The Kestrel's Dreams

June 10, 2014

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After having mostly fragmented memories of dreams and waking at 5:30 am, I fell back asleep and had this dream:


I was visiting some other country with my family (immediate and most of the grandparents/aunts/cousins, as well as the Stanleys, who are the family of my mom's old high school friend). At first, we were in a city, wandering around and exploring new places. We were in a Hotel there, and my mom had come back with a bicycle she'd just bought. We all wondered how practical this was, since we were going to have to fly back, just like we'd had to fly there. We all got in multiple cars and headed for the house we were renting for the next week and a half of the trip; apparently Bob had built it.

I decided to do some exploring of the house. There was a main section of the house, with the living spaces, and three of the bedrooms, and then there was a separate space connected by a partially underground hallway (there were windows at the top of the walls, and these windows were just above ground level outside). The second space was a garden/master bedroom. There were flowers in pots everywhere and when I looked out the window, I saw that the whole top of that hallway was also planted. There were lots of windows, and the bed was in a section that was sunk down a few steps. I went outside the building and saw a door, but didn't think much of it, assuming it was just leading off from one of the bedrooms.

Then, mom got back. She'd decided to come on her bike, so it took her a lot longer to get there. Except she came on a motor scooter. We asked her why she had it, and she said that she'd traded the bike for the scooter. She had apparently also picked up groceries on the way there; they were in bags behind her.

I asked it I could ride the scooter (I only call it a scooter because I can't think of any better word... It was basically a box with wheels and no right-side wall, so that you could get in and out. I guess it was more of a cockpit?), and mom said sure, why not? She proceeded to show my family the snake she'd gotten on a whim at the grocery store.

So I get in through the absent right-hand wall, and sit/squat in this awkward little seat that was slanted forwards. The steering mechanism was a simple floppy paddle handle (like the locks on some bathroom stalls). At first, I thought that it was also the way to accelerate (kind of how in bumper cars, often times to reverse, you need to turn so far you go backwards), so I turned it really far and ended up just spinning really fast and getting dizzy (it spun without pressing the gas, apparently). I found the actual gas and break pedals and got on my way, taking it out for a spin.

I first went up the road to the left (as you face the house), which was up. The house was on a hill, so to the left it went uphill, and to the right it went downhill on a curve to the right. We were on a mountain or something, I think. I got bored going uphill, so I turned around (the turning was like in some video games, where when you rotate the handle to the left for the camera view, it turns right, and vise versa. I hate that, it confuses me so much) and went downhill. I passed the house and went along the curve to the right, and then it was straight and steep, and there was a jeep (this jeep, to be precise; I should clarify that I am in no way a conservative. One of my friends posted this on FB) coming at me really fast with their brights on even though the sun was just starting to set, and the road was narrow, so I pulled over to the right side, which was nearly a cliff, and waited for it to pass. I got freaked out by the jeep and turned back to go home.

When I got back, the snake my mom had bought with the groceries was chilling on the front porch, but then a large red snake with yellow spots outlined in black came out of the ground (like, it came out of the GROUND, not out of a hole in the ground) and attacked mom's snake. It was crazy. They were vicious and kept going in and out of the ground, and I was freaked out because I was almost positive this other snake was venomous and they kept coming up at random spots, so I hopped back inside where I would be safe. I told my mom, but she didn't seem too worried about her snake. "She's a tough cookie, that one," she said with a thumbs up.

I went off to find my brothers and ended up finding them in the main living room. Bob said he'd included a secret space when he built the house. I looked over and found a room I had missed before; it was long and narrow, with bunk beds built into the wall on the right-hand side. There were four bunks, then one twin, and then one queen/double. The last thing built into that wall was a sort of reading nook with a table and booth-benches around it. Bob and Erik said they would be sleeping in this room with the Stanley boys and our uncles.

On the left at the end of the room was an open space, and a door was at the very end. I opened it, and found out it was the door I'd seen earlier.

