Recurring Elements

I, too, have recurring dream elements. They used to be really frequent. Now some of them come much less often. Others remain frequent visitors of my dreams.

TORNADOES: By far my most commonly recurring dream element. I have dreams with tornadoes in them all the time, often several tornadoes all around me. Sometimes they're destroying everything. Other times, they're just off on the horizon, almost as if part of the landscape. This is perhaps not surprising, given my childhood experiences.

SUBURBAN WASTELAND: This one isn't as common as it used to be, but I used to find myself in a suburban neighborhood, with row upon row, street after street, of identical ranch-style houses. There are no trees in this neighborhood, and usually no people around either. The sky is usually grey, or it's twilight and the neighborhood is dimly lit. I don't recognize anything, yet I always have a feeling that I am home. It's not a good, comfy feeling of home, though - because I don't know where I am, nor do I feel like I belong there. I just have a knowledge that I don't have anywhere else to go.

STRIP MALL LAND: I often dream about a huge area of strip malls, interspersed with apartment complexes. I think this is loosely based on the Mall Area in my hometown, Grand Island, NE, because it basically looks the same. Just lots of strip malls everywhere. Sometimes I go into the mall. It's usually filled with food courts. Often, there are tornadoes in the distance when I'm in strip mall land.

HOTEL: It's an old Victorian hotel. I don't know what it looks like on the outside, because I've only been on the inside. Everything in the interior is either dark red or gray. Gray painted wainscoting, etc, and lots of red velvet chairs, curtains, and red Victorian-era wallpaper with intricate floral patterns.

INVASION FROM THE AIR: This is one of the most disturbing (to me) recurring dreams I have. The setting is usually the back yard of the house where I grew up in Grand Island. Our back yard was huge, and across the fence was open range and farmland for two miles. So "my back yard" is actually a very huge space in this dream, where aircraft are flying very low, and very slow (almost to the point of hovering). Many of them are crashing in the fields behind my house. Sometimes it's an air battle taking place. Other times, it's more of an invasion - and the aircraft may not even be human in construction. It's always terrifying - HUGE flying ships swooping low, and hovering, and crashing all around, within hundreds of feet of me.

AIRPLANE: I'm often getting on an airplane to travel to distant lands, usually in the Arctic Circle. I have to transfer from plane to plane to ultimately reach my destination. This is a weird one, that's hard to describe, strangely enough, because the dream usually involves a landscape that is actually more of a map (as if I'm seeing everything from a high altitude), and there is usually a lot of anxiety associated with changing planes. When I'm on the plane, there are no windows, and our takeoff is for some reason dangerously steep.

THE STEEPEST HILL/BRIDGE TO NOWWHERE - I used to dream very often about having to drive up a hill that would get steeper and steeper until I was certain the car was going to stall, and flip backwards. By the time the hill became steep enough that the car would actually begin to flip, I would be hundreds or thousands of feet up. Similarly, I would often be crossing a bridge that was either steep, or seemingly was leading to nowhere/infinity. If I did make it across the bridge, it would lead me to the

SKYSCRAPER: An incredibly tall structure towering high above many other very tall glass buildings. The skyscraper has an observation floor at the top with an absolutely insane view of the city, thousands of feet below. There are many elevators and escalators, and it requires using them all to finally reach the top floor. The elevators are unpredictable, and are malfunctioning. The doors won't always close, and sometimes the cars plummet or rise at great speeds without warning.

DROWNING: I used to dream very frequently about my brother drowning - in a pool, in a lake, in a river. This was only when he was really young - and I think I was probably feeling protective of him, but also worried about a certain sense of responsibility perhaps. The weird thing is, once he and I went out to the Platte River to goof around (which is famously shallow). We were walking across one of the channels, and suddenly came to an unexpected deep current. The river literally went from 8" deep to over our heads in a single step. I saw his head disappear under the water and all my fears, and memories of my nightmares, came to sudden realization for an instant. Then his head popped out of the water and I pulled him back into the shallow channel. He wasn't freaked at all - but I nearly had a heart attack.

HIGH GREEN HILLS: I often have dreams of high green hills located just west of Grand Island. They are beautiful hills, covered with green grass. I have no idea why my mind places these lovely hills in my dreams near Grand Island where there are no hills.

HIDDEN WATERFALL: I also dream of a mythical forest in an area of mountains and deep canyons, also in Nebraska. In my dream, it's Nebraska's Pine Ridge region - and it's actually somewhat similar to the real thing - yet also quite fantastic in an otherworldly sort of way. In my dream, there's a waterfall near a very swiftly rushing river. The waterfall is huge and beautiful, but can only be accessed by entering a cave, wading into deep, cold water, and finally crawling through a very tight space. Once you get through this, you come out into an open, but very steep and narrow canyon that is lush with vegetation... and in the crux of the canyon, is this spectacular, graceful waterfall.