My mot common dream patterns. In no particular order.
1) Swims with Sharks. Cool, no? Usually they 're either nightmares, or the kind of dreams you wake up from sweating. They started some ten years ago, maybe more, and because of them, i developped an actualy very real waking phobia, that didn't let me enjoy a swim at sea for a long time. Then, at some point, i was so fed up with them, that i reacted. I was hunted by a shark, and got out of the water, but then i got so angry, that i just went back in with a couple of huge wooden wedges in my hands, and chased the fucker. Um... that was in a dream, ok? After that, i seldom ever had an actual nightmare, with or without sharks, for about four or five years. I still had dreams with sharks, but they were the sort of confrontation/ conflict dream, not the kind of dream you want to absolutely desperately run away from. I guess it makes some sense that it coincided with my coming out as a trannie. It's also an example of a dream pattern changing: at first I was hunted by the sharks, then I started hunting them, or just fighting them.
2) School/ Army dreams, where i am at some sort of camp, or schoolyard, or classroom or sth, and am being instructed, or trained, or drilled on some subject, but the dream never focuses on the subject. It's more of a setting, than about the actual training. There's a twist involving some sort or projection that me and the rest of the students are shown (that happens only in schools, never in barracks). At some point in the projection, when all the other kids are sitting quietly, the dream starts getting weird, almost lucid, and I end up being transported in another place, or just realise that I am dreaming, and wake up.
3) Police station/ Detention center of some sort. I 'm being hunted by the police, or just wanted, or merely watched. Might have to do with the old old story of my being arrested and led to a trial in 1991. I was a minor and i got out of it, don't worry. These are dreams full of anxiety and fear, of course. One notable twist on that pattern, was a couple dreams I had in which I was in a clinic for mentally ill children. That was a really really bad and realistic dream too.
4) Le temp des Gitanes. No, really. I dream about gypsies a lot. Usually it's just the kids, but sometimes it's the grown ups too. I 've never been in one of their homes, where they live and all, we just meet at some street, and then it's not always always in a friendly way, like, some times there seems to be some disputed interests, but most of the time it's the live and let live thing. I like waking life gypsies a lot too. The kids especially. No, we don't have any disputing interests... hehe...
5) Dressing up dreams. I 'd thought they would have ended after i finally came out and about with my transsexuality and perverse sexuality, but, no, they insist. I have no idea what all the fuss is about. Usualy, i 'm at some old looking place, maybe one of the houses i spent parts of my childhood in, or some vast looking mansion, and i 'm trying, anxiously enough, to find something to drag up with. I experience the same rush i always did when i was sneaking up into my mums bedroom, when i was a kid. Then, just when i have finally managed to find my one, unbelievably stimulating piece, something happens, or i do something, and i never get around to wearing it. Reminds me of an old, obsolete kind of dreams . . .
6) ...Journey Interrupted. Now, that's really vintage. I haven't had this one for a long, long time. I used to have it a lot before coming out though. I guess the symbols there can be explained accordingly. So, in those dreams i 'd get all ready to set out for a journey with some transport, usually ship, less often train, or plane, once a bus, but i 'd always miss it, because i had so many stuff i wanted to put in my bag, and take with me, and i kept looking around for more that i might have forgotten or sth. At one time, i remember i managed to get into the ship, but for some reason, it turned back and went into the harbour again, and i had to get down and wake up. Hah.
7) Dream Machine. That's almost as old as Sharks and Journey Interrupted. I dream of a motorcycle, or, rather, of me riding a motorcycle. Sometimes i do acrobatics with it, like that time when i was careening down a road with all the traffic lights red, and without brakes, and i managed to get out of it alive, although i did have to slide the bike under a truck. Yeah, like a stuntman. Hey, listen, if you have any dangerous scenes, in some dream... These dreams prompted me to actually get a bike of my own, which happened to be an antique german Horex from the 1950s, that i kept around for a couple of years. My best guess is the dream has something to do with my body, the body being the machine, and me trying to do all sorts of dangerous stunts with it. Last time i had that sort of dream, i was trying to make a weird looking chopper out of spare parts i had found. It ended up looking like a steam punk sculpture, or i don't know what.
