The dream thread

[alice]

Try and interpret this!

I was ZBBing, and there were two white meringue-like things on the keyboard made of calcium carbonate, like thick halves of birds' eggs. There was a large one (about 2 inches wide) called "zompist" and a much smaller one which was another ZBB member, but I don't remember who. These two were conversing in some way, and every so often one of them would make a snapping sound and part of it would fly off, a bit like a seed-pod exploding. At one point there was a particularly loud snap and a sizeable chunk of "zompist" flew across the room, and that's all I can remember.

[jlyne]

I was in the shower, musing to myself how great it is not to live on the main floor of a building anymore, that I haven't seen a single insect in my apartment. I look up, and there is a big orange crab on top of the shower head, holding a little ceramic crab in its claws. I scream and run out of the shower into the living room, the crab follows. The ceramic crab vanishes, and the real crab starts coming towards me, clacking its claws together. My cat is hissing at it. I throw a towel over it and pick up. It starts pinching me through the towel and somehow wraps itself around my arm. I go out onto the balcony, and start trying to throw it over the side, but it's just attached to my hand. My cat is leaping towards it trying to get it.

Then I woke up. It took a good 20 seconds before I realized it was a dream and not a memory, I was thinking "Man, that was really crazy when that happened. I was out on my balcony naked and everything, everyone must have thought I was nuts." followed by "Wait, what?"

[Astraios]

I was trapped in my room with one of the dream-people I often have nightmares about. It was a sunny day, and my windows were open. The dream-person shapeshifted into a small boy, and, almost without thought, I picked him up, walked over to the window, and dropped him out of it, down three storeys to the pavement below. He didn't realize what was happening until it was too late, so it was incredibly easy.

I was pretty sure that he was dead, and I remember thinking "It looks like he fell down the steps [my window is directly above the raised entrance to the building], no one will know I killed him."

Hopefully he'll stay dead in my subconscious, and I won't have nightmares about him any more.

[Bristel]

I was trapped in my room with one of the dream-people I often have nightmares about. It was a sunny day, and my windows were open. The dream-person shapeshifted into a small boy, and, almost without thought, I picked him up, walked over to the window, and dropped him out of it, down three storeys to the pavement below. He didn't realize what was happening until it was too late, so it was incredibly easy.

I was pretty sure that he was dead, and I remember thinking "It looks like he fell down the steps [my window is directly above the raised entrance to the building], no one will know I killed him."

Hopefully he'll stay dead in my subconscious, and I won't have nightmares about him any more.

If it has never been that easy to get rid of him in the dream... it is quite possible that you've removed him from the things you are worried about subconsciously.

I used to have a dream about a man who walked through a dark or scary door in order to tickle me, which horrified me in my dreams...

But one day, I had dreamt that I escaped the room he was going to come into... instead of being frozen with fear... And after that, I never had that dream again.

[Trailsend]

Try and interpret this!

I was ZBBing, and there were two white meringue-like things on the keyboard made of calcium carbonate, like thick halves of birds' eggs. There was a large one (about 2 inches wide) called "zompist" and a much smaller one which was another ZBB member, but I don't remember who. These two were conversing in some way, and every so often one of them would make a snapping sound and part of it would fly off, a bit like a seed-pod exploding. At one point there was a particularly loud snap and a sizeable chunk of "zompist" flew across the room, and that's all I can remember.

Now we need someone to incorporate a "conversation as (explosively?) hatching eggs" conceptual metaphor into a conlang.

[Shm Jay]

I dreamt about Doonesbury: something like that I was in the university they went to in the 1960s. There was also something like the Chicago El upon which the trains were tilting perilously, and a football field that had been fenced off to build the stadium. There were purple ties and oatmeal cookies. And there was someone who decided that being a hippie was not for him and he went back to his Jewish parents to become some sort of doctor, but not a dentist, to the disappointment of his mother.

[Astraios]

If it has never been that easy to get rid of him in the dream... it is quite possible that you've removed him from the things you are worried about subconsciously.

I used to have a dream about a man who walked through a dark or scary door in order to tickle me, which horrified me in my dreams...

But one day, I had dreamt that I escaped the room he was going to come into... instead of being frozen with fear... And after that, I never had that dream again.

That'd be great. I just hope my dropping a small boy out the window wasn't a premonition...

[LinguistCat]

Last night I dreamed there were zombies, but they were the kind that you could easily keep out of your house by locking doors and windows. What I was worried about was that my outdoor pets would get eaten, or bitten and turned into zombies. So I was got our pets and "pet-proofed" the exits so they couldn't escape and get eaten.

Actually, a lot of my dreams lately have dealt with saving pets from zombies.

[dhok]

I was touring North Korea on a charter bus. The landscape was very pretty, and I had some North Korean chocolate, which was delicious. I also asked for Dear Leader's autograph, which I never got.

