Recent DJ Posts

Morning of August 7, 2015. Friday.



A child is at a door and cannot quite reach the doorknob (which is atypically high). I only see her silhouette.

“Here, let me get that for you…” She is gone. I hear the sound of the beanbag chair breaking. It is, as always, remote viewing.

I hate to interrupt an artist. Carroll (who looks eerily like my brother-in-law but only from some angles and only at certain times) acknowledges my presence with a respectful nod.

“What do you see?” He asks.

I find myself in a continuously changing three-dimensional landscape that is like a “real” version of “Zoo Scene”. I see what looks like giant butterflies fly about in and out of the structure. I enjoy the imagery for several minutes.

It becomes the real version. I see something that, once I see it, I cannot “unsee” it.

It is a “shark fin” within the structure that is in reality, the road going away from behind the structure. “A predator…” Carroll acknowledges me respectfully and nods.

“You are not to blame for every disadvantaged soul…or for any life ever taken,” he says.

I would tend to agree. Love and respect. In every place. In every time.

I was a popular artist, and some high-end museum had commissioned some work. I was going to take some tree roots and cover them with paper mache. But somehow all the supplies for my artwork ended up in this black guy's car. He started driving off with them. So I hopped into my car and chased him. I followed him all night. Finally he stopped for gas at a convenience store. As he was inside paying, I hastily piled all the stuff from his car into mine and then got in my car and floored it back to my studio. Then I wrote a letter to a friend, telling her what happened.

Dream recall from today's WBTB/nap.

Dream 1(fragment):

There was something about decisions and clans.

Dream 2(fragments):

I was updating dreaming competition and seen that somebody posted a dream about akashicverse.

Dream 3(fragment):

An illustrated game on one of forums got updated and i was reading it.

Dream 4(fragments):

I was chatting with dragons on skype and then followed some link where i started watching somebody drawing. He was drawing some weird house and i didn't noticed as i somehow was together with artist now. I continue watching and i feel that i am dreaming, artist suddenly reacts to that and asks what i would suggest that should be added to that picture, which now looked like some sort of abandoned house. For some reason i think graffiti would be fitting for abandoned place like that so i tell him and he agrees that it would be perfect and starts adding, i then realize that i need to go for goals and stuff, but dream starts destabilizing and artists tries to help me stay in dream telling that i should not move but i wake up shortly and go through some HH.

Dream 1(fragment):

I was playing some kind of MMO with a friend, we controlled some characters from top down. I was annoyed by p2w(pay to win) system and then friend bought everything for both of us.

Dream 2(fragments):

I was in some game in 2D, that looked like Terraria. Screen was very limited and i and some people were fighting some enemies. Then screen expanded and some tree was misplaced on the level, ending up being in the air, which caused error that started spawning infinite wooden debris. View switched to 3D and now i was in the park. The infinite debris spawning error was in the sky and it produced bigger and bigger wooden debris which were falling through the ground. I noticed that sky is more like skybox in video games and decided to meddle with it a bit. I ended up creating some kind of... dark matter objects, hard to describe but they were basically geometric objects made of dark matter strings and they also were connected to the 'walls' of skybox, they were randomly moving and connection was 'dynamic' in a way that base of strings that was on the wall was moving with those. I was satisfied and then some artist with long hair showed up, he asked if he could add to it and i was fine with it. He added more detail to the constructions and now they looked even better. After that we were boasting about our art to random people that were around the place.

My dad was driving me to school. I kept urging him to go faster. We were already late but he said he was hungry. So he pulled into a McDonlads drive though and ordered some mcnuggets or something. They gave him his food and he ate it really fast.
I told him that he had his food and he needed to get me to school or I was going to be late. But right when I thought we were going to leave he drove around and went though it again, ordered more food and ate it.
After he did this a couple times, He told me that I didn't have to go to school he was taking me to see some artist guy that he knew when he was younger or something. He started driving, and soon we arrived at this house.
It looked sort of like Falling Water but was really big and had a huge porch with this big party going on. I'm quite sure several other family members of mine were there.
Then someone introduced me to a dream character that I remember vividly. He had black hair, thick square glasses, pale skin, and was probably around 20-ish.
He was very smart and happy and someone told me that he was an artist who owned this estate and wanted to throw this party.
For awhile, me and him just sort of talked about life. I told him that I was practicing to be an artist just like him.

