Hieronymous the Anonymous

What dreams tell me

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What do you think about dreams? I've having a shitload recently - or rather I'm remembering a shitload more dreams than usual. I go through patches like this which makes me wonder if there are external factors making it so. Are there things happening - or not happening - in my life that bold my dreams?

The dreams I'm having are the usual variety. Some are weird; some are utterly prosaic. Most feature people I know, but some don't. In some dreams there are people long forgotten, or deep in my past suddenly featuring. Some dreams seem significant, and some don't.

I love having dreams, and I'm always wary of them. I'm inclined to believe that there is occasionally little - and maybe great - truths revealed in our nocturnal wonderings. I've written before of how I think there is often more wisdom in our unconscious than our conscious. Our body knows what our civilised, conscious mind does not.

Some of the dreams I've had lately have been very vivid. I slept on Saturday night in Brunswick Heads with the rain falling down and in an unfamiliar bed and the dreams were in technicolour. I remembered little of them when I woke in the morning but what who was in them. That was interesting enough for me. I lay in bed touched still by what I had dreamt and ruminating on the last lingering sentiments wondering if they meant anything, or not. I was inclined to think then that they meant plenty, but that was in the full flush of feeling. Why not? I thought. For an hour or so I was inclined to act on what I had dreamt. What did I have to lose?

It's a good question and the answer is, very little. That doesn't make it right though. To act on the basis of what is to gain or lose seems pretty shallow, though obviously it's a popular way of deciding. It's not about me though, not about what I have to lose or what I have to gain. If there's more than one person involved then it's about what is right.

Right, as I've so often pontificated, is not always easily recognised. I'll wait for my next set of dreams to tell me what.

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The drowned world in dreams

I'm not sleeping well lately and I'm waking up tired. I'm dreaming a lot too. Most of the dreams are convoluted and detailed. They consume your mind sleeping and on waking linger disturbingly. You can't quite shake your mind of the strange worlds you have entered no matter how much you look to reality. This is characteristic of poor sleep in my experience, though I don't know what comes first: do I sleep poorly because I dream so much, or do I dream as much as I do because I can't settle into a deep sleep?

The night before last I had a particularly vivid dream. What I can recall still is the dramatic imagery. I am on an international flight out of Australia. We are flying north and are about 6 hours into the flight when I look out the window. To my great surprise we are close to the ground, scarily close. Even more surprising is what I see on the ground. At first I think it is one of the wonders of the world I never heard of before. Below the water is tumultuous, it gushes across the land and falls prettily down sheer drops to rival any of the great waterfalls. As I look I ralise this is not normal. What I am seeing is a city being consumed by a tsunami of raging, rising water. The water is high, near the tops of the sky-scrapers, and as I behold it I think no-one could survive this.

I am stunned. This is beyond comprehension. I am in the air above this, safe, yet there is a sense of peril. Perhaps the low flying plane will tumble into this water? Or perhaps the rushing water will rise up to engulf us too? Then I wonder what it means. If the water has risen so high here where has it done. I look ahead: will we find somewhere to land?

That's how it ends, but it is a troubling dream. Much of it is taken I think from recent events, though a wild extrapolation of them. In there as well I reckon there is a growing dread at the effects of climate change: where will it end? Will it? And what will we be left with?

Beyond all that there is surely something of me in this dream, though I am not expert enough to understand what it is.

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The ghost at the end of my bed

I woke up at about 4.30 this morning. I was over-warm, which may have been the cause, but there was another reason too. As I lay there I heard the heavy breathing of a woman. It was not laboured breathing, the breaths coming quick and sharp, but rather deep, lung filling gasps of air that came in erratic bursts.

I lay there trying to understand it. Was it next door? I used to hear the previous tenants sometimes when they had sex, but have heard nothing since the new people moved in. I didn't think it was next door though. What I heard before was the in extremis sounds of a couple fucking and noise travelling through the common wall. This was not that loud, though it was much clearer. It sounded like the sound was coming from inside the room, at the end of my bed.

I sat up in bed wondering if it could possibly be the dogs, though with every gasp that seemed less likely: the sound was human and feminine. In any case the dogs slept, one on either side of the bed, seemingly undisturbed by the sound.

