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Dreams: Train stations and fairgrounds

23:43 / 15.05.02

Having just stopped smoking pot again (now at week 2) I've been having a lot of intensely vivid dreams.

Two recurring elements keep popping up, one - train stations. Always suburban train stations, with ususally truncated trains (one carridge only) arriving at them.

The other recurring element is the Melbourne showgrounds. A place empty most of the year execpt for when the Melbourne Show is on (an agricultural fair basically, with tacky rides and showbags) or is used for big concerts (eg. the Big Day Out). Its got all these large shed buildings on the site. It not in a field or out of the city, its very urban and built up.

These two elements have been present in nearly every dream I've had for the last two weeks. Anyone got any idea what they could mean?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

02:03 / 16.05.02

Questions
Is the fair grounds full or empty?
The train comes out of the tunnel?
Have you ever rode the train?

03:22 / 16.05.02

>>Is the fair grounds full or empty?
Never full, sometimes empty. Often at dusk, on a gloomy or rainy day (though it never actually rains during the dream).

>>The train comes out of the tunnel?
No tunnel.

>>Have you ever rode the train?
Yes, but there is nearly always a mix up. I get on the wrong train or I leave something behind (on station or on train).

The last dream I remember involved get on the minitrain with some luggage then getting off the train because it was the wrong one, but couldn't get my luggage off in time. So I caught a cab to try and beat the train to a certain station I knew it was going to, so I could get my bag. I woke up just after getting in the cab. I could have resumed the dream, but found it too pointless and annoying.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

04:34 / 16.05.02

Well there's the "Your missing something" interpretation. ie: missing the train, your luggage, the party, your white tubular doob-like object. I am working hard to avoid the freudian assumption.

Then there's the "forgotten places" interpretation. ie: the station and fairgrounds when abbandoned. Think of these as magick spaces, you are abbandoning these parts of your brain.

Either way my prognosis is that this is withdrawl from a mild psychological addiction. Try to come up with non-chemical ways of playing in these parts of your brain.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

04:35 / 16.05.02

I am not a doctor... just so my officious tone doesn't mislead you.

23:22 / 20.08.04

I had an odd train station dream last night. Not recurring, although I'm having a lot of different dreams about missing trains and buses, but simply because I often do, or almost do.

In this dream, I had 15 minutes to make 35 minute journey to the station, and for some reason went on the bus that takes an hour to get there. When I arrived (and miraculously, the train was still there), I didnt have a ticket, but didnt want to leave the train either, incase it pulled away. I asked my mum to run to the machines to get my ticket (like the ones for the Gatwick Express; they send you a code and you collect them there) but she must have got confused, and came back to the train as the doors were just about to close, with not a ticket, but a tin of beans that she seemed to think would do instead.

Now if anyone can explain the last part, I'd be impressed.

03:40 / 21.08.04

but she must have got confused, and came back to the train as the doors were just about to close, with not a ticket, but a tin of beans that she seemed to think would do instead.

A tin of beans has a lot of suger in it doesn't it? So it could possibly be that your energy levels are low and the beans are symbolising this, so if you have more sugar in your system your body and mind will work better and you'll be in a better state to get to your buses and trains on time.

It's a long shot, but it could be something.

17:19 / 22.08.04

No, they're magic beans! The kind you get instead of what you think you need - money for your cow, or a train ticket - and it seems like a bad deal, but they end up leading you to where you really need to go...

I've had dreams about fairgrounds before. They're usually at night, and the place is not only empty but abandoned and falling apart - rust and weeds and rotting wood everywhere. Always feels creepy and cobwebby and haunted.

Never dreamed of a train station - but then I've never been to one in waking life. Trains appear frequently, though. In one of my common recurring nightmares as a child, I was riding with my family on a train that went off the end of an unfinished trestle bridge.

I've never ridden a train in my life. Not an avoidance issue, because I'd quite like to; it just hasn't come up.

22:31 / 22.08.04

I nearly always dream about trains.

Recurring symbols:

I'm playing in the tunnels, they're usually quite dark and empty, however I'm usually accompanied by at least one other person. Their never seems to be a fear or apprehension involved in exploring these 'dark places' but there's always an undercurrent of being hit by a train or getting eletrocuted by the track.

Another symbol is transferring trains from one place to another. This is a rare form for my train dreams to take but it's a fairly strong one. There's usually some kind of problem transferring trains, like not getting the right one or missing the one I'm supposed to get. Missed opportunities? Fear of such?

Ideas?

09:18 / 23.08.04

I have very similar dreams. I’ve noticed that they tend to occur if I’m stressed or worried about something. I have to take a long journey and then at the end of the journey, just as I’m nearing my destination, I have to start it all over again. Actually, re-reading the thread, I’d say that this seems a main point of all the dreams above – the disrupted journey. Note: I’m not saying that if you’re dreaming this that you are under stress at the moment. I don’t think that our dreams have that kind of straightforward linear relationships with our lives, and all kinds of free floating psychic miasma from our internal dynamics washes up there. With your dreams, Fool, possibly this anxiety is something that’s been locked down by dope?

Trains do seem to have mutated into a general all purpose symbol for me though, I’m uncertain as to the exact reason, possibly the “underground” thing has something to do with it, though more likely it’s just that I’ve spent so much time travelling on them since my early teens as it’s my main mode of locomotion around London. As for the fairground, I’d agree with Nietchze’s interpretation above (or at least accept it provisionally) – just the phrase “deserted fairground” brings up a lovely creepy feeling, with shades of the Brothers Quay…

10:15 / 23.08.04

Clanking ferris wheels rotate against a steel grey sky, mysterious sounds emanate from the Hall of Mirrors…

This thread reminds me of how much I love dreams. If you’ve never kept a dream diary, I really recommend it.

Reminded me of something else as well… I made my first breakthrough in understanding my own dream symbolism reading about trans in a book on surrealism. Something just “clicked” and the particular turn of phrase the writer used leapt off the page and into my head. As I remember it, the phrase wasn’t directly relevant but it provided the “fuel” for a conceptual leap that spoke directly about what was happening. Thee was an amazing sense that, all of this time – the symbol had been bugging me for months – it has had a meaning, logic and consistency all of it’s own, yet I’d only just cracked it. It’s like getting perfumed love letters in a foreign language you are unable to read. I think this is true of any recurring dream symbol or situation, so I’d say if one is having trouble decoding it, just rotate the image in your mind, think it through in terms of the language of dreams, really try and feel it, and eventually the inner meaning will reveal itself to you. An old tip I remember from a book on dreamwork is to attempt to try and feel the emotional tone of any scene or image, rather than a “dream dictionary” symbol X = Y approach. I’d add that whatever it is in our psyche that generates and talks to us through such startling beautiful imagery is IMO, the audogedies or Holy Guardian Angel, and can be prompted to talk more directly.

10:19 / 24.08.04

A train journey within a dream denotes to me a transitional change that the mind is trying to wrestle with. Of course some Freudians would suggest more phallic conontations. Its wonderfull how our minds can metaphorise engrams and past memory traces! As for fairgrounds hmmmm it's like an escape from mundanity for most people who don't work the fairs and that. Had a wicked "trip" once about rollercoasters and fairgrounds - my then partner was having a hellish world-astral cord interstellar episode, so it was back to reality and the end of that! I had this dream where I met a beautifull lass with olive-skin and shoulder-length black shiny hair at a park whilst feeding the ducks, and eloped with her on the train to somewhere. Ther was 2 other women involved so I figure it was a 3 Fates type of archetypal dream, you know sacred trinity of 3 women.