This is from February 4th:

Last night I had the most peculiar dream. Its peculiarity came from the fact that I was not in it, and it had very, very little to do with my life, it didn't really connect to events at all. It was wonderful, and because I wasn't in it, at least not as myself, and nobody else who I knew was in it, it felt completely real; there was no "in-dream consciousness" at all.

The only connection perhaps was that it started in a second-hand bookshop; I bought this novel which was published by Oxford Classics (I knew because it had the same crimson and cream spine). When I left the shop the cover was badly folded over, so I took it back and went to exchange it, but on the shelf where the replacement should have been I found another novel, one which intrigued me more, and it came free with the film adaptation.

I say "came free", but I really don't know that; I'm filling in blanks, because soon after I was inside that novel, not as a person who people acknowledged, but as an invisible onlooker. It was a period piece, full of melodrama, and I was watching on not as a film, but as if on a film set. Then I decided that I didn't want to spoil the book, so I stopped.

Really, the only thing that bore any resemblance to my "real" life was that, when I found this second book, I chose to buy it over one called Damnation; I remember thinking in the dream, "This must be the World Cinema original novels" section. The original title of Damnation read; "Karo ha zat".

It was like Tony Soprano's Kevin Finnerty dreams in season six, but here my dream character wasn't me, there was no identity crisis at all.

It's times like this when I wish I was seeing a shrink.

Capo, I take it you keep a dream journal? Or you have a really good memory.

I've always wanted to try that, but it never seems to work out. The few times I remember enough of what I dream to record, I forget to do so.

I found it interesting that you had spears thrown into you yet felt no sense of pain. I was apparently shot in the head in mine at one point, but felt no pain - it actually had no effect on me at all. The feeling I got was that I was just being shown what being shot would seem like, but I wasn't actually shot, even in the dream. I don't think I've ever felt pain in a dream. How does that even happen? Hmm.

ive been shot..stabbed bashed etc..and never felt any pain..but once i dreamed i was having a heart attack and it felt sooo real..i woke up clutching my chest and breathing heavily..it was pretty weird

Apparently if you die in your dream you can die in real life, too. It's why you always wake up when you fall from a building or something, because if you hit the bottom you're heart would react to the "real" impact.

is that shit true..or just an old wives tale?..ive got friends who reckon they.ve died in there dreams and everything just fades to black and they wake up

I've heard that.

In my dreams I'm a hot dog. Seroisly.

my friend thought he was a hot dog when he had a bad acid trip

I keep having really bizarre dreams where I go to places that I've never been to, never heard of, have never even thought of, but I am fairly confident that if I were to go to these places (they're all just around town) that they actually exist. It's really strange. The places aren't even the focus of the dreams, they're just the setting, but I'm certain they exist. Other times, the dreams will take place in places that served as the setting to dreams I had as a young, young child (ages 6-8, roughly, which is around the period when I had stopped remembering my dreams, until this past month or two) that I had long forgotten. Other times, I'll go to actual places I had gone to in my infancy, but I'm not so sure that they exist at all, if that makes sense at all. It's hard to explain. Bottomline is, these dreams are really bizarre and happen to be the first dreams I've had/can remember when I wake up in almost a decade.

because i take Zoloft medication...i get nonstop viloent dreams..where ive killed someone and im stressing out trying to find a place to bury them...or i have dreams that im in a war running around with an ak 47 and my girlfriend has been shot...its pretty full on at times...screws with my head

Wow Manic, that must be awful having violent dreams all the time. One every now and then, but on a regular basis??

I haven't had many dreams lately, but I think we've all had the falling dream. I have yet to actually hit the ground in my dream. I always wake up before, thankfully.

A number of years ago I had a recurring dream (the only recurring dream I've ever had). I was driving my car and simply could not keep my eyes open. Not only that, I couldn't keep my foot from pressing down on the gas pedal and would be speeding and weaving through traffic, all the while desperately trying to stay awake. It was as though I was half asleep and half awake. In the dream I always woke up before I crashed. I always wondered how to interpret it. It was during a difficult time in my life, so many it had something to do with how I was handling my life's directions or something. Heck, I don't know, but it sure was scary.

