Travel and vehicles
The road, the timetable, and every way a journey fails. Control dreams outnumber crash dreams by a long way, which is the reverse of what the traditions suggest.
17 records
- ActionBeing lateOne of the most widely reported dreams there is, and one of the most consistent in structure: a deadline, an obstacle that keeps multiplying, and no arrival. The dream is far better at producing the obstacle than at producing the outcome.
- ActionGetting lostDistinct from searching, which is looking for a thing. This is not knowing where you are, and the reports centre on a specific and quite eerie experience: a place you know well that has stopped being navigable.
- PlaceRoadThe road is scenery in most dreams and the subject in a few. Where it is the subject, the reports are about the road running out: an end, a fork, a surface that stops being a road, or a route that no longer goes where it used to.
- PlaceTrainTrain dreams are timetable dreams. What dominates the reports is not the train but the schedule around it: the platform that cannot be found, the ticket that is missing, and the train that leaves while the dreamer is still on the concourse.
- PlaceAeroplaneThe first thing to establish is that this is not a flying dream. Unaided flight is one of the most positively reported experiences there is; being a passenger in an aircraft is reported almost entirely in terms of turbulence, crashes and not being in control.
- PlaceBoatA boat puts the dreamer on water rather than in it, and that distinction runs through every report. The recurring themes are the condition of the vessel, the state of the water underneath, and whether anyone is steering.
- PlaceRiverRivers differ from other water in one respect that dominates every report: they move, and they move in a direction. What dreamers describe is the current, the far bank, and whether they got across.
- PlaceMountainMountain dreams are effort dreams. What people report is the climb rather than the view, and specifically a slope that steepens, a summit that recedes, and ground that will not hold.
- PlaceDesertThe desert is the dream setting with the least in it, and that is what the reports are about: no landmarks, no direction, and no way to judge distance or progress.
- PlaceIslandAn island is a place with a boundary you cannot cross, and the reports divide sharply on whether that is experienced as safety or as being cut off. Both are common, and which one shows up says more than the island does.
- PlaceCityCities in dreams are usually composites: a place assembled from several real ones, which the dreamer nonetheless names confidently as somewhere specific. That combination of accurate detail and impossible layout is the most reported feature.
- PlaceCaveThe natural counterpart to the built underground spaces. What separates cave reports from tunnels and basements is that a cave was not made, has no plan, and offers no assurance that the passage continues.
- SymbolBicycleBicycles fail by balance rather than by control, which makes them different from every other vehicle here. The characteristic report is wobbling, and dreamers describe the effort of staying upright rather than of steering.
- PlaceBusBuses fail by route. The characteristic report is being on one that is not going where the dreamer needs, and being unable to get off, which is a specific combination no other vehicle here produces.
- PlaceTaxiThe only vehicle in this database where the failure is being unable to say where you are going. Dreamers report a driver waiting for a destination they cannot produce, and it is one of the more precise dream frustrations there is.
- SymbolMotorbikeMotorbikes fail by speed. Where the car reports are about brakes and steering, these are about going faster than intended and being unable to slow, with nothing between the rider and the road.
- PlaceShipWhere a boat is small and the water is the subject, a ship is a building that happens to be at sea. The reports are interiors: corridors, decks and stairs, and they behave like the impossible-architecture material rather than like water dreams.