The Rembis Report And Other Fascinating Topics - Volume CXXXIII

This essay is the second in a weekly series about the personal nature of thinking, thought progression, dreams, and ponderings on the subject of quantum entanglement.

It may be helpful to read this from the start, so please CLICK HERE for Albatross - Part I

When the albatross takes flight, it may travel for 10,000 miles in a single journey, only stopping to rest at sea. It is my guess that when they decide to land, they sleep. But for all I know, they doze off in mid-flight, and dream.

You have heard those stories of people dreaming that they were a bird in flight. Perhaps you have had one yourself. I am sure I have dreamt of flying, but don’t recall anything more than that brief sensation. Offhand, I have no specific memory of a flying dream.

For dreamers who have enjoyed that nocturnal luxury, freely floating high above the Earth, they got a sense of what being an albatross must be like. This leads me to question what the albatross dreams. Do they, somehow, during their long flights, let their minds wander, and dream of being human, doing something that you do, and wonder what they are experiencing? If that is the case, are you and the albatross exchanging thoughts? Are you both experiencing each other’s actions through quantum entanglement?

There is no way to confirm or deny this. If there were, we could probably prove the existence of remote viewing, ghosts, and a host of other paranormal phenomena. That is a lot of heady stuff that steps right into the dark shadow realms of conspiracy theory. But I am not going there. For now, I just want to examine dreams.

Some people say their dreams have come true. They claim predictive powers. Others say they can interpret dreams. Charismatic self-proclaimed seers and psychoanalysts make careers from such interpretation, stating that they are keenly intuitive and are able to show parallels between the dreamer, their lives, their fears, their wants and needs, and real events, connect all those dots, and appear to be some kind of expert on the subject. But really, anybody can listen to the story of your dream and tell you whatever they want. If they weave a tale well enough, even the most bizarre concepts will start to make sense.

Dreams are for the dreamer. They are free to interpret any way they wish, and if that means getting an outside opinion and agreeing with it, who are we to argue? Nobody can prove anything for sure.

One of my favorite dreams (not my own) came from a newspaper comic strip.

It went like this - The short man told the tall man, “I had a dream the other night. It was about my kid, Jimmy. He and I went to the track and Jimmy said he liked the ten horse. The next day I woke up and went to the track. There was a horse named Jimmy’s Birthday in the 10th race. It just so happened to be the number 10 horse! It also just so happened to be my kid Jimmy’s 10th birthday! Then I looked at the odds and Jimmy’s Birthday was at ten-to-one! I looked in my pocket and all I had were ten dollar bills! I knew it was a sign! So I went and put all my money on Jimmy’s Birthday.”

"And he won?” asked the tall man.

“No. He came in tenth.”

So, I guess Jimmy didn’t get anything for his birthday, but the point is, how much stock you take in your dreams is up to you.

Last night I was exceptionally drowsy when I went to sleep. I find that when I push myself to the limits of consciousness before bedtime, where I am absolutely incapable of remaining awake, instead of lying down only mostly tired, to think about sleep, I sleep deeper on those nights. I don’t know if it affects my ability to dream, but it seems that those next mornings after staying up later, I have more recall.

I dreamt about the Mountain Roads. I have these dreams quite often. I am not calling them the fourth Dreamland because I don’t know if they may be part of one of the others or not. The Mountain Roads all seem familiar. Unlike the people I know in the Dreamlands, the people I meet on the Mountain Roads, I seem to know from waking life, even if in the Mountain Roads scenario, they do not carry exactly the same persona I know them by in waking life. But my dear, sweet wife Ellen is constant. She is there sometimes, riding with me as I drive. The roads take us into towns, and I think they are on the outskirts of the fourth Dreamland. In waking life, I can recall a lot from the Mountain Roads. I know which way they go, the neighborhoods they take us to. I can partially visualize them as a map. I know where dead ends are, and shortcuts, and steep grades that lead to scenic vistas. Some are dirt and some are paved. I have been on these roads in all weather conditions. I am confident and comfortable with them. Sometimes I know exactly where the road is going, and we go there. I don’t know if that qualifies as lucid dreaming, but I think not, because I don’t get the sense that I know it is a dream.

Last night I had two dreams, both on the Mountain Roads. In the first one, Ellen and I drove to an office/shopping complex. I knew right where to park for her to get to the bathroom quickly (also a knack I have in waking life from years of being a salesman). Then we walked around the mall for a bit. There was an art installation of pillows on the floor in one area, where the artist encouraged walking on and through them. We did not have to remove our shoes. It was a sensory thing. A lot of people were walking through, laughing, talking. It was silly, but we joined in that before leaving.

