Thursday 22 February 2018

Dream 919

'3 Bad Things'
Date: 21 February 2018
Time: 04:30 - 11:00
Type of dream: Normal dream
Dream recall: Normal recall 

This dream was part of my current Dream Incubation Experiment - Anakin Skywalker Dream. Please click HERE for my post on the Dream Incubation Experiment, the Methodology I am using (with instructions for those who also want to attempt to incubate their own dream) and links to my previous Dream Incubation Experiments and previous Star Wars-themed dreams. On that post you will also find an Index for all recorded dreams which take place during this experiment.

Scene 1: My University, Norwich (?) - Day
I was in a room which appeared to be within my university - it was a room with various items of furniture, although I only recall some blue sofas lined against a wall These sofas looked exactly like those in my own home (which is on campus). I was with DL (who also works at my university). There were some other dream characters present, although I cannot recall them.

I was waiting to get an email from my supervisor telling me that my request for a retrospective intercalation for personal reasons had been authorised. I did receive a message on my phone and I walked a short distance away to a brightly lit area on the other side of the room to read the message. I remember that there was some kind of table or shelves in this area and it reminded me of somewhere I know in real life, but I cannot recall exactly where this was. I read the message.

My supervisor's email referred to 3 really bad things I had done while teaching last semester, and for which I was being 'investigated'. My supervisor has no input into my teaching work typically, and in fact we are not really supervised in our role as long as we do the job properly. The email listed the 3 bad things as being: 
  1. Referring to a trans person named Peter as 'Dude' in class (this is a dream character who does not exist in real life and in the dream was a FTM transman)
  2. Possessing a disturbing and scary image of a baby which was 'illegal'
  3. Making a firefighter cringe because of how bad I was at explaining Star Wars in class
I was really worried about these matters, so I decided to call my supervisor IE and defend myself against the allegations. I had an actual visual image of Peter in the classroom (short white man with short brown hair, wearing a green jumper) and the firefighter, sitting in the classroom in his full uniform and pulling a cringing, embarrassed face). I saw these as if they were flashbacks/memories in my mind's eye. I used my mobile phone to call him, while standing beside the blue sofas. IE answered the phone and said a series of weird words, which sounded like: 'Boogle, woogle, oogle oooh'. I said: 'It's me, not your girlfriend' as in the dream I assumed the words he was saying were 'romantic' words intended for a lover. I said to IE that 'Peter' had only complained about me after they failed the class and decided that they wanted to find a reason to find fault with the teaching. I said this proved I was not in the wrong. IE referred to Peter as 'her' or 'she' and I immediately said: 'Peter is a transman, so using feminine pronouns is misgendering him'. I said calling them 'Dude' was not transphobic or misgendering as it is masculine/neutral and used for all genders. In response to the allegation about the image of the baby, I explained that this was in a book called 'Amazing' which was a monograph of the artist Damien Hirst (this book does not exist in real life). I said I could prove that the image was not illegal in any way, although it was 'disturbing'. In response to the firefighter allegation, I just said I had been nervous when teaching that class and I was allowed to be anxious without having it used against me. IE seemed to accept my explanations. 

After the phone call I walked back to DL and told him what had happened. We were going somewhere, although I cannot recall where or why. I managed to find the Damien Hirst book, which had an image of spilled tomato ketchup on the front, and was actually called 'Awesome', not 'Amazing'. I found the image of the baby (which was just a normal image, not at all disturbing or scary) and showed it to DL and a couple of other dream characters, all of whom were standing in front of a large window, proving that the image was not illegal. 

I cannot recall anything else that happened in this dream.

