Childhood dream

[MusicMan]

As ARC requested:

"MusicMan - I'm very interested in hearing about the dream you have remembered for so long. It's amazing how something like a dream can make such a deep impression in memory."

At about the age of six, (more than 60 years ago) I had recurring dreams in which I was watching myself walking, and I seemed to be inside some kind of a cloud. The cloud was not a clean cloud - it was like the stuff which comes out of railway steam engines containing drops of oil. I always came out of the cloud looking a bit grotty. I was always moving from left to right in the dream.
I must have worked out a way of getting rid of the cloud though, because the dreams stopped.

At about the same time ( in another dream) I used to be able to envisage the neighbourhood I lived in as I flew around it at some height off the ground. I must have watched too much 'Superman' on TV - that was available to us back in England before we emigrated (1951). The 'neighbourhood' was a migrant hostel in Adelaide. We lived there for five years.

I don't know if the dream was related to the divorce my parents were going through or not, I was too young to really know what was going on.

 

[ARC]

Sorry, MusicMan, that I'm just now seeing this. I'm still learning how to navigate this forum to make the best use of it.

I think it's incredible that you experienced flight in your dreams at such an early age. My younger brother and I watched a lot of superman, batman & robin, as well as other super heroes but I don't think I have ever experienced flying in a dream.

I wish I knew the symbolism for flying in a dream. Is there a way we can message each other on this forum? I would like to ask zin and another member (whose name I can't think of right off hand but they posted in the thread I started called "the early dreams" and seem quite knowledgable).

There may also be significance to the dream occurring in your neighborhood - maybe something about your environment? Perhaps that could have something to do with your parents divorce, as in your environment would be changing yet you know not how and are powerless to do anything about it.

Just one question: How did you feel in the dream? Were you happy or sad or frightened?

ARC

 

[MusicMan]

Hello ARC, in my flying dream, as far as emotions went, they were neutral.
If anything I would say that it engendered curiosity more than anything.

I remember that if I wanted to dream of flying, all I had to do was to raise my arms to the horizontal so that I looked like a 'T'. and off I would go.

The height wasn't anything fantastic, like about twenty feet.
It was always outdoors in the daytime.
I never associated it with Superman at the time.

One other thing. When I was young, I was myopic, and I still am.
But in my dreams I could see perfectly. This was before I got my spectacles.

 

[ARC]

At 20 feet you could look down on the tops of houses but you probably saw more of the ground topography - grass, sidewalks, people, dogs. I used to wake up early and go outside before anyone else in the neighborhood was out and about - I learned that neighborhood dogs tend to roam in a pack during those early hours (probably since some time during the late night hours). They get into fights that looks like a rolling ball of dogs. It's like they were totally oblivious to me - I would see them way down the street and then all of a sudden they would be all around me and then way down on the opposite side of the street like they didn't even notice I was there. A couple of time they got into fights near me and I had to run to avoid getting in the middle of it. Do you happen to recall seeing any dogs behaving in such ways while you were flying around the neighborhood in your dreams? Just curious. Or was it daytime in the dream while you were flying? Or nighttime, as in "dreamtime"? I just find this so fascinating.

Also, I was going to ask this in my last reply but I got sidetracked by a telephone call - in the other dream, where you were watching yourself walking in a cloud, was it like you were looking down on yourself from above, similar to the way you see the neighborhood from your flying dreams? I wonder, since they occurred around the same time, if both dreams were stemming from the same issue in your life, whatever it was.

I'm sorry that these aren't very good questions to help you evaluate the dream and are more to satisfy my own curious agenda (for lack of a better word). I really wish someone who knows about dream symbolism would see this and reply - might help us both (lol).

ARC

 

[MusicMan]

Hello ARC, in the Flying dream, I saw no animals, nor people, only places.
It seemed to be an enjoyable experience, because I would actively promote the dream, by raising my arms.

In the Cloud dream I viewed myself from the side as if I was dispassionately watching.
I seemed to know that it was myself in the cloud, and trying to work out how to extricate myself from it. There were no other features in the dream, only the cloud.

Back to you now - with your experience with the dogs, were you dreaming that, or was that while you were awake?

I know that I have dreamed of lions roaring, then woke myself up with my snoring!

 

[ARC]

When I was a kid I always liked getting up very early and going outside, like the crack of dawn. My dad probably woke me up as he was getting ready for work around 5am and was generally gone by 6. I liked being outside at that hour - I still do but rarely do any more. There is just something about the morning air and sunshine that always makes me feel good.

The dogs were just the neighborhood pets - some of them I knew and played with every day and others were from around areas of the neighborhood I didn't see that much, but they were all 'hood dogs. Their fights didn't usually last very long and there appeared to be no bad blood afterwards - they all just continued on their merry way.

It's funny when I hear dogs barking at night and I know they are "talking" to each other, probably making plans to meet up later to go roaming - at least the ones that are loose at night. When I would see them in the early morning they were probably heading home soon to laze around most of the day.

We lived in Florida back then, near Ft Lauderdale. During the rainy season when the mosquitoes were bad these trucks would drive through the neighborhoods slowly, spraying pesticides and trailing a chemical cloud behind them. We weren't allowed to do it but most of the neighborhood kids would run after the trucks keeping up with the cloud and trying to stay inside it - some of the older boys rode their bikes in it and would follow the trucks for great distances. It seems crazy now, to think that anyone would want to be inside a pesticide cloud but if I had been allowed I probably would have done it, if for no other reason than all my friends were doing it.

I think there must be some significance in your dream about seeing yourself in a cloud and not being able to get out of it - something toxic(?) in your life perhaps, that you couldn't seem to escape? I've been reading some stuff on the forum about dreams but I didn't find anything that gives actual symbolisms for particular elements within dreams. I tried using a dream dictionary I googled but it won't give me anything for "toxic cloud", instead I get that "cloud" may represent depression (or happiness), with a separate definition for "toxic" which it changed to "lead" that it could signify being "weighed down". So I tried "oil" because you mentioned drops of oil in the cloud, but that didn't seem to yield anything significant either.

ARC