2025.8.8 Hypnagogia Double Feature Dream ①: Black Fruit and Funeral Rites | Dream Diary | Dream Analysis | Image Work | Jungian Psychology | Depth Psychology | Father-Daughter Relationship | Parent-Child Relationship | Family Therapy | End-of-Life Care | Grief Work |

*This post is a continuation of
Inherited Stories: Karafuto and My Two Grandfathers
.

Read the previous post here ▼
Please be sure to read it as well.

Regarding the
hypnagogia (hypnagogic imagery)
mentioned in the post title, I explain it in detail here ▼

The Beginning of the Dream

Yesterday morning, just before I woke up, I had a strange dream.
Usually, dream memories fade the moment I wake up,

but in this dream, both the visuals and the emotions
remained remarkably clear.

In the dream, I was in a place overgrown with underbrush.
There were many trees growing all around.
Seeing the lush green trees and undergrowth,
I wondered if it was summer, just like in the real world.
I seemed to have a vague awareness that I was in a dream.

The trees were planted in a regular pattern,
and their height felt artificially kept down.
I felt like I was going to bump into the branches above my head.
I crouched down slightly to avoid the branches.

There was something like a large net
draped over the trees.
The scenery felt somewhat familiar.

When I looked around carefully,
it looked like a plum orchard.
At first glance, it didn't look like there was any fruit, but
my maternal grandfather's house is a plum and grape farm,
so I felt like I recognized it.

Even so, it felt a little different from
the plum orchard at my grandfather's house.

Feeling a sense of familiarity and relief, I decided to walk through the orchard.
I reached the edge of the orchard.

Beyond the trees was an open space,
where dry soil was visible.
I thought that the area around the orchard must be a different field.

An Unexpected Encounter with Two People

At the edge of the orchard,
there was a mound of earth about the height of my waist,
like a small hill.

What is this? At first,
I wondered if it was a small burial mound.
Or perhaps they were
making leaf mold here?
I was curious about what this mound was.

As I thought that and moved closer,
I saw someone I recognized.
It was my maternal uncle.
He was my mother's older brother,
and the eldest son of my maternal grandfather.

Wait? But my uncle
should have passed away a long time ago?

I wondered what he was doing in a place like this, and when I looked,
I realized my father was on the opposite side of my uncle.
My father also passed away two years ago.
I had just held his third-year memorial service two weeks ago.
Two people who have passed away are here? That's strange. It's too meaningful.

Fruit of Mourning Colors

My uncle was digging into the small hill,
taking something out from inside.
I was curious about the inside of the hill,
so I approached my uncle.

The inside of the hill was a substance like solidified beeswax,
and it seemed to be kept as a pure, clean space.

My uncle took something out of the hill.
My father was also searching for
something inside the hill in the same way.
When I asked my father, "What are you doing?"
he said, "Nori (seaweed/glue)."

Nori?? What does that mean?
He's as bad at communicating as ever.
I felt a bit exasperated.
When I asked my uncle the same question,
he took out something that looked like a pitch-black fruit
and showed it to me.

It was a jet-black fruit that couldn't exist in the real world.
As I stared in shock,
my uncle said he was sticking nori (seaweed) to the outside of the fruit
to make it a black fruit.
Nori = seaweed. It made sense to me then.

He explained that after applying the glue, I should put it in this small mountain
to store it.
I think to myself that the uncle is
as good at chatting as ever.

That black fruit is certainly
like the plums
grown at the uncle's place.

The uncle splits the black fruit open
and shows me the inside.
I briefly wonder if it's a precious fruit, but
I accept his offer to look without hesitation.

The inside is black, too.
But unlike the outer skin,
it is juicy, wet, and glistening.
It is a dark brown color, a mix of black and red.

Seeing that, I wonder if it's a Soldam plum?
(A plum with dark brown flesh)
But the skin is black, and the inside of the skin is clearly
blacker than a Soldam.

Do they dye the inside of the fruit
to make it black?
As I wonder why anyone would make such a black fruit, the uncle tells me,
It's a special process for gifts,
used for funerals and the like.

A dream of mourning the departed

At that moment, I understood.
It was a black fruit for a funeral.
A ritual item made to mourn someone's death and quietly
send them off.

For some reason, the me in the dream knew its meaning.
Perhaps it was a fruit for mourning
my uncle and my father.

What I felt in the dream was a sense of stillness and
a feeling as if it were an extension of daily life.
Even though I was likely touching upon death in the dream,
it wasn't fear, but rather a feeling of
reconnecting with relationships.

While dreaming, I vaguely
felt that this was a dream with deep meaning.

Analysis begins upon waking

The moment I woke up, I had an intuition that this
was no ordinary dream.
Even though I have never experienced the black fruit or the symbolic exchange of mourning in reality,
I feel as though it is deeply connected to something in the depths of my heart.

After a while, I remembered.
It might be linked to the note I uploaded yesterday—
Inherited Stories: Karafuto and My Two Grandfathers.

In that post, I wrote about the memories of war and life
of my paternal and maternal grandfathers.
The memories I received in fragments from my two grandfathers
have lived within me for a long time.

The act of looking at the black fruit in the dream
was like quietly facing the dead
and reconnecting with them.

It felt like the very act of facing
lost memories and untold stories once again.

Wordplay in the dream

Another impressive point about this dream
was the word 'nori' (glue/seaweed).
At first, I thought it was glue,
and wondered about it.

But after waking up, I remembered a scene from the anime
'My Dress-Up Darling' I watched last night, after the aquarium date,
where a character was holding 'water glue'.
It was as if the dream was picking up and weaving together

even the smallest fragments of real-life memories.

Next time preview

Thank you for reading
to the end.
Hypnagogia Double Feature Dream ①:
The Black Fruit Ritual ends here.

In the second part ②,
I will summarize another dream
that I had consecutively with this one.

In it, images of my current hobbies and
affections appeared,
and I ended up finding a mysterious connection
to this morning's 'Black Fruit and the Ritual of Mourning'.

Scheduled to be updated tomorrow.
Please come back and visit again ♡