Recent DJ Posts

I’m reading through profiles posted on a website. For one, I read, “My story does not begin or end and has no need to stop at these David’s bones.”

--

I’m going to a gym or similar. Everybody there is trying to work out some cryptic puzzle. The phrase “traveling in the tail of a sound” is a hint.

--

I’m attending a class in a floating city where all the buildings and such look like clouds – almost certainly as a person other than myself. It’s a group of a dozen or so students led by a teacher. There’s a nocturnal atmosphere. Up until this point, I’ve been behind the rest of the class, but something has clicked for me since the last time we met. All of us are supposed to race to find a certain ship (airship, really, although it wasn’t described that way). I start out strong and have a lead from the beginning, and I actually make it there first. (This part is sort of video game-ish.) We do a couple more rounds after that; I take even more efficient routes, having a better idea of the city’s layout, and again make it there first. The third time, which works a little differently, I make it to the ship so far ahead that I actually have time to untie it and bring it around to where the others are still struggling to get past a certain obstacle.

--

The next dream from that night is explicitly video game-like rather than implicitly. The dream involves the party going down to the underworld to rescue a comrade. This is a fairly routine occurrence, although enough of a bother to where it’s still better to avoid having to do it. This is the first time it’s happened in this game, so we get a special introduction to Fancrow, who is putting in a special appearance as lord of the dead. Fancrow is an older man, short, Caucasian, with white hair and a beard, wearing a blue uniform trimmed in yellow – just how he looked in the previous game. There are a number of little references to his role in that game, where he was a side character: there, you have to win a duel against him to get [handwriting illegible]. I’ve been given to understand that he just lets the dead person go the first time, and also the first time it happens after a solstice passes (which is yet another little reference). But nothing is happening. In addition to the action playing out, there are a number of interface elements visible, including one with a grayed-out sword. That means that we haven’t yet recruited the party member who would be really helpful in this situation.

It’s also possible for the deceased themselves to trigger their own release, and the dream then cuts to the PoV of the person we’re here for, who’s in the process of doing just that. She jumps onto a flying vehicle, which instantly plummets since it’s set to the gravity of the lower realms. As it goes down, a bad smell becomes more and more prominent – associated with the place itself.

The dream cuts back to the scene with Fancrow, where something is happening. He’s being hit with small objects in advance of the party member breaking through. Things are looking good now, but I’m still angry at Fancrow for taking my friend away, so I take advantage of his distraction to punch him. But he isn’t taken off guard. He just mirrors my action and grins. I know that now I’m going to be the next one to end up down here.

--

To help RD, I go to a place that looks like an abandoned mall to complete some kind of puzzle that involves getting the air to flow into a certain place up high, which is necessary to accomplish something. There’s no place I can stand to get it there directly, so I have to use the extremely larger flowers growing high up on vines there to redirect it. This is a timed puzzle, but I manage to complete it quickly, mentally directing the air along the right path. RD is happy about this. We are part of a small group, and because of this, she will be able to provide the space for us to do something later on. Possibly related, although for reasons that are now unclear, later on, I'm running through mental projections of rat experiments, one after another, changing the conditions as certain aspects become clear so I can get another step closer to figuring out what I want to know. I do tens of thousands of them, although each one only seems to take instants to run start to finish. It seems as if all of this is necessary since I'm trying to actually figure out the causation of something rather than just navigating outcomes.

--

I have, in connection with (dream-)siblings, made something that had gotten very popular. I'm getting invitations from people all over the world wanting me to have adventures with them. I could travel anywhere in an instant, but that somehow makes it seem less interesting. And what I really want to do is just to get back to the newest musical project I'm working on.

--

I'm with a group of people in a small city, chasing after someone. We split into groups to surround them. Something will end when we catch this person, and I want it to be over really badly. I experience the landscape of the dream as having harmonic connotations – in the area where I am, specifically, ones indicating tension. There’s no audible music playing, just a sense of information being perceptible as part of my experience of the dream.