This dream does reveal that I am a huge art nerd. I draw comic strips, write stories, paint, etc.

Also, I am really looking forward to getting my drivers license in a few months. I am tired of these anxiety dreams. Then again, I'll probably still have them, I'll just be the one making myself late.

Our youth group wanted a new place to meet, so we get a huge mansion. We each have a bedroom with our name artistically added to it. I find Kieran's, Devin's, and Megan's. I never found mine. We all go back downstairs to have the meeting. During the meeting, I'm accused of having to go to swim practice and leaving early. This is morning, swim is at night, so I stomp off and go up some unexplored stairs. I find Aelita Andre, the four year old artist that I'm doing a report on. She glares at me and starts singing "Set Fire to the Rain" by Adele. All of a sudden, I'm outside with my brothers and parents. Everyone else is gone. Fire is all around the city, and terrorists are on their way to bomb the mansion. Dad decides to blow it up himself. I agree, thinking that he will follow us while we run from the bomb, but sad music starts to play as he walks off, like in a movie. I realize that he would be blown up in the attack, and grab him. I refuse to let him sacrifice himself. So we all run away, he throws the bomb on top of the building as he runs. Mom is lagging, but sprints, jumps, lands on one foot on top of a six foot fence, jumps off, and lands on her face. After a second, she gets up and starts running again. As we all climb the fence, I see little Aelita running as fast as her four year old legs can run. I realize that she'll be caught in the blast. Scene shifts, I'm in a newroom watching a threat screen. The blue warning is just here and there. All off a sudden, a massive blue circle appears. I hear my parents talking in the backround.

I recall a boat and rough seas, with friends/allies, in a war/battle. We landed on land, and I was surprised that we ended up on level with the dock, despite the terrible waves and the storm and dark skies.

I was walking with someone, down the Manapla town road. We went to tito Ric's place. It's being renovated. I was gonna take the rice and stuff, but it was too heavy. Mom was there. She suggested we get an artist to help carry the stuff.

---------

Dreamsigns:

Mom's suggestion of carrying the sack of rice with the help of an artist (yeah, he'll paint all the way home)

1. I find myself in a concrete basement, with really interesting art on the walls. Some are paintings, and some are stencils. I am particularly interested in the stenciling. Someone I know is in the room, and they tell me that the artist is active in street art and wants me to do pieces with him. I start a strange painting that keeps changing on me. The artist comes out from the back somewhere and helps me decide what to do with my painting. We discuss stenciling. He has a large beard and a grey sweatshirt.

2. I walk into a strange church that is full of medical examination tables. I sit on one that isn't covered with that paper sheet.

3. I am going on a fishing trip with some friends. I am trying to convince them that it would be a good idea to bring a compass with us, just in case, but they fail to see the merit of it. I am very insistent because I know how easy it can be to get lost out on the ocean. I drive to a store to get one. We go on the trip, and I can see the boat as though I am not in it. Then I am back in the boat, and the current is so strong that we are having difficulty steering.

Good morning, everybody.

My nighttime discipline has been terrible lately! Last night, I spent too long watching the Girls' Generation "Visual Dreams" video and some anime stuff on YouTube. It wrecked my dream recall.

One thing before I do the dreams. At the Japan Society in NYC a series is currently running showcasing the work of the director Sabu.

On Wednesday I watched Sabu's film Monday. The plot of the story revolves around a businessman who wakes up after having been drunk for two days. He slowly recalls all the things he did while he was drunk.

The story reminds me of waking up and looking back on a dream. But at a certain moment the main character takes charge over his actions. At this moment, the "dream" stories become more like lucid dreams.

There aren't any extreme special effects. But I think the film, in itself, is very good. And I think it's also good as a metaphor for the dreaming and lucid dreaming processes.