I fumbled for the lamp switch by the side of the bed. I was not concerned or afraid, but I felt it something eerie. It was not a threatening sound, but it didn't belong either. For a moment I thought maybe someone had come in the open back door and stopped at the end of my bed.

All the while I'm fumbling for the light switch which I can't find in the dark. I'm afraid the sound will stop before I get the light on, but it continues unabated, crystal clear.

It must be 10-15 seconds before I finally get the light on - and the sound stops. Light floods the room, but no-one is there. Rigby waking to the light looks up at me and thumps his tail on the floor. I'm no closer to understanding what it was, and turn the light off.

I lay back in bed and wonder at it. Maybe it was next door I consider. Maybe the sound travelled through the chimney? That doesn't compute though. The ears play tricks, but I was certain it was in the room. Then for some reason I think of mum, now far away in Honolulu. That seems silly though. Eventually I fall asleep without knowing any better.

In my dreams

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The other night I had a particularly vivid sexual dream. For all my focus on it my sexual dreams are surprisingly few and far between. That was one reason this one seemed so different.

The other reason was that it was fun. I didn't know the woman in the dream but she was clearly into me. I was hardly passive, but she took the lead, pressing herself onto me, suggesting things as if she wanted to prove her attachment to me. It was fun in all the ways you can imagine, and after I woke the residue stayed with me for hours after. It was nice, I felt alert and alive and even more switched on than usual.

The dream was interesting in other ways. The woman was younger than me, attractive and firm in body. She was not someone I recognised, but she had a resemblance to a woman I know. I thought about that after I woke. I wondered if there were a message in that for me.

The woman in question has a boyfriend she proclaims to be in love with. We get on very well, hitting it off naturally. I don't think much more of it than that, though I like her as a person and find her fun, and maybe a little sexy. Nothing out of the usual there though.

On her side I know she likes me and finds me interesting and fun and a little provocative. I'm different to what she's used to. I've sensed for quite a while some attraction in her for me, and have felt flattered in a way though I haven't taken it seriously.

After I woke from my dream I associated the unknown woman in my dream with her. Physically they were very close without being the same, and the attitude and cheek were similar. Later I thought the dream was the reflection of something I already knew inside me: that she is tempted.

A week before I had another, much gentler dream. This dream was of Jen, and of her child. Whether she has a child by now in real life I do not know, though it wouldn't surprise me. She looked upon me. There seemed something sad in her, as if the recent past had been imperfect. She was happy to see me though in her quiet way. I was a reminder of other times, and perhaps of an alternate future she might have taken up. I can't remember if we spoke. I remember her explaining to her child of me. And I remember the sense of reconciliation in our meeting.

It was a good dream, and like many times before I woke thinking that it was a kind of sign. Nothing deep or remarkable. I considered maybe far away over the seas Jen had thought of me, and somehow her thoughts had made it to me in the shape of a dream. That's the sort of thing I believe in.

Then last Friday on the train to work I saw at the end of the carriage Paige's boyfriend. I see him from time to time loping around the streets with a dumb, drug-fucked smile on his face. Once or twice I have seen her. On this occasion he was with someone else.

I had to look hard to prove it wasn't Paige, but though while she had a vague resemblance to her this one was shorter, her hair longer, and she did not have the strong build of Paige. I wondered at that, looking from the corner of my eye. While they were not intimate they were close, and they got off together at Richmond to catch a loop train. I concluded that Paige had finally dumped Paul, and he had taken up with someone else much like her.

Later I mentioned it to Becky. Becky was part of the fall-out when Paige went ballistic. "Do you think it might be a good time to email her again" Becky asked. "Maybe for you", I said. "Not me". I didn't say it, but it was in my head: too long, and too much has happened since. we've moved along.

Dream therapy

Imagine somewhere peaceful, serene. Take yourself to a place that calms you. So goes the mantra when you meditate. I didn’t meditate last night, but amidst the turmoil in my sleep my dreams took me to such a place, initially at least.

I fell asleep thinking, wondering, remembering things past that showed up in a new light now, and imagining every possible permutation and how it might leave us. Eventually I fell into a heavy sleep.

