A “not rude at all” Anon asked: “I get lost in your blog posts for hours but I must admit I thought I’d pick it up by now and have not – what exactly are you talking about? That seems so much ruder than I intend, honestly your blog is one of my favourites but I need to know.”
You think it’s confusing to read… it’s confusing to live! ~much laughter and mirth~
Everything labeled as “dream”, is really either a dream, a hallucination, or a vision. The boundaries between the three are as clear as concrete with me. I can sleep with my eyes open (and doing things, even!), and I’ve had visions in the middle of a dream. Replace “dream” with “altered state” and you’ll have a much better handle on how these things happen.
I just don’t label them as “altered state” because when I first did that on Tumblr, I had so many requests for the “good shit” that gives me those altered states I almost quit. I can do this because my life is physically, emotionally, and psychologically fucked up like fuck. ~nods~ As an aside, it really cracks me up that people pay money to experience this. For a while, I was to the point where I was willing to pay money NOT TO.
But anyways…
There are several overlapping realms/worlds/states. There’s my house. (Okay, my parents’ house.) This is the house I finished my childhood in, and returned to after losing what little shreds of sanity I had left after other bullshit happened. Because of a stupid, little, dare back in 1986… ~whistles innocently~ a portal to the world of the dead was opened. And never closed. Ironically, this happened because I was trying to prove to my cousins that ghosts and the supernatural are not a thing.
Whoops.
The house itself is now haunted. There’s one entity that the entire family knows about, accepts, and is cool with. That entity is pretty much benign and is my mother’s protector. Then, there’s the others that I have only been able to see within the past couple of years. Many of them have been here since the portal opening event. Some wandered through later and settled down. Those are “The Regulars”. Then there are groups like the amber jelly-fish appear mob that has been gone for over a year, but came back. I call them “The Irregulars”. (If you have better names, my inbox is open.)
Most of the Regulars chill here because of the atmosphere my parents (especially my mother) has engendered here. No one comes here. Everything stays the same. Because of reasons, the interior of the house is shifted “just a little bit” away from the rest of the world. It’s a safe-house for spirits that want to hang around on this world.
Not all Regulars are laid back, though. My mother’s… attitudes… towards life raises a lot of energy. Scooby Snacks for the disembodied. The “Bastards” in the attic would push us human denizens of the house emotionally. Intentionally starting shit so we would fight, and they would kick back and feed off our despair. Well, they did. Until I started realizing what I can do, what I really did back in ‘86, and started taking responsibility. They retreated to the attic, and remained there because I wanted to find another way of dealing with them than just destroying them. Because the house is not sealed (and probably never will be, I think), I can’t just kick them out, because they’ll be back the moment my back is turned. The recent post is me losing my damn mind and solving most of the Bastards’ problem.
So that’s one key world setting in my “dreams”.
Then, there’s the City. I might need some rum to try and explain. You might need some to follow along. The City is a focal point of human dreams. But it is just one locale in a multidimensional realm. And even the City itself changes according to what you are dreaming, and how lucid you are within the dream. I haven’t come up with a better name for the City than “The City”, because I’ve noted if I name it after an established metropolis, it starts to take on that Waking world’s character. This is blinding, actually. Because the City is sometimes like Small Town, USA, sometimes like modern London, sometimes like ancient Rome. The dream segment I posted today about the “grocery debt” takes place in the City, but in a remote and all but abandoned area.
The City, being a human city, is speciest as fuck. Humans Only. Thus, the adventures with Jill and keeping her appearing as human to the populace at large. The shocked looks of other residents and citizens when I shape change or show any hints of non-human attributes. When I bring my Dreaming roommate, Snake (I’ll let you guess what species he is.), he has to appear as a human or there will be trouble. The Envoy is more than the representative of the City, he is the embodiment of the City. Thankfully, he is not omniscient of what goes on in City bounds. This has bitten me in the ass a couple times. The Envoy really, really, wants me to give up the Wandering Through The Realms life and settle down in the City like a nice human would. I’ll let you guess how likely that is going to happen.
There are various factions that do the political thing for power within the City. The Envoy generally doesn’t give a flying fuck as long as their antics don’t put the City itself in danger. When I started coming to the City, there were all sorts of fucking bullshit pulled by the factions to gain my allegiance to one or the other, one way or another. Did I mention “fucking bullshit”? Let’s just say the factions now try to keep me out of their politics as much as possible, because I have a bad tendency of fucking up the most carefully laid plan. (An attribute the Envoy has actually taken advantage of for the good of the City.)
Speaking of Snake… I have a lair I share with him in the Dreaming. Just a cozy little cave, with some goodies placed inside for comfort. Because most of my dreaming is lucid, it’s not just a matter of closing my eyes and falling asleep. It’s more like leaving this life and opening my eyes in another. Having the lair gives me a “safe place” to “wake up” in and usually keeps me out of trouble. Well, that’s the intent, anyways. And Snake is just that, a snake. A shape-changing, telepathic, still growing, fifty feet of attitude and puzzles, snake. With a few mythic aspects thrown in for good measure.
I used to roam the Nine Worlds all the time. There is where you’ll find characters such as the Shamblings, the Old Man of the Mountain, and the Svartalf. I miss them. I should go visit them again.
Sometimes, I wind up among the Fae. Puck is a lovely bastard. Some of his associates are ugly enough to turn water to stone. There is one that I sometimes have tea with. I have to be blindfolded when in his presence though. He has such a lovely voice, I could listen to it all day. And he serves such fragrant tea. I know as long as I keep the blindfold on, everything is okay. If I ever take the blindfold off and see him, everything will turn to dust and I’ll never have tea with him again.
We won’t talk of Queen Mab.
We will talk of the Rummer. Briefly. He likes rum. And cigars. And collects skulls. He gave me Horatio as a bound spirit servant last year. Not much else to tell about him.
Speaking of skulls… the Boneyard. I can summarize the Boneyard, and if you read through archives, you’ll come back and accuse me of holding things back. Then I’ll tell you to read the summary again, and you’ll realize there is much more to the Boneyard than can be written. The Boneyard is where the Ravens bring the bones of the (human) dead. There, the bones are arranged and burned in pyres to help the dead release their last bonds with life and “move on”. It would seem I have duties there, and the flames also serve to help me release my own burdens that have been sandbagging me. And stuff.
Have that all straight?
Would you like a map of how all these different realms are connected?
~takes a piece of paper and makes a dot in the middle of the blank paper~
They are all… ~taps paper~ there. All of it. And realms I’m newly encountering, and realms I’ve forgotten about. Right there. ~points~ They are all the same realm, and all different realms. It all depends on where the focus of my awareness is. Sometimes I can slide easy between them. Sometimes I’m pulled. (Read: Involuntary visions.) Sometimes I’m pushed. Sometimes, my awareness is split between them.
And yes, this realm, the Waking world, is but one of them.
So… I understand, Anon, why trying to keep track of the dreams and where they are set is confusing. It is. Nothing is linear. Not even time. What happens in one world, affects the others.
Please, ask questions when you’re stumped. That’s not being rude at all. Sometimes I have to hold back information, and the holes trip up the careful reader. And while I tend to bite viciously at the willfully ignorant, I welcome questions like these. Because answering them helps me sort things out. Thank you.