Recent DJ Posts

Ritual: WTB around 2am. Drank a lot of wine last night, so woke up many times to rehydrate. Just before dawn I felt the slightly anxious insomnia that often helps me get lucid, so I decided to confirm my intention with a little piracetam. For years I've been trying to come up with a good dream mantra/affirmation but never found one that stuck. Since I got lucid in a recent dream from seing the word "awaken" I decided to start with that. I wanted it to be longer and have good rhythm, so I tried "Awaken into (seeing) dream," where the word in parenthesis could be varied with any other two-syllable verb with the emphasis on the first syllable: seeing, hearing, feeling, being, dreaming, etc. I liked the versatility and hoped the variations would help keep my mind active. It seems this mantra was actually successful because it was still going through my mind well after the dream had started, although, curiously, the words had changed (see below).

WILD, "No Snow for Sledding": The transition was very smooth, and I think the mantra actually served as a good anchor this time. At one point I was inspired to see if I could move my dream limbs, and felt that familiar ambiguity about whether it was dream movement or real movement. I was 65% sure it was dream, so I kept at it until I gently 'flumpfed' in a loose heap right off the bottom of the bed, and then I knew for certain. This dream version of my bedroom was remarkably accurate to WL.

I was crawling at first, and from that low perspective had a good view of my two cats. They looked a little different—shorter hair I think—but I could still tell them apart. Dream logic made me wonder if I could somehow better communicate with my anxious cat in a dream. I crawled over to her and put my hands on her head, reaching toward her with gentle thoughts and telling her that she didn't need to be so anxious. It didn't work: she bit my hand! After that she went into the hallway where I was surprised to see our older cat chase her, an inversion of their usual relationship. I moved toward them and noticed a third animal, a remarkably lifelike grey squirrel—even more vividly rendered than the two cats. [Source: I had recently remarked to my husband how odd it was that I had never seen any squirrels near our house here, but he said that he had. Then just two days ago I glimpsed a grey squirrel outside.]

I thought I had better remove the squirrel from the house, so I picked it up by the scruff of the neck—it was so realistic I thought I had better handle it carefully lest I get bitten again. I peered down to it, wondering if it might have anything to say (this being a dream and all), but no, it just twitched its nose like a regular squirrel. So I opened the window on my side of the bed, the place where in WL I toss out the miscellaneous bugs that stray into the house, and tossed it out.

Around this point I noticed that my mantra was still going through my head, though slightly changed from what it had been as I fell asleep. It had taken the form: "Awaken, dreamer, I am dream." It occurred to me that once I was already lucid, the word "awaken" was no longer useful, and in fact might be detrimental. I thought about how the meaning of the word depended on its context: from non-lucid sleep one can "awaken" into lucidity, but from a state of lucidity, to "awaken" is to wake up. With the precarious thought of waking I felt the dream begin to destabilized, and hastily altered the mantra to: "Dream on, dreamer, I am dream." I managed to restabilize, and with the natural musicality of dream found myself adding a bit of melody to the words.

After this my thoughts turned to more practical ends. Wasn't there a task I wanted to do? Right, the sled ride. I thought over the details. I would need to sled down from the top of a snowy mountain and then through a crack in the earth into... who knows? Finding out would be the fun part. It was snowy outside, like it is in WL, so I thought that would make a good start. I just needed to go outside and find a sled and a mountain.

I opened the window again to fly out, but now there was a pane of what felt like transparent plastic covering the opening. I was annoyed because even in WL this is one of the few windows in the house that has no screen, so there should not be anything barring my passing. I decided to shatter the barrier with my mind, concentrated, and... nothing happened. Disappointed that I could not resolve this more stylishly, I manually peeled aside the flexible plastic panel and slipped out onto the lower roof. (This part was not quite accurate to WL: although there is a sloping side of another roof to the left, there is no level area just below the window where one could stand.)

