Date: 26-03-2019

Last night the dream I had was bewitched. It’s difficult to explain. There was a malicious entity involved in the background, that was omnipresent in the dream but also outside of the dream, somehow. I got the feeling somehow this entity was or took the form of a nasty old lady, and that she forced me into this dream reality. Inside the dream reality I was able to remain calm and even a bit curious. When I woke up I had some scary images fresh in my memory. I knew the entire time it was a dream, but I didn’t take control, as if that was the one part I didn’t realise I could. That perhaps can be attributed to the evil entity.

The dream didn’t even really have a story to it. It was just filled with unreal scenes. It took place on the flood fields in Amersfoort where they create an outdoors ice skate rink during the winter months. In this dream, in the forest park adjacent to the fields stood a big castle-like house. I was part of a group of people that were on the run for something. In front of this house there was a gathering of all manner of elite people. They were all rich bankers, corporate owners, and politicians. We had to prevent being spotted by them, and for some reason we had to try and enter that big house and make our way inside the little watch tower all the way at the top of the house.

I only recall vaguely how we got to the house, entered the house, and made our way towards that tower. I have some faint impressions and images I barely recall, like trying to traverse a large wooden beam from one side of a large gallery to the other, while these elite were sitting about 20 meters below us, listening to some kind of speech. But eventually we made it to some kind of room or space inside this castle-like house where one of us – a very kind black man – got sucked into a very large painting, standing in the room.

This changed the painting, as if the paint on the canvas had come to life and could move freely over the canvas. It reminded me a bit of the T1000 from the Terminator franchise, but this paint was not just silver in colour but was colourful. I tried to see what the painting was changing into, but I couldn’t see what it was supposed to show me. I came a little closer, even though I was a bit scared. Still I couldn’t make out the picture, so I came closer and closer, until I was right in front of the painting and realised I was looking at a fractal pattern. And each fractal showed this poor black man’s horrified face.

His facial expression was that of pure fright, and since it was a fractal this face was everywhere. It didn’t matter if you looked closer or further away; it showed this face thousands upon thousands of times. I looked at one of the faces, and focussed on one of his teeth, and that tooth too was the face, and the tooth next to it too, and the teeth of each of these faces too. It went on and on. It shocked me when I realised this. But then I noticed there was a little tare in the canvas, where the fractal discontinued. I focussed on that tare, and saw the dark entity that was doing this to this poor man. It was like I peaked behind the scenes. This crack showed a place that was unpleasantly well lit.

But then I got sucked in just like the man before me, and I ended up inside the little tower on the house. There were other people here too. I looked outside of one of the very tiny windows of this tower and saw the fields in front of the house, but on the fields stood two gigantic trees. Like, truly enormous. They were trees with leaves, and they easily rivalled the city’s big church tower in height. But sadly that is all the coherent things I can recall from the dream. There was more but it was just impressions and negative emotions. I cannot make heads or tails out of it.

I woke up with a strong feeling something had lured me into that dream reality, to enjoy my fear. When I was awake I somehow felt this entity was still with me a short while after.

Date: 22-03-2019

I had another New Year’s Eve dream. In the dream I still lived with my mom and dad, and I had gotten a shit load of fireworks to build a fireworks show with. D was here too, but she only had a guest role. I had build my fireworks creation all by myself, cause my brother wasn’t here. He had told me he didn’t want to spend any money on fireworks this year, and he was reluctant to come still as he had felt it would be hypocritical of him if he were to have fun with fireworks I had purchased. In the dream I cared not about who bought what. I just wanted to do this together with him. But I had been unable to convince him and so I had accepted I would be doing this alone. Whether together with him or not; I also liked to build a show from fireworks, regardless of who comes to watch it. Secretly I hoped my brother would show up at the last minute.

And indeed he did. He showed up while I was still busy perfecting my creation. My brother had been helping a mutual friend of ours, A, who was into fireworks too. M had been helping on A’s request and he’d been having such a good time with him, he decided he wanted to share with me what he and A had built. And as M had seen me working on my creation he had become filled with enthusiasm, and started helping me like it was in his nature. My fireworks looked amazing by the way, like it was military grade stuff. My brother loved it, and was absolutely amazed at all the things I had been putting together, looking forward to the end result. He told me: “I had forgotten how much fun this could be, just the two of us, and fireworks.” Later adding: “Man, I really missed doing this!” We also discussed a friend with whom we used to do this too, T. And we agreed on one thing: “We should never invite him for this again. He is able to suck all the fun out of it.”

Our creation was ready, and after a while it was time. The clock was at 0:00 hours. But outside it was still daytime! My brother and I were both adamant to light the fuse when it was dark and no sooner, cause that’s when the show can be best appreciated. We decided to wait. We waited another hour, but the sun only kept climbing. My brother pointed it out: “Dude, look. The sun is over the neighbours’ house now.” It was the strangest thing, as we watched how our sharp shadows formed short blobs on the ground near our feet in nighttime, in a direction where our shadows normally wouldn’t point. But then I realised something. Somehow, New Year’s Eve was on the longest day of the year. I pointed out where the sun was now, which was high in the sky, and told M: “Oh wait a second! That’s right! New Year’s Eve falls on the longest day of the year this year! It was in the news!”

We realised it was going to stay light for a while, though the day was receding. Eventually the clock was almost at 2:00 AM. After this time you are not allowed to light any more fireworks in The Netherlands. And subsequently we saw ever more police cars patrol the neighbourhood, like they were vultures circling a dying animal. But as long as we didn’t light the fuse there was nothing they could do anyway. But would we light it now, our show would certainly last past 2:00 AM before it was finished. But the sun had now moved just beyond the horizon in a fast motion, and the sky was in twilight. On the opposite side of the sky we could see the first stars emerge. Even though it was now past 2:00 AM we decided to light the fuse.

Our show was an amazing show, but we found ourselves in a cat and mouse chase with the police, and as we fled from one place to another while being chased down by police we could sometimes see over our shoulders how our fireworks show blanketed the sky with various explosions and effects. We were like gravity artists who couldn’t enjoy their creation while others were free to take a good look and appreciate its beauty. The chase between us and the police was fun, as we were able to stay out of their sight with ease. They just patrolled the neighbourhood where they might’ve seen us in the distance, but since we knew the environment like the back of our hand we were always two steps ahead. The show caught the attention of many onlookers, and we were very proud of it, though sad we couldn’t view it up close.

Date: 13-01-2019 

Last night I dreamt I was going back to the student dorm in Amersfoort, either to live there or to visit. I got back into my old room which was exactly as it was when I used to live there before. Same furniture, same stuff. There were a lot of new people living there now, but also a few of the old core members. There were subtle changes in scenery and rules, but over all I got the same vibes from that place. Good vibes. The location of the house was a different place now though. I was situated at a local shopping centre.

It was a sunny day. My brother was waiting outside. I had to get something from inside the house before going somewhere with him. There was no hallway in the house now, so all the rooms just linked together via doors. As I went inside there were many house mates inside cheering my name as I entered the room, all happy to see me. I then saw my old neighbour from when I lived here before; RS. It looked like I had entered his room on my way to mine. The dream was a little bit lucid in a way, but not nearly completely. But I do recall I had my full faculties as I talked to him, calmly.

He said: “Huh? What are you doing here?” There was a bit of judgement in his tone, but I had every right to be here; a place I have discovered so much about myself and grown so much spiritually. I was going to answer him but just as I wanted to, his gay partner bumped into me with his shoulder, coming from my back, and while doing so simultaneously said: “Oh sorry.” indicating this was done on purpose to signal he disliked me. But his bump didn’t even move me a little. I stood firm and his action almost resulted in him tripping, though he could catch his balance back.

