Alone in my Subconscious-The Night-time Meanderings of a Deranged Mind.

Last night saw me testing out the Dreamz Ipod app for the first time which monitors your movements and plays an audio signal when it senses that you are in REM sleep. Although I did not attain lucidity from this, I found myself laying in bed in two out of my three remembered dreams. I believe that this oddity alongside my excellent recall from last night is result of the heightened awareness of having to sleep with my Ipod underneath the sheets. It should be interesting to test this further over the upcoming nights.

Dream 1

I was waiting outside one of my seminar classrooms and could hear my lecturer (S.M) playing a guitar and singing in a band to what sounded like a sizeable audience who were cheering them on. The first of the songs played was very Hendrix-esque and had a great solo played by S.M whereas the second was 'If' by Pink Floyd. My classmates seemed somewhat irritated at having to wait for this performance to finish before we were able to enter the room although I was very much enjoying it even if for some reason I was listening from a giant bed in the corridor, wearing only my boxers. I think I felt some sense of shame at my state of undress and remember dressing myself underneath the covers.

Dream 2
Again this dream took place with me lying in bed but this time in the middle of what I believe was some kind of airport. With some of my university classmates, although I only remember E.B and J.H. We were possibly on our way to America or somewhere but our flight was cancelled and we were looking for a way back home.

Dream 3
I seemed to be some kind of character in some bizarre take on the Game of Thrones Universe in which I had to execute a talking tomato with an axe. I remember feeling genuinely disgusted with myself after carrying out this "killing".

I was in a strange version of New York, possibly on holiday or living there with L. and J. We were walking around when we came to a large patch of land with a play-park erected on it. The play equipment was seemingly designed for adults as it was all rather high-up and I had to jump to reach the pull-up bars and rope swings. I remember feeling anxiety over L's rather vigorous use of a trampoline, believing it liable to break at any moment!

I was awoken by my family getting ready for work and was somewhat frustrated at vaguely knowing I had just been dreaming but I still can't recall it, I think it may have involved a snake though...

Either way I found that I was getting quite a lot of hypnagogic imagery so I thought I would perhaps attempt a WILD. I must have lost focus on this and it seemingly led to one of the most vivid false awakenings I have ever experienced. I went to the toilet and checked my phone which held a message from a friend asking details about an event that I will be attending later today. It really seemed that the only dreamsign present was that this friend had a rather long extended, double-barrelled type name in my phonebook, although I failed to pick up on this. Obviously, I need to work on my reality checking techniques and train myself to recognise these false awakenings in the future.

I seem to remember being in the midst of some kind of battle on-board a battleship, at one point somebody was driving a tank inside a giant enemy vessel and had to square up against some kind of giant super-vehicle owned by a mechanised Napoleon.


Dream 2

I was ordering food inside a rather large fast food store that served sandwiches etc. I think my mother was waiting for me in the car but when I returned she was missing and I believe there was some anxiety over this as I tried to find her.

Dream 1
A. and I are wizards in the Harry Potter universe and on a mission to destroy Voldemort. A. has a pet cat named Russ, which does not exist in real life. Furthermore, in a nice display of intertextuality from my dreaming mind it appears that Voldemort had teamed up with the villains from A Game of Thrones. I really need to stop dreaming about this show/book but it's turning out to be something of a dream sign!

Dream 2

I am sat in my Rebels, Rakes and Partisans seminar with H. absent. SM comes over and ask me if she is not enjoying the course

Dream 3
I am at an airport with A. I am wrongfully arrested by some kind of detective who seemingly mistakes me for some kind of maniac. We leave the room and see the person he was looking for having sex with somebody in a room with M.B and others I don't recognise

Crazy stuff!

I dreamt that I had awoken too late and was going to miss my class. My university was very different to how it is in waking life and seemed to have a system of caverns with medieval style wooden doors leading into stonewalled rooms. Thinking that there was I two hours late and that there was no point attending the last few minutes, I went for a beer at a bar in one of the aforementioned rooms where I met some of my friends, friends which do not even attend the same uni as me in real life. A good selection of real ales was on offer and the atmosphere was rather friendly.

I was in command of some kind of attack on an alien planet with A. as my companion. I killed a few human soldiers in a gunfight and after believing the fortress to be clear I loaded up a six-shooter revolver for A and entrusted her to guard two prisoners. Rather oddly I remember that I loading the gun with what appeared to be rubber, toy bullets although whatever they were they had fatal effects on their targets! We were then overran by winged alien creatures although were rescued by two Jedis who I believe were Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. Weird stuff!

