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I managed to remember a dream I had the other night.

In the dream, I was a guy. And I was working with my best friend (also a guy) on a particular job, although I don't completely remember what his part in it was.

I was some kind of con man. I was trying to get into some sort of nobleman's quarters, for some reason. I remember he was kind of a shithead.

The architecture of the place was very... Sorr of Tudor... With some fantasy elements thrown in.

I got in... But he returned while I was there. I tried to go hide in another room, which was like a bathroom, but he knew I was there and sent guards after me.

I jumped out the window, and managed to make my way down by jumping from stone window ledge to window ledge. But I got to a point where I couldn't, where it was just a sheer drop to the ground, and I was going to have to jump and hope I landed alright.

I somehow made it, and I was in an area behind the mansion that wasn't quite a backyard. There was a sort of chicken wire fence and high grass. It kind of reminds me of the area behind an apartment complex where a friend used to live when I was little (I got into an argument with her there, in real life, about whether or not you can walk on rainbows. I was heavily in favor of "yes, you can". No rainbow in this dream, though, just me running away from guards.

As for last night, I vaguely recall something about riding the bus. But that's it.

Original journal entry dated May 22, 2002:

It didn't really start out as a nightmare, it started out as a dream that I was playing Dungeons and Dragons like my friends, and it was a normal session except for the fact that we would literally become our characters. And the fact that the campaign took place on the actual campus, not in a far off fantasy world. This was a whole dream in and of itself.

It then phased into the next dream in this manner:
When we were done playing, we cleaned our stuff up, packed it away, etc. I asked for a ride home but nobody wanted to give me one, although M offered to drop me off at the closest bus-stop. Unfortunately, it wasn't the bus-stop that I needed to be at, which was a mile down and across the freeway. So I started walking down the side of the freeway, which wasn't there at first, but then there were walls along the edge of the road and I had to walk IN the road, inching along with my back pressed to the wall, while tons of cars barreled by. I managed to get across the freeway when I realized that I had miscalculated and overshot the place where the bus-stop was, so I had to go back. As I was going back, I found myself stumbling along a gravel embankment at the edge of the road, and the way that the wall and embankment were arranged, I had to walk away from the actual road and into a sort of hollow near the freeway pillars and supporting structures... all of the sudden, it got way too foggy for me to see, and I wandered blindly until I suddenly felt incredibly cold, clammy hands all over me, and then I passed out...

...when I woke up, I was blind, but I was in a warm bed and a house, and people were talking to me. There were 3 voices - one was a fatherly voice, conjuring up in my head the image of a man smoking a pipe. The second was a daughter-ish voice, that of a young girl. She spent a lot of time talking to me and stuff. The last one scared me, it was a mother-ish voice, but instead of conjuring up a motherly image in my head it conjured up the image of something rather like a medusa (I'm talking mythology, not squid, here). They took care of me and talked to me, but they never touched me. In my dream I think I was an orphan so I guess I finally had a family. I always refered to the fatherly figure as "father", the sisterly one as "sister", but didn't refer to the motherly figure as anything at all. I kept asking them when I would be well, when any important events would happen, when I would be able to go back... they told me, one day, that in a day they were going to go somewhere, and asked me whether or not I wanted to go with - I could go tomorrow, or in a week. I told them tomorrow, and asked them where we were going to go and what we were going to do. They responded, "Tomorrow they will uncover us." As I vaguely began to wonder if my caretakers were something other than... well, alive or human... back in real life, D knocked on my door, and the dream abruptly ended.

So then I managed to get back to sleep, but this time my dream was different, it was about the dorms only the design had changed (for one, they were nicer and the foliage was more lush, the landscape was prettier). There were some design flaws in the dorms, one of them was that in order to reach their own patio the next-door dorm had to cross ours. So there was a debate as to whether or not they also got to use and put their stuff on the half of our patio that they had to cross to get to their own. Then there was some stuff about mom and screen-names, and a bunch of random stuff, one thing of which included a mural with different descriptive name-bubbles that you could choose to put next to the objects depicted in the mural. The Mural of the Week was one with dinosaurs, and for some reason they didn't look sad but they were crying, and some of the word bubbles were pretty silly.

Practices: ADA, Mindfulness, WBTB, DEILD
While falling asleep, mantra: "I am aware"

Dream #1 - I am with my friend, R__. She's driving a car - one belonging to one of my relatives, according to my dream-memory, but in real life none of them own a gray minivan. We're driving around a mall parking lot. We can't seem to find a parking space. She accidentally hits another car while pulling into a parking space, and I cringe at the sound, but she's more angry about it than worried. She decides to try to use a note left on her windshield to explain why she parked in one of the restricted parking spots, by claiming she can't walk that far, but I don't think that will hold up under scrutiny. She finally gives up and parks pretty far away from the mall entrance. We can see it from where we are, but it's quite a walk.

I briefly wake up from the dream and try to carry my awareness with me into my next dream, using my mantra.

As soon as the dream reforms, I am instantly lucid. I'm inside of the mall from the previous dream, but R__ is gone now. The lucid dream has the crystal clarity characteristic of my lucid. Since I'm not outdoors (unusual), rather than the usual sweeping landscapes and storm-swept skies, instead the architecture inside of the mall is extremely grand. Super high vaulted ceilings, probably 80-100 feet high, with graceful arches carved out of solid pale pink marble and golden inlays. Intricate carvings and sculptures. White marble floors. The whole thing looks more like the inside of a cathedral than a mall.

I look around and think, "This is definitely a dream". I inspect my hand - it's perfectly formed. I do a reality check by trying to push one hand through the other, but I can't. I shrug it off - I know I'm dreaming. I try to fly, and hover in the air above the crowds milling around the mall. My lucidity tends to fade very quickly while I'm flying, though - there's something about not having my feet on the ground that does that. So I land, and then crawl on the floor and inspect the marble tiles. There's grime between them and they feel a little gritty - this place needs to be swept and mopped.