It was a bit humiliating for him, and I added to that by simply greeting him: “Hello JK…” Without saying anything back he moved out of the room again. I stared him out of the room as he walked off, then looked at RS again, who’s question I hadn’t yet answered. But instead of answering his question, I just said: “You were always the slightly less anti-social one.” I phrased it differently in Dutch, but the direct translation doesn’t capture this meaning. What I said in Dutch was a subtle way of saying the above. And RS picked up on that message and looked away in shame.

I got what I needed and went back outside. There my brother was still waiting for me, but he was now in the company of a younger version of me. Younger me was in his twenties I think. And both these two guys were joking how fun it would be if the three of us would show up at mom and dad’s place. I laughed dismissively: “Come on, guys. You know me. That ain’t gonna happen.” But my brother and younger me weren’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer, and they jokingly were ‘going to kidnap me’. My brother had a large stick, like a broomstick but bigger, and he had rope.

They were going to tie me up native American style, hand and feet tied to the stick, and then carry me there. It was a hilarious idea, and although I did not want to go to mom and dad, I was going to play along with this plan. So as we all laughed and joked together, they would “tie me up” and I resisted not: “Do what you guys have to do. Fate will decide if I end up visiting them.” So they had me tied up, and lifted the stick with me hanging there like a tree sloth. But it was quite a heavy task, and it didn’t help we were all laughing hysterically. We just couldn’t stop laughing at the idea of walking onto their driveway with an “abducted” me, like; here, we brought him to you.

And to make matters even more hilarious, the rope would sometimes come loose, meaning they had to tie me up again. I even helped them as we couldn’t focus cause of all the jokes we came up with. But after a while as the laughter slowly died down they found that this task was impossible. I was too heavy to carry all the way to them. My brother said: “Alright. This ain’t going to work.” My younger me agreed. The three of us walked back to the train station, playing out sketches of how mom and dad would have reacted to the arrival of this delegation. We were laughing our socks off again.

Date: 25-12-2018

Last night I had – what I would call – a warning dream. A dream that warns me of things to come.

This dream started in a place I more often dream of, but it doesn’t exist in this reality (or at least I have never been there before). It’s always evening/night here when I am at this place. And in this dream the situation was such that there were a bunch of chairs of mine still at a house where I used to live. I was on the streets, and there were many partying students on the streets, audibly talking about wanting to throw a party and needing chairs. I was afraid they’d find my chairs and use them without even asking, and I reckoned I wouldn’t see those chairs back if I would not collect them before they did.

I owned a small car in this dream. It could barely fit 4 people total. I took this car and drove to this house. It was a scary house, like one you’d expect to be used in an Adam’s Family movie. It stood alone, surrounded by dark forest. The house itself was black. And around the house the disembodied souls of people wondered around like they were confused. They were souls, but they had a body still sometimes. Many of those souls were of children I had once been a teacher to when I worked at VSC. All those souls had lost their way. Two of them stood out to me. One was Jacky (an actual existing ex-student) who I called Lisa for some reason, and one was Jake (a non-existing little boy, slightly overweight). They saw me and helped me find my chairs. We found 2 of the 4 total outside the house. The other two must’ve been inside still.

I was adamant about not going inside. Jake still did. I didn’t want anything to happen to him, so I also went inside. The entrance hall inside was again filled with lost souls, wondering around aimlessly. There were no corridors in this house, somehow. Just rooms, with many doors to other rooms, and so on. Every door would lead into another room, or sometimes a stairs up or down. It was a maze. There was no way to remember whether you had been somewhere before or not, because every single room looked almost exactly alike. They were all generic. And in every room there were more of these lost souls, wondering around aimlessly. Inside the house these souls had not just lost the way; they were also looking for objects they had lost. And above this, all these souls were very afraid of something. You could see it in their eyes.

Lisa and Jake got scared because of this. They wanted to go outside. I pressed on, but soon I got lost. In a light panic, I opened the next door and saw an incredibly scared soul pick up meatballs from the floor. “Ah, there they are.” He said while collecting them. There were at least 50 meatballs on the floor. It would be impossible for him to pick them all up, so I helped him. Suddenly a door swung open, and in the opening on the other side from a pitch black room I saw a massive black wolf/bear monster. This monster jumped on the scared soul in the room with me and literally shredded him to pieces right in front of me. Panic tried to get the better of me, but I was able to channel it and went into survival mode.

I opened the nearest door to me, and ran through it, and continued to go from door to door, next room to the next, in flight mode, picking each door at complete random, slamming each door behind me shut. I thought to myself that if I didn’t know where I was in this house, the creature would neither. But I could hear the beast was following me in fast pace, as its heavy breathing and movement over the wooden floorboards were not far behind me. I was fast but I couldn’t increase the distance. During this minute long chase there was never more than one room between us. I thought that maybe it picked up the meatball smell from my hands. The chase lasted a minute or two as I tried to tire the animal.

The beast was getting ever more agitated, as I was very able to stay out of its jaws. It reacted to that by transforming into an even bigger, stronger, and scarier version of itself. But I didn’t give up, and during this chase I discovered 4 rooms that were all adjacent to each other allowing me to go in circles either way between these rooms. With the wolf-bear still in pursuit, I sometimes felt a bit of panic, but I mostly was able to focus on the athletic performance of trying to cut corners as close as possible, and leaping over and under furniture. A few times the animal tried to outsmart me by running after me in clockwise direction, and then suddenly reversing direction going counter-clockwise. But it did this so clumsily that I was on to it before it executed this manoeuvre every time. And when it tried this for the third time, it actually allowed me to escape into another room altogether. I used its predictable behaviour against itself.

The beast had lost track of me now. I was now on a stairway that looked much like the stairs to the attic in the old house in Amersfoort. I could hear the beast behind the door in the next room, still actively sniffing the floor, trying to pick up my scent, and probably still transforming into God knows what. So I gently advanced up the stairs and went into the room. It kinda was my old room, but then again it also wasn’t. Something was different. I looked outside through the window and saw scaffolding placed along side the backside of what now looked like the old house where I used to live during my childhood. The scaffolding provided me with an escape route, to get outside and down to ground level.

As I was moving down and reached the ground, Lisa was now on the scaffolding herself. She had exited the same window where I had come out of. That sweet girl had gone back inside to try and rescue me. I ushered her down, and told her which parts to be careful of. There were certain parts she just needed to avoid, cause intuitively I knew certain places on the scaffolding had booby-traps. One particular booby-trap was near the wooden boards under the window of my parents’ old bedroom. Somehow I knew that if she would walk in front of those wooden boards, a pig with the hair and moustache of none other than Adolf Hitler would break through the wood. To.. scare her, I guess?

Because I knew these booby-traps beforehand somehow, I was able to get down to ground level in 3 seconds myself. But because I had discovered Lisa too late she was already heading towards those boards. There was no other way for her to proceed but to traverse that location. I calmly explained the situation to her, to try and get her ready for what was going to happen. I told her what would happen, when it would happen, and that she had nothing to fear. She accepted her fate, and pressed on. And indeed the pig broke through the wood, and it was a being of pure evil. It indeed looked just like a Hitler pig, but as an extra it also sported red glowing eyes. But since I had prepared Lisa, the scare didn’t really work, and she was down at ground level and my safety within seconds.

