Dream Within A Dream

Since I was young I've had precognitive dreams. For a long time I couldn't tell the difference between what was just a dream and what was more. Now after years of practice I know what is just dream and what is more than just a dream. When it's just a dream and nothing more it's like a movie with no feelings. When it's not just a dream I see it like flashes of pictures in my mind and feel emotion as well. A lot of times I know what's gonna happen long before it actually happens.

When I was roughly 21 years old some girlfriends and I were invited to a party. As we pulled into the driveway I had a vision. That's what I call it. I knew the place even though I had never been there before. I sat there quietly trying to remember the dream. Recalling the layout of the inside of the house. I knew something bad was going to happen but I couldn't remember what. I could remember the emotion of panic. We got out of the car and walked into the house. Everything was just like my dream. The color of the walls, the layout of the house, right down to the black lab and his name. The dog's name was Sargent. I went to the bathroom to be alone with my thoughts for a minute. Trying to recall the dream. I knew something bad was going to happen but for the life of me I couldn't remember what. I wanted to leave immediately. So I told the girls I had a bad feeling about the party and convinced them that we should leave. The following day we found out that some guy showed up to that party, shot two people and killed them.

Ever since that incident I started to keep a dream journal. I record all my dreams. I make them into a poem, or a short story. Many things like the story I just told has happened over the years. Some good, some not so good. Most of the time I'll see something random like a shop sign, or someone will say something, a song will start playing, something very random that normally would mean nothing will trigger a vision. I'll see those flashes of pictures and know immediately I'm going to run into so and so that I haven't seen in a long time. I know what's going to happen just before it happens.

I believe I dreamt about the tsunami in Japan a year before it happened.  I kept having dreams of water, lots of water. A huge wave washing everything away. The emotion was pure panic and chaos, people running everywhere. I really didn't see people in my dream but I could feel their emotions. I'm not sure how I knew, but I knew it wasn't in the US. The landscape was wrong for the United States.

I can gage how long until an event happens by how often I have the same dream. I'll have the same type of dream over and over. Flashes of pictures with emotion. The dreams will get more and more frequent until it happens then the dreams will stop. I have a tendency to mess with my close friends. I'll tell them such and such is gonna happen then when it does, I'll get that look. Not everything I see is bad. I see good stuff to. I also see stuff that is neither good nor bad it's just random like a conversation.

Sometimes I dream of people I have yet to meet. I know more about them, than what I should, considering I haven't met them yet. My friend Michelle is a great example. Before I met her I dreamt of her. I knew she was a dancer and singer, she wore the color blue often, had a pool, a black cat named Sam, drove a white car, and brushed her teeth more than 3 times a day. I would also dream of dancing together.  The day I met her she was auditioning for Bite. As soon as I seen her on that stage I knew she was that girl from my dreams. We've been friends ever since. So far every stranger from my dreams, once we meet, is a part of my everyday life. I doesn't happen often but very cool when it does....

Take this kiss upon the brow
And, in parting from you now
Thus much let me avow
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day
In a vision, or in none
Is it therefore the less done?
All that I see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep
Can I not grasp them
with a tighter clasp?
Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that I see or seem
But a dream within a dream