I decide to go treasure hunting. I reach into my back pocket - for some reason, I'm wearing a skirt with pockets - and feel around for a map. I feel crumpled paper and tug. I pull out a sheet of notebook paper, folded in half several times, and unfold it. There is a map on it, scribbled in blue pen, but I can't read what it says. It also has little pictures. I decide that I need to go find a dream character who CAN read it, and if I'm going to treasure hunt, I'm going to do it in style - which means having a whole group of treasure hunters with me. I run my hand along the wall as I walk.

I walk toward the food court - well, an archway I have decided is the food court. The floor slopes downward between it in a ramp, heading underground. I can see tables in the distance. I decide that's kind of boring and want it to be something more exciting. As I approach, it morphs into a Viking style beer hall. I'm pretty satisfied - this is definitely more fun.

I enter the beer hall, which is smokey and full of warriors eating and drinking. There is an empty space in the middle with a fire-pit that looks like it's used by entertainers - wrestlers, musicians, etc. The benches on either side are elevated on steps, sort of like bleachers, so everybody can see. Nobody is performing right now, though.

I see a group of 5 or 6 Tolkein-style Dwarves over to one side. They look like they're having a pretty good time. I approach them and introduce myself. Their leader is a pretty buff looking Dwarf. He has long, thick braided brown hair and is wearing a sort of heavy brown leather harness that has what looks like a lion's mane stitched around the neck and shoulders. He greets me respectfully:
"I am Lokmin, son of (I can't remember his dad's name)." He thumps his chest (which is more Roman, I guess, but whatever).
I hold out my treasure map. "I've found a map to potential treasure, but it might be dangerous."
The Dwarves deliberate over my wrinkled sheet of notebook paper, making sounds of interest and approval. Lokmin looks like he's about to make the decision to follow me...

But unfortunately, we never got to find the treasure. I live near an airport - one of the EXTREMELY LOUD jets that I LOATHE flies overhead, waking me up and ending my lucid dream. I was pretty upset. Even now there's another really loud jet flying overhead. I hate those things, and the airport by extension (it wasn't always noisy here - they moved the flight paths).

I go back to sleep, trying to re-enter the dream, but I'm too irritated to focus.


Dream #3 - I dream that I am taking naked photographs of myself using my laptop camera and didn't realize the curtain across the sliding glass door in the living room was sheer. I figure either nobody saw me, or they didn't care.

Aug. 7, 2003:
I woke up after what I know were most likely some pretty strange dreams, some of them about Lemmings, with a vague sense that something wasn't right. I still have that sense that something isn't right, but I can't put my finger on it. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, when my house is a smoldering pile of ashes or something. In the meantime, the Lemmings beckon.

Aug, 12, 2003:
I had a dream that I was a moogle, only I was some sort of strange, aquatic moogle. I basically spent a lot of time looking for treasure and bringing it back, particularly archaeological treasures that were impossible for other people to reach. I dreamed that I found this stash of rare pearls and stuff in a really ancient sunken ship. The catch to this was, even though I was aquatic and stuff, I was more like a penguin and a fish: I still had to breathe air. The wreck was perched on this really unstable shelf of rock, or something, and I was breathing pockets of air in the wreck, when something happened and it started sliding into the crevasse, so I had to make a split-second decision as to whether or not to take the treasure with me. I knew that people would probably exploit or wreck something so rare and beautiful, but I couldn't bring myself to leave it there, so I decided to bring it with and escape. I exited the room I was in, on the ship, and suddenly I was in some sort of little bedroom, and my aunt was there packing stuff up, to get it all out before the ship tumbled into the crevasse. She helped me pack the treasure, and then we escaped.

So then, the dream continued... God only knows why... and there was some sort of sorceress, or evil, or something, taking over the land, and there were a bunch of mages I hung out with at this academy and they were practicing their fly spell, only one of them flew off-course and was attacked by some higher level enemies, so we had to go and help him.

And then there was something about a big explosion and a matter-crunching/black hole sort of spell, and the apocalypse. There was lots of lava.

Original journal entry dated Sept. 26, 2002:

I had a strange dream about shoplifting toddlers who ran around in costume all the time. It was... strange. And there was a dog in it. I can't remember much about the dog.

I had this dream that this one guy who looked a lot like an animated version of Hero from "RPG World", was leading all of us ([college friends], and I) on this one journey to collect these mystical stones. Everything was going VERY badly. We had to go to this one underwater Atlantis-like city, which was actually the ancient ruins of some advanced civilization of aquatic druids, and we all got a specific treasure item that was neat-o cool. Except one of my friends lost hers, because we got into a battle and she didn't get a chance to pick it up before some stupid mage cast a spell that teleported us about 50 miles out into the ocean, where we may have subsequently drowned if not for a passing ship. Anyway, we completed that quest, but she never got her item. On the next quest we went on we had to pass through that area again so we went back to kick some mage ass (on principle) and get her item. It turned out to be a Stone Of Greater Discounting. It allowed her character to buy rare and expensive items at FAR below normal price.

I had another dream that I had a camcorder and was videotaping a train ride I went on through the Rockies when I was about 14. The train ride actually happened, but I've never owned a camcorder, and as far as I know, in real life mountains don't breathe.

Original journal entry dated Aug. 18, 2002:

I had a dream that I made out with Kermit the Frog (?!). I hope this doesn't indicate some sort of weird Muppet obsession on my part. And then he changed into somebody else.

Then, I was fighting these dragons that were attacking me, only I had to fight them with chi as well as with my sword, and they were REALLY powerful, and I killed the strongest one by chopping his head in half.