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December 2005
"My father took me and my mum to the north. We went there because of his job, we went with him. Just like that time, a long time ago, I can't even remember, my brothers weren't even born yet, when he took my mother with him to Norway...I think it was Norway. She could see outside through a wall of glass, jagged mountain peaks covered by forests, a blue shadow over the perennial twilight of those clear skies.
I never saw my father in the dream, though. He'd already left us with a girl, or was it a woman? I didn't really think about it in the dream, but I think she was meant to take us to a hotel, we were in her care anyway...she was a kind of guide.
I remember her. Light neutral colours. A long camel coat down to her calves, pointed shoes with heels. She was pretty. I don't remember her face...I rarely see people's faces in dreams...but she was very slim, a bit elf-like, with pale skin and long blond hair, smooth and shiny. Not golden, more toward the silver spectrum, and some streaks were even lighter. I remember a notepad in her hands.
We followed her, the woman, the girl, the being without age. Into the car, she had come to get us at the airport. We got in. She was really nice, we'd already started chatting.
The car was going up one of those concrete multi-storey car parks, round and up, floor after floor. It was quite dark in there, as it normally is inside those places. As we reached the exit on the roof, we emerged on a snow-covered landscape.
I don't remember leaving the car...we were just suddenly walking, still talking and laughing. The landscape was a kind of very wide valley, sloping up very gently, almost artificially, forming like two parallel tree-covered curbs at the sides. In the dream it didn't seem strange. The ground was perfectly smooth and even, covered in a thin untouched layer of snow. The valley seemed to be never-ending, stretching away in front of us.
The surroundings change again. I'm not sure if the dream jumped from one scene to the other, or if the valley narrowed and the sky darkened. We were stil walking as before, but the valley had suddenly reached the mountains and become a winding footpath, while the sky was beginning to get darker."
It all gets confusing at this point, I'd apparently stopped writing things down in an organised thought form...this is what remains of the rest, scattered fragments:
"ageless elf-like creature - mountains closing in - cathedrals of ice growing among timeless forests, and glowing lights from within their spires, flickering and staining the snow-covered roots, twisting along the path - ancient gods frozen in their deaths - in their sleep - limping echoes of a lament and agonising pain, the symbol of deity, the sacred reincarnation, crying before pagan idols of stone - Poseidon frozen in the twilight death - ageless despair - "where is the shepherd?" - signs on the ground, geometric shapes, changing - white charcoal sliding on the ground - (left my life behind) - a voice, a tale of innocence and death "I'm not a murderer" he said - (and shining eyes) - (turn away) - ask death to stroke the fragile, the sweetness of a caress - (I called on death in the end) - pleasure brought death for me, too - "I didn't kill them" - stroking a broken cat - there was so much blood over them, their hands, that when they'd finished stroking the kitten, it seemed all their blood had left their bodies, but the river drowned them and the small dead one - death will break me with a caress"
So...it was a long time ago now, I don't even remember all of it, but I found all of this written on a folded piece of paper in an old diary, and thought I'd share.
This dream has stayed with me for a long time, I always go back to it in my thoughts. I remember it being so incredibly clear and detailed, real-looking, and also very long, full of symbols. When I woke up from it, I remember that I was more shocked by the vividness of it all than by the violence at the end.
Anyway, to make it clearer for you (I can remember a bit more now I've seen my notes), I wasn't with my mother or the elf-being now, I was walking alone. The footpath was in a forest of very old and tangled trees, with light coming out from the cracks, a thousand tiny windows and houses hidden under the roots and in the branches. Fairy houses?
As I walk on, I start seeing stone monuments at the sides of the path, small at first, tombstone-sized, and then actual statues. Pagan gods, like the ancient greek and roman ones. And suddenly in front of me a huge Poseidon. Straight in front. Blocking the path...but actually I think the path ended there in front of him. And this huge statue is covered in vines and ivy and leaves. Very old and hidden.
I don't remember anything about the lament in the notes, but I know that someone or something was deeply distressed because some sheep had been lost. And I start following these marks on the ground...I think there was a dog at this point leading me. I can precisely remember turning towards the right in front of the statue and following these white marks on the ground, into a wood cabin. The wood cabin actually leads underground somehow...which is really not underground but another level of the dream, and this is the part where it says 'left my life behind' in the notes.
I'm in a forest still, but on the shore of a river (stream? it wasn't very big, muddy water). And there are two children. At this point it's not just my memory failing, the dream had started getting confused as well...the children had killed a kitten without meaning to, broke its back while cuddling it. They were crying and hadn't meant to kill it, but they drown anyway. And the last scene is a huge hand coming from behind me, as if to stroke me. I'm the cat.
As I said before, I never had a dream as vivid as this one since. And after this I had a long period of cat-dreams, although I don't think I wrote them down anywhere.
I've had a few insights into its meaning, and have understood a lot since then, but every time I think back to it there's some new detail to notice.
