Recent DJ Posts

My old friend Saimi and I are sitting at a table by the city’s inner wall, having coffee. They are thick walls, built with greyish stone, and through a window in the wall—a rough hole with a metal grid across it—we can see something a little troubling taking place: a small group of oni is building a campfire there, in the courtyard area between this wall and the outer one. They’re larger than humans, with colorful skin and wearing rough clothing, some of it made from animal skins. It’s odd, I think to myself. It’s been ages since I’ve read, watched or played anything with oni in it. The ones I can recall looked different. And yet, these guys strike me as familiar—familiar as individuals, even. I can’t account for it.

Anyway, Saimi and I have business to take care of. I have been investigating a series of mysterious events that Saimi has been involved with in some way—something from a dream from earlier in the night that I can no longer remember— and since our last meeting, my research has turned up something quite interesting. We have two small pages of text with us that appeared when the events took place and that we suspect may be connected to them somehow—both the same text, but one copy in English and one in Korean. They seem to concern some kind of game.

The oni—whom we’ve been keeping a watchful eye on this whole time—are now entering through the gate, which isn't far from where we're sitting, and roaming the city square. Presumably, they're looking for someone to eat. Should we move? We decide not to. They'll probably be satisfied with only one person, and there’s only a small chance it’ll be one of us. We continue talking. But suddenly, I feel myself grabbed from behind and carried backwards. My espresso cup falls to the ground and rolls away. I call out something to Saimi as I struggle to get free—but then the dream shifts around us. I’m not sure now whether it was something I did intentionally or something that just happened, but at any rate, I seem to be better prepared for it than the oni are. While they’re trying to figure out what just happened, I break loose and run for it.

Or rather, my character on the screen does, since I’m now experiencing this as a video game. I get a few screens away, at which point I know I’m safe. From there, I explore the town where I now am for a little while, going into houses and talking to the people there—and then I seem to be on my computer, checking my email. As I watch, new emails are arriving in my inbox every few seconds, which is unusual. Something big must be happening.

And then I wake up.

(22.1.17)

Morning of September 20, 2014. Saturday.



I seem to be passively viewing an investigation, though I am still present in the setting, which seems to have the essence of the northeast corner of the Cubitis living room (where I am not been sine 1978). It seems to be taking place in a corner of a first-floor room at two perpendicular desks. Two unknown young females are talking about a telephone being tapped. They seem uncertain about what they are doing. When a number is given by one to the other, she complains that it is a private number (supposedly indicated by starting with 392), as it seems it was supposed to be related to a business telephone, possibly a bank or loan company operating illegally. It is decided that at least one of them will pretend to be a call girl from the service already known by this other person. She sets up a meeting pretending to be from their usual escort service.

---

My dream shifts to a hotel room (fourth floor or higher) in a different type of dream scenario and where I am more present. My wife Zsuzsanna is now with me. Curiously, Tom Welling is here in his Clark Kent persona (from “Smallville”). He also seems to be some sort of amateur investigator. It is presently nighttime. In the distance, viewed through the hotel windows, is a very large building that creates the impression of also being like the model of a city. There is one large belfry that is more like a towering apartment. Tom aka Clark seems to be indicating that one of the criminals under investigation (a corrupt banker) is living there. I seem to know it is where Bruce Wayne lives. I casually say “That is where Bruce Wayne, Batman, lives.” Suddenly, I realize that I should not have said that, as now Clark knows the superhero identity of Bruce Wayne. I walk more to the corner of the room saying “Whoops…pretend I did not say that”.

Clark appears to be puzzled. Apparently, he has never heard of either Bruce Wayne or Batman. I guess it may not matter what I said. I absentmindedly (remembering the comic books) ask him if this is Earth A, B, or C and he replies with “C”.

I realize that I have altered history, because now, I notice that there is a black leather outfit lying on one of the two beds (the one farthest from the door) which seems like a prototype of a Batman costume. It seems that Clark Kent will now become Batman instead of Superman because of me talking about Batman. However, it also soon seems that Clark is partly in that outfit, but he is “disintegrating” in a similar manner as the monsters in “Little Monsters” do when exposed to light. One of the arms is still flopping around but Tom is mostly gone.

Suddenly, the mood of my dream shifts and I attempt to make a comedic exit. I sing the old television “Batman” theme: “DO do DO do DO do DO do, DO do DO do DO do DO do…Batman!”