Anyhow, I want to suggest that anybody in or near NYC go to the Japan Society to check out some of Sabu's films. Sabu is there to introduce each film and do a Q&A. So that's also incredible.

Dream #1

I was in my great-grandmother's backyard on a sunny day. My great-grandmother was still alive. My family may have been near me somewhere. My great-grandma was talking to me, possibly standing very close to me, or possibly through some kind of telepathy.

I was now in my "great-grandma's basement." I stood before a bed that was covered in deep blue sheets. My great-grandma told me something about my great-grandfather. I got the feeling that this may have been the bed my great-grandfather had died in.

My great-grandma now told me that I had to lay in the bed. It was as if I was going to be in town for a while, and that I would have to stay at this house while I was here. So I'd be using this bed.

The bed was now different. The previous bed didn't have any headboard. But this bed had a very fancy headboard of nice wood. The bed also had blankets. In fact, the bedding appeared to be a very nice, homemade quilt with mint-green squares alternating with white squares with pink flower (?) designs on them.

I was a little afraid to lay in the bed. I felt like it had been empty for so long that maybe bedbugs had started to live inside of it. I thought I would check the bed for bugs. But I knew my great-grandmother was somewhere around me. I didn't want to check the bed in front of her and offend her by implying that she had neglected the bed.

Dream #2

I was in some museum or art gallery. I was in a room, possibly laying face down on a cushioned bench that was backed up against a wall. My head kind of hung down over one end of the bench. This specific room was spacious but small, kind of dimly lit, with white walls and possibly some thin carpet.

There had been some big art exhibit opening. The opening included some kind of presentation by the artist, a woman who kind of looked like Laurel Nakadate. Now everybody was milling around or leaving. Most of the people looked like somewhat wealthy business people.

The artist woman leaned against the wall near the bench on which I lay. I was playing with some device like an iPhone. All the icons on the phone were squares with a swirly pattern of pinks, browns, and oranges. I was scanning through a number of different icons.

The artist said something to me like, "I could never figure out how those things worked. You seem to know it pretty well. You must be smart."

I figured from this that the artist couldn't afford to own an iPhone. I let her look at mine, so she could figure out how to use it. But as soon as I handed it over, I felt a little bit of anxiety. I knew I had a lot of really wacky porn sites still up on my internet. I hoped that she wouldn't look through my internet history.

The artist, did, however, end up scrolling through my internet history. As the artist continued using the phone, the phone became something like a sit-down driving game like you would see in an arcade. The artist was sitting inside the game, scrolling through my internet history, which was a black screen, with old, pixellated, dim-white lettering. The room also became dim, like an arcade.

The artist, thankfully, kept scrolling down to sections full of internet searches I'd apparently done for really fancy recipes. Also, there seemed to be some sections where I'd taken pictures of these fancy dishes I made.

The artist may have made some comment about how nice it was that a guy actually put effort into making all these delicious meals. That comment made me even more afraid of the artist finding the porn sites.

I thought that maybe I'd get lucky and that the artist might not happen upon any of the porn sites that I'd looked at on my phone. But she eventually did. The porn sites in question were apparently of me, all by myself, on my bed, masturbating or dressed in women's underwear.

At some point the arcade game version of my phone became my phone again, although at certain times the views were coming straight into my head, as if I were just imagining them all. The artist was gone, although I may have heard her talking to me, as if I were hearing the conversation telepathically or through "memory-phone."

I now stood before a bed in an almost completely dark room. I may have thrown the phone on my bed. I still had the weird photos of me running through my head. Eventually I got on the bed, standing on my knees.

(Side notes: Dream #2 implies that I look for porn and fancy recipes on the web. This is wrong. I don't look for fancy recipes. But I probably should, because I think cooking is really cool.)

Good morning, everybody. I'm pretty sure I was only semi-lucid in the first dream, even though I was aware that I was dreaming.

The second dream took place between 5 AM and 5:30 AM, I'm pretty sure.

Dream #1

I was in a house with some female "family members." They appeared to be about my age, white, very pretty. I saw them as if we were all close together. The women were having some kind of serious conversation.