When I closed the door, everything went all Minecraft on me. I accidentally deleted a block from the wall, and I rotated through my inventory to replace it with a stone block, but then I realized the walls were made of leaf-blocks. I didn't have any of those in my inventory, so I left it as it was. I looked over to the area to the left and noticed something strange; it looked like there was something behind the leaf-blocks making up the wall, so I broke one of them with my sheers (so I could replace it if there wasn't actually anything there) and found a tunnel with a pitfall at the end. I looked down the hole, and found out there was water running below. A tetris-ish shaped lily-pad floated past, and I jumped down and landed on it.

I was in this GORGEOUS underground jungle-temple-like space. The river was artificial, it seemed, made out of cobblestone blocks, suspended a few blocks from the ground and winding and going up and down. There were vines hanging down over everything and dappled light coming in through little holes in the ground (the ceiling above me, since I was underground now). Roots intertwined and connected with the cobblestone river. It was at the same time minecraft blocky and real-world smooth. It was so surreal and so beautiful! There were lily-pads on the water, and chests full of treasure scattered throughout the river; some in the water, some above the water, some on the cobblestone at the edge of the water.

I let myself be carried by the river until it came into open daylight (the sun still had not set, but was very close to the horizon now) and found myself above the house. Instead of the road there had been before, it was all a river now. Wait a minute, this was a road before... Am I dreaming? Sure enough, for the first time ever, I did a reality check in my dream, and found I was dreaming. I was so excited that it started to destabilize, but I ran as fast as I could to the house to tell everyone we were in a dream.

I woke up before I could reach the house.
I gained lucidity (and remember it) for the first time!


Update: That day I spent way more time than I should have building the house in Minecraft. lol

June 06, 2014

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Hippopotamuses EVERYWHERE

I was at home, and it was getting dark but I didn't feel like going to bed. So I got into my car and started driving. I went down to Doug Ave, and headed north. When I passed the light at Patty St, the road was different from the way it is IRL. Instead of being wide and non-residential, there were houses on both sides, more like the street I live on.

But that wasn't the weird part. At the light, I saw the first one of them: A lone Hippopotamus standing at the edge of the road. As I drove on, there were more of them, and eventually I had to stop because there were so many of them, all over the road. They were in the road and in driveways and shuffling about slowly as large beasts often do.

I know hippos are dangerous animals, but these ones were more like kittens. They came up and sniffed the car and then left, leaving me alone for the most part.

I was amazed, and drove back to where ever I had just come from, where some of my friends were. "Guys!" I shouted. "Guys, there are hippos ALL OVER THE PLACE down on that street. Ugh what's it called? The one with the sketchy gas station where they sell rugs and tapestries!" (I couldn't remember the name of the street for some reason, so I was trying to describe it. But I remembered it anyways) "Doug. They're on Doug Avenue! Come on!" And so a few of them get into my car (Zukin is there, she sits shotgun) and I drive them to where the hippos are.

One of the people living in one of the houses to our right came out of their house and fed one of the hippos a carrot. She patted it on the head and then waved at us, before heading back into her house. A hippo came up to the car and playfully headbutted the passenger's side front window (Zukin's) like a kitten headbutting their human.

It was all rather awesome.




Bus?

All I remember from this one is that I was on a bus with a bunch of random people.




Ice Test
I was taking a test of sorts; it was like an obstacle course with puzzles scattered around, which I had to solve. All the tests were on a huge ice-mountain. Everything was made of ice, and had an ethereal glow to it. I don't remember much of the actual course, but I do remember the last part. I seemed to like it so much that when I got done, I did the last part four more times, at least. It was a series of switchbacks in the ice, and we were supposed to get down as fast as we could. So I took off the jacket I had been wearing and used it as a toboggan, sliding down. The last time I went on that part, I looked over the ledge at the city below me. It was night time and the ice-mountain was lit up, and so was the city below. We were so high up that the city looked like it does from inside and airplane.