Extra Information: 
No Vitamin B6 taken (forgot)

Recurrent Dream Themes: 

  • Star Wars as a dream theme

Dreamsigns: 

  • The allegations against me
  • The language used by my supervisor

Day Residue: 
  • On the day of this dream I received an email from the PGR office of my university confirming that my intercalation request was being processed
  • On the day of this dream I had commenting on Facebook tag page/group posts - which usually end up in conflict. On one thread I was arguing with a woman who said she was not willing to refer to transpersons as 'they' and will use 'he' and 'she' depending on whether she perceives them as male or female. She referred to herself as a 'grammar Nazi' despite her own comments being incredibly poorly spelled with atrocious, incorrect grammar. I was poking fun at her hypocrisy of saying 'singular they' is incorrect grammar and her being a grammar Nazi means she is unable to respect trans rights, yet was making so many ironic errors. On another thread we were discussing the actions of a page member who was self-congratulating and virtue signalling for not harassing a woman who had told him his unsolicited messages were making her feel uncomfortable. He posted screenshots of him not being abusive when she asked him to stop texting her weird, creepy messages about staring at/being distracted by her in class and indicated that he was a 'nice guy' for not abusing or insulting her for rejecting him. He said that other men should follow his example. Most of the commenters were calling him out for wanting to celebrate normal, basic human decency and setting the benchmark for male behaviour towards women far too low. One woman (Bonnie) was defending him, saying that she gives praise to all men who are 'nice' to women. We were asking her to stop being such a male apologist and rewarding adults for not being abusive (which should be the default, not the goal). She referred to his actions as 'amazing' which I pointed out to her as being ludicrous. Eventually another woman on the thread exposed the man as having sent her unsolicited sexual message on Facebook, which meant all his apologists/allies/supporters soon backtracked and began to see why he was being problematic, including Bonnie. Note that when I was little I used to have a baby doll named 'Bonnie' 
  • On the day of this dream I had been watching 2 Youtube channels - both of which referred to babies. The first was Grav3yardgirl - I was watching Bunny show a haul of antique baby dolls and doll parts, which she refers to as 'creepy'. The other channel was Scaretheater - I watched his video on 'The Grifter' which is a popular Creepypasta which originated on 4Chan. The thumbnail of Scaretheater's Youtube video is that of a baby (a screenshot from the alleged 'Grifter' video, which is so horrifying it supposedly causes viewers to go insane. experience nausea and nightmares or commit suicide. The myth has been thoroughly debunked and the images used in The Grifter have been traced back to a movie, Little Otik (2000). I also watched a Scaretheater video about a strange Facebook profile called 'Ahenobarbus Henocied' which allegedly targeted children and young people, sending them disturbing images, some of which are thought to have been pornographic and illegal. I have included images associated with 'The Grifter' and the Ahenobarbus Henocied profile (the original profile has been removed from Facebook for violation)
  • A week before this dream DL and I had been discussing gendered pronouns in a conversation about Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, who was recently ridiculed for correcting a woman who used the word 'mankind' (he said we should use the term 'peoplekind'). DL and I agreed that this was unnecessarily pedantic as 'mankind' is not a gendered word in itself when used to refer to humans. I did say that I prefer gender-neutral job titles such as 'chairperson', 'police officer' and notably 'firefighter' 
  • On the day of this dream I had been playing Sims 3 and while I was scrolling the map, noticed that the home of an NPC sim was randomly on fire. I wondered if it was possible to summons a firefighter on behalf of an NPC, but then decided to just allow the game to determine the fate of the house/sims
  • When creating the poorly edited image for Dream 917 - 'I'm a Person, and my Name is Anakin' (Dream Incubation Experiment Success) I actually thought the fisherman's yellow waders reminded me of firefighter uniforms
  • Last semester I was teaching a class in which Star Wars and Jedi were the theme of a problem question about religious discrimination
  • Last week a student emailed me to inform me that they had failed their exam and asked for my advice
  • Approximately a week or so prior to this dream DL and I were discussing Damien Hirst. I am a fan of almost all contemporary 'Young British Artists' who emerged during the 1990s (and own very many art books on this era of art), while DL is not a fan of Hirst. He was telling me about Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable (2017), which is a fake documentary (mockumentary) about the (falsified) discovery of precious antiques and artefacts from a shipwreck and the mythology and legends surrounding it. Conceptually, I think this is an excellent piece of art, as did DL. I have included an image from the Hirst documentary below - mainly because I have a 'phobia' (or 'anxiety' may be a better description) of seeing images of humanoid statues underwater, particularly partially submerged ones. I may have mentioned this elsewhere on this Blog. When I was younger I used to lay in the bath and imagine the bath water was an entire ocean (i.e. all the oceans of the planet together) and I was a huge statue or giant. Whenever I moved and splashed water, I'd imagine I was causing floods (well, tsunamis, but I didn't know that word at the time), killing all the people in the world. I would then freak myself out and have to get out of the bath because the idea of being a partially submerged giant statue in the ocean was terrifying, even if I was 'safe'. I particularly hate seeing a partially submerged Statue of Liberty. This anxiety extends to images of swimmers/ships on the surface of the ocean with large submerged objects under the water, showing the scale (see image below). I have gone into detail about these issues as this is one of the weird similarities I share with Bunny Meyer (Grav3yardgirl) - at least she says she has a phobia of seeing man-made objects submerged under water. We have a lot of very specific things in common, which is one of the reasons I feel extremely connected to her as a person and am constantly amazed at how much I can relate or identify with her, her personality and her tastes/favourite things. I think Bunny's antique baby dolls and Damien Hirst's fake antiques became intertwined in this dream