I also wandered into a private food shop (?) that you could tell was run by Christians (???) after about 30 seconds in the place. Dream North Korea, it seems, is not very repressive.

[vampireshark]

For some odd reason, I dreamt that I was in a grocery store. Only it wasn't your run-of-the-mill store: it was a mishmash of all the grocery stores from all the countries I had previously visited. There was an entire aisle devoted to foreign Fantas and other such soft drinks, a rather extensive bulk/dry goods section similar to the store I visited in Poland, another large chocolate section, all the meat you could ask for (Pick salami, Schwarzwaldschinken, Bratwurst, Sinaia salami, pršut, etc.) in the cold section, a wide selection of breads and pastries, a condiments section, and a rather expansive alcohol section with Jägermeister, Limoncello, rakija, and other such things. Most of the people shopping there were Brits and Germans, for some odd reason.

I was busy filling up my shopping cart and, before I knew it, it was full. Then I woke up and became more certain that I want to go back to the UK for Spring Break.

[Soap]

A new doctor did a bunch of operations on me that I needed to have done, but it turned out at the end he was technically a dentist, so my health insurance wasnt covering any of it and I owed thousands of dollars. (Sorry, Ive never appreciated dentists very much)

[Torco]

I've been having strange dreams in europe... one of them involved my teeth falling off... another involved me having a panther as a pet. weird

[the duke of nuke]

I had a dream that my college house looked different (two stories instead of 3 1/2) and was somewhere in the North. It and the house next to it were reduced to rubble by a trickster being without damaging any of the other houses - for some reason this was good, except that my piano was probably destroyed.

[Count Iblis]

I've been having strange dreams in europe... one of them involved my teeth falling off... another involved me having a panther as a pet. weird

I used to have teeth falling out dreams all the time. Then one night while having the dream I realized that I was just dreaming. I haven't have the dream since.

[Civil War Bugle]

Why does everyone have dreams about teeth falling out? I hear about that all the time, but have never dreamt it myself.

[Bristel]

Why does everyone have dreams about teeth falling out? I hear about that all the time, but have never dreamt it myself.

It's a common "dream theme", but I don't trust the interpretations given by "dream experts" or "dream psychologists"...

I believe (at least in my case), that the dream is a reminder to take care of your teeth... as simple as that. Although for some, it could be a representation of a fear or something in the subconscious...

[Soap]

Im really a skeptic on the idea that dreams are warnings or prem9onitions.

I was playing a video game with a "friend" whom I didnt like that much, but considered to be a friend because I was one of the few people he wasnt constantly making fun of. (This is a real person, but we've never met face to face. His personality isnt really that bad but the part about making fun of others but not me because "he likes me" is kind of true.) We were on the same side in the game, but Im not sure if we were playing against "the game" or some other humans over the Internet. Things that we did in the game, we'd do in real life shortly thereafter ... this wasnt a new technology or anything, it was just part of the surreality of the dream (kind of like Jumanji, really). The game was basically a fighting game, but expanded to have thousands of fighters and each of them had their own little world that they spent time in when not fighting someone else. Because I fell into a pit in a certain way, I ended up being a guy who lives in New Orleans and "attacks" by blasting very loud stereo sounds at his enemies, causing them to fall away and go deaf without actually hitting them. Essentially the same as the "Raph" character in Street Racer. But, much to my dismay, I could only afford one speaker, and I had to carry it around in my hands, since I couldnt afford a car. Nevertheless, even though it was bigger than me, it wasnt heavy and I could still jump ridiculously high in the air.

The dream went beyond this, but I dont remember any details and I dont htink there was any mortal combat. I believe that there were various "little" enemies to fight in New Orleans, which woudl give me money when I defeated them, and I could use that to buy more speakers and/or a vehicle so I wouldnt have to run and jump everywhere. I remember wondering /why/ I would need those things though since I seemed to be doing pretty well without.

[dunomapuka]

I wandered through a suburban area at dusk. I saw a small boy who was also wandering by himself. He had been separated from his family. I decided to help him find them. But he knew the area well, surprisingly well for his age (about 6), and he led me by the wrist as we walked, cutting across lawns and parking lots. Everything was deserted, maybe post-apocalyptic.

I was a little hungry and I suggested we go to Mcdonald's, but he took me instead to a small convenience store where I got some coffee. The Pakistani shopkeeper was at first confused by my order but we sorted it out.

A family walked into the shop. They were not the boy's family - they were southeast Asian and he was black - but they seemed to be family friends. I was glad he was now in safe hands. And then another family entered the shop, with an old woman on a stretcher. Her face was bruised and bloody. I felt like I was related to her but I could not quite place how.

Elsewhere, at a summer camp, I was surrounded by everyone I knew. We were enacting a bizarre Midsummer's Eve ritual. People were running around in animal masks and some were funneling beers. One guy was naked and painted blue. I realized I had forgotten my costume so I decided to improvise one.