I looked to my right, where there was a barrier of some sort made out of lots of randomly sized and placed cube-like shapes. They had about the same shape as a Companion Cube, but a little more exaggerated in terms of the corners that stick out. I wanted to see what was "out of bounds," so I started climbing around the ledge to see what was past the cubes. After about ten feet, it was getting a lot harder to climb, and I didn't want to fall, as there was no path below me, only a really really really far drop, and it looked like there wasn't anything further on, anyways. I figured that if there had been a cave or something, I would keep going, but since there wasn't, I turned back and went down the ice switchbacks again. At the bottom, the "teachers" were handing out our grades for the course. I had taken it before, and gotten 98% on it, and since I got 98% again this time, I technically failed it. You only passed if you did better than your best score so far. I didn't care though, because the 98 from the last time was good enough for anything I wanted to do with my life.

As I was walking along another ledge at the bottom, I looked out at the city again, which was a little bit closer, but still really small-looking from high up.

Then I woke up.

June 05, 2014

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Whoa, 6 Dreams (well, some Dreams and some Fragments) remembered!

Blue Pool

I was with Zukin and some people who claimed to be high-level Dreamers, and we were sitting on a sofa, talking about Lucid Dreaming (funny that we were talking about it but I didn't realize I was dreaming). Then we all moved to a room that was a pool. The whole room was a giant pool with a walkway down the middle. The tiles in the pool were mostly deep blue with some red ones. There were signs being made (like actual signs. Road signs.) somewhere in the room. They were popping out of a conveyor on the other side of the wall.

I think I might have realized I was dreaming, but I woke up immediately. If I did realize, it didn't last long.




Circus!

I was a kid again in this dream. Maybe 10-14 years old. My dad and brothers were going to a circus. We walked into the lobby of the building it was in (it was on some upper floor of a large building). There were three other children there, with their guardian (I wasn't sure if it was their parent or not) in the lobby.

We got into the elevator, the walls of which were lined with that yellow foamy insulator you find in crawl spaces and whatnot.

We got out of the elevator and then sat down in this little play corner that was actually the seats for the audience. You were supposed to climb up to any seat we wanted. It's a bit hard to describe, but think of side-scrolling video games where there are ledges you have to jump up to and whatnot. So I'm trying to get up to the perfect seat, but I can't reach it.



Then there were two fractions of dreams: One about playing my music over speakers, and another about sleeping downstairs in my laundry room. I was only wearing underwear (no bra) because it was really hot, and my dad came in and got all embarrassed. But I was still half asleep and still tired so I threw on a shirt and went to sleep in the car, since we were going somewhere that day. My mom was already sleeping in the back, so I just curled up in the passenger seat.




Just Don't Tell my Mom, Okay?

I was a student in a classroom, high school, I think. We were in the middle of class, and two punks had barged in; They were pushing my classmates around, badmouthing everyone, and extorting money from them and being general jerks. Eventually I got fed up with it and yelled at them from across the room, "You two need to GET. OUT."

One of them got all bashful and apologized, getting ready to leave, but the other (the taller one) just stood in the door way with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring down his nose at me. I planted my feet and glared right back (I am short, so this must have been hilarious to watch), until he averted his gaze and then left, grumbling.

About an hour later, another punk came to my classroom, and yelled, "Which Bitch is that told my boys to leave?!" Like an idiot, I stood up and said, "It was me." The guy looked like a Gangster Pimp.

He took me out in the hall and I felt like he was gong to beat me, so I started to run away. I felt like a rabbit being chased by a wolf, and it felt hopeless. It felt like no matter where I ran, he would find me, and then beat me, rape me, verbally abuse me, who knows what.

