Dream 44: Einstein and I

Thoroughly enjoyable night of dreaming. Started off in a hotel, a regular theme for me, most of it is lost now, but usual things of rooms being changed, sharing rooms, finding towels and so forth. Then I took part in one of the activities, we were walking on this giant rocky outcrop or tor. It didn't involve climbing as in ropes, harnesses etc, but it was extremely tricky and potentially very dangerous. We were very high up and the views were spectacular, there was a crisp breeze but the sun was shining in a brilliant blue sky and only the odd cloud. I was in my element. Our tour leader was Einstein. He was pretty much as you'd expect from the photos, although his hair wasn't quite as mad or as thick on this occasion and he was a short, slender, agile, wise, oldish man. He was telling us all sorts of things about the rock and the route, and was extremely patient and kind. He gave off the feeling that he found everyone to be intelligent given half the chance and that he wasn't especially more intelligent than anyone else. Yet his aura was immense. You knew you were in the presence of someone great but you also felt like you were his special friend and at peace. We were going along a particularly tricky section with these built in staircases and steps as well as the natural and sometime treacherous rock. There were shear drops of hundreds of feet every now and then. Einstein was there to show us the way, but we also had to figure it out for ourselves like a puzzle. There was a woman in front of me who was trying to get one bit right. Einstein had been chatting to her more intimately and I wanted her to get on with it so it would be my turn. He hopped down some man-made steps on to a ledge, asking the woman if this was the way to go. She hesitated as there was another lot of steps with a rail going another way. She started to follow but he trotted quickly back to her, saying she shouldn't follow him on that bit. He was trained and skilled, but that was actually the wrong way and she would have fallen, he didn't say to her death, but she probably would have. We continued on. I looked across the valley to another rocky ridge. About halfway down under an overhang was a steep path cut along the scree. I could see figures running up it. Looked like a team of extreme sports people doing some training and they were trying to compete with each other up the slope. I looked around at the rest of the view and drank it all in. We came to a break in the rock and looked out at a different view. The woman was talking about her ancestors and Einstein nodded as he listened. Then she said well of course you know V's family history goes way back to.. she was going to say William the Conqueror, but Einstein cut in with yes the something of Cornwall. Is wasn't Duke or Earl or a title I'd heard of but as soon as he said it I recognised it. I wondered how he knew so precisely our ancestral line, most people just new generalities, but he had pinpointed an obscure predecessor and far removed from the Northern England regions which were more well documented. I was impressed and flattered. He just smiled slightly impishly. We were impatient to move on, but Einstein suddenly trotted off down a grassy slope with some boulders scattered around. It was steep but looked innocuous enough. He grabbed something from the bottom, like a jacket or fleece then trotted back up like a mountain goat. I wondered why we couldn't just go down that way, but there was an unspoken rule that although it seemed an easy route it had taken years of training and skill for him to be able to trot down and back, and really he'd just taken a short cut because he needed his jacket. We still had hours to go before we would reached the bottom. Then it was my turn to be next to Einstein, he led the way calmly with occasional reference to me to make sure I understood the puzzle and chose the right the pathway. He told me all sorts of things about the surroundings and about life in general. I felt wonderful. I had a glimpse of a future where I could tell people that I actually knew Einstein, and we were friends, because I genuinely felt we were by this time. He talked much more freely to me than to the other woman. We were climbing quite sharply and just as we got to the top of a little plateau I said I just can't believe.... and he jumped in and said you can't believe this isn't real? I said no, everything feels so real, my legs ache from the climb, I can feel the sun and breeze, I can touch the rock and see everything so clearly, plus the conversation was very real. He said yes I know but that is part of everything. He didn't actually say 'relativity' but the word was hanging in the air. I was thinking, but this isn't like my other dreams, it seems to be happening in real time, everything is so clear and sharp, not muddled and jumping from one thing to another. There were no strange close ups of things and weird scenarios (!). Then we came to another descent. There were rocky steps that disappeared to nothing. Einstein trotted down then must have gone down another lot of steps underneath the overhang that we were on. I knew this was the last part of the journey and I didn't want it to end and I was trying not to think about it being a dream. I pulled off to one side and P was there. A few people came up behind us talking and one man turned to speak as he was going down the steps. He put his foot into mid air, then realised and quickly adjusted. The steps were steep and very deep, sort of squarish boulders with huge gaps between seemingly suspended in mid air. If you just kept going you'd walk off into nothing. So I figured you had to spin around at some point and find the other steps underneath where we were standing. This was the last test and it looked like the others might not make it. I was nearly ready to leave when I had a really sharp pain on my right big toe. That was very real too! I yelped and P tried to help. When I looked down my foot was bare and was in a puddle from an indent in the rock. There was a large bug thing on my toe. It was a cross between a crab, a cicada and a huge flying beetle. It was very colourful and spread it's wings to the side. I got a close up of it and thought, here we go back to dreamscape and I felt slightly disappointed to have left the 'reality' of the previous part of the dream. The bug let go and flew off, but there was another one which latched on to my toe, again with the same painful consequence. They seemed to be hatching from the pool. That's all I can remember from that section. A couple of snippets from later dreams include my bed being in street, parked like a car. Some bloke came up, a cross between a policeman, spy and an IT advisor. He stood at the head of the bed and said I don't expect you have broadband. I awoke very hazily and looked up over my pillow and said in a very slurry, sleepy voice, I do have broadband but I can't speak. Meaning that I was still half asleep. Another snippet was my brother and I were sitting in a lounge room. We were watching a larger than life couch with three men on it. We were sitting at odd angles to the couch and each other. The people on the couch should have felt very uncomfortable with us so close and under such scrutiny. But they were actually from a sitcom. They were normally on telly, but we'd somehow got them in this room, live, but not so we could interact with them. I exchanged glances with my brother. I think I quite liked the sitcom, although it was silly, but he hadn't seen it on the basis that it was too stupid. One man on the couch had just had a baby with his sitcom partner. The baby was on the couch with them and he had his two best mates there. He said I know guys, (looks all around) we'll share the load! Huge laughter and high jinks as this was a running joke for them although this time he was referring to the baby. I smiled, I didn't think my brother would get it but he seemed to be amused too. We continued watching them as they did more humour seated on the couch.