We went to the car. Outside it was still dark. The house was now again that scary Adam’s Family house, in that dark forest, but the surroundings also had features of my childhood house. The car was parked far from the house up the enormously long driveway between house and street. Inside the house we could hear the monster make very loud noises. It had become consumed with anger and rage because of our escape. It growled and roared very loudly. All the lost souls around the house had fled away into the forest, as if they knew what was to follow. You could hear the size of the beast now was enormous, probably due to many transformations. Jake was at the car, and he had tied the chairs we found behind the car because they could not fit inside with us inside the car too. As Lisa and I ran around the house the roars of the beast seemed to build up, like it was a generator starting up to reach its peak.

I looked back over my shoulder as Lisa kept going towards the car, and I saw the front door was still open. In the hallway I saw the monster, which had now gained so much in size due to transformation after transformation, that it was scarier than any wolf or bear I could imagine. Big sharp claws, big teeth, red glowing eyes, terrifyingly huge. It was barely able to fit in the entry hall of the huge house, and to see me it had to duck its head. It couldn’t fit through the door at all, but would break through the wall with ease if it wanted to exit. It was still charging up. But in a moment of found courage I walked back with confidence and in one final act of defiance I grabbed the door handle, and closed the front door, hahaha! Then I hasted back to the car. Lisa and Jake had for some reason still not entered the car, so I jumped in and urged them to get in too before it was too late.

Inside the house the roaring and growling kept intensifying, accompanied by load up noises like an engine of an aeroplane. That sound kept getting louder and louder, and was climbing in pitch. It was getting closer and closer to a climax. Jake and Lisa got in. Now, the car was no longer motorised, but was instead some kind of tuk-tuk trike, that needed to be peddled like a bicycle. I got on the peddles and started biking. I had great difficulty to gain speed, and meanwhile it was evident that the further away we would be from that house, the safer it would be. But I just didn’t gain any significant speed. Maybe under other circumstances it would be an acceptable speed, but we were in a big hurry to get out of there. We needed more speed.

The chairs were dragging behind the trike. This slowed us down. I instructed Jake to cut lose the chairs, but Jake refused. It was a matter of principle for him. I told him we needed to cut them lose, and we went back and forth in a discussion. But there was really no time to discuss this, as we needed to get out of there and these chairs were slowing us down. And these were my chairs after all. But then Jake found a solution that would work for us both. There were some abandoned road works near us, with a big hole in the ground. Jake would put the chairs in the ground and cover them with the sand from the pile next to it. Nobody but us knew the chairs would be there, and we would be able to recover them later. Part of me was actually happy that I had not truly lost the chairs now.

We moved along through the city of Amersfoort, but the layout doesn’t match reality. It was like someone had taken the map of the city, cut it into parts, and put those parts back together in an incorrect order. Eventually we reached the shopping square near my parents’ house, with behind us the scary house, which we could see from here all the way in the distance. We could still hear the distant roars and build up sounds coming from the house, and they had almost reached their peak. It was in its last phase. And then it climaxed. And that climax was followed by eerie silence. It was ready. We did not know what that meant. We kept our focus on the house, and then we saw something emerge from the rooftop.

It seemed at first like lights in the colours red and blue, emanating from the centre of the rooftop. But then these lights extended in long strings of light. These strings flowed upwards and away from the centre in a 360 degree circle, and arched towards the ground, much like long ribbons from a confetti cannon. It formed a really high dome structure, visible from everywhere. There were many strings, all blue or red in colour, and the shape they had now formed was like that of a doughnut, though just in shape. It kinda also looked like a spider. The arched strings started ever so slightly rotating counter clockwise around the centre. Very slowly they continued. It remained completely silent, and that added to the suspense. And then it started moving towards us.

In somewhat of a panic we exited the vehicle, and ran behind the shops of the square, but the layout of Amersfoort still made no sense. It was a total surprise where we would end up after each street we took. We looked behind us and could see the ribbons of red and blue light above the houses. It had come really close to us. It was still moving slowly. We kept moving, as it continued to follow us, quietly, noiseless even. Then we entered what would turn out to be a dead end street, and we had to go back. We looked up and saw the ribbons of blue and red light above our heads. We were now under the ‘umbrella’ of whatever it was that was at its centre. That moment where we entered under it had gone by swiftly and completely unnoticed; we hadn’t even seen the wall of ribbons approach us. The centre of these things was near us, just one street away.

I peeked around the corner to see what the source of these light ribbons was exactly. It had to be something truly scary from which they emanated. But when I looked it was such an anti-climactic sight. It turned out to be a small delivery van that had been converted into a mini bus. It was white with a brown stripe along its flanks, and shaded windows. I couldn’t see who was inside, and it was still moving towards us in that same slow pace. From the middle of its roof emanated the huge structure of light ribbons. This was the source of it, and from behind the old church it now came around the corner. It became a lot less scary, though it was still a bit ominous.

We were now in the opportunity to quickly run past the van thanks to some parked cars, and it would mean it had to make a difficult 180 in that narrow street, which was nearly impossible. We ran and were about to succeed, but then this thing spawned a ‘pop up’ in front of us. Yes. I kid you not. A pop up hung in the air in front of us. It stated: “If you pass me, I win. Do you want that?” We could choose yes or no. It might’ve been a seemingly mundane minivan but it still must’ve possessed some supernatural powers if it could create magic light ribbons and could spawn pop ups out of thin air. But I was done being dicked around by these evil machinations that tried to scare us. I felt my inner rebel, pressed YES, and ran along side the minivan, giving it a good firm kick as I passed it.

But as if this thing was an empty carton of milk the minivan tumbled violently sideways through the air and landed in the bushes on the other side of the road. This gave us the opportunity to flee. We had escaped, again. “How is this a win?” I said jokingly: “He might have scored once, but we’re not giving up.” We kept running and running, until we ended up at a train station. Not the main train station of Amersfoort, but one I recognised afterwards from an earlier dream. This station probably only exists in my dreams. Also nightmarish dreams, by the way. We decided to go into the station. There were access gates followed by more access gates, and so on and so forth. After each gate you had to reconfirm you were legally there.

And as it turned out neither of us had the correct access passes to advance every single checkpoint, so we had to wait until someone else came from the other side, and then quickly move through behind them as the access gates closed again. That’s how we advanced into the station. But the further we got into the station, the busier it got with people. The station was ever more crowded after each checkpoint. But the dream got ever weirder and more absurd the further we went in. Most people were walking the other way, into the direction from which we came. I asked someone what exactly was going on. “The ticket machines are broken. You can only get a ticket at the service desk. Everything must be done by hand now.” He replied.

There was chaos now. Everywhere there were railroad employees and security personnel. They had noticed us. We stood out. We had done nothing wrong as far as we were concerned, as we weren’t cutting the line or something. In fact, we were doing the exact opposite as we were going back to the end of the line. Eventually we found one of the ticket machines. The things we saw and tried to do were too complicated to explain, and it doesn’t matter. The short story is that it got us nowhere. They truly didn’t work any more. We then wanted to try to add funds to the cards of Lisa and Jake, but the loading point was behind another checkpoint. We tried to get there, but the station had become even more crowded, and as we moved it seemed the people were intentionally trying to obstruct us.

