09/09/04
The Heritage Of The Ruins
I was with J., somebody I know from online, and I believe we were being chased. I don't know by who or what but we somehow fled into these underground tunnels; I think they were wide and lined with stone, so they weren't just little earthen tunnels. We ran and ran and ended up in this system of underground ruins built by some ancient civilization. We came out into this round room with a low ceiling, all cobbled from top to bottom with these large rounded-off golden-cream-colored stones. There may have been something in the middle of the room, like an altar or rounded well-like structure or something; I seem to remember you couldn't walk straight from one side of the room to the other without being impeded by something. The room was well lit with warm yellow light, although there were no light sources or windows that I can recall. There were odd symbols here and there, and one of them may have resembled either something like a caduceus (winged serpent staff of Mercury/Hermes), or else a sun symbol of some kind. I was very curious about this place but had no real knowledge of it.
J., I realized, was like an expert on this culture. I know it was a very old culture, one of the first civilizations ever, like Sumer or something. This made sense to me that J. had knowledge of these people because in real life both of us are HP Lovecraft fans, and Lovecraft was a writer who wrote horror stories about these vastly ancient cultures who worshipped strange alien gods and used odd symbols. So when J. started to fill me in on what these ruins meant, I was not too surprised that he should know.
J. also told me that he was a descendant or something of this ancient culture, I think. Then he turned to me and in a puzzled, kind of disbelieving tone asked something like, "Don't you know about your own heritage?" He'd just told me about his own, and seeing as I seemed so clueless, he appeared to know I was ignorant of my own ancestry--and this perplexed him, like he felt everyone should know where and who they came from. I guess I shrugged.
"Kind of," I said. "But my heritage only goes back about two hundred years, and it's British." There was a very long pause while we looked around a bit more, then I started thinking, British? "And German," I said after a long while had passed.
(In the dream I said "British" and "German," as if the fact that my ancestry was so mundane made my past somehow lesser than J.'s, with his exotic background. In real life my ancestry is more German and French-Canadian. I do not know of a British ancestry though I guess it's possible. In the dream I think I equated British with Irish, or else felt I had some Irish in me too, while in real life I do not believe this is so. As for the two hundred years, in the dream I meant that was how far back my ancestry had been recorded, thus that was as far back as I knew of my heritage. In real life my mother is keeping a family tree database; I think it might go back at least two hundred years, though I assume it would be more than that, BUT I'm not sure how much of it is catalogued or known about. So that "two hundred years" estimate seems pretty arbitrary, considering I really have no clue HOW far back my recorded ancestry goes. Another weird thing is that in the dream, I also equated two hundred years ago with the 1700s, which is inaccurate.)
Well, the dream gets hazy here, but I guess we left. And we, or I, somehow ended up aboveground and outside again. It was night, but I ended up on a football field and there were bright lights shining down on it and I think there were other people around. Somehow T./S., a woman I know online and write to occasionally (she and J. and I all met on the same now-defunct website a few years ago), was involved here; maybe she was accompanying me for a short time, and I think she may have been vaguely and disinterestedly warning me about J. or about the ancient culture or something else, but I wasn't really listening and she didn't seem very concerned anyway. I was walking with the nearby bleachers or whatever on my left, toward the end of the football field, and I was walking right along the edge of it so as not to get in the way of anyone. (I don't remember crowds or any sort of game going on.) As I walked, it's like some barren tree branches appeared somehow, as if growing out of the bleachers or out of thin air, and I had to try to avoid them. I almost tripped over one but managed to catch myself, but then I stumbled over another one and nearly fell, and had to hop a little bit to regain my balance. The branches threatened to tangle with my legs and halt my progress and I had quite a time trying to navigate my way through/over them. I never felt frustrated or irritated, just kind of neutral, like, "I have to watch out for these branches." It seemed like I had somewhere important to get to but I don't know where or why. I think maybe I was trying to catch up with J., who had moved on ahead of me.
Real-life associations: I was reading J.'s online journal, mostly political entries, the day before I had this dream, so maybe that's why he showed up; his latest entry had been an angry one which upset me somewhat (it wasn't about me) with its tone, but I didn't say anything about it. I really do equate the weird ruins/symbols with our shared interest in Lovecraft, as I seem to remember thinking of that even in the dream. I can't remember a specific symbol but for some reason I focus on either a caduceus or a sun symbol, so I'm not sure; there was more than one but there was one that caught my attention primarily. My association of the culture with Sumer probably came from the book The Necronomicon by "Simon," which is very loosely based on a book in Lovecraft's writings, and alleged that the alien cultures he wrote of were based in Sumer or something like that. (Personally I found this book dull and did not like how the author made Lovecraft's bizarre alien gods so mundane as to claim they were Sumerian.) My comment about my heritage extending back only 200 years--somehow to the 1700s, though it should have been the 1800s--for some reason makes me think of my mother's researches on our family history, and how sometime in the past we supposedly had a couple of native ancestors (a Menominee, I think, and maybe an Iroquois, and possibly an Ottawa or Ojibwa); in real life recently I've been rewriting text for a website of mine dealing with Mackinac Island and one photograph is of a house called McGulpin House, which is one of the oldest buildings on the island and was once owned by a great-great-great-etc. grandfather (?) of mine. I do not know why the association of McGulpin House and the native ancestors springs to mind from this dream, but for some reason it does. In the dream saying "British" began to strike me as incorrect, so I added "German" after a lot of thought; I never thought to add "French-Canadian" as well. The branches which appeared make me think vaguely of my fondness for trees, although these branches were barren and a nuisance; I have no clue why T./S. or the football field appeared. Though on thinking about it I did just remember that our city high school/sporting mascot is the Chief, so who knows?
