maboroshi

(Good morning, everybody. This is a really long entry. Sorry.

I remember three dreams from last night. The first two dreams happened sometime between midnight and 5 AM. The third dream was between about 5:30 AM and 7 AM.

I became lucid in the third dream, and sustained my lucidity for quite a while. But I think it was mainly because I “conserved my energy” and didn’t really try anything out of my normal range of dream-activity.)

Dream #1

I was coming back to “my apartment.” I was walking through a building that itself was as big as a small neighborhood. I walked through one area, a huge room with tall ceilings and wood walls.

As I walked through the area, I went past a young man and woman who were possibly standing outside the door to the woman’s apartment. The door may have been pale blue.

The woman was very pretty, with copper-colored skin and long, straight, black hair. The man was handsome, white, tall, with blonde hair about down to his shoulders. He wore a grey, wool cap and some winter clothes.

The man was telling the woman that he would make sure her move went smoothly. She was apparently moving to another place, and she was nervous about it. I gathered, from the man’s speech to the woman, that the man would make sure she didn’t experience the same harassment she’d experienced at her present apartment.

But as I was walking past the couple (I didn’t actually get very close to them, and I had to exit via another door into another room in order to get to “my building”), the man and woman expressed some kind of concern that I was going to get them in trouble. It was as if, as well as the woman experiencing harassment from some group of people, the man and the woman had themselves been accused of causing trouble in their neighborhood. They thought I was the kind of person who would get them in trouble again.

I walked softly and quickly through the door, trying my best to give an impression to the man and woman that I was nice, that I wouldn’t harass the woman, and that I wouldn’t get the man and woman in trouble – in other words, that I would just mind my own business.

I walked into the next area, which was like a mix between some completely forgotten room or corridor in an enormous mansion and a back alley. A light shone from high above, and at the heights of the room, it was dark as night, though it was light enough near the floor. The walls were wood, and the floor had a pale, blue-grey carpeting. But there was junk everywhere, like tattered cardboard boxes, wadded up pieces of wrapping plastic, and other garbage. There seemed to be turns and staircases here and there, leading up to other “apartment buildings.”

I walked toward my building, which didn’t even have a front door, just a staircase leading up to a winding ramp into darkness. My landlord, an older, black man or woman, stood at the top of or on one of the curves in the ramp. He/she apparently knew I was coming home, so he/she was waiting to welcome me back. I may have been away for a few days, doing something like visiting my family.

I didn’t realize, but the young man had followed me all the way here. My “building,” it turned out, was the building that the young woman would be staying in. I thought that for sure the man would now be panicked. He and the woman had been so afraid to begin with that I would get them in trouble. And now it looked like I had “reverse followed” him all the way to the woman’s new residence.

I tried to act natural and cool, to make the man understand I wasn’t going to do anything mean to him or the woman. I spoke a little bit with the landlord, in a kind of easy, happy tone. I then said I was going to head on in to my room and get a little rest.

As I headed toward my room, through a door along a dim balcony facing at an odd angle to the ramps and the long alley-corridor, I heard the landlord now speaking with the young man. I thought, Why not prove that I’m a good guy, and let the young man see inside my room? Once he sees how lived-in my place is, he’ll know I’ve been here a few years, I’m a decent guy, and that I won’t do anything rude or mean to the woman or him?

So I called attention to the landlord and the young man. I had them come over to my room. I opened the door to my room. The room was humongous and dim. But I could tell, just by glancing inside, that the room was a complete mess – a disaster! Plus, the place just let out a horrendous smell, like tons and tons of socks that hadn’t been washed for months!

I quickly closed the door and told the landlord and young man nevermind, that I must have forgotten what I wanted to tell them. They walked away, kind of disappeared.

I suddenly felt suspicious of the young man. I felt that, now that he’d seen even just a little into my room, and he’d seen where I live, that he’d try to break into my room. I closed my door. I walked slowly away, as if I was trying to put on some kind of show that I didn’t really live in this apartment.

