DREAM GALAXY

Research case · Cities & buildings

Showing a Researcher Around

Not stated · Date unknown · contemporary study

Somebody, umm this girl had joined my research group, and I was showing her around, but like, the research was like in Italy or something. My car was a boat; it was just like a gondola. We were just like going to the city to get back to Furman, and I was just like showing her my phone, and somehow like everyone just use the same phone and you could just share...you could just like hold everyone's information...and like just press this button... and when she pressed the button, then like all of your information gets backed up, and it wasn't the other person's phone anymore. And so I was explaining that to her and she was like "Wow! So Cool!" and then um...so she was trying to set up all of her information so that she could use the phone. Um... and then I was telling her it was my mom's phone and it didn't have internet and like that was a big deal for her, that it didn't have the internet. And when I gave her the key at where she would be living on campus and told her to not lose it because that's a lot of money, and then I gave her the key to the lab, and then it like she.... I don't know.... we had to like.... I gave her money, I don't know why, it wasn't like regular money, it had RC on it, cause I was trying to figure out what RC stand for. And I gave her all these coins and they have like RC on them. And all that was like what was going on two seconds ago. Before that, cause we were at the house we were staying at, and then we left for some reason on that gondola. But so we were at the house and I was at the house waiting for her to get there. For some reason, there was like a softball game was going on in the backyard, and there was this big dog guarding the house. So I had to like help people to get past the dog so that they can go play softball in the backyard. People kept coming and I was like hey you're good...you're good, and I was waiting for this girl to get here so I could do all those stuff I just said... did. And I was talking to somebody, I was talking to two other people, like they were getting me ready, basically just telling me all the things I just told the girl. And my mom was there and she was like the person telling me what to say. I don't know, I was sitting in a rocking chair. It was kinda weird. And umm I was happening....And...um...I think that like.... The girl tried to call me on the phone but it didn't work for some reason, and then like came to the house. So I was like talking in the house to the girl. Um...and like everyone was just like quiet. Umm and when she got there like I had to like help her get past the dog into the house, so I was telling her to go around the back just like what I told softball people to do. And for some reason I couldn't tell if she is a softball person or if she was here to work with research. All the softball people looked very distinct, they looked the same, they weren't the same person but they all looked very similar, I was thinking like.... Aren't you already here?.... Umm.... And so yeah I figured out who she was. An then I was like I tried to take her to the lab and I tried to show her around. And that's where all those other stuff happened. That's it.

Original text — Zhang & Wamsley 2019 dream EEG reports — krank curated text-only release v1, Jing Zhang and Erin J. Wamsley (research); Erin Wamsley, Jing Zhang and Megan Collins (archive); Remington Mallett / krank (text curation)

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Source
Zhang & Wamsley 2019 dream EEG reports — krank curated text-only release v1 — Jing Zhang and Erin J. Wamsley (research); Erin Wamsley, Jing Zhang and Megan Collins (archive); Remington Mallett / krank (text curation), 2019 study; 2025 curated release. Curated text-only release, de-identified report 251
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Record type
Research case
Place
Not stated · American
Date
Date unknown · contemporary study
Uncertainty
Moderate — De-identified sleep-mentation report; the source does not establish a calendar dream date. Chinese title and translation are AI-generated editorial drafts, not human-verified. Broken oral phrase “I was happening” is intentionally preserved; do not invent a missing event.
Imagery
Child · Vehicle · Boat · City · Crowd
Feelings
Confusion · Calm

Another way to look at this dream

Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.

Child

Whose child was it — yours, someone you know, or yourself when young? What did the child need?

Jung · The child archetype

Jung described the “child” in dreams and myth as an image of what is not yet — a beginning, small and easy to overlook, that carries a future.

C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”, Collected Works 9i

Psychoanalysis Depth psychology

Freud began his theory with children’s dreams, which he found to be plain, undisguised wishes — a trip promised, a treat withheld.

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), ch. III

East Asian custom Folk saying

In China and Korea (where it is called taemong), “conception dreams” before a birth are a living custom, often retold within families.

East Asian folk custom

All perspectives on child →

Boat

Were you steering, a passenger, or simply being carried? Did you know where the boat was going?

Jung · The night sea journey

Borrowing the ethnologist Frobenius’s phrase, Jung wrote about the “night sea journey”: a hero swallowed by the sea or a monster who travels in the dark and comes out changed.

C. G. Jung, “Symbols of Transformation”, Collected Works 5

Ancient Egypt Myth & scripture

Egyptian funerary books such as the Amduat describe the sun god sailing a barque through the twelve hours of the night before rising again at dawn.

Amduat (New Kingdom)

Daoist thought Philosophy

The Zhuangzi praises one who wanders “like an unmoored boat” — drifting here is ease, not loss of control.

Zhuangzi, “Lie Yukou”

All perspectives on boat →

City

Do you know this city? Were you looking for a way, hurrying, or lost?

Jung · The centre

In 1927 Jung dreamed of a dark, sooty Liverpool; at its centre was a square with a pool, an island and a single magnolia tree in bloom, lit as if by sunlight. He took it as an image of a centre in the psyche — what he called the Self.

C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)

Song-dynasty memoir Literature

After Kaifeng fell, Meng Yuanlao wrote down the lost capital street by street and called the book a “dream of splendour”, comparing his memory to the Yellow Emperor waking from his dream of the land of Huaxu.

Meng Yuanlao, Dongjing Meng Hua Lu (1147), preface

Hebrew Bible Myth & scripture

The builders of Babel set out to make a city and a tower reaching heaven, and end scattered, no longer speaking one language.

Genesis 11:1–9

All perspectives on city →

Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images