Night Vision

I’m walking down a dirt road at night in some rural-looking, semi-wooded place. It’s very dark, maybe lit only by the moonlight. A car is coming down the road, from the direction I’m headed. It stops nearby, and a woman opens the driver’s side door slightly and asks me whether I need a ride. I tell her no, I’m just out for a walk. She drives off, and I keep going.

I’m only going as far as the end of the fence before I turn back - a wooden one on my right - and I’m almost there now. Actually, I’m not surprised the woman stopped, since I’m carrying some pillows with me, and that probably made it seem like I wasn’t just out here because I want to be. Why am I carrying these things anyway? I’ve been doing it for a while this way, and it’s not like I’ve ever done anything with them. Maybe I should just leave them behind next time.

Then it’s as if the scenario repeats itself, but with changes. This was a dream from early in the night: I went to bed a little after midnight, and woke up to record everything around 2. Perhaps because of this, even though the setting seems fully realized, the dream is unusually full of sudden shifts - or else I’m unusually aware of them - and I’m also aware at times of other less imagistic mental content taking place simultaneously, influencing the dream from without. This time, there’s a restaurant by the side of the road that I walk past - one that’s clearly still open, as I can see and hear people out on the terraces. As I turn around, I see a man a little ways behind me. He explains that he just happened to be walking the same way, as if he’s reassuring me that he’s not actually some kind of creeper.

The scene shifts. I’m in a hallway full of closed doorways where moving shadows pass by me on their way from one end to the other. A sense of unease. Major liminal space vibes here.

After what feels like a short time, though, the setting changes again. I’m once again outside on a moonlit night, but this place has a different feel to it. Also, I’m now aware that I’m dreaming, although it isn’t clear what led to this realization. There’s still a sense at times of parallel mental content happening, including awareness of a dream plot being imposed, but there are also some short segments where I seem to be imagining how things play out before they actually do.

I walk. It feels somehow more like reality than like a lucid dream - that's how it strikes me at the time, anyway - and I’m fascinated by how detailed the mist looks - little swirls of it are constantly catching the moonlight, especially over a stream I pass by, where it’s thickest. After what feels like a few minutes, I reach a house - my destination. I knock loudly on the garage door, and there’s another sudden change of scene, to where I’m now inside the garage.

Until now, I’ve been following the “plot”. It just feels as if I should somehow. But the setting here has felt so unaccountably somber. There’s a heaviness to the atmosphere that’s getting to be a little oppressive, and by now it’s starting to bug me a little, so I yell out: “It’s-a me, Mario!” As loud as I can.

“Don’t say that,” a voice says from right next to me. “It makes me heartbroken.” I turn to my left and see a man standing beside me.

“Why?” I ask. His answer didn’t quite make sense to me. “Is your name Mario?” But he doesn’t answer me. He is completely absorbed in pouring himself a glass of amber-colored liquid from a bottle into a glass and then drinking it. I take a closer look at him. He’s a fairly young man, white with short, dark-colored hair and wearing a black leather jacket. I briefly wonder whether I modeled him after a character in a gangster movie or something.

The man is on his second glass when the door leading into the house opens. A woman is there, having heard me. She’s been expecting me and beckons for me to come in. I go, inviting the man to follow along as well.

Another sudden shift of scene. We’re sitting in a room, at a square table. Across from me is the woman: we’re talking about something, although I can’t remember any of the details now. Meanwhile the man, seated on the side to my left, seems oblivious to our conversation. His attention is focused on what looks like a primitive electronic toy of a sort that was around in the ‘90s, and maybe later too, but I really have no idea. It’s pastel blue, and it emits all kinds of little bleeps and blips as he presses buttons. He’s apparently trying to type something out but finding it rather hard going. I hear an awful lot of the two-quick-blips sound (I recognize the interval they make as a descending tritone) that indicates he’s using the backspace key.

And then I wake up.


19.12.24

I seem to be visiting my parents - maybe over the holidays or something like that. The dream is set late at night, in what is maybe supposed to be their house. It’s a condo that seems very beige and nondescript to the point of not really looking like a place where people live. More like a hotel room or something.

On this day every year, on which everything always happens exactly the same, I can see into the future. It’s all just there for me - the memories of how things will go. I try talking to them about it, my mother in particular, but although it doesn’t seem as if she actively disbelieves what I’m saying, it’s clear that she hasn’t really absorbed it, or considered the implications in any depth. I was talking to my father at some point, too - about being able to see the bad things that will happen to him, and to me as well, but already knowing saying it isn’t actually going to lead to anything. This apparently relates to dreams in a way that’s no longer clear - I actually use the phrase, “this dream I’m having right now” - although, somehow, I manage to do so without it triggering lucidity.