I eventually got to a door leading out of the building. It opened to a slope, exactly like the one Zukin and I slid down on our butts in Austria. It was steep and the soil was dry, and there were trees scattered sparsely. I slid down the slope, using the trees as check-points of a sort to control my path downward. I got to the bottom and looked up to see if he was following. He was inside still, I could see him glaring down at me from inside the door. It had started to rain, so I assumed that he wouldn't come out in order to keep his clothes clean (Or rather, his voice was in my head saying "The only reason I'm not going and getting you out there is to keep my clothes dry, bitch."). I started running to my left, and turned when the building made a corner. Around the corner was another door into the building. I figured I would go in and try to get a teacher. As I ran toward the door, to my right I heard a voice say, "You don't have to run. You have the power to manipulate him." I turned to see a man floating in the air. It looked like he was sitting in an invisible throne in the air. He had on clothes that appeared kinda jester-like. But more ragged. Colorful patches everywhere, a funny hat. His hair was long, for a guy, and messy. He has a sing-songy voice.

I ignored what he said because the Gangster Pimp was going to kill me if I didn't keep running. I keep running, and I almost reach the door, but the Gangster Pimp comes out of a door a little further down and starts running after me. It's still raining, but we're under an awning now. I'm no longer safe, in the rain.

I try to reach the door but he catches me just before I get there and corners me. "I'll teach you to mess with my boys!" He threatened, cracking his knuckles.
"I didn't touch them! All I did was make them leave!"
He hit me on the left side of my face. "Shut up, bitch! I'm a pimp and I protect my boys!"
I didn't know what else to do, so I started begging and apologizing. "I'm sorry, okay? I won't do it again! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Just don't hit me again...!"
And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of my old high school teachers coming outside. "Help! Help, Hafer! Mr. Hafer! This guy...!" But he didn't hear me at all, or else ignored me (which he wouldn't do; he was one of the best teachers I had in high school). He walked back inside, and I felt so alone.

The Gangster Pimp raised his hand like he was going to hit me again, and I yelled, "You would hit a girl like that?!"
Suddenly he got all sheepish. "D-don't say it like that!" He stammered.
Suddenly I was scolding him. "And this is a new piercing. Do you know how much it hurts to get hit over a new piercing?!"
"I'm sorry..."
"And besides you should be in class!"
"Yes Ma'am..."
"Before that, go apologize to my classmates for disrupting our learning!"
"Don't tell my mom about this, okay...?"
We walk back to the tree-slope door for some reason, instead of taking the door right next to us. We wait under the overhang until the rain clears, to keep his clothes clean. Once it was clear, we start walking, and to my left, still where he had been before, was the jester-man, who had much the same feeling as The Face at the end of one of my previous dreams. He smiled (though it was more of a smirk) and said, "Told you." Then he vanished. I noticed then that the rain hadn't been falling on him; there was a circle of dry pavement around where he'd been.

After getting back to my class, like right after the Gangster Pimp leaves, I got a text from him asking if I wanted to go to a rap concert with him. I don't know how he got my number.

Then I either woke up or faded into the next dream...



Rest Stop of Creepy

I was on a car trip with my Dad, Erik, Bob, WW (my grandpa) and my uncle Nick. I don't know why my mom wasn't there. We were driving in some place with mountains and open prairie/almost desert. We stopped at a rest stop to get some things and while we were browsing, this weird man enters the store, and asks random people if he can buy them random junk from the store. He asked me if he could buy me some canned peaches and I said no. I kept saying no but he kept asking about other things he could buy me. Eventually I got him to go away, and picked up a chocolate milk, bringing it to my dad to pay for while I went to the bathroom.

When I got out, I tried to find my family but they had left without me. I knew where we were going, so I figured I would just walk to catch up with them. I texted them to wait for me somewhere up the road, and turned out to the road. I went left (I get the feeling I was going west... but I'm directionally challenged so I don't know if that is true).

I passed a couple buildings on a hill to my left. At some point I met a woman who handed me a box of water bottles and some paper cups, telling me to "keep strong." I was starting to panic because the sun was setting and I could hear some animals off in the distance. I had gotten out of the woodsy hills and was now in an open, relatively flat, prairie area. There were huge, majestic mountains to my right. It looked a little like the Tetons look from the road. I got to another hilly area and checked my phone to see if anyone had responded to my texts. Then I rounded a corner and found the van sitting at a lookout with a door open, waiting for me to jump in. I was pissed at them all and didn't speak to any of them for the rest of the ride.



