The Dream Machine
In the first remembered scene of this rather complex dream, I was climbing a dry and dusty road up a mountain. I was with a companion in this and several of the following sequences, but he is indistinct and poorly remembered. The mountain itself was composed of loose crumbly sandstone.
At the top I found a couple of makeshift structures in poor repair, and a couple of local boys, about 12 to 14 years old. They wished to sell me fossil shells which they had extracted from the sandstone by scraping away the sandy matrix. These were large conchs of three types, which, although they had lost their gloss, were in excellent preservation with much of their original color. Two were of shapes I am familiar with: a thin one with a frilly edge and a heavier one built more like a cowrey. The third had a frilly edge with several long fingers projecting from it with channels on their undersides.
The prices asked by the boys were more than I wished to pay, so I refused to buy. One of the boys said to come back in a couple of days and maybe he could do better. I said that we were to be here only a short time and would not make the climb again. This boy left into one of the structures in disgust. The other boy continued to try to make a sale, and started coming closer and crowding me belligerently. I stood my ground, understanding he was trying to make me back down to put me at a disadvantage.
Scene Shift - Time & Place: The scene shifted to a time when the creatures that occupied the shells were alive. I knew this was a time long before there were people as such, so I was surprised to find a primitive civilization of human like creatures. They were brown skinned and had long faces with fish-like round mouths. Their cloths were loose, not very full robes of coarse cloth, colored in vertical stripes that had once been bright, but were now a bit faded from washing.
I was fairly high on a slope at the bottom of which was a deep bay. As many as forty houses were built on a number of terraces up the slope from the bay, forming a rough half moon. Each terrace had a narrow street at its edge, and there were several radial streets going straight from the top terrace down to the bay. The terraces were of packed clay and all of the houses, each identical to the others except for the painted designs, were surfaced entirely in clay. The houses were roughly 25 feet long and about 9 feet wide at the door end, tapering to about six feet at the back end, which was round. The roofs were flat with no overhang, and each house was painted in broad horizontal stripes and geometric patterns. I did not see the entrances as they all faced the bay and I was higher on the hill.
There were few people on the streets, but I knew there were many inside the houses. Out on the bay there were rows of white floats, and to these were tied many small boats, about one boat to a house, most painted white. I presumed the people lived by fishing. I walked down toward the bay, entering the village.
Major shift: I was in a structure by the sea, or some other sandy place. There were girders holding up the roof, but only sand on the floor. There was a large machine here, and a woman in the machine who was some kind of instructor. She explained what we were doing, but this has all been erased (See Notes).
There was a small machine related to the big one, having a vertical square opening that accepted slides about 2 x 2 inches. A man explained the function if the machine as he adjusted the slide. A light of some kind impinged on one edge of the slide from below, and another from the side. When the slide was adjusted just right, it suddenly projected a room size three dimensional image. I seem to recall that one could walk into the image and become part of the scene, but again, much of this was erased. As he fiddled the slide into focus, the man talked about the nature of dreams, how they were used and how they were produced.
Shift: I and a companion were in a railroad passenger car moving at moderate speed. It became derailed at a curve along with other cars and I could feel the bouncing along the ties. I do not know if anything serious happened to the car.
Shift: I and my companion were walking along a railroad track at a curve. At this place the roadbed had ben cut into a fairly steep but not particularly high wooded hillside. We noticed scars in the ties and missing and bent over sections in the broad white railing beside the track.
We suddenly realized this damage was not actually there, but existed in the future. I remembered the ride in the train car and yelled, "Remember? - We were here before! - lets get out of here!". We could both hear a train coming, so we took off down the hill as fast as we could, knowing there would be a passenger car rolling down behind us soon. We were safely ahead and knew we would be well beyond where the car would stop. I noticed houses hidden among the trees here in the valley.
End.
Notes: I awoke from this dream in the perfect state for remembering, so I immediately started reviewing the section with the machine and projector, considering it to be by far the most important sequence, but as I reviewed it, pieces were erased as though they were being deliberately taken from me. When I realized this, I became instantly fully awake to preserve as much as I still had. The sequences to both sides were still vivid and complete, but this one sequence now had serious holes.
This experience was quite frightening, and made me feel someone might try to erase my memory more, so I wrote everything down before going to sleep again. It occurred to me, and I made a half hearted attempt, to try to return to the same place in subsequent dreams, but the nervousness I felt about the experience caused me not to make as much effort as I might have.
The village of the brown people reminded me of the village unearthed at Lepinski Vir in Serbia. The setting was similar, on terraces above a bay, or river whirlpool in the case of Lepinski Vir. The houses were of roughly similar shape. The houses in the dream were much larger and of clay, rather than the wood and hides the Lepenski Vir houses are thought to have been made of. The village was also of a much more ordered arrangement, larger, and the curve of the bay was different.
The faces of the people reminded me of the small sculptures found at Lepenski Vir, but while those faces were round, the faces of these people were very long. Some months before this dream I had read a short article in the Serbian (then Yugoslavian) village which included a picture of one of the statues, but I knew nothing otherwise about the site, so couldn't have composed this dream from knowledge.
Other Dreams
In my notes from the original recording of these dream sequences, I have found the following notes on other dreams that popped into my consciousness at that time.
I could see from the retreat of the water that a tidal wave was coming in, so I took off running up nearby hills, crashing through Southern California style dry shrub growth. After the wave had come and receded, I returned to the shore, now just washed up sand. Large sections of steel freighters were floating by out on the water, broken up by the wave, but still afloat.
Strange foreigners came ashore from one of the ships and started to pursue me. I fled through a partially destroyed industrial structure made of steel and wood. This structure was built on several levels up a slope and I entered at the bottom, going up. I had a hand gun (.45?) and shot pursuers who got too close. Unlike other pursuit dreams of the time, this stopped them, but there was always another pursuer gaining. I finally got to a place where I could get to the next higher level by climbing a rope, which I pulled up after me, stopping the pursuit. This level led to the outside, and I left the building considering myself safe. There was a large meadow here bordered with young trees.
A spy dream occurred to me also, supposedly from even farther back, but it was too vague to describe.
As I organize these notes (1-27-1983), another dream has just occurred to me, where I was in a large warehouse with a very high roof. It was nearly vacant but with some barrels and such around on the bare wooden floors. I climbed one of several ropes and managed at one point to get to a high loft. I think I was trying to escape.
There was quite a problem getting down. For a while I was stranded on a rafter, but eventually figured out a way to do some risky but successful rope swinging and beam crawling to where I needed to be. I may have gotten out through a small vent window up near the roof, but I do not remember clearly. This dream I think is several years old at least, but how can one know for sure if it wasn't written down at the time.