(July, mostly)

lucid: in what felt like a costco-ish parking lot, very bright outside. as me and my partner walked toward the building, away from our car, i looked up at what i knew to be a street sweeping sign (though this wasn't a residential area so it doesn't make sense after being awake) and it read:

Tues-Thurs
Tues

made no sense but it looked right!

Night of February 12, 2015. Thursday.



I am sitting on our bed at our present address on W Street. I have a couple brochures it seems, although one is of stiffer paper. At one point I am actually holding one piece of thin cardboard with three unrealistically vertically narrow photographs (though apparently not cropped) horizontally arranged and attached to it (possibly by double-sided tape). It is of family members including our youngest daughter playing with our youngest son but from a fair distance and not that focused on the subjects. Just as I start to consider (or vaguely question) where it came from, it sort of “pops” out of existence with a slight breeze leaving me somewhat surprised.

My perspective shifts into more of an internal awareness (though not fully disembodied, just in some sort of realm of analytical thought and solely closely-rendered imagery as is typical of some “reading” or “studying” dream types - though at this point I think I may still be technically in the same bed - possibly lying on my side with my head up a bit). I am looking at some sort of brochure that is possibly related to a daycare center, possibly in connection with the “Ninety-Nine Red Balloons” daycare center of many years back. There is a young mustached male (of about twenty-five) with a cluster of balloons. He is standing near a van but it is crudely illustrated (without much detail) as if by someone with minimal drawing or commercial art experience.

From here, I note one of the catchphrases which seems more related to a travel agency. It is something about the “milest of miles” (“Enjoy the milest of miles?”). This annoys me somewhat and I try to work out if I am reading it incorrectly. I also ponder “miliest of miles”. I end up becoming “stuck” in an in-dream fallacy; trying to work out which is more grammatically relevant in this particular case - “milest” or “miliest” (or both depending on the intent of the faux “messages” in the particular part of the brochure?) - of course neither of which are actual words - typical in-dream gibberish, something I have enjoyed noting and documenting since I was about six years of age, just for the pure ridiculousness and amusement of it.

Night of February 12, 2015. Thursday.



I am sitting on our bed at our present address on W Street. I have a couple brochures it seems, although one is of stiffer paper. At one point I am actually holding one piece of thin cardboard with three unrealistically vertically narrow photographs (though apparently not cropped) horizontally arranged and attached to it (possibly by double-sided tape). It is of family members including our youngest daughter playing with our youngest son but from a fair distance and not that focused on the subjects. Just as I start to consider (or vaguely question) where it came from, it sort of “pops” out of existence with a slight breeze leaving me somewhat surprised.

My perspective shifts into more of an internal awareness (though not fully disembodied, just in some sort of realm of analytical thought and solely closely-rendered imagery as is typical of some “reading” or “studying” dream types - though at this point I think I may still be technically in the same bed - possibly lying on my side with my head up a bit). I am looking at some sort of brochure that is possibly related to a daycare center, possibly in connection with the “Ninety-Nine Red Balloons” daycare center of many years back. There is a young mustached male (of about twenty-five) with a cluster of balloons. He is standing near a van but it is crudely illustrated (without much detail) as if by someone with minimal drawing or commercial art experience.

From here, I note one of the catchphrases which seems more related to a travel agency. It is something about the “milest of miles” (“Enjoy the milest of miles?”). This annoys me somewhat and I try to work out if I am reading it incorrectly. I also ponder “miliest of miles”. I end up becoming “stuck” in an in-dream fallacy; trying to work out which is more grammatically relevant in this particular case - “milest” or “miliest” (or both depending on the intent of the faux “messages” in the particular part of the brochure?) - of course neither of which are actual words - typical in-dream gibberish, something I have enjoyed noting and documenting since I was about six years of age, just for the pure ridiculousness and amusement of it.