Dog Fights

I was at Oma and Grandpa's house (in the living room with big windows), talking to my grandpa about his past. My family and some dogs I didn't know were playing outside in the back yard.

Through the windows, I saw a pack of three foxes, larger than any normal fox, circle the group, as if hunting. I tried to warn my family, but they couldn't hear me from inside. Then, one of the foxes jumped at Erik, but he ducked just in time and didn't get hurt. Everyone starts yelling and the foxes run away. They were literally hopping/jumping as high as the trees, like Virginia (John Carter) in the movie. (Um, just sort of ignore that music in that video... There was loud music playing when I found the video. And then it lead to a hilarious moment when Zukin turned off her music and we both heard the music in this video for the first time)

But after a few minutes, they come back with two large wolves. Then, all hell broke loose.
There were suddenly a bunch of neighborhood dogs of all kinds, and the wolves and foxes were fighting the dogs. The dogs eventually fought off the wolves and foxes, but two of them were badly wounded. Their owners were there, and one of the really badly wounded ones, a newfie, was leaning on its owner and dying. It was really sad...

Apparently, my grandpa had completely missed the whole thing. He's a bit deaf, so he hadn't heard any of the mayhem.

Then I woke up.

March 17, 2014

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My family and I were on a long road trip; I can't remember where we were headed, though. I only really remember one part of this dream; we were driving through a wooded area in the mountains, and suddenly the road lead us to a bridge that had broken away years ago. We were stumped for a while, but we found a pile of good lumber nearby; it looked like people had been getting ready to rebuild the bridge but has suddenly stopped, leaving all the lumber there years ago. It was old lumber, gray, but still good and strong.

So we rebuilt the bridge. Bob, Erik and I did the work while mom and dad tried to find people or a place to stay for the night in case we didn't finish in time.

The scenery was really vivid, but hard for me to describe;
it was wooded mountains (it reminded me of Mirkwood forest from the Hobbit) like I said before, but at the same time it was also a bit like a desert mountain with lots of spikes of red rock and arches under which the road wound.

December 23, 2013

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I was a newbie hair dresser at a salon. All of the employees made fun of me, except for one of them. She was the only one who was nice to me, and we became friends.

But as we were working late one evening, something weird started happening and we figured out that the salon was haunted. One-by-one, all the employees were turning into zombie-banshee creatures, except it was a different type of monster for each person. They resembled the various monsters from The Dark Meadow (Some Examples).

I was one of the last three people left non-monsterfied, and we were running down the halls. The place had turned into a sort of hospital-like place, with long sterile hallways. They had the feeling they should have been brightly lit like in a hospital, but all the lights were very dim, if on at all. It was very eerie.

I'd split up from the other two people left, and I heard them both scream somewhere far away as they both got haunted/possessed as well. So now I was alone, the last one left, and I ran until I was out of breath. The one who was chasing me was one I'd especially despised because she was being super nasty to me. I did something but I can't remember what it was, and she went back to normal. Now, knowing how to cure everyone, I went around finding them all and soon everyone was back to normal, just as dawn was breaking (I know, cliche, right?).

Everyone praised me and I got a promotion, and to celebrate we all went to the owner's house, which was in some kind of huge tree, kind of like the house the Berenstain Bears lived in. One by one we all challenged the owner to some sort of battle; everyone had different types of weapons. I didn't yet have a weapon, so I just watched. But then, when nobody could beat the owner, he called in Obama. He and his family came to see us, and suggested we all settles this with a different kind of battle; We all got into our cars (me in my family's Honda Odyssey) and drove out to a large icy field. The goal was to slide around on the ice and try to ram as many people as possible. Don't ask me how this is a good idea. I woke up after starting my car and trying to slide around a bit.