Thought I'd contribute to this thread since it looks pretty cool from the comments I've read. Here's a weird dream I had recently: I was a young man from England in the 1800s, possibly one of my own characters. I was visiting Nepal with my fellow English gentleman friend who I was very close with. We were visiting Nepal to see Mt. Everest and record information about it, which included me creating what would be the first painting of Mt. Everest. I knew all of this because there was a narrator talking about it. I was the only one who could hear the narrator, however, which is something that happens to me in a lot of dreams. I'll be going about the dream as if I'm an actor, because I somehow know things that any other person in the dream would never pick up on, but I still pretend I know nothing for the sake of the "story". Back to Mt. Everest. We were standing on a flat part of the mountain that was only about 400 feet down from the summit. There was a small wooden boardwalk next to us. The sky was dark and cloudy, almost like smoke, and the wind was blowing at high speeds. The mountain face was completely covered in smooth snow. It wasn't very cold, though, and my friend and I weren't wearing any kind of mountain-climbing gear. I got out my paints and canvas and began painting the snowy peak, absolutely mesmerized. I was so focused on painting that I barely noticed the crying sounds echoing down the mountain face. My friend pointed them out to me, and we both panicked as we searched for the source of the crying. The crying stopped as a small shape rocketed down the mountain face. It crashed into the boardwalk and broke a few wooden boards. I rushed over to it and realized that it was a baby, wrapped in nothing but a thin, raggedy blanket, now smeared with a bit of blood. I picked up the baby and it resumed crying. I heard the narrator say that the baby had broken most of its bones, and it wasn't going to live much longer. This obviously made me upset, but I knew the only thing I could do now was make it feel at peace for the time it had left. I sang it Wanderer's Lullaby by Adriana Figueroa, a song that I had discovered recently in real life. The baby immediately stopped crying as I sang and carried it with me to a nearby cliff. Out of the clouds rose a steampunk-style flying ship with patches of a leather adorning its sides and sails similar to that of a Chinese junk boat. The boat hovered by the cliff, waiting for us to board. That's when I woke up. This was one of my dreams that really stuck with me because I felt like it was important...
Many moons ago, in my dissolute youth, I had recently read that people who report that they don't dream are psychopaths. Not long afterward I found myself in Carmel California one night, with a woman I had just met. Beautiful girl, Ivy League student, on an aimless summer sojourn, as was I. I no longer recall exactly where or how we met, but we had our respective sleeping bags and backpacks, and were alone on the beach, the night clear and gentle, stars like diamonds, the waves literally lapping on the shore. Memory suggests traces of pot. Anyway and somehow the topic of dreams came up, and she said she never dreamed. Red flags went up, and I gradually edged away from her, actually demurring when she suggested we zip our bags together to keep warm. We slept separately, and next day went our separate ways, forever. I sometimes wonder what I missed out on that night, a romantic interlude, a wondrous future, or a sudden violent end on a deserted beach. And then I curse whatever book it was in which I read the psychopath crap.
When I was a young lad, 5 to 7 or so, I had a repeated series of dreams in which I was standing in the back of an antique car, a childish version of a Ford Model T, and it was was rolling away, toward a cliff or other disaster. My father was on foot on the road behind me, and I was yelling for him to come help me. He followed along, but never broke into a run to catch up, simply walking along, just out of reach. The dreams went on until I told my babysitter about them one evening, a sweet old lady, widow of a farmer as I recall. She listened patiently, then told that no doubt the car gently ran into a tree and stopped, no harm done. And the dreams stopped. Only years later did I go into the dream in terms of symbolism and message, and it made sense in terms of a distant father who was essentially going through the motions of parenting. And only years after that did I reach the point at which I understood and forgave him, unfortunately after he was gone.
In 2003 I was going through some very rough work related trauma. I had three vivid dreams over a short period of time that involved me being naked in public. The first started with me standing in front of a nightclub. It was dark, and that made me feel less uncomfortable until I had to go in and take a leak in the well light bathroom. Double whammy of people staring, and me standing on that gross floor in bare feet. Second started in the basement parking garage of a hotel. I had to make it up the elevator then try to get to my room without being seen. I got there with no pockets, therefore no key. The third I was helping decorate a hall for a wedding, standing on a ladder when guests started arriving.
