Night Vision

A classroom - another person and I are teachers there, but I’m aware the situation isn’t real without having identified it as a dream. Rather, I think of it as a story we’re making together. After some time eliciting answers from students on a certain topic, I think that we’ll need to pause and discuss making notes for each of them and their backstories as they become established.

There are some third-person scenes featuring the main character of possibly the same story. It’s like the beginning of a new plot arc. The dream shows an older mentor character with the two protagonists on a hill, a place they often go. Some kind of shadowy, inky blackness comes out of him and into them, and it’s shown heading from them onto a world map on a bulletin board. The blackness covers the entire map before gathering in a single spot that seems to be located approximately in the center of Texas. A pin moves to mark it, going all the way through the board. The protagonist girls are puzzled when they return and see it there. The board seems to be in one of their rooms.

1.3.25


I am in a large building with an industrial vibe, alone. I’m exploring this place in a deliberate way, almost as if it were a video game. There’s no sense of any immediate threat, or anybody or anything else around, but I’m still keeping a close eye on my surroundings.

At the end of a hallway, I find a sort of utility room behind a door, and a staircase to the right takes me upstairs, where there’s an electrical panel in a location directly above it. I examine the panel. I know I have to disarm the security system to get any further in, but it’s going to be tricky. Once I get started, I’ll only have a limited time to finish, and I’ll have to be going back and forth between here and the room downstairs. It’s already getting late, so I figure it'll be better to come back here tomorrow instead of trying to do it now.

5.3.25


A place similar to the one in yesterday’s dream - speaking with a man, something about him going to retrieve my body if I die there.

6.3.25


It is a foggy day, and I’m going to use it as an opportunity to sneak into the yard of the neighbor across the street and see what’s there. I’ve heard all kinds of weird rumors about it, and the area back there looks very interesting on my maps. (Why do I have maps, you might ask? That’s a very good question….)

It is a unique-to-dream setting, and I start by flying to the top of an extremely tall tree in the front yard. The branches are bare, as if it’s still early spring. I figure they’re less likely to see me if I enter like this, from above. I fly across and land in back of the house. From there, things get a little unclear - lots of conversations with strange beings that are back there. But there’s definitely something off about the whole place.

—

I’m on board a ship. I start out on the deck - I think there may also have been some parts before this - and go inside, where I almost immediately find the person I’m looking for, who seems to be loosely based on a musician I know but haven’t seen for more than a year now, J. We go back out, and I ask him about routes that we can take to our destination. We actually seem to be in a city waterway, so there are buildings and other ships visible around us.

J tells me about the first route, which seems to be through some kind of a narrow pass. He indicates the direction it’s in. Even before he starts describing the other, I know that’s the one we’ll be taking, even if it is almost certainly the more dangerous of the two. We’d have a tailwind all the way there - it’s too good to pass up.

14.3.25


I am in a grocery store - yet another one, with another unfamiliar layout. It isn’t all that familiar to me in the dream, either. I’m looking for some crumbled pecans for a recipe but am having trouble finding any. I check back again in the aisle that the entrance of the store led directly into, since that seems like the most likely place, but still no luck.

While this is going on, some employees of the store are trying to get everyone there to join them in singing sea shanties, apparently as some kind of obligatory fun somebody somewhere thought up. And they really seem to be enforcing participation, so I join in, but it’s distracting me from the pecan search, so I stop again to focus on that.

Eventually, I figure that they must just not have any pecans, so I get a bag of almonds instead, figuring those will also work.

21.3.25

A canyon-like setting, rocky with little vegetation. I’m seeing events play out in third person. A man called Xeno lives in a house there with his wife, and others live there as well. It seems as if they’re his students or something of the sort. He knows that the area is about to flood and that there aren’t enough people there to do the necessary work to keep the house safe, and so he raises a man from the dead to make a zombie to help. He talks with the man, who doesn’t look visibly dead and seems rather like a sleepwalker. At one point, the man says, “I like unimaginative nightmares.” I’m not sure if there was a context for this or not….

—

I’m standing in a long line outside of a restaurant, waiting to get in. For a long time, the line doesn’t move, and I’m just about ready to leave and go somewhere else, but then it does start moving - and pretty fast at that - and doesn’t stop, so that I’m inside just about as fast as I can walk.

Once inside, somebody I know calls me over to her table, and I sit down across from her. She indicates the table next to us, on the left - nobody is there now, but there are a couple shopping bags on the booth seating. She says that my Aunt O is sitting at that table, and they were talking earlier. She obviously has no idea that this is not something I’d be all that happy about. I wonder - should I warn her about some of the things she’s done to me and said about me to others? That doesn’t seem right, though - like I wouldn’t be giving my friend the chance to make her own first impression.

