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A set of recurring bear dreams.


Mid October, 2017

I was in a variation on my aunt F and uncle C's house where a party was being held. There were so many strange and quirky characters there that it felt more like an indoor carnival. In one room I met a woman who was the caretaker of a semi-trained bear. People took turns meeting the bear, warily, before leaving, fully amused by their encounter. It was a black bear, small as bears go but still large enough to do some serious damage if it wanted to. It followed me around in particular and it kept resting its head in my lap every time I sat down. Each time I would feel a little on edge despite its outward displays of affection. I was worried about making the wrong move and setting off its wilder instincts. After the fourth or fifth time I started to even feel annoyed, not wanting to have to stay on my toes all the time. The caretaker woman seemed to sense my annoyance and she came up to me saying, “It is a great honor to be chosen by a bear.” I wandered out of the room, thoughtful, but not entirely convinced.

***

Thursday Night, 11/7/19

See "The Jaguar Woman" entry.

***

Tuesday Night, 6/30/20

I was someone else, a man in his 40's I think, outside at the edge of a forest as dusk was approaching. I morphed to resemble my waking self. I began climbing a large arbor for some reason, treating it like a jungle gym. While I was up there, I discovered a baby elephant hanging from its trunk in the arbor I was climbing. I stared at it for a while, confused by how it got up there. It changed into a bear cub. Das showed up. He thought the baby bear was cute and wanted to pet it indefinitely. I began to think about the implications, however, and I started looking around nervously for the mother. It appeared to be alone out here, but I was still wary.

"We shouldn't have put our scent on the cub." I told Das, "The mother will smell us and get angry if she's around."

Das shrugged. "I'm not worried. Look! He wants pets!"

I sighed and edged my way down the arbor. "Come on." I said, trying not to be too loud, "It's almost night time, we need to leave the forest now if we want to get clear of wherever the mother bear is at." I started creeping quietly away from the arbor and towards a sparser area of trees.

Das shrugged again but reluctantly stopped petting the cub and trailed along behind me.

I started to hear sounds in the bushes and a low rumble, and I realized the mother bear had arrived. For a moment I picked up the pace but continued to try to be as quiet as possible, hoping we might somehow get away before it finished locking onto our location. I searched my mind for what to do in case of a bear attack, and I remembered to play dead. The mother bear showed herself, blocking our path. I realized we weren't going to make it. The bear roared angrily and charged at us, knocking down Das first. Then she ripped into me (which didn't hurt as much as one would expect) and I got to see my intestines, right before my right eye was detached from its retina and everything went dark. I woke up. "Damn it Das..." I said out loud.

***

Thursday Night, 11/5/20

I'm talking with my parents outside on the deck when an adolescent black bear wanders into our back yard and we notice it has an abscess on the right side of its head. My mom wants to go over to it and treat it. I'm also worried about the bear's health, but I do not think it's a good idea to go up to it like that. I suggest maybe calling a wildlife center instead. "I have some leftover antibiotic ointment from when the cats were sick, I'll go get it!" My mom says and goes back into the house. My dad laughs at us and goes back inside to the other side of the house.

I follow my mom and try to get her to reconsider, but she doesn't listen to me. "Well, here it goes!" She starts heading back outside with the ointment.

"Mom, no!"

My mom jumps a little, startled. "Ah, you scared me!"

"You should be scared, it's a bear!" I look away for a moment, wondering about the wildlife center idea again, but when I look back I see that my mom is way out in the yard heading towards the bear.

For whatever reason I decide I have no choice but to do things my mom's way now. The least I can do is try to mitigate the danger so she doesn't get attacked... But this is probably a bad move. I head outside and my mom is scaring the bear towards the fence and towards me. I'm worried it will feel cornered. I backtrack a little and grab a bag of cat treats as it's the only thing I can get to quickly. I manage to get the bear's attention with the food, tossing a handful of treats on the ground in front of it to distract it. My mom comes up behind the bear with the ointment. The bear finishes the treats very quickly so I keep having to scramble to get handful after handful ready. I'm worried about the gaps of time where the bear might get aggressive. "When I say stop, stop until I can get more treats." I tell my mom, convinced the bear needs to be distracted with the process eating to not notice her. It's a dubious plan to begin with but I'm clinging to it.

My mom is applying the ointment to the bear, but I'm struggling to get the next set of treats out of the bag. The bear is slowly starting to look up. "Stop." I say. My mom does not stop. The bear looks directly at me with dark black eyes. "Stop, stop." I say again. Still no response from my mom. I imagine I can see impatience developing in the bear's expression, although it's hard to tell. "STOP!" I'm trying not to be too loud, but I'm starting to panic. I finally get the last of the treats out of the bag and toss them on the ground.