Then I dreamt. In the dream I was new to some place and welcomed warmly. I was someone special it seemed, someone for whom they had great expectations. I was early though and they invited me to relax and enjoy the facilities to my hearts content, they were at my service.

Whatever my purpose was to be there I don’t know, and while there seemed some serious aspect to the destination there also appeared to be some kind of resort. It was not a showy resort with cocktails and swimming pools. It was lower key than that, quiet, almost new age. It was a resort for the soul as much as for the body.

I was tired. I decided I would have a massage and go to town with it. I would indulge my senses and they agreed to oblige my every whim. I was not in a hurry though, and did not rush. I found myself in a room with about half a dozen single beds. I lay down on one and it reminded me in the dream of the bed I had slept in growing up. It was a pleasant thought. I closed my eyes and slept for over an hour. I woke then and it was time for my massage.

The masseuse was a beautiful, delicate Asian woman. She looked at me serenely and asked what I wanted from her. I told her, the best massage you’ve ever done. She smiled and then with the same serene air asked if I wanted anything more than that. The inference was clear. She was there to please me however I wished without limitation. If I wanted a happy ending I could have it, and more.

I stood there without saying anything. I was surprised. All these familiar thoughts charged through my head. I have always said that I would not pay for something I could get for free, and though there would be no money involved the point was the same: I did not want to be with anyone who did not want to be with me. It felt disciordant, like the wrong note suddenly being played in a quiet melody.

She watched me, her eyes dark and gentle, her face serene. This was not a moral question for her. It was part of the available service, and only that. It was strange and I struggled in those moments to come to terms with the question. How could such a skilful practitioner go from gently massaging my weary muscles to having sex with me? She was a beautiful woman and despite her seeming willingness it felt inelegant. I literally imagined her bending to give me a head job and it felt somehow crass in the context of the serene environment.

But then I thought differently. I still had not answered as she watched me. I wondered what it would be like. She was beautiful and tender after all. Would it feel different in this context? I wondered. And I wondered why I should close myself to everything on the strength of some catchy platitudes. Was that real after all? Should I live by stale prejudice? Finally I saw in it something more graceful, even therapeutic. I imagined then that the act of sex would simply be a continuation of the restorative, as if it was all of a piece, the innuendo stripped from it in the communion of bodies.

I looked into her dark eyes and found myself agreeing, ok, go as far as you think best. And then the dream ended.

Crocodile dreams

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My sleep is chock-full of dreams at the moment. The night before last I dreamt of Jen. Of all the women in my life recently she is the one I dream of most. The dreams are unremarkable and claim no special relationship between us. They seem reflective of the reality between us, if by some mechanism we again found ourselves in close proximity. There is a polite wariness, an unspoken awareness of the past between us and a low-key sizzle of unresolved and undeniable feelings between us. It is shy, in surreptitious looks and chance encounters and the undercurrent in mundane conversation. She is receptive to my presence even if she does not actively welcome it. I am the other man, the alluring possibility she cannot completely turn from.  She will not condemn me, and will be secretly pleased at my efforts to get close to her.

In all of my dreams she seems very authentic, the girl I remembered and the personality I knew so well. Funny, I dream of her, but rarely think of her, though hope she is well.

My dream last night was about crocodiles, or more specifically, alligators. We were in the water and at risk of being attacked. It was dark and we remained still so as not to attract their attention. The alligators were in a tangled pile on a small island in the middle of the river. One of us doused them in fuel and set them alight. They burned and their blood ran into the river turning it red.

Strange dream. It must mean something to dream of crocodiles/alligators.

What dreams may come...

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I had a dream this morning which asked me if I could go back to a moment in my past to start afresh from when would it be? The answer came immediately, though it was a surprise when I woke to consider it. It was a recent time and a very specific place. On my trip to North Africa 2 years ago we are stopped at one of the Templar castles in Jordan. I have explored it with the others and have returned to our minivan. While I am waiting for all to come back I browse some of the shops in the small street. I buy a drink and, if I recall right, a set of playing cards with some local attraction printed on their back. It's as I'm walking from the shops back to the minivan that the picture chooses to pause. This is my chance: get back on that bus and start again.