I willed myself to fly, but nothing happened initially. I kept focusing until I began to float up and across the yard. There were a lot of random pavilions scattered below, and I reminded myself to be observant so I would remember the details later. I flew over to the roof of a small outbuilding—the environment no longer bore any resemblance to WL—where I found two sleds. One was child-sized, the other larger, and I noticed approvingly that they were the old fashioned kind on runners, much easier to control than round saucer sleds.

I picked up the larger sled and looked it over. The details were wonderfully vivid: it had a painted metal superstructure consisting of thin round bars painted white, and flat wide bars painted green. These encircled a small rectangular seat of heavily aged and distressed wood. I noticed an odd detail in the very center of the sled, a transparent glass sphere about four inches in diameter, half full of water. I peered closer, wondering if it was some sort of gyroscope, and saw words printed on the sphere: "FAST WATER." I decided that this was a device for boosting speed, and that I would name my new sled "Fastwater." I felt very pleased with it.

Sled in hand, next I needed a mountain. I resumed floating through the air and scanning for suitable topography. I soon found myself approaching a steep hillock, but since it was at most a couple dozen feet high, I didn't think it qualified as a "mountain." After that was a second, taller hillock, but I rejected that one too on the same grounds. Then in the distance I saw a much taller hill with a massive castle on top of it. I had the impression that it was a German castle called "Schwanzstein," though even in the dream I recalled the meaning of schwanz (which, in common with many Americans, I learned long ago from the Mel Brooks film Space Balls). That seemed like a peculiar yet somehow familiar name for a castle, and I wondered why it came to mind. [Source: German castles have come up in conversation twice in the last few days, both the one at Wernigerode and another whose name I couldn't remember. I just asked my husband and he reminded me it was "Neuschwanstein." So there you have it. Sorry Freudians, you can go back home now.]

I figured that the type of hill on which one was likely to find a German castle could qualify as a small mountain, and decided that this would be a good spot to sled down from. I floated closer, noting a number of stiff and oddly sepia-hued guards standing around the courtyards, as though peopling an old postcard. I noticed a perfect straight chute for sledding that ran down from the top of the mountain, so that's where I landed. Everything was in place... except... there was no snow anymore. Could I just sled down anyway, I wondered? No, I distinctly recalled that the task specified a snowy mountain. I peered around, hoping I could at least spot a few patches of snow and call it even. But the grass was as brown as the guards—there was a hint of sepia about the whole place, like a movie scene shot through a filter—and no snow was visible anywhere.

I sat down with my sled, willing it to snow. I concentrated my expectations, imagining how the first tiny flakes would move erratically through the air. Once again the distinction between imagination and experience—which seems so improbable in the dream state—was reconfirmed, because even though I could clearly see the type of snow I envisioned in my mind's eye, the dream air remained stubbornly free of flakes. This TOTM has a lot of moving parts, I thought. It's as hard as a TOTY! A moment later I woke up and was amused to recognize my error; in waking life I would not have misremembered the category of the task, since the TOTYs are linked by a common theme.

I was lying on the floor in a foyer outside a kind of auditorium space, updating my dream notebook. Inside the auditorium I could hear the sounds of an epic battle taking place between a group of human defenders and a massive demon overlord and his infernal minions. The demon overlord kept shouting ominous things in his deep booming voice, which was a mildly annoying distraction as I tried to write.

Finally I finished my entry and decided to go inside and intervene. I wondered if I should have helped the people earlier in their fight, but told myself that if I solved all their problems for them, they would never learn how to do things for themselves. That made me think of Aslan, from the Narnia series, who was always a bit of a dick that way: let the kids attempt to do something, wait until they inevitably failed, and then swoop in as a deus ex machina to save the day. Today I was going to be that dick.

