AstronomyDomine

I am playing a game behind a big glass window, almost like a virtual old-fashioned pinball game, which started out with me playing it on my iPad, but then quickly morphed into a full-size attraction. It has huge flippers protruding through the glass to propel the ball. I walk outside the glass structure and notice I am naked (bingo dream sign). I do an RC and check my hands: they are deformed. I then look over to see a DC walking towards me, in the parking lot of where that glass pinball game was. It looks like an elven creature from one J.R. Tolkien's LOTR stories. It's very gangly, with big ears and a mouse-like face. Its big, intense eyes peer straight ahead, fixated on something in the far distance as it shambles forward. The mythological-looking creature never looks at me. I try to greet it. It doesn't talk to me.

As he walks past me, my subconscious informs me that this DC is, in fact, me. That this is how I look when I dream; this is the form and the image I take on. I marvel at this, wondering why my subconscious has projected me as in such a alien, non-human way. I figure I'll have a lot of introspective, self-analysis to do come morning. I try to address the creature and tell him that this is a dream. Again, no response; it is as though he is deaf. I think I even try call him by my own name, Paul, but to no avail. This lucid dream is very low-quality and blurry. There is a dirty, ubiquitous fog which permeates the dreamscape.

I follow the creature as he shambles into the building I just came from. The glass window is gone, the gigantic pinball machine which was behind it is gone. The interior now looks like someone's dingy apartment. It reminds me of the inside of a dank mobile home which hasn't been remodeled since 1979. The carpet is dark brown shag, and the kitchen is grotesquely in need of an upgrade. The walls are made of a type flimsy faux-wood paneling which was popular back in the 1970's. There are old, dirty plates and bowls piled up on the countertops. The strange caricature of me goes into the kitchen. I stay in the family room with the brown shag carpet. I walk around in circles, looking down at the carpet.

Because of the foggy, sluggish ambiance of the dream, I am unmotivated to do anything, and I and am reluctant to go anywhere without my dream-double (even though he seems oblivious to my presence). I peer pack into the kitchen and there he is, standing by the sink and eating something from a dish. He still hasn't said a word or looked at me. I decide to commit myself to staying here in this ramshackle abode with him. To make the most of my time, I practice dream stabilization and increasing vividness by rubbing my hands together and focusing on details in the room. I inspect a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall; I scrutinize the individual strands of brown shag in the carpet and I focus intently again on my hands. Every time I look at them they shapeshift. The final time I inspected them, they were black with outline of my fingers glowing with a green and red neon charge. There is a light switch on the wall. It worked (proving yet again that this type of RC can be unreliable).

I eventually lose control and my LD recall fades. Dreamt 1/15/2017

I am staying at a very prestigious hotel suite, akin to the Ambassador or Renaissance. I am just wandering around and exploring and marveling at all the different luxurious amenities they provide. I go downstairs to the lobby and check out the gym and shower/sauna area. Eventually, I get lost. Apparently, I am at this hotel and staying with a group of people, but I have separated myself from them. I see them in the distance but have no interest in rejoining them.

In the lobby of the hotel is a train depot, like the monorail system at Walt Disney World which runs through the Contemporary Hotel in the Magic Kingdom. I get on one of the trains and sit next to a British couple. The woman is incessantly talking to her husband and she never shuts up. We get off at the next stop, which looks like a big, empty terminal. There are rows of chairs in a circular pattern which go down into an amphitheater. I run toward the chairs and start jumping on them like a little kid, making my way towards the empty concession area in the far back of the station. As I hop on the chairs I can hear the British woman tell her husband that this was her "favorite stop" in America and that she loves to hop and jump on the chairs like I'm doing. Fade Recall. Dreamt 1/15/2017

I am talking to a guy in a bar who says he'll bump up my commissions to 65% if he ever becomes boss of my company. I pull out my iPad and show him the sweet deal I just closed. As he looks down at the contract, I look up and see my dead friend Don Wilson leaning against a far wall in the bar. Don died last September in an automobile accident. I forget the guy I am talking to and slowly walk over to my dead friend. As I do so, I realize that I am dreaming. This is a dream!