The dream changes to a view of a line drawing, kind of like a manga page but not really in the right kind of art style, showing a full-body picture of smiling woman. The title of the book was: Love Brings Us Home.


22.1.25

I’m in a school, waiting for a colleague to arrive. He’s supposed to be here subbing for the person I’d usually be working with. I’ve never met him before, and all I know about him is that his name is Rishab.

Through the end-of-school-day crowds, I see a dark-skinned young man wearing what I can tell even from a distance is one of the bright green company t-shirts. I wave at him, trying to get his attention. He sees and comes over to me, and I tell him to follow me to the room where we need to set up.

I realize that we’re going to go right past where my Aunt B is, so I stop to check on her. She’s been here for a while - I couldn’t get her to go lie down. I say something to her, but she just sits there staring and doesn’t answer. I am concerned - so is Rishab, and a couple others who are in the room.

1.2.25


Part of a longer dream. I’m in a school, walking students to the door to meet their parents alongside someone else. Mostly notable in that, at one point, the perspective switches to that other person, so I can briefly see myself from behind. I’m wearing black cotton trousers, a pink tank top, and a black cap - all modeled off of clothing I actually have, although I wouldn’t ordinarily be wearing it to work - and my hair is in a braid down my back. It switches back and stays that way for the rest of the dream, as far as I remember. A student’s mother is already there at the door waiting for her. One of them is called Britney, although I can’t remember now whether it was the mother or the student….

—

I’m in a grocery store, or something that’s supposed to be one. It really seems more like an outdoor market that just happens to be inside, if that makes sense. Various things happen which may or may not have been interesting, but at some point I become aware that I’m dreaming. Possibly before I get into a conversation with a man there, although I think this is one of those cases where the realization didn’t happen all at once.

He was the one who started the conversation with me, I’m pretty sure. A heavyset man, maybe in his 40s or 50s, with dark skin - so black it’s almost bluish. I don’t remember exactly what he was wearing - just an impression of bright colors and complexity.

He expresses concern about me. (This may have had some connection to the dream, but definitely had a foundation in waking life, as I’d probably spent most of the night trying to find a sleeping position that didn’t hurt to lie in. Kind of a long story, but it boils down to a bad reaction to a food additive combining with chronic back issues and developing into neck and shoulder pain. So no, it hasn’t been a good week.) I tell him it’s no big deal. I’m not going to let it get to me, and I know I’ll be feeling a lot better if I can just get out to dance this weekend. He seems skeptical that it could really be that significant, saying something about people just going out now and then for a night dancing to top-40 stuff. I reply that maybe that’s how it is some places, for some people - maybe even the way it is for most people, for all I know - but that’s a totally different world from the one I’m familiar with. And I have no idea what’s even in the top 40 now, and I bet that’s probably true for most people over 30. He laughs, as if to say that, yeah, I’ve got him there.

From there, the conversation turns to the Grammys, and in an oblique dream logic move to award shows in general, which I profess to be meaningless. He agrees overall, but adds that there are exceptions - he mentions actors who fit their roles so well that from that point on, people don’t think about them apart from the role. This strikes the by now definitely lucid me as having some special significance that I ought to make a point of remembering.

At some point we get up from where we’re sitting and part ways. I walk around, just looking at my surroundings, and I soon find myself in a relatively open area, where I spend a couple minutes just messing around, running and jumping higher and longer than a person could do outside of a dream. But then I decide I’d really rather go somewhere else and walk through a wall. Usually I just go straight through them, but this one turns out to have kind of a gooey texture, a little like raw bread dough, and so I have to push my way through.

I find myself in utter darkness on the other side. But I know what to do in a situation like this: just keep on going, and keep my other senses as engaged as possible. I walk. The air is a little cold here, and I feel cold water around my feet, which becomes deeper as I go. I sing the first thing that comes to mind, which happens to be:


Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again.


Lyrics appear out of the darkness - not in space, but in my mind’s eye, which just happens to be indistinguishable from it right now. They appear one line at a time, spelled out in large letters in a vivid orange, and I treat them kind of as a karaoke prompt - although I only realized after waking up that what appeared weren’t the actual lyrics, and by then I could no longer remember anything specific about them. Waking up to a body in pain definitely does not help with dream recall.

Eventually, I can see my surroundings again. I’m now in a corridor with an industrial back area feel to it. No windows - only metal doors in metal walls. I walk along and push open a door that’s already ajar. The room inside has tables set up in a horseshoe shape like an office boardroom, although it looks like some kind of storage room otherwise, and isn’t quite big enough to fit the tables comfortably. A couple people are sitting there. One of them tells me that I’m not allowed in there. Fair enough - I continue down the hallway and try another door.