I went into the auditorium and conjured a metal sphere in the air above my hand, then sent it toward the huge demon. It began circling his body, and as it did so, metal parts began extending from the sphere. Soon it had transformed into a metal suit that completely encased the demon. The headpiece had a transparent pane, so we could see the spray of red when the suit dissolved the demon's body. The suit then retracted into a floating metallic sphere again, leaving nothing but a red mist in the air where the demon had been. The sphere now targeted the smaller demonic underlings, killing them with high-speed impact. Then it found its way up past the ceiling of the auditorium, which was another transparent pane, and overhead we could see the sphere shooting in all directions, crashing into the flying vehicles that belonged to the demon city that towered overhead. Our victory would be thorough.

I started chatting with some people around me, expressing condolences for their comrades who had fallen in the battle earlier. "Where were you?" someone asked, and without thinking I admitted, "In the next room." Then I worried that they might be upset that I had taken so long before coming to help, when they realized I had been right there and could have come at any time. I didn't think it would improve matters if I tried explaining that I had delayed my arrival in order to update my dream journal.

Ritual: WTB 11:30pm, WBTB 5–5:45am. Took supplements (l-theanine, alpha-gpc, piracetam, bacopa), did about half an hour of relaxation/breathing/counting on my back. Toward the end had brief series of vivid hypnagogic images (close up of eagle's head, view of a forest) then snapped back to full wakefulness. Not worried, this always happens. Turned on my left side to fall asleep. Woke with dream at 6:30am, so I had probably been asleep for about fifteen minutes.

DILD, "Time Stop": I've just finished a multi-course meal at a nice restaurant and I'm standing a the bar afterward, where the proprietor is offering me a special drink. While she prepares it, I notice that I can barely stand, my legs are crumpling under me, and I stagger as I try to regain my balance, hoping no one will notice. I kneel at the bar, which is low enough to accommodate this, to disguise my inability to stand. This is so embarrassing... am I drunk? I think back and don't understand how that could be, since I've only had ordinary wine pairings with my meal. Then I realize the truth: ohhhh... that incredible heaviness in my legs, that's just because I'm falling asleep!

I'm relieved to understand what is going on, and also impressed that I can think so clearly about the fact that my real body is falling asleep in bed without disrupting the dream. I decide to go on with the narrative that is playing out because I really want to try this drink. The bartender sets an unusual glass in front of me. It is shaped like a particular wooden table made by Isamu Noguchi circa 1941, but with a semi-circular indentation on top for the drink. It is made of hollow light blue glass and the interior is full of crushed ice, to keep the drink cool. The whole thing is very small, like a sake cup, and the indentation looks like it holds less than an ounce of liquid.



I try the drink, which is a clear liquid, pleasantly bright and floral in taste, in flavor a bit like St. Germain but lighter-bodied and not so cloyingly sweet. I complement the bartender and ask what it is made of. "Catfish liqueur," she replies. I'm impressed! I wouldn't have guessed, as the taste was not the least bit fishy. Another girl asks how the drink is made, and narrates as the bartender shows her: "So you mix it with that blue stuff, then top with..." I look at the bottle she's indicating. It is a gallon-sized jug made of translucent plastic containing a clear liquid. It reminds me of those extra-large bottles of Heinz white vinegar, but the shape of the bottle is more like that typically used for laundry detergent. There is a graphic of naturalistic forest trees on the front of the bottle which makes it resemble the cover of a nature magazine. The brand name clearly reads: "Gesuckt." From the name I assume it is a foreign import, probably German, and wonder if I can buy it at any of my usual grocery stores.

My earlier thought about "fishiness" has now taken the form of a chunk of sardine or mackerel that I discover lodged between my gum and upper lip. I reason that it must have come from a dish I ate during the meal earlier. I prod it out with my tongue and finish chewing it. Meanwhile I'm walking away from the bar toward the restaurant area. There are a lot of people in the room, which reminds me—hey! I could try the TOTM again, see if I can do it properly this time.

"Freeze!" I say loudly, but people keep going about their business. I remember the difficulty I had with this last time, and it also reminds me that I'm supposed to be stopping time, so I switch wording. "Time stop!" I command. I say it a few times, still not getting much result, so I decide an explanation is needed, addressing the room in a loud voice so that everyone can hear. "I said 'time stop!' That means everybody stops moving. Time stop! Time stop, everybody!"