8) Cats. I see them a lot. I 've no idea what they mean, unless it's something really occult and metaphysical inside me. They 're very diverse, just like the varieties of cats i meet during them. At one time, i was on the top of a building looking like my old shool, with someone else, i think it was a lion, or some feline anyway. I was crying, because he had just revealed to me my true nature, and i was screaming "no, no, i am not a cat, i am a man"!!!, to which i added with a smaller voice "a woman". Then we got down the old staircases, and through dimly lit corridors, until we reached the schoolyard, which was surrounded by the buildings of the school, and i looked up. All around the roof, I saw my ancestors, grim silent lions, looking down at me.
9) Bears. If it isn't cats, or sharks, it's bears. They follow me, hunt me down ruthlessly, and no matter what i do they just keep it on, like the Energiser bunny. I climb stony cliffs, or hide, or dive into the sea, they 're always there, behind me. Once, i was caught by one, and it did something strange. I was in a womans shape, in that dream and it assaulted me, but i still don't know if it fucked me or ripped me apart with it's fangs. Weird. Those dreams sometimes overlap with the ones about cats. Sometimes i 'm not being chased by bears, but by cats. Large cats, that i try to keep away from behind a door that's too frail to withstand their strength, and so i keep it shut with my body, but i see a paw coming through, or they just smash it to bits and burst in the room.
10) The Succubus. I 'd have to have much more male energy in me for this to qualify as a real succubic experience. Anyway, i 'm meeting this woman i don't know, and who's really hot and sexy, and i just have to fuck her, she's really provocative. The only thing that stops me, is Ada, i think of her, and how she 'll get hurt when i tell her, and sometimes i don't do it, sometimes i can't help it, and i just think of Ada while i fuck the woman. I used to have that same kind of dream with Lila and Charis, who where the only other girls i had a really close and long lasting sexual relation with, so it doesn't have to do with Ada in particular, it's just that she's the one i 'm with right now. I think this one's about my femininity and the clash between it and my relations with my girlfriends. I do tend to feel that the two don't exactly go like bread and butter together in real life too. On the other hand, the appearance and overall sexyness of the succubic women in those dreams, are not exactly the image i associate with my self, but then, maybe i 'm missing something... I don't know.
11) Dream substances. I don't really do drugs anymore. My system must be cleared from all the long lasting influences of the stuff i took in the past. Still, i dream dreams where i 'm taking that stuff again, and, in those dreams, everything feels exactly like if i was actually dropping that pill, or smoking that spliff. Heh. Free trip, but then that's what dreaming is all about.
12) Weird/ Lucid dreams. Sometimes i get these. Most of the time, I just realise i 'm dreaming, and wake up promptly after, with a feeling of surfacing from underwater. Back in the days of chemical abusiveness, i used to have long winded dream sequences where i didn't just realise i was dreaming, but also tried to do diverse dreaming tricks while at it. That's really a separate dream category deserving some description of its' own, so you 'll find a chapter about Lucid Dreaming elswhere in this site.
13) Going Nowhere. I 'm running, but really slow, and trying to go faster, but i can't. Sometimes, i 'm running from something, but more often than not, I 'm just running to go somewhere in time, or just plain running. Then i realise i 'm going really slow, like i 'm swimming in time. Usualy, I then start to run on all fours, in a weird loping stride, sort of like a pouncing beast, but all in slow motion. At some point, i start thinking all this is very weird, or I remember having dreamt of it, or I think to myself "It's just like one of those dreams...!!" upon which i realise i 'm probably dreaming, or at least i wonder whether i am or not, which finally wakes me up. One summer, I was swimming in the sea, and I tried to imitate that "loping stride". It turned out to be quite effective a way for swimming, although you had to keep under the surface all the time, so I couldn't keep it up for too long at a time.
14) Ultra Violence. Somebody does something that really pisses me off, and i 'm getting really really ugly, and violent against them. I start hitting them, so hard they ask for mercy, but i 'm beyond it. It used to be that everything started with someone trying to get me into a fight, just like in a western, someone would try to draw some pistolero person into a fight, that they didn't want to get into, but they won anyway and killed the guy taunting them. The first series of that sort of dream followed that kind of scenario. Then they stopped for a while, and now they come back only once or twice a year, from all i remember. I used to see a direct link between these dreams, and the attitude of certain people i used to know, which would always try to prove themselves as better than me, and end up looking really stupid and pathetic, without me ever realising what was going on, until only later when i recalled the incident in the light of the dreams. That used to happen a lot, but of course it could have been just me overestimating the importance of the dream repeating itself.