As I leave the hotel room, I see Zsuzsanna and our children sitting at computers in an open room of which is part of a hall, which seems to be part of my old apartment on King Street. I go into the small hallway bathroom and after a short time I hear (seemingly from out of nowhere) Ian McKellen shouting “That’s the consequence of being a thumb…and ANGULAR!”.

---

The dream state indicators are of course the beds, which do not symbolize anything other than the subliminal memory of having fallen asleep. Dream state indicators are a very common factor in my dreams and have nothing to do with “interpretation”.

The emergent consciousness factor is the feature of the computers in the last scene, where my conscious self identity is beginning to become active in the waking transition.

My dream resolves in the last scene of being a typical bathroom wake-up call. Originally, I had not delved into some of the meaning in this dream so as not to offend people, but the remark shouted at the end is of course a reference to men urinating and potentially being off the mark, although unlike the experiences reported by other people, I have rarely ever used a toilet in a dream as this dream type is to induce RAS mediation to wake and attend to biological needs. (“Penis” is replaced by “thumb” and the reference to “angular” relates to the stream not always being straight. It reminds me of the old joke. “Our aim is to keep this bathroom clean. Your aim will help.” There is even the childhood Batman bathroom joke as related to the theme song just before the final scene.)

The scene with Clark dissolving on the bed is, in addition to being the usual vestibular system symbolism (associations with flight in this case), also associated with “Little Monsters”, which in turn is an association with being in the dream state. It symbolizes the ephemerality of the fictional dream self.

---

(From yesterday.) There's a girl on the grounds of some large estate, talking to a boy. She's been chosen to play some role in some tradition or game or something - it's something of an honor, but she's refusing to have anything to do with it. He's trying to convince her - not with any particular effort, just an aw-c'mon kind of way.

Scene change - elsewhere on that same estate, there's a different girl, wearing a rather old-fashioned maid's uniform (this is a roughly modern setting), and she's standing against a tree. I have the impression she's tied there, but I don't see ropes. This is the role that the other girl had originally been chosen for. There's a group of people who've just found her - searching is part of the game, or tradition, or whatever it is. She's got an oval metal ornament on her forehead, covering her eyes, engraved with some scene. A boy reaches out to remove it - this is also part of the game/tradition/whatever. The 'dream camera' angle changes then, so I can't see the girl's face, but I'm aware that - and this isn't part of the tradition - it will turn out the ornament has a long, thin spike underneath, and the girl is dead. I have a brief image of blood around her eyes, or possibly eye sockets - from the angle I'm standing now, off to one side, I'm not sure which.

A man's just finished examining the crime scene, though he's not anyone official. He's feeling outraged about something else he'd found, some belonging of hers that had been put on display, hung from a tree with ropes. Standing behind him is the owner of the estate, and that's who the outrage is directed towards. Highlander-inspired then: the man doing the examining takes out a sword - it had been concealed under the grey trenchcoat he's wearing - and formally introduces himself to the owner of the estate, who also has a sword, and who simply says "Yeah" - the implication being that his name's already known.

Been a little bit since I recalled anything. Glad to see it back!
I was with both my family and some strangers. The strangers consisted of a woman, two children, and Woody Harrelson (I believe he was in here because of my latest obsession with the show True Detective). We hung out at this warped version of my house for a while, but soon, people started dying! We weren't sure why, but it seemed to be something paranormal. That was our guess anyway.
At one point I pretended to be a ghost, to the amusement of everyone else. In the midst of investigating, my aunt brought her dogs to the house, and I played with both them and the stranger kids.
Suddenly, the truth was starting to reveal itself. The woman I mentioned as one of the strangers ended up dying in Woody's room by unknown causes. When we all gathered in his room later on, Woody revealed that he had cameras throughout the house to record and capture paranormal activity due to his suspicions. Even so, for some reason, we didn't think to check the footage to see how the woman died. Eerily enough, when we looked at Woody's desk, his keys were gone. Everyone insisted that they didn't take them, and we even checked. It must have been the woman.
After all these crazy events, I was left feeling inspired, and felt like saying one thing to Woody and the gang.
"I wish I had a PS4..."
Cue fade to black. Many years pass (instantaneously of course, like a time skip in a movie or book), and the two kids are sitting around a dinner table, a lot older now (teenagers at least).

