Dream 594

'Going to America!'

Dream date: 24 March 2016

This is Day 25 of my Dream Incubation Experiment. You can read the details and methodology of my latest Dream Incubation Experiment by clicking HERE. 

This entire dream was one big confusion as I am not sure if it was a single dream which took place at one time, or several dreams. My only clue that it was a single dream comes from the fact that there was a female dream character who appeared in multiple dream scenes.

Scene 1: An Interior Scene (Location Unknown) - Time Unknown

I was in an interior location and I was discussing a dream I had experienced earlier - it wasn't a 'real' dream, it was a dream within a dream, but I did not experience 'dreaming' it - just the fact it had previously happened. The dream within a dream was just an image of stars in a night sky. Present while I was discussing 'the dream' was a mature female dream character (unknown in real-life) and my Mum and Nan. 

Scene 2: A School - Time Unknown

Without leaving to to go anywhere, I found that I was in a school area - there was a desk where students (some of whom were people I had attended high school with) were handing in just-completed assignments. The teacher was the mature female dream character from the previous scene. I had just handed in my Psychology and Art coursework. I then saw JF - a girl I went to high school with, who was extremely unacademic and badly behaved at school, and just wanted to start having babies as soon as she became a teenager (which is what she and her sisters in fact did). She was handing in English and History coursework. I then realised that I had not been able to study English and History, 2 subjects I was very good at. I asked the teacher why I had not taken these classes, as I wanted these qualifications. The teacher told me that there had been no space in the class for these subjects and I could just enrol for them now, for the new school term. My Mum came over and asked if it would be possible for me to repeat a year of my education so that I could take English and History, and then graduate the following year. The teacher said that this would be possible. I was annoyed that I could not take these subjects the first time around, as I was the 'star pupil' and would have got the highest grades in the class.

Scene 3: An Interior Scene (Location Unknown) - Time Unknown

I was in an interior scene which I am unable to describe, as I recall very little about it. My Mum and Nan were there, as was the female dream character. I was packing a suitcase, but all my clothes were those I would have worn as a teenager - extremely baggy, grungy clothes influenced by the fact I used to skateboard and go to a lot of hardcore/screamo shows. The clothes were mainly long baggy shorts. I wondered if they still fit me. I picked up a pair of mustard-coloured denim shorts and tried to put them on. At first it seemed that they were too small in size, but then I thought: 'I always used to buy clothes several sizes too big' and noticed that indeed, the shorts did fit me and were very loose and baggy on the waist and hips. I wondered if I could still dress this way, but realised I could not. As a teenager, I used to wear my trousers/shorts very low, so they fell below, or halfway down my butt - as a fully grown woman, with a large butt (which also gets a lot of male attention, due to the popularisation of 'big booty'), I could not wear such fashion items and they did not flatter me. I did not change out of the shorts (but I also do not remember if I continued wearing them) and continued to pack the suitcase. 

There was some reference to cannabis - I may have found some in my suitcase, or been given some - I cannot recall. I do remember the cannabis scene definitely happened at the same time I was packing my suitcase. 

The female dream character then showed me a copy of Heat magazine (a very popular UK celebrity-based magazine - the most popular of its kind). On the 'Spotted' section, I saw a picture of my ex-boyfriend, SL, out at night drinking. In the photo, his he wa standing in the street and had his head tilted back. I wondered if SL was now a celebrity. It wasn't clear. I was then shown some more pictures in the same magazine, by the mature dream character. She flicked through the pages of the magazine while I was still holding it, and then pointed to the picture she wanted me to look at. This picture was also taken at night. It showed a pavement which was made of grey concrete and was sloped like a very steep hill. The photograph was taken from the top of the hill, looking down. It appeared to be a street. At the bottom of the hill were some broken metal railings. Halfway up the hill, a group of people I went to high school with, were posing for the photograph. One of them was CM, a boy who is on my Facebook. I said to the female dream character, showing me the photo: 'I recognise that place' to which she said: 'Of course you do, it's Sheringham' (it wasn't a real-life place in Sheringham). I doubted whether it really was Sheringham.

I decided to send a message on Facebook to RBA. I used my mobile phone to find my Facebook friends on chat. I only ever have my chat showing me as 'online' to 2 friends - DL and RBA (the only 2 people I am happy to get a message from at any time, hence why I appear offline to my 1,000+ other friends on Facebook). Neither of the 2 contacts shown in my chat contacts were DL or RBA, and this confused me. The 2 friends shown were random names. I searched specifically for RBA, found his profile, and messaged him. I am not sure what my message said.

