1AndreasJ
I thought we had a thread about this, but can't find it.
I dreamt about buying some sort of weird book this night, sufficiently vividly that upon waking I had to convince myself it hadn't actually happened and I didn't have to add it to LT. By the time it occured to me to try and put down any details of the dream, however, I only recalled fragments.
So, on the off chance it interests somebody, here's what I recall: I found it in an dusty used bookshop, of the kind where you'd expect to find a copy of the Necronomicon next to a stack of 1890s romance novels (there's nothing similar in my city). The book was a half-rotten thing with an old-fashioned red-and-off-white cover, apparently an omnibus of the middle trilogy in a sequence of nine novels or novellas. The title was "{Something} and Arabs" - I absolutely cannot recall the first word, but I do not think it was another ethnonym - which struck me as strange as it seemed to have nothing to do with the titles of the component works. What those component titles were I don't recall, and I sort of suspect they were never clearly present in the dream either; just the perception of the mismatch. The subject matter was apparently within the interests of this group, fin-de-last-siècle decadence or the like.
ETA: Said first word might have been "Inclination", but as likely I'm fooling myself.
I dreamt about buying some sort of weird book this night, sufficiently vividly that upon waking I had to convince myself it hadn't actually happened and I didn't have to add it to LT. By the time it occured to me to try and put down any details of the dream, however, I only recalled fragments.
So, on the off chance it interests somebody, here's what I recall: I found it in an dusty used bookshop, of the kind where you'd expect to find a copy of the Necronomicon next to a stack of 1890s romance novels (there's nothing similar in my city). The book was a half-rotten thing with an old-fashioned red-and-off-white cover, apparently an omnibus of the middle trilogy in a sequence of nine novels or novellas. The title was "{Something} and Arabs" - I absolutely cannot recall the first word, but I do not think it was another ethnonym - which struck me as strange as it seemed to have nothing to do with the titles of the component works. What those component titles were I don't recall, and I sort of suspect they were never clearly present in the dream either; just the perception of the mismatch. The subject matter was apparently within the interests of this group, fin-de-last-siècle decadence or the like.
ETA: Said first word might have been "Inclination", but as likely I'm fooling myself.
2paradoxosalpha
I've been having a lot of vivid dreams this week too. One I recall in particular was being with my family on the ground floor of the two-story house of my youth, and something causing it to sink rapidly into the earth, so that we all had to run upstairs to try to escape through windows.
3elenchus
I like this thread, perhaps a prompt for me to capture as much as I can before the details dissolve. I had a recent dream that was unusually vivid and complete, to the extent I could relay it to my family as a potential short story idea. Now I've forgotten all details. I'll see if any of my family remembers what I told them and if that jogs my memory.
4gwendetenebre
Good idea for a topic. The only vivid bit of dream I remember recently was one in which an elephant-sized spider wearing a top hat darted nonchalantly across my path. I desperately needed to tell my daughter about it, but I couldn't find her. I kept wondering how it was able to keep the top hat on, being a spider and all. Silly and weird, but unforgettable. Apparently.
5Jarandel
A dream I had yesterday.
I was in my parents' attic to fetch something, I don't remember what but I wasn't finding it. At some point I looked out of the fairly dusty and spider-webbed window and saw the land on the horizon was disappearing into nothingness, Neverending Story fashion. I rushed down to warn everybody we had to take the cars and run. For some reason while the house had its current day aspect for the most part, what came to my mind when I thought about the cars were models we owned quite a while ago, some I even probably only really remembered seeing in photographs rather than direct memory, because I thought of them with the skewed colors they had in those old paper photographs.
But when I came down some family members were staring daggers at me and behaving quite uncharacteristically, accusing me of something either false or that they wouldn't even go into enough details that I could really know what it was, because they'd found a photograph of my grandfather on their side I'd kept from the light in some other papers, not too sure what the documents were either though I remember being quite baffled at why they would develop such an unusual anger over them, and the photograph was innocuous enough as well, just an old portrait. That conjunction apparently led them to think whatever they were thinking, and all I could do was feeling hurt and try to convince them, while I intermittently also saw the land outside still disappearing.
I was in my parents' attic to fetch something, I don't remember what but I wasn't finding it. At some point I looked out of the fairly dusty and spider-webbed window and saw the land on the horizon was disappearing into nothingness, Neverending Story fashion. I rushed down to warn everybody we had to take the cars and run. For some reason while the house had its current day aspect for the most part, what came to my mind when I thought about the cars were models we owned quite a while ago, some I even probably only really remembered seeing in photographs rather than direct memory, because I thought of them with the skewed colors they had in those old paper photographs.