I'm someone who's investigating a woman, and my partner and I are searching her apartment. I'm going through old chat logs on her computer. As we leave, walking down the stairwell, we talk about something I found in those logs. I'm saying to her something about "the desire to feel someone else can understand your experience, your point of view. The internet can be great for that." I'm thinking that I'm starting to understand this woman we're investigating, to know how she thinks; I can relate to her. I'm also thinking that the internet's never worked out that way for me - but then I think, feeling alone in something is a universal human experience in itself.

Connecting directly to that feeling-alone-in-something thought - we get to the bottom of the stairwell and walk out the door, and outside, we're in the ruins of an apartment building where I used to live. Everything I can see is covered in debris. We're standing in front of what used to be the indoor pool on the first floor - there's no water, there's a layer of debris at the bottom, and there's no wall or ceiling, the pool is the only recognizable part of the building left. This is a memory of where I was when my wife and daughter died. I climb down to the pool ladder, trying to recreate the moment. But I'm shorter now than I was then, the perspective's wrong. Getting the right eye level means putting my feet on a different rung of the ladder than before. It's not quite right.

Looking around, I find something in the debris. It looks like a cartridge for an old video game console; from the pictures and words on it, I get the impression it's not a game itself, but a soundtrack. My partner takes it from me and looks it over and says, yeah, if you don't know what you're doing it'll just be a soundtrack - but this contains a hidden emulator.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Fantasy setting loosely based on ancient China. As a disembodied observer, I'm watching a man teleport into a large tunnel or cave, only to immediately crumble into dust. I'm thinking, whoops. Let's retry that.

Earlier, a woman showed that man a dark green and glittering substance kept in a small, rectangular, light green bottle, and explained that to use it you simply rub it over the palms of your hands and clap them together. Having seen him crumble into dust, I can tell she was tricking him, deliberately leading him to his death, but I'm also aware that this substance really is something of value - this man only asked her about it because he's seen her use it before. There's an old man listening to their conversation, and when she's left that old man catches the younger man's eye and takes the bottle himself, tucking it into his sleeve. The scene skips ahead to a moment when those two men are surrounded and need to escape in a hurry; the old man produces that bottle, rubs the contents over his hands - which causes them to look claw-like - and claps his hands together. Both men are teleported to that tunnel - this time around, the original teleporter lives, and the old man crumbles into dust.

Morning of February 7, 2014. Friday.



In my dream, I am brought in as a murder suspect of an unknown teenage female. I spend most of my time in my dream standing at a counter (walking a short distance from it now and then in the same large room) of a type very similar to the local library’s but inverted (the setting already being a clue that my dream will resolve to “choosing books”); that is, forming an inward angle of over one-hundred-ten degrees (not ninety; that is, not a square angle as the counter’s division relative to the two walls is not perpendicular), spanning across a corner of a large room, though the counter section on the left is of a shorter length. There are two main (unfamiliar) male investigators that go through various role-playing and questioning sessions with me, sometimes seemingly forgetting what they were saying or doing (or planning to do). It seems that nearly a day goes by, and I spend all my time standing or walking and am even clearly aware of the tiredness in my legs later on.

One of the reasons I was brought in as a suspect was because I was “chubby”. Their reasoning is that someone who is chubbier is “naturally” more likely to overtake a weaker or smaller person.

I am eventually vividly aware that they are wasting their time to too great of an extent for it to be a “real” investigation and at one point they also seem aware of this, but I seemingly am meant to have patience as if it is a game. I have no clear thoughts on who the actual criminal might be, although I do sense he is possibly a very chubby older single male. I tend to waver between complaining in a hostile manner to expressing a patient understanding of their methods.

I am asked to write my version of something the older detective says to see if my writing matches a note the killer supposedly wrote and left near the victim in writing style as well as what I write. He tells me that I do not have to write exactly what he says but how I would naturally write my version of what he says, which is quite strange because one of the choices is to write “jellyfish” or not write it - something about writing “this is why all jellyfish should die” or write a similar phrase and leaving out “jellyfish” (there is no clue what the killer actually wrote) which will give them the evidence of whether or not it was me. However, I do not finish this test as the detectives are distracted and thus they go off on a tangent to some other concerns not related to the killing. I am also considering if the crime took place before I was born, but that reasoning does not seem to matter to them even if true.

