin to dote and cuddle the boy, who clearly doesn’t like it, so I stop. I notice while we do that, Tess is both affectionate and cruel, coddling and pushing. In substitute for doting, I begin to ask the boy questions such as has he met my sons, his cousins* (he hasn’t) what year he’s in at school (seven) and what he likes to do. He begins to enthuse over an engineering concept and I smile, considering him to be in his father’s image. The thought causes Paul and Mary and their “other” kids to appear in the crowd and Paul beams with pride as his son continues the conversation with him. I notice an older, taller brother with similar features (they are both thin with large noses and straggly longish hair). The boy goes over to the older brother and puts his hand at the back of his neck to greet him but also because the appearance of his brother makes him feel more secure. For some reason this gesture reminds me of my own sons. I think something about Paul’s family living in Gymea.

*My sons would actually be second cousins.

Notes: Paul and Mary divorced many years ago and their kids are adults. They lived in Gymea in the past.
I recently fell out with Aunt Tess because she was being homophobic and religiously bigoted on my FB page. Paul and Mary’s actual youngest son is gay, so I guess I found myself wondering how she treats him; that would explain the combination of aunts and uncles in this dream to some extent but not the dream manufacturing of two totally new cousins.

[Beekeeper]

13^th March, 2012.
Tuesday

Struggle with recall. A poor night of frequent waking.

“Braiding hair.”
At an outdoor venue, there’s a gathering of people. It’s to celebrate some kind of legal declaration regarding the rights of children and young people. It essentially limits the amount of money they can earn and I wonder how this benefits them.

A plump red haired girl wants me to braid her hair in a certain way. I explain that I had sons rather than daughters so I’m not experienced at braiding but I’ll give it a go. My former student, Ashley, turns up to help because she routinely braids her daughters’ hair. I’m pretty certain I can do it; look over at a dark haired child with elaborate hair braids (Ashley’s youngest?) and am grateful that the girl didn’t ask for anything so elaborate. Partway through the process the girl walks away and doesn’t return. I turn to my sister J, who appears to be younger and ask if she’d like me to braid hers instead. She agrees.

[Beekeeper]

11^th April, 2012.
Wednesday.

We’re currently on a family retreat in the Blue Mountains.

I had dreams before the lucid but cannot recall them now. I distinctly remember a smooth female voice saying something to the effect of, “I’m here,” or “This is mine,” as a hpnagogic hallucination. I had to actively recall the LD - it wasn’t so stunning it made me jump out of bed and type; besides, it’s so damn cold here!

“UFO and Blobman”
I’m lying in bed looking at the night sky with G. I see a series of white, translucent discs and I can tell they’re not planets, so I’m wonder what they are and if G can see them as well. Then I see movement and what is clearly a flying saucer making its way past the other discs and I know I’m dreaming.
I’m surprised to find myself lucid. It’s been ages since it last occurred and I haven’t deliberately attempted an induction. I don’t have a plan so I think about what I should do next and figure a reality check is probably in order but which one. Since I seem to be lying on a dream bed with my arm dangling down towards the floor, I decide to stick a finger through the floorboards. After that, I decide the next thing to do is fly somewhere but that doesn’t seem to want to work. I realise I’m in a similar predicament to the dream in the ute with S, only without the sensation of moving. Then I remember what I think was my last lucid where I felt energy coil around my arm and chest and constrict like a snake and I think I’m probably in a state of sleep paralysis. No sooner do I have the thought than I feel a large lump of something conscious form in the bed beside me and, Instead of reacting in fear, I pull it close in order to sense it. It’s about man size but it’s amorphous and it reacts to my embrace with slight resistance.

“The mutated men”
I lose lucidity and begin to dream a documentary. It’s about something strange that has happened within some families, a genetic mutation I guess. I see a man and his son and they are both deformed somehow and, I presume, mentally retarded. There is something terribly exaggerated about their jaws and their eyes are small and close together. When they talk, there’s a definite telepathic link between them. I’m fascinated as one starts a sentence, the other continues it without missing a beat and the first picks up where the other leaves off. A third relative with the same syndrome enters the shot and we see him in profile. Again, his prominent jaw takes my attention.

Now it moves into another theme. These people are apparently aboriginal (they don’t look it) and part of the Stolen Generation.~

Other dreams not published.