Dream journal, 1/25/92 USSR

1/25/92  I was reading my dream records and I was surprised to see that many of the elements came true, more or less. One year later, those dreams about Russia for example, most notably the changing blue and green sign I saw in Red Square. In the dream I’m with Oleg Atbashian, in real life it was with Valera Stupachenko. They put a an electronic bulletin board in the windows of GUM since I’ve last been to Red Square. I stood in front of it thinking I was in a déjà vu dream, not recalling the particulars of the dream. So, when I read about it, I was very surprised. I had a lot of déjà vu experiences when I was in Russia. The dreams usually occurred a year and advance, that’s why I don’t remember much about them. It’s almost as if I simultaneously lived an entire life out each day in the course of a year.

Maybe we are only on this earthly plane a year at a time and so we live alternate lives, continuously recycling the year down to the end. Other Russian images that were either too generic to pinpoint, or didn’t come true, with the exception of my helping an older woman, by offering my arm, she was recognizably Lydia from our business trip. Lots of dreams about getting ready to go to Russia, buying coats, sweaters, etc. Of course there’s always a group but there’s always a group involved in the USSR so that’s not exactly prophetic.

Maybe I need to pay attention to the strangers that I meet in dreams, because that’s the stronger indication of a déjà vu than anything else. Certainly I’ve met Valera before in dreams. That was well over a year in advance, Another theory shot, but it was the right time of year. I first remembered the Valera dream, was in 1989 before I went to Russia or I had even met Oleg, for that matter.

The images of people speaking in a language with lots of ZH sounds like Portuguese but not quite, it was obviously Russian, upon rereading. I recognize dream images. Even the icons were there except the dreamscape was like the coast of California instead of Russia. That threw me off. I could I couldn’t make headway with it. How was  I to know I would meet Valera at Fort Ross, of all places?

It’s hard to be objective but I’d like to more accurately see, so I can record the events. None of the actual images came through, with the exception of the I’m tired and want to sleep In church scene, a composite, the images were more metaphoric, than not. The problem is is I cannot remember much upon waking, then the dream is lost forever, unless I can record some imperfect meager scrap. Building, reconstructing the pieces is the actual déjà vu process, I guess reshuffling the images and the order of events, renaming the inarticulate descriptions, I can only record to the best of my ability. And that is colored by my linear consciousness. Call it dream pollution, but sometimes I’m able to capture an image in spite of it all. A tantalizing tidbit, enough to tease, but not enough to satisfy.