The younger detective talks about his mistakes and regrets of the past in similar work he had done before, although does not go into detail. I start to suspect that about twenty-five percent of people in jail never committed a crime. A few times I yell at them in frustration but am also laughing at a few points, even feeling a bit giddy as if I cannot believe how incompetent they are, including with their fill-in-the-blanks mentality and overwhelming proclivity to fabricate or be mistaken in environmental or personal cues. Sometimes they seem like buffoons, other times more focused on their work. Sometimes they seem to be testing my reaction on questions that make no sense. I do get very annoyed over time and wonder why I happen to be the only one in the situation. I suppose it is possible that other suspects are being questioned or tested in other rooms, but I sense that this is somehow not the case. If it is not proven to be me, perhaps the investigation will not even continue.

At one point, I see a large cardboard box someone brings in which has a thinner purple blanket and somewhat formal-looking yellow (with white lacy trim) clothes - a shorter dress and blouse, I think. The blanket is sparsely woven of yarn (but commercially produced I assume), in a way that about twenty-five percent of it is open stitching so that you can mostly see through it, somewhat like a much lighter thinner afghan blanket. I am not familiar with the materials at all. They look like they might have been in the ground for a time. I stand there patiently but am not questioned on the materials as they may just be testing my reaction.

Later, they seem to have at least seven or eight old comic books; the same ones owned from when I was about nine or ten years old. Supposedly, I had written my full name inside each book on the first panel of each comic (which I never did in real life), near the top and in neat cursive in blue ink. They are all Harvey comics and all of Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost - with a supposedly “fictional” one (though it was real) of Spooky playing pool and cheating. I guess people interested in collecting comic books and playing pool are also likely murder suspects.

From here, my dream mostly falls into somewhat abstract thinking relating to my puzzlement over the similarity of the different comic book covers as I begin to see additional Hot Stuff covers in addition to the Spooky ones.

---

What is curious is that, thanks to research, I learned something I had not known. I thought I had all issues of Spooky when I was younger - but I had been missing one (likely due to the similarity of a cover of a comic book I already had). Coincidentally, the only one I was missing had a similar gag as the “Devil Kids” one I did have - that is, the main character going through a pool table - Spooky going through in a ghostly way and Hot Stuff burning his way through. Even more intriguing and somewhat amusing - I was seemingly taught in a subtle way by my dream - about a facet of “normal” (or consensus-based) human consciousness. There is apparently another “version” of the “same” Hot Stuff cover in real life that is missing the point entirely (although he is using his trident as a pool cue, which is supposed to be the gag in this case though also seems a missed variation on the other one where he uses a normal pool cue which would likely burn up) and he is at the pool table without any significant sight gag other than the trident as the “pool stick” (with no burning in to cheat). In my opinion, the ideal cover would have been burning through the table while using his trident as the “pool stick”.

I have seen this fairly often in my life; that is, people writing, drawing, or copying the aspects of something in this way and missing the main point (although I do understand that metaphors and word plays and even certain types of sight gags or particular intent of images do not translate into other languages or even for certain types of people; for example - there is a well-known old Australian poster that conveys something different than intended - see bottom image in this post).

My dream was partly influenced by a track I was working on about a year ago where an African chant seems to reflect a set of English phrases: “Johnny not wait, ooh ooh, why wait, he wanna play pool” and including the line “patience is a virtue”. Sometimes I am amazed at how meaningful and intricate dreams are and literally revelatory (not symbolic) once you examine them more closely. I also noticed that the in-dream blanket was the same purple as the background color in the Spooky cover and the title in yellow as with the in-dream clothes.

Wednesday:

Fragments involving a man with a hook for a hand, giving him a hand and taking his hook myself; a witch who was trying to force the hook-man to sleep so that she could somehow influence him in a dream; a prince and his army who arrived on this scene, with no knowledge of anything going on between the witch and the hook-man; and a man with some form of mental connection to the witch, his sister.

A man visiting his wife's family with her, the first time since they were married. The father-in-law's distant and judgmental. He's saying, "You'll have to understand, we only drink old French wines here - Bordeaux," that being where the mother-in-law's from. Inside, the mother-in-law is a tiny woman with long, thick grey hair, very warm and expressive. She asks her son-in-law how his meditation practice is going, and asks if he's getting by okay in New York - which he loves, but she doesn't understand how anyone could enjoy living in cities. She says, "You've been in that city for about a hundred years, but you seem to have left in a good mood." He finds her energy overwhelming.

In a small restaurant, the baker's brought out samples of new doughnuts for everyone to try, I had two, one with a peach filling, the other blueberry, and I was surprised by the taste of the 'blueberry' - it reminds me of pixie stix and sweet tarts and similar childhood candies, not in the sense of being sugary, it's more the type of flavoring those candies use. I comment on it, and someone at the next table asks what this lump in theirs is. I look and point out to them that it's a blueberry. They've never seen a blueberry before?