It started with simple things that looked like a coincidence. I would try to pass someone from the left side, and they ventured left, so I would try the right side, and they ventured right. So I tried to walk past the person next to them, but they would move obstructing me too. This went on and on, and got ever more absurd. I would try and go under someone’s legs, they would stop and kneel to adjust their shoes, I tried to skip past them over their backs but someone would throw a suitcase to me as if it slipped their hands. It became clear to me these people were under the influence of the evil entity that was chasing us. It got so absurd that at one point people would just pretend to faint whenever I had a clear path of 4 feet, just to obstruct my advance. We then saw a narrow corridor with no people, ran towards it, just to see a guy in a wheelchair block the alleyway. We tried to squeeze through, and he literally blocked the entrance by falling out of his chair!

This kept going on and on, and it became more and more bizarre until it was actually quite scary. I saw one way out to the side, where there was apparently an outdoor market on that part of the station. We pushed through to that part of the station and immediately blended in with the crowd there. The dream turned a little more peaceful again, as we browsed around on this market. There was a stall where the actor who plays ‘The Duke of Sandringham’ in the series ‘Outlander’ was selling things. It was the same guy, and he wore the same clothes, and spoke with the same posh British accent as in the series, but he didn’t wear any makeup. And he was such a nice guy!

In English we asked him if he had any travelling documents, and if we could use them if so. In his posh English accent he answered: “Yes, I do. But, I’m afraid it’s a personal permit of travel.” He showed it to us, and on the card we saw a picture of him in Lord of the Rings elven clothes. He apparently had also played an elf sometimes? He explained that whenever the film studio needs him, he can travel by bus, train, plane, you name it. He wasn’t able to help us use the trains for our escape. We asked him if he knew about the evil entity: “Do you know about any evil entities in this area?” I recall word for word his response.

Still in the same posh British accent, he answered: “Ah, yes! There is an evil spirit out there that is pret-ty bad.” This shook us. This was after us? “How bad..?” I asked. This answer I also recall clearly: “Well, let’s just say that this spirit doesn’t just stop by the mere mention of Jesus.” This was a problem. But from here I have much difficulty recalling what happened next. I recall vaguely how I lost Jake and Lisa. I went looking for them, and I recall the evil entity started possessing people, but then while possessing, others would try and help me find Lisa. I vaguely thought that maybe the entity was not as evil as I had thought, though that doesn’t mean much truly. There might’ve been another chase and we ended up in a plane. There rest is a blanc.

Analysis 25-01-2024:

I’ve never ever typed an analysis for this dream. In fact, it wasn’t even part of my dream journal. Instead I found it in a conversation between me and my brother via chat. I was reading back and stumbled upon it. Reading it I realised its potential for this published dream journal, and oh boy is it filled with messages.

Of the many obvious messages one stuck out for me personally, and that was yet another dream where I needed to get away from the old house in Amersfoort. Again! Though the dream I am referring to came to me almost two years after this one, so this was the first dream that showed me this. All this means perhaps nothing to you, but to me this is very important.

I wonder who Jake and Lisa/Jacky represented. Perhaps they represented different aspects of myself.

The chairs were perhaps things, habits, people I will need to let go of, or leave behind. Part of me doesn’t want to, but my conscious self knows this is the only way. Looking back, perhaps this also represented my brother. Maybe we had to part, though when I had this dream, I would not have believed we would become estranged the way we did. I do think we both needed to be away from each other to take the road we each wanted to take.

The evil turned out to be much less dangerous than I thought. As long as you don’t give up, it can’t do much besides try to scare you. That’s basically what the evil in this dream was to me. Being afraid of it seemed its way to influence my decision. I truly enjoyed my own feats of defiance, closing the front door, not to stop it, but because I wanted to show my defiance. Kicking the minivan was also pretty cool, and had a big effect. I wonder what would’ve happened had we stopped running after this.

The duke I think was a guiding spirit. I’m still not sure what kind of evil he was referring to. What kind of evil doesn’t just stop at the mention of the name Jesus? Then again, what kind of evil does? I do not know.

The people who were at the train station working against us, to me symbolised how people in a future technologized society will no longer be able to see how their conduct aids the machine, and not the other way around. They just do as they’re told. There’s no one weighing their actions on the balance of morality.

For many things I am a bit at a loss. That scene with the meatballs was oddly specific, but I have no idea what it meant. The souls that were wondering about aimlessly inside and outside the house could represent people who realise they no longer fit in the system but who haven’t the mental strength to see another path, so they wonder about for evil to abuse them as it sees fit.

Perhaps there’s much more, but I don’t want to sound like a broken record any more than I already do.

Date: 12-12-2018

I dreamt I had to take care of a horse. She was a white mare, not too big. This was something I had ‘inherited’ from my relation with my ex. I had to find a place for her to graze. I don’t know why or how, but the place I had kept her would become unavailable. I had to look for another place.

The new place I had found for her was in front of the school on the other side of the busy road to which the street my parents lived on was a side road. That school was situated with a large green patch of grass in front of it. But when I arrived there, it turned out there was another horse there. A big white stallion. And I mean big. It was a big hulk of pure muscle. And this stallion looked at my little mare and I could see he was interested in her.

My brother and D were now also present. The stallion walked up to our little white mare and they sniffed each others’ noses. My brother and I were making jokes that this huge horse must have a monster ding-dong, and I revered to it as a ‘tampeloeris’ which is old Dutch Amsterdam slang for penis. My brother laughed so hard because it’s a funny word people rarely use any more.

After a while my brother and D left, and I was alone on the field with these two animals, and I found myself talking to the stallion like I sometimes do to animals, trees, stars, etc. Like they are real people, I will just talk to them about the things I worry about, like they are wise gurus that can advice me. And for some reason, this stallion took a liking to me because of my blatant honesty about myself to it. And in the dream this meant I could switch horses. And as soon as this spiritual transference had taken place I was besties with this stallion. He kneeled and allowed me to sit on its back. The white mare would remain in the field where we found the stallion.

And riding this big stallion was so incredibly cool! I didn’t know a thing about riding a horse, but I managed quite well. If I wanted it to go left I stroked its left cheek, and asked nicely to take a left. The same for going right, stroking his right cheek, asking nicely to go right. To stop I just said: “Ho..!”  And he understood me well enough each time for the things I wanted. And it was such a treat to ride this magnificent beast. I towered about 13 feet above the ground.

But since I had traded this horse for my previous horse, it meant in this dream that all things agreed upon with the mare now applied to this horse. One such thing was that the mare had been entered into a competition, but the competition was for its jockey and less so about the horse itself. Showing up on a different horse was fine. The competition would’ve been a challenge on old horse of my ex, but not this hunk of muscles. It would even be a lot of fun to compete on this mighty piece of raw force. I looked forward to it.

I had to prepare for this competition. One of the challenges of the competition was to have the horse jump while the jockey held something heavy he/she was not allowed to drop. So the horse had to carry me + heavy object, and I just had to carry the heavy object. To me in hindsight that sounds like it was more a competition for the horse, but this 4 horsepower stallion would do this with ease.

Because my stallion could carry so much I decided to challenge myself. I was going to carry a tree stump weighing 25 kilos, carrying it in a jute back. The tree stump I had in mind laid in my sister’s yard. This was agreed upon with her earlier, before I had the stallion, but when I came there her plans for the tree stump had changed. The tree stump was supposed to be cut into smaller pieces, and I could take some pieces but not all. I didn’t understand what she had in mind. Confused I asked her if I could take another tree stump (she had a few) and she was fine with that. I got what I wanted; a heavy tree stump to carry. I thought to myself I should tame my autistic side, and just accept this wasn’t my stuff and my sister was free to do with it as she pleased.