I look around and find that everyone has frozen in place. Okay, this is better, I seem to have gotten the point across. Now I'm supposed to put someone in an embarassing position. I didn't plan ahead for this, so I'm going to have to come up with an idea on the fly. My gaze falls on a stout old lady in the middle of the room. I walk over and unbutton her light blue jacket and white blouse. Inside, she's wearing a pink bra, and I'm relieved to see that it has a front closure, so I unhook it and reveal her breasts. I hope I'm not being too mean, but remind myself that it's just a dream so there will be no lasting harm.

Now I have to get everyone moving again. What's the opposite of "time stop"? I try some variants: "Uhhh... go. Start. Start moving." This works, but meanwhile I had taken my eyes off the old lady to check whether everyone else was back in motion, and when I look at her again, her clothes are already back in order and no one is reacting as if they had seen anything unusual. I chide myself for not paying closer attention. I'd better try again.

"Time stop! Time stop!" This time the DCs react much more promptly, like they're getting the hang of it. Okay, what should I do this time? I look around for ideas. Among a group of people in one corner are two meathead-looking guys. I go over and start posing them really close together, much closer than a couple of straight men would normally be comfortable with. As I move and angle their bodies, I notice that it doesn't feel so much like time has stopped as that they are just playing along while I reposition them, and there's some difficulty, maybe even slight resistance, as I lean their faces together as though they were about to kiss. Finally I get it just how I want, so that their lips are almost touching. Then I step back a few paces so that when I restart time, I'll have a clear view of both their reactions and the people around them.

This time I restart the scene with more confidence, like I'm getting the hang of this too. "Okay, renew!" I command, punctuating the signal by clapping the first two fingers of my right hand into the palm of my left. It feels like being a movie director.

I watch closely as people start moving again. I was hoping the two guys would either react with comic embarrassment or, even better, be overcome by a latent attraction and really start kissing. Instead, they simply draw away from one another without any expression or commentary, and no one around them takes any visible notice. I'm disappointed with the blasé behavior of all these DCs, but I have to admit it makes sense: they're projections of my own mind, after all, and I'm fairly blasé myself most of the time.

Observing a dog walking through the room, I momentarily wonder if I should try again, but the lackluster reactions of the DCs has sapped my motivation, and I feel that I have adequately performed the TOTM. I wonder if I should wake up and write... but the dream seems stable, and I'm reluctant to end it earlier than I have to. However, I'm aware how easy it is to start forgetting the details if I don't record them promptly, so I do the next best thing and start verbally recounting my memories of the scene, to help fix them in mind for later. As I'm doing this I end up waking anyway.

Interlude: From 6:30 to 7:15am I record my notes and then return to bed, going to sleep with no further techniques. I wake up at 8:30am from another DILD.

DILD, "Sphere": The plot has been going on for a while but I don't remember much detail from before I become lucid. I'm sitting on the toilet in the bathroom of a house that belongs to a male friend I've been hanging out with for most of the dream [!WL]. I feel guilty when I notice that I've almost used up all his toilet paper. I tell myself that I should really stop giving into the urge to use the bathroom when I'm dreaming. This isn't waking life, where it actually makes sense to go if you feel like you have to. In a dream it's completely pointless, a waste of time, and kind of gross. If I'm doing this, it's because I'm too caught up in the idea of a physical body. I'm reminded of something Sageous wrote in the forum, how he doesn't really have a body in dreams anymore. I should work on getting less attached to mine.



I get up and go over to the bathroom sink, studying my reflection in the mirror. It's actually a close resemblance, as far as I can tell through the mask that covers most of my features. The mask is reminiscent of the one worn by Michio Ito in his 1915 "Fox Dance," though mine lacks the long snout and doesn't cover my mouth. Also my eyes are clearly visible through the sockets. The fact that I am wearing a mask does not strike me as odd, and instead I ponder what to do about my body. I don't think I can eliminate the idea of it all at once, so it might be best to proceed in stages. What's the most radical distortion I can think of? I know! I'll become a sphere.