Later, we went to visit somebody who lived on a Mountain Road. It was our friend Jill, and her mother. But her mother was not her mother as we know her. Jill’s mother was played by my coworker Julia. Those two could easily pass for mother and daughter, should they be seen together. They do not know each other in waking life (to the best of my knowledge - maybe they do and I don’t know it). We visited with them for a bit and went on our way.

That’s about it for the Mountain Roads. Why I meet people from waking life on the Mountain Roads, and not in other Dreamlands, I can’t say, but that is how it is. They are just a bit different, as Julia was here, appearing as Jill’s mother. I recall seeing them in certain areas, and knowing where they live, or work, and can think to myself when I awake that “Isn’t that odd that Kevin (my pal from Montana) is making pizza, now?” or something to that effect about somebody else. The people I know from waking life may appear here, but slightly different from the way I know them.

In Dreamland Four the only real person from waking life, who is also a constant here, is my wife, Ellen. Everybody else in Dreamland Four only exists in Dreamland Four. They are unknown to me in waking life. But Dreamland Four is the most real of them all.

While I know my way around the other Dreamlands and the mountain roads fairly well, they do not have the same tone as Dreamland Four. It feels like a completely different place. It feels more real. I know I keep saying that, but I don’t have a better way to describe it. Maybe through analogy.

Walk through this exercise with me. Picture a movie you like. Any movie that you know well, one of your favorites where you know all the lines, the music, every character, and you could watch it over and over. Now, turn that movie into a live production. More than a stage play, but an actual event where you are in the town, or world, where all that stuff you love is actually happening. Now, place yourself alongside everyone as another character. You are part of your favorite movie and it is real. That is what Dreamland Four is like.

But my Dreamland Four is not akin to any movie you have seen. The actors are not anybody you know. It is a world that only I get to see. And I know it well because I have been living there for years. When I get there I don’t just see it, I feel it. I breathe and drink and eat and bathe and use the bathroom and watch TV and sleep there. I know lots of people and they know me. I have a life there and a house where Ellen and I live.

I call Dreamland Four the Mall City. This is because the mall is the central place in Dreamland Four. I work there. While it remains vague in waking life, I know the larger narrative is that I work for the mall in some capacity that has to do with tenancy, like a leasing agent. I have never had such a job in waking life.

I know all the shops and the people who work in them. We have small Mom and Pop’s and large retailers. I don’t ever recall the names of the stores, but the mall does well. There are barely any vacancies and the mall is always bustling. It is both indoor and outdoor. The mall has everything.

I do mean everything. Picture every mall and plaza and food court you have ever seen and patch it all together with a bunch of parking garages, and - that’s it.

Does it have an indoor waterslide and rollercoaster?

No, it does not have an indoor waterslide or rollercoaster that I am aware of, but I would not be surprised to find them being installed. You never know what management is going to do next. That is something I will keep an eye out for.

The mall has theaters and meeting facilities, too, but no hotel. There are long, carpeted hallways, and escalators that climb alongside several flights of staircases.

I know my way around the place. When I am walking through any part of the mall I know where I am and I know how to get to anywhere else in the mall because it is so familiar. It is my world. I enjoy an extreme level of comfort. It feels natural to be there.

My favorite parts of the mall are the vacancies. I don’t know why, but I have always enjoyed empty and abandoned spaces. Seems that who I am in waking life carries over. We don’t have many vacancies, but I know them well. When I lift up a roll-down cage that separates an empty storefront from the mall, where people are walking by, and go inside to survey the blank walls adorned with hooks and those panels that hold shelving, examine the wiring that was left askew, I recall the business that once inhabited that spot. One was a clothing store that sold purses. Another was a shoe store.

I have memories within Dreamland Four. I remember things that happened there. Sometimes while I am there, and sometimes in waking life, I recall events from Dreamland Four. But I don’t recall it all perfectly. There are lots of missing gaps. I can tell you a lot about it, but I can’t tell you everything.

We have a few big vacancies. There is a new theater complex on the east end of the mall, and the old one, in the southwest corner, is defunct. They recently took all the seats out, so they are just big empty halls now. I don’t know what is going to happen with that space.

I have an absolute sense of direction in every Dreamland. East, West, North, and South are natural to me. The reason I am certain of the direction is because when the old theaters were open, I remember people coming in to the movies at dusk and the sunset shining in the distance. Now, with the new theaters on east side, the building blocks the sunset.