TIS

I used to have horrible dreams about my children, about harm coming to them. Those are the kind that you DON'T fall back to sleep afterwards.

The weirdest one I ever had was when I dreamed that the house was on fire and I was choking on the smoke and trying to get out of the house. When I woke up, I was terrified, thinking that the house was really on fire and that I had incorporated the smell of smoke into my dream from real life.

I suffer occasional bouts of sleep paralysis, which is being completely aware that I'm asleep, yet I can't wake myself up or move my limbs until it passes.

When I was a kid it used to terrify me, for fear that I'd never wake up. It happens to me very rarely now, but when it does I just wait it out. It's still scary though.

Is his name "Frank"??

Francis Footer

Ha ha ha!! So he dreamed he was a foot long hot dog then hu? Ok, not as witty as SC, but best I could come up with.

TIS

Francis Footer Coppola??? I think I heard of that guy... he makes gangster movies, right?

Yeah, that's him, Frank Footer.

He's a kraut

His grandfather fought in World War I. He was killed my MUSTARD gas.

yo pizza boy i get that shit aswell...scares the crap outta me...i start trying to wake my girlfriend up and instead of talking i make little whimpering sounds...really weird sometimes it takes ages to be able to move again

You try to fight to wake up right ?

Then when you do, you gotta get up and go for a walk, because if you go straight back to sleep, it starts all over again.

yeah its straight fu$%ed up...i hate it...i went through a stage of getting it once or twice a week...your completely paralysed but you can soughta look around moving just your eyeballs sometimes...its like your minds awake but your body is asleep and dosent respond to your thoughts

I had written about this once before - my "weirdest" dream came about a few days after my wife died. She died August 1, 1993 (8/1). Two days later I had an EXTREMELY vivid dream... I was dreaming that I was at JFK Airport, walking through one of the terminals when a few planes EXPLODED into flames. There was damage and carnage all over the place and I was trying desperately to save some lives... the flames kept beating me back and I was unable to save anyone (I later thought it was an unconscious reference to being unable to save my wife's life). I started crying (in the dream) for someone to call 9-1-1 and as I was watching these people die in the flames the Port Authority Police (the Port Authority runs JFK Airport) started to arrive as I kept repeating "Call 9-1-1".

The telephone woke me up at that very point (my heart was racing and I was crying). I looked at the clock; it was 9:11 (my sister was calling to discuss plans for the wake), and I guess thats why I remember the dream so vividly.

It wasn't for years later that I made another "connection" to that dream. Some eight years and one month later (8/1) the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center took place (9/11). The operators of the World Trade Center were none other than the Port Authority. Jet planes with lots of people dying and the terrible feeling of just watching and being unable to do nothing to save those people completed the revisit to that dream.

That's really intense SC. Do you think of it as an eery coincidence or do you think of it as a premonition of some kind ?

Yeah, you could die if your dream death shocks your heart into stopping. Otherwise, I don't think so.

To this day I really don't know. I expect when one is under a great deal of stress (i.e. just losing a loved one) there MAY be some ESP moments. I also think that just about anything can be read into a dream and its later "proof" that it came true, but this particular dream (and its coincidences) still troubles me.

(It wasn't for a few years after the WTC attack that I started to make a conscious connection).

I just realized that I have something in common with Manic.

YIKES !

why??!!!is that a bad thing?

My dreams are almost always fairly realistic. I never dream of talking dogs or such strange things. For sure, I do dream of strange circumstances, but my emotions in my dreams seem to mimic those in real life.

Someone mentioned about thier deceased spouse. Both my parents died a couple of years ago, but I've only dreamed of them a couple of times. My brother died 15 years ago and I've dreamed of him only once.

I have the naked dream though. But in it noone seems to notice and I am not feeling awkward about it. Hmmm.

Wow SC, that's something. So many dreams (at least many of mine) just don't make sense, but there are certain dreams that truly make you wonder, like yours. Just reading your post gives me the chills, and I can imagine how you feel.


TIS