Waking Reactions: 
This dream represents a fairly complex interweaving of various strands of Day Residue into quite a simple and coherent narrative. 

I think this dream reflects my anxiety about my studies, but also generally my career prospects and performance. I am anxious about many things currently, so this is just one aspect of my life causing me stress, but it seems to be surfacing in my dreams. 

You may have read my previous dream (which took place during the currency of this Dream Incubation Experiment), Dream 908 - 'One Big Confusing Day' in which I was with Youtuber Sam Chapman of Pixiwoo and we met my Nan who told me she had been with my Mum who was unwell and had to visit the doctor. In the dream my Nan told me she had been 'keeping me away from my Mum' while my Mum was unwell. I had analysed the Day Residue which may have influenced this dream and assumed that the reference to my Nan keeping me away from my Mum because my Mum was unwell could have been because I had watched a Pixiwoo video in which Sam Chapman described her depression following her stepfather's recent death from cancer. This made sense because Sam featured in my dream, linking the themes explicitly. I had also noticed that I had even less contact with my Mum than usual. This is where everything becomes more odd, and has made me feel very anxious and depressed recently. In fact I have been 'scared' about dreaming. On 16 February 2018 (so 12 days after I had Dream 908, my Mum phoned me at night and told me that my Nan has been diagnosed with breast cancer. My family have been aware of the problem and attending all the hospital appointments for a while, but were keeping this secret from me so that I did not worry. Now she has been diagnosed and the surgery is scheduled, they had to tell me. My Mum said she was driving right past my house (on campus) to take my Nan to the hospital on so many occasions, yet I knew nothing about it. The majority of my family (although not necessarily my cousins, who I believe were told by their respective parents on the same day as I was) knew about this. I am not suggesting Dream 908 was a precognitive dream in the paranormal ESP sense of me predicting the future - I think maybe I subconsciously picked up on cues (lack of contact with my Mum) and just happened to have correctly guessed the reason, if only by complete coincidence. There are a number of other weird things about this dream. In that post I referred to dream deja vu and linked an old post I wrote on that topic (because I thought I was experiencing dream deja vu in relation to a secondhand bookshop location). That post covers both dream deja-vu and precognitive dreams - in fact it is entitled 'Deja vu & dream precognition'. Again, this could just be one of those strange coincidences which it is easy to interpret as meaningful. I would go into more depth about the oddities I have spotted while re-analysing this dream with the hindsight of knowing about my Nan and her illness, but in all honesty, even writing about it in this post is making me feel depressed and anxious. I just wanted to record it here while it could be somehow linked in to the current post. I may write on this topic again when I feel mentally and emotionally stronger. 

I guess this dream had a subtle Star Wars theme, which is positive, although unsurprising given how much Star Wars related material I come into contact with on a daily basis, even without attempting an Anakin Skywalker Dream Incubation Experiment. 

Screenshot from ''The Grifter' video which are attributed to scenes cut from the movie Little Otik (2000)
The profile picture used by the Ahenobarbus Henocied Facebook account - this was used in a Creepypasta entitled 'Gurgles & Bugman', but is thought to originate from a Japanese online imageboard
Scene from Damien Hirst's Treasure from the Wreck of the Unbelievable (2017)

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