Dream 31: Weird Operations

I was in a hospital and was being shown revolutionary techniques which reduced bruising and swelling and vastly aided recovery after operations. A woman came out, she said she’d had a lump on her spine. She had a normal head but then she was just a spinal column. The vertebrae only, covered in skin as normal but there was no other body there at all (no organs either) and the spine just went down to her pelvic bones. She did have arms and on the top around the biceps and triceps were a series of tubes. They were made from her own skin and they wound out and back into her arm in a tangled confusion like very large fat tubular spaghetti. The tubes were about two or three centimetres in diameter and there was series of switches and taps which regulated them. It seemed to filter the blood and other body fluid so eliminating the swelling and bruising. It was fascinating, very graphic and real, but when I woke up I also realised it was a bit weird.....

Dream 15: Time Traveller

I was sitting in a shed with an older man (I was also a man). We had both seen the film 'Back to the Future' and knew this was the machine they had used but it had been re-vamped since the last time and the people who used it were long since gone. We knew the film, but also knew it had been used for real, but we weren't sure what it entailed. We discussed our plan and I predicted what the future spot would look like, I said something like 'Rain forest, concrete, forest, ice and...' not sure what my final category was.We started the machine and I said I wasn't sure if the shed was going to have to go at 80mph (or whatever it was in the film) and then have to be fired by a huge surge of electricity from lightening. The shed didn't seem to be kitted out for this so we thought it wouldn't work. But the modifications proved good and we suddenly started to shake and travel rapidly through time. The first thing we saw through the window was rain forest! And I said 'I told you there'd be rain forest.' We sat there watching the window intently. The rain forest gave way to a plantation of banana style plants but they were deformed and wizened. This gave way to a more temperate forest, less moisture and exotic plants but this enormous tree trunk filled the window and there were these large brown tubular growths, they were soft like felt and hung down from the tree and grew very dense as if the tree had dreadlocks. The scene was extremely vivid, like a super fast time delay film when watched back. The browns and greens of the forest were so verdant and beautiful. There was an enormous hill of soft reddy-brown soil which seemed to constantly build it self and be sliding down its own side. I wasn't sure how we got to be at the bottom of such a seemingly huge valley, but we could only see the parts framed by the window so it was hard to tell the bigger picture.I don't know how far we set the time machine into the future but it seemed to be several hundred or even thousand years. We stopped and next thing I knew I was standing in a forest clearing. Our shed was in amoungst some trees with it's side down flat on the ground. There was a larger old shed next to it, still in tact and I thought to myself 'oh there are still some buildings left.' I then looked around thinking we could be the only humans around, but before I could get my bearings I saw some tall medieval looking figures clad in white-ish thick weaved course robes and with long grey beards. There were some smaller figures with them as well. They were on a small ridge just above the clearing and as soon as they saw us they raised their arms aggressively, some may even have had weapons. The leader marched quickly along the ridge towards us. I shouted 'It's OK we come in peace...' I was going to say more and do submissive body language, but the leader had reached the edge of the ridge pathway at a point where it joined another sloped path down to the clearing. He interrupted me shouting 'I hope you brought the stone!'I realised we were expected and my stomach sank as I thought what stone? But then I vaguely felt something in my left trouser pocket and a picture of a large gleaming green emerald came into mind. Just as the leader stepped onto the second path he disappeared as if the ground had swallowed him up. The other figures like him kept disappearing too. We were left looking a these little dark blue figures not much bigger than knee high. They were odd looking things as if they'd been melted down from something larger. They had elongated rounded heads as if pointed English Bobby's helmets had been pressed onto them then grown there over generations. They didn't wear clothes but their bodies seemed to be made up from shrunken plasticated material like a uniform of some kind with belts, badges and pockets which