Don was a funeral director and fellow embalmer I worked with for about 3 years. His death shocked everyone. He was only 45 years old. We were pretty close and got along very well. Seeing him, now, in this LD, was a very beautiful experience. This was by far the most vivid LD I had ever had. As I approached him, I focused intently on his skin, his hair -- and, in particular, on the individual salt-and-pepper strains. Everything was perfect; he was as crystal-clear and identical body-wise as he was IWL. I could even smell his aftershave. I saw him and he looked at me and smiled, then he looked back down. I said, "Don, this is a dream. We are dreaming." He continued to look down, smiling. I touched his arm. He was solid, warm, real. I said, "I am so sorry about what happened to you. We all really miss you. Your mom loves you so much...and so do I." I touched his arm again and he continued to look down and smile. I was in awe of how detailed he was. He looked fantastic. I was tempted to say, "Death becomes you, my friend" but did not. I just stared at his hair. The more I focused on it, the more vivid and brilliant the LD became. I rubbed my hands to ground myself in lucidity even more.

I noticed the lights in the bar were starting to dim. I looked over my shoulder to see what was going on. Don did the same. When I looked back at Don, he was wearing a dark blue pullover sweater with a black zipper that went a quarter of the way down in the front. He wasn't wearing it before. Don was still looking inquisitively up as to why the lights were dimming, and he said with amusement, "Now I know what you mean about this being a dream..." As he said these words, I began to float. I didn't want to float away, but I couldn't stop it. I say to Don, "Look what we can do!" But he just stood there and watched me go up, slowly, like a helium balloon that was let go. My vision went dark as my head went through the ceiling, and I went into the attic. I looked down at my rising feet to see if Don was following me, but he wasn't. I was still looking down for Don when I suddenly heard my son in the TV room yell at his sister. His scream jolted me from the LD and I regained consciousness in my bed. I lay for about five minutes, processing it all. The realness of Don in the LD was so great that I found myself weeping as I poured my coffee. I earnestly thanked my subconscious for the experience, and found myself wishing that Don's mother and sister could have experienced the same. It was truly a miraculous experience.

I had an LD this morning which came as the result of a hybrid induction technique I've been experimenting with. The LD itself was brief, but its duration was not what I was after -- I was aiming instead for instant awareness and lucidity. And this I achieved. In fact, the shortness of the LD was due to my sheer surprise and excitement upon realizing that the technique actually worked. I've called it VBIM - Vision Board Induction Method. It is essentially the same method I use to manifest wealth through the laws of attraction via creative visualization. The method consists of only two components: one simple mantra, and one simple visual. The mantra is: "When I am dreaming, I am aware that I am dreaming," and the visual is two hands, palms up. The mantra was given to me by my subconscious higher-self during a period of hypnogogic activity, word-for-word. When I tried to exclude the word "that" from the mantra, I was instructed not to exclude it via a dream guide who appeared to me as a little girl sitting in a park.

To make the method work, you'll need to construct a vision board. The vision board's purpose is to implant the mantra and its associated image directly into your subconscious. Thus the two items become inseparable in your mind. For this, I use a 20 x 30 x 3/16 inch foam board that you can pick up at any hobby store for less than two bucks. On the board, I centralize the mantra and then surround the text with its associated image: the pair of hands. The vision board I created looks like this (please click to enlarge):




I look at this board frequently, several times a day. When I'm not in front of it, I visualize it in my mind. While I am driving, for instance, I can easily conjure the image. When I see the image in my mind, I do it holographically: meaning I attach emotion, sound and feeling to it, simulating the induction as though it were actually happening in a dream. When I see the hands, I automatically recite the affirmation (in my mind); when I recite the affirmation, I automatically see the hands (in my mind). I do this frequently throughout the day, pretending that WL right now is the dream. You can do this as frequently as you do your regular RC's throughout the day. Only this is much more powerful. It is like an RC on steroids when done properly. It also serves as an tremendous autosuggestion, as I explain below.