My next stop was the veterinarian in Amersfoort. I was short one last item which I absolutely needed to compete in the competition; the liver of another animal. And this vet was the supplier for this competition, somehow. So I navigated my stallion through traffic. For the most this went well, except for a few occasions. The animal got a little nervous due to the busy traffic, and a few times it almost went wrong, but in a fun way. I would try and have it wait for a car, but in its nervousness and playfulness it would just decide to continue on through someone’s front yard. But it made me laugh. Every time it didn’t go as planned all parties on the road just had to let us pass because this thing was the biggest thing on the road. There was no negotiating with it. Every time I just shrugged my shoulders and said: “Woops!”

We arrived at the veterinarian office. It had a port that led to a courtyard. I had to leave the stallion alone there for a moment as I went inside. He didn’t like that, didn’t allow me to tie it off either. I didn’t force it. There was no where he could go anyway. The courtyard was closed off. Inside I saw my mother sitting on the waiting bench near the service counter. She was with Pedro; a pet dog we used to care for a decade ago, who has since passed. In the dream Pedro was ill. I didn’t know. My mother looked sad and had a defeated demeanour. The second she saw me she was surprised to see me here, and my unexpected appearance here was uncomfortable for her as I had seen her in that state.

The hallway where she sat was quite dark by the way. The light in the hallway came from the service counter. That’s where I had to request a liver to pick up. Mom was doing her thing again, complete pretence, like I haven’t stayed away from her for the past 3 years. ‘Keeping up appearances’. “Hey, what are you doing here then? How are you?” But she added her signature disdain by asking me if I was able to live on my own. Not “are you enjoying living on yourself” or something, but “am I succeeding“. And regretfully I played the game, bragging about how well I was doing for myself.

She then started giving me tips on how to request the liver at the desk, making it seem I might not get one if I didn’t ask right. With this in the back of my mind I went to the desk, and I felt a little insecure because of what my mom had said to me. A woman came, and I said: “I need a liver for the jockey competition.” “Okay. Let me get it for you.” Said the lady. That was it. No tricks needed. My mother had made me nervous for no reason at all. 

I don’t recall actually being handed a liver, but after having been at the desk I was done there and went outside again to the courtyard. There I saw my horse was fooling around and misbehaving. I could see it in its eyes. I wanted to grab him, and he allowed me to come close just to run off again as I almost reached him. This continued on for a few minutes as I talked to it and tried to cease his play. In the midst of this cat and mouse game, he even walked straight against a wall with his head, but he walked away unscathed. Eventually I sweet talked him back to me.

But then I noticed Pedro was also outside in the courtyard. He was clearly lost and scared. I think he was afraid of being alone outside in the vicinity of this huge horse. But I called out his name and he recognised me and came to me. I was someone he knew. The moment I got him softly by his collar he seemed to feel relieved and less scared. I petted him. He returned to his old self instead of this nervously shivering wreck.

Why was Pedro outside this courtyard? Dream logic; mom had forgotten him while simultaneously still being inside the veterinarian office. The solution? I had to bring Pedro back home to them. I did not feel like going back to the house. This was also when I realised my regret for having talked to mom at all. She might now think things are all fine again and invite me in. I didn’t like the prospects of having to decline that offer or worse; feel obligated to enter and have tea with her, and participate in her game of pretence. But I couldn’t leave Pedro there all alone. He deserved it for me to help him get home. I was going to try and bring him there but make it seem like I was in a hurry, to escape any confrontation with mom.

That’s where the dream ended somewhere; me walking the street with a small black dog on a leash in one hand, and the reins of this huge muscular white stallion in the other.

Analysis 25-02-2024:

It was fun to read back this dream. I had forgotten all about it, and reading this account again helped me get a few impressions back. I recall how fun it was to traverse the traffic on the back of this meat tank. It was amazing.

The account with my mother in the dream was typical. I think it showed me how I so easily fall for her games and participate against my wishes. I couldn’t yet stand up to her the way I wanted.

The stallion is something I got indirectly from my prior relationship. Pedro is something from the past. I think both animals are a representation of me. I think the end is me going into the future with these two sides of me. A side from the past that is scared and nervous. The stallion the side of me that is playful and above all strong. I let go of a good version of myself from my past relationship and got back something stronger and better. I left the mare behind at a place where I grew up. I brought Pedro, the nervous dog, back there too. It’s interesting to realise what this dream could’ve meant.

The competition perhaps showed me how I enjoyed taking on the challenges of live with my new self. Though I wonder what the tree stump and liver (especially the liver) meant in this. I got the tree stump from my sister? And a liver from the vet? I hope some day I can figure out what that meant. Right now, I haven’t a clue.

Date: 09-06-2017

This was an interesting dream. I was in the ‘Rijksmuseum’ (a famous Dutch museum, I’ve never visited), but in the dream this place had nothing to do with the actual ‘Rijksmuseum’ as it is in real life. In this dream it was a sort of VIP place where famous people and ‘collectors’ could meet. I was with someone; a renowned and highly skilled collector. I was his pupil and he my teacher. The collectors brought the things they had collected to that museum so that famous/important people could view them or even take some with them. The head administrator of the museum was there too when I came to visit with my teacher, and he was present while I was looking around. The head administrator looked like a very classy waiter. Everything he did – every move he made – he did so from the highest form of etiquette; extremely polite and aware. He and I talked, and in that conversation I tried to do my best to be as polite and classy as I could. But I stood in his shadow. Compared to him I felt like I was trash, but still he was so incredibly nice and polite to me, despite my shortcomings of applying his level of etiquette to our interaction. In our conversation I painted myself as not belonging there. “I’m just a simple collector, nothing more. I stand in the shadow of everyone here.” But he disagreed! “On the contrary. The collectors are famous among the famous. Each has a role to play.” His comment was uplifting. I felt a little less out of place.

After our conversation I browsed around in the museum, when I unexpectedly encountered my mother there. She was there with my dad, and they had found things from their past in the museum. That was one of the things people could do there. There was a kind of photo archive, and you were allowed to check whether it held any photos of your past. You were allowed to take them if you found them. My mom had a photo in her hand. She asked me: “Have a look. Do you recognise it?” I recognised the place in the photo immediately. This was the little square in front of the garage door. But now things got a little more interesting. This was an obvious old photo. It was in colour, but the technology for personal colour photography was in its infancy when this photo was taken. But despite that, the garage on the photo looked as it did after my dad had put a second floor on it. It should’ve shown the garage with a flat roof. The photo was taken from ground level, as if the camera was on the ground itself, and it was taken from the side of the neighbours’ house facing the direction of the garage. The garage door was the old one, with vertical green and white stripes. On the picture there were clothing racks in front of that garage door, and on those racks hung all kinds of dress up clothing (cowboy, Indian, police officer, etc.). Dad, looking like he did in the 80s (beard, moustache, sideburns, which I know from old photos, haha), stood near the racks and was playing dress up with a couple of other people I didn’t know.

He was wearing cowboy clothing. This was all the way in the background of the photo. But very near the camera was a tiny little mouse. In the dream I recognised it as one of their house pets, that they supposedly used to have (which they didn’t in real life as far as I know). In the dream it was known to me they had this mouse from stories they told us, like the stories and pictures of dogs my parents used to have before we were born. I exclaimed excitedly: “Hey!! Isn’t that…?” “Yes.” My mother replied, adding: “We only just got him back then.” But then the photo became animated like it was a video. I looked at the video. On the video you could see the little mouse was scared and it looked around. Its innocence in world affairs couldn’t have been more evident. Then my very young looking mother entered the frame of the photo. She petted the little mouse, and gave it a soft loving kiss on its little head. I could see she really loved this little creature. It was an interesting peek into a past before my time. The collector now stood next to me, while I was watching the photo/video. He was done with whatever he had planned to do, and said: “We have to move on. Are you ready?” I handed the photo back to mom and said goodbye. Dad was there too somewhere but I didn’t speak to him. I woke up just after following the collector on his way out.