It's A Long Way To The Mailbox...
I don't know if these are in fact the same dream--they may have been two different ones--but I'll treat them as the same.
Very vague. I was outside and it was daytime, possibly sunny, maybe not; it didn't seem to be summer but it wasn't cold either. I seemed to be alone. I went outside barefoot and our short driveway was VERY sandy, I mean that loose clean sand you'll find on the beach, instead of gravel. I noticed a pit in the driveway and knew I had dug it for some reason that made sense in the dream. *shrug* It was right in front of Dad's SUV. I felt he would grow irritated on finding the hole I'd dug, even if it had been for a valid reason, and decided to fill it in. I was very neutral throughout all this, like, "Oh. There's that hole; I should fill it in." I went over and started scraping a lot of the loose sand into the hole using my foot. I was barefoot and seemed to be dressed in my house clothes, although for some reason I equated the loose sand with snow. It shifted and spilled into the hole very easily and I kept scooping more and more piles of it from all around the hole, trying to fill it up. I filled most of it but it was so deep there was still an indentation there. The hole seemed kind of squared off or rectangular. And I think that after some scraping there may have been more than one hole, but I wasn't too concerned. In fact I seemed to be very intrigued by shifting the sand around, though I can't quite describe it, nor why. I seem to remember murmuring something to myself about this but I don't recall what. :/ I just kept scooping and scooping and scooping. I think I remarked that the hole I'd dug was so deep it wouldn't fill in completely, but I wasn't upset. Oh well.
If this was the same dream, I then went to check the mail. Now I seemed to be irritated and frustrated about something, so maybe that's why it might have been a different dream. I crossed the road and opened the mailbox and saw that a big brown paper-wrapped package had been jammed in there so tightly that I had to reach my hand through behind it to push it out from the back. At first I was irritated even more by this, assuming it was a featured selection sent to me by my book club, which I'd have to send back. (In real life they recently discovered the error of their ways and have stopped automatically sending featured selections because they were losing money doing that. About time they realized that!) But I think as I took it out I noticed it was, yes, to me, but not from the book club. I think it was from P., somebody I write to once in a while online and in snail mail. My spirits lifted, if in fact I saw it was from him. Either that or I was just amazed I'd gotten ANYTHING other than a stupid unwanted featured selection. I never get interesting mail!
I looked in the mailbox and there was a TON of other things in there--envelopes, big envelopes, maybe another, small package. I reached in and scooped it all out, shut the mailbox, and headed back toward the house. I was still irritated but I felt a growing sense of anticipation on seeing what all this mail was, how much of it was for me, and if it was any good or not. At least I'd finally GOTTEN something!
...And it was JUST as I was taking this mail to the house that I woke up. I never got to open a single thing. >_<
Real-life associations: Just the day before this I was wondering, for the hundredth time, why I have not heard from P. in so long. :( I snail-mailed him months ago and long ago he said he was working on a reply to that but I have yet to get one. I received a few e-mailed comments on stories of mine from him since then, but he has not been around to comment on my latest two chapters, and they have been up for weeks. He seems to disappear a lot lately, and while he is still friendly to me, doesn't seem very interested in conversing anymore aside from commenting on my stories. And now he hasn't done that, either. I've been having a very bad time communicating with anyone lately due to people never replying, and as P. has been the ONLY person to have maintained communication with me for so long, this really upsets me. I don't know whether I should snail-mail him again, or e-mail him, or keep waiting, or what. I feel very conflicted and wish he would contact me again, and wish I knew how to let him know I wish we could communicate like we used to.
The package jammed in the mailbox so tightly that I had to push it from behind is just like a couple of times in real life when the mailman jammed a too-big package into the mailbox rather than simply leave it on the porch, and I found that irritating. I don't remember my original reason for being irritated in the dream but that added to it. I felt that jamming the package in so hard might damage our already disintegrating mailbox. Also lately in real life I've been wishing I could get interesting mail, particularly from P., though I never do, so that's why all these things in my dream excited me so much.
I have no clue what the sand thing was about. In real life I used to randomly dig holes for the fun of it and Dad would get angry, but I never did that in the short driveway, and that was years ago. Plus our land is by no means sandy.
2004 Dreams
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