Task 7 - Writing

[Chantel Poole]

Writing Time!

As much of a hurry as Gary is in, he’s already feeling a little irresponsible (having gotten himself into this mess), and now his dad’s voice is running around in his head telling him to “Make safe choices.” Like taking periodic breaks from driving the sleigh and having a rest! After pulling over, one thing leads to another, and as the snow-drifts continue to swirl their way around, Gary winds up drifting off himself into a dreamy little nap.

Task:
Don’t let Gary stay asleep for too long! Keep an eye on the time (and stay awake yourself) by writing 100 words or more reminiscing about a Dream you’ve had in the past which included themes which revolve around Snow, Penguins, Significant Transitions, or any topics you feel could be tied to this holiday adjacent activity. If nothing comes to mind, you’re welcome to make one up, or share a significant dream of any kind! Perhaps include the significance of what it means to you, or any potential symbolism one could glean from its messages.

Post about your dream below by January 31st at 11:59pm HOL time to earn 10 beans.

[Prof. Will Lestrange]

The dream I'm thinking of involves ice, a wintry cousin of snow. I am skating on ice, and all of a sudden the floor gives way. There's about an inch of water; below is another layer of ice and I somehow see the label 1. Trying to break through again, the second floor gives way, I see more water and another layer and then comes the label 2. Floors continue to break, and the water gets an inch deeper each time until the number goes up by one.

The first time I had this dream I was twelve years old and around 5'3" tall, so the water went up to 63, then 64 (my head was fully submerged) and finally 65 before I woke up! When the dream occurred later on in life, on the other side of my growth spurt, I would see somewhat larger numbers (say, into the seventies) before waking up. The sense of futile struggle makes this a particularly frustrating dream!

[Maeve Madden]

This was a dream that I used to have all the time when I was little. Penguins were my favourite animal, so it makes sense that I would dream about them.

I dreamt that I was part of a research group in Antarctica that was studying penguins. At one point during my time there, I got into an argument with one of the other researchers. The project head deemed the argument my fault, and so punished me to spend two weeks as a penguin (I guess he had the ability to do that). The next day I was brought to the penguin colony and transformed. The penguins didn't accept me right away; I was shunned. But I was determined to make the best of the situation, so I caught a pile of fish and brought them to the colony. They were so happy that they took me right in! The next two weeks were wonderful. I made lots of friends, helped raise baby penguins, and went diving and swimming with the colony. When it was time to turn back into a human, I begged the project head to let me stay as a penguin. He did, with the caveat that I would help with the research. I lived out the rest of my days as a penguin, even falling in love and having penguin babies of my own! The research was groundbreaking, as they now had an inside source to help them, and won lots of awards.

Now, waking up from this dream was always a little weird; I had lived out an entire life as a penguin, and now was back in a little girl's body. And I don't really know the significance of this dream, other than I really loved penguins and I knew that I wanted to be some sort of scientist. I haven't had this dream for a long time, but would love to have it again!

[Kalgri Sicaria]

I don't often remember my dreams once I'm fully awake, and even when I can remember fragments they are often non-sensical or leave me feeling unsettled for some reason. I know that I am generally aware that I am dreaming when I am in a dream, but that does not help me to remember it. As I live in an area where snow is a rarity, my dreams normally take place without any snow in them, so instead of sharing a dream, I thought I'd share a memory.

From the ages of 7-11 I attended a school that was known to be the only one in the area that never closed for snow days. So, when it snowed one January my younger sister got the day off and went sledging with our father, and I had to go to school. However, the school did try to make it a fun day, to try to pacify those of us with older or younger siblings who had the day off. We had an extra-long lunch break and were allowed onto the playing fields (which was only normally allowed in summer). The teachers lent us items of clothing to dress-up snowmen in, and we had a good time. Later in the afternoon, we saw some older children climb over the fence from the graveyard, destroy some of the snowmen, and steal a few flatcap hats. However, they were all previous students and the teachers recognised them, so their parents all got phone calls from the headmaster of both our school and their school, and the hats were returned!

[Adeline Morior]

I have never been in snow or experienced it so I cannot dream of it too realistically. I can tell you about a dream of a terrain as white as snow. It was a vast rocky mountain area next to the ocean with the mountain and rocks being pure white. We were hiking without a trail over these terrains. I remember coming to a hundred meter drop that seemed to go on forever. We only had a small area we could cross by hanging from our fingertips and slowly crossing. All of the members of our party refused to go through with it and turned back. I, being fairly brave in my dreams, decided I could do it. It wasn’t easy but slowly I managed to cross over. The scene that followed awed me so much. The landscape transitioned into a lush green area with beautiful foliage and a waterfall. I have had many dreams like this. I take it to mean I am one of few I know willing to take risks and go beyond in order to succeed. I have yet not to reap the rewards. I am thankful and try to remain humble by it.

[Dominick Salinas]

The dreams I do remember are, sadly, mostly nightmares. When I was younger, I watched one of those nature documentaries where the penguins would leave the ice in Antarctica to go searching for food and the leopard seals would be waiting to eat the penguins and there would be this big chase underwater and sometimes the seals would make it out alive and sometimes they would become a meal. Apparently, this scarred me because at one point I had a nightmare that I was a penguin and was fooling around on the ice and accidentally fell into the water and, of course, directly into the mouth of a leopard seal. Somehow I was able to swim away unscathed (this didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me since I literally fell directly into the seal, but dreams don't always make the most logical sense).

