N stabbed me in the liver. I called a random contact on my mobile, and A picked up, but said that he couldn’t come because his parents were having such a row that he was afraid to come out of his room. When I later saw N, he had a beard and was having breakfast: a cup of coffee and a vitamin capsule. He’d forgotten all about what he’d done, but he looked troubled. I asked him what was wrong, he said he was sad because some friends of his were going through tough times. I asked, “Couldn’t it be because you tried to kill me?” When he remembered, his face lit up with joy and he jumped up at me, but I hit him with a chair. When I looked before me again, he’d disappeared. He could only have gone under the table, so I punched it until it collapsed. When I looked underneath, he’d gone, and all I saw there was a capsule of vitamin A. He must’ve disappeared into the capsule.
There were large mantids all over the floor, and I couldn’t stop squashing them in my hands. At one point I had a cramp, and had to open my hand with the other.
A team of cameramen which had gone to a poor African village for a kind of TV program. They had come to bully the villagers to see what their reactions would be. They had brought food with them which could feed the entire village, but tantalized them with it. With their stacks of food boxes around them, they would pester any of the villagers which would come close, filming them all the while. When a child in purple rags came close, a bubblegum-chewing cameraman threw rocks at it and told it that no-one could get any of the food until they'd Westernize. That meant real Western clothes, no rags, as well as having food to spare. The child ran away.
To restore their relations with the village to prevent them from lynching them, they went to the marketplace and bought some things which for the villagers were expensive. One of these things was a lucky ring.
The merchant who sold them this ring was surprisingly friendly towards them, considering their persecution. He said the ring would make the wearer more lively. When the two cameramen went back to their camp, the merchant came with them. When one of them pocketed the ring, and the merchant asked why he didn't wear it. He said he was lively enough already.
Dream:
I dreamt I could not sleep. For some reason I felt anxious, so I sang a song. But when I stopped, I still heard something behind my bedstead. I turned on the lights to see a stone gnome bent over my bed. I turned the lights off again and went back to sleep. But the anxiety came back, and I looked under my bed to see a dying raven. I cried out, and my father came in. When he took the bird, it moved. I picked up a piece of meat from where it had lain and brought it to its beak, and sure enough, it started to nibble at it. I then saw that my father had lost his left forearm. The stub had healed, but an iron rod protruded from it. I asked what had happened, but he waved it off, saying he lost that arm years ago. How did I never notice?
Interpretation:
At the time, I was writing a novel about “Alvis” whose name I got from a Norse myth of a dwarf “Alviss” that knew all (“All-wit”) and was tricked into telling stories until the morning’s light turned him to stone. I find it easier to write at night, so I associate him with fantasy. That night, I was trying to become lucid, but knew that I’d forget most of my dreams when I wake up, turning Alvis to stone.
My father came to my room when I attempted suicide, so that I am the raven, an animal I associate with depressive realism. The suicide attempt involved cuts to my arm, and my dad’s lost arm is the effect it must have had on him. But he’s been used to my cutting myself for a year, and remained strong anyway. I associate “monsters under the bed” with monsters in my head, i.e. repressed memories, and the suicide attempt involved a drug cocktail that caused amnesia of the event.
When police officers at a murder scene in a suburban house played the voice mail, it had a message for them: "I have committed murder. That's why you might be very interested to carefully hear what I've got to say." At that point, they were shot down by the murderer, a burly bald man with a machine gun.
Passing the house, I heard the gunfire and looked through the window as the murderer walked over the bodies. I fled, and the murderer pursued me through the fields. When I came to a stream, I nimbly crossed across over the rocks. My pursuer, being heavier, gave up.
I drove home with my father when we heard screams, and I turned around at once to flee the country. In the evening we stayed at a hotel in a village, but I couldn’t sleep and walked around the hotel to the reception, where I saw on the black-and-white monitor how men with chainsaws were cutting through the entrance door. I fled through the back door, but one of them was there too. I threw a chair at his chainsaw, getting it stuck. When I was outside, I saw that the men with chainsaws where everywhere.
In my dream, some kind of Indian ascetic did a kind of ritual dance to "awaken" me. I did awaken — to waking life.
I was a member of an expedition of explorers, descended into a mysterious network of subterranean labyrinth. It was a network of caves and tombs vaster than we would ever know. It was empty in this dark place; there was not a soul to be found. No humans, no bats, no rats, not even fungus — and contrary to our superstitions, no undead.
The structures there had once stood here had crumbled to ruins, ghosts of a distant past. The place was long abandoned; yet at some point, from within the darkness of a hall lined with pillars came a caravan, led by a blind girl.
We overcame our fears as soon as we saw her, for she radiated a gentle warmth.
She turned out to be a girl of lore: a sage, and yet she was still a child, though we could feel that she was somehow older in spirit. When we saw her, her wisdom seemed to sweep over our minds, and it overwhelmed us with a strange feeling of wonder.
In the hall there were strange crystal columns all around us. And it was as though her soul sang through these pillars, for they emitted a tremulous sound of soft choral voices as she passed.
She looked at each of us in turn, seeing us not with her blind eyes yet with her soul. As she did, we each became transported with a strange feeling, and it seemed that for a moment our souls let go off our bodies. As she turned my way, I had a vision, leaving my body in the hall beneath and ascending to the higher halls above us.
These led to the regal crypts, where the ancient kings and queens of these caverns rested in their sarcophagi, each inlaid with special, beautiful gemstones, which were renowned for their brilliance. As I came into the temple of the foremost king, where his figure was embossed in draperies upon a sarcophagus, the gem which laid upon its stone finger began to glow; and it glowed with such warmth as touched my spirit.
But when I opened my eyes again and saw the young sage, smiling at me in all her serenity, I was unsure whether the effect had come from the magical gemstone, or from her.
The stones, she told us, were no longer there; thus, we agreed to take it upon ourselves to retrieve them to their rightful owners, the kings and queens which now rested in their tombs.
"I love it when people sing in the pillars," she said. These words struck me as strange, for whatever these pillars were, I had though that it was through her soul that the pillars had sung when she came to face us.
We eventually came to the crypts, and retrieved three of the gemstones; but one of us had betrayed us, and knowing where the last, most valuable of the gems was, he left our group and sought it to claim it as his own.
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