lucid

Notes: I've been having lucid dreams very frequently since eating shit on bike this summer and concussing myself. These almost always occur just after falling asleep and usually end with the sensation of choking, resulting in waking up. I also almost always drool during these events.

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I appeared, quite suddenly, in a long metallic looking hallway glowing with a strange red tint. I perceived that this was representative of some distant war fire.

In reality, I had just sent my friend a Facebook message before suddenly falling asleep. Instead of focusing on the still empty hallway I thought about that for a minute, then turned my attention to my physical body, which felt numb. I could feel myself drooling. Realizing I was lucid dreaming, I decided to stop wasting my time focusing on external factors and focus on the dream.

My first thought was to dream about fighting off a horde of baddies. A bunch of grunts wearing steel helmets and lamellar armor appeared. An axe appeared in my hand. I started to fight.

At first, I couldn't move quickly. Something in my mind was holding me back from fully controlling the dream. I thought "no, move faster" repeatedly until eventually, my dream self could move full speed.

My brain continued to try and derail my lucidity. At one point I conjured some fat dude in office attire to grab me and pull me away from the action. After thinking, very purposefully, "fuck off" a few times, he did so. Almost immediately after that, the part of my brain that wants to confound me conjured my dad and tried to turn my lucid dream into a nightmare.

He was being attacked by several grunts, his hand reaching out to me from between a door crack. I knew my dream was going to have him killed. I threw my axe and stayed one grunt, the other disappeared. My dad lay bent over unnaturally over a couch, I could tell part of my brain was waiting for me to interpret his figure as dead.

"Nope, he's fine," I thought. Dad sprung back up, totally untouched.

At this point, I started to feel the choking sensation and knew I wasn't going to be able to remain asleep. I felt like I couldn't breathe. The dream swirled out of focus. I began to hear my physical body making a choking noise. I woke up and breathed. My pillow was covered in drool.

June 23, 2011

Notes
Sleeping over in a hotel room tonight. Have been going to bed very early since coming back to the states. I haven't written any of my dreams down for awhile so I figure now's as good a time as any. At the last dream I started to become a little lucid seeing as I was waking up every five minutes to the sound of my mom's alarm clock. Recurring themes of school and crossdressing.

Entry 012
I'm in a cave, swimming in a clear underground lake. Around me I can see my old classmates swimming as well, though none of them are distinct. The teacher is a woman with dark hair pulled back into a bun and a thin, delicate face. Although I've never had a teacher who looked like her, she seems familiar. She pulls out an old photograph of her and her family and lays it on the rocky shore of the lake. "Bring me tokens, then we can move on." I don't know what she means, but I dive to the bottom of the lake and place a smooth pebble on top of the photo. My classmates bring other things they find and place them on the photo as well.

We're going somewhere now, we walk into a huge chamber with a waterfall.

----

I'm in Tokyo, and I'm Japanese. For some reason I'm dressed up like a man and wearing a police uniform. It looks like my disguise has fooled everyone. Well, everyone but one guy. In Akihabara some otaku wearing a long white coat and huge coke bottle glasses spots me and knows I can't be a man. He starts to stalk me. I don't start to run really, but I'm definitely trying to lose him. I come to a tall tower. The otaku sees a baby nearby and steals it, knowing I won't run away while he's putting the life of an infant in danger. I somehow outsmart him and retrieve the baby, ringing the doorbell of the tower and giving it back to the confused Japanese housewife inside. From there on the dream morphs into some kind of parkour chase across Tokyo, with only occasional pauses whenever I think I've lost him.

----

I'm with my friend Jane, and we're at some kind of anime convention. We're both wearing costumes that disguise us as men, but the people at the convention can tell from our faces that we're girls. We're wearing tight under-armor shirts with padded muscles and tight skinny jeans with sneakers. We look convincing. We're there for some kind of competition. We walk into a packed room and head for the makeshift stage at the front. We're in a line of other costumed groups. The audience appears to be picking its favorite groups from the line up, shouting whenever the ones they like are mentioned. Our names are called out and we flex and pose for the crowd. We get a huge response, we move on to the next round.