When I do VBIM, it is all mental. I am not moving my physical hands, nor am I actually speaking. Because while asleep in my bed, I am not physically moving my hands or speaking audibly. All the activity is taking place in my "dream mind" while I'm awake. As I look at my vision board and practice projecting its message through my third eye, it becomes embedded more and more deeply into the subconscious. And when I lay down at night, after doing a WBTB, I can go right back to sleep after journaling whatever recall I have from the first part of the night without having to worry about any additional techniques. For when I close my eyes, I automatically see my vision board -- and this provides an instant autosuggestion.

The first time I tried this method, I went lucid so fast that I didn't have time to stabilize or ground myself. Literally, as soon as the dream started (I was in a car, driving down the road), I began questioning my awareness. I thought the car drove strangely. When I slowed down to park, the brakes seemed bad; that's how keen my observation was. I remembered that my truck's breaks weren't nearly this bad in IWL. Up came the hands (an automatic reflex), and this time I saw that they were fat and misshapen -- BAM I was lucid. The dream had hardly started, yet I picked up on something so insignificant and mundane to which I would have never noticed otherwise (usually it takes me having a conversation with a dead person, or wandering around the halls of my high school naked to even think to do an RC). This method works very effectively for me. Maybe it will work for you?

Good luck, and sweet lucidity!

I am in an office, speaking to a woman named Esmeralda. She is an extremely sexy woman who resembles Olivia Munn. Our conversation is centered on the planning of some unknown function. My brother suddenly manifests in the office, dressed in a suit. We begin fighting for reasons I cannot recall. The fighting escalates to the point where my brother removes his shoes and throws them at me. I duck down as they hit the wall. We punch and kick each other in blind fury. I use loud profanity and order him to get out of the office. Esmeralda calmly watches this from her desk. My brother leaves and goes upstairs (there is a hotel above the office). As he leaves, another lady enters the office. Her name is Maria. She is the office "project manager", and she is also very attractive. I go outside to make sure my brother is gone from the premises. I am still out of breath from all the punching and kicking and it feels like my face is bleeding.

As I wander outside, I see a concrete hexagonal chute and decide to look inside it for my brother. But I get stuck when I turn around and try to exit it, and I can't return to the office. I see a fat woman pass by, heading towards to office door. I call to her from inside the chute for assistance. She pauses and looks stupidly at me. I tell her to go inside and get Esmeralda. She runs in the building, but soon comes back to tell me Esmeralda is gone. She then begins to flirt with me by crossing her legs and twirling her hair and smiling. I ask her to please go try to find someone -- I am stuck. She sticks her head in the door and calls for Maria. I tell her, "No! We need to find Esmeralda!" Recall fades. Dreamt 1/14/2017

I am working at an old funeral home in New Braunfels, Texas -- my old place of employment IRL. I am back on call with the other funeral directors and embalmers, rotating the nightly death calls. I am in the prep room (the place where all the embalming and cosmetic restoration goes on) talking with my co-workers and they are glad to have me back. I too am glad to be back. I am looking forward to embalming again (embalming was very relaxing and even therapeutic for me IRL). One thing keeps nagging at me: my embalming and funeral director licenses are all expired. I never renewed them after I left the industry three years ago. I now regret letting them expire.

I leave the funeral home on a motorcycle. This motorcycle has manifested before in other dreams (I do not drive a motorcycle IRL). I drive out to the country to be by the water. I roll up to a gothic-style iron fence. The fence has sharp spears on the rails and it surrounds a heavily-wooded estate. The mansion of the estate is located deep within the woods somewhere. A man suddenly appears at the fence. He is a brown-skinned Latino guy who reminds me of Paco Hewlette, a Puerto Rican kid who once lived next door to me. He is the neighbor of whoever lives behind the iron gate. He invites me over to his place. I park the motorbike beside the iron gate and walk over to his house, which is right on the water. He has a dirty swimming pool in the back of his house next to the lake. He invites me into the pool. As I sit across from him in his dirty pool, I see that the water in the pool is actually crystal-clear; it only looks dirty because there are strange dark objects floating in it. I am not able to define what these "things" are, but they do not defile the water. We are safe, and the water is clean. I am very relaxed. We are drinking good beer from glass bottles and smoking Cuban cigars.