[roninbodhisattva]

I had a dream the other night that I was watching Fringe. But Agent Olivia Dunham had the personality of Liz Lemon from 30 Rock. It was quite entertaining.

[Shm Jay]

I dreamt: 1. One of the Half Price Books in town no longer sold books, but instead sold greeting cards, wrapping paper, candy, hobby supplies, frilly things, and other knickknacks, yet kept them. Later I went to a cake shop that sold fancy and delicious cakes.

2. Someone was selling a prepuce (that was the exact word, not my euphemism) on e-Bay.

[linguoboy]

Crazy dream inspired by watching Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex too close to bedtime. At one point, I was moving into a commune with about ten other German anarchists. (I think we had bought the building rather than simply occupying it--albeit from genuine squatters--so like many of the RAF we were slumming bourgeois rather than socialist proles. I also think the building may have been in a northern suburb of Istanbul, which is a consequence of reading Pamuk's non-fiction book about the city.) At one point, the others were away while we had a couple of guys in to do some work on some of the apartments. (Very Trostkyite of us, I know.) My brother and I were listening to their conversation about our group from the floor below, which is how I got some of this background.

Later, after the others had returned, I was tearing up a small metal fitting with my bare hands and eating it piece by piece to make some point about anarchism that I can't even remember any more. (I had a moment's concern about what a heavy bolt would do to my system as it passed through, but then I recalled that I'd done this before with no ill effects.) I dropped a bolt on the floor and, in the process of looking for it, began to tidy up. For some reason, this enraged one of the other communards until finally he leapt up and beat the shit out of me. Lying on the floor, immobile with pain, I began to curse him and the others, screaming in strained, deliberate German:

"DU BIST EIN AUSSICHTSLOSER[*] BRUTALER SCHEISSKERL! IHR SEID ALLE SCHEISSKERLE, WEIL IHR NUR DA GESTANDEN HABT[**] UND GEGLOTZT ALS ER MICH PRUEGELTE[**]!"

("YOU'RE A HOPELESS[*] AND BRUTAL SHITHEAD! YOU'RE ALL SHITHEADS BECAUSE YOU JUST STOOD THERE AND GAPED WHEN HE BEAT ME!")

[*] This wasn't exactly the word I wanted here, which was gewissenlos "conscienceless".
[**] Normally I would say "gestanden seid" and "geprügelt hat". But I remember thinking that we must be Berliners, and as one myself I wouldn't have these Southernisms in my speech.

[roninbodhisattva]

That description just made my morning.

[Jetboy]

I had a dream involving the origin of words in a descendant language, specifically Koine Greek. Most of them slid down a hill from the summit of Ancient Greek, passing to the right of a tree, but a few were smuggled in from a wooded hill to the right (which I think was a substrate). It was kind of neat.

[Astraios]

I had another rather vague and fuzzy dream, so this won't be as detailed as usual.

I was in Scotland, and apparently I was near where finlay lives, but I didn't see him. There were a lot of turf houses on a hill, and I was driving past them, only I didn't have a car - I was sort of just zooming along the road under my own power. There was a wicked witch zooming along behind me, looking like a cross between Maleficent and Yzma, so I decided to zoom up off the motorway into a field full of sheep. I met a childhood friend hiding in among the sheep, so I told him to get into my "car", and we went further up the hill, scaring the sheep on the way.

When we reached the top, we saw the witch was still following us, so I decided to move down to the next level. I pressed a molehill with my foot, and some of the ground vanished, leaving a misty grey hole. We jumped in, but I forgot to look at the altometer, so I applied the brakes at sixty metres instead of 400 metres, and we both died.

I wasn't too upset by the fact that we'd just died, I said "Ah, well..." and we drove off somewhere else.

And that's all I remember.

[Torco]

Why does everyone have dreams about teeth falling out? I hear about that all the time, but have never dreamt it myself.

It's a common "dream theme", but I don't trust the interpretations given by "dream experts" or "dream psychologists"...

I believe (at least in my case), that the dream is a reminder to take care of your teeth... as simple as that. Although for some, it could be a representation of a fear or something in the subconscious...

teeth are very early in our lives associated with power, violence, and desire. teeth are the first thing you harm people with, and they empower you to eat grownup food. plus, later in life, they are associated with youth, beauty and joy, so loosing ones teeth might well be a metaphor for loss of health, power, or something like that.

I think in my case it was... I was pretty ill those days, and impossibilitated to do anything but lie in bed and pop paracetamol. so yeah.

last night I had the most bizarre dream, involving the deep nature of the multiverse, parallel timelines, pigmies, 80ies movie cliches, colombian drug lords, lovecraftian relics, leather jackets, time travel and old videogames similar to time commando or twinsens oddyssey. All in all I woke up with the feeling of having read the most amazing, bizarre, over-the-top novel of my life... and now, of course, I remember like 10% of it.