"Beset the Queen of Angels"

It's time for another forum staple, folks: "I had the weirdest dream last night..."

After falling asleep on the couch, I dreamt I was in the library of a private school, which to some degree resembled my own. Scattered around the room were several portable whiteboards covered with mantras and short hymns. There were three main things happening in this dream: one, I was trying to enrol for said school (or possibly enrol someone else, maybe one of my non-existant children, I can't remember) - I don't remember much about this, but that's why I was in that location. Two, I was trying to help a Middle-Eastern man gain entry for his two sons, by playing on an electric piano the simple song that children trying to enrol had to sing. From looking down at my hands, it seemed like I was playing E-F-#G-A, though there were four "black keys" (forgot the name) between F and B, and therefore five white (inclusive), instead of three black and four white. I then played F-G-#A-B, etc. Three, I was researching some mysterious event far back in the school's past on their computers (I was on Google), though I can't remember what it was. I don't remember what I searched for, but the school internet blocked the phrases "Mary" and "Queen Mary" - somehow, I knew this was to stop people finding out about an enormous secret, dating to at least a century ago, and somehow connected to the monarchy (and not just because of the 'Queen' bit. This 'Mary' I immediately recognised as the Christian Mary). This wasn't the event I was searching for, but the restrictions hindered my research. Also, I immediately thought of the phrase "...beset the queen of angels...", which I don't think exists. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of Christianity will know that the "Queen of Angels" is said Mary. I'm not religious, but for some reason that phrase really spooked me. The dream ended as I saw myself walk past the whiteboards and out of the library, hands in pockets, mumbling a fairly upbeat mantra.

Anyway, tell us about any particularly strange/good/bad dreams you've had, or maybe just last night's...

 

Have you been reading Eco or Borges recently?

 

*blank look*

Marvel at my ignorance. Who are Eco and Borges?

 

Writers. Two of my favorites, actually. Magical realism (like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, not like David Eddings). Both of them have a thing for academic conspiracies. The Name of the Rose (also a film) and Foucault's Pendulum are some famous ones by Eco.

I wish I could remember more of my dreams. I'd gladly share. The only ones I remember primarily involve toothbrushing or bowling or something. I vaguely know I have better ones, but I never remember them.

 

I get the weirdest fucking dreams that scare the shit out of me.

 

Ah, you mean Eco Umberto labyrinthian. Yes, The Name of the Rose is an excellent book, if you manage to make yourself read it. Also, magical realism is pretty distinct from fantasy, which is what David Eddings writes. Magical realism is more like fantastic/improbable events happening in a conventional setting. I personally don't like it, because it's usually sickeningly full of symbolism, but some people do.

As for weird dreams, I can never remember them longer than a couple of hours. Some of them have freaked the shit out of me though. Besides, I've tried describing them to other people and I can't. Words do not exist that would do the images and events I experience in my dreams justice.

 

Yeah, I know the difference between magical realism and fantasy, but I didn't want to make any assumptions about other folks, since most people respond with something like "You mean like Lord of the Rings?" when I talk about magical realism. I'm a big fan of the genre. So much so that I write it as well as read it. I think there should be a line drawn between cheesy pop magical realism (Paolo Coelho, that saccharine tripe Pi, etc.) and the good stuff (Umberto Eco, Thomas Pynchon, Italo Calvino, Jeanette Winterson, Jorge Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marques, etc.)

 

I know exactly what you mean. I seem to have an inherent knowledge of what's happening in my dreams - I don't derive a great deal from what I "see" and "hear". I really enjoy mindbending dreams.

I remember a dream from about five or six years ago (I think I was nine or ten), which happened during a bout of heatstroke. I slept for a good 12 hours straight, during which time I had an 'epic' dream. I then woke up at about 9 AM, got up, said good morning to my family, then decided I wanted to keep the dream going. I went back to bed and slept for another three hours, in which I kept the dream going. Strange.

 

I've done that before, but I never got up.

 

You actually like Borges? I suppose I am just jaded because I had a spanish lit teacher that loved Borges, and decided that we should read WAY too much of him. The only story I could put up with was "El Sur."

and Magical Realism should really be divided up. Marques's Magical Realism is absolutely nothing like Borges's.

I mean, Borges style is a fairly distinctly Latin American thing, where much of the story may or may not be inside that person's head.

