Dream - The figure in the tree

Back in July of 2007, probably around the middle of the month, I had a long dream with a lot of things happening in it. Earlier in the dream, I tried to help my younger brother a couple of times in a minor way, but he coldly rejected it. One time I remember he had been eating a sandwich and had gotten a lot of crumbs on his arm and I tried to brush them off with a paper, but he looked at me coldly and said I was just making it worse. The dream also had a lot of separate incidents with what were apparently pirates and odd raft-like ships made out of big metal tubes and tall masts and triangular supports that were also made out of metal.

At one point I was looking in a big hollow tree that leaned or curved slightly to one side, trying to show someone the light that was visible in the sky past the dark leafless branches of another, thin tree that was inside the hollow trunk of the big tree. The light was strange and pale, roughly circular, with a border around it like twisted or woven purple cloud, with a dark but not black nighttime sky as the background. It shown down inside the hollow tree and made a round bright area on some dark water, a lake or maybe a river, that was perhaps 10 or 15 feet underground. This time, though, I was having trouble finding the light. I just saw a broad washed-out pale area with the skinny branches of the small tree in silhouette.

I was leaning into the hollow trunk and peering upward, looking closer and moving my head back and forth, trying to find the light past the branches when I became aware that a small figure, perhaps three or four feet tall, was sitting in the tree and apparently blocking my view of the light. I moved my head closer at it, feeling somehow that I should be able to somehow see through its eyes and out the back of its head, as though there wasn't anything back there. Its face was round and broad, almost slightly square, and its mouth was stretched in a wide toothy grin. Its eyes were relatively small and very round, and were entirely black with a slight cloudiness, and looked somehow soft like round dark grapes.

As I came close to the head, looking at it and the eyes, I suddenly realized that it wasn't really alive, not as we think of life, that it had an emptiness about it, but that it was somehow nevertheless animated, though by something that wasn't actually living precisely in it but behind and somewhat above it. It gave a short laugh and said that I would never be able to look through its eyes that way.

I was fairly close to it now, and there was suddenly a feeling of great danger and of tremendous power held in check, power that could be released at any time and to any degree necessary, and that it was only letting me do as much as it pleased it to let me do, and that I should not tempt it too much.

I had a brief vision, then, of what could happen. I saw its body silently crackling with white energy going out all around it like electricity, and its arms becoming much longer and reaching out for me, with long hands and long fingers ending in pointed nails. Its face seemed more angular, but still with the wide, toothy grin and small wide open black eyes. Its face got closer to me and also seemed to somehow project inside my head, and I felt tremendous terror wrap around my brain like a fog, not the kind of terror where you run, but the kind of terror that brings you to you knees, hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. I felt my awareness and my brain cringing, shrinking in on itself, feeling like something caught in mid-spasm, shrinking to a point and then starting to fade out, leaving only the face and the eyes and the terror.

And then I was moving my face back, somewhat nervously, and trying to look around the figure to each side, trying to find the light in the sky. I finally reached up and lifted the figure, the little man, down from the tree, but I still couldn't find the light, just a broad diffused light through the dark branches, and light that shown down softly on the dark water below. I finally left the tree and the dream proceeded to other things.


That Sunday, after the dream, I happened to watch the last half of Waterworld on the TV, a movie I had never seen. In it, the main character had a boat made of metal or metal-like pontoons and with tall metal masts and supports. Near the end, he rescued a little girl by blowing up an oil tanker run by pirate-like people. He did this by dropping a lighted flare through a wide metal pipe that led to a lake of dark oil far below. The light fell onto the oil, which then erupted into pale streamers of fire and exploded. Fire boiled through all the openings of the ship, and blew open new openings. People were running everywhere in mindless terror.

The movie had in common with the dream the metal boats, the light on a dark liquid far below, bright streamers that were electricity in the dream and an explosion in the movie, and terror.

Dream - A future or other-time self tries to kill me

Around July 1, 2007, I had a dream in which a future or other-time self came in my bedroom, where I was laying in bed, and pointed his hand at my face, with the fingers formed into a gun shape.

I begged him, "No... please... don't..." He pulled the "trigger" anyway.

Nothing apparently happened when the trigger was pulled, but I felt that somehow something did happen, that the effects were or might be somehow delayed.

I realized sometime later, after awakening, that the figure looked more like my younger brother, as he looked twenty years ago, than me. I'm not sure of the significance of that, as I did not feel in the dream that the person was my brother. Perhaps the person was far enough removed from me genetically to have just a family resemblance, instead of looking specifically like me.