I keep watching my reflection as my face starts swelling and widening. It looks disturbing at first, like obesity or an illness, and I have to focus on making my whole body expand, not just my face. Not only can I witness this happening in the mirror, I can actually feel it. As I become rounder and rounder, I remind myself that there is no reason a sphere should only see out of two frontally positioned eyes. I should try to expand my concept of vision to include the area behind me. This only partly works: I'm now getting visual feed from what seems like the opposite side of my sphere, and can perceive the rim of the tub and a bit of the floor and shower curtain, all very close up. However in the process I lose my frontal vision, and as I try to experience both visual fields at once I become disoriented and start rotating in place, which makes sense given that I'm a sphere with nothing to stand on anymore. The disorientation gets so bad that I'm afraid it might disrupt the dream, so I let my body snap back to its familiar structure, satisfied that I had a reasonable success for my first try.

I look back in the mirror to check my appearance again. My reflection looks like it did before, and I'm still convinced that it is just like waking life—although in retrospect I realize that my dream-self had a brunette bob rather than the shoulder-length brown hair of WL. I'm still wearing the mask and want to look at the face underneath, so I take it off. There are more layers of mask under the first, and I peel them off one by one, until I'm finally just wearing glasses, and take those off too. Finally my face is uncovered, and I am satisfied that it is a good likeness. I notice an unusual vividness to my eyes, which are sparkling and happy, and I am pleased with my appearance.

Stepping outside, I realize that I'm still carrying my glasses. Should I just throw them away? I feel a natural reluctance, but remind myself that it's a dream, it doesn't matter. Then I reason that I might want to use them later: this could be a good trick to improve focus if the dream gets hazy. Sure, I could always manifest a fresh pair, but that will be easier if I condition my expectations by saving these now. So I slip the glasses into my jacket pocket.

What should I do now? I'm in a great mood and have no particular task in mind, so I decide to explore the dream world. Perched alone on a grassy hillside I see a strange building, very gaudy, with red roofs under a gold dome: it looks like a cross between an old McDonald's and a sultan's palace. I realize it is a restaurant of some kind and head over there.

I'm still feeling unusually happy and excited as I walk in, so I pump my fist and go "Woo!" My enthusiasm has been making the people around me more friendly, I notice, and remind myself that I should try to be more like this in WL. The restaurant is small inside, like a cafe, with a several tables and a counter where I go up to order. Despite the counter it is not a fast food restaurant: the menu consists of about six innovative dishes printed on a small square of white paper.

"What's the tastiest thing on the menu?" I ask, then realize I have a craving for spicy food and ask, "I mean the tastiest spicy dish."

"The D-4," replies the server. I check the menu and the description lists this as a big steak dish, which sounds too heavy and will take forever to prepare, so I look at the appetizers instead. There are only three listed, but two of them sound like they consist of just three pieces of fish, served nigiri sushi style. The fish that interests me looks like langoustine, but with the soft, ribbed texture of monkfish. The server tries to warn me that it's a very small dish, but I say, "I know. It looks like someone has already left one here," pointing to the piece sitting on the menu.

I put in my order and take a place at a small table, then get up to think this over. Can I really commit valuable dream time to sitting down for a whole meal, even a small one? Shouldn't I be doing something more productive? Maybe I should just leave. But I consider that the experience might be interesting, and I can even try to combine it with a task—the circumstances are ideal to work on summoning, something I've always struggled with.

I walk back over and tell the server, "Actually, I'm here to meet somebody." I pull out my phone, wondering who to call among the characters I've tried (unsuccessfully) to summon over the years. But then I notice that someone is already sitting at my table, so I go over to see who it is. I've never seen this guy before: he looks like he's in his twenties, with straight, mousy-brown hair and thin, very pointed features.

"Hi, are you here to meet me?" He nods.

