Dream Appearances

Zone Hoppers

I dreamt of a group of 6-8 young people living on the border where the German, French and Italian language zones meet in Switzerland. (That does not exist in the waking world.) They spoke all three languages plus English fluently.

They were just shopping and clubbing and pursuing intrigues among themselves, as you might expect people in their early twenties to do. They were changing zones two or three times per day by train. No one else could keep up with them so they were very exclusive and tight-knit.

I did not interact with them, but overheard about four of them talking to others on the French side. I had the impression that they were former and current lovers, and that the constant flux created ambiguity. They were beautiful, and Switzerland was beautiful.

I took this to be another message about the lives of dream guides. Each of us is trapped in his own dream (language zone), but they are free to cross borders. Because of that, they keep society amongst themselves, only occasionally interacting with locals for practical reasons.

Return of the Dolphins

Here is another dream, which differs only superficially:

I dreamt of an underground city, or rather it was a city of many canals, but the sky was obscured by buildings or steel works. It was rather steam-punk looking, with loads of mechanical bridges spanning the canals. There were walkways over the canals, which could be retracted to allow free movement on the canals. This was done, in particular, when a group of dolphins arrived. There was a religion regarding these dolphins. They would periodically arrive from the sea for some beneficial purpose, which is why the city was set up to receive them. At this point, all traffic is brought to a standstill while all walkways are retracted to allow the dolphins to progress into the city. At some point, dolphins would take human form. I saw this as a musical intro to a child’s television series. The dolphins would arrive, swim through the canals, and emerge from the water in human form. Even so, they continued to be playful and they pranked each other incessantly. What they did on land, I never learned, because I awoke. But I think the point of the dream was to reveal that humans and ‘dolphins’ have a particular relationship that is neither predatory nor parental.

Reality is never what it seems

If you can think of these two dreams(Swiss dream and dolphin dream) as the same dream separated by a number of years, then the dream world must make as much sense to you as the waking world. There are themes, patterns, rules, and particular actors — the only difference being that appearances are free to vary.

Convertible characters

I dreamt of riding in a convertible car on a highway with three men whose facial features were shifting over time. A subtle change in nose, then eyebrows, the mouth, and so on, until each face was completely different.

At one point, I was merely observing as a disembodied entity, and then even their positions in the car became uncertain. Uncertainty is the only way to describe it. They were not moving around magically like TV characters. It was more like quantum collapse: it is not certain where someone is, but if the observer insists that each person be somewhere, that is in fact what is observed. But without persistent and concentrated insistence, the uncertainty creeps back in. What is evident is only that there are three people in the car, but who is sitting where is uncertain.

It was being shown to me that the car was a sham. There was some simpler reality behind it, with my mind filling in plausible details. I am reminded of a dream account I read once, in which the dreamer was observing a field of stars. Slowly, each star was replaced by a ballroom dancer until the scene had in fact transitioned to a ballroom. Then it slowly transitioned back to the starfield, with each star in the very position a dancer had been.

Crazy, except when it is not

After I had COVID, I had unusual smell sensitivity for about six months. A lawyer could smell the same as a supermarket cashier, even though their roles were very different. I could smell when someone was angry or upset or afraid, but not why, nor how important the cause was. Sometimes I smelled people who were no longer in the room. I found myself in a world in which smells were crazy except when they weren’t.

Having the sense of smell that other mammals take for granted was a mind-blowing experience for me. I realised that all of my other senses were as unreliable, but I had gotten used to that long ago. For example, when I walk into my bathroom at night, it looks 90% different from the way it looks during the day, if it has any appearance at all. I am just used to it. I tacitly assume that it is the same place with a different appearance.

This is the dream world; it makes sense; it has permanence, but your senses — all five senses — are unreliable in a way that you’re not used to.