All work and no play...

Every retelling of an experience is a recreation of that experience – it goes one step further from the experience itself as every re-imagining requires us to recreate in our minds eye that which we are retelling. I do not fancy going into Plato’s theory of forms right here, so don’t push me.

I woke on Saturday morning after seeing an amazing dream. I have recounted it twice, very conscious how each retelling destroys some of the magic and awe in the original dream I experienced, but since I haven’t had one in a while, here is the dream I had on Saturday night, in its third outing, and the first time in English – all original dialogue or rather esologue was in Greek.

I was sleeping in bed – not my bed, but my bed, you know how it is in dreams. I was hot, too hot to sleep, so I woke up and noticed I had two t-shirts on, and took one off. I woke up again, too hot to sleep, and again I had two t-shirts on, so I took one off. In the end, realizing I would not be sleeping any longer, I got up.

K was there and told me to come and see how things were, now the packing cases had been moved away. There, behind where the packing cases had been, a narrow corridor led away, glass blocks making up the wall on the right, and on the left the main door to the apartment, which I realized we weren’t using because it had been hidden away behind the packing cases. The corridor had a large room at the end of it, and when I reached it I was in a huge sitting room with sofas and armchairs on a number of levels, with all mod cons and plenty of space and good lighting. The house was not set up as I would like it, being something a little too much towards a sort of seventies set up, but it had everything I could want or need. From the sitting room, a dining room led off, with dining table and chairs, again, everything anyone could possibly want. Up some stairs, a second sitting room, less formal, with huge TV, stereos, electric guitars with amps, and a playstation with a broken steering wheel accessory.

And I remember at this point thinking to myself, where has all this stuff come from, and sensing the answer that it has always been here: I just couldn’t see it because the packing cases had shut off access to these rooms. So there I was in a house full of everything anyone could want or need, and realizing that I had always had it.

Jack Torrance aside, it was an amazing, awe-inspiring dream. I woke fully aware of the interpretation of the trunk of the dream, if not all the details and said to myself, oi – you better not forget this one if you go back to sleep now!

Three days on, I am still high on the realization that it’s up to me to move the packing crates and reveal what I know to be behind.

What I saw in my sleep last night (9 June 2009)

So there I was in an airport - I know, I tend to spend a lot of time in airports - just watching people around me, when suddenly I notice what looks like a guy in a 'Binson fleece. Almost without thinking, I shout out, "Kit!" in the sort of voice reserved for boatie self-identification over large distances which is superficially disapproving but ultimately appreciative of the thing being spotted.

The fleece wearer turns to look at me and it's JWH! Out of nowhere Big-Geoff also appears in a 'Binson Lent VIII fleece from 1993. JWH is happy to see me and asks to see photos of the little one. I tell him I have none save for those on my mobile. I give him the mobile. He plays with the menu and restores it to factory settings. Ever the joker old JWH! It was always his favourite trick to switch his friends' Nokia phones to Arabic language, this joke went one better.

I woke thinking it had been a jolly long time since I'd heard any news from Big Geoff and I wondered how Caius were doing this season.

What I saw in my sleep last night

Possibly influenced by the fact that I had spent the evening with my cousin who is serving in Rhodes, I saw myself walking around Lindos - although I did not know this until about half way through the dream.

Of course it wasn't the real Lindos. I was on an asphalted path, next to a railing, beyond which rose a limestone hill. On the sides of the hill, walls were visible, in my mind, they were norman / frankish era walls, but they did not fit the description as they were essentially massive marble monolithic constructions covered in ionic flutes and egg-and-dart edging. Walking along I was reminded a little of Jackson's Minas Tirith, except everything had the trappings and finishings of the ionic order.

As I walked down the path with the hill to my right, the hill fell away and the asphalt walkway with the railing were now raised above an open space over to my right where stones had been placed in such a way as to form letters - I could make out no words for a while and then I saw that the heaped stones spelled out the word "Lindenberg", from which I guessed this was Lindos I was looking at, although quite why the Germans would have spelled out the letters in this way, I could not understand.

Turning to my right, I saw a huge classical temple (which had been hidden from view by the hill and "norman" fortifications) with its pediment and pedimental sculpture intact - the order was, again, Ionic.

And there I was, looking at this, and I started framing the scene in my mind's eye and playing a soundtrack over it, thinking how I would work the panning and the reveal from the pedimental statues to the whole temple, thinking about the cuts from scene to scene, etc. And then I started thinking about whether or not Warner Music Group own the rights to the recording of Carl Orf's Catulli Carmina which I intended to use for the video I was planning out.

Then I woke up.

WMG - get out of my frikking head, already.

... and the underwater dream

I never got round to completing the write up of this dream. It involved a big chest of treasure as well, I think.

It was a few nights ago now, but very vivid in the colours and the play of light and shadow. We were about 20m down although everything was bright as if we were no deeper than a few feet and the sand was as reflective as that at the beach on Elaphonnesus. I was there with a bunch of people, including Nikos and Kom, not sure why I was there, but I was enjoying it. At some point my bottle came off my back, but caused no distress to my breathing - I just had to hold the bottle so the tubes wouldn't run away.

There were no fish, only arthropods and that struck me as weird - as did the lack of plant material in the sea.

That'll learn me to write up the dreams closer to when they actually happen.