One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

...but I didn't write it down. Shame on me. I vaguely recall that it felt like I was repeating a previous dream. In the lucid dream, I was explaining to a DC that I had had this dream before and I knew what would happen next. That went on for a while. Then I took control, changed the scene and had some dream sex. It felt like at least 45 minutes total. When the dream finally ended, I was left in SP for several minutes. It wasn't uncomfortable. It felt interesting.

I haven't written in my dream journal in several months but I'm trying now to get back into the habit.

Magazine, Polar Bear
I'm with my sister and I think my mother. We are at a zoo, but the style of the architecture is like a Japanese monastery alongside a quiet brook and a wooden bridge. We are writing an article about the zoo for a magazine. I remember the image of arranging blocks of text and pictures on a white template.

Then we are looking at the polar bear and I admire how it's fur looks when it's all wet. But then the bear sees me and gets angry. He leaps over the railing of his pen and starts chasing me. I turn and run along the brook to the bridge and across. I feel that if I can just get across the bridge and over one more fence that I will be safe.

Then the bear chase scene repeats twice more. The last time, the bridge looks different and I am confused that I am going the wrong way.

I woke up pretty frightened. Just a dream.... Just a dream.... I couldn't get back to sleep. After about an hour of failing I got up and read for a bit. Eventually got back to sleep, not sure when.

Lucid, Can't Move
I start with a false awakening. It's quite dark. I look down toward my feet and see my room looks very different from what it should. I am confused, I try to think where I am and what time it is. I realize I am dreaming but without much clarity. I concentrate on my body for a moment as I prepare to move. I am afraid I am feeling my physical body and if I move I will wake up. I try to push that thought out of my mind and just do it. I try to sit up but instead hover and tumble as if weightless in outer space. My body just drifts through the air; I am paralyzed and can move my limbs or neck.

I drift through the room toward the door. I try to observe the place but it's very dark and unclear. As I float through the door and then the ceiling and walls, the scene seems to change, but always a dark room cluttered with unidentifiable objects. In one room, it seems to be a dark night club and I think I see people but they are all frozen and don't move.

After about a minute of this, I sense that I am not just floating but rather that someone is holding me and guiding me along. I speak weakly "Who?". Then with more confidence in my voice, I say more clearly "Who is holding me?" I try to turn my head to look but can't hardly. I start to be become unnerved and force myself to wake up.

Lucid, Come Fly With Me
I begin again with a false awakening. It is similar to the previous dream: a dark room that seems somewhat like my real bedroom but unfamiliar. This time, I hear my mother's voice from the next room. She's saying something about missing the bathroom. I think, wait, do I live with my mother? I have to think about that one real hard. No, I don't. This is a dream.

I sit up in bed and the dream is quiet unstable. My mother enters the room. I get up and walk towards her but she gets pulled back and disappears in the void. I turn toward the bathroom, I suppose instinctively as something I do when I wake up. I hear another voice. Not my mother. It sounds like a younger girl. I turn back to the door to look at her and I see faintly a pretty girl with brown hair. She's half invisible and the whole dream is still quite unstable. I walk toward and reach for her but she's floating away. It's like she's just an image on my retina that don't get closer as I move. I follow the image of her through several doors and hallways. Her image morphs and fades in and out.

I slow down, I try to focus. I stop walking and just look at my surroundings. Things become clearer and the girl in front of me becomes solid. I grab her hand and say "Hi, you're so beautiful." I lead her through another door and we are outside. It's sunny, though we are in the shadow of the building we just exited. It seems like a garden-style condo complex. I lead the girl toward the sunlight, not sure where I am going. As we pass a doorway, I spot another person peeking out the door. It's another girl, this one blonde and with a bright blue dress. I take her hand and lead both girls out to the edge of the building where there are some trees. I turn back and look at the girls. They are both very pretty. I see now that the first is wearing a red dress under a leather jacket. They have earrings and make up and handbags. They look sharp.

Without really thinking, I climb the tree and use it to get on the roof. I help the girls up as well. I want to fly and I want them to fly with me. They don't seem convinced that they can. I try to explain that they can. I'm not sure exactly what I said.