"Done!" My mom exclaims cheerfully.

"Mom, get inside, quick." I say anxiously. I make sure she makes it inside while the bear's still eating, then I go in myself and close the screen door first. Why am I bothering to close the screen door first? It's not going to stop a bear and I'm wasting time... I think and close the sliding glass door as quickly as I can. I can see the bear standing in the yard, eyeing the bag in my hand as if annoyed there are no more freebies.

***

Monday Night, 11/23/20

I'm in a building I don't recognize. My dad is there and says something very mean to me, although I can't remember exactly what it was or why it happened. Rather than feeling hurt or scared, I suddenly feel a deep anger come up as the full implication of the words sink in. "I am not stupid." I yell powerfully. My dad disappears but I yell it again. It seems to be irrelevant that no one is around anymore. I can see out a window onto the unfamiliar street outside. It's night time and raining a little. I still feel the anger, like a raw energy. I open my mouth and a bear's roar comes out, a guttural rumbling. I stop, confused at the ability to make such a sound and feeling self conscious, thinking people will think I'm weak for being too emotional and sounding ridiculous. Then I decide I don't care, even if anyone was around to hear. Twice more, I let out the bear's roar which resolves into a more human sounding scream. The dream fades.

Thursday Night, 11/7/19

I was hiking through a forest and I came out into an open field, accidentally spawning a large bear as I did so. I had to run away from it using video game controls. It morphed from bear, to wolf, to lion, to jaguar and long story short I couldn't increase the distance between me and it no matter what tactics I used.

Gradually the environment shifted from video game to realistic until I was running in my own body rather than using controls. Knowing I stood no chance remaining in the open field, I dove into the deep river to my left and swam across. I pulled myself out onto the opposite river bank and found myself back among the trees. But of course jaguars are excellent swimmers so the big cat followed me easily. As it came out of the water the jaguar transformed into a woman. She was beautiful and lithe, dressed in flowing white, with the cold expression of a seasoned killer. We came out onto a wide and empty paved road that cut through the trees. I walked backwards and shot invisible arrows at her which made her health bar go down - a remaining feature from the video game - but she was otherwise unfazed. She was slowly walking toward me holding an already bloodied sword which she didn't even bother to raise. She said, "It's always hard to kill something for the first time." Clearly she was not referring to herself. She seemed to be implying that any reluctance to kill on my part would give her the advantage.



We both stopped walking and she informed me flatly that I was out of arrows. Her health bar was only at half. I knew I would have to use my sword and hack away for my life. I wasn't very skilled with a sword. That is to say I'd never used one before. As the jaguar woman raised her own sword it was immediately clear she was in her element. My alarm went off, yanking me out of there and into a waking state.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had a huge beard. It just went along my jawline, so that the rest of my face was bare, except that I may also have had a mustache. The beard was maybe three inches long, made up of bushy, wiry hairs. It was pale, reddish brown. But it also seemed to be coated with some white, frosty stuff, like powdered sugar. The white stuff may actually have been the whiteness of the hairs. I may have thought about trimming my beard. I was surprised I had actually let it get this long.

Dream #2

I was talking with an older man. I needed to move out of my apartment, possibly because of violenced in the neighborhood as well as in the buidling itself. The man was telling me about some sort of hotel that also served as apartments for a lot of people.

I saw outside the apartments on a sunny day. The apartment buildings were smallish, maybe three or four stories tall, and made of red brick. Somewhere was the name of the hotel, something like French Hotels. The place looked okay, but it also seemed a little dumpy.

The older man and I were now inside one of the apartments. I wondered if this place would have bed bugs. As the man continued to talk to me about something, I considered checking under the mattress for bed bugs.

I was now by myself in some other apartment. It was a pretty big apartment, and it felt pretty lonely. I began to think about my current apartment and all the noise I had to deal with there. I thought to one place I'd lived in only recently, but for a few years, where I'd had no troubles with my neighbors, no noise. But, then, I remembered, that place had been a separate house, not an apartment.

I thought over what I'd just thought. It didn't make sense. I had been living in the apartment I was living in right now for a number of years. How could I have recently been living in a house for a number of years as well?

Dream #3

There was an outdoor camp. There were a lot of tents closely packed together outside. Bordering the left side of the tents was a big, concrete wall. Some soldiers stood on the wall or at some kind of watchtower that reached just over the wall.

A soldier was telling a woman, possibly an older, Asian woman, to be very careful in the camp. He may have told her not to leave her tent often and to keep an eye on her children. The soldier said that wild animals were still able to get into the camp.

The soldier said, "I don't mean that a dingo is going to eat your baby or anything."