Night Vision

I am somewhere like a dorm room, which I seem to share with around three other people. The beds are really low, maybe just mattresses on the floor, and we’re sitting on them, listening to a woman in some kind of position of authority who’s speaking to us. She takes a feather comforter from somewhere and hands it to me to replace my current one. My bedding is all extremely tangled and twisted - I’ve slept badly. I tell her that it wouldn’t be that difficult to untangle it, but she still wants to give me the new one, so I take it and set the old one at the front of the bed. She then leaves.

My old friend Ona, who seems to be one of my roommates, is trying to tell me something now, but she’s wearing something over her mouth sort of like an underwater breathing apparatus, so I have trouble understanding her at first. Eventually, with the help of one of the others, I understand that she’s saying something about a concert she saw me play in yesterday – also something about how she had previously been familiar with only one of the composers whose pieces were played there.

This next part may or may not be part of the same dream – there were definitely parts after that one that I forgot, anyway. But I’m in a restaurant now. It’s a large, bright space, lit mainly by daylight streaming through full-length glass windows, but a little crowded – all the tables seem to be filled, and there isn’t much space to move between them. Saimi passes by the table where I’m sitting and makes some kind of signal to me with her hand. This somehow clues me into the fact that I’m dreaming.

I get up and follow her out to the balcony to talk. As I pass through the glass window, I can feel some sensations from it, especially the dividing metal bars, which is unusual and a little surprising – possibly it has something to do with the overall level of realism seeming especially high this time. Saimi watches, pauses for a second, and then opens a glass door and walks out. I jokingly say that I haven’t used a door in a dream for years now.

We jump down from the balcony and walk around while we decide what to do. It’s now clear that the restaurant is located on a college campus – one that’s dream-familiar to me from at least one dream I know I’ve recorded. Saimi says that before meeting up with me, she was waiting for my Aunt O so that they could see something together. She seems to want me to guess, so I do. A play? No. A movie? Also no. Apparently, it’s something like episodes from a TV series being screened somewhere on campus. She still wants to do this now, while lucid. I don’t think this sounds like a very good idea – looking at a screen for any considerable length of time seems like a pretty good way of losing lucidity to me. It could be interesting to see if my aunt shows up, though, and to talk with her, so I agree to wait with her. Since they agreed to meet in the restaurant, we head back there, flying back up to the balcony and going back where we started.

I figure I should probably do something to keep engaged with the dream. This doesn’t strike me as a very interesting situation to work with initially. I wonder, though: what if I try to read these people’s minds? I look around the room, getting a read of the atmosphere – just in a way one might in waking life. How should I do this? I focus on one woman sitting at a table near me, trying to access her mindstate. What happens is that the dream imagery itself seems to transform so that now I’m seeing her in something like a large version of a baby’s high chair, chewing a mouthful of food with evident displeasure. So the form of the dream changed to reflect my intention, rather than my experiencing her thoughts as some kind of verbal overlay – fascinating.

I wake up soon after, but quickly fall asleep again and find myself in the same setting, this time with my cat Ronnie. I’m trying to tie something around one of his paws, but soon I remember that I’m dreaming. I wake up again before I can do much of anything.

-16.12.22

Boat on a Stormy Sea

I’m at an event taking place in a large, white tent, with people sitting at long tables in rows. I can’t remember the earlier part of the dream any longer, but at some point, a man on some sort of machine, kind of like a large tractor/open tank, bursts in and starts threatening people while riding up and down the aisles. He doesn’t actually seem to be trying to hurt anyone – yet – but it’s clearly a dangerous situation, so I head off to prepare properly before taking care of it.

I go some distance away to a much smaller tent, where my own things are, and start by tying my hair back since that thing has exposed moving parts on it, and I want to be able to get close to it without having my neck snapped. While I’m getting ready, I plan, although I don’t think this will be very complicated. I figure I’ll just jump on and start messing with levers. But I’ll want to take out his grapply thingies first so he can’t just move them back.

When I’m done, I go back a different way, past some fairly large buildings. The area is reminiscent of a university campus, and life seems to be going on normally here. A woman holding a number of small cards approaches me, wanting me to draw one. I do, knowing that she’s trying to help in some way. The cards are made of cardboard and are of varying sizes, as if they’re from multiple decks. I draw one which turns out to have a picture showing a boat on a stormy sea.* There’s accompanying text – I’m aware of having to focus more than usual in order to not instantly forget it (although, unfortunately, I did forget it between then and awakening). I take this as a positive sign. It also somehow suggests to me that it might be a good idea to see if I can get some of the other people in the tent to help out regarding the grapply things.

* Note: this is the symbol for chords with dominant function in the app I use to practice improvising, which is something I was doing the night before this dream.

13.5.22



Cemetery Campsite

I seem to be camping in a cemetery. Another tent is staked a few plots down – a mother and a young boy, who's three-ish, are staying there. I wonder whether I should tell them they’re camped on one of the graves that’s supposed to be haunted.

We eventually do meet up somehow, and I show them the way to a local bank at her request. She meets with a couple of her relatives there, including an older woman who reminds me of somebody I know, who is looking after the child (who I now know is called Eliot) while she does something there. Eliot suddenly runs out of the building, and the woman follows, chasing him. I think she may need some help though, and so I wait around the opposite corner of the building and catch Eliot as he rounds it. He immediately starts crying.

Sometime after that – back at the campsite – the woman has given me a bone with some meat on it to cook over a small fire. However, as I hold it over the flame, I notice there’s hardly any meat there at all – just a couple little scraps.

Upon awakening, I also remembered a piano ostinato playing – not as a background of the dream, but as if it had somehow been going through my mind at the same time, apart from it. I didn’t check the pitches soon enough after the dream to be able to put it in a definite key, but this is what it sounded like:



-15.5.22


Lots of interesting dreams lately. I'm not going to copy them all here, but highlights include:

-Preparing for a chess match against a guy who likes to send his bishop in for a sacrifice on the f-pawn early in the game. I find this annoying and intend to make sure, through my own choice of moves, that this is not going to be an appealing option for him.

-Lots of hostels and hotels.

-Attending a concert on a campus but leaving after my rowdy friends got kicked out since it’s not really worth being there without them.

-A lucid dream mostly consisting of talking to people and exploring.

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I’m in a building that seems to be part of a university campus, heading for the top floor, which is where I have to go to retrieve my renewed passport and some other visa documents. But as I look through the doorway, into the large, open room where I have to go, I see two knights on horseback riding around – a pair of enemies that seem to have spawned here. They’re wearing head-to-foot armor of a bronzey-gold color and carrying lances, and the horses are white.

I’m reluctant to go in, as I have just defeated another pair of these guys – although those were a black and ghostly variety, and these ones will be even tougher and therefore even more of a nuisance. I just can’t be bothered right now. And since I’m not in a particular hurry, I figure I’ll just come back for the papers later. I head back down, taking the stairs rather than the elevator, as it is inevitable that if I get on, they will too.

As I descend, though, I hear people talking – but it’s rather vague, more like a combination of thinking and of overhearing conversations. I hear people talking about how many people have been faking their passports, and when you open them up, they’re empty on the inside. But mine is real – and actually, that’s something I shouldn’t be taking for granted.

Somehow, what I am hearing has changed my mind: I head back up again and walk into the room. There’s only one of the knights now, and he’s holding my papers. I walk up to him and grab them. Contrary to expectations, a fight does not commence, and so I take the papers to another part of the room to look through them. My renewed passport is there, and it already has an approved visa in it. This is something I applied for previously, which required going through quite a bit of red tape – entrance to a country that seems to be located somewhere in Central Asia.

23.8.21