Not sure what the symbolism behind it is - my nightmares are somehow largely dictated by the things I watch before I go to bed. A lot of them involve me being eaten (I also have a recurring one where my dad adopts a t-rex for a pet and it eats me), so I'm sure this is all a bad omen for something and only time will tell me exactly for what.

[Prof. Felicia Hartwick]

We were vacationing this past week in Florida and had this dream just the other night. I'm guessing it had to do with our returning from a vacation in Florida back to the cold and snowy New York.

My family and I we going down to one of the restaurants in our hotel and were waiting for the elevator to arrive. Just as the door began to open, my hubby and son remembered they forgot something in our room. As they walked back to the room, I went into the elevator and called to them that I would get our table. The ride down had been just as quick as all other rides, but when the doors opened I was in what looked like a sub basement and I had no idea where I was. I remember in the dream, of me running around this dark and gray looking area for a staircase or another elevator. Why I didn't just get back in the one I just came down in, I don't know. But after what seemed like hours I found a door and pulled it open.

The only problem, I was no longer in sunny Florida, but in some cold and snowy place. As I looked around, no one was in sight. I ran around the neighborhood calling our for my son and husband but they were no where to be found. How could they be, they were back in the sunny place.

I do remember waking up and calling out, or so I thought, but according to my son and husband they never heard me, so it must have all been in the dream.

[Anne-Marie Gagne]

I have very few dreams I remember fully and even less that involve snow. But there was one dream I can mostly remember from my childhood that involved snow (and only rarely, this dream has reoccurred a couple of times in different weather). It also involved a building being constructed, the bad guys in horror films (Ghostface, Michael Myers, etc.), lots of snow, and a chase along the building like in Tom and Jerry.

Now first I must say this was not a nightmare. Because I spent a lot of the dream laughing. I don’t really watch horror movies so my knowledge of the villains at the time was based on what I’ve absorbed through osmosis basically. My friends love those movies so they would talk about them.

Anyways, the dream started basically in the middle of the chase. I’m running along the beams and jumping from one moving beam to the other. The snow was falling heavily but not really affecting me at all. It was like I was walking on top instead of in it. Now that I’m thinking about it again, I would re-watch Lord of the Rings trilogy a lot so I was probably mimicking Legolas in this chase. The villains were slipping and sliding off the beams every time I would turn around. Knocking each other over and having to jump over the others to get to me but slipping themselves. Though they all would still be there when I would look back even if I watched one of them fall off. Dreams are weird.
There isn’t much to this besides the chase. It ends with me jumping on top of a beam being moved up with a crane and making the villains have to come to a stop at the very edge of another. Until the last villain can’t stop in time and knocks all of them right off.

[Emily Spencer]

I’ve never actually lived in a place that had a lot of snow, but one dream from my childhood that I distinctly remember revolved around snow. At the time, my mom was very into Little House on the Prairie and one of the fond memories I have of her was the time spent reading the books together. I fancied myself a modern day Laura Ingalls, thus the basis for the dream.

In my dream, my family and I were living in a log cabin on the prairie (big shocker, right?!). My Pa was away (no clue why), so it was just my mom, my sister, and myself. It started to snow that day, and my sister and I had so much fun making snowmen and snow angels, and Ma was nice enough to gather up a few cupfuls of snow to make snow cream (our version of ice cream). Things were pretty pleasant until nighttime fell.

The gentle snow turned into a blizzard and soon we found ourselves snowed in, and I remember being terribly frightened and huddled with my sister in bed crying. To add to the chaos, we could hear wolves howling near the door, and the pleasant dream fast turned into a nightmare. The door crashed open and I screamed…and woke up promptly. I have no idea who or what was coming through that door.

I believe that the driving force behind the dream was not only the Ingall’s story, but the fact that it was a bonding time between my mother and myself. The symbolism that I take from the blizzard was that something pleasant could turn dangerous in the blink of an eye. The wolf,I believe, symbolized (oddly enough) strength and courage, even though I was too frightened in the dream to see it that way.

[Louis Walles]

I was a deer. A mighty deer, who accidentally got lost in the forest, and left my herd behind and could not find my way back. I have spent months to walk around the forest to find my way back. Then, in the midst of winter, I finally did find my home. But no one was there. I was standing in the deep snow when other forest animals appeared around me. They have telepathically told me that everyone from my herd was dead. I believe they died when a group of hunters suddenly appeared while I was gone. It was a really sad dream.

[Harry Walles]

I was walking around a park during the winter. I was alone but it did not really matter. Out of the blue, I looked around and I spotted a huge black horse. The horse was just standing there and looking at me peacefully. Then, all of the sudden, I have had a sudden urge to get nearer to the horse. The animal decided to turn around and walk away and so I decided to follow it. That is when the dream turned weird. For the remaining of the dream, I kept on following the horse and it kept walking away from me.

[Ereshkigal Csintalan]

I’ve had plenty of dreams that I have remembered at the time and written down or shared with others but I can’t seem to find one that has been set in the snow or really fits the holiday theme as such.

The closest dream (or part of a dream) I have had that fits this is as follows:

I was leaving a house and I see a snow leopard walking around in the area. I have no idea how or why it is there. This really isn’t the kind of place you’d expect to see such a creature as it’s nowhere near where they’re from and it’s neither cold nor snowy. I just observe the creature making sure I don’t disturb it or announce my presence to it.

That’s all I can remember from that dream. I looked up the meaning of a snow leopard in a dream and apparently, it means that with continued effort, an obstacle in life can be overcome. (According to the Dream Dictionary on Dream Moods (although that’s leopard, not specifically snow leopard))