h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have to stop reading these dreams...last night, I had a dream. Never mind what it was about, somewhere in the middle I identified a thrush by its silhouette, and I thought when I woke up, 'Hey! All that nature stuff is Willem's trick.'

Heh heh well I hope you don't go!

Last night I went travelling again. We managed to go by car from South Africa to Central America. We were in Panama, and I think Guatemala. And again I was struck by how much Central America looked like South Africa. The same kind of savannah landscape. In my dreams this is what Russia looks like, and Mongolia and other places in Eastern Asia, and North America too. All of them look like South Africa - open savannah with lots of grass and trees - but it all looks very pretty all the same, with weird and wonderful kinds of trees like we get over here.

Heh, heh that is a pretty neat trick as long as some one else is paying the petrol bill.

Aha. Rewriting the landscape.

"By car from Africa to Central America"

Hi Dmitri and Abbi! This happens a lot in my dreams. I've never travelled by boat or train ... so in dreams whenever I have to get somewhere, it's by car, by bicycle or by foot.

Last night I had a bicycle dream in fact. I was at university but had to work as well, I made deliveries using my bike. In the dream I got really nervous about that because I couldn't remember ever having delivered anything! I get this in my dreams ... where I have jobs that I don't seem to ever actually do, which causes me to get very nervous.

I also dreamt about a solifugid, a delightful kind of invertebrate that I hope to cover for Colours of Wildlife soon.

The night before last I dreamt a lot. I was in a restaurant, eating something pizza-ish. A woman was speaking of living like a nomad, going from place to place with no fixed home; she then asked me if I was going back into preaching.

Next a guy (a preacher, I think) was cleaning up my garden. He was re-planting and pruning my thick-trunked plants, mentioning how delicate they were. He gave me advice also on tending them. And from him I found out that one of my plants - the species Pterodiscus ngamicus - was not a plant at all but an animal! I can remember studying it and seeing some organs and stuff in motion, surprising me immensely. And I thought, but this thing makes flowers and seeds and so, how could it be an animal?

I asked the preacher if he came across any animals in the garden; he said no. Then he stood on something ... the compost-heap, I think ... to look over the fence. While he was standing there an ENORMOUS worm-like thing crawled out of the leaves in front of me ... it was like a flat, ribbon-like worm, crossed with a centipede, and at least a metre long. I asked him if he saw that; he didn't seem to think it was very amazing. Then I walked to the other corner of the compost heap and there saw a small green snake! A harmless bush snake. But then I saw another snake ... huge head and eyes ... a boomslang! They are very venomous but can't easily bite people. Then there was another venomous snake above me ... I was suddenly surrounded by deadly snakes and scared to move!

The next dream: I drew some comics-style illustrations for my stories, and put them online. Then to my surprise I realised I had got some comments about my stories! I wasn't even aware of having put them online, but there they were ... apparently they had got online somehow and lots of people were reading them and commenting on them.

Next dream I went to buy bread and bought white bread by accident! My mother said there was brown bread ... in the house or in the shop? Can't remember clearly.

Last dream I can remember: I was sharpening the flesh-colour pencil from my set, and accidentally broke a big piece off the tip, which frustrated me immensely. (Real life subtext - yep!)

Wow, vivid stuff. I'd tell those snakes to behave, or I'd dream me up a giant mongoose.

I wish I could influence my dreams willingly Dmitri!

The nigt before last: I was dreaming about orangutans! They were climbing very, very high up in the canopy with a huge fall below them. But they were able to grasp onto thin branches ... I pondered how immensely strong their hands must be. Then in the dream there was a demonstration of an orangutan crushing a brick into dust.

I dreamt at some point I was trying to phone my mother but couldn't find the number and/or type it in on my cellphone.

Then I dreamt at a point I was being discriminated against for being different from 'normal' people. I was hanged (but not to death), whipped, and large areas of my skin burnt off with acids and other chemicals. I managed to get to the house of someone who then helped me.

Last night I can only remember the 'no, it doesn't shed its skin' dream. There was a monitor lizard, I don't know if it was a painting or a real one but it was shedding its skin. There was a girl who then said to me 'no, monitors don't shed their skin'. I then said they do, and explained how and why they do. Then she said, 'all right, you're the expert, you speak the truth but really, they don't shed their skin.'

Those sounds like troubling dreams. Well, maybe not the one with the know-it-all girl.

That wasn't really that bad ... I had far worse.

Having difficulty remembering my dreams. Last night I dreamt a lot but all I can remember was my sister and I going to a hanging-out place, she had some beer. There was another nice girl as well. I realized we were in a military defense tower. I looed out of a window and saw a tank/boat sort of thing approaching. I realized war had broken out. The tank approached and the turret moved and pointed right at us, and fired ... I realized we had been blown to kingdom come!

Good thing you woke up.

Yes, I guess if I didn't wake up it would have been pretty bad!

Last night: I dreamt of dolphins and whales! There were people swimming and playing and suddenly a humpback whale turned up. The whales and dolphins were extremel strong ... there was one spinning around while a kid held onto it, creating a terrible centrifugal force but the kid was unable to let go!

I also dreamt of little birds in a cage.