I suddenly floated up and out of the house. I assumed I was in the neighborhood my family had lived in before I went to college. (Though it now seems to me that all the houses were much bigger that in that neighborhood, and that they all had flat roofs.)

At some point during all of this, I told myself I was dreaming. I think that I was thinking this was something more like an out-of-body experience than a dream. I told myself to focus on the rooftops and try to "bring something back" to waking life that would prove I'd had an OBE.

But I was only floating around between a small number of houses. I think I was having some kind of trouble with my vertical control, like I kept on going up way high and having to pull myself back down.

At some point in time I saw a house with its roof caved in. I recognized this house as being a couple houses down from my family's old house. I thought for sure that this would be something I could "bring back."

I thought I'd focus in on this house, land on the roof. But instead of landing on the roof, I ended up going way down to the ground or a much lower roof (as if all these houses were like multi-story buildings -- which is obviously not true in that neighborhood). I flew back up and landed on the top of the roof.

But the roof wasn't collapsed. Instead, I found, the whole thing had been an optical illusion. The object which had given an impression of a depression in the roof was actually the basin of a gigantic hot tub.

Somehow, again without any criticism, I found myself in the empty basin of this gigantic hot tub, indoors. The hot tub was actually on the roof of the back end of a big RV. The room I was in was like a gigantic garage for the RV (even though, again, it was on the top floor of this "house").

I called out to my brother. He'd been friends with the son of this family. I figured he'd know more about this than I did. My brother "appeared," though I don't think I ever saw him directly.

After I'd "asked" (mentally?) my brother about the gigantic RV and hot tub, he responded, "Yeah, I was surprised, too, the first time I came to their house. I thought it was a broken roof, too. Because they always looked and acted so poor.

"But then I realized that they really did have all this rich stuff, too. Then I started getting jealous, because we don't have anything like this! But then they started letting me use it, too."

Dream #2

I was watching some kind of live-action drama that had elements in common with an anime drama.

The view eventually changed to some kind of drama of which I was a part, even though I was still only an observer.

There were a bunch of beautiful, rich, college-aged people walking from the right to the left of my view, before some stone castle which was part of some college campus. The sky overhead was dark and roiling with clouds. The students (mostly or all women?) were wearing colorful, silk dresses and plastic masks to make them look like anime characters.

Eventually I was in a room, at a party. The room felt like a study in a big, nice house. The room was dim, full of people, probably rich adults.

I had been talking at first with a young woman. At some point I was listening to the speech of a man who had a face like Rodin's sculptures of Balzac. The man was speaking with great pride about how he had cheated some business associate, then killed and eaten him.

Now I saw a group of partiers, all turned toward me, motionless, silent. They were mostly women. The women wore masks like female anime characters. The men wore masks like the mustache mask from V for Vendetta (?).

My view now shifted to a number of fragmented scenes showing old, great manga and anime artists at their work. One scene had a man sitting back in his swivel chair before his desk. The man was tallish, wearing a sweater and a beret (but he wasn't Tezuka).

The wall of the man's room was turquoise blue, and was decorated with some of the classic anime and manga he'd created. One drawing was a figure of a plain, young man with black hair wearing a yellow sweater and khaki slacks. Another anime of his had to do with the adventures of some little girl in a forest. I heard the anime theme song.

(As I woke, I could hear the theme song of this anime. I even hummed it to keep it in my mind. But I forgot it now. Ugh.)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID FALSE AWAKENING PRECOG SHARED

2:40 GMT

Selling grandma’s house
I’m at my grandma’s house with my mom. It is completely empty and I’m telling my mom how I never before noticed the place is actually nice, when it’s empty – no longer crammed with furniture, it let’s light in and has lots of space. We’re doing a last tour to all rooms just to check if everything is ok. A lady is coming to see the house and then I realise it is for sale. I find a paper on the wall, near the fax machine (didn’t know there was one...) and I take it, just when my mom is opening the door to the lady.