Next round and we're on stage with different costumes this time. Now we're wearing fluorescent pink and yellow pixie-cut wigs and matching tutus. Now we're competing against just one other group for the semi-finals. The last challenge is to dress up a girl from an audience to match us. I pick out a girl with brown hair tied up in a braid. For some reason Jane has left the stage and I have to do the makeup all by myself, even though I have no idea how. I spend the entire time allotted applying pink lipstick to the girl. Somehow, though, when she walks to the front of the stage, she looks just like us. We move to the semi-finals, but once there we lose because my design on the girl wasn't original enough. I have become somewhat lucid at this point due to an alarm clock, and I feel curious about how my makeup actually looks. I look in a mirror and look strangely old underneath the makeup. I can see wrinkles cracking the top of my upper lip and bags pulling down my eyes. It scares me.

I wake up.

April 25, 2011

Notes
Hardly slept last night. Went to bed at 1:30am, woke up screaming for my mom. Took me awhile to fall back asleep, not sure when exactly. Woke up finally at 6am. I rarely have outright nightmares. Creepy, ominous, yes. Horrifying? No, not really. If I ever have a nightmare I usually will become lucid and then either stop/change the dream. Although I did do that this time, it was really late and the nightmare was practically already over. Also, three dreams inside of each other. I could make an inception joke, but honestly I'm still creeped out. My dream self didn't realize they were dreams inside dreams. Motifs of nothing, I've never had a dream quite like this. Also, I had dreams this weekend but they weren't too interesting seeing as I lost sleep. Also I wasn't home, so I didn't bother to write them down anyways.

Entry 010
I'm in Dr. Clark's room. We have some huge essay to write, it's due in 30 minutes, but I'm so tired. I lay my head down on my desk and fall asleep.

I'm in my bed, except I realized later that it was on the wrong side of the room and exact to my old bed back home. I'm half-asleep, my body is already paralyzed and my mind is mostly unconscious. As I'm lying there, about to enter a deep sleep, I feel something on my back. It feels like a hand. For a minute I don't feel particularly worried about this. The hand is running over my back, slipping lower until it runs over my ass. I feel uncomfortable. Then I can feel nails digging into me. I realize there is no hand, but the touch persists. I realize the hand belongs to some kind of demon, and that its intention is to murder me. My body is still paralyzed. I try screaming, but all that comes out of my throat is a strangled grunt. It's not loud enough for anyone to hear. I know that I have to stand up and get out of here. I try to stand, but I can't. I fall to my knees and drag myself to the door. Along the way I see something out of the corner of my eye. It's a little man, about as wide and tall as a bowling pin, dressed in clothes like Charlie Chaplin with white pasty skin, frizzy black hair and huge, staring, yellow eyes. I open the door and drag myself to the hall. I try screaming more, but I'm still not able. I think I see my mom on the couch, but it's dark. I get to the couch, someone's there. I'm safe. I relax, fall asleep by the couch.

I wake up. I'm in bed. Something is touching me. Repeat of the last dream, but as I reach my door this time I think "My bed is on the other wall. Didn't I just have this dream?" and I realize I'm dreaming. My dream self, however, is still panicking. It's screaming at me to get the hell out of the room. The will of my dream self overpowers my lucid self and I fling the door open. There's a blinding white light.

I open my eyes. I'm screaming. My mom is in the doorway.

April 22, 2011

Notes
After forgetting my dream last night, had 3 dreams tonight, one lucid. Went to bed at around 1am, woke up several times but eventually at 1:30pm. Great dreams tonight, some of the typical weird stuff that happens in my dreams. Attempted control at the end of the lucid dream, almost succeeded, blocked by some creepy projection of myself. Very memorable at the end of the lucid, very unsettling. Reoccurring people, which I've never noticed until I started this journal, and of course my dog Riley shows up again. Motifs of weird adventures, futuristic settings, otherworldly experiences, school, etc.