While walking across a field, I'm explaining to someone what juice is. I wind up having to describe it as crushing something until its external protection breaks down and its liquid insides run out, and I'm trying to figure out how to make it very, very clear to the creature I'm talking to that this is something that should be done only to plants.

As Rumpelstiltskin, I'm in a dream world, talking to an image of Regina that is breaking down and melting after being attacked by someone else, and I'm saying, "This isn't you." Allowing herself to show weakness, I mean. I say it again, then reconsider - it's possible this is one side of her, or even how I think of her. There had been a young girl with her, and now I take the girl by the hand and lead her away, ignoring the image of Regina that's still falling apart.

Someone's telling me they need me to act as a detective. I cut them off, saying, "What, I'm supposed to magically figure out where the dying guy came from?" But I do find some form of trail, scratches on the floor, leading to what seemed like a wall but which must have some kind of opening.

Vampires. I brought two humans to see a friend of mine, I wasn't intending to kill them, and I'm a little annoyed at my friend, but I'm not making any effort to stop him either. He's saying to the humans that he hasn't decided yet whether to kill them or turn them. His fangs dig into his own lip, and he spits blood on the human he's got pinned down, which has a sort of acidic effect. I, the dreamer rather than the character, observe that it's much like the way flies break down their food.

I've been working on a system of cables to allow transportation around an island. It's something two guys had been using on a very small scale on their own property, and I've been working with them to expand it to cover the entire island. I'm mostly doing this to help out a woman I'm in love with who lives in a very remote area, but it's going to benefit everyone on the island. Now I'm looking at the initial stage that's about ready for a test run, and feeling proud, when a troop of soldiers with wings descends out of the sky. Their leader - who I've met before, in a friendlier setting - arrests me on suspicion of killing the king, among others. This is a setup - I know who the actual killer is, and I came to this island in the first place to hunt that person. I'm blaming myself for getting distracted with this side project; if I'd focused solely on my mission, maybe he wouldn't have had time to frame me.

Thursday:

There's a room on a spaceship that's being converted into a sort of swamp. This alien species needed this certain type of room for some cultural reason to do with the sharing of emotions, and so we set it up for him. One of the other aliens, from a different species, says that if humans turn out to be understanding and reasonable, s/he's going to be very disappointed. I say nah, don't worry, no matter how many understanding and reasonable humans you meet, you can always count on a few of us to mess things up, every time.

A group of vampire hunters. A man leading things over the phone; someone who is either a doctor, a former doctor, or simply someone who steals meds from hospitals, refusing to be hurried by the hunters around him; a recording of a man interacting with someone who doesn't show up on video, with viewers arguing that it's definitely faked.

A woman's talking to some kind of spirit in a mirror, something that's teaching her magic. Watching this, it strikes me that the stories about vampires and mirrors come from the same place as this creature.

Based on AHS, 3 witches (including the supreme and her daughter), the daughter's blind, the other two are each missing one eye. Someone makes a blind-leading-the-blind joke. I'm thinking about the Graeae passing an eye between them.

Partners looking for a serial killer had three suspects in mind, but tracking them down has ruled each of them out. One of detectives is approached by a woman who believes her husband, Darryl, may be the killer. The detective ignores her, having heard many claims like this; but ignoring this one is a mistake, the woman's claim is true.

Four teenage girls have barricaded themselves in a room, two of them trying to protect the other two. There's some form of cult that's taken root in the town, there's an image of a girl in a bathtub covered in blood related to this; and the cult's summoning these two girls now, but they need the girls to come to them, they can't enter the room themselves. A girl from the cult appears outside the door as a sort of delegate, to talk.

Dorian Gray is talking to someone about the house he wants to leave, and the way memories seem have ingrained themselves in the very walls: the scent of a decomposing body even though he's long since disposed of it, the sound of music on the stairs although the musician's gone.

I'm walking home after a storm, a few trees and power lines have been knocked down. But there are also a lot of trees that look as if they were cut down, and I'm thinking it's as if the town tried to get into the woods to clean up something after the storm, and they simply cut down anything in their way.

I have to walk over a downed power line to get to my property, I stop at the mailbox, and as I pick up the newspaper I/Quincey think about Mina and how calm and still she's been, and I think - in words, as if this were something I was writing out - "that's when you really have to stay with people. But I couldn't."