Analysis:

On the Chinese calender I am a mouse according to the date of my birth. I was born in 1984. I know this through my brother’s Chinese girlfriend. The photo/video my mom showed me was taken in the 80s. I am pretty confident to say that little mouse was me.

It showed my mother when she was young. Maybe she was different back then. This dream showed me my mother wasn’t always who she eventually became. She plainly loved me when I was small, fragile, and innocent, and she didn’t play any games. Her love for me was real and pure. Untainted.

Dad was playing dress up. I recall that from the photo as it started to play like a video that my dad was showing off to those other people. That was kind of how he was back then. I take after him in that regard. I love being in the spotlight and getting the attention with humorous and witty comments.

Dress up is in fact dressing up and pretending to be someone or something you are not. And that might be something interesting. My mom has told us (her children) that dad didn’t want any children. She was the one that really wanted to have kids. I think it was a wish he did not want to take from her. But when my mom revealed this, things did fall in to place some more. It made sense. Our dad wasn’t a typical dad. He was there on important moments, like graduations and birthdays, but often absent in the smaller less obvious moments. Maybe this dream depicted him playing his dad role but maybe it was something he felt didn’t come natural to him.

The collector who had me under his wing was a kind and wise old man. I think this was a depiction of my guide, or one of them. I think this guide is helping me to let go of my past. The museum was perhaps a place where you could look back at your life to help you progress spiritually.

Date: 05-04-2017

Dream inception again last night. A dream within a dream. It started like this. I was in my childhood bedroom on my bunk bed. My mother told me she was going shopping in the city centre. I remained in bed. Outside the house I had constructed some kind of security system, with various sensors. It allowed me to register whether someone was entering our property, and I had set up triggers for sounds to play when someone would. From here I fell asleep on my childhood bed, and had another dream.

This dream was truly bizarre. I dreamt I was part of a team of specialists that were going to travel to another dimension to look into a prehistoric animal that had gone extinct in our dimension but not theirs. We wanted to find out if this animal belonged in the clade of the dinosaurs or whether it was something else altogether. But we had to be really careful in that other dimension, as the people in that dimension had become ‘unstable’ due to a genetic experiment.

We travelled to the other dimension by means unknown. As we arrived there, people were out on the streets in daytime, walking around like the zombies from ‘The Walking Dead’ series. But they weren’t zombies. They were people, but they were utterly stupid, though some seemed quite normal. But what made them so dangerous was that when they were startled or got scared, or something unexpected happened near them, they could explode. I don’t mean they would get mad, I mean their body would actually expand followed by an explosion. And not some whimsy firecracker, no; they exploded like dynamite. It was loud, violent, and very dangerous as it was easily lethal for anyone around.

As we had ported into this other dimension we had arrived in a mass of these zombies. We mimicked their behaviour as to not scare them. They made the same sounds as the zombies from the afore mentioned series, and they drooled, but otherwise looked like completely normal people to us. But they were so utterly stupid. They would walk around together in groups, and when one passed a parked car, it would point to it and exclaim: “CARRRRRRR. CARRRRRR.” And the others in the group would confirm this statement: “YES. CARRR. CARRRRR.” That’s how they walked around and acted.

We just mimicked their behaviour as we moved about, until we arrived at a square where there was a podium. On the stage was someone who was clearly leaps smarter than the crowd of zombies that had gathered in front of the stage. This fellow was apparently teaching them the alphabet. He had a microphone, and to his left and right stood a stack of stage speakers, and behind him was a large screen where all the letters of the alphabet were being projected on. He walked around with a pointing stick, and touched the letter D, stating through the microphone: “The letter D.” The zombie people – who were not even looking at him or the screen, but were instead just wondering around aimlessly – would repeat: “DEEEE. DEEEE. DEEEE.”

It turned out the guy who was giving this reading lesson was also our contact in this dimension. He was going to help us. Apparently it was illegal for us to come there. He had found us a place where we could spend the night. It was a student dorm flat, so the people inside that building were on average a bit smarter than those we had encountered outside on the street. But even though they were smarter, there was still the danger of them exploding on sudden events. The guy ended his lesson and got off stage. He came to us, greeted us, and gave us tips and instructions on where we would go and how best to behave. He would take the lead, and we all continued our imbecilic routine.

Part of it was actually quite funny, if it wasn’t for the danger of exploding people. We arrived at the dorm flat where we (a group of 6 to 8, I’m not sure exactly) were going to spend the night in one big room. The room was L shaped, and had two entry doors on the inside of the L shape, that both gave access to the same hallway. We had brought with us 4 “traps” that we had to put down on the ground. Each trap would emit a V shape with lasers, and if someone entered the opening of that V shape, two things would happen:
1. The device would start beeping
2. The person inside the V shape would be frozen in place

But of course these devices were not made for this dimension, and it was possible that if one of them went off we actually had to run for our lives because of an imminent explosion that could follow. It was truly illogical to have brought those devices, but that’s what happened. So we went to sleep, and of course the students of this dorm curiously came looking at us. They were the cutest looking girls! We struck up a conversation with them, but they weren’t very bright at all. Compared to us, they were like children, and they reasoned like children in many ways. But in this realm they were the smarter ones. In the land of the blind… I guess.

And, yes, of course sometimes one of them would wonder into those fancy traps despite our warnings to stay clear of them. As they got stuck in the beam, they seemed to go into some kind of epileptic seizure, making sounds like they were being electrocuted, looking all frightened. When that happened one of us would rush to the device to quickly switch it off, or turn it away from them. And as soon as we did that, it seemed like they instantly completely had forgotten it happened. Like *having terrifying seizure* CLICK device off “Hey who are you, what do you study?” Like nothing happened! Truly bizarre.

But after a while they left and most of our group couldn’t sleep, including me. We wanted to go outside and satisfy our curiosity about this dimension, but two of our party were asleep. We didn’t want to wake them, so we decided to place all four traps in such a way they had the largest possible range, so that anyone trapped in them would be as far away from our sleeping comrades as possible. I set them up, and found them to be complicated devices with many switches, dials, and buttons. But I succeeded.

Now we proceeded outside. It was now truly nighttime and this world was even scarier than it had been during the day. There were monsters everywhere, dinosaurs the size of houses, that kind of world. But they left all the zombie people alone. Didn’t touch them, didn’t trample them, didn’t even look at them. I thought to myself that because of natural selection the big animals had learned not to try and eat them, cause they would explode in their bellies.

We arrived at some shopping centre, and wondered around. Going inside any of the shops was too dangerous though. We were slowly getting used to how utterly different this world was from ours when we were all shocked by what sounded like an enormous explosion in the not too far distance. We looked into the direction of where the sound emanated from, and saw a huge fireball rise from the student dorm flat where we were staying. That’s where two of our team members and our stuff was at. We panicked.

Now what? It didn’t take long for the sound of approaching sirens to be heard. Not just that, the emergency alert also started sounding. This situation was beginning to get very dangerous. People panicked on the streets. Everyone could blow up at any time. A small contingent of soldiers with super weapons was deployed on the street by the authorities. They were a bit like “the Ginyu Force” of Dragon Ball Z; a small group of special warriors. They had been tasked to come to this region because the authorities had been informed of our illegal presence in their dimension, and in response had tasked their best team to find us.