There is a lot that has happened since then, so it was a sensible choice in many ways, though the specific moment selected is curious. When I woke I thought why not a week or so before that. I had started that trip in good spirits, but probably within 5 days found myself dogged by thoughts of home and the situation there, even as I enjoyed the different sites. Why would I not choose to avoid that too? As I write now I wonder if in an ideal world those days of angst might have been of some benefit had I learned from them. Perhaps that was the reason why, to start again with knowledge of what has come before and what I felt, and to proceed with that knowledge and defiant of it.

Who will know? It was dream, we aren't given that option. How good would that be though? If we could go back and restore a backup from a previous stage of our life?  Again though, perhaps we are not meant to make mistakes, but we are made to live with them, and to overcome them if we can. That is our lot and it could be a lot worse.

I feel as if things are shifting again. I may be superstitious in these matters, but I am given cause to believe that it is time for me to consider my present station in life and to question it. I was disturbed some weeks ago by that dream I described here. I had another dream when I was in Sydney the other night. In the dream I am laying in bed when I am woken by a loud noise. As I lay in bed I hear it come again and again. What I am hearing are gunshots, each loud and distinct and separated by an interval just under a second. They come from the house across the road and I don't know if it is my imagination or reality, but with each shot I see the flash of the gun light up through the windows of the house. I imagine the family living there murdered in their beds.

This is another disturbing dream coming hot on the heels of the other. Do I consider them coincidences? I could do, but they are so out of character that I can only believe they are indicative of some deeper uncertainty.

Over dinner earlier that night I had told my friend of the dream I had described here. I had thought deeply on it and chose to interpret it a certain way. My friend had a different interpretation. To him it seemed pretty clear that it was a dream of alienation, of feeling the world was against me. I understood his perspective and could see the validity in it. I thought it overlooked some salient points in the dream, but then considered they might be red herrings in any case. That this is not something I consciously feel is no reason to refute the interpretation - dreams are, I think, often the expression of our subliminal doubts, fears and hopes.

So what? I don't know. I am thinking about things, and am receptive to signs, to opportunities.

I had a small dream on Saturday morning. Look at your Facebook friends it said, watch for someone you have not spoken to for a long time. Last night I got a text message from a girl I have not seen or spoken to for about 8 years - well before Facebook existed. Is that still you she asked. Yes, it's still me I answered. We exchanged a couple of messages and then she asked if I was on Facebook - is that your style?

I don't think it means anything, and if it does it is more about how things are shifting and moving, and how I might expect something to change soon.

What does it mean?

I had a very disturbing and out of character dream the other night. I’ve been sitting on it since trying to work out what it meant, and somewhat afraid of finding out. Anyway, this is it.

There are two teams of people, and I’m the leader of one. We’re both a loose conglomeration of people, adults, children, people from all walks of life competing over something much smaller than a sheep station. I go into the competition expecting us to win. It might be my natural confidence, or it might be that I think that we have a natural advantage. In any case I’m feeling pretty cosy with the whole thing.

It is a shock then when we fall behind in this unspecified competition. We fall behind so badly that it becomes very clear that regardless what we do the cause is lost. There is some minor celebration of this on the other side, and some angst on my side. For me it is cause for some unexpected soul-searching, which even more surprising tips over into an act of stupid violence.

We share a communal fridge it seems, and in the door of the fridge is a glass bottle belonging to a young girl on the other side. On wild impulse I smash the bottle and walk away. At first nobody knows who smashed the bottle, and then they begin to point fingers at me and mutter, looking at me with an expression of surprised contempt.

I am feeling miserable, and more remorseful than I can explain. At the same time there is a sense of bewilderment. Did I really do that? How could I have done that? In the face of their accusations I don’t deny it, but find myself wanting to make an excuse, to explain that it was an accident when I knew it wasn’t. To my credit I don’t, but when another child, a boy of about 10, comes to taunt me over it I snap again. This time I lash out at him making him cry. He is whisked away by adults. Everyone, including my own team, look upon me with disgust, and the boy’s father quite rightly has a go at me.