Later in the night, in another dream, I’m in what’s supposed to be my room. I’m digitizing a record - “Tomorrow Never Knows,” by the Beatles. The screen is on some kind of high shelf - too high up for me to be able to read it easily, which I find kind of annoying.

Partway through, my uncle comes in - maybe my uncle. It kind of seems like he’s my father in the dream, or some kind of half-invented composite figure. A number of people follow him in - seven or eight of them. They are apparently family, but also people I haven’t known for long, as if they’re in-laws or something of the sort. They are mostly male, and younger - the exception being the eldest of them, a teenage girl who comes in holding a small child.

My uncle apparently had something to tell me, and leaves after saying it. I’m surprised he didn’t take any notice of the device I have set up. It was his, after all - he just gave it to me because he wasn’t doing anything with it. The others all stick around, though, as if they’re curious and just don’t have anything better to do than watch what I’m doing.

9.12.24

I seem to be staying with a large group of people in a sort of vacation rental house. It’s late night, early morning, and having woken up, I’ve checked on the cats to make sure they’re still here, where they’re supposed to be. (I notice at some point that I’m not wearing pajamas, but an olive green cargo vest over a multicolor shirt, which strikes me as a little odd.) The cats are fine, but it looks like other people are up and about as well – the other young people there seem to be gathering together in an unused room, and there’s an atmosphere of anticipation, as if some spur-of-the-moment plan is being put together. I don’t really feel like going in to see what’s going on, though – I walk past to the bathroom down the hall.

After that, somebody actually comes along to invite me to join them, and there’s a jump to another location, this one outside, along a street of what seems vaguely like a small city. We’re near an ice cream vendor and his cart, and somebody has apparently managed to get a really good deal on a large quantity of ice cream. The man scoops different kinds out and hands it over to the people who are also out here now. An older man explains to me what’s going on: everybody is planning to travel together to Prague to see the Pablo Neruda museum. (This places the location firmly in Dream-Prague, as no such thing exists there, as far as I know.)

He has a picture of it, like a newspaper clipping in black and white showing the front of the building, which strikes me as familiar. There are four odd statues out front, roughly human-shaped. One seems to have a head the shape of a crescent moon. The man states that the museum is located in the Place of Right. This confuses me for just a second. Then I tell him that the name would probably be something more like “Law Square” or “Legal Plaza” translated into English. My memories of the place suggest that the association with the law comes from a former era and is not representative of the present-day location, that it’s located near the Mala Strana area (possibly by association with Nerudova Street) or a bit south of that, and that there’s a Gothic tower in the square as well as the museum.

All of us are in Croatia, and I’m not sure if I feel like traveling all the way to Prague, especially since I visited the museum relatively recently. But it would be an interesting experience in its own right, traveling there with all these people. And maybe they could use someone who knows their way around there. Somebody brings me a cup of ice cream, white with flecks of chocolate or cookies in it. I take it. I don’t really like ice cream that much, especially not first thing in the morning, but it would probably just sit there and melt if I refused.

-12.5.22

This was a dream that was only a hair’s breadth from being lucid – one of the dreams where I can’t be entirely sure that the only reason I didn’t realize it was a dream was that I was taking it for granted that it was one the whole time.

I start out standing on a grassy hill outside a very large house at night. A man is nearby – another dreamer. Together, we fly up and then over towards the house. I have to help him part of the way because he can’t get high enough, but we make it onto the roof and go inside.

I can’t remember much of the journey, which seemed somewhat reminiscent of a video game, and after a while, we reach a room with a bunch of other people. They're all dreamers, too. They’re chatting, messing around, having fun, but I have something more serious on my mind. First, though, I ask a woman to heal me, since I was injured by a monster on the way. (It isn't actually painful, still in line with video game logic.) I joke that I never got the hang of healing magic myself, but don’t mention I have a reason for not wanting to use too much of my energy right now. I go past them, up through a door in the ceiling.

Once again, I'm standing on the roof. It’s night out here too, but otherwise, it looks like a completely different place than the one I entered from. Almost close enough to touch is a tornado. It’s completely still though: it looks like it was sculpted out of some steely metal, frozen in place. I did this at some point in the past, freezing it in time, but it won’t be long now until it starts to unfreeze. I gauge its strength and determine that I won’t have trouble taking care of it before it unfreezes. But there’s another problem: the effect is already wearing off with some of the monsters around here, and I probably can’t take care of everything at once. I may have to get some of the others down below up here to fight them – but I don’t like that idea. They’d probably be happy to, but they’re relatively inexperienced, and I don’t want to get them into a potentially dangerous situation.

I start by taking out some of the smaller enemies with lightening – things like little wild pigs running around. Then I see that another monster is watching me – an enormous cyclops goat monster. I have the impression that he’s sad, like he’s taking it personally that he’s been unfrozen all this time and I haven’t even noticed.

This is maybe weird enough to wake me up.

20.5.21

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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