Okay, I think, rolling with the circumstances, this could work. I'll meet someone new, like a blind date. "What's your name?" I inquire.

"I'm Denny, a crass ass." He looks bashfully down at the table.

This odd term rings a bell. Didn't I, much earlier in the dream, long before I got lucid, meet a guy named Paul who used the exact same term for himself? What an oddity; I don't think I've ever heard that term in life. What could it mean?

"Did you say, 'a crass ass'?" I ask, enunciating clearly. The young man nods.

"Why would you call yourself that?" I am genuinely mystified.

"It's what my friends call me."

Unfortunately I woke up before I could find out anything more!

21.09.2014

Superman smoking? (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I believe I might have been superman in this dream, but I did not look like him nor was dressed like him, so maybe I just believed I was superman and had some of his powers.

I was in a mall, and this mall had a huge tower next to it, apparently, it was owned by some weird people that accused me that I was smoking in a no-smoke place. So I went inside this tower to complain and as I tried to fly up, some guy fought me but I was able to beat him easily while I was flying upwards.

They thew something at me as I started to feel dizzy and see everything fading, but I was able to focus to get on the top, but when I did, some of they guys threw a small white sphere, that for some reason I had the urge to pick it up before it smashed at the bottom of the tower. It looked something like this:







I flew fast to grab it, which I successfully did and went back up and got into the office. As I entered, there were a few reclining chairs and some people eating bread. There were two females that appeared to be awakening at a spiritual level and my wife was there too. I was considering in sharing with one of those two ladies that I was no Superman, but a psychic medium and give her a reading, but my wife was not sure if any of them would accept it.

10/26/2013

I remember a colorful sphere, spinning around and hovering above a circular design.

Night of October 13, 2013. Sunday.



Within the large transparent and safe sphere (about the size of a city block), I attempt to create and “program” a suitable tulpa for a change - and perhaps other features later. First, I allow the grains of feldspar and dark basalt to flow in through the “equator of small holes” that go all around the sphere until it is halfway up near said “equator”. The sound of grains moving and gathering is peaceful, nearly as much as rain, as I rise to the center of this environment as the “solid” ground, as it manifests, lifts me up. Oxygen flows in as if the sphere were made of a smooth, strong, translucent skin. First, I begin to manifest from the tulpa template, focusing on the knuckle of the middle finger, and its glowing blue skin, of the left hand. Shift. I am able to hold it for almost nine seconds. The fingertips of light shrink back very slightly on the second run, but that is only based on my eye movements, which I should control better. My right hand to “her” left hand, a slight pulling sensation on the back of my head. Ten seconds.

My focus is “interrupted” by vague impressions of lines of text over everything, a modern inconvenience, with a subtle impression of a brick wall that fades but remains as “background noise”. The soft, larger wrinkles and folds on the knuckles remind me of lips, and after this, the eyes of lizards, perhaps miniature iguanas.

Now how about toes? A leg and feet and toes - becoming a sapling with five expanding roots. Try again. I get a vague impression of two hands forming “okay” with the fingers, yet also appearing to be doing something else, perhaps holding a grain or something very small between the tips of the thumbs and forefingers.

Pure white, wool-like hair, “burning”/flowing as if it is cool fire, yet radiating soft blue light, like filaments of the thinnest, most malleable “crystal”. Time to shift and make the face for a time, but the eyes keep closing, which is very common for new ones. Come on, look at me.

Dimensionality of the tulpa hologram reverses, as if my depth-perception is of the inside of a mask rather than the outside of a face, somewhat of an unusual effect (and fairly common depending on focus and shifts) - as if I am “inside” the tulpa template itself. Try again. No, this one refuses to keep her eyes open. And even so, they become entirely black if left open for too long. This is not something “demonic” (as falsely claimed by many others) to be wary of (in fact, almost the opposite - innocent over-the-top expectation - much like an individual discovering a new talent and wanting to “use it all up” upon each moment) - it is simply the pupil of a “new one” going “overboard” and wanting to see everything too soon, tulpa-eye-dilation, until the entire eye is as such (and all shiny and black). Vibrations of near consciousness. Atoms have no higher consciousness in such a state, anyway. Why worry unless you are afraid of yourself?

