1. Deep Blue Sea.
This was my first "Swims with Sharks" dream. It was not to be the only one. It started with me swimming in the sea. It was a summer day with a lot of sun, it looked like it was around midday or later, and the water was deep blue and pleasant. I felt adventurous, so I swam a bit further than I used to. At some point I realised I was far enough from the shore to feel comfortable about it, so I said to myself that maybe it was not a bad idea to go back soon. So I turned around, but I couldn't see the land. I was confused, truth be told. A moment ago, I could see the beachead with the corner of my eye, and it didn't really look that distant. Now I couldn't find the beach.I would have peed my pants, if I wore any, but there was only the sea to pee in. I turned around again, certain I 'd made some mistake, and the shore was the other way. But I was in the open sea, and if there was land anywhere around me, it was too far away to even see. Then I saw a streamlined shadow moving swiftly in the waters not too far away. And coming in quickly. I panicked. I thought "Shark" of course. And it was big. Too big to overlook. I remembered a documentary from good old Jacque-Yves, who said that you could avoid being eaten by a shark if you stayed at the bottom, because supposedly sharks can't eat unless they 're under their victim. I dived, and I woke up sweating, trying to dive in my pillow. There was sweat everywhere, I was really swimming.
2. Deep Blue Fucking Sea Indeed.
This was the last of the nightmare chapter of my "Swims With Sharks" dreams. They continued after it, but not only they were far from nightmares anymore, I also didn't have any seriously nightmarish dreams for the next five years following this dream. That is, I had dreams that should feel bad, but they felt mildly unpleasant, a bit anxious some time, but not really scary or threatening. I was swimming again, and then I saw a shark. Nothing like the original crackenish thing that had threatened me the first time, but it was menacing anyways. I shrieked and got out of the water fast. But then I felt angry, so angry, outraged, and I grabbed a couple of wooden spikes I found lying there on the beach, and dived back into the water. I chased the damn shark, furious like hell, and I killed it with hate. The poor thing, it was so scared when it saw me coming back for it...
3. 'A'A.
I was taking a stroll on the beach, in the evening. There were rainclouds forming far away, and the weather was rather dark and moody. The sea was not calm, in fact there were waves, and the water was an angry greenish shade. I felt drawn by it, and I focused on the waves, and then suddendly, I was gone, taken by the sea, and carried deep inside it and far away. I remember it happened in a pretty weird way. I was standing on my head on the waves, almost like I was surfing with my hair as a board or something. My thoughts were the deep vacuum of a Dattura trip, and I felt extatic, quite unlike a Dattura trip. I recovered some of my self control when I was already deep in the water, but it was OK cause I could breathe and swim easily. Then I saw a dolphin, far away in the misty distance. No, I don't have to use all those adjectives, but it's fun. I heard it call at me, with a clicking sound. To my ears, it sounded like: " 'A "! I replied, someway or other, and then it started teaching me its' language. It said " 'A " meant "him/her or it", " 'A'A " meant "you" and " 'A'A'A " meant "me". I understood it was liking me and it wanted us to be friends, and that it was warning me about sharks in the waters- if there was any trouble, I had to scream " 'A ", so that it knew there was a "him/her or it " around, at which point, I figured, it would come to help. I thought about it while the dream lasted and I was swimming around fishily, and I found it weird that one 'A meant "it" and three 'A meant "me". It looked like their language persons were inverted compared to ours : First person for "that", second still for "you" and third for "this".
4. Ulin.
I had just finished reading The Lord of the Rings (and it was long long ago, a looong time before Peter Jackson got his Holywood dirtied hands on it), and I figured I 'd do some magic. One day, Aliki, an old family friend of mine, had an accident at school. She fell on a glass pane and cut the tendons of two or three of her fingers. There was blood everywhere, and I found a tiny bit of glass with some of her blood smeared over it. I took it home, and for three nights, during that months' full moon, I 'd hold it in my hand, looking at the moon through it, and saying " A Elbereth Gilthoniel, Silivren Penna Miriel" etc etc. I had a problem with my accent, but it didn't seem to matter. One night, while I was asleep, with the little glass triangle next to my bed in a ring case I 'd found in my moms stuff, I heard a funny noise coming from it. I woke up, and I saw a triangle of green light, each corner crested with a circle of the same luminescence, floating over my head. There was a thin line of green light connecting it to the ring case. I heard myself exclaim "It's an Ulin!" or something similar, although I 'm pretty positive the actual word got all mangled up with the name of that thing from the Neverending Story, that I watched on video shortly after, so that in the end I couldn't make out which was the real name of my magic bit of glass, and which one was my cryptomnesia. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to observe any similar magic after that, as the very next day my little talisman got broken as a friend (and he was my best friend) examined it, and it fell from his hands. I kicked him in the groin for that and cried a lot, but it was broken and never worked any childhood magics again.
