I don’t remember how it started. I was in the '46 Willys Jeep, driving in a residential neighbourhood at night. There was an animal running loose and for some reason I needed to find it (or maybe since I was in the neighbourhood I decided to look for it). I caught glimpses of it, a large, black cat – maybe a panther – and followed it to an abandoned house. An animal control officer came up shortly. I went into the dark house and saw the creature. Somehow I knew that it was evil. It wasn’t merely a large cat. It was cornered and growling at us. The animal control officer had a flashlight, but for some reason it would not work properly. It was as if the light was being sucked into oblivion before it could shine on anything. We decided we should retreat.
Once we were outside, the cat-thing decided it would attack. We got in the Jeep. Now, a '46 Willys is not a speedwagon. For some reason I couldn’t get out of second gear. The cat-thing loped along behind us. It didn’t seem solid. As it ran, its body seemed to joggle and flow like Jell-O. Yep. Definitely from the underworld. Evil. Death and soul stealing.
The Jeep started to backfire, and we could not outrun the cat-thing. I remembered I had a flashlight (a yellow diving light with a clear lens that you twist to turn it on) in my back pocket. Perhaps its powerful krypton beam would hold the beast back? I handed it to the animal control officer.
As the officer turned to use the light, my bladder informed me that it was time to wake up and vent the overflow. As I lay there wondering if I really had to urinate enough to get out of bed, I thought about the dream and got a chill. I went to the bathroom and still got a chill. When I was finished, I got a chill as I walked back to my bedroom. I never get chills after a dream!
After I went back to sleep I had another dream, but I don’t remember it at all.
Really, the only image from Peter Pan (the book) which stayed with me into adulthood, was Mama Darling going through her children’s minds every evening as they slept, and putting their thoughts into order, as she did with their toys and clothes. Mr. Barrie explained that this is the source of dreams, and I tend to agree with him.
Other, likeminded but slightly more scientific, folk contend that it is difficult to interpret dream symbolism in a universal manner, because the black cat means something different to one individual than to another, even ignoring cultural barriers.
Yeah, well, after a hot curry the other night I had a dream that I was an intelligence director in a South Asian country and that we had a crackerjack plan to lob exploding mangoes at the rebels, who would be distracted by the tasty mango goo and start licking each other and therefore be too busy to bomb anything. With full visuals and Ride of the Valkyries as a background track. Top that!
Nothing unusual, really. I’ve been designing a castle in my head and trying to figure out how to afford it. (I have a four storey tower to start with, but I only have enough in the bank for one or two storeys.)
False_God: I’ve had a few memorable dreams. I might post them sometime.
EggNogg: Not my books! :eek:
Zebra: No, no lost cats; but there is a very friendly black and white cat that appeared in the courtyard a few days ago.
GKW: Nah, if I have to urinate at night I usually just wake up.
Coldfire: If someone wanted to trade a new Yamaha R1, I’d do it. But even though I like some Jags, I’m more of a Porschephile. (I miss my old 911SC.)
Are you a city person? This sounds like urban/rural conflict to me; cat, wild, rural, powerful; Animal control officer, bureaucratic, urban, ineffectual; flashlights, scientific/technological, urban, also ineffectual.
You are in a technical job in an urban setting. Your job is either unsatisfying or unimportant in the grander scheme of things. YOu really want to take in t he cat, but your condo association or land-lord will not allow it.
Find a vacation house in the country, plant a vegetable garden, and design a web-site for your local Girls’ Incorporated or church.
The panther of absolute, stealing dark is the guilt you have accumulated for all the things you have left half finished and undone, and a symbol of your approaching mortality. All the plans and dreams you had that come to nothing as death approaches, ever faster and you feel it’s frosty breath on the nape of your neck. It’s coming to get you.
Hah, compared to my nightmares that’s a wet dream. Chills? I’ve vomited after waking up.
Haven’t had many nightmares lately, but last night I had a somewhat memorable one which is pretty par for the course for me. I met a guy with a glass eye, then he told me he had two glass eyes. He pulled one out and way back in the socket you could barely see another eye. He said someone hit him in the eye and knocked it back into the socket, and then the veins grew into it (as he said this I had a close-up vision of veins growing like weeds around the glass eye) and it couldn’t be removed.
I think I had that dream because people sometimes ask me if I have a glass eye, because I have one that wanders slightly sometimes (head injury when I was 11).
I misworded that, I did not mean to imply that the dream I had was a typical nightmare, but that it was a typical dream. Nothing scary happened in the glass eye dream, it was just weird and a bit gross.
Sometimes my nightmares are incredibly gorey, and I don’t know where my mind gets the images to show me, as it’s often stuff I know I have never seen in a movie.
Me, too. When I grow up, I’m going to live in Summerland (which really is a region here in Beautiful BC) and have a huge house and a big garden and make jams and pickles and things and run my place like a B&B so that it will pay for itself. Even the third and fourth storeys.
As far as what that has to do with this thread, well, I do dream of this a lot.