I get a vague yet vivid sound pulse of a man of about thirty or younger saying “diablo” (“devil” in Spanish). As it is impossible to fully block the existence of wayward dreaming minds from the lower supraconsciousness, I ignore it - and do not acknowledge it at all - I was way past that sort of thing over twenty years ago. I had spoken Spanish for about two hours today (but not saying or thinking of that word at all), and this probably linked me slightly to the outer field of the Spanish supraconsciousness. The same effect happens when a guitar string vibrates at a certain frequency - one within a certain range of it will resonant slightly with it (and the lower the frequency, the more the expanding and “interfering” vibrations) - thus the same with human minds and perception at certain levels, which is a loose form of subtle, non-focused telepathy that happens all the time but goes unnoticed by most.

I fold my hands around the back of the tulpa’s head. The sphere is filling up (not fully, just as an environmental feature) with small, dried leaves. I do not mind, the permission was there somewhere in the back of my mind. I am reaching the point where the eyes become like mirrors to reflect my own visage for a time, in brief periods.

I pick up some new features in the environment, which are thinner, lighter sticks, and they remind me somewhat of pieces of an exoskeleton of a giant insect’s leg, not in any alarming sense, but in a wondrous way. I then get an impression of ash and snow - mixed together, almost to a point where the mix becomes indistinguishable - as either being snow or ash, this being almost as a property of the curling, dried leaves it settles upon. I enjoy the snow-ash-dried-leaf crumbs flowing around me like a rejuvenating force…

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on the Brooklyn Bridge with my mom and possibly some other members of my family. It was like we were looking down onto the walkway of the bridge, like we were floating over it. The bridge itself looked like it was in bad shape, even like it had been charred in places.

There was a young, white boy sitting on the footpath, in some weird contraption that seemed actually to have been made out of the footpath.

The contraption looked like a pipe organ. But there were no pipes. Instead there was some kind of grid of square holes, where the pipes would have been. The holes were all charred, and they may have had broken-off fragments of pipes in them. The rest of the contraption seemed to be made out of wood and metal suspension wires.

The boy started talking about how he'd taken his wife to the Brooklyn Bridge and murdered her. He'd done something really cruel to her, then he'd cut her throat.

The boy may have said something about how he thought the Brooklyn Bridge was such a great spot for doing evil things. He may also have said he was planning to do something even more evil on the Bridge.

I was pretty amazed. I "knew" this boy was only twelve years old. But he'd already been married and murdered his wife. I wondered what the next evil thing was that he could be planning to do.

I may have wondered whether, since my mom and I were on the bridge, we'd have to do something evil, too. I visualized the suspension cables on the bridge snapping here and there. I may have imagined the bridge collapsing.

Dream #2

I was riding in a big vehicle like a van with a big group of people, possibly my family, out onto a bridge. It was like we had just come up out of a tunnel and onto the bridge. We were high over a river like the Hudson River.

We drove on an outer lane, so I could see the river well. I looked back, to the large city we were driving away from. There were huge, curling billows of smoke, piling higher and higher. The smoke didn't look like clouds: it looked like chains of grey lava, just piling up.

I felt like this was the smoke from a nuclear bomb. I figured that the smoke buildup was just a precursor to the great flash of light. I wondered why there was no mushroom cloud. But it suddenly occurred to me that the lava-like clouds were building themselves up into a mushroom cloud. Once the cloud was fully formed, the light would flash.

The cloud formed a stalagmite-like pillar, and then suddenly there was a bright, white flash. It must have had some force to it. I remember hanging halfway out the window, my arm flapping in the air, in bright, white light, and unable to pull myself back into the van.

The flash dissipated. I was back inside the van. We were still driving. We'd continued driving all this time.