Mina's sitting on the sofa, perfectly straight and upright and with her hands folded in her lap, and when I drop the newspaper beside her she doesn't move, only smiles a little. I'm reluctant to disturb her further but there's something I have to show her, something I've learned about the way we think, her and I and anyone else caught in this transition; it will upset her, but all information we can gain from our condition is something that can be used as a weapon. I fetch a white sheet and silver hand mirror and I shove them at her, apologizing as I do so; I hold the sheet up behind her and ask her to take up the mirror. I/the dreamer as disembodied observer wonder what I/Quincey am planning to show her with those - surely not just our lack of reflection, that can't be new information. No, I/Quincey am thinking something about pattern or texture.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A man who's risen to political or religious power - either way, a man who's gained sway over a small community, virtually overnight. His collaborator is disgusted with him.

A girl yells after Freddy Krueger as he's forced by something else to retreat into the woods, "You're a real (some insult)!"

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I wake up sitting in a chair in a hospital waiting room, I note the time as "sometime between 2300 and 0800." I had a friend do an autopsy on a case I'm working, off the record. The victim had a demon eye transplant in his forehead, and sometimes those things go bad. But my friend at the hospital found no more than the usual amount of decay around the eye. I'm looking out the window at the billboards you can see around the city, there's one with an image of a guy with a demon eye, another one directly across from the hospital with a picture of a woman on it, and I'm wondering exactly how large these things are in terms of a percentage of your field of vision; most of the time I hardly consciously notice them, but how much of an impact are they really having on people? I'm remembering a line from a book, about a woman who'd just arrived in the modern age and was pleased by the sense of desire everywhere. (Accurately remembered line, the book was Clive Barker's Weaveworld.)

The zombie boy from the American Horror Story series is sitting on the floor, focusing on the burnt, hollowed-out eye sockets of his rapist's body. He fits the head back into place, then looks up at the witch girl who brought him back to life, who looks sickened, and he says, cheerfully, "Doctor!", like he's calling her to go to work and pull off another resurrection.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A young woman sitting with a book is talking to another woman sitting in a curtained bed, saying "Gonna wave you in. Stop me if (something)." The one in bed acknowledges this, and the one with the book passes her hand over the other woman's face, then starts reading a series of words from the book that sound random to me - "If, old, some..." As she speaks, the one in bed gets purple-tinted flashes of another person/place, too brief to make out anything but getting longer and more stable with every word spoken from the book.

I'm standing at a crossroads of a low-income neighborhood out on the edge of the city, reading a sign that says Cheese Road (or Lane or Street or something), and pleased to have found the place from that vision in the last scene. A car drives up to the stop sign very slowly, I find it suspicious, but it drives off in the other direction.

I'm inside a mental simulation of a memory from my past, allowing two people to go through the contents of my memory, a man and a woman. I'm lying down on the bed while the woman goes into the next room to look around.

Will Graham standing in a room, alone, but with mental images of many people moving around, he's piecing together what happened here in the past. He's watching the phantom images move, but he's mostly thinking about Hannibal and the increasing inevitability of consulting him on this case. This whole image is replaced by written words in white: "The Kingdom".

I'm a man who's been doing research into my own unknown ancestry, and turned up some info that my father was a cult leader. And while my mother's still a mystery, I'm complaining to someone that at this rate she'll probably turn out to be a goat. It's a reference to an image of goat-headed Baphomet that was connected to the cult.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm watching three women try to recreate images from old photos of other people, dressing up like them and trying to copy their poses exactly, in order to figure out something that happened in the past, something about a girl with some sense of guilt towards another woman. Copying the photos requires one of the women to adopt some really uncomfortable looking poses, she's dressed up in a wedding gown and the angle she's holding her neck at looks like it should be fatal.

There's this guy who killed someone, and I told him over the phone 'I'm not going to come for you' unless he does something about the body himself. When I get there, I look out the back window into his yard, and see a few of those big black trash bags full of fallen leaves, and I note that there are a couple more bags now than were there when I left. I note that he split it up into several bags instead of just one.

I'm in the yard of some huge mansion with a few white tables and chairs set up for a party, abandoned now; I'm out at the very edge of the yard, near a river, standing over someone who's been shot, and I'm saying to Hannibal, "One person, you could have saved one person!" He says something disagreeing with me. I'm thinking about Abigail.

