Many theories have traveled the road between dream life and waking life in an attempt to appropriate for themselves the territory of both. The extreme views move from the notion that dreams just reflect concerns in waking life, to the other pole that feels that waking life just being a pale refection of the Dream Time. One says we build houses, and then dream about them, the other says we want and dream about houses and then reconstruct them.

More inclusive conceptualizations produce a notion of dynamic interplay between the dream world and the waking world. We build houses and dream about them, but we also dream about houses and construct them. The question of whether the house was first dreamt or built is long lost. There is a dynamic between the two with co-create one another. Further, dream houses function and operate in many other ways in dreams than plans for later waking-life constructions. That is, they exist for the existential pleasure (or horror) of living in them in the dream, they bring together novel experiences, thoughts and feelings, they contextualize emotions, and operate in countless other ways. And upon waking, the dream house is not just something to replicate either. The dream house image may be captured for a journal, for a discussion, for an interpretation, an art piece, for a theory, for food for another dream. In its form as a nightmare or divine inspiration we see that the dream produces connections in the waking world even when we don't have an interest in the dream acting this way. A cybernetic feedback system develops between waking and dreaming life. Interactively dynamic and mutually productive images, actions and forces emerge. Biological and cultural codes and objects and trends change and are re-absorbed by the dream-world, and then flow again upon the body of the earth, the body of the social, the body of the gods.

Here, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the most dynamic cultural object and trend is the digital revolution. For many people this simply means that there are a lot more computers in our lives. Others feel there is a fundamental paradigm shift occurring. Either way, computer dreams are on the rise. As I have written about before [see Wilkerson (2000 July). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams II : The changing (inter)face of dream texts. Electric Dreams 7(7). ; Wilkerson (2000 March) Digital Dreams: The changing (inter)face of dreams in the twenty-first century. Electric Dreams 7(3). ; and Wilkerson (1999 Aug) Computers in Dreams, Electric Dreams 6(8) ] whether you believe that these dreams simply reflect the rising concern and involvement with computers during our waking life or feel that they are a symbolic trail to our innermost self and beyond now mediated by binary metaphors, the information age and its technologically mediated communications now increasingly inhabit our dreamscapes and are a part of our inner dreamworld. Just as when we shifted in the last century from dreams of horses and carriages to automobiles and interstates, the shift to computer screens and virtual reality have changed the psychological landscape and created a whole new set of images through which we can see our lives. What does it all signify and how to we give it meaning? Like the digital revolution itself, there is the continual question: Is the computer just another en-slaving machine we are adding to our collection of cultural accumulations or a major paradigm shift in human consciousness?

I would like to suggest that the burden of answering this question has shifted from a natural position to a constructed one, and that dreamwork can be part of the positive construction. While humankind has always had to struggle with the creation of meaning and value, it has never been so hard as it is in the early 21st century. Older cultures offer rich systems of meaning and value for their participants and through rituals of initiation they move from one level of meaning into another. But our culture (Western capital culture) absorbs all other cultures. As older cultures encounter us, they either have to run into the wilderness and hide or watch their traditions fade away as the members of the tribe begin to acquire radios and guns and tennis shoes. Though it may only be a consolation prize for us, the destruction of older values has opened the door for new worlds of our choosing. This doesn't mean choosing anything. Because we live in a world of other individuals and souls, other natural and unnatural processes, choosing becomes an art that creatively includes the desires of others as well as our own desires.

From the perspective of choice, we participate in giving meaning to things. That is, by seeing meaning and value as something that is partially given and partially received, we establish a relationship with the Other and negotiate a world where the meaning is neither forced upon us, nor totally constructed by us. We co-create with the universe. This is the curse and blessing of freedom.

Carl Jung suggested that the early philosopher-scientists, the alchemists, were engaged in an investigation of categories of mind-body-spirit that today have been so broken up and divided that they have little sense of wholeness and hardly get any cross fertilization from other fields. Spiritual people study spirit, mechanics study mechanical things and biologists study biological things. Not for the alchemist. They read all aspects of the imagination, psyche and matter for clues to discovering the only secret worth knowing, the philosopher's stone. Materialists thought this exploration was simply a foolish path of greedy people to find ways to make gold. But the true alchemist was more interested in the transmutation of something quite fantastic.. Changing lead to gold was simply a test of the philosopher's stone. The real event was the secret of changing base materials into finer substances.

We have a similar task in exploring and making meaning out of our soulless machines in our dreams and in our lives. These machines inhabit our lives more and more, and mediate our experience more and more. Without really knowing what is going on, we push forward, giving meaning to things and allowing them to reveal their significance to us. Future generations will look back on us as alchemists, mixing dreams, computers, society, self and spirit. As Jung noted, this innocence is needed to see the big things. That is, we throw all our expectations and hopes and desire into these new things, and by doing so, we get to see the deep imagination that is reflected in these projections on matter. Technology becomes the mirror of our soul, and we have a chance to encounter and give meaning to it before its significance is over-determined or abandoned as something absent.

To explore these notions, the Digital Dreaming Project was launched in August of 1999. The first part of this project involves the collection of dreams about computers, the Internet and peripheral devices and issues. During the first part of the collection phase, Electric Dreams allowed dreams to be sent in by the dreamers via requests on the Electric Dreams e-zine, on usenet newsgroups and through direct solicitation from public dreamers and dream journals online, such as the dreambank.net project and personal dream journals. The Digital Dreaming Project has also allied itself with the DreamRegistry project, and independently funded project to establish a public repository and searchable data for dreams. The unique part of the DreamRegistry project is that unlike other online dream databases, the DreamRegistry will allow communications between other databases, thereby allowing independent collection sites to exist, but sharing the data that is common to them. Some independent databases may be established as vertical portals, interested only in collecting nightmares or spiritual dreams. The DreamRegistry will allow these sites to maintain their identity and yet share data at the same time.

