Carabas

Fragments: Something composed of metal loops that I take for an art piece, believing it's something to do with male and female; instead I'm told it's a spell for godhood. A scene with a teacher and student. A reference to 'maenad.'

Classic movie monsters. The dream was in black and white, and featured Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Lon Chaney Jr's Wolfman. Through some plan of Dracula's, Talbot winds up becoming a vampire, while Drac becomes the wolfman instead, and essentially human when it's not a full moon. Talbot's not thrilled with any of this. There's a scene in which Dracula springs Talbot from an asylum through the window, before the monster-type switch; and afterward, a confrontation in a swamp in which Dracula is talking about world domination, and how the ability to appear human was required.

I'd been talking to someone about a career change I was considering, when I realize I'm still wearing a change of clothes I acquired earlier in a dream. At first, I think it a marvel, a thing in a dream that carried over into real life - but later on, as I'm sitting around a dinner table having a boring conversation, I realize that actually it must be an indication that I'm still dreaming. I become lucid and immediately start floating in the air; I stopped paying attention to the other characters in the room and didn't see them after this point. Initially I intended to go outside and continue flying, but then I decide to try something new this time. I decide to summon a god - Apollo, since summoning his light for an anti-nightmare technique has been very effective, but he's yet to show up in person. I'm also thinking his association with trance states might carry over into lucid dreaming. I close my eyes so that I can't see the room, and I focus on him, call him. Nothing happens. I eventually give up, open my eyes again. I think a little more structure may be helpful, and I should probably keep my eyes open; I remember a time when a dream fell apart completely after I stopped focusing on visuals.

I go to a mirror, but instead of calling Apollo again, this time I decide to call up an image of my ideal future self (possibly related to the non-lucid talk of career changes earlier). Several options appear one at a time, and I reject each of them. Many of them bear very little physical resemblance to me, and most are wearing glasses (which I don't need). Eventually I settle on one that I approve of (though why I approved of this particular one, I don't know); he looks like something out of the 1700s. When I turn away from the mirror, he's standing next to me. He seems a little confused by this, but he's just here for me to get a more detailed look at him. But while he's here anyway, we decide to fuck. Eventually I remember my original intention to summon a god and I decide that's more interesting than what is essentially dream masturbation, so I leave him on the floor by the mirror and go back to the table. I sit down, then remember I didn't bother to get dressed again; I decide I'd rather have clothes on for this. I try to summon clothing by just deciding I am wearing clothes, but this doesn't work; I think perhaps it doesn't work only because I can clearly see and feel myself not wearing clothes, so I'm trying to overrule the evidence of my senses. My shirt's by the table, but my pants are all the way across the room, so I just pick up the shirt and try to extend it, to use it as a source of materials to create something new. This seems to be working, but very slowly. I don't care to wait; I give up and just walk back across the room for my pants, and start thinking about the 'rules' of dreams - thinking that perhaps it's better to work with what's already in the environment rather than try to create new things from scratch all the time; less wasteful, less effort. I become aware that I'm starting to wake up.

A note from an earlier wakeup that I no longer remember: "Rescue mission. 2 people ready to bodily drag this guy away from the queen, not realizing he has his own plan."

I become lucid. (I no longer remember what was happening before this, if anything.) I'm standing at the bottom of a short flight of steps leading up out of a shop, onto a street, and there's two guys I'm with who are heading up the stairs, and if I want to follow the storyline of this dream I should head up those stairs with them. But given that I've just become lucid, I'm not sure the lucidity is stable enough to last through a scene-changing doorway, so I decide to abandon the storyline. I look around the shop instead, looking at the wooden pillars and ceiling, wondering what I'd like to do. There's a guy working the register who's grumbling, in a bad mood, and we start talking. He's attractive.

The scene changes; we're elsewhere, having sex, and I can feel everything I do to him as if it were being done to me. He's aware of the sudden scene change, and he's confused, but up for it. His appearance gradually changes, and I become aware that without consciously deciding to do so, I'm changing him to better suit my tastes; now that I've noticed I'm doing it, I consciously encourage specific changes. Everything I change alters gradually, but then suddenly his whole appearance changes in an instant, now a goth/punk look, pale and with half his head shaved; I hadn't intended to do that. I'm thinking that all the gradual changes I was making must have pushed him to some tipping point, and I'm a little annoyed with myself. He's now becoming distressed; I don't think he's aware that he used to look very different, but he's aware something's off. The dream disappears, and I'm in darkness, no visuals, no body, thinking over what went wrong.

I become aware that I'm lying in bed. (False awakening.) I open my eyes: I'm in a dorm, I think of this as a place associated with dreaming. The room's filled with many bunk beds, reminds me of hostels, and although I should have this room to myself, there are a bunch of people here now, new students who've arrived in the night. I try to go back to sleep, although they're very noisy, and I overhear something about framing someone for something as a joke, and something about cats and bad luck. Eventually I remember that I don't live in a dorm anymore, therefore none of this is real and I don't have to be here, so I get up to leave. One of the students tries to stop me, referencing cats and bad luck again, and I get really, irrationally, over-the-top irritated by this - by the idea of a DC standing in my way and wasting my time. I put my hand around his throat - my hand has long claws as I do so - move him out of my way, and walk out the door. (And then woke up.)