5. Ftinolathoboochteri.
The title could be translated as "Fed Up With Cheap Oil" and it was the name of a ship from a dream. The dream itself wasn't that particular, although there were pirates in it, and I was the captain of the ship. The interesting part was that I managed to remember the name. It's a made up word, and made up in my dream pressumably. It sounds really funny and a bit like a limmerick word in greek, only there's no limmericks in greek. But it could be the word a really small child gave to one of his fantasy ships in a fantasy with pirates and brave captains. In the dream, I was, as I said, the captain of Ftinolathoboochteri, and she was assaulted by pirates. The moment we saw them, I ordered the big fat ugly cannon we had on board to shoot a couple of volleys at them, and their ship sank. Then, they swam to our ship, and they climbed on it. Me and my men started running around the ship trying to find them, and everytime we found one, we put him in chains, and tied them altogether to an umbrella pole on the deck, but it was a tough job, because they were mingled with the passengers (my ship was a cruiser filled with tourists). Maybe some managed to escape. They 'd also done something to my ship, because it was flooded with water. There was water everywhere on the decks, ankle deep, and I was afraid she would sink, but of course she didn't. Ha.
6. Dreaming Tides.
I was in a canoe with a friend, and we were floating casually in Athens city, only it was in dream time, and so the streets had turned to canals. We must have been somewhere around Filopapou hill, when we heard a bells' toll. My friend instructed me to duck in the canoe, and hold on to the sides, and then there came a wave, like a tide, that swept over us. I heard more tollings of the bell, and every time, a wave rushed over the boat with us ducking in it and holding on to the sides. Then we got up, like nothing had happened and started paddling quietly again.
7. I Am Not A Cat.
I was standing on the roof of a school bulding, from the looks of it. I could see the schoolyard underneath, and the classroom buildings around it. Someone was with me, I think a lion, or some other large cat, or just a man who looked like a cat. Maybe he had a cats' head or something. He said something to me, which I can't remember, and I fell on my knees and then on the floor, and I started crying and saying "No, No, I am not a cat!! I am a man!!" and then, with a smaller voice "a woman". The cat, or cat man, took me and we got down the stairs, and through dimly lit corridors, we reached the schoolyard. There was green grass everywhere. I lifted my head, and looked around, on the roofs of the classroom buildings. My ancestors, grim silent lions were looking down at me.
8. But I know I can Swim (Under the Persian Rug)
I was walking on the wind, over some avenue with a lot of cars running on it. Their lights left aftereffects in my eyes, like shinning bees. I flew around a bit, and then I saw a guy, around my age, all dressed in black and tall, looking a bit like a Vampire Prince from the World Of Darkness. I went near him, and then, suddendly, I lost my purchase on the wind and I sank to the ground. I stood next to him and I looked at him in a confused, bewildered way. That had never happened before. We started talking. It turned out, from what we made up from the experience, that whereas I used the Wind created by other peoples lives to fly, he disrupted it, in some sort of way, and that was why I couldn't walk on the wind over him.
9. Look, Ma, no Walls.
I was being chased by some people, who didn't really mean any good to me. I was at a place that must have been my moms house at Penteli, but it looked very different, as usual in dreams. I hid in a closet, but they found me. Then I started running again, and at some point, I did something with my chest muscles, or my breath, maybe, and I passed through a wall. That was great. The people chasing me got really mad, because they couldn't follow through the wall. I started doing that thing with the chest muscles again, to escape them. I woke up thrilled, and for a while I could remember exactly what the muscle thing felt like, but I couldn't really repeat it. I tried, but it didn't work. Then I fell back to sleep, and next morning, I couldn't remember it any more.
10. Drunken Ship
I was at Corfu, and all my friends from there, they were in a strange- looking elongated building, something like a bunker, only with rows of holes in the walls like windows, and they had put oars through them, and they were rowing merrily. Some of them were outside, drinking, packing things, generally making ready to go. I was talking with one. He told me they were getting ready to go away on a journey. I was welcome to come along, it seemed. I told him I would really love to do that, but I couldn't. I wasn't one of them. I was on my own, and I was already on a journey of my own too, we had to follow our separate ways. Maybe at some point our paths had crossed, and maybe they would again in the future. Maybe they should even cross for that journey they were ready to make, but it didn't really look that way to me. I wished them well and went my way then.