The following dreams were either sent in to Electric Dreams or requested from Web site from August 2000 through October 2000. The names have been changed except were the dreamers have explicitly requested their names to be kept with their dreams. Note that some people sent in collections while others sent individual dreams.

If you would like to send in a dream about computers, you can send them directly to Richard Wilkerson at rcwilk@dreamgate.com or enter them anonymously at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple

Digital Dreams - August 2000 to October 2000

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Depressing Message
From: V.
i am at my computer talking to some one. I don't know who it is or what the conversation is about. but all of a sudden they tell me something and i get really depressed. in the end i commit suicide Reprinted with permission of the Dream Chimney: http://dreamchimney.com/
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Dee's Computer Dreams Collection from 6-06-00 to 7-02-00

6-6-00 - DREAM - I was working on a web page and went to get a couple links for it and I thought I was really doing this so that when I woke up, I was surprised I was laying in bed.

I can't remember now what it was about though in the dream I thought it was a great idea.

xxx
6-11-00 - DREAM - I was searching for words about 'love' on the computer. But it wasn't just about love, it was about 'pure love' I used these words: 'love', 'welcome', 'masters', 'It To', 'Iyt To', 'Set To'. (These might not be exact spelling) They were the names of three masters who worked together. In the search, I placed all the words in a row with no marks between them.
xxx
6-13-00 - DREAM - (I had this dream at least 7 times during the night)

This was a web page about mass landing of UFOs. There are absolutely no details, only whiteness on whiteness. I put this list on a different web page each time so that everyone would know about it. The 2nd last time I had the dream, I saw the year 2029. The last time I had it, I saw the number 432.

I feel absolutely exhausted like I was awake all night making sure the work got done ... basically that's exactly what I did.

xxx
6-16-00 - DREAM - Part lucid - I was seeing an electronic screen that had boxes where words would appear. They would be either positive or negative words. I would recognize the word, react positively or negatively to it and move onto the next one. I don't know where this was or what it was for.

When I woke up from this, I realized that I had dreamed that a long time and wanted a people dream, so went back to sleep on purpose.

xxx
6-21-00 - DREAM - I was looking at a web page with links to sites that were about the environment. The links were in red and blue and my attention was drawn to a specific site t look at. (I can't remember what it was and don't think I could actually read it either)

NOTE: I have a environmental database page, but not a page specifically with news about the environment. http://www.greatdreams.com/environ.htm

xxx
6-26-00 - DREAMS - I was working on web pages about crop circles and UFOs ... these were all links - database - no pictures

xxx
6-28-00 - THREE DREAMS - These were 3 separate computer screen dreams in which I was being tested. The tests were all about myself and listing and matching sets of attributes and abilities.

Vxxx

7-2-00 - NOTE: I was watching a 5 hour long anniversary show on TV about the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson. - I went to sleep to take a nap during the show and dreamed I was making a web page about the biography of the Jackson 5. As soon after I realized that the movie was still on when I woke up that I had dreamed what was still on TV, I decided to forget the dream and went back to sleep.
DREAM 2: I dreamed I was making a web page about the biography of Art Bell. I placed his name within a box and did a page about him. After I published the page I got a phone call from a woman who asked me how it was that I published Art Bell's phone number. I told her I only published what was already available to the public.
I then went across the street where Art Bell lived and when I knocked on the door and there was no answer, I opened the door and went inside and found George Burns and Art Bell laying on the floor ... dead drunk ... (passed out) I woke them up and they thanked me for caring about them. They came home with me across the street and we talked a bit. When they left together, George Burns was smoking his cigar and he was walking arm and arm around each other's shoulders with Art Bell. The last thing Art said to me was that I should come across the street again in the morning to make sure they were all right. I agreed that I would come and check on them again.
I closed my door and saw that my front door was all glass and the white lace curtains were pulled aside and that everyone could see inside my house. I put the key into the lock and decided to leave the key in the door because then nobody can put a key in from the outside. I walked back towards my computer and saw that the biography on Art Bell wasn't yet complete because his life wasn't yet over.

NOTE: Joe reminded me that George Burns played the part of God in the movie 'OH GOD'.
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"XXX Chips "
By Tony
August 2000
Once I dreamt I was inside this computer and the chips were women trying to grab me. It was kind of erotic except that they looked more or less like robots. They finally got a hold of me, took off my shoes and connected me to the motherboard. I started screaming, it was painful and then...I woke up.

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"RPG Game"
by DBSboy
June 94
Dream
a group of fighters. A monster attacks, one of our members were hurt and the monster fled.

We found a peasant house and the woman living there invited us to stay there for the night. While we walked around the village, I saw a statue of the monster, which attacked us. The lady explained to us that the monsters, each with its own area, will not go near others of their own kind. The same night we gathered and discussed how to rid the monsters, and one thing we decided was to drive a car. I was the one chosen to drive. I sat in the car and started it (In real life I didn't know how to drive). The car swung left and right. I felt dizzy and finally I dropped out of the car, lying on the ground. A girl with a group of guys came by and said I was a girl(I am a guy), I fell unconscious before I could respond. The next thing I know I was walking in a hallway, and a best friend of mine came. He was very angry and punched me in my stomach. I punched him in return. He said he was told that I was flirting with his girlfriend (the girl I saw before I fell unconscious, in real life we never met each other). I explained to him what I wasn't flirting with her, and in fact I didn't know she is his girlfriend. He then went away. I followed him to a room and he was using the computer. I kept walking to the next room and his girlfriend sleeping in bed, that's when I first noticed she was very beautiful(as he told me in real life). That's the end of my dream.
Comments by Dreamer this is a dream long time ago, but I still remember it clearly, so I thought I might share it with other people.
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"Obsession"
by Maha
7/15/2000 evening (awoke at 9 30 pm)

I was a part of a large community, living together in a complex of buildings and living quarters, on massive acreage. One of the buildings was a training facility, for combat, stealth, operations of various sorts with a feeling of anti-government. Missions were planned and trained for, scenarios played out and there was a certain progression that everyone was required to follow even if they weren't there to go into the field, even if their skills were not in that area.

