Dream: Newspaper Photos of the Breakfast Table

Dream 20030803, 5:00 AM:

I’m living in a tiny, tiny house (about the size of a travel camper, but it seems like a building) with my brother R. It is fairly messy, but I don’t feel really stressed about it. I get a phone call from someone, telling me that they’re going to visit and take photos of me for a newspaper article. I rearrange a few things in the tiny house, so that they will get a good shot. The article has something to do with me cooking breakfast, but the stuff that I’m working on at the stove reminds me more of my soapmaking equipment. I am stirring something in a very tall cannister like a section of stove pipe; I think it may be oatmeal. I drape a white towel over some stuff on a counter, to hide it for the photo – it’s not anything I feel concerned about, just trying to make the image cleaner by removing visual distraction. The person arrives and visits with me for a while and takes a few pictures, then leaves.

Apparently, the article generates a lot of interest, and they decide to do a more in-depth study of my breakfast table. I don’t think I’m at the same place, but now there are people setting up and arranging a more elaborate photo shoot. They pull out a dining table that I recognize as mine, but it’s not really the one I like. They set it up so that it’s collapsed down very slim, like all its leaves have been removed; apparently it’s something to do with the picture. Then, we find the oak dining table that I really like (the real one that’s in the dining room now) and set it up in place of the other one, and that makes me happy. There are people working on the photo shoot, and I have to wait in another room.

It finally seems like they’re finished, and I go to look at the setup. The room I’m in looks like part of a furniture store, and I realize that they’ve changed out everything; not even the table is mine. It’s very decorative, though, with candlesticks carved out of wood and banded and studded with metal. The table looks like mahogany, sort of reddish and open-grained. The only things that I recognize are two bottles of something like salad dressing, and they’re set up so that the back label panels are facing the photo area, and “Michael’s” is written on them in black marker. I’m annoyed because they have changed the whole thing; I start to complain to someone, but he seems unconcerned.

5 replies
  1. admin
    admin says:

    Howdy!

    Hey there!

    Nice ta meet’cha. I added you to my Friends list – I usually don’t friends-screen much, although I try to always use cut-lines because some of my posts are lengthy.

    And yes, research has shown that with a few exceptions, mostly traumatic brain damage cases, everyone else dreams several times per night. If you decide you want to start mining that vein, I’d be happy to share some of the tips and methods I’ve learned.

  2. redwaterlily
    redwaterlily says:

    Re: Howdy!

    that would be awesome – I’d love to remember my dreams – well..except for some that i DO remember and that I’d rather forget (I dreamed once that my ex shot and killed me..i couldn’t even more and i was not allthe wya asleep…eerie).

    adding you back

  3. admin
    admin says:

    Dreamland…

    If you want to start working with dreams – There are a lot of good books on the subject; I particularly recommend Patricia Garfield’s “Creative Dreaming” as a good starting place.

    The first thing you have to do, is start remembering. It’s mostly psychological – we have decided that dreams are not important, and we don’t pay them any mind; they just drift off after we’re done dreaming, and we don’t remember them after we wake.

    Keep a journal by your bedside, and when you wake up in the morning, keep your eyes closed and hunt for any suggestion of what you might have been dreaming – often it is just a feeling, or a memory of a particular “snapshot” image, or an item you can remember holding or touching. If you get anything at all, open your eyes and write down all that you can remember. As you become more in tune, you typically get bigger chunks at a time, including plot pieces, fuller images, and other sensations like touch and smell.

    Lots of dreamers feel like there is a “veil” at the edge of sleep, that we forget everything as we pass through – when you’re dreaming you don’t remember all of your waking life, and when you’re awake you don’t remember your dreaming life. The trick, is to carry something across that veil. It often gives you insight into what’s going on subconsciously in your life.

    I have gotten to the point (when I was able to devote that much time and energy to it) that I could recall four or so dreams per night. These days, I get usually one, sometimes two; I don’t always write them down, just because there are so many and I don’t choose to take the time every morning.

  4. admin
    admin says:

    Re: Dreamland…

    Forgot to say… “couldn’t move and was half asleep” probably refers to sleep paralysis… the brain cuts the body off at the brainstem, so that it doesn’t go about acting out all of the dream actions – otherwise, we’d do everything we dream, which wouldn’t always be safe or wise. There is occasionally a problem with timing, and the brain wakes up before the body can move – this creates many nightmares and the typical “Night Hag” experience (paralyzed, pressed to the bed by some kind of attacker.)

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