A vision of small Gray head swooping toward me

Around July 3, 2007, I was sitting at the computer and closed my eyes to try and go to sleep for a while, and immediately saw a tiny head in the distance ahead of me and slightly to one side. It seemed to be the head of a Gray-type entity, the ones commonly assumed to be extraterrestrial aliens. It rapidly moved toward me, enlarging as it came, though it always remained small. As it approached it became clearer and its appearance was also shifting, becoming somewhat different. It remained approximately the same color (which I think might have been light blue instead of gray), but the shape was almost the reverse of the standard Gray alien shape. It had a very small, rounded head with bulging cheeks. Its eyes were like shiny plastic, and ran around to the sides of its face. The eyes were straight on top and rounded on the bottom, giving the Gray a slightly angry look. The eyes also had thick, black rims around them, like goggles.

Oddly, although it felt at the beginning to be far away, it also actually seemed to be only four or five feet away for some reason, only actually getting a foot or two closer to me as it swooped toward me. It was almost like it was more a representation of distance than actual distance. Or perhaps the distance was not a physical one.

This was not a dream, at least not in the traditional sense. It was more like a vision. I wasn't sleeping when it happened, and I didn't try to sleep for a while after it happened.

At the time, the face reminded me somewhat of a gerbil or hamster with its cheeks stuffed with food, just because of the bulging cheeks, not for any other reason. After thinking about it some more, it seemed to also resemble a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle a little bit, although it wasn't that exaggerated. However, I soon found something else that was startlingly reminiscent of it.

A day or two before the vision, I had gotten an issue of Discover magazine in the mail, but I hadn't read it yet. About a day after the vision, I started looking through the magazine and found a picture of a swimmer's head sticking partly out of the water. The picture was evidently taken fairly close up at a low angle, and the top of the head, covered with either the top of a wet suit or a tight cap, was a smooth light blue and appeared very small. The front of the face was exaggerated and the bottom part was apparently in the water, with a yellowish snorkel in the mouth making the bottom part of the face seem to bulge enormously. The swimmer also had enormous black-rimmed goggles on that were straight on the top and rounded, in an angular sort of way, on the bottom.

It seems likely that the vision was for some reason connected with that picture, though I don't know why. It may also be that more than one thing was represented by the vision, and the different things were combined into one image, but I don't have any real evidence for that.

The picture in question is on page 18 of the August 2007 issue of Discover magazine.

What if we didn't die tomorrow?

If we were to die tomorrow, and we put all our affairs in order, and did everything that we had to do and said everything that needed to be said, and then tomorrow came and we did not die, then what?

Was the time wasted? Would we have been better off doing something else, perhaps just going through the day as we normally do?

Probably not. They were all things that needed to be done anyway (assuming that you didn't actually give away all your stuff).

Just remember to treat people well, and even if you do not die, opportunities pass and may not come again. Leave good impressions behind you, and try to make the world a better place.

Sliding down the stairs

For several years when I was very young, we lived in a house in a small town in north-central Missouri. We moved there from my grandparents' farm probably sometime when I was three, but I could have been as young as two. I slept upstairs there with the rest of the family in a converted attic. The bathroom and the living room and the kitchen were downstairs, along with another room.

My little brother was young enough that he crawled around when we first moved there. My mother eventually had my father put a barrier across the stairs, so my little brother couldn't get to them. It was basically just a board, tall enough to prevent him from getting over it, and could be moved out of the way as necessary. Still, I moved to try to push him away from the stairs when he was heading for them.

One day I was going downstairs and had gotten past the barrier, and was on the steps but not very far along. I was walking down and talking to my mother, who was on the first floor a few feet from the bottom of the stairs. Suddenly, somehow, I almost entirely missed a step, hitting just the edge of it with the edge of my heel, which then slid off to the step below. I fell forward with my hands stretched out in front of me, and my whole body fell on the stairs. I slid forward with my head up and my arms straight out in front of me with the palms turned up, my wrists and arms and body sliding along the front edges of the steps, all the way to the bottom. I couldn't stop myself, I just kept sliding. My mother was still there near the bottom, watching. I was terribly embarrassed. I felt that I had failed, that I had done a terribly stupid thing, that it was not something someone my age should do.

I wasn't injured, except for a long scratch on my wrist, I think my right one, going back up probably halfway or more to the elbow. It was really a very minor scratch, but it was further evidence of my failure.

When my father came home from work for lunch, I didn't want him to see it. I held my arm behind my back, even while we sat at the table and ate. He kept turning and looking at me and asking about it. My mother finally said something to him about what happened, something brief and about me being embarrassed by it. I continued to hold my arm behind me, though.