I am astounded, embarrassed, ashamed. I can’t understand anything. This is not what I am, this is not what I do...and yet here I am, guilty as charged. How can this be I wonder desperately. I am dignified, measured, I don’t get emotional, I don’t take things to heart, I don’t lose control. But now. I’m in the centre of this storm, despised even by my own team and unable to blame them, the pathetic character who takes his frustrations out on children.

I try to apologise but no-one wants anything of it. I’ve lost it I think. I’ve lost.

I woke with this dream in me. It was Tuesday morning in Sydney. As I got myself ready for work and packed up my things I wondered what I was doing here. How did I end up here? In those moments I believed I had taken the wrong turn. I was living the wrong life.

Did I feel that because of the dream? Or was the dream the reflection of some deep-seated frustration? A warning perhaps? Or is it nothing at all? In the days since I can’t disavow the dream, but I can reject the content of it as being foreign to who I am and what I believe.

Dreams of dying?

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I had an interesting dream last night. In it I was in a plane flying somewhere when it was struck by a rocket fired from the ground. It was not enough to crash the plane, but it was good enough to incapacitate it. The pilot could keep it aloft for a few hours more perhaps, but at some point it was going to crash to earth.

As it happens I lived in an age where you can beam from one place to another (which begs the question why I was on a plane, but never mind). Like most on the plane I chose to teleport myself off the doomed aircraft and into the company of family and friends. I might have felt safe there thinking that while the plane might crash I would not be on it - but no. We were gathered together all of us who had beamed off and told for whatever technological or scientific reason that some of us must return to the plane. It was further announced that the cabin crew would be doing just that, but they needed just a few more volunteers to return with them to balance up their requirement.

There was silence in the roof as the news sunk in. I know in myself I felt suddenly as if the safety I had presumed was revealed to be false. This was a death sentence, some of us would die. Overhead somewhere the plane flew on, slowly failing, heading to an inevitable doom. I stood there willing someone else to step forward, but knowing that I would, that I must - it was not for me to remain safe while others died in my stead. With a sigh I stepped forward, this was it. And that was the dream.

I had another dream somehow similar a few nights ago. In that dream we have been abruptly invaded. Enemy troops are in the streets shooting at anyone that moves. There are dead everywhere as they go house to house taking no prisoners.

I am trapped somewhere in their path. I am aware that our troops had fought back and were doing battle not far away, and that safety lay in that direction, yet to get there I had to go unarmed through enemy lines.

It's a scenario in the light of day you might consider rationally without really taking account of the danger and the terror involved. I think myself a resourceful, calm type, in the clear-light of day I would back myself to find a way, killing if I needed to. There is no clear daylight in your dreams though, and sometimes they see more true because of it. My rational mind was not engaged; in my dream I faced the raw, bleak peril of the situation with nothing to comfort me.

At first I was terrified, so terrified that I refused to move. How often have I watched a movie or read a book and have in frustration urged the paralysed protagonist, to move, to, to act? More times than I can count. In the dream though that was me. Faced with the very real possibility of a violent death I could do nothing. I could feel the very real terror of my predicament.

Eventually I moved. With every step I feared discovery. I could hear gun shots still, and expected to come across an enemy soldier at any moment. My greatest fears came when I had to expose myself: when I must cross an open space or veer from the nooks and crannies and the side of the road.

I remember as the dream became muddled how I watched an enemy soldier and considered how I might get by him. I thought of killing him, but how? I considered him dead then, and thought to acquire his gun - but the thought of crossing to him in the wide open and being visible to unseen enemies stopped me. Then I faced another dilemma. As I neared 'our' lines I wandered how I was to cross to them. I did not want to be shot inadvertently by my own people. But if I were to alert them to my coming I risked exposing myself to the enemy.

The dream ended at that point. While the events of the dream were much like any other dream, the raw terror I felt seemed very real. This is how it would really be I thought, for all my bravado, my 'resourcefulness' and 'calm' I would be scared shitless. I guess though that's the only sensible way to be.

Crash, burn, fly...

