I must have been four years old. I was running a high fever and struggling to breath.
I sat up in bed, opened my eyes to the pitch black, only to find that it wasn't black. The walls were glowing a dull, greying rotten corpse flesh colour. They were wriggling. Closing in. The walls became masses of writhing tiny human-like figures. Only they weren't people. They were more like beasts or demons.
I got up off the bottom bunk, stood in the middle of the room, closed my eyes. I couldn't breath. I could still see the small throbbing creatures with my eyes closed. It was as though my eyelids were translucent. This was the greatest fear this dot of a four year old had ever known.
I opened my eyes. The things quickened pace. Enclosing me. I needed to escape. I found my voice.
"They're coming out of the walls!" I screamed.
My older brother, on the top bunk, began to laugh.
"What are you doing?" He asked.
I ran from the room, screeching and shouting until my mother appeared from her room and comforted me in her embrace. The forsaken things ebbed slowly away, slinking back into the glowing walls.
I think this may have been my first asthma attack.
I had amazingly vivid, horrific nightmares throughout my early childhood up until around the age of 9 or 10. They mostly occurred when asleep, but occasionally I'd have that same waking hallucinatory experience. It was at this age that I developed the ability of lucid dreaming.
For those who don't know, lucid dreaming is when you become aware that you are dreaming. I went a step further and began to be able to control the nature of my dreams out of necessity and perhaps instinctual self-preservation.
I realised that these dreams were mine alone and they were coming from me. Therefore, my child self reasoned, I could do whatever I wanted in them. I turned the tables in the nightmares.
Freddy Krueger shit himself when I started chasing him. Chucky's little doll legs couldn't carry him away fast enough when I conjured up a chainsaw to dismember his doll parts.
When the fever hit again, those little bastards coming out of the walls didn't know what hit them. I took a breath on my Ventolin inhalor, made a Tommy gun appear in my hands and sprayed the walls with dream bullets until they oozed with the blood of a thousand minuscule demons.
I'd defeated the nightmares.
Those nightmares gave me a gift from then on.
I was fascinated with the dream-world. I could fly at will, create the most extravagant adventures. I was a kung fu master one moment, a zombie slayer the next. I was a superhero.
I even developed the ability to leave my body and travel elsewhere as a ball of light, but that's another story...
Deep Reflections
In this life we move to stay alive.
Evolution and change are necessary to learn
the connections in disorder, to organise our hive.
Expectations of power exist in our lust to earn.
Deep reflections in the lake within a lake;
I’m unchanging in this world of dreams,
this world, contrary to perception when awake,
make no mistake, everything is and isn’t as it seems.
The lake is a portal to the tree of life.
Proceed no further without proper guidance.
Follow your guides to your staircase of life,
paths cross to help or hinder, trust providence.
Each step is a different length and height;
as you struggle, things try to stop you.
You must stop and learn from their might
to move towards the goal you’ve pursued.
The final step leads to a crown-like castle.
Within are your guardian and a spiritual machine.
Choose to pull the lever, exercising your freewill
and dive bravely through destiny into your chosen scene.
The first time I had this dream I was on the bank of a huge lake looking into it's vast depths, fighting the urge to jump in. For months I'd have the same dream, I would just stand there, not jumping in, knowing that I couldn't swim.
Months later I was back in the same dream, only this time I trusted the urge and dived straight in, swam around. I'd wake up in a panic if I went too deep, thinking I would drown. I never did drown, no matter how deep I went.
Every time I'd have the dream I'd go a little deeper, until one night I caught a glimpse of another lake at the bottom of the lake. I plucked up all the courage I could and went all the way to the bottom.
I passed through the new lake into another realm where there was a huge oak tree. On either side of the oak tree stood my two sisters, although I don't think they were my sisters. In the middle of the tree was an opening with another new world inside. You can see the rest of what happened in the poem above.
This dream recurred over a matter of years. It was filled with Jungian archetypal imagery. In the dream, although it was lucid, I could only control myself as I would in everyday life, unlike the other lucid dreams where I had power over everything.
This lead me to reason that there are at least two different types of dream. There is the dream that takes place purely within the subconscious part of the mind - which is the one I'm able to control; and there is the dream which seems to take place somewhere outside my subconscious - where I can control only myself as I would in reality.
This brought me to three possible conclusions about the second type of dream.
1: The dream took place in an alternate universe or reality - that is a real world that exists somewhere on a different wave length to that which is experienced in waking reality.
2: The dream is formed from archetypal imagery more ancient and complicated than I can fathom; Possibly formed from a universal mind made up of all possible thoughts from the beginning to the end of time - something which we can all tap into through our subconscious mind within the dream state.
3: I'm a crazy bastard...
Or perhaps a mixture of all three.
Pykey Recommends:
Write Out Loud,
The above link will open a new window showing you an awesome website for poets. It's an excellent resource showing up to date competitions, publishers asking for submissions, poetry news and views, poetry gigs and open mic events, and you can start your own poetry blog on there if you wish. Highly recommended. Give it a try.