were flat now and just part of the design (I'm struggling to describe them as you can tell). Very odd little creatures some of which had blazing bright red eyes and others had glowing dark green bits. Some were carrying skateboards made from the local wood. A few jumped on them and came down towards us, we swatted a few away and I contemplated grabbing a skate board myself and using it to escape. But we were on a leaf covered forest floor and nearly at the bottom of the slope. The little Bobby's were shouting things at us about the stone. We wanted to know where the men in white had gone to.Then a few normal sized people appeared. One was a pretty young teenage girl in a rustic red dress. Someone told her to sing her song. She sang something like 'When you are young in a time like now, two men will come to see. One will like you' (at this point she looked coquettishly around at me and I realised I did like her very much) ' and they will see that the stone belongs to you'. She was singing and making her way further into the forest as we followed. Up ahead there was a large water hole which looked wonderfully idyllic. I was entranced with the girl as she sang, and a rustic voice came from behind me 'ah you sang that beautifully my dear'. Just as I was starting to enjoy the fantastical forest and the story unfolding... inevitably I woke up.

Dream 12: Home Freezing and Strangling

I was at my childhood home in Harrogate, most aspects of the house were quite accurate considering it was a dream version of the house. There was a huge space project being conducted near where we lived. At one point I think I went into the building where some of the program was being carried out. It was an enormous warehouse/hanger type affair with James Bond style gizmo's tootling about the place and lifts up to various levels which housed numerous secret activities.Then I was back at home and two men were in the lounge room. They were secret police attached to the space program and they were keeping an eye on us. I went into the hall and as I turned around I felt this blast of cold air. P was coming downstairs and was almost at the bottom, his Mum (she didn't look anything like his real Mum) was just going from the dining room into the lounge room. As I looked around we were all frozen completely stiff then I lost consciousness. We were frozen for several years. Occasionally we were aware, I could see P and his mum stuck in their positions. My vision was as if I was inside a thin block of ice. Another time I was aware of some minute movement. P's mum seemed to be moving very slightly, a few inches maybe per month or even per year. Eventually she disappeared.Finally we were unfrozen. It was decades later. We had all aged, but at only a fraction of the rate we would have done normally. Unfortunately P's mum had died. Which is why she had disappeared. But someone was explaining that she'd fought against the freeze. She knew she was going to die and she somehow managed to move herself towards the dog in the lounge room. When she died her spirit went into the dog. I didn't know where the dog had gone, but I tried to comfort P by telling him what happened.I went out to find some food. There was a market outside with loads of food stalls. Everyone was milling about and feeling hungry, we'd all been frozen for years. I met my brother (not the same as my real one), he had lost a lot of his hair, but his face had not aged at all. He was loading up the boot of the car with food. I went to get some chicken for P. There was a fried chicken stall, but next thing I knew I was working there and trying to serve customers. We were running out of stock and I had to explain that we were expecting a delivery, but that we were dependant on the people controlling the space project (and apparently our lives). I was feeling very hungry myself but didn't want to fast food, especially not chicken (I'm a veggie).Then I was on a river in a large Canadian canoe following another canoe. There was a secret policewoman in the canoe in front. She was very suspicious of me and kept looking back at what I was doing. I was trying to escape. Several of us wanted to break into the space program building and sabotage the project, and perhaps free ourselves from their grip. The policewoman jumped out of the canoe and swam towards me. She was going to get into my canoe so she could stop me doing whatever I was planning. As she came along side I grabbed her by the throat. She had quite a thin throat and it became pliable, like plasticine. It was effortless to squeeze it and I also held her underwater. Again this was very easy to do, but she took ages to actually die. She didn't struggle but she looked vaguely surprised. Eventually she expired and I paddled over to team up with the other canoe and form a rebel group.