The authorities were apparently people that were about as smart as us, though undoubtedly corrupt to the core as most their countrymen were barely smart enough to properly wipe their own asses. This specialised team of soldiers started following us. Each of them looked differently, with their own capabilities and unique weapons. They were about as strong and smart as us, and we both had fancy weapons. I recall one of them had a kind of freeze ray weapon. But my weapon was very sweet too. It was a big weapon with two settings; one continuous blue energy beam, and the second firing small orange plasma balls in bursts of four like an energy machine gun.

I fired away at them. While we were battling them it turned out we had been betrayed by one of my house mates in our dimension! That’s how the authorities knew about us, despite us being so stealthy and careful. We didn’t want to do so much damage to the infrastructure of this dimension. We came here for research, not to fight. We wanted to get home now. To get home we had to go to a specific spot, where a portal would open which would lead back to our own dimension. We succeeded and I woke up, back in my childhood bunk bed.

Mom had returned from shopping, and she told me some of the sensors of my security system had worked, cause on her return she had heard a sound come from the bushes. What I had done was rig a sound sensor to trigger a sound if it detected sound above a certain decibel level. When it did it would play the sound of a growling dog. It was supposed to scare unknowing people away, but the way my mom related her account of this back to me, made me realise it wasn’t scary at all, but perhaps only slightly comedic.

She said: “Yeah, and then I took a few steps onto the driveway, and I heard a tiny dog in the bushes.” And just after she had said this, I heard my brother mimic the sound on the other side of the door, where in the door crack he made a soft repeating growling noise, as to drive the point home in a comedic way how utterly ineffective my idea was. Grrrr… Grrrr… Grrrr… That little jackass, haha! He kept repeating to make the sound. Grrrr… Grrrr… Grrrr… Until I slowly woke up in my own bed, and heard the sound still. It was my wife snoring softly.

When I told my brother this, it made him laugh. It was quite funny.

Date: 04-12-2016

Introduction:

Last night I had a very rare and special dream experience. In the dream, I didn’t think it was a dream, because I recalled what I had dreamt earlier that night in this very dream. So this dream wasn’t lucid, but it was very vivid. I thought this was real. The memories of this dream were very sharp when I woke up.

Seasonal Spider:

This took place during day time at the little square in front of the garage of my parents’ house. A voice from above was speaking to me. I was standing near the part of the house where the exhaust of the extractor hood above the stove exited the wall. I was facing into the direction of the road. On the driveway were small pools of water, teeming with life. Spiders, grasshoppers, crickets, butterflies, dragonflies, and frogs. Mostly frogs. The whole focus of this aspect of the dream was on the frogs. The voice had control over what happened in this small ecosystem I saw. It was a calm and kind voice.

The voice spoke to me and said: “Look at what is happening in your family. It is like the seasons of the year.” And while the voice was explaining I saw in fast forward the life cycle of the frogs, from frogs going into the water, mating, eggs, tadpoles, and little frogs crawling on land and growing into mature frogs that would move back to the water and start mating again. It was in fast forward, yet I could see every detail of it. It happened in one smooth motion. Woosh! And again. And again. The whole cycle, in one second. Woosh. Woosh. Woosh.

The voice meanwhile continued to explain to me the dynamic in our family, and used the cycles of the frogs as an analogue: “You see it? These are cycles. They repeat, again and again and again. What is happening now, is part of something that has been going on for a long time. Right now, you are just in a season of that ongoing cycle. It is something that has happened many times before.” And I understood exactly what the voice meant. I replied to the voice: “But I don’t want this. I want to part from these seasons. That’s what I am trying to do now; to part with it.”

While I said it, and had continued to observe the repeating cycles of the frogs in front of me, I now simultaneously began seeing events from our own family history happen parallel to the frog cycles. Woosh! Woosh! I saw how my own mother had in the past tried to distance herself from her family too, and yet returned every time. I saw this happen multiple times in the dream, and in real life I had lived through one such attempt myself, but that wasn’t the first time she had tried. She tried it before. Yet, she returned every time.

But it wasn’t just her cycle of return. I also saw an uncle of ours (her younger brother) who did the same, and a cousin on our father’s side of the family who too did the same, and many more examples. Our families had been going through these cycles for the longest of times. And finally I also saw my own conduct in this metaphor. It was like I was being shown a multi dimensional holographic power point presentation. I saw how I myself kept coming back, though very infrequently and with much time in between visits. But I would still occasionally pop up at their door. It showed me I was not trying to break the cycle at all, but was just doing what everyone else was doing who was stuck in these cycles.

As I realised this, I looked at the house. It turned into an ominous house again, as I had seen it in previous dreams. It turned blackish, the walls showed cracks, there was tar pouring out of these cracks, and black smoke filled the rooms of the house. The voice continued: “Look over here. This house is like a spiderweb. Every season the web hosts a new spider.” I again immediately understood what the voice was trying to explain to me, and replied: “And in the current season that spider is my mother.” After having said this I immediately woke up, and wasn’t able to fall asleep again. I typed this experience out right after I was awake. The memories were very sharp.

Analysis:

I think the message in this dream to me is quite clear. If I want to break free of these cycles, I have to stop trying to walk the middle ground. Only then will I truly break free from this cycle. The way I handle it now is the way every individual in this family of ours has handled it. They all came back and endured more drama.

Though it is a very complex situation, its breakdown is actually quite simple. None of us want to carry all this pain that was passed onto us by the generation that came before us. Our parents before us didn’t want to either, and they got it from their parents, who got it from their parents, and so on and so forth. If I want to break free, I need to want to leave it all behind.

The words “this house is like a spiderweb and every season the web hosts a new spider” really hit the bullseye. It made things so much more clear to me. My mother is just fulfilling a role. Her mother came before her. Every family that works this way has someone that performs this role.

I don’t think my mother wants this role, but in order for her to be able to part with that role I need to remove myself from the web.

There are no winners in this conflicts. There are only our individual choices, and how those choices affect the others that involve those choices.

Date: 03-01-2016

I recall a short but telling dream I had last night. My brother and I were celebrating New Year’s Eve at our parents’ house. I was standing alone on the little square in front of their garage. But I had my own place now since a little while and I suddenly realised in the dream: “Why aren’t we celebrating this over at my place, without the restricting rules and disapproving oversight of our parents?” I wanted to suggest this to my brother, who was inside the house. I walked around the house to the front door. As I stood before it, the door opened, and out walked my sister, her husband, my brother, and his girlfriend. My sister was crying, her husband visibly sad, my brother looked like he had been crying, but his girlfriend seemed mostly fine. She was calm and comforted him. I hadn’t seen my parents. In the dream it was a given they were inside the house. They remained inside the house throughout this short dream. The door closed and the five of us stood outside on the driveway. After my brother and sister, and their spouses had exited the house all its windows turned dark black, like the shaded glass of a limousine. I could no longer see what happened inside. I asked: “What happened?” My sister answered: “We have confronted mom and dad with the past. This had to stop. Things could no longer continue as they did. All three their children were damaged by all the things they had swept under the carpet, and what little we had uncovered they were trying with great effort to bury again.” My brother confirmed it: “Things were getting out of hand. Something had to be done. This needed to be said.” None of them felt like celebrating New Year with me now though. They all wanted to process what had happened. I was glad they had not involved me into this.