I'm standing in my IRL shower, and there's a spider in here, well out of the way of the water; but I accidentally drip some on it and it slips down into the tub, gets caught in the water and washed down the drain before I can catch it. I feel guilt about that. I didn't want to drown it. But then an insect crawls up out of the drain - a huge winged ant, and then another one - and I feel sure the spider will be able to make it back up too.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm meeting some people in a dream. A woman and I have just arrived on a beach, bright sunny day, clear blue-green water, and we've got these dark fragments of void-stuff hanging around us from our arrival, dissipating like smoke. She's telling me about the guy she's going to introduce me to, who's supposed to guide me through something specific. He appears in a puff of darkness like we did, but standing on the water a little bit away, dark-haired guy wearing a suit, and he jogs across the water to meet us on the sand. He apologizes for taking so long to get here, and I'm thinking to myself that it only took him so long because he's accepting limitations that are unnecessary in a dream, not really a promising start. I expect him to say something else but he doesn't, they've both gone silent and stopped moving, and I realize that we've lost the connection and I'm waking up.

Hypnagogia: A man's voice laughing, deeply unpleasant.

A man and a woman in what looks like an interrogation room, although he is technically free to go at any time, and the organization this woman belongs to isn't exactly law enforcement. There's a woman, not human, something else, something dangerous, who's coming for this man - she's not a danger to him, but she is to everyone else - and the people here need to know his story before she gets there. He says to the human woman in the room with him, "And the bounty? P.Big's?" P.Big being the name of the larger of the two bounties he'd recently turned in - these people had confiscated his reward money, along with the rest of his belongings. That's the main reason he's still here. She says, "You can have it back. In exchange for the war story."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A man waiting for a tow truck finally hears a vehicle pull up outside, goes to the window to look. There's a woman in a firefighter's uniform entering the house through the back door, without him noticing, and she watches as the man is killed by a wire around his throat. The two men who killed him pick up his body, standing right next to her but not looking at her or acknowledging her in any way.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a boy with an older woman - possibly his grandmother, though relatively young for it, someone who doesn't live with him but who stopped by today - he's crouching in a corner with a weapon, listening to what he believes is someone with a gun in his home. He's eager to face them. Footsteps approach the door, the door opens - it's the gardener/maid, and she's carrying a leaf blower, not a rifle. She makes the usual small talk and walks on. His grandmother says to him that she is not going to ask what he was thinking, she is not going to dignify this by discussing it, but she wants him to think about what just happened.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Last dream was just fragments, but had similar themes from the earlier dreams: something about a boy, an older woman who knows better than him, and a war.

A fragment of dialogue: "And you will be trusted with it. Again."

(Woke up at 7:50 am, after getting to bed at 4:30 am. Back to sleep.)

I'm reading a multi-volume autobiography. This particular chapter is describing a vision the author had at a young age, and what he thought about that - not about the content of the vision, but the act of having one.

A man is being held captive by a coyote god, or rather a coyote spirit which has temporarily become a god, taking on a human but coyote-headed physical form. They're surrounded by baby spiders acting as helpful servants. This man had been searching for his wife, refusing to believe the reports of her death, and his search led him here.

As Haruka/Onikui, I'm chained in a cell, with Minamoto Raikou standing over me with the keys.

(Woke at 9:04. Back to sleep.)

"They had more passion, ordinary things; and it didn't do to tempt the passions of ordinary things in passing." The thoughts of a woman who had a man over to eat together with her mother and her daughter, flirting and enjoying it, but with this thought in her head.

(Woke at 10:28. Back to sleep - but I woke up roughly every half hour after that, and I kept running into that problem where, half-awake, I think about writing a dream down and mistake that thought for having actually done it, and so forget the dream. Nonetheless I wound up with two more pages of notes, mostly too dull to bother writing out in detail.)

Very dull dreams from the rest of the night included discussions of my control issues, a man taking the shape of a three-eyed bat with a green-and-gold mask, watching the sunset, farm work, bear hunting, anatomy studies, a vampire movie starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, the death of Mickey Mouse while he was nobly saving Donald Duck, my IRL civilian sister as a military police officer in training, a werewolf-hunting father and daughter giving a werewolf shelter in their home, and a sitcom about hobbits with fangs.

A classic black and white movie called Death in the Rain, with Ingrid Bergman, and a reference to Rappaccini's Daughter.