I then had a rather infuriating false awakening in which I recorded this dream!

I was back at secondary school and found myself worrying that I knew absolutely nothing for upcoming exams. I was back in my old form room, with my old form tutor and several class mates. At one point a photo was taken of me with a somewhat odd looking camera as if the dream character's were aware of this strange "reunion" and wanted a record for posterity.

I do have university exams coming up in a few weeks and anxiety dreams such as this are quite common for me around exam season! Hopefully, I will be able to recognise this as a dream sign when it occurs again!

So after finding myself in some small state of intoxication last night I feel that I can now personally vouch for the negative effects that alcohol has on dream recall. However, I did thankfully manage to remember the following:

Dream 1
I was drinking whisky with a person I don't think I have seen before but I believed to be the work-colleague of one of my friends. I believe I was laid up on my old bed (a bunkbed) sipping a supermarket value-brand brew whilst my acquaintance was enjoying a far superior bottle of Glenmorangie. Eventually, L. came in and expressed his distaste at my drinking buddy's choice of tipple, saying something along the lines of it being a "girl's drink".

Dream 2
I was in some kind of shop with L. and C. I believe that my shoe laces constantly becoming untied was something of a cause of anxiety for me, and my friends were quick to criticise the length of time it was taking me to tie them up again. Hmm, I'm wondering if this could possibly symbolise anything!?

Well, that's pretty much all from last night. Certainly some objects of interest here but I'm hoping tonight will be more fruitful!

I had been given an Ipad of by my parents as some kind of gift and then remember being driven around by A. who showed me how to do a few things on it but seemed resentful of me being in his car. I remember having to hand over frequent petrol money and even an incident where I had to run along the side of the road running after him as he drove off.

When I returned we were somehow inside the boot of his car which appeared to hold Tardis like dimensions and was large enough for us to stand and walk around in quite comfortably; there was no surprise from either of us and so I gather this was not to be seen as anything extraordinary but instead as quite a normal function of the dream world. I saw that A. had had began to eat hotdogs yet none were offered to me. Thinking that such action was somewhat out of character due to his hard-line vegetarian status, I assumed that they simply consisted of a meat substitute.

Observations
From the few dreams I have recalled so far I have already began to notice a few of their main recurring features.

1. I often seem to simply "know" things in the dream without being told by a dream character or logically working something out
2. Most of my dreams at the moment appear to be about anxiety in some form or another
3. I am very likely to dream about people/situations that reflect the waking day
4. Perhaps most importantly, I seem to be beginning to question dream occurrences and exercise my logical faculties more and more. I believe this will lead to becoming lucid quite soon!
   

This dream appeared to have no real discernable location. I remember feeling under threat in some kind of biker-bar with my friend C..., I seemed to know that the huge man on the bar with Celtic crosses tattooed on each bicep was the villain of the piece and that he meant some harm to us. Suddenly, A.F appeared seemingly drunk and dressed in full pirate regalia to rescue us; I felt somewhat miffed at this as I believed myself to be perfectly capable of resolving the situation. I leapt out of the doorway and ran away, all the while humming the Game of Thrones theme tune.

I had travelled to Prague alone and checked into a hotel I believed to be named "The Royal Prague Station Hotel", however the man on the check-in desk corrected me, stating that it was in fact simply called "The Royal Prague Hotel". I "checked in" to this location using the Facebook app on my Ipod and then was led to my room which was somewhat unconventional. It seemed that my room was a kind of corridor space between several others and that people were quite free to look in and walk through as they pleased.

I found this something of an invasion of privacy but don't recall being too put off by it, I must have then decided to go and see the sights although I mistakenly checked out and left my room's keycard. After worrying about were I was going to spend the night I returned to the hotel and was able to rebuy my room for €10 through some kind of loophole. This was a stroke of luck as I knew that a stay at the hotel was usually in the thousands, despite having no real idea how I had found such money for my original booking.

I was in my bedroom typing over steam with my friend Velcroraptor when he posted links to two items on Ebay that he was selling, namely a long steampunk looking coat and a rather camp cardigan. For some reason, these items suddenly appeared in my room and I was trying on the coat. I didn't seem to think this turn of events too peculiar although the clothing was not really to my taste, not willing to buy them, my thoughts turned to how I might go about posting them back to him.