chochiyo_sama

Something strange. very strange indeed, is going on in my subconscious. 

I'm dreaming constantly--the minute my eyes close--and I dream such intricate, bizarre, unlikely things.  I can't always remember the dreams once I've awakened, but I TRY.  Sometimes I can't catch more than the flavor of it and the general theme before it is sucked back into my subconscious and the ether again.

I just woke up from another and it was SO bizarre that I pulled up my laptop and am going to write it down.  It is already fading rapidly.

I dreamt I was in a huge building--it seemed like it was an old church, only it was like a high tower.  There were huge, once elegant but now decrepit windows.  They were like a monochromatic stained glass--seemed frosted but not by cold, but design.   They were several stories in size on all four sides of this big tower, which had a creaky wooden staircase right in the middle.  The stairs were wide and the staircase was the kind that had landings and turns--like a box.  I'll have to google a picture.

It was kinda like this--only it kept turning and turning on the way up the tower, like a box--four sides:  stairs, landing, turn right, stairs, landing, turn right; stairs, landing, turn right; and on and on.  And of course the stairs were much older and decrepit looking and were made of wood with a roughly made wooden rail.  More like this:

  Except that they were not against any wall, they were free standing and in the middle of the huge tower.

It was dusty and dirty inside this tower, and there were holes in it in various places.  I don't remember seeing any pigeons, but I definitely had the sense they were there.

The overall mood of the place was spooky and a little sad.  I think it was meant to be an old old abandoned church of some kind.  It had that hushed, waiting, silent feeling--as if there were lots and lots of Things there that were not visible to the eye that were watching.  Watching and waiting.  Waiting for what I am not sure.

Anyway, enough with the scenery.

In my head, I "knew" that a huge conflict was going on between forces of good and forces of evil.  I had the impression (so what's new?) that the forces of good were extremely outnumbered by the forces of evil, and that our cause was basically desperate and without hope, yet we were at this place with hope that we could do something to affect the outcome.  I was with one other person.  He was a man in a long brown hooded robe.  He reminded me of ObiWan Kenobi--but he wasn't.  I don't know WHO he was, but he was someone that I had great respect for and fear of.  He projected an aura of strength, purpose, and "goodness"--though not necessarily kindness.  I did not have any sense that he would hurt me--though I was still afraid of him.  It seemed that he was a teacher or a mentor to my dream self--but not a warm fuzzy type.

I was in my dream-child persona.  To recap for those with whom I have never discussed my dreams--often in my dreams (maybe even USUALLY), I am a child usually around ten years old.  Though sometimes, I can be a little older--say 12. 

It seemed we were there to find someone or something--and destroy it.  Though I myself really had no idea WHAT we were supposed to accomplish there.  The man I was with knew.  But I was enough in awe/fear of him not to ask.

My eye was attracted by some strange apparatus to my right, and I went to investigate it.  He went off to the left, his long brown robes swishing through the dust and leaving marks in it like it had been brushed by wings.

Then the perspective of the dream altered.  I was no longer "there" as a participant.  It was more like I was watching a movie. 

There was some tumble down framing--looked like it had collapsed of old age rather than having been destroyed by something.  Behind it was a table.  Strapped to the table was a woman.  She was a scary looking creature--and I knew instantly that she was the one that was supposed to be destroyed.  She looked evil.  Yet, she also looked sad and as if she had been enduring major shit for an exceedingly long time.

Description first:  she was lying on her stomach.  Her arms and legs were strapped in place with wide leather straps.  She was dressed in black.  Her right leg was cranked up into the air and strapped into something that looked like a traction device--but I didn't have the sense that she was injured.  I had the sense that she had been strapped there in that position to make her suffer and to humiliate her.

She looked old and tired.  Her eyes were dark and hollow looking.  She had dark circles under them.  Her face was gaunt and angular and had an unhealthy  ashy complexion.  Her hair was long and scraggly and shot with much gray.  Her mouth was what drew my attention the most.  It was unusually large.  Her lips were thin and cracked and very dry looking.   Now here's the really creepy part about her.  Her face was different on each side.  On the right side, she looked normal--old and tired, but normal.  On the left side, her face was bizarre.  Her eye seemed off kilter.  The flesh of her face seemed drawn and stretched oddly.  And she had no ear on the left side of her head.  Instead she had a pointed animal-like ear, pointed like a cat's ear.  It was black.

On the floor beneath the table was a wing--it was off white in color.  I just KNEW it was hers and that it had been deliberately broken off of her.

 When she saw the man in the brown robe, she smiled and greeted him by name.  Her voice was tired and pained, but strong.  It was as if she knew her fate, had no control over it, and yet was too damned stubborn and ornery to despair.  She didn't appear or sound afraid or threatening.  She just sounded tired and hopeless.  But still strong.

Of course, I don't remember the name she called the man.

And he responded in kind.  He called her something endearing--like a nickname you'd give a child--but without affection.  He was really a pretty cold fish, i'm thinking, in retrospect.  Of course, I can't remember that either. 

Then I had a flash back--of her being delivered to him as a very small child--maybe six or seven--and of him being mentor to her and teaching her.  It was like all of us experienced this flashback.  And she laughed humorlessly at it, and said dryly that times had changed.  She had Other Teachers now.  And I had the impression of something huge and cruel--the impression was that it was a woman--but also that it was a gigantic crow like bird with huge black wings and cruel talons.  There was an enormous gaping hole in the high part of one of the windows--I had the image of this creature descending into the tower through this hole, talons first, to attack us.

I also had the impression that the imprisoned woman was forced to serve this creature--and part of the servicee was to hunt birds for it to eat.

I had the impression that the imprisoned woman had done ghastly, horrible things in service to the creature, but also that she hated the creature and hated serving it. 

I did not feel she could be trusted, however.

The robed man said little, though I knew that in his head he was deciding whether or not he should just kill her and be done with it.  Ultimately he gave her the choice to die or come with him.  And she laughed, her mouth stretching even thinner.  Suddenly--I was *her* in the dream.  And I felt her bitterness.  Her pain.  Her feeling that she was a misshapen monster.  I felt her fear of the black monster creature that she served, but also her disdain for it.  I felt her uncertainty about whether she could be trusted.

Ultimately, she chose to go with the man.  He undid her restraints and helped her to stand.  She laughed frequently, but it was a bitter humorless laugh.  One of those, "I laugh because if I don't laugh, I would scream--and if I began screaming, I don't know that I would ever stop," laughs.

When she was on her feet, the man produced a long black robe--just like his except it was black not brown.  He appeared to pull it out of thin air.  Then I knew he was some sort of magician....but he was on the side of goodness and order, not evil and chaos.  They started toward the stairs, and at the top of the stairs the man said something about her incompleteness.  Then the wing from beneath the table she had been tied to and another one from over near the apparatus that my dream child self had been examining earlier, appeared as if summoned and attached themselves to her back.  At that moment it was MY back, and I could feel them hit my back and attach to it, locking themselves into place.  My primary thought was, "Too low.  They should be higher."

What was odd at this point of the dream was that I was TWO characters at the same time.  I was the woman who'd been enslaved by the "Dark Side" who had very little confidence in her ability to be "true" to the Pure side, and I was also the dream child, brining up the rear of the procession who was having serious doubts of the wisdom of bringing this hideous creature back with us.  I had some notion of the reaction the others would have when we brought this woman "home" with us--an impression of old men in white robes being extremely pissed at us for doing it.

And that was as far as the dream went.  The cat was raising hell in the window, and woke me up.

It was odd enough and complex enough that I wanted to record it NOW so I wouldn't forget.

How does a person analyze a dream like that???