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The night before Christmas I woke up at about 5am. I had been dreaming intensely, complex dreams full of intricate detail. Into my dreams a sound had intruded. The sound was incorporated into my dreams in the way of these things, it had swelled and become so insistent that the narrative of my dreams fell away, and I woke. I lay in bed feeling disorientated at first. Then as I slowly found my bearings I realised the sound from my dreams continued now that I was awake. I lay still listening, trying to follow the source of the sound. At first I thought it was coming from next door and I wondered what it could be. Then I realised I was wrong. I continued to listen before getting out of bed. I walked down the hallway towards the sound without turning a light on. I could see clearly with my dark accustomed eyes. Rigby followed at my heels. The sound became louder as I approached. I felt no alarm, though I wondered what it could be. It sounded a little like a smoke alarm, but knew it couldn't be. I poked my head in the loungeroom and the sound diminished. When I turned towards the bathroom it became louder.

Earlier in the day I had bought a new iPhone clock radio and had put the old one in the bathroom. In my fumblings with it I had inadvertently set the alarm to go off at 4.55am. I switched it off and went back to bed.

Awake now I lay in bed and recalled the dream. I slowly put it together again from the fragments I had left in my memory. I recalled a series of women asking me questions about what I wanted to do. The dream shifted into different locations and different scenes, but this remained the constant: a subtle, gentle and genuinely curious probing of my ambitions. I tried to answer and as I did one after the other to the series of questions asked of me I found my answer shifting. It was as if in my first response I had answered conventionally with the expected answer, and the answer I had not bothered to question myself. With the stress of answering and of examining myself again and again it seemed I gradually went beyond the expected to something deeper. What did I really want then? And who does that make me?

The night before the yoga teacher had asked me about the job I was in. In answering I explained to her some of the dilemma I potentially faced. The truth is I am bored and am not sold on the company, yet I am already being sounded out about a permanent role there. That would be a role hard to resist - great money and a senior role at one of the biggest companies in Oz. It would set me up. It felt though I choice between what I wanted to do and what I thought I should.

To my surprise the yoga teacher thought I should continue to go my own way. It's more fun she said, more dynamic. As I sat there I wondered at that. It is a lot of things, and maybe those amongst it - yet her point is well made. I continually think I must establish myself into a life and career. I think I should 'settle'. I feel the need to re-build and to reclaim some of what I have lost. The sensible option then is to accept the gilt edged option when it is presented to me.

That may yet happen, if in fact the opportunity comes, but I think it unwise to commit myself one way or the other yet. As always I remind myself to be true to who I am - and I increasingly believe I am made for certain things and not others. This was the sense of the dream I think, brought on perhaps by the comments of the yoga teacher.

Funnily enough earlier in the day I had come across one of Rilke's more famous poems: Archaic Torso of Apollo. 

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could 
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark centre where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

There in the last sentence of the last line is the kicker. In all my little journeys this is something I find myself returning to. Not that I should be changing my life necessarily, but that I should be taking proper account of it. It is easy to slip into easy ways. I think to myself and the sensual delight I take in life, in what I eat and drink and touch. It is pleasant to eat Haigh's chocolate and to order in fine wine and to sit comfortably in my home watching cable TV in between jaunts to cool bars and top notch restaurants. There is nothing to complain at any of that, but it is lifestyle, not life.

For me again I reiterate that I feel I must scoop out everything inside me. I have to use it, put it out there, know and understand it. I don't think I can settle, I don't think I'm made for the sedate and comfortable lifestyle, and no matter what riches there are within my reach they are good only for a nice flat-screen TV, a cool holiday and the lifestyle I speak of. I can't help but believe that I am built in such a way that I must follow my own erratic course if only because that way truth lies. And perhaps enlightenment.

Is this the choice everyone makes? I tend to think not, for whatever reason. It is true for me though. The story of my life is the story of my wrestling with this decision. For every time I wish to settle down and to lead the conventional life there is a part of me that says ok, but... I want those things, I hope to have them, but I think now it must be within the context of my own journey. I have to go the way my instinct leads, must continue, I think, to crash sometimes because I have tried for too much, have outreached and sometimes outsmarted myself, as I must do...I cannot deny who I am.

So, we'll see how things unfold. Odd to think though that a person who thinks this way can possibly be the serious master of the universe in the corner office.