Q

Category: Dream Diary

dreams, dreams

The day before, a slew of dreams.

One of them with C, again. This time we had the same diagnosis. I thought she would go up with me for the test I so dreaded. “Why should I? I don’t need to anyway.” I thought about it. She’s right, she’d never need to.

Another one of me rushing into the lift for my appointment. But just as the door closed I noticed a baby right outside. Or I had noticed it before but cast my eyes away from it, concerned with being late.

The baby was striking blonde with blue eyes. Next to him, a cat and a dog of the same coloring. Just as the door closed in, I dashed out.

Scooped up the baby, he felt solid, heavy. Ran back into the lift, but the animals followed. The cat, especially, was hostile. It hissed at us, bearing white fangs framed by fair whiskers. Yet I was unafraid. I counted the ascend of the lift, waiting, waiting…

When the doors once again slid open, I pushed them out. With all my weight kept them out until the doors were shut to them again.

Then I had to rush, rush to the appointment and make sure the baby remains safe…

May 22, 2025
A feather from a boulder

One of those nights where sleeplessness was welcome. I felt again that sensation, wrapped within a dream, both somatic and cognitive: that contrast between what’s unbearably heavy and oppressively light.

Have you ever had one of those dream-not dreams? Not a chain of events, but a repetition of a feeling.

The first time I had this dream I was a child. The first and most vivid of all acceding instances. In it, I carried a large object — I will call it a boulder, although in my mind it had the incomparable largeness and weight of the perceivable world.

Bearing this weight, I walked door-to-door. I say that for as a metaphor. In the reality of the non-reality they were intervals of nothing. At each interval, I took from the boulder, each time I could only grasp and release a pinch. Each pinch was light as nothing, a down feather of a baby bird.

After the first dream, I have had frequent recurrences of this dream. Not as vivid but always, at the centre, that feeling. Not the heaviness nor the lightness, for when awake I carry sandbags and barbells above my weight, and have felt the slip of snowflake so inconsequential it dissolves on my palm.

No, it is that in-between, that contrast, the shock of nothing from everything, a down feather when I expected a boulder, that sticks with me.

The other night where I, in a rare state, welcomed sleeplessness, I felt that contrast, that discomfiting dissonance. Not in a dream but floating towards one. And after two decades of being called to this sensation in my sleep, it finally struck me the simplicity of what this meant. Or, let’s do away with maudlin needs to ascribe meaning. It struck me why and when I have these dreams.

When I’m stressed and overwhelmed, and when every action I take to address these stressors appear futile. Carrying the world, no amount of tasks ticked off is enough to complete what needs to be done.

This discovery, though, is less fascinating to me than that feeling of dissonance. It feels such a singular and isolating sensation that I’m not sure I share with anyone. The contrast of weight between boulder and feather.

June 30, 2024
Dream Quotes

Having a dream journal is great. Makes me laugh, discover the strangest trends, and affirm that i’m an unfulfilled genius. Just check out the gems my subconscious throws out:

“你一身的massage，就是觉悟他的诅咒。”
Realizing that to be free, we need to undergo suffering.

“Evolution ensured survival of the adaptively advantageous”.
Basically that the strongest survive.

“And Plato said to apply the socially distinct theory of things.”
I have no idea.

“I feel zen zen peripheral to all.”
I’m at peace because my actions and I are but peripheral to everyone else’s life. There’s no need to feel self-conscious or overly responsible.

Yes these are lines my brain cooks up in dreams. SUH WEIRD QING.

September 13, 2015
Bizarre dreams

I’d have a series of unrelated dreams almost every other night, each incredibly vivid.

Recently I had one where there was a competition of sorts and the champion gets to be pope. The events were like those you find on Japanese gameshows, one of them being this flight of huge stairs SLATHERED with butter and you need to crawl to the top. And when the competition ended, this huge torch of fire blazed in the middle of the cylindrical stadium and some babies that were riding on terrified chickens were put into chariots and carried into the stadium by birds still in their cages (but flying). They flew into the blazing fire and imploded and I woke up. Whuuut.

So just last night I dreamt that I was a male microbe. Yes a MICROBE. And there was a huge war between all the microbes in the world and the slightly bigger debris. So there were lots of casualties but every time a wave of microbes were sent out and most of them killed, we kept going on about how there are BILLION TRILLION microbes in the world and even if a lot of us are killed we won’t die out. That was basically our strategy against the larger debris. And there was even a darkly comical sequence where I became a human for awhile to have another perspective of the war. And even though in the microbe-level world it was utter chaos, as a human everything was hilariously calm and normal. But if you looked up at dirty corners you could see dustballs quivering strangely… because apparently they are at war with microbes.

And then I was a microbe again, discussing with an older microbe about the costs of war. We realized that both of us had lost our loved one to the war (I’m somehow often male in my dreams). And both our girlfriends/wives (?) had English names, we had some Chinese name idk omg. And the wise older guy explained that they had English names because they were not natural microbes but man-made ones. So they were… named?! Oh god idk why am I so weird.

November 4, 2013
3am

An old woman stands alone in a dark, narrow room.

She is reciting nonsensical lines. “I like YOUTH! I like ASIA! I love YOUTHASIA!” She says them with deliberation and enunciation; loudly, perhaps louder than necessary.

When she is done the room is abruptly silent and hollow.

She remembers a child who was once precious to her. Remembers not only it but the depth of her love as she peered into the cot at its fat, thrashing limbs, remembers the way it returns her attention.

Before this child there was a string of others. She did not love them as much as the child because her love was divided, but their footsteps and voices fill her mind and remind her that she is alive.

Now she thinks about her husband. In a jar she has kept his bones. At the angle, the jar projects a dimensional image of him as he used to be on a domed glass surface.

She kisses the image, but the surface is searing hot.

She cries out and falls backwards.

She lies there, crying, her lips a raw red.

And then I woke up. She, I think, either outlived her husband, children, and grandchildren. On hindsight I think “I love youthasia” might be her saying she wanted to be euthanized. In my dream I didn’t make the connection.

Waking up with that final image makes me indescribably sad.

August 19, 2013