Entry 009
My first dream begins in a house. It's my house, only my room specifically seems to be bigger, with a really strange wall shape. The room sits kind of like a townhouse, on the second floor of some other apartment and only loosely attached to the main house. The atmosphere inside is just like my room-- books scattered everywhere, clashing color schemes and fabrics, random nic nacs on every surface. I'm sitting by the window, looking out at the street below. There's an eclectic shop across the road, filled with antiques and dried squid hanging from the ceiling (what?). I see a friend walk into view, maybe Sejal, maybe not, I can't really remember. She waves, I wave back then open up the window and jump down to the street. We go inside the shop for awhile. There's an old woman who looks like some kind of cartoon gypsy or one of those old fortuneteller machines sitting behind the counter, watching us like a hawk from behind her round spectacles. We leave and I go back up to my room, only to find everything either gone or covered in a white sheet. My mom comes in and said she did some "cleaning" and that she's packed up all my stuff for me to go to college.

---

Another dream in similar setting to the first, only without the previous one ever happening and with the place that was my room now being a classroom. We live in some futuristic world, with tall white skyscrapers and even a couple flying cars here and there. Despite all the modernity, there are still places like the antique store with dried squid cramped along the narrow paths between buildings.

I'm walking, then I stop at a towering building meant for residential apartments. On the first floor I can see Burell, but I'm not here to see him. I am at a different floor in the building. I ring the bell and Donahue answers. There are already some students waiting inside. I get the impression that we always have school in these residential apartments for some reason, even though the classrooms are more like personal houses of the teachers than classrooms at all. We have a lesson, but I'm hardly paying attentions. My gaze keeps shifting to the wide, floor to ceiling windows which give a panorama view of the world outside, flying cars and all.

Eventually, one lesson ends and the majority of the students file out of the apartment. Only myself and a couple others are leftover, and we're all given instruments. We practice for awhile, then Donahue says something about us "being ready". Apparently there's some kind of festival around a bonfire today (something that seems strangely uncivilized for a nation with flying cars, but whatever...) and they need musicians so that the dancers have a beat. I leave, stop in at the antique-squid place again.

When I come out of the shop I look up at the sky and see it's getting dark. I have to hurry to the festival. Someone or something is with me all this time, but I'm not sure what it is. When I (we?) get to the festival, all of the other musicians have already taken their places in a horseshoe of black chairs set upon a hill. I kind of lurk in the back of these chairs, but never sit down or play. I have an ominous feeling, like something sinister is happening. I see Donahue front and center playing a tuba or something like that. The people around the fire dance.

As I'm walking back to the building, Burell sees me and intercepts. As we walk back together, I tell him I have some strange feeling about Donahue and the festival. Burell then tells me that I was right to, then reveals some dark past of Donahue's; why we have classes in his apartment, why there's a festival, why we were made to play music in the festival. When we get to the building, Burell slips in to his apartment on the first floor. As I'm standing there, staring at the place where Burell was standing only a second ago, Donahue sneaks up behind me and taps me on the shoulder. Is something wrong? He smiles.

--

Final dream. I'm lucid. I'm in some kind of futuristic world, an underground society connected by dim, floating lights and wide tunnels of whooshing air used to travel. I've just moved in to a new, comfortable home and I'm inviting people over for a party. We're playing video games, watching TV and talking; just generally having fun. Eventually, however, some neighbors come over to complain. They're already holding a grudge against me for not inviting them, and so they want to interfere in our fun. I invite them in and I get some impression that I shouldn't have. Riley is here, and she's snapping at their heels. The floor is made of large multicolored tiles that light up underneath your feet and I can see myself backing away, lighting yellows, purples, reds, as they move forward.

The dream gets fuzzy here, I think I may have temporarily lost lucidity, but I get the impression they severely beat me up and that one of them rapes me.

When the dream comes back to me, they've switched my new home in to some kind of place of indoctrination. A bunch of brainwashed kids are sitting around me, my previous party guests, all wearing bathing suits, raincoats, tutus and other bizarre clothing. Occasionally a new person tries to enter the room and join us. If we find them attractive we let them in, and if we don't we beat them to a bloody pulp. One fat little girl in a purple bathing suit tries to come in. The room tenses. There's no way we can let her in.

Just as we're about to strike, I stand up and shout "NO". I'm wearing some kind of cosplay or costume with a tutu and a crown. It's very scanty. I run to the front of the room and tell the girl to quickly leave, and she won't get hurt. This action seems to somehow snap the rest of the people in there room out of their daze. I notice the original neighbors look furious. I also notice they don't seem to have human forms any longer, but are more like purple shadows with glowing eyes. I run out of the house with them chasing me. Somehow I am faster or more quick-witted than they are, so I can easily escape. The problem is how determined they are. They never stop chasing me for even a second.