Walking through memories
Walking by the neighbourhood of my childhood’s best friend. It looks under construction as it was then in the past and not as it looks nowadays. An old colleague from school is walking with me and we’re both going through our memories. From the end of this neighbourhood we pass into the backs of our old school. I recall it was the place for kids to make out and we do find a couple there half hidden by the grass and we smile. He also recalls some guys who did drugs also met on this place but that I never saw. As we keep going we pass by some gardened area where we used to run through on our physical education classes. But there’s a lot of new trees making the path a bit more dark than it used to be. I see some figures going down that path and I feel curious and go after them. My colleague is left behind.

Golden Buddhas
At the end of this path I find a building, the door is half open and there are people standing there, people arriving and trying to go inside and I peak and see lots of people sitting there. I see monks and realise it’s a Buddhist group listening to some teachings from their guru. I don’t recognize him and it all seems a bit fishy to me, but I try not to judge before knowing them, so I also try to find a seat. But just when I’m about to sit, it ends and the teacher gets up and heads to the exit. People are bowing down at his passage and I sneak outside where there is a table with some Buddhist relics and sacred objects for people to admire. I just get in there when they are scolding a lady who tried to steal some object by hiding it on her coat. Then I go back to the garden and no longer it looks dark but instead it is very bright and I see many many big golden Buddhas statues. Some are floating in the air above our heads and I pass under one and touch the lotus flower on which a Buddha is sitting. I get an amazing feeling I can’t really describe, like I’m floating on air or dissolving into the air.

Japanese artist
Then I see some Japanese banners waving with the wind and go check it out. I meet a girl who paints canvas and banners with traditional Japanese paintings. She is selling her work on some corner enclosed by hedges. Her cheaper painting costs 20 EUR. I tell her I love her work but I have no money with me. Then we start talking and I notice she is Japanese-looking although she tells she never actually been to Japan. I tell her I did and she says “How lucky of you!” I ask why she never been there and she says it’s the land of her ancestors and she plans to go one day, but she is always travelling everywhere but there. She tells me she even travelled on a Japanese boat with a Japanese crew once for some reason, but never put a foot in Japan. Then she tells me (and I see it through her eyes) about her adventures on that boat. The crew was all men and one day she entered some room where they were doing some heavy work and could not leave and she caught one or two peeing to bottles, because they could not even go to the toilet. She was so embarrassed and the men were laughing at her and tell her to come in. After a few days she was already so adapted and relaxed she even took some provocative pictures like one in which she was doing fellatio to some phallic shaped pipe.

6:00 GMT

A chase and goths
Inside some house, on what seems to be the office room. I m looking through the window and I see a couple. I recognize Sandra but don’t know the guy. For some reason they are coming inside the house looking for me and I want to hide, so I run to the toilet and lock myself there. They are trying to break in, so I escape through a window and go to the rooftop and from there I jump to the middle of a street. The street is filled with boxes and bags with groceries and I decide to hide behind it and pick up some food – some bread, juice and so on – to take with me, because apparently I’m planning to go on a long trip. But they come at the window and they see me. I run and I hide on some large building, like an abandoned slaughterhouse. They keep chasing me and I have to climb through some ropes and a few more stunts to get to a second floor. Here I find some offices and hide in one, trying to lock the door behind me. But some group of Goths come inside to do something. One guy in the group wants to help me so he makes me lay down on some kind of hospital bed that they take outside. I’m covered by a sheet, but I am totally sure this won’t work so I jump out of it and decide to just run. The gothic guy help me escape through a window. Outside there are stands – some kind of fair – with gothic, anime and fetishist stuff. But not all the Goths are willing to help me and some I encounter actually try to grab me, so I fly up.

