Dream Journal: "The Arm is Evil!"

[hrj]

I should have written this up first thing in the morning when it was more detailed. The dream had multiple layers of reality -- the sort where each preceding scenario is revealed to have been "the dream" but the new context is "reality". But really, the core scenario stood nicely by itself and would have made a nice little horror flick.

Basically, there was this severed arm, significantly decomposed. As in, the three main arm bones were all visible, but strung together with tendons and bits of muscle. The hand was whole. And the arm crawled. It chased me around ... and various other details happened that have faded now. And I kept trying to alert people to the danger with the message, "The arm is evil! The arm is evil!" Unclear exactly what the danger was, other than the existential horror of being chased by a rotting severed arm.

Then we back up a layer, and I'm trying hard to remember that I have to journal about the arm, to let people know that it's evil. Or am I supposed to journal about a dream about a decomposed arm chasing me around? No that's the third layer, when I'm aware that the evil arm was a dream, but I'm still trying hard to remember to journal about it. Then we back up a layer where I think that I've journaled about the dream about the arm, but I realize that I only journaled about it in a dream, and I still have to remember to do it for real.

Somebody pinch me so I know I'm not still in the last layer.

It didn't feel like a "meaningful" dream (despite one of my favorite motifs of skeletal bits) -- just a very vivid one. I do wish I'd remembered more of the details, though.

Comments

[kbhjs.livejournal.com]

Have you looked at my LJ profile page lately? Its a Zombie arm chasing my MEEZ around... Freaky coincidence?

Sounds like a stress deam to me...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Now if I'd actually seen that animation before you pointed it out here, it might explain some things. Freaky. The problem with seeing it as a stress dream is that I'm currently under the least stress I've had all year.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

oh, dear! Sounds like one of those dreams wherein it is a relief to not be asleep any more.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Oh, not really. Dreams about dead and rotting body parts don't particularly freak me out in and of themselves. I don't know if you've read some of my previous dream analysis, but "being ankle deep in rotting body parts" is an established dream motif for me that represents having left some task undone for so long that my only defense is to forget I was even supposed to do it. The roots of the motif are in my time with the Bird of Prey Rehabilitation Center at U.C. Davis. The original dream-motif was discovering that I'd neglected to clean my hawk's cage for ... well, for long enough that the leftover dinners had gotten ankle-deep in the cage.

Animated rotting body parts, on the other hand ....

[kareina.livejournal.com]

I haven't had the time to go back and read much from before I added you to my friends list, so while I've seen a dream or two, I hadn't yet encountered this theme. I absolutely understand the symbolism, particularly with the back-story as to why your mind would see that as a reasonable metaphor for things undone.

Perhaps that is why I see it as an uncomfortable sort of dream to have--I've got quite a bit undone in my life at the moment (I don't need to tell you what the final part of a PhD project is like!), and I've noticed that dreaming about what needs doing often doesn't result in quality rest & recuperation.

[wulfsdottir.livejournal.com]

Well, at least you were able to definitively establish that the arm was evil. And now you've journaled about it. Unless I'm just part of your dream, which would possibly be freakier than evil zombie arms, considering the sum total of my existence in your world is words on a screen, and a picture of one wolf or other...

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

"all that we see or seem..."

I read a horror story long ago, about a man who developed automatic writing, and his hand continued to write after he was dead... I'd like to find that story and read it again to see if it was as scary/good as I remember it.

[cryptocosm.livejournal.com]

"Last layer"? Rather a naive assumption that there has to be a last one, don't you think? Remind me to discuss the concept of infinite recursion, and of multiply infinite recursion, with you . . .

after you wake up.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

For no reason I can think of, I woke up today remembering this post of yours, and it occurred to me that if it had felt like a "meaningful" dream it would be a good time to check your own arms for any odd lumps or skin legions, random infections, or anything else that might make one of them count as "evil" and a danger to the rest of your body if left undetected/untreated...