I had a vision problem and wore glasses and it bothered me terribly. (In waking life I do wear glasses, my recent difficulty seeing has been very distressful, and my father has been needing cataract surgery for some months and I have neglected to take him for it.) I knew it would affect my performance in a certain test course I would be having to go through and I thought it unfair and was afraid I would be mis-judged based on that, that it wouldn't be taken into consideration and I was distressed about it. I was pacing back and forth in front of the counter, waiting for my turn.

I had an object of desire... a man who kept appearing as two different people: a boy (now grown as the man) who I had known in my childhood (close family friend, it was always joked that we would grow up and marry, we remain in occasional touch) and my now companion who came here to live with me because I need help with certain things (I am also married - 30 years - and have 5 grown children). In this place (waiting for my test) he was the grown boy.

In being my object of desire, I was obsessed, he was on my mind constantly. I worried about everything to do with him/us. I was afraid I was going to scare him away with my intense nature, everything from my facial expressions to anything I said to him. We were dating casually, but I suspected he knew the intensity of the feeling I had for him and it was a constant stressor.

On the other side of the counter where I was waiting to take my test, there were divided areas each consisting of 4 work stations. They were defined as being either computer, person only, empty, or other types. The test consisted of standing at the end of the counter and bending over to look through a one-eye view. The perspective was difficult and I had to go from the end forward and name each station. Memory played a definite role in my answers and I said so. He said that was alright and to not be distressed by my poor vision but to do the best I could.

I completed the test and wanted to stay with him, but he ushered me out and said that I had things to do, others to attend to and that he would see me later. I went back to the main house to help with certain things... preparing dinner, seeing visitors off, trying to help my mother who had just moved into the complex and was still unpacking.

People were milling around, making plans for dinner and what to do afterwards, Dark was falling and there was no central lighting system and we all knew that we would have to either light torches and candles or accept the darkness. There were certain activities planned that I did not want to participate in but felt pressured and obligated to do so. It remained dark as no one lit anything and I was glad, thinking I would be able to slip away unseen. I wanted to think about the object of my obsession.

I slipped away from the activities but was accosted in the kitchen by a young girl who wanted me to help her make fried onion rings. I knew that would take time and I wanted to avoid it so I sent her on an errand and then put the bowl outside the door, making it difficult for her to find. Another person came in and looked disheveled and I asked her what she was doing and where she was going. She took me to another room and said that some of them were going away for the summer and did I want to go? I said no, I couldn't bear the thought of being separated from "him". They were doing some shooting routines and I became enraged, took a gun from one of them and aimed it at the tv screen which was showing Maury Povich. I hit him in the forehead right between the eyes and the picture froze like that, with a smile on his face.
They were horrified and looked at me as if i had done a truly terrible thing and they started to say how unlike me that was, how out of character. I became even more distressed and threw (I typed "through" and then corrected it here...) the gun down in horror and ran from the room. I was confronted by a group who were distraught over an accident, it turned out that I had been riding a horse with my father who was incapable of staying on by himself. When I had slipped off, he had fallen and was hurt, needing to go to the hospital.

I called the VA and tired to explain things, but they were far away and not helpful They said they knew him and that he was just acting. I argued but they were not receptive. (In waking life my father has been ill, going down hill and I have neglected my responsibility to get him to a doctor.) I finally threw the phone down and went to try and get ready, showered, looked frantically for something to wear as I had outgrown most of my clothes (gained weight). I found a closet with some of my older "fat clothes" and tired to find something without much success and had to settle for something I didn't like.

My mother came out of the other area and confronted me in some distress, showing me a bracelet that was mine. She asked me had I given it to HIM and I said it was none of her business, that it was mine. If I wanted to give it away I would, that it had in fact been given to me by soandso (a former lover). She was very upset and then HE walked in and I was upset to think that he might think our family was unstable and undesirable in terms of getting involved with on any personal level. He walked the other way and I followed him and he turned around and said for me to not worry.

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"Computer Dreams"
by Danielle

Jan-Mar 2000 various times

All I would see in my dreams were the screen of the computer. The words were in bright colors and I heard voices from voice chat. I was always in the pregnancy chat room(I was in my third trimester of pregnancy at the time). I would ask questions in the room about pregnancy and talk about baby names and labor stories. Mostly when I was having these dreams it was with the regulars that came into that room. I would time out with my ISP and that is usually when I awoke.

Comments by Dreamer I would often wake my mother from talking in my sleep and she said that I would move my hands as if typing. I was on bed-rest my last trimester and I had a laptop in which I spent most of the day in the pregnancy chat room. The rest of the day I was chatting in my sleep.

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"Cut and Paste"
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000
From: Kouro

I very readily have "cut and paste" imagery in my dreams. Very often I have dream worries that there is something on my invisible clipboard that I have previously cut, that I am in danger of forgetting about, that I need to paste somewhere before it gets lost.