But when I came down some family members were staring daggers at me and behaving quite uncharacteristically, accusing me of something either false or that they wouldn't even go into enough details that I could really know what it was, because they'd found a photograph of my grandfather on their side I'd kept from the light in some other papers, not too sure what the documents were either though I remember being quite baffled at why they would develop such an unusual anger over them, and the photograph was innocuous enough as well, just an old portrait. That conjunction apparently led them to think whatever they were thinking, and all I could do was feeling hurt and try to convince them, while I intermittently also saw the land outside still disappearing.
6paradoxosalpha
Hypothesis: Readers of weird fiction are more likely to pay attention to their sleeping dreams than the general population are.
8AndreasJ
>4 gwendetenebre:
The top-hat-wearing ones are the worst ones!
>6 paradoxosalpha:
I often remember, or seem to remember, dreams upon waking, but on trying to collect my thoughts the images that immediately before seemed so vivid evaporate*. This one was unusual in that I managed to remember as much as I did - as well as in that initial confusion about whether it was a dream in the first place.
* A couple lines from Mike Oldfield's "To France" come to mind:
Isn't it strange how
Dreams fade and shimmer?
The top-hat-wearing ones are the worst ones!
>6 paradoxosalpha:
I often remember, or seem to remember, dreams upon waking, but on trying to collect my thoughts the images that immediately before seemed so vivid evaporate*. This one was unusual in that I managed to remember as much as I did - as well as in that initial confusion about whether it was a dream in the first place.
* A couple lines from Mike Oldfield's "To France" come to mind:
Isn't it strange how
Dreams fade and shimmer?
14paradoxosalpha
>12 frahealee:
No, I didn't grow up in the Usher family manor!
Thanks for piping up as a long-time lurker.
No, I didn't grow up in the Usher family manor!
Thanks for piping up as a long-time lurker.
16elenchus
>11 frahealee:
Lurkers are fittingly welcome in The Weird Tradition. Feel free to lurk and even post in any thread.
It's also affirming to learn that our online conversations live on beyond the week they're held. Comments even months or years later are most welcome, too.
Lurkers are fittingly welcome in The Weird Tradition. Feel free to lurk and even post in any thread.
It's also affirming to learn that our online conversations live on beyond the week they're held. Comments even months or years later are most welcome, too.
18gwendetenebre
>13 frahealee:
My spider was a bit more dapper, kind of like Fred Astaire if he had been drawn with eight legs by Edward Gorey, but now that you mention it, I think I do remember "Old Joe"!
Now, I have had actual night terrors that might be worth relating...
My spider was a bit more dapper, kind of like Fred Astaire if he had been drawn with eight legs by Edward Gorey, but now that you mention it, I think I do remember "Old Joe"!
Now, I have had actual night terrors that might be worth relating...
20AndreasJ
Only weird in a distinctly lowecase sense, but since I do recall it I might just as well mention it: this morning I dreamt of seeing some sort of Tree of Life video presentation. It started out rather conventional, showing all animal life as a small twig among prokaryotic diversity, albeit oddly showing plants as more distant from us than bacteria. Then it zoomed out fractally, and also started crossing wildly, eventually showing all known life as a vanishingly tiny speck in one corner of an impossibly vast web of ... something?
Actually, putting it down in words, it sounds rather cosmicist, in the Lovecraft-per-Joshi sense, but the feeling during the dream was not of cosmic insignificance or indifference, but of baffled wonderment that someone should be showing me something so absurd.
Actually, putting it down in words, it sounds rather cosmicist, in the Lovecraft-per-Joshi sense, but the feeling during the dream was not of cosmic insignificance or indifference, but of baffled wonderment that someone should be showing me something so absurd.
24AndreasJ
For the first time, I woke up this morning remembering a dream not merely relevant to this group but actually about it. Specifically, I dreamt I was writing a post about a Deep Ones read, a story featuring a woman who, on the advice of daemon, locked herself into a car to escape a ghast. The story ended before we learnt whether this worked.
(What sort of "ghast" this was I now have no idea, except it was clearly dangerous and inimical.)
(What sort of "ghast" this was I now have no idea, except it was clearly dangerous and inimical.)