So, I was having some difficulty falling asleep and decided to try out the method*. At first, I was trying to make random semi-meaningful sentences and phrases "They came for the food; People sitting on road, etc.", then switched to more meaningless stuff and finally went on to random generation of a set of any three words, sometimes with a slight association between the words "hobby batman train", "milk bread wall".

One of the early effects while trying to generate these words was that I started having mini memory flashbacks of real scenes from the past. This sometimes happens to me when reaching a clear but conscious state of mind and the memories are real ones rather than imaginary.

As I continued with the exercise, a number of past dream memories, again real ones started mixing with the life flashbacks. These weren't very vivid and would last a second or so as I was fully concentrating on the word exercise.

I was getting somewhat tired of continuously generating random words and also my awareness was beginning to slip away. At this point, I noticed the emergence of other random scene flashes, but those contained novel or rather different (not real dream or life memories). This is not new to me as I had on other occasions observed that the more towards unconsciousness I would drift, the more of these different scenes I get, while when my mind is fully aware and quiet it tends to get more real memory flashbacks. No idea what this is all about.

Anyways, the interesting part was that as I was struggling to generate a new set of words, I would begin to get a random flashback scene before each word (now a mix of true past places and some unknown random places), and my mind would actually scan the scene for an object or action and use it in the word set! And this would go on for every word or sometimes two words would come from the same scene. It a was really cool realization when it happened the first time, then I let the process continue. I wasn't fully asleep at this point and took a step back towards wakefulness to review the process. Then continued a bit more with the word generation, eventually got tired and stopped and fell asleep.

Looking forward to playing with this again!

*Tnx to Xanous, Jeff and CL for the ideas and links.

Ritual: Went to bed 1am, woke at 2, too early to do anything, woke again at 5:40 with fresh NLD, so forced myself to get up and do a proper WBTB. Returned to bed at 6:15, did hybrid of SSILD and counting, but kept getting disturbed by environmental factors. Hard to sleep, eventually dozed off without awareness, finally woke at 7:20 and declared it a failed attempt. I could still squeeze in another hour of sleep though so I figured I'd just try FILD as a last resort.

After this things get confusing. My best guess is that I did FILD, then fell asleep and into a NLD, then... I woke up, or thought I did (might have been an FA), and did FILD again (possibly in the dream state). Then I noticed that my arm was lying free on the bed rather than tucked under my pillow as usual, so I thought, "Fine, I'll do the stupid nose pinch RC," and what do you know, I could breathe! So I knew I was dreaming, but I was very perplexed. I had just been doing FILD and hadn't observed any kind of transition or even a momentary lapse of awareness in which the transition could have occurred. How could I have fallen asleep and not realized it? In retrospect, I really do think that this started as an FA that I mistook for a real waking, so I did FILD without realizing that I was already dreaming. Hey, whatever works.

So I sat up, and immediately became more perplexed. I was in a bed, but it was not the one I had gone to sleep in, and the bedroom also bore no resemblance to mine in RL. I got up and started looking around, but then I realized that I recognized the place after all: hadn't I been having a non-lucid dream here, just before I woke up and tried that FILD attempt? (This also argues for the FILD-during-FA hypothesis, and it wouldn't be the first time I've had a "WILD" that was initiated from within an ongoing dream—a DIWILD?)

This is hard to confirm because I always have a hard time putting dream events in their proper sequence, but there were events I remembered taking place in this building that don't seem lucid and don't fit into my memory of the lucid episode, so I think that must be what happened. That is, all the previous events took place downstairs, but the entire lucid sequence took place upstairs in what I took to be the same house.

NLD: Earlier when I was downstairs, there had been some complicated narrative I don't recall, but it resulted in me opening the front door several times to let cats into the house. At one point there was a really big one, an orange tabby, both large-bodied and very plump. When I saw him sitting on the doorstep I thought he was the biggest cat I'd ever seen, and I invited him in and closed the door. But there had been two or three other orange tabbies of normal size sitting with him, so I relented and opened the door again to let them in too. "Okay, fine, we'll just let them all in." I knew we didn't have room for them all, but figured it wouldn't be fair to turn them away after I'd already let in others. We could sort it out later.