This one appears to be a classroom - there’s a long whiteboard along one wall with writing and drawings in black marker all over it, although, similar to the other room, it looks more like some kind of storage space that just happens to be set up as a classroom. Students are seated on the floor facing the board, and there are a number of free-standing shelves on the other side of the room, which is much larger than the first one. I notice a drawing on the board showing an octave’s worth of piano keys. Maybe this is some kind of music class - this could be interesting. I ask one of the men who seem to be teachers there if I can sit in on it, and he says yes, so I go in.

I take a closer look at the shelves, as it looks like they’re not quite ready to start the lesson just yet. It occurs to me that it could be a good idea to have something to make notes with, so I make a pencil materialize, but before I can do a notebook as well, the lecture begins, so I go over to where the students are to sit down. I wake up soon after that, though.

6.2.24

I’m driving to a grocery store with my mother. Not clear what the context is, as the environment seems entirely unfamiliar. I park the car, and in response to something my mother said, I get her a black cardigan (maybe the wrong name for it - I never know what to call articles of clothing….) that just seems to be kicking around somewhere in the backseat so that she won’t be cold inside. We go in.

We are immediately confronted by almost bare shelves. Uh-oh. Maybe this wasn’t the best day to come here. We might have trouble finding what we’re looking for today. But most of the store isn’t quite that bad.

At some point, we split up. The store seems to be divided into distinct sections, with different kinds of food in each, and I walk through a couple of them before I hear something strange. There’s music playing, but the melody is just one note, played in a rhythm over the changing chords. I see where it’s coming from: it’s something like an arcade game, although it seems to be specifically set up for music creation. Beside it are two women. One is a frail-looking older woman, who I think was in a wheelchair, and the other looks like she may be some kind of medical attendant. She’s the one who’s tapping out the single note over what I gather the older woman has made on the machine, apparently to help out in some way.

How I can tactfully step in and take over, since the attendant obviously has no idea what she’s doing? I can already imagine the melody I’d improvise - a simple one that keeps the rhythm she’s tapping out, but with a better fitting, musical shape. I wake up and immediately record what I remember:



(I put chord indications in, but I’m actually not 100% sure of anything except the cadence. For the rest, I just picked out the simplest chords that would match what I remember of where the repeated note was clashing and what I intended to do to fix it. It’s not all that interesting of a musical fragment, but the simplicity did make it relatively easy to transcribe after awakening.)

16.12.24

I’m an observer watching a scene unfold on a boat—but really, it’s more that I’m looking at it and the people on deck while being aware of the situation playing out there in a more abstract way. There are some documents I need for traveling on this boat, and I’m not sure if I have them or if I need to go through some process to get them.

The scene shifts—I’m now exiting a bus. But instead of winding up outside as I had expected, I’ve simply stepped onto another bus. I quickly take a seat behind the two women who entered ahead of me and wonder where this one is going to take me.

The scene shifts again—this time, I’m waking up in the back of a car my parents are driving. It feels as if I’m younger in this one. We’ve just stopped by a building I recognize as the one where my father’s workshop is. That means we’re not far from home now. I fall back asleep.

The scene shifts yet again—this time, I’m in a grocery store. And this time, I know it’s a dream, although I still seem to think the last bit with the car was waking reality. I think it would be best if I sleep for the remainder of the trip, and so that means making sure this dream lasts.

I look around. There don’t seem to be anyone here but me. It's reminiscent of the specialty grocer’s down the street from my old flat on Svornosti. That means there should be a counter over in the corner where I can get some coffee.

I go over and find the counter is there, and that there’s somebody behind it. There’s nothing displaying prices, so I just put down three bills, possibly dollars, which seems like a more than fair price. But the woman tells me I have to make the coffee myself using the machine there. It’s an odd contraption, like no coffee maker I’ve ever used, but after messing around for it a bit, I get it to pour some coffee out - Turkish style, with the grounds at the bottom. I drink it. This isn’t a conscious attempt at stabilization, I don’t think—just something that struck me as a pretty good idea—but it may have had that effect, as it’s normally hard for me to stay asleep so late in the morning.

I consider where to go from here. Perhaps home, where the car was headed—only I have no idea where I am right now. But if I fly, perhaps I’ll see some familiar landmark from the air and be able to find my way from there. And to fly, I’ll need a high place to launch from—so it looks like I’m headed to the roof.

In the meantime, I’ve noticed six or seven wolves between two shelves on the upper story, which is a sort of balcony over one half of the store. They all trot off in a single direction as I watch. Are they coming after me? But I wasn’t planning on sticking around here in any case. I climb a shelf and phase through the ceiling.