I hear a noise and look over to see a city parade going down the road where I had parked my motorbike. There are all kinds of exotic animals in this parade: horses, llamas, goats, bears, elephants. The animals are dressed up in brilliant gold costumes and march down the road in obedient precision. I realize this is Paco's parade (or whatever the name of this dream character in the pool with me is). The house, the land, the gate, the animals all belong to Paco's father. There are people gathering along the sides of the road with cameras, and spectators are stopping their cars to get a glimpse of the parade. Suddenly, people are everywhere. This parade, it turns out, is a big event and it happens at this time every year. It's a famous parade, a staple of the community. Looking at all the exotic animals march down the road, I turn to my friend in the pool and say, "I guess this what you can do when you have more money than you know what to do with." Fade recall.

Other isolated fragments from the night include:

(1) I am with a friend walking around in the "underground district" of some unknown city. We are trying to get into a mysterious club after hours. The outer walls are made of stone, and the archway entrance resembles a Mediterranean garden (2) I am driving around the same city with a short-haired pug dog on my lap. I love the dog. He feels good and warm on my lap and he really enjoys me petting him. (3) I am in an apartment on a military base somewhere. Suddenly, from out in the distance, I hear a loud "Oorah!" as someone guns an engine and a car peels away. Marines are here on the post, apparently, and there is a party going on somewhere. Dreamt 1/09/2017

I am at a bowling alley/pool hall with family and in-laws and friends. A Hispanic couple is sitting across the table from me and my daughter. They do not talk to us. I've seen them before, perhaps in other dreams. They brought a transistor radio with them. It is under the table. When they get up from the table to go great someone, my daughter accidentally hits the "play" button with her leg and the radio starts blaring Tejano music.

I notice the couple turning around to look back at our table while shaking someone's hand. I am embarrassed. As the man returns to the table to turn off his radio, I try to apologize to him in Spanish and explain how my daughter's leg hit the play button by accident. But the only thing I could manage in Spanish is "La pierna de mi hija" (my daughter's leg), and point apologetically to her foot and then to the radio. He stares at me with a confused expression and says nothing. I ask another man sitting next to us to please help translate what happened. He leans forward and explains to the man with the radio in Spanish what I was trying to convey. The man nods and then understands it was an accident. He goes back to his wife. The man who translated now wants to engage me in conversation, but I am not interested in talking to him. Fade recall. Dreamt 1/09/2017

I am at my home with some guests. One of the guests is this guy named Greg, an employee of the company I work with. Several other people are there. My daughter wrote on the new table we are sitting at with indelible ink and she also left deep scratch marks in the wood. I become enraged. My wife tries to calm me, but I am inconsolable. I have a temper tantrum and start hurling books against the wall and cussing up a storm. I don't care that we have guests over. Everyone leaves and a lady comes and takes my daughter away. She may have been CPS.

I have a scooter (motorbike) and someone gave me a bunch of helmets as a gift. I use the bike to get to and from work. I keep the helmets in a closet where there is a strange makeshift bathtub on the ground. There are towels at the bottom of the tub and water is running continuously on them. I put on the helmets, one by one, trying to decide which one looks best. I am aware if two things before my recall fades: (1) This closet is in my house, and (2) someone is in the bathroom with me.

Dreamt 1/09/2017

I am looking into a special monitor that tracks people via a hidden camera as they enter and exit a room. As I look into the monitor I suddenly see a couple of Mexican girls enter a hospital room from a camera underneath a bed. As I continue to watch the girls, they begin to morph into my own children. Fade recall.

