Rock chopper

30 November

With my friend Alyn, I was exploring a cave in a rocky outcrop at Whatipu, and discovered a homeless guy living in it. He was a little belligerent but as we got talking he revealed that he used to be a helicopter pilot and the rock was also an old derelict UH-1 Iroquois helicopter. Just then Pierce Brosnan came along and said he could get it going again.
He flipped rows of switches, there was a whine of a turbine engine, and the rock/helicopter (it was both things at exactly the same time, and space) got moving, but couldn't quite get airborne because of it's aged disrepair, so we simply skimmed and bounced at speed across the sand dunes.

R2D2 and the subsiding urinal shed

This morning.

As seems to be the case in some of my dreams, I experience the character(s) varying between first-person (being the character) and third-person, watching objectively.

A small boy maybe about 6 or 7 goes into the family urinal - a large barn-like structure with a sunken rectangular pit, the full width of the building, at one end. As the boy wees into the pit he/I idly runs his/my fingers over the old and rusted, but still sturdy, decorative iron railings that line the dusty windows. As one hand idly holds onto a part of railing the boy / I ponder how useful they would be if the ground suddenly subsided. And then it does. Starting from the urinal pit the ground flexes and sinks, and the boy, because of the one hand idly holding on, manages to grab on and climb along the ironwork back to the exit.

he floor returns to normal and some time later he returns with his dad, who was angry (this part is hard to recall exactly) with the flooding (?) and the boy's preposterous story. However he humours the boy and sprays some water from the garden hose into the urinal pit. The same flexing and subsidence occurs, then abates, and the dad is incredulous - but more importantly, in the context of the dream and my POV of being the boy, the seemingly ridiculous story is vindicated.

However when the boy and dad come to leave the barn/urinal, the door is strangely locked. The boy pulls from his pocket a battered old (original 1970s edition) R2D2 action figure and places it on the floor. He whispers to it encouragingly, turns the head a bit to cause a sound ( the original R2D2 figure crudely attempted to mimic the bleeps of the movie robot with some clinking bit of metal that twanged when you turned the head) and it fires a bolt of electricity at the door lock, which crackles, short circuits (even though it is a simple wooden barn door) and releases. The dad, seemingly used to electric-bolt-firing action figures, nods approvingly and rushes off to tell his wife about the subsiding floor.

However, the evil that lives in the urinal shed was annoyed at it's defeat. Suddnely another old star wars action figure (Amanaman, I think), perhaps possessed by the evil or simply a manifestation of it, swoops out of the sky, grabs up the R2D2 and takes it aloft trying to kill it. The boy screams at his dad for help but he is too far to hear, and busy telling his wife of the amazing subsiding floor. The dream ends tragically with the boy screaming tearfully 'somebody help me..' at the top of his lungs as his R2D2 figure is being dismembered...


I can trace the urinal aspect of this dream is a testament to waking up at 5am needing the loo, but being too lazy to get out of bed and falling asleep again.


I can also trace the way the evil action figure was attacking the R2D2 figure to seeing a couple of pigeons briefly sparring mid-air two days ago. But as for the rest...

 

Holiday conspiracy

(dreamt a few weeks ago)


I was on holiday with a group of people in the countryside, and discovered a secluded sort of hippy community living across the river in teepees. Later when going back to visit a second time, I jumped onto a passing barge to grab an easy lift down the river, intending to jump off when the barge slowed down. But it didn't slow down, it sped up like a train and I was trapped on board for hours.

Eventually the boat reached a grotty sort of airport/depot and I noticed a Qantas plane preparing to leave, so I thought I would stow away to (implausibly, of course) get back to where I started. While hiding on the plane I bumped into Adam, the Irish guy I met in Morocco this year, who was also stowing away. I realised the plane was actually going to the UK but just then we were discovered, but the pilot seemed to be expecting me, and said "Mister Groves, we have a seat for you in First Class, welcome aboard". I was initially tempted by such a free flight but realised I didn't want to go back to the UK, and I was suspicious of why 'they' knew I was there and were so keen to get me back. So I gave my passport to Adam and told him to pretend to be me and get a free flight home (or near enough).

A little later I was sneaking around an old rundown railway station, which was being used by authorities as somewhere to house migrant workers from Eastern Europe. However in one room I discovered a group of my friends who were all being returned home by force from their holidays (though the door wasn't locked!), and while talking to them, some sort of guarwas heard to be coming, so I hid in a large wooden chest and listened. He talked about how all the people in the room simply had work that needed doing so they were being repatriated for their own good, because work is important. He sat on the chest at one point and seemed to know I was there, and eventually lifted the lid. I confronted him angrily about the injustice of forcibly returning people to their jobs before they had finished their holidays, said I would blow this wide open to the media, etc. He just kept saying "but you have a National Bank brochure to do..."

The end (beep goes my alarm clock)

Inception

Not a dream but the movie I would recomend (one I have seen twice). In some ways I think it is 'The Matrix' of this decade, though I would rather watch Leonardo DiCaprio on film than Keanu Reeves any day. While it has been criticized - and I can agree somewhat - for drowning an intriguing premise with too many gratuitous gunfights (Inception, not the Matrix) for me the intrigue remains, well, intriguing, as the characters grapple with being in a dream within a dream within a dream...and so on. It leaves you questioning whether 'the real world' in the film is in fact real at all, something which stuck with me as I left the cinema and had me pondering the reality of the world around me for a while.

Victorian bomb disposal cat

May 2010 (very approx) This was very very unusual, not in fact a dream while asleep but a single fully formed image that leapt into my mind while I was lying on the floor (eyes closed, admittedly)waiting for a yoga class to start.
Essentially I saw a bomb-disposal helmet, similar to those worn in The Hurt Locker, except this was how such a helmet could have looked in Victorian times - sturdy brass with ornate metal scrollwork decorations, including a small royal crown integrated into and sticking up from the top of the helmet. And wearing this helmet was a wise tabby cat.

Zombie dream #634

August 2010 (approx) I actually have no idea how many dreams I've had about zombies but this is a recent one I can still recall.
In a future world where a virus has ravaged the earth and filled it with zombies, the remaining humans had a stable and safe community. Safe, because all the zombies had been long ago lured, trapped and locked inside vast glasshouses, something like those in Kew Gardens, London (pictured, personal shot). A joyriding/frivolous flight from the community, in a microlight-like light aircraft where the wing was made from a looped duvet/sleeping bag/puffer jacket, flew over one of the glasshouses, accidentally clipped the side of it and shattered some of the glass panes (then recovered and flew home). The zombies inside, dormant for decades, are roused and suddenly remember that they are hungry. Smashing their way out, they start to chew on anything outside. However the virus had also turned anything organic into a kind of purple fossilized cauliflower-like material, though still holding it's shape. The zombies descend upon human and animal bodies still lying outside since the initial apocalypse, only to find they are chewing on this hard fossilized material (in the dream I briefly was one of the zombies and recall the texture of this material to be like very very stale baguette, roughly). The zombies are very dissatisfied and angered by the lack of food and start an epic trek towards the human enclave, who were grimly contemplating the return to a besieged and emergency situation...