Night Three: No dreams
Night Four: I’m with family and my old dog, wandering around the garden where I grew up.
The river is in flood. We walk through some woods where there’s a bees nest in the trunk of a big old tree. Next, we walk out of the woods and it’s just me and my mum, we get in my car and start driving around a rotary, but I can’t turn off, I don’t know where I’m going.
Night Five: There are lots of people around, I’m in my underwear, but no-one seems to notice. I’m trying to find my apartment which is in a mall. I’m going up and down the escalators. There’s also a spiral staircase. When I finally find my front door it’s next to the amusements, I can see fruit machines and flashing lights. I realise that I’ve left my keys in the car, which is back down on the first floor parked among the stores. So I start going up and down the escalators again. Once again I can feel myself getting really frustrated and upset.
Night Six: No dreams.
Laura’s dreams also involve some anxiety. She has the classic “underwear in public” aspect to a part of her dream, too—(see the section on nudity in dreams THE AWARD FOR “MOST POPULAR DREAM” GOES TO…). There’s also a large degree of going back to her past; the old family home, the bicycle that’s too big, and the time she spends in the dream with her mother might suggest that Laura is longing for a return to simpler days with fewer responsibilities.
Here are segments from more of the dreams that were reported back. We defy you to decide whether they were cheese-fuelled or not…here are some of the more coherent extracts.
I can’t get into my house because the porch is covered with rabbits disguised as pineapples. They’re wriggling all over the place and I don’t want to step on them
I am standing inside a hamster wheel, having fun, then I realize it’s not a hamster wheel but a gigantic roll of adhesive tape. Or am I just really tiny?
Aliens are going to invade the planet. They get here by climbing though radios that are set to a certain frequency. I am trying to stop people fiddling with their dials.
I look into my friend’s pram to admire her new-born baby. There’s no baby there, only a plate of dressed crab. But my friend seems pleased enough and I just can’t tell her the truth.
I have a job interview and am hurrying to get ready. The only stuff in my wardrobe is full-sized animal skins, all evidently very recently skinned from the animals they belonged to because blood is dripping everywhere.
ANSWER; The first two dreams are cheese-fuelled. The last two are “normal.”
“I was having a very deep and meaningful conversation with my cat, Mr. Bootsypuss, and then suddenly we were on the bed making out. I knew it was wrong, but it was fabulous sex. When I woke up and went to feed him in the morning, it was really weird. We’ve exchanged some meaningful stares since that night, and I wonder if he had the same dream.”
COFFIN
The coffin is an example of a “container” dream (See Bottle or Box). The container, or in this case, coffin, represents you. The more obvious meaning of the coffin—death—can’t be ignored, though. In this case, the coffin in your dream represents an ending of something, death making way for something new.
COLOR
Some people say that they never dream in color—or at least, if they do, then they don’t notice what those colors are; it’s likely that the colors are simply not significant within the dream. Sometimes, however, the colors in your dream cannot be ignored. Here’s a guide to their (very) basic meanings:
Red = life, energy
Green = growth, harmony
Blue = spirituality, calmness
Pink = sexuality
Brown = earthiness
Yellow = childlike qualities
Black = mystery, decay
White = purity, cleanliness
Purple = magic and mystery
COMPASS
The main task of a compass is to indicate direction. In dreams, your subconscious mind communicates with you. Therefore, it’s logical to suppose that dreaming of a compass means that your subconscious mind is trying to tell you something about the direction your life is taking. Perhaps you need to change it.
CONDOM
Condoms are protection. They protect us from STDs and stop women from getting pregnant. What, in your waking life, requires protection?
Your dream of condoms is a reminder that something needs to be looked after.
CONFETTI
It seems odd when you think about it that we like to have tiny scraps of paper flying through the air when we have something to celebrate. Confetti or tickertape in your dream means that you have something joyful to look forward to in real life.
CORRIDOR
A house or a building in a dream, represents you. A corridor is an area of transition, a path that leads us from one place to another—somewhere we don’t generally linger. Perhaps there’s such a transition taking place in your life at the moment, and you’re in a metaphorical corridor between jobs, relationships, or homes.
CROWD
To find that you’re in a crowd can either be upsetting and confusing or joyous and unifying—depending, of course, on the mood of the crowd. If the dream is a confusing crowd scene, then the feeling of trapped frustration might reflect a certain situation in your waking life. If the crowd is unified and joyful, then you might as well enjoy whatever is going on, knowing that you’re one small but important component in a unified whole.
CUP
Any sort of a vessel, such as a cup, chalice, or goblet, represents the female aspect of your psyche. This applies whether you are male or female. If you are the former, this dream is telling you to follow your intuitions and your “feminine” side.
D
DAISY
Daisies stand for freshness, optimism, springtime, and new growth, as well as the innocence of childhood. Sometimes dreams remind us of what’s missing in our lives, so the appearance of a daisy in your dream could be a gentle hint that perhaps things aren’t that bad after all. New growth will come soon.
DANCING
If you were dancing by yourself, this dream implies that you can express yourself best when you’re left alone. You might be feeling bogged down by the responsibilities of everyday waking life, but dancing alone in your dream shows that you’re young inside, and the world is still your oyster. If you were dancing with a partner, this is an expression of harmony, both in your life and in your choice of sexual partner. Again, you might be fortunate in that this perfectly describes your situation, or it could be something you’re craving.
DAUGHTER
If your daughter is a real person and you dream about her, the context of the dream will tell you if you’re expressing your hopes for her or your anxieties about her. If you have no daughter, the girl in the dream represents a part of yourself. This is the case no matter whether you’re male or female.
DEAD
There’s a distinction between “dead” and “death,” and so you’ll find entries for both in this book. If someone that you know to be dead appears to you in a dream, there’s a strong school of thought