The Dream and the Book

[Val]

I don't know if there is anything to this or not. I don't dream all that often but sometimes they have haunting overtones and carry on working themselves out after I've woken up. A few days ago I had a loing dream (I suppose really several dreams flowing into each other) but ended looking for a woman in a camp in the Iraqi war but soon came to be the Second World War. I found myself trapped where several huts came together. Next, we were out under some trees and she seemed much younger physically, though leaning over me I could see breasts under her blue angora sweater. I also knew she wasn't really as she appeared and we were both different types of time traveller, she living through local bodies until her mission was over - this one seemed to be to drop hints about decoding Nazi messages - and I a kind of immortal collecting her type once their mision was done. She knew that successful completion and my arrival meant her death and was afraid in the same way as somebody might rationally know spiders harmless but still find their appearance horrific (I do!). At the same time there was a sadnes in me that she could at that time be my mother but young enough to be almost my grand-daughter. Anyway, she suffered a bomb on our separate ways back and I collected her from hospital as a sort of blue whirlingness glad to leave such a bleak period.

So much for dream. A couple of days later I found an Isaac Asimov I've never seen before called The End of Eternity (1955). I was very surprised to find a novel I hadn't read in his SF. It is all about a time-travel operative falling in love with a young woman and protecting her from ceasing to exist when her reality is adjusted. She is not what she appears but in fact is from an evolved remote future sent to prevent time control from coming about, since it has held human evolution static.

Not the same story but similarities. I suppose the long arm of coincidence has to happen at least once. Still, it feels ... odd.

[Crazyhorse]

That is wierd Val. I have lots of dreams but very rarely do they make much sense. I dont dream anything as profound as that. What I do find odd is that the setting for many of my dreams that involve a house are at the place where I grew up, even though I have hardly been back there for more than a couple of days over the last 35 years. I have lived at my current address for nearly 20 years and hardly ever does a dream involve me at this house.

I cant remember if I have mentioned this on this board before and cant be arsed to search, but my only 'prophetic' dream was when I dreamed I was half woken up by an earthquake. I was on nights so sleeping in the day does produce strange effects, sometimes. I thought no more of it until I watched the tv news which said there had been a small earthquake in the uk. I suddenly remembered my dream and thought it was good but not a dream after all, it really did happen.
I went back to work that evening and people were talking about the earthquake which I found out had happened about 4.30pm that afternoon. This was a big surprise as I had got up at 3pm and so had had the earthquake dream some hours before it had took place, but had never felt anything of the real thing :?

[Val]

I used to take a lot of note of things like this but gradually came to tone it down. There must be a lot that just happen to fit and the ones that don't get forgotten. I can't remember the name but somebody wrote a book in the 1920s that could make sense based on the idea of different levels of time, so once you're asleep you have access to future 'memories' too. He reckoned that you can't predict the future but you can remember your future and then mangle it as much as dreams usually mangle memories, and that's why some predictions came closer to news reports than what turns out to be the real thing. Of course in those days news would be only written so what anybody imagined from reading about it could be even further from any real event than seeing a TV report.

I often dream of home and sometimes as a ruin. That's on my mind for various reasons. And I used to have a type of dream that involved going underground for a long time, like hibernation, and then everything had changed when we came back but the world though we were the ones changed and would kill us. Usually, as long as we didn't say anything we were safe. It was like our language gave us away even though we looked different. I expect it has something to do with moving to different places.

[Crazyhorse]

I have three recurring dreams, although I only have them once or twice a month.

In the first I am climbing stairs in a very tall office building, but the stairs get narrower and narrower and the brick walls give way to glass, so that I can see the ground way down below. This seems to be just a manifestation of my vertigo.

In the second, I am about to take my school or college exams but haven't done any work for the course, or any revision of the subject.

And thirdly, I am at work and trying to keep to the time schedule as best as I can, but the harder I try, the slower I get. So the following shift arrives and I am still trying to finish what I should have hours ago, while they wait.

The interesting thing is that a few other people I have spoken to have had exactly the same dreams as my last two.

[Val]

I've had the occasional school dream recently. I think they are wanting to change my life efforts. Wouldn't we all! I'm thinking of putting the story up that I did about the dream.