And then about a CD drive ... the songs were not playing properly and when I opened it up it was full of grass and hairs! I took out bundles of this and set them aside so I could properly clean the player ... then I noticed a dove was sitting in the bundle of leaves/hairs ... it was its nest!

A dove making a nest in a CD drive? What an extraordinary image, Willem! I love it. I marvel at dream logic, as if a dove could fit in a CD drive, and yet in the dream it all seems quite logical, ahhh how dreamlogic has its own way to go ...

Heh heh hi Cactuscafé, yes my dreams are full of funny stuff like that.

A few nights ago I dreamt of reconstructing an Oligokyphus, but in the dream I thought it was a Zalambdalestes ... in the dream I even figured out the significance of the name ... but it was still actually an Oligokyphus. Gotta see about illustrating those ... my subconscious is reminding me to work on some prehistoric critturs.

Last night: in the middle of a long dream I can't remember much of my nephew Christiaan showed me a delightful pet! It was a HUGE (could only just sit in your hand) black spider-scorpion combo. I remember how panicked I was when I saw it and my nephew held it in his hand as if it were a kitten! But I overcame my fear in the dream and held it as well and it didn't bite or sting me. Then in the dream it escaped from the room in which it was kept and ran wild in the house!

My subconscious must be reminding me to start with the 'scary invertebrate' section of Colours of Wildlife.

Then there was a dream when I had a vision (it might have been an old video tape or home movie or even a photo) of a girl a long time ago and I was fascinated to see she was wearing a school uniform I recognized as something close to that of my old primary school. The in the dream I went back in time and saw the environs of Polokwane as they looked ages ago ... wild, no town, and I could walk wherever I wanted. So I did a bit of exploration ... but I can't remember now what I saw! But this might be my subconscious telling me to explore more.

I also dreamt

Night before last: I dreamt I was visiting Beyoncé (in truth I don't know a single song of hers) but what was interesting that her house in the dream was made of tree roots/branches that had grown and fused together which was very interesting to me.

There was also a dream in which light rays disappeared ... the light of the sun no longer reached the earth! It was a very bleak and dark dream but somehow there were still bits of light here and there. One of a number of dreams of mine featuring weird Apocalypses.

Next dream I was back at university but not finding time to study.

Last night I dreamt I was back at university but not finding time to study. Instead I was spending a lot of time in a shop trying to find acceptable cheese. I mean acceptable to me as a vegetarian ... cheese involving no animal exploitation or suffering at all.

I ended up accidentally buying a bag of nuts with R95 I was supposed to spend on something else.

In this university dream I was sleeping in a room along with a bunch of seriously handicapped and deformed children. A doctor came in and there was a mother with a child; the child had on a loose shirt sort of thing, the doctor picked him up and was surprised/embarassed to find the child lighter and less substantial than he expected; the mother said with a rather apologetic tone, 'sorry, he's just a torso'.

There was a dream with my preacher friend driving me home, taking a HUGE detour.

I don't know any Beyonce songs either but sounds like she has an interesting house

Hi Peanut, nice to see you here again. And I should have made it clear her house was shaped out of LIVING tree!

Last night I had weird dreams. There was one when a bunch of folks and I were running here in the suburb from hyenas attacking us. We managed to outrun them for a while and then suddenly they started dropping on us *from above*. How the heck did they get up in the air? We ended up hiding on top of some tall bird cages. Then I saw a dead blue waxbill dropping to the ground. I was very sad about that ... I think someone took a picture and I said that's not nice. Then the body sank to the bottom of a pool of water and I felt better.

oof, I don't like the idea of hyenas dropping on me

a living tree house is cool though, and you be lucky enough to have some interesting neighbours of the variety

I would indeed love to live in such a house Peanut! And in some of my dream places as well ...

Last night was weird. There was the 'Wall of Drills' dream ... wow. I was exploring a mountain. People warned me to not go over the crest of the mountain as there were wild drills there. Well, drills in real life are very rare so I wasn't worried about encountering one. I went over the crest ... the slope on the other side was extremely steep. I had to hold on to bushes and stuff on the way down but eventually I couldn't go any further down, there was almost a sheer drop below me. So I started moving sideways instead, still grasping bushes and stuff, towards a kind of natural rock bridge where I thought I could get back up and over the crest back to the more gradual slope on the side I came from.

Then on the way to this rock bridge I realised something. I wasn't grasping on to grass and bushes ... I was grasping on to drill fur. Even grasping them by the beard. I looked up and saw that the ENTIRE SLOPE of the mountain consisted of an unbroken line of drills! They were just all standing there and grimacing with their huge canine teeth ... I had been grabbing on to drills all the way without realising! It was incredible. The drills had all been frozen in place as if they were gargoyles until this point, but now they suddenly sprang into action and rushed towards me, teeth bared! I scrambled back up and over the crest and escaped.

The other dreams can't really compare. There was one where I went to a place and Jane Seymour was there ... I owed her twelve dollars (or maybe Rands) ... I had the idea I owed a lot more but she smiled at me and said no, no more.

There was another guy, an old school friend (in the dream ... no such real life school friend exists) and he was really tiny, three foot or so tall. He helped me with money and bank stuff.

There was a dream of an awards ceremony ... can't remember details.