Scene 4: A House (Location Unknown Initially) - Day

I was then in a house with the mature female dream character. The house resembled that of my Mum's friend, CC (a guest house in Sheringham), especially the back garden. The female dream character was renovating/redecorating the house - or at least assessing the house so she could do so, later. There were other dream characters - I think the inhabitants of the house - present. I cannot recall anything about them, but there was conversation between them and the female dream character. When it was time to leave, the female and I went outside, into the garden. The sky was dark and grey - it was day, but looked like a storm was coming. We were going to leave via the back gate, which would take us into the residents' parking lot. I saw that the 3 - 4 concrete steps down from the back entrance to the patio were in a weird formation - they zigzagged and had red arrows painted on them to show where to place your foot. Each stair was narrow (only about the width of an average adult foot) and therefore, these steps seemed dangerous. I was glad I didn't have to navigate them (I was already standing in the back garden, watching the female dream character descend). I wondered where we were, and she said to me (as if reading my mind): 'We're in America'. 

We got into a car and started driving - the female in the driving sear on the right and me in the passenger seat, on the left. We were on a long, winding road. It was still day, but the sky seemed brighter now, and not stormy. There were many dream characters, and it seemed like a tourist area. On either side of the road were pavements (sidewalks) where these dream characters were walking. On one side (my right), were huge billboards, which stretched high into the sky and extended the entire length of the road. The billboards were only coloured red and white and had the same adverts repeated: for fast-food establishments and electrical goods shops. On my left was the sea/beach and other seaside tourist attractions. I wondered if this was really America, as it did not 'look like America' to me. 

It became night suddenly, and we were still driving down this road. The road was filled with a number of dream characters, all standing in the way of the traffic, which was coming from both directions. Directly ahead of us were 3 young males (teenagers), who were playing in the road, carelessly, and did not seem to be moving out of the way of the car. The female dream character pressed a large button on the dashboard of her car (which said 'Brown' and was printed in brown lettering) and told me: 'We just have to run them down' - preceding to drive straight through the boys in the road, killing them. I wondered if we would get into trouble for this hit-and-run, but the female dream character seemed unconcerned and I quickly decided that everything was fine.

Scene 5: Meeting Room at Work, University (Norwich) - Day
I was then in a work meeting for my university job - present were all the colleagues on my team and my boss, DT. DT had a brochure. The brochure had been designed by the residents of B6, a block which my friend DC supervises. The brochure was printed in pink and white and had photographs in it. DT explained that B6 students had come up with ideas of how to improve the environment inside residences, and one of these ideas was that an SR (my colleagues and I are known as SRs) should cook them a group meal every night. DC protested - as SR for this block. It would be a massive commitment. I said: 'I could do it...' and DC started to say something along the lines of: 'But you cook foreign food', so I interrupted and said: 'I cook one-pot dishes which would be ideal'. Our boss, DT said: 'Yes, that would be perfect' and I said: 'I'd make spaghetti bolognese and curry and stew...' (listing the foods I thought would appeal most to British palettes). DT was excited and clapping his hands at the prospect that I would become the 'in-residence cook' for B6.

I cannot recall what else happened in this dream. I woke up.

TIME: 22:00 - 07:40 hours (I woke up from this dream)

LUCIDITY: PRE-LUCID

SPECIAL NOTES: NONE OF NOTE

Dream Information:

• My only non-European holiday was when I went to New York with SL in 2004
• The 'hill' (which appeared in the photograph in Scene 3  was a lot like my experience of the streets of Glasgow, which to me - coming from the flattest county in the UK - were like insurmountable mountains which had to be climbed or descended carefully and seemed to appear every few steps, making walking around very tiring and precarious (to me). I had said to RBA that I didn't know how any Glaswegian could cope dealing with the hills in the city centre, especially women in high heeled shoes)
• House B6 has experienced a number of very serious issues within it this academic year

Dreamsigns:

• Seeing an image of stars in a night sky represented the fact I had had a dream (within my actual dream)
• The photograph of 'Sheringham' did not seem like it was really located there - an awareness I also had in the dream
• We drove into 3 boys playing in the middle of the road, killing them

Recurrent Dream Themes:

• Cannabis
• A brochure

Potential Day/Dream Residue:

• Stars in a night sky are associated in my mind with dreaming, as I use an image of such for the background of my Blog
• The day before this dream I had been telling DL about my former Art teacher and how he had tried to persuade me to study Art further, after high school, and how he wanted to give me the Art prize for my high school achievements, but had been pressured to give it to another student, who was going to continue to study Art in higher education, bearing in mind I had been awarded achievement awards in all of my other main subjects, and the student to win Art was one of the highest achieving students, but had not won any awards herself, which made it more fair for her to win at least one. The Art teacher had told my Mum I was his best student, because I had a conceptual and aesthetic brain. I went on to study English, History, Psychology and Theatre & Film Studies at A-level, hence the subjects referred to in this dream. 
• The day before this dream I overheard a conversation between 2 female students - one was saying: 'This is my second time doing first year [at university]'
• The day before this dream, JP had told me that my friend LD2 had retroactively intercalated on his postgraduate, meaning he would graduate later than initially planned, but be able to remain working on campus
• The day before this dream, DL and I had been discussing the clothing I used to dress in as a teenager. I had also thought that I should go to my Nan's house and clear out all my old clothes from storage that I will no longer wear. I started this process a while ago, but it was too much work. I had also been telling JP, separately, about 2 days before this dream that I would be unable to fit in a lot of clothes that I have in storage, so should just throw them out
• The day before this dream I had watched an episode of Ricky Gervais' Extras - S02E01 -  where the guest celebrity star, Orlando Bloom is looking at his own photograph and says words to the effect of: 'Everyone reads Heat'
• Once, about 6 years ago, SL randomly offered to take me out for a meal. I had not seen him for a number of years prior to this, so it was out of the blue. In short, it was because of a bet which I had made with him when we were university undergraduates (so in about 2000 - 2003). The prize for winning the bet was to be taken out for a meal by the loser. I had bet that a person we both knew would train to be a doctor in the future, and he had bet that this person would not be able to complete medical training. I won the bet - and SL had seen the person post about their graduation, hence him contacting me to fulfil his obligation to buy me the meal. We went to a Japanese restaurant in Camden and while in there, I saw Nikki Grahame, a contestant on Big Brother, Series 7 (2006) - note I had a dream which related to Big Brother, the day before this dream: see Dream 593 - 'You Don't Inject Cannabis'. In the restaurant toilets, Grahame had been talking on her mobile phone and was in a complete state, screaming and crying hysterically, very clearly distressed by something. I had said to SL that we should contact Heat's 'Spotted Section' as this was the first celebrity I had actually recognized while living in London - I subsequently decided not to, given that Grahame had been in such an upset state and had been trying to hide away in the toilets, which didn't really make it fair for me to try and profit off her distress. Note also, that Grahame suffered a childhood in hospital as a result of an extremely serious case of anorexia nervosa - one of the worst witnessed by her doctors - which had been publicized
• On the day before this dream, DL and I had talked about my ex-boyfriend (SL) in the context of a wider conversation - I mentioned how he loved eating a diverse range of foods and would also drink heavily (and always had). I think the conversation was about metabolism and health and how some people can eat/drink what they want and stay relatively healthy, whereas others - like DL's friend, also referred to in the conversation, have to make better lifestyle and diet choices because of the negative impact on their health. In the course of this same conversation I referred to Kate Moss and said that although she was skinny, I did not understand why she had been demonized in the media as promoting eating disorders, because she wasn't underweight and is clearly a very naturally slim woman, like my cousin HM (who, as a child, resembled the adult Nikki Grahame - both had long straight blonde hair and doll-like facial features) - I believe this conversation cemented the elements of SL, Heat magazine and drinking alcohol into a dream narrative
• In the same conversation described above, I had mentioned my friend, JL (a former colleague at my university job) - who is African-American and has a similar body shape to SL (this was the context in which we were discussing him)
• The day of this dream DL and I had been playing a 'thought game' where we were pretending to be producers for a new UK-based soap opera which had to be set in a seaside town - we were describing the premise and which actors we would hire to play the main roles
• I dreamed of a brochure which was part of a police crime report in Dream 592 - 'Don't F*ck with the Chuck!'. In my university job, writing reports is one of our main duties. In a conversation with JP, I had mentioned that Security (who also write reports) are often ex-police officers and probably write reports very much like police write witness statements (I read a lot of police witness statements and reports in my work within Criminal Law) 
• DL, RBA, DT and DC all have the same first name!

Waking Thoughts & Emotions:

This dream was not related to my Dream Incubation Experiment - although there was an act of killing 3 males all at the same time, However, I was not responsible for their deaths and it wasn't within the context of a serial killing. This was a very weird dream - I cannot put it into words, but the entire dream had a very strange feel about it, like I was anticipating something happening, or waiting in some respect. Also, the fact that many of the scenes took place at night (or involved photographs depicting night) or in very grey, stormy day time weather, felt quite claustrophobic or depressing in a way which I also cannot describe. I woke up with this dream firmly on my mind and causing me confusion as to why it felt negative and significant at the same time.

* I may have forgotten some aspects of this dream. If I recall anything else later, I will record them below.