I was surprised that I didn't feel burnt. The bomb had been blindingly bright, but not hot at all. I figured we must have been too far away to feel the heat. I was afraid that if another bomb dropped, I'd really feel the heat.

Another bomb must have gone off. There was another huge, bright flash, this time without any smoke. As the bomb's light dissipated, there was a storm of little black spheres, like marbles made out of smoky quartz, and tiny, little, cartoony rainbows. These things flickered in and out, like on a video game.

These vanished, and we kept driving on. I'd been looking backward all this time. But now I looked forward. I knew another bomb would strike soon. But I was afraid -- more for the heat of the blast than anything else.

This time the bomb exploded really close to us. There was a huge flash of light, again with no smoke. And again there was a huge flurry of black spheres and tiny rainbows. But the flash of white light didn't dissipate very much at all.

I felt like everything else had vanished around me. I was pulled up out of the van -- if it still existed -- and was made to fly higher and higher up into the air. As I did, I soared through swarms and swarms of the black spheres and rainbows.

Eventually the flash dissipated -- but not fully. For a moment I may have seen the river and city below. But then I saw only blue sky and white clouds, like I was flying upward through some sort of cloud level in a video game.

I began to be able to control my flight through the crowds of black spheres and rainbows, but not really well. I would fly quickly at the spheres and rainbows, hitting them, as if I were "collecting" them.

At some point I realized that this must be the afterlife. I'd become a spirit, and now I was operating on some kind of spirit level.

This struck my "reasonable" side (if you can't tell, even IWL, I don't have much of a "reasonable" side) as odd. I remembered a dream I'd had, as a kid, about dying in a nuclear bomb blast. In that dream, my spirit had drifted up through a tunnel darkness and clouds, up to a big, full moon.

I thought that had been the correct version of the afterlife. So, I thought, this version would probably change into that version at some point.

I told myelf to remain calm and stable and keep flying around in the black spheres and rainbows. Eventually, I figured, this vision would fade into a vision of me drifting up into the moon.

Dream #3

I was in some kind of room with a few other people. I may have known a few of them, and one of them may have been my mother. It felt like there were a lot of us. But the room was pretty big, and we all had our own space.

The room looked kind of like a bedroom. There was a huge line of bunk beds, maybe enough beds for eight or so people. Then there was a concrete floor. Off to the right of the beds, there was a space with a cluttered grouping of plastic chairs.

Across the floor from the beds was a big piece of furniture, like a huge dresser. It was about waist-high, and there was a TV on top. Behind the TV there was a little ledge, and then some more space, like a little cubby hole with more bed-like mattresses.

People sat on the beds and in the chairs. It was almost like we were all watching TV. But we were really hanging out, waiting for some people to get us for some reason or another.

Some of us may have been eating fried chicken. Others may have been eating wraps, like the hot wraps at Pret-a-Manger. I may have been eating a wrap that had fried chicken inside of it.

For some reason I put on a pair of white, satiny panties, and a white, satiny or lacy bra. I started walking around like this in front of everybody. I was partly ashamed of myself for doing this, being a guy and walking around in lingerie. But I also felt like I was part of some fashion show.

I went back to my space on the bunk beds, the mattresses of which were folded up, like futons, to appear like couches. I was looking for my regular clothes. I may have found them. I was really eager to change back into them.

But now it really like there was a fashion show. Some other guy walked around in front of everybody in lingerie. I just watched. I don't think I changed out of the lingerie I was wearing.

A little boy was supposed to go next. The boy was maybe five years old. He ran away from his dad, who may have been trying to get the boy ready for the fashion show. The boy stood at the other end of the room, eating a hot wrap. He may have only been wearing Underoos underwear.

I realized the dad had been trying to put the boy into lingerie. But the boy didn't want to wear women's lingerie. He wanted to be a boy, not a girl.

I didn't think it was fair for the boy to have to wear lingerie if he didn't want to. But I realized that it was kind of my fault. I'd started this whole weird "fashion show" thing by walking around in lingerie. Now it was even affecting the little boys.