Then my recall skips. I think maybe I flew away alone and landed elsewhere. I can begin to recall again being in a different part outside of the condos. The sun is vividly bright. Looking down at the white sidewalk makes my eyes strain. I look up and see yet another girl. This one with a bright magenta dress. Looking at it too makes my eyes hurt. I walk closer to her to get a look at her face. Then everything fades away and I wake up.

Restful, but light sleep this night with many short interrupted dreams. The lucids are barely worth counting. I'm giving myself credit for at least recognizing some dreamsigns that made me lucid.

Food and Robots
0523 C. Hazy and jumpy. Two girls are competing for my attention. We are in a two story house. I'm resting on the couch on the first floor watching a boy singer who might be a robot. One girl is on the first floor and the other on the second. They are both cooking things for me. One cooks a steak but it looks like a big raw beef roast. Around it she puts a bunch of small Philly-style cheesesteak sandwiches. The other girl made something too but the first girl blocked her from showing me. I go to the bathroom and I think the second girl meets me in there to tries to tell me something. Something about the cartoon charactor Lisa Simpson. Maybe she is Lisa. Then the boy robot singer starts singing again but he's terrible. The first girls is upset about this: "Did you reset the game back to beginning?!"

Meanwhile, I recall cut scenes in between my plot to a different character. It's a guy pretending to be a robot. He's dressed a bit like the Tinman from Wizard of Oz but really skinny. He's trying to blend in with other robots that all look that same. The robots greet him in a robotic voice (think the infantry droids from Star Wars) saying "Left-hand side of you." To which he is supposed to salute his right arm across to his left side. Then "Right-hand side of you" and salute with other arm. The pretend robot catches on to this greeting and fools the other robots. At one point he is drinking from a water fountain. I sense he is my friend.

untitled
0654 D. Short dream. Not sure what to make of my notes: I'm baking a special bread that will make me lucid. Carry inside my body? The Simpsons.

WBTB+MILD 10 minutes

untitled
0748: D. I'm Homer Simpson and I'm practicing MILD. I go into a dream world with simple geometric-shaped objects like Tron. I'm being chased by men in suits with pistols like the agents from The Matrix. I can stop their bullets just like Neo.

Trouble sleeping, turned it into a WBTB+meditation and reading DV for about an hour total

False Awakening Chain
1018 C. This was about 20 minutes of false awakenings. In my own room. I can see through my sleep mask. I see my desk and alarm clock in the wrong place across the room. I'm lucid but can barely move my arms and legs. I manage to sit up in bed. At this point IWL, the garbage truck shows up and makes a loud banging noise about every five minutes. Each time, this either wakes me up or triggers an FA. Some times I could move my arms to nose-plug and I was awake. Other times I couldn't move my arms. I'm unsure how many times it happened but I recall a couple more lucid periods.

False awakening. I can see but the view is dark and blurry. I sense a small dog jump on my bed to my left. He gets close to my face and I can feel the heat of his breath. I can't move to look at him. I'm just trying to be patient for the scene to solidify. The dog starts growling. Interrupted by noise.

False awakening. I'm laying on my back and can't move my body. I can tilt my head down and look at my body. My view looks like an X-ray image highlighted with electric blue. A blue line extends along my body like my spine but continues all the way down to between my feet.

Eventually, I reach a real wakening and give up on this futile chain so I can note it in my journal.

False Awakening, Dreamsign
1044: C. Another false awakening. I can see through my sleep mask. I notice my bedroom door is open when it shouldn't be. I hear my roommate in the next room, whisking eggs I think. I can't move.

untitled
1000: F. I recalled this dream after/inside the dream that followed it all I remember is a fragment. A blond man?

Doomsday Program, Customer Complaint
1114: D. Really jumping with very short and fast scene cuts. I'm at work. I woman comes in and tells me I have to get out fast. It's like near the beginning of The Matrix when Neo needs to sneak out of his office. The woman leads me to a car and I'm driving. We are chased by some bad guys. I tell her to reach in the back seat and grab a special cell phone. I tell her to dial a special sequence of numbers. She does and it activates a doomsday program. We are on a bridge over water and parts of it collapse but the section we are on is intact. Buildings around in the distance all blow up and collapse. The bad guy car can't follow us but we're stuck on this section of bridge.