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"From within the Womb of a Dream"
by Jude
Sunday, February 13, 2000

dreams liberate our evolving psyches from the demons imprisoning our inner souls…haunted emotions emanating from deep within the core of our beings, are awarded the opportunity to become unrestrained… scents of negative thought dissolve from the patterns of past lifetimes and transform into familiar fragrances of future conquests…
as i'm in the dreamscape, when the Now is manifest, all elements of my psychological nature, are presented and viewed with lucid candor…
the beasts residing in the synapses of my "unconscious" thought, transmute into saviors of introspection…molecules of motion shift
the blueprint skin surrounding my mind, as to shed the remnants of past lifetimes and flow into the movement of the present dream cycle…

well the other night, I had dream both revelatory as well as cryptic. it was truly enticing, in the sense that I was able to consciously "bend" or "alter" the environment and objects within the dream. the experience was a purging of my individual psyche and an internal hunger to evolve the world i'm presently residing in…
i'm focusing my psychic energy into the core of my dreams by redirecting the road i'm traveling on at that moment…good and evil, black and white, angelic and demonic forms, are the quintessential archetypes hidden within our collective thought…the blending or altering of the polar realities, or balancing the forces of creation, comprise the realm of Abraxas…the world of shadows become illuminating. Andre Breton surmised, "In the depths of our minds conceal strange forces capable of augmenting or conquering those on the surface. It is our greatest interest to capture them." to paraphrase Eckhart, all the devils are really angels just waiting to set you free…
i'm outside a mansion seemingly under reconstruction under renovation…it's bedside a dirt road obscured by overgrown shrubs and the corners of the roof are dripping with blood…there's surreal blue hues pulsating from within the windows accompanied by thunderous taunts of invitation…something is luring me to enter…the "front door is locked but open," says a sign on the door breathing in and out like rubber…I decide to pass through the door by osmosis, becoming transparent…rays of sunlight are smashing against the glass roof above me and the light is broken down into a spectrum…as I stare into the colors, there are loud voices coming from another room, actually sounds like singing, reminding me of the mythological Sirens…I'm standing on a floor of earth, where I notice, next to a fireplace are these small Gothic creatures dancing close to the flames; chanting songs to a "magic-sun animal…" their voices are incredible human.

I begin to realize, I'm in my mind's mansion where all the elements of my being are housed…I sense something is about to unravel…I enter another room where I notice a middle-aged woman sitting in a large wooden chair, on a neon-green seat…I'm reminded of the Museum of Natural History, for there's knight armor scattered all about and the chair reminds me of Louie the 15th…the woman is dressed in neo-modern clothing…she's sitting at the head of a long table mixing potions and reading labels…there's old books, glass flasks, lit candles and bottles of day-glo powders and solutions strewn about the table…as I approach her, I notice the table has an inscription in the center, shaped like a triangle, endowed with what appears to be extraterrestrial hieroglyphics…

she peers over to me with a soothing smile and winks as if she's trying to hint at something…suddenly, there's loud thumping on the walls as though someone or something wants to enter but there's no doors…everything is now in slow-motion, even the sun's rays piercing through the spotted ceiling…I begin to become a bit overwhelmed by the dense mist of apprehensive emotion reverberating about this room as an abrupt gust of wind pins me to the floor and as I look upon the smile of the woman, I laugh and exclaim "what a wild dream!"

while on the floor, I notice a vanity mirror across from me…I'm sideways on the floor and as I look into the mirror, I see my reflection shift into a myriad of faces…I am now in the skeleton of my psyche, in the membrane of my collective memory…facets of my selves are free-flowing and I know I'm dreaming and so attempt to rearrange the situation as I lay down on my back…I want to be cooled off for I'm sweating (sweating a trial of power…) I'm successful for I now find myself in a large pool, floating on a cushion of electrical wire…

I see the woman again, now sitting in a lounge chair by the side of the pool, knitting a very large sweater with hypodermic needles…she looks at me and mentions "I can still feel you inside my womb." Suddenly, I'm transported next to a waterfall inside the middle of the NY Botanical Gardens…I can hear opera, sounds like Mari Calles, echoing from the spacious Orchard Garden…I lie down on the grass and whip out my cell phone and begin speaking to a female voice who begins to give me instructions on how to download the "spiritual software" needed to make my "dream connections clear and free of distortion…"

I begin to explain that this may be difficult because I'm going to Manhattan to get to the Holland Tunnel and there may be dead zones in the tunnel…she laughs and says, "on my phone there is no dead time." she then adds, "a dream is what you allow it to be…"

I'm back at the pool…I see the woman standing beside a computer where she suggests "to look into the programming and when you access a disk-like object, switch to the topic you find most attractive…the code to the infinite structure of form…the formula waiting to be encoded."

She points to the computer under a sun-umbrella by the side of the pool…as I look into the monitor, I notice a gray circle with bold black words stating to "click here for lucid dreaming and here for prophecy…"
As I look back to her, she's gone…there's a virtual hand in the air with long rainbow-painted nails pointing at the screen where it now prompts to "download dreams…"

At this point, I'm a bit overwhelmed by the clarity and vivid impressions unfolding…I type into the computer {c:setup/deadzone} to see if I get a response from my mother who died at childbirth…(maybe this is the woman I'm seeing in my dream?…on the monitor I see "download failure try again." This time I type in {c:setup/oversoul}…the response is affirmative…"ENTER"…enter where I ask myself? "enter everywhere…" it responds without my typing anything into it, sort of like mental telepathy with a computer;)…I look at the computer and command it to transform into a brain and it does so! Pulsating with an orange glow…the brain commands me to look to the sky…a female voice then asks me to enter and I begin to realize I'm being reborn from the womb of this dream…