I suddenly recognized that, just beyond my door, the wall to my room only went up to about the middle of my chest. You could see inside the room just by standing out on the balcony. I looked inside, hoping that nothing of value would be easily spotted, prompting the young man to break into my house and steal things.

All I could see, though, anywhere, was a bunch of clutter and garbage. I felt like there was no way I could have left my place this way when I’d left. Had I been that neglectful of things? Or had I been gone so long that my place just kind of dissolved into these shambles of itself?

I walked around the corner of the balcony, now facing some dim corner of the alley-corridor directly, but still having a good view into my room.

Down below, in my room, I saw a huge, pale-blue, L-shaped couch. It was completely torn up. The stuffing of the couch was bloating out of the cushions, and a black, metal frame jutted out the edges.

Suddenly, my mother burst out from the inside of the couch. She scrambled out of the couch cushions. She then rabidly twitched and scratched against the couch, tearing it even more to pieces. She looked terrible, like she’d become some kind of wild animal.

I was terrified by this. But I quickly became indignant. Who had allowed my mother into my apartment? I ran down the balcony to find someone to complain to.

I ended up on some dark hilltop, under a small tree. It was pitch black night, but I could see, as if a car from somewhere were shining its lights on the scene. There were a few people wandering around, possibly Hispanic.

I found my father, who was almost cartoonishly wide. He was also dressed somewhat like a clown, in red clothes with pink and orange polka-dots. He may even have worn a clown-nose.

I yelled at my dad, “Why did you let my mom into my apartment?”

My dad gave me some kind of excuse that sounded half-hearted but official, so that I couldn’t really argue against it.

Dream #2

I was in a subway station, waiting for the train to come. I was in a far-off, unfamiliar neighborhood, and I had been doing some kind of activity that made me tired and ready to go back somewhere familiar.

The subway station was more like the lobby for a building like a hospital. I sat at a table in an area that looked like a makeshift café. The serving counter may have been in a small room, off to my right. Behind me, there may have been the main lobby area, large and bright, with a lot of sunlight flowing through the window-walls.

To my left was a wide doorway, through which I could see one subway platform. Through a kind of dim, plasticky window at the opposite end of the room and in front of me, I could see another subway platform.

I pulled out a book, crossed my legs, slumped in my chair, and started reading. A couple of teenage boys sat down a couple of tables away from me. They were making jokes with each other, pretty relaxed. They seemed cool. But for some reason, I didn’t want them to notice me. I thought they might start trouble.

Suddenly I could see, from some kind of reflection, that the train on the platform to my left was coming. It seemed to be coming without warning and very quickly. In a rush, the boys and I stood up from our tables and ran to the platform.

But I didn’t want the boys to know I got on this train. I felt that if they knew this about me they could hurt me somehow. So I tried to act like I wasn’t getting onto this train.

But when I got out to the platform (which was huge, wide, with tall ceilings, nothing like in NYC), the train wasn’t there. I heard the rushing of a train to my left. I looked and saw, down the platform, and up at the top of a tall staircase, a different train arriving at another platform. Was it just that train I’d heard? But I could have sworn I’d seen the train arrive on this platform, as well as heard it.

I looked down into the well for the train and tracks for my platform – and was terribly shocked! Instead of tracks, the floor was completely empty, trackless, and painted a bright yellow. There were no tracks! No train could ever have arrived here! But I was sure this was where the train was supposed to be – where I had actually seen it arrive!

I felt terribly foggy all of the sudden, as if I had fallen into a different world.

I heard the train on the second platform, off to my right, arriving. I thought I’d take that train. But I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere close to where I wanted to go. I knew I’d just have to take this train, at this platform, whenever it came, no matter how long it took.

So I went back into the café area to go back to reading my book.

Dream #3

I was in my great-grandmother’s house. I had apparently been there for a long time. The place looked nothing like it had looked while my great-grandmother was alive: it was dim, grey-blue, and strewn garbage, household items, and even streams of toilet paper.