Marques's magickal realism is, instead, impossible events occuring in a seamingly natural way in the normal, real world. Toni Morrison writes in the same sort of way.

As to dreams, I never remember any of them.

 

Let's get back on topic here. I'll start.

My Dream.

My mum and I are in a boat, and there are all these freaks in cages. There was this one guy who makes this special milk that makes you all deformed, and he had a bucket. He spilt some on the ground and my mum got a cloth and whiped it up. Some of the milk got on her, and her hand swelled up and became disproprtioned. I started screaming and then I woke up.

I know, I'm a pathetic Momma's boy.

 

Some of my freeky dreams...

This first one is the most vivid dream i have ever had, and is very similar imo to the whole idea of the very begining of the chronicles of narnia books.

I'm walking down the street with my bait kit full of paint and warhammer models, (i'm 10 years old and this is when i was living in england) and i come to a sort of drainage canal, the cement kind you always hear about kids getting swept away in, except this one has gravel on the bottom. For some reason i drop my bait kit and climb down to go get it, the sky is completely blue and there isnt a cloud in the sky so i dont have to worry about being swept away by an flash floods or whatnot. But just as a reach my paint and stuff I start to sink into the gravel up to my thighs, and i cant get myself out, and then ihear water rushing towards me. I turn around and i'm engulfed in perfectly clear, blue water, and i sink even further into the gravel, until i finaly sink through to a tunnel/pipe underneath all the gravel, and i'm swept along a tube of white bathroom tiles, all impeccable, and clean, ever once in a while there is a sploth of blue ones. I see blackness at the end of the tunnel, and i shoot out into space. Bellow me are stars, above me is a sun, and i fall for an unimaginable amount of time, until i reach the source of gravity's pull, and there is a huge mattress waiting for me, after i crash through a enourmous glass dome. I pull myself onto my feet and there is this gandalf type dude waiting for me, he tells me all this "you're our only hope" stuff always refferring to the himself in the plural, even though it is painfully obvious that he is the only one there. (oh and about where i landed... think discworld but only the size of a few city blocks, and very modern day london-esque, with a huge glass sphere encircling it, and scraggly edges with foliage, and crubling sidewalks hanging over the edes)

Anyway, he takes me to this "place of testing", which is a cloud like formation where i'm given some cursory riddles and i'm morally tested (this is all assumed, i know it was supposed to happen, but there were no specifics) i have a near miss and almost plumet off the edge, and i finish it all up by recovering a set of cherub wings, a roman style half sword (its broken in half, (think pirates of dark water's main character's weapon)) and a goofy viking helmet.

During all this i noticed the city was completely abandoned and no one was anywhere except for the wizardy dude. Windows are broken, food is rotten, and there was a dead skeletonized dog lying in the street somewhere. The wizard tells me it is my set task to defeat the enemy. At this point i see a huge flaming something ouit in space headed for the planetoid. I use ny wings to fly up, and as it approaches it ecomes apparent that it is a gigantic humanoid, (basically it was the marvel comics villain "Cyber" for those of you who remember him, hes the guy with the adamantium skin not skeleton or claws like wolverine... but i digress, he was only missing everything below his waste, which extended out in a genie like tail of fire) i raised my sword to do battle and realised the futility of it when i finally discovered how huge a person this was (its hard to obtain perspective in space) basically he was bigger than the planet and he smacked me into the sun with one blow.

I woke up.

Pretty pointless eh?

I had another dream where I'm in a shopping center where everythings on sale, and there are no doors, or exits or bathrooms, and the whole place is arranged in a square about the size of an average department store, except its full of bannana republic/gap/express/starbucks/barnes and noble/discovery zone-like shops (your average american mall stores). And no one notices that there is no way out but me, and I run around trying to tell everyone that we're trapped, that we're doomed to eternal exploitation, and corporate vicimization, and no matter where we walk, or what we do we'll just be expected to spend more money on whatever is on sale, but everyone is too caught up in their hip mock turtle neck sweaters and mocha lattes to notice the 70 foot walls rising above the bi-level quadrangle of store fronts. Basically i walk around telling people we're all trapped, for about 5 hours of dream until i finally wake up.