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"Mutual Mud"
by Ken
September 2000

I have a lot of dreams, some of which relate clearly to technology, others less so. Here's an interesting one. I was first exposed to the Internet my first year in college (93), and began mudding (IgorMud, specifically) the second semester. I played a lot at the time, a kind of mini-connectivity addiction. A few friends discovered it at the same time, played similar amounts. Each of us (I can think of 3 people) had dreams in which we were navigating terrain in a sort of segmented fashion, parallel to the 'east','enter' type commands of the mud. Our terrains differed, as did events within the dream itself, but we all had several dreams in which the dream progresses room by room, which was an odd experience, and a sure sign that we were addicted enough and playing enough that some of our cognitive pathways were getting fused. I don't remember much details about the dreams themselves other than their segmented style... still, I hope its useful to you. Who knows, maybe others share similar experiences?
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"Query Dreams"
October 2000
Michael

I have a lot.(of computer dreams) Especially when I am designing something on ACCESS and I get stuck with a Query.
I often dream of the answer .
Do not write this of as weird as it has happened 5-6 times and I am getting
to rely on it+ACE-
By the way I am a Shrink myself with Dynamic Orientation and there is no Freudian overlays or underlays in the dreams.
I do think that the PC can be a tool for creativity as can internet as a whole.
I am sorry I have no specific recall of a dream other than to say if they are there.
I will try keep your address and if another one comes along you will get it.

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"Too much Quake"
by SS,
September, 2000

"R<> Are you having computer dreams?
"R<> I am collecting dreams, dreams you have during sleep, of computers and
"R<> Internet related issues and topics.

Only if I've played too much Quake 2 before going to bed.

Sounds facetious, but it's not. The scenes - though not usually the violence - will form backdrops to my dreams. Wierd, eh?

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"Dreaming in Code"
by Robyn
September, 2000

being a techie i have computer dreams alot - whenever i start a new job i dream in code for a while - the whole dream consists of code scrolling on a black screen - not much to it - but kinda disturbing. I've also had dreams where parts of my computer were missing. One in particular my company kept making my monitor smaller and smaller until i had no monitor but i was still expected to do my job.

thats all - hope it helps.

[Note: stan requests that his name be kept with his dreams]

richard,
i saw your posted questionaire about computers in dreams. this dream not only has one of my old apple2 computers in it, i try to use it in my dream
to record part of the dream into my dream log. hence the starting sentence and probably a few more after that were actually composed while i was still asleep
but almost awaking.

stan kulikowski ii <stankuli@pcola.gulf.net>
DATE : 29 aug 2000 06:13
DREAM : the black horse recursion

=( yesterday i was rather tired after only two lectures on javascript and an exam review. when i got home, i took a short nap then spent the evening just vegging in front of the television with my mother. when i came to bed around midnight, i read a couple of the short introductory chapters in cornelius agrippa's _occult philosophy_, the virtues of elements and their compounds. agrippa is laboring over his inability to distinguish truth from fantasy in pliny's natural history, but he occasionally hints to have experience which is plainly untrue. i have so far accepted this as mostly self delusion on his part rather than deliberate deception. i got to sleep easily about 01:30. this is rather too early for me, but i managed to stay asleep as i still felt tired. )=

mark littlefield's brother, mitchell, has the odd habit of sleeping with his horse. it is a large mare, mostly black with some small white markings about the underside and a diamond blaze on her forehead. they sleep in an open room carpeted with mattresses, the horse on one side with mitch on the other near its hooves. today is an uncommon day, mitch rising just before sun up and going for a ride to exercise the horse.

in the still grayness of morning just before dawn, the horse and rider work to get in perfect coordination. at first the horse is a little bit out of rhythm but then comes into balance for a full gallop. running down the empty roadsides of massachusetts until they come to outskirts of amherst. then mitch decides to pull up by the community flagpole rather than continue into the town.

the community flagpole beside the roadway is a tampering rectangle built of rounded yellow sandstone rocks, each an oval half a meter in size. it is a truncated tetrahedron about three meters tall with a bare metal pole in the middle. no flag has been on it in months. it had been built during the WPA era of community work projects during the great depression.

the sun is just coming up when mitch dismounts beside the flagpole. his black horse rubs the side of her face against the rough sandstone. mitchell considers going for a longer run this morning before going off to work.

a disturbance on top of the flag base. another horse, a piebald stallion, has been sleeping up there on the right side of the pole. mitch's black mare, startled by the unexpected appearance of another horse, runs around the back of the flagpole where it meets an embankment, and so climbs up to meet the other animal. the stallion has an irregular patch of red, white and brown colors on its face, but its body is composed of large patchworks almost like a quilt.

"good morning to you." says a heavy set amish woman who has come up the path in a pasture next to the flagpole. she is dressed in grey broadcloth in the plain fashion of her community. "i see your mare have met our sire. he be guarding his mares."

the stallion on top of the base of the flagpole, smells mitch's mare once, then leaps off back into it pasture. he has seen a fresh pile of yellow manure left by one of his mares, which he quickly shoves it with his nose under a nearby bush. he then runs out of sight himself. apparently dung management is one of his duties toward his herd.

i seem to wake up here in my mother's house in ohio where i grew up. i debate about whether to write this dream up in my dream journal but decide that i have enough time before i have to go lecture today. i go over to the closet and pull out the components to my old apple 2 computer. i manage to get the various parts together on my bed but it is awkward to hold the CPU box with the keyboard on my lap. as the machine beeps and whirs in boot up, i wonder if i should dig around for a newer computer since the floppy disk format of this machine is not compatible with the rest of dream journal files. the green and black monitor starts to show and i decide it is better to get the dream down before i lose most of its details.

my sister comes to the door and begins saying something to me. i insist that she leave the room right away and she starts to complain. "please." i tell her as i push her out the door. "i am concentrating on remembering my dream before i forget it entirely." i close her out and lock the door. "i will come get you in a few minutes."

i go back to the bed and reposition myself among the various components of the apple computer. i begin to type "mark littlefield's brother, mitchell, has the odd habit of sleeping with his horse..."

