The Saga of Amelia -- or -- Getting Stuck in a Dream

The Saga of Amelia
--- OR ---
Getting Stuck in a Dream


Cautionary "fiction" story by Kenneth Parker Begun January 18, 2007.

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Forward (by Ken Parker): Dreams

I am convinced that everybody dreams. I consider it to be a necessary part of the infrastructure of life. Now, dream recall is another story. In fact, dream recall is an art that can take time to develop for many people. The reason for that is that the entire memory system in a dream may be completely different than for regular waking life. In effect, the dream can have its own past and its own projected future that has nothing in common with waking life.

I have been interested in my dreams for much of my life. I started a semi-regular dream journal in March of 1980 and have never regretted it. I found that the best way of recording my dreams was to have the journal right next to my bed so I could start writing before I allowed thoughts of my upcoming day to come up. That is actually quite important because what can quickly disappear is what I will call the "card catalog" for the dream memories. In other words, the dream memories often disappear all at once.

There are many kinds of dreams, as well as many triggers for dreams. Obviously, what was said, done or even eaten during the day can have a major effect on the quality of dreams. But I have had dreams that did not appear to have anything at all to do with my waking life. And dreams can obviously be pleasant or unpleasant. Nightmares come to mind here. Also, people report recurring dreams. I have not experienced this phenomena myself, but firmly believe that it represents a person's Essence (or "higher self") attempting to get his or her attention. Dreams can be highly symbolic, but I do not believe they have to be. I believe, for example, that some dreams may be memories of other times, often from other lifetimes or from other parallel versions of the current lifetime.

I will now discuss one kind of dream I have experienced frequently because I believe it to be central to Amelia's story. It is what I will call an "Epic Dream". My definition of an Epic Dream is a dream that 1. takes up a lot of subjective time, 2. includes a large amount of scenery, and 3. includes a number of people who are true participants, rather than just being "extras". In addition, I can often search my "dream memory" while I am writing the dream down to get a "back story" that may go back years before the part of the dream I am experiencing. Some of my Epic Dreams may take many pages to write down.

One special kind of dream is what is known as a Lucid Dream. It is where a person figures out, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are dreaming while the dream is in progress. I have experienced this myself more than once. The dream becomes extremely vivid at that moment, and it often becomes possible to gain control over the dream. I bring this up because Amelia became lucid in the dream that is key to this story. In fact, this story is a cautionary tale to those who regularly have Lucid Dreams because it points out a possible pitfall to be careful of.

There are many resources available to learn more about dreams. For example, "Lucid dream" brought up 448,000 entries in a Google Search. Wikipedia has a number of articles on dreaming: [1] and [2] among others.

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Chapter 1: A Dreary Life

Let me introduce myself. I am Amelia. I am a "Past Life" of Ken Parker. At the time of this story, I was a suburban housewife with nothing really to look forward to. I had made some bad choices, most notably my choice of husband, who tended to be more interested in liquor than in work, family or social obligations. Unfortunately, that made life at home quite unpleasant. The one silver lining is that we had no children. If we had, that would have made things even worse when my husband lost his job. He was not home much, preferring to be out with his "buddies", but that was preferable to the frequent tantrums he would throw when he did show up at home.

When I look back, I can certainly find that I could have handled things much better than I did. I hated confrontations, and so did not handle the situation with my husband very well. This takes place a couple of hundred years ago and so we did not have the benefit of pop psychology. But looking at it from my side, I would have been described as an "Enabler", as I would do what I could to "smooth things over" for my husband. We also did not have the benefit of Alcoholics Anonymous, but that may not have helped anyway as it normally requires the alcoholic to recognize that there is a problem, which my husband absolutely did not do.

After my husband lost his job, my life became even more dreary than it originally was because we quickly ran out of resources for living. I consider this the direct trigger for what came next.

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Chapter 2: My Dream Life

Even as a child, I had a rich, fantasy life. My upbringing was a lot better than my married life. In fact, I was encouraged to talk about my dreams, which encouraged me to remember them on a regular basis.

Once I was married, my dream life felt almost more "real" than my waking life and I often would be upset when I woke up from a dream, because it was usually quite a bit more pleasant than what I had to look forward to at home. In fact,

Looking back, I can see that I was approaching a breaking point, especially after my husband lost his job. If I had not done what I did, I would have likely had a nervous breakdown.







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Chapter 3: Getting Stuck in a Dream

Before the dream that is key to this story, I started doing everything in my power to dream as much as possible. It was easy to do because my husband was not home much in the last days, allowing me to sleep by myself. I would nap as much as possible during the day and only do the minimum necessary to get by in my waking life. After the money ran out, I really lost all incentive to accomplish anything at all. As I stated, I was at a breaking point.

And then it happened: A most magical dream on a different planet. I was not even human in this dream, but an androgynous (neither male nor female) creature that could climb trees easily. While the dream was in effect, there were a lot of inhabitants on this planet, as well as lush vegetation and lots of animals. While the dream was occurring, I figured out that I was dreaming. It happened when my body signaled me that it needed my attention. At that point, I was equally aware of myself on this planet and in my bed. But, now knowing that I was dreaming, I immediately made the decision that I did not want this dream to end. Ever! So now, with the knowledge that I was dreaming, I did everything I could to ignore my body's signals to come back. And it is not really easy to do that, as the body can be quite insistent in its demands. But I stuck with it. And finally, my body stopped complaining and slipped into a coma.

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Chapter 4: The Coma

I only got the details of what happened next at home when I recently got a chance to review my lifetime. What is a coma? I now know that a coma is the human equivalent of going into hibernation. Bears go into hibernation every winter but humans only normally go into a coma when they are either badly injured or gravely ill. But every so often, a person who is healthy will go into a coma without an external reason. That is what happened in my case. My husband finally came home and found me like that and promptly called our doctor. I was taken to a hospital where I died two weeks later.

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Chapter 5: Back to the Planet

I had an immediate feeling of relief when my body stopped complaining. And the dream continued. But gradually, the other inhabitants of the planet started dying out or otherwise disappearing. So the dream started losing its magic. But I was quite stubborn about staying on that planet. I'm convinced now that I had some opportunities to leave the dream, but ignored every one of them, because I absolutely did not want to go back to that dreary housewife life.

So it took a number of years for me to figure out that I was now alone on a planet. I now know that this was a "prop" for a dream, but it was one that is maintained, as far as vegetation is concerned. But life started getting a bit lonely.

. . . . . . . . .


And now, I am stuck on a planet, hoping to one day be rescued.

To Be Continued...

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Footnotes:

[1] (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream for more information).

[2] (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_Dreaming for more information).

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When judging these stories...

When judging these stories, please judge by content and not by form.

I am currently studying "Verbal Comportment" (mainly for public speaking, but some for writing skills), and this will include some advanced English classes in the future.

Thank you and best regards,

Ken Parker, Seattle, Washington

The Alida Chronicles

This BLOG will be a preview of my Science Fiction stories.

I figure that I can Start them here, and then, if people are interested enough, somebody might slip me an Advance or some such.

Take a look at my other BLOGs (About Me is the route), and you should know that I have many topics to choose from for my stories.

Thank you and best regards,

Kenneth Parker, Seattle, Washington