Dream 3: Castle Theme Park, Tidal Waves, Strange Religion

Woke up around 5.40 this morning after this dream - a long one. As with most of my dreams this one was extremely vivid, colourful and full of drama. It's hard to capture the essence of some parts because there was a complexity to it with subtle layers and feelings that are hard to translate into words and waking experiences. Anyway here goes - there were some bits leading up to this but I can only clearly remember from here:I was in a castle which was like a theme park but more sinister as people were actually trapped in there. It had a medieval feel to it, although there were modern aspects. I seemed to be a teenager. I was going from section to section in the castle. There were rooms where different events took place. They made it very realistic and it was decidedly scary. Some visitors could not work out what to do and ended up being trapped in certain sections. At one point I was caught up in a type of courtroom trial. There were sort of caves or cells in a balcony above the courtroom where all the prisoners were waiting. I was in one of those. There was no front to the cell, no bars or anything. When the prisoners were called forward they went to the front of the balcony or down into the court room. It was very chaotic and there was no law or justice to the proceedings. People in the cells were scrambling with each other to avoid being next in line. The other people awaiting trial were dressed in armour and similar medieval gear. There was a strong sense that we were all doomed. Some officials came to drag out the next victim and I leapt out and down over the balcony. They shouted after me and gave chase. They yelled that I was not allowed to leave and that I must stand trial. As I fled for the door I shouted back that I had a certificate and this seem to confuse them sufficiently for me to make good my escape. I ran into some others who had managed to escape from a different section. We briefly compared notes. They said the hardest section was the dog section, a mental picture of the room appeared and I remembered being in there but working out how to get away. They replied that that part was quite tricky but there was second part to the dog room and another mental picture came to me of the same room but with old fashioned school desks with dogs sitting at them and a dog teacher in mortar board and gown. They told me not to go into that room as it was very difficult to get out and there were people who had been stuck in there for ages, some had gone mad or had given up and were just weeping all the time.By this time I was in an open area making my way towards a gate. I ran across an official dressed in courtier's clothes, I mean as if he were one of the Kings cohorts, a nobleman of some kind. I thrust a bit of paper at him and said authoritatively 'sign this'. He bumbled and blustered a bit but I said it was my certificate and he had to sign it. There was scroll-work on the top of the paper which seemed to match up with what the nobleman expected. He signed it with a feather pen and I snatched it and ran for the exit. Once outside the whole town had a medieval feel and it was dark. I roamed the streets for some time trying to find a safe way home. I had to be careful not to be seen and I didn't know who was trustworthy or not so it was best to avoid everyone. I finally made it back home and got into bed. Shortly afterwards by parents came home, pretty worse for wear, especially my Dad. I pretended to be asleep but they would have woken me anyway. It was in the early hours of the morning and so they said it was officially my birthday. My Dad had made me a card he said. It was folded small in an odd shape with a bit sticking out. I opened it with dread, thinking my Dad was not a practical man and being drunk he'd probably made a complete mess of it. They both looked on smiling and giggling as I opened it up. It unfolded nicely and turned out to be quite large. It was painted a beautiful deep blue with a vibrant yellow duck on it. Like a cartoon duck. It was very well done and I was surprised and touched. They wished me Happy Birthday and went out.Later I sneaked out early to go and visit my friend T (a friend from my real life childhood and teenage years). We were walking along some cliffs heading for the town. The cliffs lead down to a bay which we had to cross. T was telling me something complicated, being clever and knowledgeable about it. I was looking out to sea. The waves were enormous. One crashed into the bay and threw up large spewms of spray. But there was an even larger one building up out to sea. It was growing bigger and bigger the nearer it came to shore. I could tell it was going to flood the whole bay and maybe even the cliff top. I stopped and tried to warn T. But she had gone down onto a lower path which lead to the bay. Then the wave thundered in. It swamped the bay and the end of the cliff along from where I was standing, the spray soaked me, but the strongest force of the wave had crashed into the cliff below. The water rapidly receded and I ran to the left edge of the cliff and screamed T's name. I threw myself flat on the ground and peered over the edge to see if I could see her, calling her name all the while. I spotted her on a concrete ledge near some steps. There was a lifeguard hut further down below, although it must have been completely underwater a few seconds ago. I yelled for someone to call an ambulance and then rooted around in my pocket for my mobile. I start to call. Then there was a close up of one of the lifeguards. He was an older man and he was already with T. He had a walkie-talkie phone devise and I could see and hear it ringing as I called him (although I was still up on the cliff I was also seeing him receiving my call).The next thing there are a few of us on a road with the older lifeguard. He was explaining that T was being taken care of and there was nothing we could do. He suggested going to a late night cafe (it was now the middle of the night again) for something to eat, some suggested chips, I wasn't sure about eating chips so late and also not knowing what had happened to T.Later again I was with my Mother in a flying machine, I suppose it was most like a helicopter but not. I was trying to help her navigate back to the castle. There was a sense that we were going to rescue someone and we had to be careful not to get caught ourselves. We emerged from a tunnel and immediately came up against the side of a huge round tower. I yelled at Mum to go up! Up! We were very close to crashing. She pulled hard and we rose up the side of the enormous tower, all we could see were the large stone bricks which curved in front of us. Then we were above it and looking down at the whole castle. There was an effigy of a man tied to the bottom of the flying machine. It was about three metres tall and made of stuffed white material like a large tailor's dummy with full arms and legs but no feet or hands. It was made to help us fight. But it had slashes down its arms, legs and body and needed repairing before it could protect us. Somehow it swung out away from under the flying machine and out over the furnace part of the castle. A place we all avoided. It was a large rectangular section with no roof and flames, sparks and burning debris leaping out above the high walls. Our fighter effigy caught fire and fell into the large deep moat surrounding the castle. I shouted to Mum that we had to go and rescue it. Then I woke up.It was about 5.40am and I lay there thinking about and trying to recall all the parts of the dream. About 5 mins later I got up and made a few notes. When I went back to sleep I had several other smaller confused dreams. The only bit I can remember now was visiting a souvenir shop for a newly founded religion. There were t-shirts, badges, cards and all sorts of the usual tat sold in such shops. Initially the religion was known by the acronym M.O.O.T.S, but while we were in the shop it changed to T.O.O.T.O.S or something like that and all the merchandise had to change itself to the new name.