=( i woke about 05:40. i had woken earlier, around 04:30 with another dream about a reunion at my elementary school in ohio and making some adjustments to a parabolic antenna used for SETI research, but this had a transmitter for contacting alien class 1 civilizations. it was too early for me to wake enough to type this dream in and i was not sufficiently awake so i fell back to sleep into this dream of the horses. i believe mark littlefield does have a brother who i have never met. i doubt his name is mitchell. i lived for fourteen years in amherst massachusetts, but there is no flagpole like the one featured here. i never had my apple 2 computers at my mother's house, but the recursion of trying to type this dream into a dream computer is somewhat interesting to me. )=

stankuli@gulf.net

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"School Monitor"
August 2000
by Judy

didn't write down yesterday's dreams, which were the first ones I've recalled in nearly a week, because of my Sabbath thing and needing to pay attention to my daughter, and now they're slipping away from me, but maybe if I capture this morning's they'll come back.

It's a traveling scene of some kind, where I've been on something like a Green Tortoise bus with a lot of people and much of our travel takes place at night. (Seems I sleep more soundly than I do on a real Tortoise venture, which is an WL exercise in uncomfortable sleep deprivation for me...). seems we're traveling mostly through rural parts of northern California, including places I used to live or visit or extended periods.

at one point we come to somewhere where there is a large computer screen and I decide I should check my e-mail and web visit sites at least a little.

My daughter, much like her WL nearly 6 year old self, is with me. I decide to look up an address or URL that sounds quite a bit like the WL life school that didn't accept her for this school year (they gave me an absurd thing about how she seemed "rather less mature" than the other first graders, which I think is utterly ridiculous, and so did every teacher she's had at her past programs, including arts camp for children up to four years older than she...it was ME that they didn't want in their family...ah the
snootiness of alternative private schools....).

so I switch from the mail program to the Web browser and when I enter the URL, I'm looking at this huge and brilliantly animated thing that looks like the combination of a theater marquee with large bright lights and a car lot...there are several long rows of shiny cars, all the same attractive shade of sparkly green, that the design artist has made into...well, this is hard to describe but they have sort of "masts" or "posts" that are sculpture-like, out of the same green enamel and material as the cars, coming up from the back, and not identical...rather like a crowd or a forest of whatever they are. I admire the artist's technical skill and creativity. My daughter is enjoying it too, and working on her reading (she is a beginning reader IWL) as I point the changes put to her.

Then my daughter and I discover that by pointing the cursor arrow, or something, at the marquee lights (which seem huge, perhaps the size they;d be in waking life or on a real silver screen, we can make the whole row of lights change and spell out what we want...we play with this for a bit.

then back to the moving around on the buses or whatever conveyance (this
part is fuzzy.)

the next morning or whatever, we come to a place that is vaguely familiar, it has large warm pools that have been constructed with big attractive concrete and tile settings around them...size of a family swimming pool but more like a spa.

I get a feeling this is a school where I visited or worked in Mendocino County twenty years ago? memory is distant but pleasant...

then I see my mother. My daughter is off doing something with maybe some other children... my mother seems worried and uptight and keeps alluding to some piece of business I really must attend to, but is being very euphemistic about it. I think she's getting at worries about my daughters legally unestablished paternity and "what if..." problems...but this could also have to do with her deceased mother (my Grandma Lottie)...who WL also had a lot of intrigue and confusion about just who her biological parents were and just where and when she was born...even the continent of her birth is in question!! my housekeeping, or lack thereof, also seems to be impugned here, though we are not even at home. (this was also Grandma Lottie's downfall...a creative and hardworking person who was really messy and disorganized. She died in 1972, when I was in high school, a little before I moved to the Bay Area.) I'm annoyed with many mother for making me guess just what she s talking about and for intruding into my life.

Then I'm in a place like the now-demolished Cowell hospital on the UC Berkeley campus, which is also a place I worked as a young college student, with mixed success at acting like a grown-up health worker. (the ways my flakiness got me into problems there is still a matter of some shame for me 25 years later. It's a beautiful if somewhat cavernous old building from the early part of this century, with, in this dream at least, a long damp leading downstairs. I have some business here too, though just what, I can't say. My daughter is still with me, and I'm trying to find something; it seems like we're part of this tour with the Tortoise-like unit but have all these nebulous tasks that have to do with my personal history to reclaim.) EOD as I recall it.....

another association with Cowell Health Center...I'm politically pissed off at what happened to it! It was a really beautiful building, as I say, and provided important on-campus care for students, including a dentist, drop-in urgent care, some in-patient services, a lab, and the women's clinic where I studied, worked and, um, learned some of my limitations at the time)...and it was destroyed so that the Business School could have its own new fancy building instead of sharing Barrows Hall with the Sociology (where I studied some too: I was an anthropology major) and Political Science departments...Student Health has moved slightly off campus and is nowhere nearly as comprehensive as it was. What this says about priorities and about the rise of corporatism over human need, is illustrative to me of why I think the journey from the 1970s to the 2000s is overall degenerate. I've gotten stronger and wiser, perhaps, but the world around me, especially as I see it in Berkeley and various parts of northern California where I've made my home since graduation, has not....