In another dream i had me and my best friend and my girlfriend at the time were dangling from a wall in hell, and satan appears to us and tells us that two of us can go free but whoever falls off the cliff first must suffer the eternal anguish that the 7th level of christianity's hell has to offer. My friend starts to argue with satan and my gf starts to cry, and i just say goodbye to my friends and jump off.

Ive also had another variation where me and two of my other friends all just jump off at the same time.

All that said, has anyone ever dreamt while they were sleepwalking? I've never actually walked around, but I used to get really stressed out in middle school and i'd sit straight up in ed at night with this horrible feeling had something to do, that there was some urgent task awaiting completeion that would decide the outcome of the rest of my life, and i'd just sit there not knowing what it was. I'd be half awake/half asleep and completely delirious with stress. Now those were fucking nightmares...

 

I try to savour those kind of 'epic' dreams you were talking about Sleek - although they're rare...

The next dream that came to mind for me was a normal, light, slightly strange dream - me and three friends (one of whom was SeaDog) were Allied spies/special ops units on a mission to capture a high-ranking German (for some reason, he was an art teacher - the reasonably snooty kind). The location was a hedge maze with a few clearings - for anyone that has played The World is Not Enough, it was very similar to the Labyrinth level, though with narrow lanes (fitting two abreast).

My friends and I were in a straight of the maze, tucked in, two-by-two, to two (blah!) opposite, very shallow alcoves (there's a better word, but I can't think of it). We were disguised as Germans (continuing the theme, we were art students), and lay (stood) in wait as the German walked past. I lashed out with a kick to his shin, but somehow missed - he didn't notice, so I returned to my old position, standing to attention.

The German wasn't suspicious, but he did ask us what was happening. One of my friends, Jan, to the surprise of myself and my other two friends, started speaking fluent German. Disaster struck when he started slipping into occasional French and English, and the German caught on. We chased him, and as we turned a corner into a clearing with a few pine tables and easels, I tackled him to the ground and started binding him with what looked like piano wire. I looked up and saw two students from my school, and called for help. One heeded the call, and I proceeded to tie up the German while he helped. Or so I thought. Next thing I remember, I'd accidentally tied him up, and the German was nowhere to be seen. So ends this tale .

 

Here we go:

Me and my class are out scubadiving when suddenly we see a christmas three under water. And we swim upp to it and dance around it holding hands, and we are under water. And when we have done it for a while suddenly santa claus comes swimming by in full scubadiving equipment and starts giving us small presents under water and choclate and we eat it and have merry and dance with santa around the three that is under water.

Then we resurfaced and washed upp and this happend what maybe one or two hours ago. And it was not a dream cause we actually did this just right now. Santa was one of our instructors and i shall see weather i can give you a link to some pictures soon.

 

Oh, i just remembered a very strange one I had when I lived in Louisianna. I woke up one day to find a full blown pirate ship sitting in the pool in our backyard. Onboard was everyone from my class (this was freshman year) and they this sort of jolly old sort of pirate party/disco thing going on, which was very strange. Anyway, I looked around at everyone and realized there was only one person missing, this girl Linday, and I ask everyone "where's lindsay?" they reply in unison (very freeky) "Arg thats right! where be lindsay! MAN OVERBOARD!!! FORM A SEARCH PARTY!" the search party turned out to be everyone forming a conga line and dancing some more. Then lindsay came out of an outhouse, and i said, "oh dont worry, she was just going to the restroom" and somehow this made me their hero and they all shouted hurrah and threw me overboard. I didnt actually wake up, this all lead into the dream about being trapped in the land of perpetual sweater sales.

I didnt remember this yesterday, but luckily i'm in the habit of transcribing my more creative dreams for posterity, I found my journal this morning, so there you go.

 

Eh, in my last dream I was a vampire and I killed most of my teachers
I must say I ejoyed it

 

One time I had this dream that I was having a record setting bull ride at a rodeo.

Then I woke up behind a dumpster next to a crackhead and my butt was bleeding. :cry:

 

There's another epic dream I remember, split into six largely unrelated segments, but I won't go into it now.

But anyway, does anyone know of any LEGAL, I repeat LEGAL substance, preferably just normal, everyday food, that induces dreams?

 

Marijuana's legal isn't it?
*Smokes a joint*
Seriously I can't think of any legal substance that induces dreams.