Dreamscapes

I have posted the odd dream but here I will discuss the recurring themes of many of my dreams over time. To start with I will say a few things of what my dreams feel like then go into specific content.

I experience my movement within dreams as somewhat viscous in nature. There is often some sense of detachment from my setting and circumstances even if I am still a direct participant. Other than this the subject matter itself tends to be relatively mundane - rare for me are the fantasy adventures of other friends. Sometimes I have a sense that I am dreaming but my direction over events is limited and I am frequently an observer of a fixed sequence of happenings. The mood is usually neutral to positive and somewhat interesting but rarely compelling.

Flying

I had my first flying dream in my teens. I was running away from a charging bull in a paddock. It was almost upon me - I could practically feel its horns on my backside - and just as I got to a wire fence I flew into the air and freedom. Since then I have had them many times but that was the only time I can remember using it to escape danger. I have done it for fun (to show friends how I can hover in the tree tops while they cannot) or to be useful (bouncing around the walls of a ballroom decorating it with balloons and streamers). Flying seems to have become less frequent into my 30s but has been replaced somewhat by climbing dreams. In these I tend to be scrambling around complex surfaces with lots of secure perches and refuges (like the rooftop of a rambling mansion). Incidentally, the sensation of flying is like a mix of treading water and dolphin-kick.

Water

Water is frequently in my dreams (such as the one linked to). As well as swamps, I have also swum in ocean-side stone pools surrounded by ancient steps and columns with imposing cliffs behind me. I have been in complex arrays of interconnecting indoor and underground water slides. At other times I have been at an indoor swimming pool which is disturbingly open-plan in nature - the pools themselves are separated from the changing areas only by the fact that they are set lower than those areas and there may be some partitioning. I suppose this is a variation on the popular naked in public dream and is in a setting that presents the experience as almost normal.

Walking

Walking walking always walking. The settings change but I am always walking and feeling like I can go as far as I need with time. Suburban streets that mirror ones I know in waking life... parklands that seem to go on forever... university campuses that feel more like shopping centres and have a ridiculous number of levels both above and below ground. Many setting are familiar and yet different from life. And another interesting thing is that some of those locations are visited more than once. Or is it just that in a dream there is a fabricated memory of having been there before rather than having dreamed it more than once?

Houses

So many houses drawing on others from life and fiction... suburban houses full of different levels and interconnecting halls and passages... rooms and alcoves partitioned only by curtains and serving as rooms for more housemates than I have ever had... mansions with wings for different groups of friends... whole abandoned levels that we forget exist... rooms with Transformers I have never owned... bedrooms I can crash in if I am too lazy to walk all the way to my own... and usually there is somebody to talk with in a room close by.

Humans

In most of my dreams there are friends or family. Things are similar yet different. Sometimes all my family are together (rather than having divorced parents) despite the fact I am my current age. Friends are mixed in a way that never happens - in one dream I walked from a seminar room full of debating Australian Democrats, across a hall, and into a dormitory full of choristers. Often there are groups in the background and a handful in the foreground. We are usually talking. Sometimes arguing. Sometimes the line of argument even makes sense once I have woken and its content is relevant to things friends have been discussing. Most interactions are verbal but only most. There is flirting and intimacy but also an element of censorship to the cinematography of my dreams as the camera pans to fireplace metaphorically.

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I imagine those with the inclination may try to interpret these dreams and are welcome to. I will however say that I'm skeptical of saying one things represents another thing. In many cases I think that a thing is what it is even in dreams. And the muddled juxtaposition of elements is just the nature of dreams - my brain is preventing thinking from becoming too rigid like a screen saver does to a monitor. However I will admit that things in my dreams do reflect me in some way - particularly because they are frequently mundane things from my waking life. Many are things I experience or almost experience and can sense just over the cusp of possibility.