8:00 GMT

More lucid meditation
Something made me feel horny in my dream and I decided to wake up and trying to use it with my BF. I had before talked to him and joked about trying to do it. So I wake up in my bed, he is by my side and I start ... you know... calling him into action. He is so surprised and I’m explaining to him that I’m bringing the horniness from a dream I was having, when I notice that something is not quite right and I realise I’m still dreaming. Then I’m left with the decision to either enjoy the lucid dream or to wake up for real and try again what I was trying to do before. But I didn’t care so much for the horniness anymore and I decided to stay dreaming and do my “homework”.
I cross a wall hoping to cross to some other dream scenario that is a nice place to meditate and I find myself on some porch. There are some kids playing nearby but in general looks good, so I sit down and start doing my visualization and repeating a mantra. It’s all going pretty well, for maybe a minute. I’m struggling not to be distracted by the kids who are now just by my side, when a third kid comes from my left and pinches me. I try not to react, but he tickles me and starts to really hurt me. I guess my “feel no pain” training is not yet 100% working. I am about to resort to violence and send some energy blast to knock them down, but I decide not to give in to that violence – it would totally ruin my efforts to calm down the mind and they would win! So I fly away to the rooftop of a huge tower nearby and decide to sit there, but the vicious kid is still after me. He climbs some metallic ladders on the side of the building to reach me and I detach it from the wall and he falls down what seems to be 100 floors. Now I’m going to sit calmly, but the tower starts to shake and swing and I am about to fall from it. Can’t stay there and so I fly down to some other rooftop and cross another wall in search of a new scenario. I pass by two or three places – a nightscape, some place with stones on the ground, etc – until I find myself in a very comfy room with dim lights, a girl sitting on the floor and another sitting on a sofa, very quiet. I ask them if I can stay there and meditate and they say “Sure! Can we join you?” Fantastic! So I also sit on the sofa and I do once again my visualization and repeat my mantras. This time I think I manage to hold it for a few minutes. Then dream starts to fade but I hold on and continue on it, this time sitting on the floor. In front of me, leaning against the wall, is a big rectangular mirror and I decide to meditate looking at it. I see my reflection. I’m dressed in beige trousers and top but with lots of skin showing. I look a bit chubby, but not ridiculously. It doesn’t disturb me. I keep repeating my mantras, visualizing the Buddha in my heart centre, radiating light and all goes well for a few more minutes. I notice through the reflection on the mirror that more people are coming inside the room and sitting on the floor. I almost wake up again, but when the dream is strong again I am now turned to the centre of the room and see this dozens of people sitting on cushions. They are all looking towards a lady guru at the end of the room. But she doesn’t inspire me confidence. She has a table full of crystals and she says “So, today we have someone special among us!” They all look at me. Then she adds “Not that you are not all special, but you know what I mean!” I have now stopped my meditation and think about leaving this place to but at same time I am curious to see what she is going to say next. She is coming in my direction with some necklace made with lots of different coloured crystals and then I notice my BF just appeared by my side and he’s looking at me like “What is this BS?” I smile and tell him we should leave. Since we’re just against the wall, we cross it and we’re outside in some garden. It’s raining. The garden is lovely, but then I see two rows of dog shelters and decide to check it out. I thought I would find big guard dogs but instead I find tiny cute pedigreed dogs. They are chained to their shelters and the shelters don’t protect them from the rain, so they are all wet and looking miserable. I feel they are there for the entertainment of rich people who own this place, but their care is totally neglected. I mean, they have food and shitty shelter, but they are totally sad, lonely and scared. I start with first little one, cuddling him and doing some reiki and he shows so much love and thankfulness. I cry. I want to do it to all of them, but they are so many! I feel the dream fading and I wish that all animals who are going through similar suffering may always feel loved and happy, no matter what circumstances they are. Then when I’m about to drop out from the dream I have a vision of the caretaker caught in a moment of truth confessing that he beats up the dogs whenever he takes food to tem. I comment with my BF how hideous is that people like him are always getting these jobs.

9:00 GMT

(Good morning, everybody. I remember one dream from last night.

The character in my dream definitely looks like a person I know from waking life. I don't know him personally, but he goes to certain art events I also attend, including one last night.

He's not at all like the person in the dream. He's really cool and insightful. So I don't know why I dreamt of him being this way.)

Dream #1

I sat at an anime fest, in a place like a basketball arena. It was like everybody who had come to attend the festival were sitting in bleachers, looking down to a stage-like area that would be where the basketball court was. The seating section, as big as in any pro basketball arena, was completely packed.

I sat near the front row. The row I sat in had a big, wooden bannister before it, which kind of reminds me of the front railing in the public area in a court room, or of the balcony area where the public sits during government sessions in capitols.