I am given a gift of a solid 24 ounce gold bar by a black man who resembles the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He tells me that in time I can use the gold bar to insert myself into a FPS video game as the hero-shooter, but, as he says, "You'll have to work up to it." With the bar in my hand, I walk out on a balcony to see my children using it (the gold bar teleported from my hand to theirs) for a carnival game. They fasten it to the "Hit the Bell with the Hammer" game, as the metal piece that slides up to bang the bell when they hit the pad with the hammer. Fade recall.

I am observing a lady sitting by a lake who wants to be alone with a book. A friend soon joins her, and they both walk out on the frozen lake and sit on the ice. I decide to join them. I've brought a ball with me. I kick it hard and it sails far away. The lady with the book gets up to retrieve the ball. Fade recall.

Dreamt 1/06/2017

I am flying in an airplane, way up above South Florida, and I can see the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean below me. The terrain lines keep changing every time I look out the window. Almost as if the land beneath me is alive and morphing and moving like some kind of wide, flat monster. I decide to land the plane and investigate. When I get out of the plane, I am joined by a minister of a Pentecostal church. As we both look down at the dream representation of the Florida coastline, the minister proceeds in "straightening out" and manipulating the terrain, as though the shape of the coastline were liquid or made of hair. He uses a knife to cut off and trim unneeded portions of the coastline. The unneeded portions are then swept away, like hair clippings on the floor of a barbershop. At this point, my recall fades but I do remember Cake's rendition of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" playing in my subconscious (and I awaken with this tune playing in my dream ears).

Now, I am with my wife and our two nieces. We are wading in the water inside a little roped-off section of a canal near the pier. It seems we are waiting for someone, and as we wait, we swim. My nieces in the dream are young -- toddler size. IRL they are both in their mid-twenties, but this is how they looked back when they were babies. One of them -- the youngest -- has a floatie and she is kicking around in the water like a duck. My subconscious measures the depth of the water to be 10 ft. My other niece suddenly transforms back to her mature body and goes underwater. My vision underwater is clear and exact. Observing her, I sense she is in danger, and I come to her rescue. I bring her to the side of the pier. As she turns her back to me and lifts herself out of the water, I marvel at her body and think of how she's become sexually active and has already had children. I ruminate this as I think of her younger sister in a floatie beside her, who is still the symbol of innocence. It is a bittersweet, sentimental feeling.

The place where we are swimming is divided into sections designated by color. We are in the "blue" section. This "blue" water area somehow corresponds with the airplane trip and terrain manipulation I dreamt about earlier. The surrounding climate is sub-tropical. I look down and see a mapped coastline similar to the one the Pentecostal minister had manipulated earlier with a knife. Only this one was color-coded. I see different "blue" and "red" designated areas, and I find our "blue" swimming area on it.

I teleport to another section of Florida, this time back to my old childhood home (a dream sign). A pregnant girl is there with me, and we are waiting for someone. With us are three other guys. They are sitting at a table between my old bedroom and the laundry room. I am restless, walking back and forth, to the laundry room, back to my bedroom, back to the laundry room and around the table, over and over again. I tell everyone that while we wait, I'll start drinking. In the dream, I drink beer. Two of the guys at the table are hugging each other, and the other one is now standing behind them. They are friends with the pregnant girl, and although the girl is familiar to me, I do not know who the guys are. Dreamt 1/06/2017

I am inside an airport, watching security people accost Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion of chess. At every turn they are pulling at his shirt and wrestling him against the wall. He is trying to leave the airport to get to his limo. I am told they are attacking him because he is the world champion. The scene at the airport fades and I am teleported to a sports stadium with Garry Kasparov. We are sitting in the front row and watching a chess match take place inside a boxing ring. I hear the announcer say, "Max Dlugy" and it appears Max is a coach for one of the fighters. One of the fighters is sitting on the ground with pink-dyed hair. His native language is German. In turn, this pink-haired fighter is himself a coach -- and he is coaching a female player.