I now find myself in a room lit by a warm light. A long mahogany table laid with bright red dishes is some distance off—set for an elaborate meal, it looks like. It's quite pretty. I continue on my way, climbing another shelf and jumping through the ceiling.

This time I’m in an attic-like room near a big calico cat that, in typical feline fashion, seems entirely unimpressed by my unusual method of transportation. But it’s about then that I wake up.

I also wake up remembering something else—not something I heard, but words that seemed to be impressed on my mind. It went something like: “Use the gifts you’ve been given, human.” I don’t know who said it—perhaps it was the cat?—but it seemed somehow independent from the rest of the dream, like it was taking place on a different level. Good advice, in any case.

12.4.18 - (Happy Lucid Dreaming Day, everyone!)

A meeting is taking place beside a river between a knight and a woman. His name is Gawain. Her name is Lotus. It seems like the beginning of a relationship between them. But she can see into the future, and she knows that one day, he will kill her. And yet, she doesn't attempt to break things off.

I am seeing things from his perspective and from hers, and also from somewhere outside of it, where I don’t like the way things are going. And so I pull the scene apart, untangling all the little mental streams that are contributing to it and recombining them into three separate bundles. It will be easier to work with this way, I figure. Now I am in the kitchen of my old house in M--- with my mother, preparing a meal. I’m making the salads. But as I tear the lettuce into smaller pieces, I can still see the river there, and a little point of red light shining in the grass beside it. It’s easy to see and easy to avoid, but it still makes me uneasy.

In a different dream, I’m in a grocery store, although the building seems to be serving multiple functions. I’m there shopping with Saimi’s little sister, who seems to be around seven years old. After a while, I figure I’ll let her take care of a few things. She gets to do something all on her own, I get to read for a little bit—it seems like a pretty good arrangement. I tell her to pick out some plums—maybe three, whatever kind looks nice—and I sit down at a table there with my book of Rilke’s poetry, which I apparently have with me. She goes off and comes back a few minutes later with a single plum in a plastic bag. She places it on the table and then leaves again. A few minutes later, she’s back with another plum in a bag. Kids. You know there’s got to be some sort of weird logic behind this.

But now something else seems to be happening: there’s going to be a horse race here, inside the building, and Saimi’s little sister is participating, along with three other people. But the horse she’s on is a rather strange one: it seems to be made of some embroidered red material with yellow patterns in it, while still behaving like a living horse. But the race doesn’t begin immediately, and I awaken before it actually takes place.

I can’t remember how the dream began, which means that I can’t be sure whether I had realized I was dreaming and decided to fly around for a while or whether I had somehow realized that I could fly and stabilize my surroundings but not the full implications of it. But either way, that’s what I ended up doing.

It seems to be early evening, and I’m on a street where all the buildings are lit up with small, multicolored lights. The street is steep and winding—a little reminiscent of Nerudova Street in its topography and architecture—and it has a vibrant and exciting atmosphere, as if it’s a Saturday night and this is the place to go on a Saturday night.


(Click to enlarge (because I can't figure out how to make it bigger here))

I fly all the way up the street and then turn around and fly back down again. But it doesn’t feel quite as real as I know it could be. I focus harder, and I imagine hearing music as I fly along, and that seems to help—this time, it feels as if I’m actually there. I fly back again, and this time I try it while spinning around—something I’ve never done before. It turns out to be a lot of fun, seeing the ground change places with the sky.

Sometime later—in another dream, probably—I'm on a bus on some kind of a trip. I’m with a large group—many young children, some teenagers and a couple adults. There are also some children and teens there who are exchange students from another country. I have the impression this is a trip for the kids, and the teens and I—not sure of my age in the dream—are there to help out with it.

At some point, we make a stop at a large grocery store—the sort that’s often still open in the middle of the night, which it seems to be now. A group of us, including me, goes in. But a woman—maybe the person in charge—asks me if I could take the dog outside for a bit so she can have a chance to burn off some energy before we’re back on the bus. She has the dog there—a big, black dog, female, I think. I agree to it.

Once in front of the store, the dog goes sprinting off in a big loop, eventually coming back around to me. She immediately runs off again, and this time she returns carrying a stick in her mouth. Looks like we’re going to be playing fetch. But just then, I hear barking coming off from to my left. Two smaller dogs are there—neither one on a leash, I note—and the one that looks like a half-size pit bull is barking up a storm. I am instantly on alert: I have seen scenarios like this one end with furniture being toppled. But the black dog is not acting threatened or aggressive, and so it seems unlikely that a fight’s going to break out. I have a vague impression of the dogs’ owner nearby—but just then, my alarm wakes me.

8.2.18

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