What is the pale white room you are in that doesn’t feel like a prison because it feels like the whole world?
What is an unquestioned condition, pattern or behaviour? A loop, a well-worn path, a mental model, a pattern of behaviour, a set of rules.
What happens if you question it? When was the last time you or someone in this condition (like a workplace) questioned a pattern there, or the whole system, or the whole premise?
Do you have strong experiences of places in dreams? Geography or cities you return to again over time?
There’s a dream geography I return to often, and it feels like a place to assess options from. It’s an asian market, attached to a greater city, with multiple entrances and exits. It features indoor asian groceries, with a large range of foods, and outdoor stalls, with specialised foods - vegetables in one, barbecued meats in another, brooms in another.
Although I sometimes have time to wander and explore, to catch my breath in the shops, it’s usually the scene of a chase of some sort. Rushing past the sauce jars, skidding past the bbq pork stand; one time a small train with pursuers onboard followed me through the indoor shops.
There’s an alley I used to go down in a town I grew up in, which linked Chinatown to the main mall. There was also another lane which linked a main street to an underground bus stop complex, which I used regularly as well.
In dreams, these two well worn locations have been entangled, so that there’s a dream geography place I visit in Chinatown, with amazing food restaurants that feel so familiar - one in particular has these great handmade noodles in a silky chilli soup, and it’s always open late, fake bamboo out the front, on a dark night, with red lanterns. And indoors is empty but they always have the soup ready.
Sometimes I go in, other times I wait out front talking with friends, and other times I order iced fruit tea from the late night iced tea bar. It’s so familiar to me I just find myself there again and again.
I’ve changed email systems and the “from” email has changed too - so, FYI, this is The Dream Stream in a new format, but still the same person, me, Lara, writing it!
Welcome to this first dreamplay note, and thank you for being here and coming along for this journey. These notes are likely to be more shorthand, experimental, and I hope prompt some helpful reflections or dream interpretations or activities.
This new year we have a gift with Neptune, our dreaming planet friend, coming into Aries, a place of firey action.
