These first three dreams recorded here were had in winter, as I napped restlessly in front of the fire. They had the most intense and numinous energy I've ever experienced from dreams, and I woke each time as if I'd been shaken awake, sweating and shocked. I had been dealing with severe mental illness for a couple years before this, but nothing prepared me for how much worse it could be. I become increasingly isolated and neglected by family, and I meet Jason. Our complicated relationship soon becomes both the best and worst part of my life. My loneliness deepens, and I withdraw ever more.
The dream is perceived as if I am reading it from a story. A boy washes ashore, dying with an arrow struck through his head. A fisherman approaches and takes the boy in his arms to comfort him, but the boy tells the fisherman that he only feels sorry for him because he(the boy) is from the sea. As he speaks, he slowly becomes the head of a salmon, with the arrow still in his skull. Stones are left in his mouth, and I understand them to be from the fish of the sea. The dream ends with a line spoken from no source: 'HE LOOKS AT THEM, AND THEY LOOK AT HIM.'
Walking across the backyard, I see a gigantic water buffalo emerge from the forest, raging. I am terrified. Another giant bull, maybe 2, appears, greenish, and tries to fight off the buffalo. I scramble not to get crushed by the huge beasts as they fight.
I am walking down our road, and a wild pine martin appears, and walks beside me. He seems like a daemon. We meet a young, sick girl on the road. She tells me that her grandfather and (maybe) mother had died. I understand that this means my own family. My emotions are unclear; I might be upset. I try to comfort her, then turn to go. I understand that these deaths had prompted the pine martin to come to me.
My brother is bothering me, and won't leave me alone. I am overwhelmed. Finally I lock myself in the bathroom. My mouth feels full of bits of food, lodged between my teeth. As I wash my mouth, I feel a tooth come loose. I wretch it out, bloody.
I am in an old castle with other people, like a tour. I am standing before very large bird cages. They tell me that thousands of birds are supposed to return each night for food, but only a small number are doing so now, because someone has been releasing lynxes into the cages and scaring them away.
I am a young boy, playing with two other boys outside. We become tired, and an old man finds us. He takes us home, bathes and feeds us, and we fall asleep in front of the fire. The man reminds me of the fisherman.
I am flying around a marsh as a goose, trying to find a place to nest. It is like a game, and others are playing too.
I am leading 3 girls to safety while flying. We come upon a raging river with steep sides and a slippery bridge across the chasm. As we cross, one girl slips and slides towards the edge. At the last moment I catch her by the hood and swing her back up. I sternly bark out orders to organize them and push us to the end. They are in awe and afraid of my commanding strength, and I myself feel strong. At another point in the dream there are others, and I instruct them to make camp in the cedar forest on the other side. Cedar forests are a common recurring dream location.
I am in a snowy marsh, birding with virgil. I see a polar bear with cubs resting in the weeds nearby, and I become afraid. I shout for virgil to run back to the car, and the bear lunges. Virgil starts at it for a moment, then runs back to me as it bites at our heels.
I am in a deep cedar forest with my brother. We are hiding, trying to get closer to a camp at the top of a cliff. Suddenly we are detected, and scouting men with dogs charge us. We flee into the trees, and are cornered on an overturned trunk across a shallow gorge. I have dreamed of an ancient, rocky cedar forest many times before.
I am on an island, and from all four corners looms a great threat. A massive tornado, a water cyclone, lava creeping across the land, and a fourth I have forgotten. Air, water, earth? I am with my father and brother, running to the water, holding the hand of a girl. I know we are doomed, and say 'I love you,' but she doesn't respond in kind. We all desperately wade into the water as the world crashes around us.
I exit a bus with an old woman who is trying to wheel a heavy load up her driveway. I take it for her, but people still call me selfish from the bus. The driveway is long and ends at an ordinary house, yet I am struck with the urge to compliment it. The closer we get, the more unusual and beautiful it becomes, as well as the land it rests within. The sunset filters through mature trees, and the path becomes more winding. She takes my hand to lead me through the past bit, which is a tangle of cedars and roots. She remarks that it is good that it is so laborious, and says something about death, or preventing death?
On the porch at last, the house is entirely different from the well-manicured house at the start. It is made from weathered wood, on the side of a cliff, and an enormous waterfall to my right sprays ice all over the deck. In the first room it is empty, except for the wild, chaotic splashes of ice, which do not seem cold.
As I proceed further into the house, the next room is filled from every corner and shelf with ice(or glass?) sculptures, mostly religious, like saints and the virgin mary. I am shocked. As I wander through the hall, they give way to an incredibly homey living area, rustic and filled with books. Math, greek history and mythology, philosophy, biographies of scientists. I know a well read and intelligent man lives here. I hear in my mind the insecurities of never being as great as these men. I slowly wander through the warmly lit house, full of wood and old materials, plants, and aquariums-- everything I desire in a house. As I explore, my insecurities lessen.