Monday 16 October 2023

Another canonical past-life dream

Early hours of Monday 16 October

And lo! did I dream... The year is 1939 or 1940; America (Kentucky? Ohio? West Virginia? Maryland? Pennsylvania?), a racetrack. Horse racing. I was standing alone, on the outside, not allowed in, as I was almost grown-up, but missing a year or two. Betting and alcohol. The grandstands were in a modern  building, with turnstile entry. There was a noisy crowd milling around outside. Dusk. The track and the plaza around the entrance and parking lot were floodlit with harsh lighting. Billboards, lit from above. Criss-crossed diagonal white wood. An amplified, urgent, male voice announced the runners and riders and betting prices for the next race, though it was muffled and distorted and I couldn't hear it clearly.  The wet ground littered with discarded betting slips. I'd manage to get me a bottle of beer - Rolling Rock. I wanted to get in, just so I could boast to my buddies that I had got in. But I wasn't going to get allowed in - and I knew it. Guy on the turnstile knew it too. So I just stood there, sipping beer, wasting time, between the grandstand and the parking lot as people - mostly men, moved around, entering and leaving the racetrack. It had started to rain and was getting cold.

As soon as I'd identified this as a canonical past-life dream [I have added it to the list, here, in chronological order], it changed. Suddenly, yet still under the influence of the beer, I was reversing a 1970s Jaguar XJ6, in British Racing Green, across a field near Henley-on-Thames; I scraped the offside rear wheel arch against a fence. The car belonged to a friend, Krysia (or her dad, can't recall). I got out to look - the scratch was too deep to ignore. I'd have to tell her. I got back in, annoyed with myself, though now I was inside the rear of a large, empty furniture truck, driving it backwards without any windows, trying to do a U-turn in reverse, navigating just with my memory of the field, this time hopefully without scraping the fence... Except the field was now in Chynów...

This latter part of the dream is normal, displaying features common to dreams; disjunctive cognitions, anxiety, things going wrong, something nice spoilt. The first part though, displays the three unities of time, place and action - there was no disjunctive cognition, none of that bizarre juxtapositions of commonplace objects and locations. This is a level of realism rarely encountered in the dream state, which I identify as a portal into potentially a past life - a relatively rare manifestation of non-local consciousness.

[Another, though entirely unconnected experience which I'll share here. On my walk just after dusk, beyond the orchards, coming out of the forest near Machcin II, I hear what I took to be a dog in the trees to my left. Then I heard some snorting. Across the heathland to my right, I saw the vague silhouettes of several animals - dogs again, I thought at first; turns out they were wild boar. Behind me and in front of me, to my left and my right. At least seven. First time I'd ever encountered them around Chynów!]

This time last year:
Cottagecore - a manifesto

This time two years ago
Ego, Consciousness and Soul

This time three years ago:
Samopoczucie, Joy and the Sublime Aesthetic

This time five years ago:
Autumn, with a railway theme

This time six years ago:
A few words about coincidence

This time nine years ago:
Hello, pork pie [my week-long pork-pie diet]

This time 11 years ago:
The meaning of class - in England, in Poland

This time 12 years ago: 
First frost 

This time 16 years ago:
First frost 
[again, as last year, no frost forecast for at least the next seven days]


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