Dream Log Archive

Tag: Location: Beach

  • January 17, 2025

    (ireland arrival / palace vision / crowded japan transit)

    I land in Ireland, not Dublin, and meet up with Dad and Sister. They say they’re going to the hotel to drop off their things and then wander around. I remind them that I came last minute and still need to find a hotel. Dad wonders if I’ll be okay, and I tell him it shouldn’t be an issue, though I worry about Baobao.

    I look up nearby hotels on an app. While I’m searching, we sit outside on large stone steps and look around. In front of us is a large park, and on the other side of the park is an old hospital. Around the park are old European buildings. To the left is a road going up a hill.

    Dad points out that under one of the building steps on the hill there is a statue of Woody and Jessie and what look like their parents, huddled together and holding up the landing. They are half buried. He says the hill had to be re-landscaped because it was slowly eroding, and when they did that it covered the bottom of the statue. A lot of people were upset because they had to reconstruct their houses to match the new level of the road. He also points out a painted sign on the building next to us. He says it reads “war makes money” in Latin and shows a man holding a gun against a red warfront background. It faces the old hospital and signifies people’s anger at wars the government participated in.

    The building whose steps we’re sitting on is a palace. Inside, we go up a spiral staircase to an exhibit room displaying dishware, including an entire wall of tea sets. The tea sets aren’t the thin fine china I expect. Either the family wasn’t wealthy enough to own fine china, or it hadn’t become popular yet. The cups are bulky and dyed primarily one color, sometimes with gold around the rim or a second color inside.

    I see a vision of the ladies of the court having tea when the king comes in to see his queen. They seem to have a good relationship, and he appears to love her very much. She has white hair, possibly a wig or dye though she’s young, curled around her head with a small curl down the back. He has orangey-brown hair stacked high like a beehive. He consults her about information she gave him that was confirmed true, and she tells him what to do next.

    In a cutaway scene, her father speaks with someone about her gift. She has foresight, or has come back in time, and can tell the future. Her father listened to her and gained a great deal. Then she asked him to send her to marry the king. Shortly after, a call went out among the aristocracy that the king was looking for a wife. She passed every test smoothly and became queen. Now she is expecting her second child and seems to anticipate future trouble that she is trying to prevent.

    Back on vacation, I’m in a museum. It has many separate dark rooms with yellow lights illuminating artifacts that look Western in origin, possibly Greek or Roman. Between rooms is a hallway that occasionally passes doors opening to a courtyard. It almost feels like a movie theater. Someone, maybe a group, comes to tell me we’re moving to another location.

    Still on vacation, I’m now in Japan. I’m in a suburb of Yokohama, and it’s extremely crowded around the train station. I try to stay with my group, but we get separated. They shout that I should just keep going and get off at the last station. I look at the train map and see that one end in a direction is Gifu, which doesn’t feel right, so I choose the other direction. It’s crowded down the stairs and onto the platform, and I’m carried along with the flow of people.

    In a new town, I stop for lunch with a friend, possibly UK Friend K or High School Friend L. I like the place but don’t feel very hungry, so I order something light. She orders a large portion of spicy shrimp tempura and a side salad with full slices of cucumber and carrot, and she eats almost none of it.

    I try to help two elementary schoolers pay at a touchscreen machine, but one insists on pressing the buttons herself and, because she can’t quite reach, selects the wrong dish. They’re on a sponsored trip and need receipts for reimbursement, but the dish she chose costs 300 yen more than what she bought. I try to change it, but the system won’t allow it. I ask the staff, but she says she can’t change it either.

    The child explains why she needs the receipt, and the staff seems conflicted because the transaction is already recorded in the system. I think privately that it’s a flawed system. I notice an elderly woman behind the counter working the machine and assume this can’t be the first time someone has entered their order incorrectly.

  • July 17, 2021

    (house with medical past / naked embarrassment / ghost pursuit)

    Sister and Sister’s Husband move into a house. It’s fully furnished from the previous family, including a medical area where their daughter used to live. She had a condition where her hands could never fully dry out, so her bed is surrounded by shallow tubs of water with toys to keep sensation in her fingers. There’s also hospital equipment like IVs. She could only see friends occasionally, on good days.

    At one point, there’s a gathering. The adults sit at the dining table, and the “kids” sit at the kitchen bar. I sit between a fair-haired girl and a dark-haired girl. I start talking to the fair-haired girl as if I recognize her, but when she turns, I realize I don’t know her. The dark-haired girl talks to me like we already know each other, but I can’t remember meeting her. It’s awkward until she mentions an online friend I had, and I realize I’ve never met her in person before.

    Later, I’m inexplicably naked in the house. I need to get to my room for clothes, but Sisters Husband is walking around. I avoid him by heading into a bathroom off the living room and close the door just as he comes into view, though it catches slightly on the rug.

    Sister’s Friends B and I arrive by bus. I see Sister, Sister’s Husband, and Sister’s Dog going out to greet them, so I run through the house to get dressed properly.

    At some point, I become the dark-haired girl, who lives near the house.