I walked around in the kitchen and dining room, possibly picking up and eating and drinking pieces of food and drink that had been left out for a long time on dirty plates and in dirty, grimy cups. There may also have been dirty, rusty knives, or something like that, somewhere.

I walked back into the living room. I felt like I had isolated myself in my great-grandmother’s house for so long. It had been days. Here I’d been, back home all this time, and I hadn’t visited my mother once!

I thought I’d give her a call and let her know I was at my great-grandma’s house, and that she could come visit me or maybe even pick me up so we could go somewhere to visit with each other. But I hesitated – I now felt so guilty having neglected my mother for all these days, that I knew just calling her would cause me a lot of heart-breaking pain.

I was suddenly in “my bedroom” at “my house.” The room was clean, a little barren. Nice sunlight flowed in through the window. It was cheerful enough. But it felt somehow lonely – not just lonely, but sterile, padded.

Something about this feeling made me realize I was dreaming. I realized I was now lucid. I told myself to keep calm and just go exploring this place as if it were a real environment.

(Oddly enough, when I became lucid, I may have “transformed” into a tallish, white, young man with tanned skin, blue eyes, and short-shaved, blonde hair. I have no idea why.)

I walked out of the bedroom and into “my living room.” I was in a suburban house. The house looked small and nice. But it was completely empty. It had thick, brown carpet.

I walked very slowly, to keep my emotions calm. I was heading for the front door. This was a kind of challenge for me, and I knew (even in my dream-state), that I had to keep calm in order to do this. I knew, I remembered (the truth, not a false memory – I mean, insofar as etc., etc.) that when I’d become lucid indoors in the past, my lucidity would end as soon as I walked outside, as if I hadn’t believed my imagination could “create” an outdoor space.

I got to the door. It had a strange bolt-lock on it, which I thought was kind of over-doing things. I worked the lock out and pulled open the door.

It was a bright, sunshiny day in a suburban neighborhood. I told myself to remain calm, remember this was all a dream, and just explore the place like it was a real environment.

My front yard was a tangle of flowery vegetation and rough, dark shrubs. There was a driveway off to my right, with a big, brown, 1970s-style car.

A blonde man, very tan, with a long tangle of hair and beard, was messing around near “my car.” He looked crazy, and I was afraid of him. But I was also pissed that he was messing around my car. So I yelled at him, “Hey! Hey! What are you doing?”

The crazy man hunched up (he never really stood) and turned toward me. He shouted and growled and barked all kinds of weird things at me and started rambling toward me violently. For some reason, he was holding a Panini and a paper plate in his hands, as if he had been eating a Panini when he’d seen my car and decided to vandalize it or rip it off.

It seemed as if the crazy man were going to try to invade my home. So I yelled at him, “Don’t you come near!”

The neighbor from the house to my left, an Asian man, in his late 30s or early 40s, wearing glasses, a pink-red polo shirt, and khaki shorts, walked out of his house and into my yard. He’d heard the commotion and was coming to help me.

I yelled again at the crazy man to back off and not to come anywhere near my home. But I also tried to make it seem to my neighbor like I had the situation under control. I felt like this crazy man was somehow important to whatever I was supposed to learn from this lucid dream. So I had to keep him at a distance without scaring him away entirely. I also wanted to make sure my neighbor didn’t scare away the crazy man.

Off to my right, in my garden, I saw a strange plant that looked like a Cleome topped with a cabbage. The cabbage was pink and white, like Cleome flowers.

Somehow, either my yelling my neighbor’s yelling had finally scared away the crazy man. He ran off. I, and possibly my neighbor, ran after him.

He ran down toward a chain link fence that ran along the crest of a kind of tall, kind of steep, cliff-like hill. I was calling to the crazy man to stop. I wasn’t trying to do him harm. But my neighbor was running faster than me, and he was chasing the crazy man quite violently.

The crazy man found a bent-up part of chain-link fence and crawled under it. I followed. I saw the crazy man run down the steep, brown hill-face, jumping into a shallow, muddy river or creek at the bottom.

