Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Leaf Blower Man

Art by Ada Zdanowicz at CollagePodge
       
            In a recent post I discussed how my dreams usually do not seem to take place at an identifiable time of day.  Here is a dream that I had a few days after that post appeared on A Faraway View.

          Keep in mind that I had recently attended BlogWorld at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  I had also recently taken a trip to Tennessee, where the autumn leaves were falling and I had been thinking about using a leaf blower to round up some of the leaves in my mother's yard.  During that trip I had helped my sister move from Phoenix, driving a rental truck with her household goods and staying in motels along the way.

         This is what I recall of a dream on Sunday morning November 6, 2011:

         Many things happen early on in the dream-- some related to BlogWorld and people I know.  At one point I am staying in a motel or apartment complex.  I have a room there, but I go to visit an old friend from Tennessee who also has a room at the same place.  


         Apparently it is getting late and I don't want to return to my room.  My friend invites me to stay in his room.  I accept the offer but then am concerned when I see there is only one bed.  I begin to find a reason to leave.  


         At this point the man in the room is no longer my old friend, but a guy that I met at BlogWorld.  My wife is now with me and there are two rooms with one bed in each.  My wife and I go to bed at which point I start to make amorous advances toward her.  She says that I should have told her earlier that I wanted to engage in this activity.


          I suddenly realize that I've left a briefcase containing a great deal of money in my van that is in the parking lot.  I jump out of bed and go outside to find my van.   


          It is dark outside--a strange gray black charcoal darkness that does not necessarily look like night, but I assume it is since I had previously started to go to bed.  As I reach the sidewalk from a walkway which leads to the door of the room, I see to my right in the dim light a man with a leaf blower.  He is about fifty feet from where I am and operating the leaf blower.


         I go to my left where there are bushes and vegetation along walk.  The walkway looks dark and foreboding.  As I am walking I fall down to my right onto the grass.  As I lay there some unseen thing seems to fall upon me and make me feel trapped so that I cannot extricate myself.  I call out "help help", hoping that someone, perhaps the leaf blower man, will hear me and rescue me.  No one comes to help.  I panic and I begin screaming loudly. 

        My audible screams wake me up.   My wife is startled by my screams and in her concern asks me what is wrong.  I am troubled for a while as I reflect upon this dream.   In my vexed state I cannot sleep anymore. Since it is nearly time to get up anyway, I go into my writing office and record the dream for this blog post.

         I rarely have dreams that upset me to the extent that I wake up screaming or in some state of intense fright.  In most cases I calmly awaken from a dream in a reflective state of mind.   Nearly every time I have awoken feeling as I did with this dream it is due to a feeling of being trapped or confined to a tight space.

         Could the dream be affected by a physical event going on within me?   Is there something that I am extremely worried about that is symbolized by the feeling in these dreams?   Have you had a dream such as this?    Do characters in your dreams sometimes start out as one person and then transform into another?


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12 comments:

  1. I've had dreams where I can't move or even scream...I wake up sweating and go back to sleep and pick up where I left off... Maybe you are feeling trapped or stifled or unable to act in some aspect of your life??

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  2. I have vivid dreams....a side effect of medication. I can dream a real horror , wake up have a drink and re-dream it all over again.
    Perhaps your subconcious is over active about a problem you may have. Hope you have pleasant dreams in the future,
    Yvonne.

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  3. I've always dreamt vividly - sometimes to the point of yelling or jumping out of bed.(One reason I never, ever, watch horror movies. I suspect a lot has to do with how vivid one's imagination is. Sometimes I can immediately identify what it is that's worrying me. Other times, the dreams are so fun and magical that I lie in bed for a while and try to bring them back :-)

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  4. Are you afraid of missing an opportunity to make some cash?
    My wife would've hit the ceiling had I started yelling in my sleep.

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  5. Delores -- Fortunately I don't have dreams of this type often, but it is scary to have one of those can't move, can't vocalize experiences. I am feeling confined in certain aspects of my life at present but I don't know if this is what the dream reflects. I'm wondering if it is a physical issue that I am experiencing at these dream times. Then again the fact that I'm concerned about money in the dream could relate to some of my current financial concerns in my waking life.

    Yvonne -- It would be bad to have a bad dream and then go back to sleep and dream it again. The problem issue is a possibility. Fortunately most of my dreams are just weird, but not particularly frightening.

    Li -- I prefer those fun and magical, or at least interesting dreams that make me ponder.

    Alex -- I definitely have some concerns about money-making opportunities, but I guess I always have. Gotta have money to pay the bills and to have decent stuff! My wife was worried about my waking like I did, but she was calm about it.

    Lee

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  6. That dream would wake me up, too. Sometimes I wonder if our dreams are delayed reactions to things from our past? I no longer teach, but I still have vivid teaching nightmares.
    Keep well.

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  7. Yep, people and places constantly transform in my dreams. I don't think dreams always have to mean anything in particular, though this one might since it was so intense.

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  8. It can be very disconcerting when people transform into someone else in dreams. But life is not so unlike that. People don't shapeshift into someone else but they do sometimes act in very unexpected ways that surprise us and upset what we think of as certainty-- when, really, that is almost impossible to achieve.

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  9. Susan-- Most of my dreams have something to do with past jobs or school. They may be delayed reactions to past invents, or perhaps interpretations or reinterpretations of those events in symbology.

    Lynda -- I believe that all dreams mean something no matter how absurd or meaningless they may seem. I think the mind is somehow making evaluations of things we have experienced or have thought about.

    Suze -- That is a good point. I have even seen people change so drastically in appearance I may not recognize them at first. And then sometimes personalities and attitudes can change making a person seem as though they have become someone else. My second wife did that.

    Lee

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  10. Lee - It is very possible that your physical environment had something to do with your dream - a knotted sheet, the position you were sleeping etc.

    It is obvious that your daily schedule was reflected in some of the events. However, I'm not sure if any of these events were disquieting enough to cause the nightmarish quality.

    I have had dreams where one person morphs into another and it's "the other" that is generally the clue.

    If I do have a dream that is disturbing, it sometimes takes me a day or two in order to dig deep for the cause.

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  11. Greetings, Lee!

    Interesting dream! To tell you the truth I seldom dream- or if I do, I'm seldom aware of it. I have had a few dreams that were puzzling and I've tried to analyze them to determine their meaning- however not to much avail.

    Dreams are mysterious and intriquing to me- I have a sister that is very clarivoyant and she does very well at dream interpretation. It's an interesting study also(Dreams).

    I can imagine that it is a terrifying thing to feel trapped and not be able to get out- that has to be frightening on any level of state of mind, especially when sleeping, since your trying to fight your way out of somewhere that conciously your not aware of at least not upon waking.

    I know that the events that take place in our lives on a daily bases can affect our dream state- its like laying it all down in an uncontrolled environment- since the conciousness is put to sleep.

    Hard to say what was going on in your dream- it does sound like the events that took place during the course of your day were being played out.

    When people share their dreams with me it always reminds me of Daniel in the Bible when he told the King that he couldn't interpret dreams , however he would ask God for the interpretation and convey its meaning.

    I read some where that when you dream you should keep a journal of all your dreams and from time to time go back and read and reflect on them and see what comes together!

    I am very interested in the states ! So ill be stopping by often! Have a great day, Lee!!

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  12. Good to have you here, Betty. This blog in some ways now serves as a dream journal for me. I used to record dreams in a journal on a regular basis, but don't have as much of a commitment to do that anymore. It's a pretty interesting thing to do and I would encourage it to anyone who can maintain that discipline.

    Lee

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The Dreamer