Dream 1: Death, Skeletons, the end of the world, Mohicans and more.

This was part of a longer dream. My real life friend SC had died in the dream. I went to the funeral. There was no coffin lid as we gathered at the graveside. People we standing around and grieving. Suddenly S sat up and started groaning. We knew he was dead and it was his body moving about but he looked very funny, his arms and torso jerking about but the expression on his face stayed the same, a haunted very much dead look. People started to giggle and laugh at the spectacle. He was a big joker in real life and everyone agreed it was typical of him to have the last laugh. His body settled back down and he was lowered into the grave.There was then a close up of his face (as in a film) and he started to rapidly decompose. We saw his flesh melting away to reveal the skeleton, it still looked like S. Then we watched his whole body disintegrate. The skin vanishing to reveal all the muscles in perfect definition, these melted away as well until there was just the skeleton left. It was very graphic and realistic, full colour and minute details, fascinating and horrific at the same time.Later on in another bit of the dream I was in a large house it was a guesthouse or small hotel and I was with a group of people. There had been a huge catastrophy and the earth was in turmoil as if it was the end of the world. This was one of the few buildings left standing and there were differenct factions, small groups of people who were trying to survive on whatever bit of ground they could keep and protect. Lots of fighting going on with each faction very strict about who was or was not a member. I went out to help protect the house against another faction but found myself becoming part of a different group. Then they too were being chased and I was separated. I ran past buildings which had become piles of rubble and desecrated landscapes. I ran up to a bridge and into a river. I knew the group giving chase would not follow me because they were afraid of the water. For some reason I was able to move from group to group without restrictions. After a while I came across some ‘Mohecans’. They were a small group walking in the river pushing some canoes with a child and their few posessions in them. The chiefs accepted me into the group and gave me a pear to eat. This was a great honour as there was little food around and fruit was even more precious. I accepted the gift and ate some of the pear. It was delicious and juicy. I gave the rest of the pear to the child in the canoe. It had never had a pear before and was very excited, happy and laughing. The adults approved of my gesture and we travelled together for some time.Later on I was in another house. I was being chased by a hard core violent group. By this time I was very skilled at flight and I came to some stairs. Instead of running up the stairs I was able to jump onto the bannisters and go up through the centre of the stairs jumping and pulling myself up from bannister to bannister. It was very easy, I was fit and effortlessly able to make big leaps and jumps. The people following would not catch me. I reached the top of the stairs and jumped over a railing and up onto a ladder leading to the roof where I could make good my escape to another area. Then I woke up.