When my father came home that night, I was playing on the floor. He bent down some from several feet away, trying to get a look at me. I didn't try to hide it anymore. It seemed silly to do so by that time. My mother said something to my father about it, and my father asked me something about it. I frowned, not really looking at him, and gave a curt answer, acting like it didn't matter. I didn't want to discuss it, and pointedly concentrated on the toys in front of me.

Dream - The hidden town and the TV Superman

On Sunday morning, November 9, 2008, I had a dream about the TV Superman of the 1950s, George Reeves.

In the dream, I was in a broad grassy valley or plains area, perhaps in Nevada, perhaps in a state to the east, maybe even Colorado. It was someplace I had been in other dreams, though I'm not sure I knew it then. At some point I had to go up a mountain. It was something I had been concerned about earlier in the dream, that somebody would have to do it. A steep path led straight up the mountain. The path wasn't rocky, just very uneven, dirt with humped areas, in places covered with long grass partly laying down. In real life it would have been impossible to drive, as it was something like a 60 degree slope in places. In the dream I think I made it at least part way up in the car, though near the end I went on foot, leaning forward and holding on to the mountain with my hands.

At the top there was a gateway or opening into a small city. The city seemed old fashioned, almost medieval. They seemed to have a lot of pageants going on. I had gone up there with someone with me. We were met at the top by some people and shown around. It was a whole different world up there, dim and a little wet and misty, and seemed to be covered by and surrounded by clouds, hiding it. We were eventually taken to a place to eat. At some point George Reeves, the TV Superman, showed up. He had a big smile and seemed very happy. I think he had some part in the plays. I think he may have even been wearing the Superman suit, though I'm not sure about this. It seems I was actually him for a while, though I switched back. It seems also that he was in black and white, though the rest of the dream had some color.

It was time after a while to go back down. George Reeves was also going down on one of his periodic trips. We went toward the exit to the outer world, and I saw that now it had tall thin pillars by it with an iron fence on either side with the top sloping up very high as it approached and joined the pillars. A carriage being drawn by two white horses was going toward it, and I think it was supposed to be George Reeves' and maybe our method of transport. Something changed, though, and the horses weren't used. Either the carriage went on without them or a car was used instead. He went first and I went over almost immediately afterward. The way down was different than it had been. It was paved now, with brick I think, and had different levels, where it would slope steeply but not so steeply as before and then drop sharply for a few feet and then another stretch of steep slope and then another sharp drop, etc. It had low walls on each side, of concrete I think, maybe two or three feet high, and beyond that, a jumble of scattered things on the mountain, various artifacts, little statues and short pillars and maybe small tables and more.

It seemed that his car had quickly gone to the left and over the low wall. I scrambled down to it, calling out to the others back up at the top. I was trying to find him, to see if he was alright. The car seemed gray and very hazy, almost ghost-like. He didn't seem to be there. I worried that he was hurt. I looked back at the path going down the mountain. It had various obstructions in it, small statues and tables, etc., looking something like a pinball machine. I worried that he had fallen and had bounced off of some of them and had gotten hurt. I continued down, trying to find him. I felt that he had gone this way.

After a little while, the path widened and the slope became more gentle, with widely spaced little round tables with central bases, some with white carved human legs or feet sticking out of the sides or at the bottom. It led toward an even wider area that was made of shiny dark brown material, probably tile or brick, and became the floor of a large room, gently sloping. The room was filled with widely spaced little round tables with central pillars and little carved white human legs sticking out at the bottom. They probably had a couple of chairs per table, too, though the other area may also have had that. The tables in this area were much more uniform in appearance, though.

He wasn't here either, but I partly sensed and was partly told by the others that he had gone into the room and then off to the right. The room narrowed in that direction, sloping from the sides in partial steps, like the road had done going down, toward a somewhat complicated wall, like overlapping rectangular painted wood plates with frames around them like 2 x 2 boards, and that he had gotten through it somehow, through some hidden opening or maybe even physically passing through the material at a special place in a special way, and passed through into another dimension, to the world on the other side. It was something he had done before, some kind of periodic business trip.

I thought of maybe trying to follow him, but I wasn't sure how he did it and there also was the matter of the others. Some or most of them were relatives who had also come down but were a ways behind me, back on the sloping road at different places but not too far away. Going back, I came to a place where one of them was, a girl in her early teens, at a place just past the low concrete wall that marked the edge of the road. There were some things in that area, various things clustered fairly close together.

My mother was on the other side of the road and some distance away, I knew, because she had called out to me when I was earlier shouting out asking where everyone was. We talked back and forth a little bit now, loudly calling out our answers. There was also someone else much further up the road, but I'm not sure who right now. There was also a car somewhere. Perhaps the girl was even in the passenger side of it, or was sitting outside but just beside it. A lot happened, especially earlier, that I don't remember.