Labyrinth's Sarah falls into an oubliette, but it's a fairly large and well-lit spherical room built of pale brown stones, a few fallen leaves drifting around, and with a pale gold stylized metal sculpture in the form of a double helix rising in the center. She's just walked all the way around the circular room with one hand on the wall searching for openings, when Hoggle appears and she asks where he came from.

Playing the role of a man who lives in a major city. Two detectives have just left my home after questioning my family and everyone else on the estate, and stressed out, I go to the park for a run. The tree branches are all bare.

Mon, Aug 19 5:00 am

It's dreams like this that will make you want to throw your alarm clock against the wall. You'll see why when I get to the end of it. Stupid phone


I'm an FBI agent, working to try and find out who recently murdered another agent in the unit that I'm working with. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember that it ended up being some crazy conspiracy driven thing. We were investigating this murder--and I'm not the head of the unit, I'm just one of the detectives working the case. The special agent in charge was actually, for all intents and purposes, Olivia Dunnam (sp?) from Fringe. Anyway, we are investigating this murder, and end up discovering the clue in the murderers business suit. It turns out to be someone who was helping fund out investigation, and his suit, when put together the right way, formed a symbol that represented a very secret organization hundreds of years old (think Mason's or the Illuminati, only it wasn't them, it was a completely different group, veiled in similar secrecy). With everyone on the alert as to the killer, we get ready to nail the guy. The head of our unit (the woman that looks like Olivia from Fringe) calls up the head of our task-force to find the guy (he is a guy that looks and sounds like Agent Broils from Fringe--except again, it's not ACTUALLY him).

Now my dream jumps. For some strange reason, I'm not with the other FBI agents about to go on the raid to arrest the killer. I'm with another FBI agent instead, sitting outside in the rain near an overpass. He and I are talking, and he casually brings up the case that I was working on, and asked how it was going. I tell him everything, about how we found out who killed the other FBI agent, and how it was that really rich guy acting like he was helping us all this time. Right after I tell him this, he excuses himself to make a call, and heads under the overpass. Feeling this rather suspect, I follow the guy and overhear his side of the phone conversation. It goes something like this:

Agent: Yeah, they have no idea you were behind the murder of (can't remember the name, but I do remember it was some famous person who's death in my dream had been publicized). Buncha dumbasses. Well, can't really say that, they're not stupid. They found YOU out, after all.

*LISTENS TO PERSON ON PHONE*

Agent: Yeah, they found you're suit, the symbol. They're coming to arrest you now. Nah, he has no idea (presumably he's talking about me here, I have no idea about something but what I still don't know).

That's all of the conversation I can remember, unfortunately. I do remember that it somehow eluded to some grand conspiracy he was a part of that was responsible for the death of that famous person he named earlier, and how they (the conspirators), were all part of some ancient underground group. I wait for the agent as he comes out of under the overpass.

As soon as he does, I step out of the shadows, and tell him that I heard his entire conversation. He startles, and turns around, glaring at me. Then, almost simultaneously, we pull our guns at the same time, pointing them at eachother. This scene was very cinematic, just like a film, with rain pouring down, dripping down our faces, it was soooo cool! And then, in my left hand I hold up a voice recorder. I tell him that I recorded his conversation, and play it back for him. I then try to bluff him, telling him it won't do any good to shoot me now, because I've already sent it in to the head of our task-force, via my cellphone.

Just as one of us is about to make our move, my stupid alarm goes off!!!!! So, now I won't ever know how that dream was going to end, darnit! One of us was about to eat a bullet though; I'd like to know if it was going to be me or him

I'm playing the role of a blonde woman with some kind of investigative background, now working with some kind of crime boss. People keep describing this as "a deal with the devil," me as "the devil's instrument," and so on, though I think of him as basically a decent guy. I meet up with him in a storeroom full of stolen goods waiting to be sold - small scale, everyday objects - and he tells me he doesn't mind if folks think of him as the Devil, it works out to his advantage, because after all, this way, "I am not real." I'm aware there's a double meaning there, it's a metaphor meaning I'm the person who deals with the world directly while he gets to stay in the background, like a ghost, never to be caught; but it's also a reminder that none of this scene is real. Since it's not real, I decide to stop wasting my time here and wake up.

Earlier fragments: following a truck transporting exotic animals; working on a farm picking berries, and getting annoyed at a coworker's spiel on northerner-vs-southerner work ethics; googling for references to Janette DuCharme, under that alias specifically; browsing a Halloween forum.