Dream Journal, 10/26/2019

Sometimes I get into these one-night cycles of constantly having dreams each time I fall asleep, wake up, fall asleep and dream again. It isn’t good sleep at all, but quite interesting to record – especially the last dream featured here from the early morning of 10/26.

First of Three: I think this was the first dream, either that or it’s the second one. Thom Yorke of Radiohead is playing drums and singing in some unspecified apartment living room, and my friend from high school Winston Kung is there enjoying it too. Then I am in a dorm and am having a night terror (in the dream), my body is contorted and I call for help down a hallway where my father opens the door to another dorm adorned with a banker’s lamp I used to use in college and a calendar similar to something I had in the past.

Then it’s a bit fuzzy – something about clownfish, an awards ceremony/hall of fame, the Radiohead song Creep and Thom Yorke’s solo career.

Analysis: I have been listening to a lot of Radiohead and a bit of Thom Yorke’s solo work, which I did not find very interesting. Winston and I shared a liking to Radiohead’s song paranoid android from the OK Computer album which is probably why he’s there. Sometimes I have nightmares/night terrors/paralysis within dreams and always try to reach out to someone for help but there’s never anyone there. And then when there is someone there I don’t get the night terrors.

Second of Three: I forgot the first part of the dream but there is a platform high above the sky and rain, and there are people from Georgetown who are walking around trying to accomplish some tasks on the platform. I have to come down from the platform which is way up in the sky on a slippery ladder with other people coming up and down, so I go slow. My mother is encouraging me and I think about my grandfather for support. There is no rung at the bottom of the ladder so I try to breathe deep and I wake up.

Now – sometimes this can happen – I re-enter the dream as/in a plane, and fly across a map like the maps in the commercial airliner entertainment consoles. There are green, blue and orange markers and routes. There’s a lot of traffic in the sky and I’m trying to fly back in the direction of the ladder but I lose speed and land somewhere away from it, and turn into a jeep – the whole thing now looks like a comic book – and I’m frustrated that I can’t get back to where I was.

Analysis: Ok, I’m starting to think I have a subconscious fear of heights, because these types of fear to fall dreams occur a lot. The map just shows that I fly too often. There is a Tintin comic I’ve read called Land of Black Gold or something that features a jeep in the desert as well.

Third of Three: This is a wild one, and dreams like this are quite concerning since I feel like they are using parts of the brain that are normally subconscious, and for good reason. I see a lot of languages in bright pink made-up/random script overlaid over commercials, essentially the script/letters are randomly generated from what I think the languages look like, or the prototypical shape of the languages’ written form.

I see what looks like closing credits with “Arabic,” “Korean,” others and other languages, scenes of deserts, stones. The Korean “commercial” is a travel/airline commercial featuring an airliner and a woman garbed in traditional clothing flying in front of the plane – basically one of those celestial women. Again, a lot of squiggly lines, accent marks, curves, shapes – it’s like Chinese characters but exaggerated, ending credits, text overlays etc.

Analysis: The problem with these dreams is that I recognize my brain is in a state other than the one it was in in the previous two dreams. A “manic” state, so to speak, which I find to be slightly dangerous or, at least, similar to the night terror/sleep paralysis states that I experience otherwise. Or maybe I’m just overthinking things.

Dream Journal – 8/4/2019

One dream and one nightmare.

Mulan-style Chinese soldiers wearing armor march in a column carrying blunderbusses/muskets and banners. A rag tag group without armor face off with and charge towards the enemy (probably the Huns) and throw javelins before engaging in hand-to-hand combat, I see this from the Hun perspective. Then I am playing capture-the-flag and am hit with a beanbag from a player from the opposing ream who is actually a former classmate of mine from Jinhua junior high school in Taiwan who I don’t think liked me, maybe because I am half white. I punched that guy in the face (in real life), that shut him up. Anyway, tagged by the beanbag, I am “out” and receive scores of my efforts on an electronic blackboard connected to a drink fridge, high marks for earnestness but low marks for athleticism. I ride an elevator above the fray where I see Chinese soldiers standing in a winding, line around the grounds, lining up to their execution at the hands of the Hun.

Image from Instagram: @dee_age

Nightmare. I am at a window facing the city lit up at night (looks like New York, since there is a tall, skinny building known as 432 Park Avenue visible out the window.) There is a white plastic windowshade flapping in the wind and a metal chain at the side of the window (outside the window) that is flapping with it. I try to hang on to the chain to close the window and windowshade but it keeps eluding my grasp. Now a thunderstorm begins outside the window with thunder and the sounds and feelings of rain, it is afternoon and the clouds and rain are making the view dark, but there is still grey-ish green light. The rain makes it more urgent to close the window, and now the white curtain turns into a white dummy/mannequin with rubber covering her flat chest (there is only a chest and head), I am holding on to the mannequin with white fake hair and I stroke her hair without seeing her face, as she is facing a bit down even though her chest is facing up (it’s obviously mixed up, I see a bit of her face but not much). The mannequin seems to be on a swivel crosswise so I turn her up a bit, and then she fully turns around and upward at her own volition and her face and eyes are contorted in a grotesque, skull-like manner, and she emits a hissing sound. I cry out softly and awaken.

Commentary: The Mulan dream is influenced by my viewing the trailer to the new live-action Mulan movie. The mannequin dream, all I can say is that I was attracted to the mannequin at first, which made her transformation all the more frightful. Also the feeling of not being able to do a simple task (close the window). I think this nightmare is a good candidate for a short film, though. I would love to create the mannequin prop myself and it might be decently easy to animate her face, the city at night, and the storm outside.