I come to one of the air tunnels people use to travel in this world. There is a slight breeze coming down the tunnel, and floating in the air are things that look like orange lifesavers used on boats. I jump into the tunnel and the wind catches me before I drop to the bottom. I'm still slowly heading to the bottom, however, and I realize that you have to grab the lifesavers for the tunnel to effectively work. I somehow control the wind with my mind to blow harder, and then I'm swinging from lifesaver to lifesaver like a monkey, the wind at my back driving me down the tunnel.

I do this for a long time, sometimes running through crowds of people at entrance to a movie theater, one time skating down an underground waterfall. I have to keep running or else I will be caught. Eventually I'm just walking through a crowd, aware that my enemies are far behind me. My lucid mind starts to wander. I remember that I need to try and control my dreams sometimes, and then I remember that one of the tasks of the month was to gather some flowers, and so I decide to create a field of red flowers. I see a door up ahead and open it. As I do a field starts to spawn ahead of me, an endless field of roses and poppies and other, unidentifiable flowers. I look back and the door is gone. I realize that there is some kind of presence with me. I look to my right and see a carbon copy of myself, grinning malevolently. "You can't control this." She says. I fall flat on my face in the field, and I can feel myself losing the dream. I try to feel the texture of the ground, like I've heard can stabilize the dream, and for a second it works. I can feel myself getting a grip back on the field. Within seconds, however, my twins face is between me and the ground and she's laughing at me. "It's already gone," she says. She's right. My eyes are flickering open, and I'm getting glimpses of my bedroom and the field alternately for a couple seconds. I try for several minutes to re-enter, but all I can see is my own face glaring at me, laughing.

I wake up.

April 20, 2011

Notes
Went to bed at 8pm, woke up at 5:30am. Heard the music in my dream, but as often happens when I'm lucid half-sleeping, I could not hear the words and though I knew it was the sound of my alarm clock, felt it a good idea to ignore it and incorporate it into my dream instead. I have horrible judgement when I'm sleeping. My dream self never wants to go to school. Eventually woken up by my mom around 6am. First lucid in a little more than a week.

Entry 008
I find myself in the city. I'm lucid, but as usual, I don't attempt to control the dream. I allow myself to become involved in the storyline. I see Clemens and a mixture of people from my journalism class and people from my February trip. I realize that this dream will in a way mimic that trip. The city is a mix of Vienna, Budapest and the place I live now. There are modern skyscrapers with quaint European shops and homes squished in between. At once I see museums and horse drawn carriages and then I see glass and steel buildings at another minute. We're told to go off on our own, like we were often told in Vienna. I go on a little excursion. Somehow I end up in someone's house with a grey horse, named Grani over the horse in Sigurd, the Volsung. I'm feeding the horse in metal bowl.

Clemens comes for me. Free time is over. We end up in a low ceilinged building, kind of like a club and a hobbit hole mixed together. We're sitting at long tables eating, watching some kind of entertainment at the front. After we eat, we see a glass enclosed arcade inside. I watch from outside as some people play DDR or sing karaoke. I watch Clemens fail horribly at DDR and decide I want to play. When I try, though, the symbols on the screen are gibberish and the arrows on the pad don't work correctly. I'm kind of disappointed, dream self and lucid self, so I decide to leave.

When I walk outside, the whole city now appears to be made out of quilted toilet paper. Also, the old European charm has vanished. If it were not for the entire city being made of toilet paper, it would look just like the main street of the city I live in now. I walk around for a bit past some familiar structures like the huge mall until I come to what looks like a ramp leading down into a parking garage. I go down. It's not a parking garage, it's the lobby of a bank. Go figure. I decide to set up an account. I'm sweating; For some reason I'm really nervous my mom is going to find out I'm setting up a bank account.

At this point the music from my alarm clock interrupts my dream. Consciously I realize that this is my alarm clock, but I won't allow myself to get up just yet. I don't know why, but the music comes through to me without any words, only instrumentals. This gets interpreted by my dream self as some kind of new super power. The ability to remove the words from songs. What an amazing ability.

I wake up.