Analysis 17-02-2024:

I write this analysis in the far future. In the rear view mirror things can become so much more clear. You should know that the Christmas that preceded this New Year’s Eve was the one where I received a Christmas card from my parents, which on opening the envelope turned out to have come with an appendix. As I took the card out of the envelope, this appendix fell to the floor out between the card. This appendix was the catalyst for a lot of conversations about the past between me and my siblings.

The Christmas card was generic, though my mother had misspelled my name again, as she also did on the envelope. She insists that the spelling of my name is the way she spells it, with two capital letters in one word, even though official government documents do not spell my name like that. But apart from the card there was this appendix, which I picked up from the floor and folded open. It was a letter that opened with the line: “To all our children.” Intuitively I folded up the letter again, and put it in a drawer.

It was apparently a letter they wrote to all of us. Any Christmas card that comes with an appendix containing what I predicted this appendix would contain is a Christmas card that illustrates a complete and utter disregard by its sender of what Christmas is supposed to stand for. I was going to read it some time later when I felt like it. I didn’t feel like consenting to their influence over my life at this moment. Later through my sister and brother I found out that I was spot on about what I predicted was the content of the letter, as they had received an identical version themselves through similar means.

But I never quite thoroughly inquired about it. To explain how I approached this, I need to give you a little backstory. Many years ago, my own mother had tried to part with her own family for what I think amounts to months, or perhaps even up to two years. During that time period, her oldest sister had sent her a letter, with the approval of her other family members. In that letter they excused all their shitty behaviour of them to her, and that letter concluded with the statement that the things they couldn’t excuse away in any specific way were just “inherent to life”.

I remember vividly how insulted and deeply hurt my mother was by that specific last statement in the letter. Things just happened? It added insult to injury of what had already transpired between them and her so far, and that is a long story going back decades into her past. She would bring this subject up time and again during tea and dinner, and would always touch upon that statement. “It’s just inherent to life.” As her pain subsided over time we would still joke about this sometimes, amongst ourselves, like when someone accidentally dropped a spoon on her toes, we’d say: “Oh, it’s inherent to life.” Mocking the statement, which was clearly just her family’s way of stating they weren’t going to take any responsibility for their behaviour, and trying to package that in a thoughtful sounding way. But now back to the letter I and my siblings received.

I inquired to my brother about the letter, asking if he had received it, and if so whether he had read it. He had. The letter had been sitting on his desk in their house when he came home from work one day. I told him I hadn’t read it. He asked if I was going to. At the time, I wasn’t sure so I said I didn’t know. He said if I wouldn’t read it I wouldn’t miss out on anything I didn’t already knew. I asked him this witty question: “Let me guess. It explains their shitty behaviour, and the rest is just “inherent to life“?” making air quotes with my fingers as I said that last part. My brother’s facial expression changed, and he laughed. Yup. That was it.

Many years later the subject came up between me and my sister. Hers was handed to her by our mom, together with a Christmas card. She too confirmed that my similarities with the letter our mom received from her family were there and that this was indeed the purport of their letter. The letter illustrated just how utterly blind for their own conduct our parents were, specifically our mother in this case. If I ever wanted to make a case for how she is to me what her family is to her, this letter would be exhibit number one.

Though I intended to read their letter at some point, I never did. For months I would sometimes come across it again, opening the drawer, reminding me of its existence. One time the letter had fallen out of the back end of the drawer and I found it laying on the ground below the cabin. Every time I saw it again I contemplated whether I was going to read it, or postpone again. I chose to postpone every time.

Then, after a few years I would move out of the student dorm, and into a house with my wife. When I moved my stuff, I could somehow no longer find the letter. I have no idea what happened to it. When moving, I had looked for it to no avail. It was gone.

Maybe it did move and is somewhere with the stuff I have in the attic, still boxed up, but I still haven’t found it. Maybe it is for the best that I never read it. All it could do now is make me angry. Maybe I will find it again when it no longer has this power over me, and I can finally laugh at it. In a way, this letter can perhaps be seen as something hilarious.

Date: 20-06-2015

This was such a weird dream. I was with a group of people. Generic students. I didn’t know them, but I did know our leader. It was GJM; a biology teacher from the university. Our task was to look for certain items. The location shifted while we were searching. It was sometimes my student dorm house, but also a large square castle. It was a very forested area. In the area where we were searching there were also other people. I recall seeing an old pupil of mine from when I was a teacher myself. She was with a girlfriend. Her presence had no baring on the story, it was just another familiar face.

GJM gave me a little wooden box painted black. In this box was a little device, which looked like an ankle bracelet for someone on house arrest. Putting this ankle bracelet on would give its wearer the ability to fly. He gave it to me and assigned me the task to look for “the keys”, of which there were seven in total. We needed these keys to start the engines of our spacecraft. With an obvious lack of skill I tried to fly, but I stumbled through the air, untrained, going from wall to wall, tower to tower, tree to tree.

I was trying to impress my former pupil, but she wasn’t really paying attention to me. And after observing her for a while I realised that she and her friend too were looking for items, and so was everyone there who was not with our group. But they had no idea what these items were for; they were just collecting them for the fun of it. We on the other hand really needed these items in order to get back to our home planet. Finding the seven keys now became a serious necessity, and not some fun quest. I already had found six of them. Only one to go.

I went inside the building and was suddenly completely naked, as if I only just realised I hadn’t worn any clothes all this time. Somewhere in the building a door opened, and I rushed away, flying into the staircase. I didn’t want anyone to see me, cause I had no way of explaining what I was doing in any sensible way. “Yeah, I’m flying here naked, looking for keys to start the spaceship of my biology teacher.” Nobody would understand this. I flew to my own room in the dorm house, where I was going to get dressed. I saw my door, but as I flew close the door of my neighbour, VB, opened.

But it wasn’t her who opened the door. Instead in the open door stood a completely naked T (my friend from the university) and he was drying himself with a towel. Apparently he had taken a shower in our bathroom, which he had stated was one of the best showers he’d ever had, some time ago in the real world. I entered my room, which was now a really tiny room instead of the spacious studio it actually is. It only had one table, and three chairs. T entered behind me and sat down on one of the chairs. I was uncomfortable because both of us were in the nude. I’m a little shy.

Then an even older friend of mine entered; a guy I knew from high school, JC. And JC reminisced about our joke routines: “Hey, do you remember our jokes about ‘Hennie’?” We laughed and laughed, until I suddenly realised I was neglecting my very important quest to look for the seven keys. I looked at my key chain, and counted the number of keys I had found. Were there six or seven keys? For some reason I had great difficulty with counting the keys. Sometimes I counted six, and sometimes I counted seven. I was unable to get a sure count, so I flew to GJM to help me count.

Somehow I was no longer naked, as if being in my room had corrected this automatically. Or maybe I had put on clothes but just don’t remember doing it. But I flew through the hallway looking for a way out of the house. Outside I found GJM and he helped me to count the keys, which somehow was a difficult task even for him. But he counted seven! I was relieved, cause if he had counted six I thought maybe he would be disappointed in me. I didn’t want that, but wanted him to be proud of me.

But then we looked at some kind of metal box. It might’ve been brass or some alloy containing copper. It looked a big like a padlock, but it had several key holes. The holes were numbered, 1 to 7, but also another: The “M” key. “We’re still one short.” Said GJM. “Now what?” I asked concerned. “Oh, wait a second.” GJM replied, who took out his own keys from his pocket: “The M key, I have one of those myself.” He took it off the ring and handed it to me with his signature big smile: “Here it is!” Now we had all the keys to open the box. The dream ended here.