The mall itself is in the northwest section of the city. The city is hilly, but not mountainous. We live someplace near the mall and shop in that section of town for groceries. The city center is a few miles south of us. Downtown has a few skyscrapers, ten or fifteen stories, maybe taller. The biggest one is a place we go to the terrace restaurant on top for dinner and look out on the city, which stretches out to the east. A few miles away in that direction there is a large municipal complex made of white stone that sits on a terraced hillside. I have been there many times. Besides the main skyscraper, this is another thing you can see from everywhere in town.

I walk around downtown a lot because you never find a parking spot right where you want to go. It is always a few blocks away, and may be in any direction. Traffic is busy because the streets are narrow, two-laned, with one in each direction. No one way streets I can think of. Like the mall, it is popular to have shops on multiple levels, so buildings are not all offices, but a combination of retail establishments and apartments. There is plenty of foot traffic, and no vacancies downtown.

Over past the municipal buildings, when you go over that hill, there is an eastern coastline. It is oceanic, a bit rocky, again, not mountainous. I drive to the north of here once in a while, to another town. When I go that way it feels like I am crossing a border, a division line to another municipality or state. I have given people rides up there and dropped them off. There is a long stretch of road with the ocean on the east side of the road, and a long lake or bay on the west side.

I can’t recall everything I was involved in, driving to these places or walking downtown, I just recall doing it. I also recall my house and neighborhood. Somewhere around the mall, our neighborhood is part of a rolling hillside that climbs up every few blocks. It is country acreage. We and the neighbors have big lots, like old farms. But nobody is farming anything and I don’t recall horses or other farm animals. I do see dogs sometimes. I am not sure if we have pets.

I have a solid mental picture of the house, more from the inside than the outside. It is built into the hillside. The big main room has 20-foot high ceilings and the windows are too high up to reach from inside without a ladder. We have two big ceiling fans above, and out the bank of windows, which do not open, but run the length of the room, it is ground level, so if anyone were standing next to them, they could be seen, and they can look right down into the living room. I call this level The Bunker. It feels like a fortress, but we have nice furniture.

Around the corner, the hallway leads to bathrooms, bedrooms, and the garage. The house feels a bit like a maze, but I know my way around. I could draw the floor plan. The bedrooms all have doors that lead into each other and into the bathrooms, so you can walk in a circle through everything without crossing your own path. The bedrooms are built even deeper into the structure and have no windows, so we always need to have lights on to see. I don’t know why it was built that way. I am not an architect.

There are two staircases. Our hillside wall is to the north and our house faces south. I know this, but have trouble recalling what it looks like from outside. The front door opens to an atrium style room with windows that look over the meadows. It is a long room, like the living room is. Hallways lead around corners to the living room and bedrooms. On the west side, a staircase with a turn and two separate landings leads up to the kitchen and dining room. Up there, the landing wraps around three of the four walls of the living room, looking over at the windows where you can see into the forest, which you are now level with, and down on the living room. So, we have many discussions, calling up and down to each other. The other staircase is at the other end of the landing, on the east end. It is steeper and has more turns and landings than the main staircase and is completely enclosed. There is no elevator here and I often wonder why.

Ellen and I live there and sometimes we are with two young adult women, and a young adult man, who I believe once lived there and now visit, or still do live there. They are the vaguest thing about this place. I remember the property better than I remember them, but I think they are our children. I do not know their names, but I see them, sometimes with their own guests. I find this most curious because Ellen and I have no children in waking life. One of the women I can can picture quite well. I have spoken with her many times, but I can’t remember anything we talked about.

I could go into greater detail about all this, but that is all it would be. Details. A bunch of trivia about what everything looks like and it won’t convey anything of substance. I realize that I see a lot of staircases, now that I wrote it all out. Not saying that means anything. I leave interpretation up to whoever likes that kind of stuff. I am just reporting the facts as I recall them.

But there is a story.

That mall. My life at that mall. Next week, I will tell you all about what is going on with me and that mall. You might say that I am making it all up because it is just a dream, but see here, that’s the thing - I am not making it up. I am not the author of my dreams.

I don’t know if there is an author. All I can do is tell you what happened.

And I will.

CLICK HERE to read Albatross - Part III

Thanks for reading.

If you are new to the Rembis Report and would like to read any of the previous issues, PLEASE CLICK HERE to access the archives. To read it from the beginning, PLEASE GET A COPY of The Rembis Report: An Observation.