After this I stood in the entry and watched the extra-big cat ambling away down the hall. Now it was even larger than it had seemed at first, with a lean, bony frame that was not at all cat-like. In fact, I thought I recognized what it was, and said to someone standing nearby, "That cat looks an awful lot like a moose. You know, I think it might actually be just a moose with no horns." Only it was still orange, which seemed a very odd color for a moose.

DIWILD: So apparently this all happened earlier, before the FILD attempt, and afterwards I was convinced I was still in the same house. In the wall facing the end of the bed was a doorway to another room, and when I went inside, I encountered someone that I immediately recognized as the moose-cat from earlier, although now he was a human-looking man with orange hair. I was still curious, so I asked him, "Are you a cat or a moose?"

"I have three types of glands," he answered, and I had the impression he was suggesting that he was both, and something more besides, a protean type of creature.

The two of us sat down on the couch, and for a moment my dream libido took over, and I started making out with him. But as things got more intense I recognized that this was a distraction and would accomplish nothing useful. Didn't I have tasks to do? I remembered that last night I had been on DV looking over the monthly tasks for August, and there had been one that I particularly wanted to try out. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. So I disentangled myself from moose-cat-man's embrace and said firmly, "Tell me a word in a foreign language."

It was hard to make out what he said at first. It sounded like "Arab mormon."

"What?" I wasn't sure if I had heard him correctly.

This time he distinctly just said, "Mormon."

It didn't sound like a word in a foreign language, but whatever. Run with it. "Alright, now tell me what it means."

"A married man."

I wasn't very satisfied with this result and wanted to try again. Another DC was in this room, sitting on another small couch further along the same wall, so I went and sat down next to him. This time I made sure my instructions were more explicit from the start: "I want you to tell me a word in a foreign language, and then tell me what it means."

"Sprenn," he said promptly.

"Spread?" I repeated what I had thought I heard at first.

"Sprenn," he clarified, and helpfully spelled it for me. "S-P-R-E-N-N."

"Okay, what does it mean?"

At this he smiled coyly, as if embarrassed. "I'll... tell you later."

I had the impression it must be a word for something naughty, but I needed to find out. "Please?" I wheedled. He shook his head.

I decided to be more forceful. "Come on, you have to tell me!" I tried to think of how to back this up, and added, "It's my homework assignment."

He tried to explain in a roundabout way: "It has to do with the city of Myrkbalik, and the laws of Garibaldi."

The two names he mentioned sounded complicated, so I wanted to make sure I had heard them correctly. "What was the name of the city? Mrkbalik?" He nodded. "And the second name? Garibaldi? Garifaldo?" This reminded me of a name I had heard in waking life, so I tried to remember, then joked with him, "The laws of Janeane Garofolo?"

He laughed, though it wasn't clear whether or not he recognized the pop culture reference, and repeated the name for me. It still sounded closer to "Garibaldi" than anything, though I had so much to remember at this point that I didn't dare ask him to try to spell it. Already in the back of my mind I was cycling through data points "mormon... married man... sprenn... mrkbalik..." trying to make sure I would be able to preserve them through waking.

Mrkbalik... that's how it sounded, and I didn't ask him to confirm the spelling of that one either. But he had said it was a city name, and to my ears it sounded Russian or Eastern European. I had a sudden insight about this DC, and asked him, "You majored in Slavic studies, didn't you?" He confirmed this.