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"Flat Line"
by Peg
oct 2000
You know, Richard, although I spend a GREAT deal of my waking time using a computer, computers almost never appear in my dreams. The only instance I can recall is a recent dream where I was watching data (sleep lab data--my job) scroll across a computer screen, and it suddenly started to "turn a corner" instead of marching, as it usually does, in a linear way across the screen. And then it became even more multi-dimensional as I watched, forming kind of like 3-D diagrams.

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"Endless Pages"
dream-flow.v002.n010.4
From: Poetica
Subject: Endless Files
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 08:17:33 -0700

I turn on the computer and get a DOS-type screen with rows of filenames listed on it. I'm trying to get to my files, but each time I try to get a file up, a new screen comes up which looks just like the first. It feels like turning endless pages, or walking through endless doorways, pulling a curtain aside, but finding exactly the same thing behind each doorway.

Comments by Dreamer This is a recurring dream, which seems to happen when I'm very stressed about study issues - eg an exam or a major paper to hand in.

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"Adventure in Russia"
by Julie
9/10; 10pm-2am

I am in my father's car, in the back seat with my older brother; I am being taken to a party. I remember that I had left a deck of cards on the trunk, so I turn back and see that they are still there, despite the fact that we are driving rather fast. I concentrate on the cards, and they begin obeying my thoughts. They cut themselves, stand on end, and bend into the wind. I point this out to my brother, who is both amazed and terrified. I show him what I can do, just by imaging it happening. After demonstrating my unique abilities, the cards suddenly grow larger and larger, until all I see is the face on the Jack of Spades.

We arrive at the house where the party is at, and my family leaves. the house is an enormous three story mansion in the middle of nowhere, though I know I am in Russia. There is another house about 300 yards off, at the end of the driveway.

I don't know any of the people who are at the party, though I do notice that the host actually breaks into the house. There are about 30 people here, and the first night I am heading to bed, when I trip on the stairs and loose all four of my front teeth. It does not hurt, and I barely remember how it happened in the morning; I am very drunk.

The next morning several trucks drive to the other house, and it is soon clear that they are "bad people," and we are not welcome in this house. I happened to spend the night on the second floor with about half the guests, while the other have had slept on the third floor. We are trapped in the house, and for some reason the party has divided into two factions, those from the second floor and those from the third floor. It seemed to me that nobody realized the true danger that we are in, and how important it is for us to work together. Some people venture outside and are killed. I know that I have an ability to control paper, so I cut several pieces of paper into circles and put them into my pocket. Some of the guests have gone outside to try to escape, so I run out to rescue them. Because I don't know any of the guests, I have trouble determining who the "bad guys" are until I notice their guns. I remove a paper "disk" from my pocket and toss it into the air. It begins spinning and I control its flight, with some effort. With the disk, I behead the men with the guns. As the disk slices through their necks, they crumble to the ground in two pieces. I actually torment the men for a while, delaying their inevitable deaths. I am having fun. All the witnesses are horrified and relieved. I feel completely ostracized: no one will talk to me because I have missing teeth and I am a killer with supernatural powers.

Back in the house, I head up to the third floor, where the guests are gathered around a very intelligent young man at a computer. It is obvious that he is planning their escape. I gather courage to talk to him, despite my disfigurement. I try to explain that I have powers, and that we need to work together. A girl about my age (22) shuns me, so I attempt to play on her emotion. I tell her how horrible I felt that I had just killed several people -- the problem is, I do not feel badly at all. She is not impressed, and is obviously superficially repulsed by my appearance (though I continue to try to cover the gap in my teeth).

This boy goes outside when it appears safe, in order to assess the grounds. I see trucks coming, so I go out to warn him. We end up running up some trails that lead to the top of a mountain. I am running so hard I feel like my lungs are going to burst, but I am so scared I force myself to keep going. As we near the top, we notice the trails (caused by tires) become rail lines. It is clear that the men after us are running an illegal coal mining operation. A train is coming, so the boy and I hide. A man shows up, and I again kill with my paper disk. We run down the other side of the mountain, and into a small, run-down town. Everything is foreign, yet we manage to find the train station, where the train is just pulling out. We miss the train, and are stuck with a decision: Each of us only has one 10-ruble note, which is exactly what the next train out would cost us. However, we do not know where it is going, nor how we will survive once we get there. Also, all the rest of the guests at the house are most likely to be murdered, now that the two of us are gone.

The dream ends with the two of us on the train platform, not knowing what to do.

Comments by Dreamer There are a few things that seem cohesive with my life: I studied a lot of Russian history in college; I am currently unemployed and have no money; I am at a crossroads in my life, as I have just graduated from college and do not have any idea of what I would like to do; I am aware of my ability to be a capable leader, but I do not feel I have the likeability to accompany the skill; I also have trouble meeting strangers, and remembering names and faces.

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"Computer Dreams"
by comadre
October, 2000

fragments on awakening. apologies in advance to Dreamshare folks for the rambling style and the references to events and processes that might not make sense to anyone else...I can explain further if anyone is interested.

