Sweet Dreams are Made of This…

Sometimes, dreams are dreams. Usually they mean something. Often, they mean something quite powerful – if not about the Universe Around You, then certainly about the Universe Within You.

You know by now that my dreams are always extremely vivid, and are very often incredibly brilliant. Just like me*. Last night, I dreamt I was sitting on the Blue Couch, in my “nest” (the corner of the couch I always sit in, because it is so close to all the stuff I’ve deposited around it, owing to the fact that I always sit there. Even the chit’luns know that when someone says “Mama’s nest”, it means that corner of the couch). I was watching a movie, and His Nibs was sitting beside me. So far, this dream is pretty vapid.

Beside me, on the table beside my nest was a little glass jar. It wasn’t much larger than a mustard jar, but at times, if you looked at it in exactly the right way, it would be as large as a pickle jar. Inside was some murky-looking water, and a large, odd-looking eye. Oh! And tentacles! Many, many tentacles!

Partway through the movie, I turned to His Nibs, and I said: “Did you know that octopus can fit into spaces much smaller than their actual body *ought* to be able to fit into?”

“Well of course,” said His Nibs. “Many animals can.”

“It’s owing to the fact that they are invertebrates; they have no skeletal structure,” I replied.

“I know what ‘invertebrate’ means,” His Nibs pointed out.

“Unlike cnidaria (probably where Roald Dahl got the name for the vermicious knids from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator), which mostly rely on the pressure of the surrounding water to retain their structural integrity (particularly those whose external membrane is really only a cell or two thick), cephalopods have an intensely rigorous muscular structure, which allows them to retain their shape outside of the water. Of course, they are marine animals, and they can’t live outside a marine environment.”

His Nibs stared at me, then shook his head and went back to watching the movie. Yes, I speak parenthetically even in my dreams.

“I have a cephalopod in this jar, you know,” I told him.

“I’m not eating squid,” he said.

“No, no! Yuk. BLEAH!” I exclaimed, because we all know that eating squid is rather a lot like chewing on old shoe leather, or the ears of comatose pigs. “No, this one’s ALIVE!!!” I said ‘ALIVE!!!’ in my very best Mad Scientist voice.

You probably know by now that the only thing odd about this scene so far is that His Nibs was sitting beside me on the couch. This is how I knew it was a dream, in fact.

I held out the little jar and showed him that the creature inside was moving. His Nibs rolled his eyes and pursed his lips and went back (again) to watching his movie. But *I* opened the jar. At first, a little tentacle (and from here on in, I will say ‘arm’, as that is appropriately what it was; I just wanted you to have the mental image of the terribly cute little appendage, with its little suckers, wiggling about in the air) emerged from under the lid. It lolloped about in the air for a moment, but was soon followed by another, and another, and another, until there were six arms, all with the nicest mushroom-coloured suckers on them, gyrating in the air and testing out the outside surface of the jar. (NB – the other two arms were supporting the critter from the bottom. Like little cephalo-legs)

I allowed the suckers to touch my fingers, my arms, my face. Their touch was gentle, and foreign. The creature inside the jar emerged, much, much larger than the jar it had been confined to, and pulled itself down the length of my body to perch on the floor. The ‘plop, plop, SLUUUURK, plop’ of its arms learning the surface of the floor was oddly reassuring.

The octopus, for that’s what it was, amused itself at my feet, wrapping its arms around my arms, gently touching my face, and trying not to get its arms in the way of the television. It picked things up and then put them down, sometimes in the same place, sometimes in different places. Then, it wrapped one arm strongly around my leg and held on. We wrestled for a moment; *I* was grinning, but I couldn’t see its beak, so I couldn’t tell you if it was.

After a time, I said, “Okay, buddy. Time to get back in the jar,” and it crawled back up the length of my body and sklurked itself back into the little jar, pulling the lid over its head as it went (see video, below).

Now, sometimes dream symbols need to be interpreted. One of the interpretations for seeing an octopus in your dream is as follows:

octopus Busy-ness, multitasking, going in many directions at once, approaching a problem from many different angles. Dreaming of this animal can represent:

* Having too much of one of these qualities, or that you could benefit by being less this way
* Not having enough of one of these qualities, or that you could benefit by being more like this
* Someone or something in your real life with whom you associate one of these qualities (an event, situation, threat, etc.)

For more clues, pay attention to what the animal was doing or any particular characteristic that stood out. – from mydreamvisions.com

I didn’t need to interpret this dream, though. I know what it means. And I think he does too, my octopus friend.

NOW I totally want an octopus for a pet. But I should probably stick to dumb things like cats and puppies. Something smart enough to use tools and leg-wrestle would probably be a Bad Idea. Although the thought of an octopus splorping on to someone’s head from above, having crawled up the wall and onto the light fixture, is the best image I’ve had in my head all morning.

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*
This is me, using the Sarcasm Hand: /* The “You’re supposed to find this funny” hand is this one: *\, and the “I’m being funny by being sarcastic” hand sign is thus: *\/*. Sometimes, these hand signs are used in rapid succession or in conjunction. If they’re waving about, it means you’re to catch on Right Quick that a funny is being made, or that sarcasm is involved. This is represented in print comme ça: ((*\ or /*)) or, of course, ((*\/*)). Which also looks like the sign for “big boobs with a tiny bikini and/or pasties”. But rest assured, it is not. It is the sign for “HEY, YOU DOOB! I’M MAKING A DRASTICALLY FUNNY WITTICISM OVER HERE THAT INVOLVES SARCASM!”