Apparently, this is a match where the coaches are directly involved in the competition. The players fight the players, and the coaches fight the coaches. And each player has a coach and each coach is coached by someone else. It reminds me of an onion, unfolding more and more layers. Or those bulbous Russian Matrioshka dolls, where one doll fits inside another, which fits inside another, which fits inside another, et cetera. Kasparov is standing next to me and I am thinking of joining in the competition, even though I am nowhere near the strength of the other players. But I figure I'll still have a fighting chance, since Garry Kasparov is my coach. Dreamt 1/05/2017

I am at my uncle Dominic's house in West Palm Beach, Florida. The house has long, dimly-lit corridors in the dream -- corridors which do not look like this in reality. There are rooms off these corridors which are also unfamiliar. Guests are over for dinner. I don't know who these people are. I excuse myself to use the downstairs bathroom (there is no "downstairs" in his actual home). There are scorpions crawling around everywhere in the bathroom: all over the floor, on the shower curtain, in the bath tub. There is also a leak in the plumbing and water is pooling up on the ground. I am afraid that if I use the toilet, the bathroom is going to flood even more after I flush it.

I decide to go back upstairs to use the toilet there. On the way upstairs, however, I get sidetracked and venture outside where I run into his neighbor, an African-American lady sleeping on a hammock on her front porch. I awaken her to ask if she would like to have a new roof put on her house. The back of her house sports a beautiful Spanish-style tile roof; the front, however, is missing shingles and has no decking. It looks as though a tornado had destroyed it years ago and it was never fixed. She tells me she is interested. At that point, I remember I had to use the bathroom, so I tell her I can help her get a new roof, but first there was something I needed to do. As I head back over to uncle Dominic's, I notice I am completely nude (a missed dream sign). I am determined now to do two things: use the bathroom, and find my clothes.

As I enter into the house, I pass an Italian-looking guy who looks like he's in the mob. He is talking to my uncle in the kitchen, using his hands to gesticulate. An attractive older woman is standing next to him. I go upstairs and use the bathroom. While sitting on the toilet, I look around and notice all different kinds of clothes hanging from the walls: jeans, slacks, shirts, etc. All the articles of clothing are of the same color and pattern -- red and black striped -- and all the clothing is in pairs. As I am wondering what this means, a young kid enters and says he needs to get his clothes. His clothes are in very close proximity to me; some of the articles are even touching my legs and arms as I sit on the commode. As he collects his clothes, I try to help him by reaching out to the articles nearest to me. As I do this, other people begin entering the bathroom, including the Italian guy. He pulls up a chair opposite from me and tries to engage in conversation. Other men join in, and suddenly it seems all my uncle's guests are up here in the bathroom with me. I want to get up and flush, but am too embarrassed to do so, given the circumstances. My hands are covering my groin and I feel trapped. Fade out.

In this next fragment, I am seated in a restaurant with a group of friends. We are planning our night out on the town. A nagging thought keeps hitting me: My time would be better spent studying and preparing for my exams so I can fulfill the requirements needed to graduate (another missed dream sign). Two geeky guys are sitting across from me. They lean over and whisper in my ear that I if play some jazz guitar tonight, they'll hook me up with some girls looking for action. Dream recall fades. Dreamt 1/04/2017

I am at the zoo with my wife and son. The zoo is indoors and it is empty. We wander the silent corridors peering into the glass animal cages, but all the animals are either absent or asleep. We reach a glass cage filled with water that has two tigers deflated under the water. They look like twin neglected floatation toys sitting on the bottom of a pool. Upon closer look, it appears the door to the cage is damaged. I carefully open the door, expecting a wave of water to gush out, but nothing happens. As I open the door wider to look inside the cage, I suddenly see a HUGE Bengal tiger walk out of his cage. He turns his massive head and looks at me. He begins walking towards me, and I step away in panic and turn to my wife and son. They are asleep on the floor in front of the cage. I desperately try to awaken them, but they are unresponsive.

The tiger emerges from the door and snarls at me. I turn away to run and he chases me. We are in a rotunda and we go round and round and round. The walls and doors of the rotunda are white. I see an opening in the wall up by the ceiling and leap into it and escape his jaws just in time. I now visualize the tiger returning to my sleeping wife and son to devour them. In a panic I run to the zoo's administration offices and burst in shouting, "A tiger's escaped!"