    A friend drags me to a church. We were supposed to perform a sealing ritual for a ghost, but this is something different and urgent, like we’re being hunted. Instead of sealing it, she unseals the ghost by swiping a bronze token so its name becomes visible. A hole opens in the altar, and she throws me down into it before escaping through a passage to the right.

    A man named Ilya chases in after me.

    I try to hide, but the ghost has also been released into the basement, and I keep running into her. She wears white rags and is emaciated, her bones visible through grey skin. Her long black hair is tangled and oily, and her face looks partially mummified.

    I eventually find my way up and run toward the sea. Ilya and the ghost are both chasing me. I manage to fly briefly over the water, but then I fall into a rift.

    The rift leads to a spirit world—an endless sandy desert. Above me, the rift opens and closes repeatedly, showing the ocean just out of reach. I try to fly back up but can’t. I walk along the desert, searching for another exit, and eventually reach a shoreline. I try stacking stones to climb out, but they won’t stay stacked.

    Just as I’m about to give up, the ghost appears behind me, and Ilya pulls me back through the rift onto the shore. Even though he was chasing me before, he doesn’t want the ghost to be free.

    As we escape over rooftops back toward the church, he asks what happened. I realize then that my friend intentionally unsealed the ghost.

    I show him the items I have to reseal her: a bronze oval pendant, a pair of her earrings, and a small silver token—one for each of us. He urgently tells me to store them somewhere that locks, because that’s how she’s tracking me. I’ve just been carrying them in a small folding box that closes but doesn’t lock.

    I try to find something secure, but the ghost catches up again and we have to keep moving. We decide to return to the church so Ilya can help reseal her.

    I worry about my friend, but Ilya reassures me that the ghost is following me because I have all the tokens, not her.

  • April 14, 2020

    (beach search / dog facility / different childhood)

    I’m walking along a beach with my family, looking for something, though I don’t know exactly where it is. We pass a taxi area and continue to another stretch of beach, but that’s not right either.

    Eventually, we come to a white glass building and go inside. It looks like a chemistry lab at first, but there are dogs everywhere—it’s more like a dog hotel or grooming center. There’s only one woman taking care of them.

    Near the entrance are four small dogs: a fluffy white one wearing a headscarf, a blonde dachshund, a jumpy dog, and what seems to be the woman’s own dog, maybe a chihuahua with partially dreaded fur.

    Behind a high table with stools where we sit, there are more dogs, including a golden-brown retriever that loves attention.I try to take pictures with all of them. They’re friendly, though some are shy.

    Later, I’m in a restaurant talking about different ways my life might have gone if I’d been born into different circumstances.

    Then I wake up as a small child.

    Murasaki comes in with her daughter. I’m supposed to know Russian, but I only have my current memories. I make an excuse to go practice and escape into the garden, then head out into the street.

    Some kids make fun of my hair color. An older white man approaches and gives me a bad feeling. I try to leave and tell him we don’t look alike. He pulls my hair angrily, but I manage to slip away and run into another house.

    Inside, it feels like a community gathering space. Another girl finds me and pulls me into a crawl space so we can move around without being seen.

    We end up at an outdoor Korean cultural museum. There’s a theater building, exhibit spaces, and alley-like streets lined with restaurants. We look for somewhere to eat but don’t settle on anything there.

    Instead, we leave and go to a building in front of the museum and decide to have Indian food. We pay up front and each order a dish. I get a kind of dumpling set—seven pieces in a batch.

  • February 27, 2019

    (California set / new job confusion / swamp creatures)

    I’m in a place that feels like California, half indoors and half outdoors. There’s a hill with sand, a road, palm trees, and people in bathing suits, like a movie set. The ocean is nearby, and at the bottom of the hill there’s a hospital.

    I’m staying in a bungalow that looks like a tea house with SHINee. I go upstairs to a kitchen area where there are presents—lots of individually boxed oranges. I divide them into equal portions for everyone and note that we’ll have to eat them quickly.

    We all go out through a door on the kitchen level into a white hallway. Two members split off into a door on the left. I go out a different door, while the others go down either side of a T-split at the end of the hall.

    I start a new job. My boss is a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length brown hair. I don’t get instructions on how to do the job, so I go in but can’t really get started.

    Over the weekend, I have a fainting episode. I go to the hospital and move through multiple floors and crowded waiting rooms before eventually leaving again with no diagnosis.

    On the way back to work, I change into my work clothes—a swimsuit and a dress. I stop to talk with Sister’s Husband, who is a senior at the same job. He helps me register the hospital visit as a half-day sick day. I talk with another coworker, and then my boss comes up and asks about my absence. I explain the health issue and say I’ll work the afternoon, even though I still don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.

    I go back up the hill and into the same hallway as before, entering a door near the end. Inside is a marshy area. Two members of SHINee have become swamp creatures—a turtle and a crocodile, which is possibly Taemin.

    The turtle struggles to catch food and gets teased by the other. He explains that tortoises are actually the fast ones in water. I feed the crocodile some reeds from the edge, and the turtle says he’ll also need to eat some for fiber along with his usual food.

    After feeding them and checking on them, I get ready to leave. I ask if they want anything special next time. They say they want oranges. I think this is simple, since I already have the individually boxed oranges from earlier that they know about.