I felt as though this conversation was winding down, so I got up and crossed the room. Against the opposite wall was a sort of shelving unit, framing square cubbyholes about the size you might put a pair of shoes in, six cubbies high and six wide. It was resting on some elevated base so that the fourth row of cubbies up was equal with my eye level. I looked in this row and saw that a couple of the cubbies were inhabited by small kittens. Could the kittens talk, I wonder? If so, I might even try the task again. But as I was wondering this, the little grey tabby kitten in the cubby I was peering into addressed me first. It had a tiny creaky high-pitched voice, like you might expect of a kitten, and said something about how its eyes were damaged or hurting. I was troubled to hear this and wondered how I might help. Since this was a dream, I figured the most effective way to help the kitten would be to correct its expectations. I smiled and said encouragingly, "No, your eyes are perfectly fine!" We had a few more exchanges like this, where the kitten would say something upsetting and I tried to reassure it. I don't remember anything afterwards so around this time I guess I woke up, although I don't have a distinct sense of the moment when it happened.

Near Dark-based, I'm enjoying watching Diamondback as this motel desk clerk tries to fight her off. She's just come around behind the counter, and she takes out her knife and stabs the desk clerk straight through the back of the hand, pinning his hand to the desk.

FMA-based, Ed's automail arm's bothering him while he's staying in a sort of underground village, and he's talking to Al. I'm briefly wondering why Al has a human body at this point in time, but then I remember that he retrieved his body very early in their journey, and then spent the rest of the time trying to retrieve something along the lines of his mind or memories or soul.

I've just entered into some wealthy household, and the lady of the house is greeting me. She uses formal greetings that trick me into responding in a way that formally declares us to be on friendly terms. By doing this, she's effectively prevented me from being able to bring up past grievances. This is very irritating. I'm thinking about how this way of manipulating words is something that she taught her husband, and it's the main thing that allowed him to make his fortune - that and the skill of building false walls that she also taught him, both things that she learned in her time working for a kind of illusionist or something similar, before she married. As I'm thinking about this I'm seeing an image of a false wall in their house which they use to spy on visitors, and then a scene of her visiting the court of a nobleman. She's raising a glass and saying "To the ruler of the land, Sho Haoon!" Calling him the ruler of the land is sort of overstating things - it's a position that's in question. She's been flattering him a great deal in order to get what she wants.

IT HAPPENED!!!

After reading quite a bit of past experiences on DV and remembering some of the techniques used by fellow dreamers, I decided that I was tired of letting things be.

I tried the Repeating word technique* (I know there's another name but adding the word technique at the end of what you’re doing makes it sound cool

So any way, I'm getting ready for bed telling myself "I'm gonna wake up in my dream, I'm gonna wake up in my dream." I continue to say this while I'm lying down with my eyes closed and continue to say it until I stop I guess.

Next thing I remember is waking up and having to go to the bathroom and I do, except right in the middle of me going number one, like right in the middle of it, I wake up! Two things hit me 1) WTF!!! 2) I gotta take a leak.

While I'm taking a leak I'm thinking to myself. "I'm pretty sure I was dreaming the first time I did this." I have confirmed that this technique works. Before I even heard the term lucid dream I was using this technique to wake up at certain times in the morning. Having to be at work around 7am meant I had to wake up at 6am. So right before I went to sleep I would repeat the phrase, "I'm going to wake up at 6am." Sure enough without a hitch I wake up SECONDS before my alarm goes off.

Repeating what you want to dream about right before your sleep is a damn good beginner technique. LucidLegend Approved! ;D

this one was kind of like a tv show... But all I remember is that there was this guy tied to this fence, and some other guy was trying to get the guy on the fence to reveal important information. the man not on the fence threatened the other with a shovel...like...about to hit him, but then the man on the fence spoke what sounded to me like gibberish. but apparently, the most important information desired was just the words "The Simulation Gestgeme". (my brain made up another word, it seems -_-) As soon as that information was revealed, the man with the shovel backed down, said something, and then walked away, leaving the other man on the fence. A third DC came along somehow and i remember him saying to the man that had the shovel "Now forgive me for not knowing all this oogly boogly stuff, but what the hell is a Simulation Gestgeme...?! "

That's all I remember...

My Dream Recall ability is definitely improving