DREAM:I'm with a group of young activists...sense of myself being younger than I am IWL (WL I'm 44) but that most of these people assembled are still considerably younger than me, maybe in their late teens and early twenties, very serious young people but with what amounts to a good sense of humor and purpose. (feel now I'm not describing this well...these folks just seem very mature and thoughtful if a bit lacking in years of experience.)

there's some group project that involves people entering their varied opinions on a discussion...vote or consensus process in lieu of majority vote coming up? (all this is about political processes tied in with historic peace and justice organizing that has a "peace church" component and subsequently became secularized with some culture shift involved...for readers who are not familiar with the context, I"ll try to explain in further discussions.)

then...HERE YOU GO RICHARD: computers again!!!!...we're working in something like a computer lab at the high school, though I think we are in some kind of rented community center instead of a high school. people have some kind of emotional, rather than political, stake, in some discussion of goals, tactics, and philosophy that's going on...waking life this sounds an awful lot like some issues I've stumbled into in several list serves list serves in which I participate, especially in the past week.. it also has toes to my own history as a justice and peace organizer...there have been some internal and group conflicts over shared and divergent ideals and thoughts and it does, indeed, have a spiritual component at its core as well as one rooted in the personal and the social...what do I truly believe?

the results of whatever is being entered into these computers is being relayed elsewhere...is this something like an election center? whoever or whatever entity is in charge(group, committee, etc.) is going to have to wade through a lot of prose to sort out what people think and also make a decision based on that. I get the feeling that some of these young adults are going to be left out...there seems to be an ideological split happening. EOD

thoughts on waking life residue.....

man this has been a week. got into it with my significant other, who told me a week ago he isn't happy in the relationship and our divergent styles of communication are the issue...still feeling pretty insecure though there have been efforts to cool this out some...trust between us a bit shaky right now.

my history as a peace and justice organizer in a small, growing, somewhat tourist-y California town 15 years ago, where indeed AI was "considerably younger than I am now"...a lot of internal division then too, due to people's naivete and varying levels of experience.
ISRAEL AND PALESTINE: I'm disgusted for my people at the behavior of Israel...this is nothing new but this eruptive violence coming on the heels of Yom Kippur, which I am the only member of my family or origin to observe in any way. on the way to work a few days ago I screamed at the news on NPR, something I;m not prone to do ordinarily. and late last night I got involved in some meta-discussion about all this on another type of activist list where this was considered off topic and...well, it;s complex but I wound up stepping in and trying to be a voice of reason where I thought someone was acting inexcusable and threatening to charge an activist group in support of Palestinians with "hate crimes" because they spammed him through this list with announcements about an emergency demonstration. and he kept referring to the group sending the message as "hey, fuckheads" and then saying :"be nice", which strikes me as counter-productive and oxymoronic.....

well, I'm Jewish and he's not, and I pointed out, as reasonably as I could, that "hate crimes" are acts of violence motivated by someone's sex, sexual orientation, race, national origin, religion, etc....and as a Jew, I couldn't see where any hate crime had been done to anyone that justified referring this to a group known for troublemaking against progressives..... do I ever feel like a voice in the wilderness! and issues like this came up when I lived in Nevada County long ago, where someone would go on a tear about something in a peace center meeting and a friend would say to me and/or my partner, "you know, you;re right, but you're outnumbered."

yesterday I e-mailed a lot, for me, with an organizer in a national project aimed at countering militarism in the high schools (I applied for the job myself and then withdrew from the competition when I realized that I was middle-aged, female, Caucasian, and not a veteran of the military or from a military myself...really a bit too much of an outsider to the target audience to be what they're looking for...plus the job moved from here in the Bay Area to Philadelphia.) I learned the following...that most of the five US Navy sailors killed on the USS Cole a few days ago were very young and at least one of them was just out of high school. the whole project is about countering the military recruiters' rosy picture of the fine adventure and splendid opportunity awaiting young people who sign on with the armed services...war forecloses the future.

and I feel this dream is about peacemaking...making peace with my past, making peace with the way people often don't get it. this week, I also made a request on the childbirth group in which I participate that people of a right-wing persuasion keep their off-politics to other lists...that this list was for discussion of unassisted birth and related issues and it was meant to be inclusive of all kinds of women with all kinds of political philosophies, or none at all. I think only a few people understood what I was saying and why...

so that's me this week...fed up with Zionism and with the untimely death of young people and with US aggression masquerading to the US population as "peacemaking", fed up with hotheads especially on-line, stressed over my relationship with Dave and our ostensible problems "communicating," which I feel have to do with his intolerance of the ways I'm different and the way I put my thoughts out there, and underneath all this...I think it's all about spiritual values and trying to get clear on what I think is really the pearl of truth, or something.

trying to smile underneath this all.

and here I am on line on the Sabbath...well, as I say, it's been an unusual week and the need to get the word out has superceded my need for spiritual rest.....
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end digital dreams

Please send in computer dreams and keep the digital dreaming research project going. rcwilk@dreamgate.com

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (1999 August). Research Request: Computer's in Dreams : Pre and Post Internet Perceptions. Electric Dreams & Part I Pre-Net Electric Dreams 6(8). Retrieved October 30, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_1999_aug_computers_in_dreams.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2000 March). Digital Dreams: The changing (inter)face of dreams in the twenty-first century. Electric Dreams 7(3). Retrieved October 30, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2000_mar_computer-dreams1.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2000 July). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams II : The changing (inter)face of dream texts. Electric Dreams 7(7). Retrieved October 30, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2000_july_computer-dreams2.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2000 November). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams III :: The Digital Shift in Culture. Electric Dreams 7(11). Retrieved October 30, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2000_nov_computer-dreams3.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2001 January). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams IV :: Dream Code and Decoded Flows. Electric Dreams 8(1). Retrieved December 31, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2001_jan_computer-dreams4.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2001 May). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams V :: Emergence of Digital Imagery in Analog Dreamers. Electric Dreams 8(5). Retrieved May 1, 2001 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2001_may_computer-dreams5.htm