My neighbor was still ahead of me, intent on capturing the crazy man. But once the crazy man was in the water, he did something to himself so that my neighbor could no longer see him. He had changed his wild, blonde hair into a weird, pink, green, and white, spiky flower style, looking like a hairdo-mix of a Cleome and a lotus. He ducked down low in the creek so that only his head was above water.

But I could still see that it was the crazy man. I wondered why my neighbor couldn’t. Nothing was different about the crazy man’s face: it was just his hair that looked like a lotus floating on the water.

I could see that the crazy man was drifting toward a group of copper-skinned, black haired children who were playing and splashing about near the creek’s banks. I thought that it might be a good idea to get the crazy man away from the children. He had gone over to them to blend in with them until we left. But I had a feeling that if he suddenly went crazy again, he could hurt the kids.

But now the crazy man and my neighbor were gone. I stood in some rocky area, looking down to the kids playing in the creek. At some point I looked over to my right and saw that there was a subway station, just jutting in a platform out of the hill, as if it were half-finished, forgotten. But it also looked new, clean, modern, even futuristic. And it was functional.

I saw some kids, maybe pre-teen or teenage, playing around near the platform, waiting for the train. I was up near the top of the hill now (which, instead of being muddy or earthy, was now rocky). I was at a pretty level view with the platform and with the kids. I hoped they wouldn’t notice me, because I didn’t want them to start trouble with me.

My emotions got so unstable that I felt my lucidity fading away.

But instead of the dream continuing, not lucid, everything blacked out. I told myself, you’re losing your lucidity. You’re waking up altogether. Go back to being in the dream, and being lucid.

So now I was back in the dream, lucid. I lay, stomach down, over some ledge of rock, looking down to some of the kids playing in the creek. They may have been a boy and a girl. They noticed me and started handing me toys to play with with them. One of the toys was a plastic horse.

I played around with the horse a little bit, then handed it back to the kids, who went back into the water.

I walked into the subway station. Inside, it seemed like it had become night. The station was lit gently with a kind of street-quality, greenish, fluorescent flood-lamp. The walls were a brownish stone, and the floors were some kind of granite-like grey. There was a downward staircase in the center of the lobby-area, and there were a few different corridors leading off from the main lobby-area.

I walked down one of the corridors off to my right. I heard a bunch of teenage kids who sounded like they were joking and having a good time. I decided that I should probably talk with the kids instead of being nervous and shy around them. This was a dream, and I was here to explore whatever I ran into.

So I saw the kids. They were a group of white boys and girls, dressed in kind of loose baggy sweaters and wool caps. They were making a bunch of jokes which struck me as intelligent and funny. I thought I’d talk to them. But they really didn’t pay any attention to me. So, rather than trying to hard to get their attention and getting hostile attention, I walked down another corridor.

But now I heard somebody calling for me. I wound around through the corridors, back to the area where the kids had been. It had definitely sounded like one of the boys, calling me back to be part of the group.

But when I got back to the area – something like a lobby, with a long, wooden counter at the front of the room, and a tall, nice painting on the cinder-block wall to my left – there were no kids, only two women. The women were both naked. They walked toward me, side by side.

The woman on the right was very tall, maybe a foot taller than I (or “I” in the dream). She was naked, but she wore a dark-blue plume of feathers as a headdress and a spray of dark blue feathers around her waist and back. She looked like a burlesque performer.

The woman on the left was still taller than I, maybe by an inch or two. She was pale, with long, curly, light-red hair. The women were both offering themselves to me for sex. I chose the shorter woman.

The woman stood right in front of me, almost to the point of pressing up to me. I asked her a question, and she replied. Satisfied, I began kissing her body.

We had sex in two or three different positions. But in one position I realized I was just doing a terrible job, and that I must just be making a weird situation for the woman, even though she did at least appear to be having fun. Regardless, I got so ashamed of what I perceived as being my stupid clumsiness that I woke up.