The area where the basketball court would be was full, probably with artists' booths. But the festival patrons weren't going down there.

We were all watching some presentation given to us by some white man who was apparently a manga artist. The man may have been tall, a little overweight, balding, with red-brown hair, and red-tan skin. He may have been wearing a kind of old, green sweatshirt and blue jeans.

When the man's presentation was finished, the man announced that we could all come down to his booth. He had a black binder full of his manga art, and he informed us that we could each choose our favorite female manga character out of the binder and take the page for free. He might also have said he would sign the page.

An overweight, black man about my age, with thick glasses and wearing a dark blue sweatshirt, sat to my left. He said, probably to me, in a joking-confiding way, "Well, everybody who's in line behind me better get ready to wait a long time. Cause I'm gonna take my time going through that book until I find my favorite anime girl."

Some announcer called each person down by name. They called the man. Right after that, they called me. I stood behind the man as he slowly flipped through the pages of the binder.

The binder was huge, full of pages. The pages were probably all in individual plastic sleeves. The art looked very pencil-y but very professional. Some of the art was in grey pencil. Some was in blue pencil.

The man pulled something out of his pocket that looked like a cell-phone-sized laptop. He checked the time, put the device back in his pocket, and went back to leafing slowly through the pages.

I was trying really hard to think to myself who my favorite manga character was. All I could come up with was Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin. I thought I should be able to come up with a character better than that. But I figured that maybe Jasmine from Aladdin really was my favorite manga character.

The man had flipped all the way to the end of the binder. Then, saying out loud that he didn't see a manga girl he liked yet, he began flipping backward through the binder.

As I watched the man flip through the pages of the binder, I saw a number of drawings of Jasmine. I figured I'd be happy with just about any of those drawings. Seeing all these Jasmine drawings, I was starting to get impatient with the man. I could have had a perfectly fine picture and been gone by now. But this man wouldn't stop taking his turn!

The man pulled his "phone" back out of his pocket and looked at the time again. The phone indicated that he'd been flipping through the book for 20 or 22 minutes by now. (The phone may not have been showing the time. It may actually been timing the man as he flipped through the pages.)

The man nodded approval at the time, put his phone back in his pocket, and began flipping slowly through the binder again. He may have gone all the way backward through the binder and started flipping forward again.

I find myself flying through a dreamscape, that is very vivid and yet closer to hypnagogia than an actual dream. I see gorgeous places and I start thinking how to paint them in my mind, because at this point I know that I'm not awake, and honestly I don't know exactly where I was. Somewhere between dreaming and awake I suppose. In this place I can paint beautiful things. Everything and anything that I think suddenly manifests, I am in control of what I am seeing. Like I am conducting and controlling the hypnagogia somehow. Each image I see is so incredible, that I take a moment to memorize it, and observe it's finest details. It has an infinite resolution. I know in my heart that I can paint such things as I see them in my mind, and I become sad that I can not so clearly see...truly see...when I am awake. I test myself. I imagine a group of people and I pose them in different ways and observe them at extreme angles as if I were below them looking up, or above them looking down. The perspective is all perfect, and I tell myself that I need to remember this when I wake up. How to see...while awake. How to tap into this place of pure inspiration. Either my own subconscious or the whole of the collective consciousness. Perhaps this is akashia. I examine every detail and notice things I never noticed before, like the structure of the big toe, and how the heel looks when viewed from a certain angle. Then I go on to imagine the most beautiful scenes I can think of. I don't even have to try, I just think, "imagine something beautiful" and it happens, and what I see is so stunning that it would bring me to tears. Not only because of it's beauty but also because I know that I could never create anything so masterful, so absolutely divine. I am the tortured artist, blessed with visions of beauty beyond measure and compare, yet without the skill to be able to recreate such visions on paper or canvas. The frustration of knowing that these things are here...in my head...inside me...and yet I cannot see them while awake. I cannot use them to help me to create. Instead all I have are vague impressions, outlines, misconceptions about form and shape. True testament to how I live my life.