Saturday 4 April 2009

I, Precarious (2)

The dreams I've been having have gotten weirder and more vivid (vivider? or even vividerer?) over the last few days, it's almost like there's a real clearing out going on up there - or a kind of stocktaking at least.

In one, I was having a cup of tea (told you it was weird), sat at a table with someone I knew, and my brother was hovering around nearby. The atmosphere and the conversation at the table were fine and the whole setting seemed relaxed enough in itself. I remember looking at the table with the various cups and plates on it, it was a table like those used for outside seating at cafes, with a shiny surface which seemed at once plastic and metallic.

We were indeed sat outside, and there was a little bit of a breeze. We seemed quite high up too. The nearby skyscrapers - well it was interesting to be able to look down on to the top of them, though I don't think my brain's dream-engine conjured up any imagery so obvious as a a bunch of execs playing rooftop golf on specially fitted turf or anything like that. No, they were just the tops of skyscrapers.

Hang on - if we could see down onto the tops of skyscrapers, then we were indeed high up - very high up (notice that for a change I haven't used an expletive for an intensifier, I could have easily said "we were very fucking high up" but I didn't). I suddenly became aware that our chairs and table weren't like normal chairs and tables. Their legs were rather long - we were taller than the skyscrapers, but the chairs and table reached right down to ground level.

My movements, which up until this point had been relaxed and, well, normal, were suddenly tense and frozen, I was in a state of rapidly increasing uneasiness - how on earth was I going to get down? Hugely aware of my own precariousness, and utterly vertiginous. And how did we get up here in the first place? I gripped onto the edge of the table for dear life, the same table that up until now I had been casually leaning on and drinking tea from.

Every movement felt like a trial - one wrong move, it seemed...I clung on and contemplated the terrifying prospect of shinning down the chair legs to get to the ground.

At this point, predictably enough, I woke up, and thought thank shitting crikey for that.

Please note the accompanying diagram, which is merely a guide rather than an accurate representation - I didn't draw it when I was asleep either, just in case you were wondering.

14 comments:

Zhoen said...

Beautiful and rather funny. Made me think of the aliens on their elevated chairs in Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimension.

Middle Ditch said...

Dreams can be so weird. Good thing they are just that, dreams.

Beth said...

LOVE the diagram.

and heh to shitting crikey making another appearance!

Bodwyn Wook said...

[It may be that here in south-central Minnesota we dwell in the vicinity of some vortex, which naturally would influence dreams and dreaming, and the tendency here at least to ceep on going after one has awacened -- BW]

In the lino on the floor of the bedroom there is I notice sometimes in the morning at the edge of one of the lovely vintage green tiles a band or streac of kream white, part of the irregular overall pattern of such stippling. And there it is at dawn, unexceptionably the faithful floor beneath my slippered feet. Although oddly enough it does not appear thus marced on the same spot in every morning. It varies. Sometimes that left, westward edge is solidly an emerald green, other mornings not. In those former days kool is spelled in the konventional manner. During latter days a “c” is used in place of the kay. The only additional point I would wish to adduce here is that in those mornings when it is green, it stays green all the day long and until lights out. And licewise all the day following, should we all arise once again to green in the first place. However, in those mornings when we are not green, it remains thus not green in turn until night and sleep. Throughout all such blighted days “c” prevails in a theme of cream white. In this konnektion, it may be added that ones dreams vary with the kolor, and kategorically as to themes. However, I have not written down dreams now for going on eleven years and so it is useless to quiz me. All rekollektion of other worlds is quite gone out of mind kompletely within five minutes of rising. One must suppose that I prefer that since neither “I” nor anyone else bothers any longer with macing notes. In any kase, the Morokkans assure me that the Sufi training is tacing hold.

Bodwyn Wook said...

Some among the dervishes rekommend on wacing to re-visit the dream and, for instance in this kase, simply to stand up and "walc on air" so to speac -- and see what happens. This komes under the head of Dr von Franz's 'Aktive Imagination'.

Annie Wan said...

i'm kind of just awake myself as i read this and wondred how your brother was hovering so high up in the air...

Reading the Signs said...

Trousers, the dream is clearly a sign of your spiritual progress and growth. But just to say that thank shitting crikey kind of sabotages the leaving out of "very fucking". Not that it would have bothered me in the slightest but with you being so near the angels and that -

DJ Kirkby said...

Cool dream (you know I keep track of all mine too) and great diagram, made me laugh. Why is the sky scrapper taller in the diagram? Not that I am pedantic or anything... xo

zola a social thing said...

Well Trousers here is a recent release from the Garfield site :-

" In Garfield's newest game, for Ninetendo DS, the fat cat is suffering from a severe case of over-indulgence. As he sleeps, his dream is so bad that he can't wake up without piecing together his smashed alarm clock to free him from his fretful slumber."

The game is called "Garfield's Nightmare".

trousers said...

As with the previous post, thanks for all your comments here, perhaps I'll get back and reply individually when I'm a little healthier - but for the past few days, healthy is what I've not been :(

trousers said...

Ok I've come back to respond to some of these:

zhoen, I don't know Buckaroo Bonzai... - it sounds intriguing, I may have to google it.

middle ditch, yes indeed - though the feelings which dreams can provoke - such as the vertigo and panic in this case - can seem all too real.

b, it had to be done!

bodwyn, nice to see you wander over from a certain zola's site. My word, I thought my dreams were weird... there definitely does appear to be a strange vortex round your neck of the woods!

mei, I'm not sure actually - I don't know whether my brother was on a chair of his own, or was just floating around, or what was going on. It somehow didn't seem to be central to the dream - like one of those details which you can see from the corner of your eye, but when you look at it directly, it disappears.

signs, I do think it is indicative of movement in that respect, I certainly hope so. So that the act of self-sabotage here is thankfully a minor one :)

deej, the skyscraper is taller than the chairs and tables, because...because I didn't think it through before I drew it out! I have no problem with such pedantry :)

zola, it may well not be insignificant that certain aspects of my life, waking or otherwise, are analogous to those of Garfield.

Montag said...

An excellent dream.
The dream extends into the past, and you have continued this dream right up until now - in a different form: the waking world type form, but it is a continuation. It's sort of up to you when it will stop - if ever.

The question that comes to mind is how did you come to sit in those terribly high chairs in the first place. I would hate to meet the maitre d' of that establishment.

One extra interesting point about the post and the comment by Bodwyn Wook; on Friday, April 17 2009 I was sitting in a theater watching the film "Knowing" and I wrote in my notebook - I always have a notebook - something that popped into my head about a short story I was writing:
"...he wrote 'akrophobiks' ...he still debated whether to use the 'c' or the 'k' in his spelling, since the Congress was still debating whether to outlaw the 'c', and to do so with penalties applied retroactively"

Acrophobia as fear of heights touches your dream, and the "c, k" business touches BW's comment. I had not read your post until this morn, April 20.

trousers said...

Hi montag, and thanks for stopping by. Yes, I think it's a continuation, but I think it's also representative of a stocktaking of sorts.

I'm trying at the moment to tidy up a bit of old mess, so to speak, so there's a lot of quite vivid imagery amongst the unsettled dust. So maybe there's the resonance in your point about when I choose to stop.

I can't answer your question though - because, as far as my recollection is able to inform me, we were just there.

I'm sort of intrigued about this C and K stuff - but I really don't have a context to fit it into so it's difficult to comment. I do like how your point spans the dream and the comment in question though.

Montag said...

Yes. The C and K borders on the incredible....or the goofy.
I don't know which.