There is a black lady at the information booth, and she quickly gathers a group of people to go and investigate. As we walk back across the zoo grounds, I am unable to remember where the rotunda was located. She keeps asking me which rotunda the tiger was in, and all I can answer is, "The white one." To my great consternation, she tells me she doesn't know of any white rotunda. She then asks me about my family. I tell her the tiger is "guarding" my family. We continue walking until at last we arrive at a red circular building. She tells me this is the only rotunda the zoo has that she knows of. I say in a fury, "But it is red!" She shrugs and says she doesn't know what else she can do. I tell her that if it were her family, she would be in hysterics. This makes her angry, and I abandon her to go search for my wife and son myself.

I crawl up a steep hill on my belly, though some high grass and snow and stumble through several different buildings in my quest to find my family. One building looks like a deserted concert hall. I tell myself that I will always despise tigers from now on. When I exit the concert hall, it is evening outside and I am completely lost. I see some strange highway I do not recognize in the distance, with lights from the cars and trucks whizzing by. I reach for my cellphone to activate my GPS, but the battery is dead. As absolute dread sweeps over me, I suddenly realize I am dreaming. I look up to the dark sky, raise my arms above my head and shout, "Oh Paul! Wake up from this dream now!"

I awaken in my bed and sit up, breathless and terrified. This nightmare was extremely vivid, as I had taken Huperzine-A and Valerian Root extract together in an effort to get past a dry spell. In retrospect, it wasn't very wise and I won't be combining these two herbal supplements again. Dreamt 1/3/2017

I am staying at an old seaside mansion in the antebellum section of a historic city (New Orleans, perhaps), and I am there with a group of people. A man is fencing in white breeches behind the mansion, down by the seashore. He is by himself, practicing his parries and thrusts. He is not wearing a mask. He has thick black hair and is in excellent physique. He is very graceful and very handsome and moves as smooth as a ballet dancer. I walk up to him when he stops and tell him that Paul Morphy was an expert fencer too, and that he never lost a match -- in fencing or in chess.

Note: Paul Morphy (1837-1884) was an extraordinary chess genius who became the unofficial world chess champion at age 21. After which, he retired from competitive chess and went insane. In this dream it appears I am staying at his mansion, which would account for the odd statement made by my subconscious to the DC fencer.

In the dream, I continue bragging on Morphy, my hero, but the people with me -- including the fencer -- seem uninterested. I cannot determine if the mansion belonged to his family, or if he lived elsewhere. I look at the sea and wonder if this was where he used to walk out on the sand. As I ponder these things, I am translocated from the seashore to a dank industrial building, akin to a warehouse where an attractive foreign woman is sitting at a table and staring at me. In my hand is a WWII German Luger pistol. As I continue to examine the pistol, the woman gets up to leave the room. Without thinking, I raise the pistol and fire at her back as she walks out the door. Nothing happens; it appears the gun wasn't loaded. The reason I tried to shoot her was because I wanted to hear how the gun sounded. Dreamt 12/31/2016

I am at an academy near the water. I am there at the academy with a partner. He resembles a friend of mine, Jeff Rygwelski, from my old college days in Boston some 26 years ago . We practice fighting together. It appears we are at a martial arts academy. At one point we are fighting near the water, on the piers. I recall that during the fighting we actually become very angry with each other and are no longer "practicing" -- we are now fighting for real. I kick my partner very hard and he sails through the air and falls into the water between two slats of wood on the docks. He must have drowned, I assume, when he doesn't resurface. I continue to wait for him to come up out of the water.

I give up waiting and decide to return to the academy. On the way back, he reappears. I see him before he has a chance to see me. I quickly duck behind a wall and try to slip out an exit door...but outside in the courtyard we bump into each other, face-to-face. He blocks the entrance to a building where I need to go. I think to myself, "I can jump on the roof and enter through that big crack in the wall," but do not. I do not want to fight him anymore. The dream recall dissipates at this point. Dreamt 12/30/2016