15) Dream me up Scotty. I 've had quite a few of these. Typically, I wake up and realise I don't know where I am. I get up, try to orient myself, and then I realise I 'm not were I slept the night before, for example, I wake up in my moms place in Athens, while I slept in Corfu. I freak out of course, and try to understand what's happening, but then of course I realise I 'm dreaming, and wake up, although in some cases, I just go back to sleep in the dream and dream more.
16) Walking against the Wind. That's a Weird dream, actually, but it's of a particular type, so it deserves special mention. In it, I start walking against the wind, sort of like a mime, but not so exaggerated. I feel pressure on my body, like I was walking underwater, and then I start using that pressure to climb and walk on thin air. It's enchanting. I don't actually fly, it's much more like swimming, I wave my arms about to hold myself afloat, and kick with my feet to move forwards. Sometimes I get so high up that I am totally terrified I might lose it and fall. Othertimes, I just float happily on. Most of the time, it's so weird, I remember it's not exactly normal to do that, I remember having seen that in a dream, and I tell to myself "wow, I can do it in real life too", or, in the worse case, just wake up.
17) Architectures. I haven't seen many of these recently. Don't know why. They 're dreams about buidlings, usually too big to understand what they are from the inside. They 're full of corridors, and I 'm runing around in them, either looking for something, or running from someone, or just running. Often, I take some weird looking elevator, to another floor, and there, I start running again. The corridors, or the rooms, I end up into, are rather complicated. Once, for example, I got to a basement, and it was a high ceilinged vast room with pipes and ladders everywhere. I had a feeling of immensity. It's silly, but I think these dreams are the way individual cells perceive the inside of my body.
18) Band on the Run. I was in a band once, years ago. Now I dream of it. It's never the exact same band, although the guys who played the base, and te drums, are always there. The three of us were the core of the band and we were changing guitarists all the time. I dream we 're having a gig, somewhere. It's always some dark Metal club, there's people everywhere, backstage, in the pit, everywhere. It feels so good. They 're not there for us, and we 're not there for them, we 're all there for the music, and the fun and there's lots and lots of it going around, catcalls, screams, booze flowing free, smoke everywhere, and people moshing or staging. It's like the concentrated extract of all the good times I had with the band, and also with friends in clubs. It's so fucking sad when I wake up. Another version of that dream is when I 'm looking for a particular song on a tape, or trying to find the tape in a pile, or trying to figure what band/song is the one playing on the tape I 'm listening to. These dreams are in the same category, because I have the nostalgic feeling of good times rolled in both versions.
19) Soul Sisters. I can't remember having seen this one more than three or four times, but it deserves a category of its' own, because it feels so important. I 'm in the streets, with some other she-males, usually older ones, that I sorta look up to. We 're talking in a friendly warm and intimate way, like we 've spent all our lives together. It's usually dark and the streets are empty, deserted. There's only us. The whole town is in a torpor. I feel melancholy, beautiful, sweet melancholy and I wanna cry.
20) Doomsday. I dream about the end of the world, from time to time. I had nightamares after I watched "The last night of the World", but this is different. Sometimes I see the disaster itself, sometimes I just know it's coming- it's usually a meteor, or a disease- and some other times still, I see the ruins of the world, the aftermath. There's panic involved, and anxiety, because there's something I have to do, or someone I want to meet before everything ends, and I don't know if I can make it in time. In one case, I was a woman that wanted to become a man, and when I finally made it, and I was looking with pride at my newly sprouted prick, the sky started falling.
21) Intruder alert. I 'm at my moms' house, in Pendeli, and there's some intruder, a burglar, or some "friend" that proves to have actually been an enemy all the time. I go around the house to flush him out, usually mad at him, outraged, and ready to throw him out, but sometimes I 'm even a bit scared, because I know he's stronger than me. Sometimes, there's more than one person in the house, that shouldn't be there. One time, they were having an actual party, and I was mad with rage. Most of the time, my mother is there, and I feel I have to protect her, and sometimes there's friendly faces around, who show some support. One of the first dreams of that type, I remember I was certain, when I woke up, that it had to do with an asshole that came around our house for some time, playing giggolo to my mom. He was trying to make a good impression to her, and this of course involved me. One day I found out he had told her he 'd seen me in Maroussi were I hung out, and that I was looking weird, not good, like I was taking drugs or something. In the dream that I thought was about him, I was screaming blind rage, and holding a meat cleaver, ready to use it, but some of my friends were holding me. After I found out about what he had told my mother, I really thought it was a good idea- the meat cleaver, I mean.