Cut to what feels like a ransom exchange with the bad guys. I hand a guy a brief case. He looks like Andy Garcia's character in Ocean's Eleven. He hands it to another guy who then runs along a the bridge cable but there's no bridge.

Cut to a big warehouse building with a dirt floor. I have my shirt off and I'm fighting the bad guys gladiator style. One of them is still the Andy Garcia character.

Cut back to me at work. I'm dozing on a couch in the kitchen (not real IWL). I keep thinking of the previous dream about the blond man. I'm trying to keep it in my mind so I can recall it later. I look up at the bulletin board and see a red poster with a very angry customer support email complaint on it. Something about a guy who lost his credits after they went over 4000. I ask, "Hey, has anyone looked into this?" A co-worker (IWL he's just an artist) gets angry at me. He says it would be so easy to look up the guy's account and he describes the few keystrokes that it would take. But he says he knows it's probably just a fraudulent claim and it's a waste of time. He's angry at me because he thinks I care too much and it's a waste of time. I'm taken aback my this.

Stove Fire
0424: C. This was early in the night and my notes aren't clear. Talking to a family of Italians in a kitchen. We're talking about food. One guy is sitting on the edge of the stove even while all four gas burners are lit, each cooking a small pizza. I try to warn him that he should move to another seat. Sister walks away very upset. He brags that a 9-inch pizza is 5 pounds of food. His clothes catch fire. Everyone is yelling at him to move but he seems paralyzed. Father puts out the fire with a fire extinguisher. Sister comes back with an "I told you so" attitude.

Backyard Ninjas
1100: A! Last sleep cycle of the night after 30 minute WBTB with MILD auto-suggestion. This might have been an unintentional WILD because of how the dream started. My plan was to practice teleporting, but I went off the script.

I start in bed, trying to fall asleep. I don't really know if I was really awake or dreaming INRA. Either way, I open my eyes and can see something through my sleep mask. I can still feel it around my head but it's like a hole is cut in it and I can see a blurry scene of what looks like a grand piano from far away. Now I know I must be dreaming but I still feel like I'm in my physical body. I'm not in the scene, I'm just seeing it without a dream body. So I just stay calm and don't try to move or control anything. I just watch what's happening in the scene and gently suggest that the "camera" move and zoom in. Gradually, the scene starts to look like a room with sunlight coming in a sliding glass door. This reminds me of the Daisetta house.

Then, WHAM!, I'm in the scene with my dream body. I'm not sure if this was a sudden change or a gap in my memory. It's the most vivid lucid I've had in a while. I phase through the glass door and out into the backyard which is a fairly faithful recreation of my true memory. There's a swimming pool, a concrete patio, a patio table with a giant umbrella and steep incline of dirt. The yard is surrounded by a tall fence and trees. I just look around a appreciate the vividness for about a minute. It's so calm and peaceful that the dream starts to destabilize and I wake up.

I remain still in bed to DEILD back. I imagine myself spinning in the same scene. And I'm back in the same spot. Phew. I figure I'd better do something but I forgot my plan so I think of any random task from my list. First task, I run and skip across the surface of the pool water with ease. I'm thinking of what to do next but my memory and vividness aren't as good as before. I figure I should stabilize a bit. I see a long garden rake laying on the patio table. I reach to grab the handle but I can't move my arms! I don't panic. I spin and recover my arms. I rub my hand and then grab the rake. All this improves the stability and I decided I'll just do something silly and fun.

I hold the rake like a bowstaff and assume a fighting posture. I suggest to myself, "Uh-oh... ninjas!" I look around and see four ninjas perched on the tress and fence around the yard. They are all in black with hoods and black sunglasses. The pounce off their perches to attack me with short swords. I fend them off with my rake and fight back for a few minutes. Eventually, all four are beaten and laying on the ground. I walk up to one, and snap his neck. Blood flows from his nostrils.

I walk up to another and realize it's a woman. I instinctively tear off her clothes. But I realize that I'm losing control and this will end the dream. I stop myself, stand up, and turn away. I'm now in the side yard and I can see a glimpse of the rest of the neighborhood toward the street. I think of all the houses with their doors and I'm reminded of the lucid dream from the night before. I begin to remember that my plan for today was to practice teleporting through doors. But before I can move, the dream fades away.

Two LDs, but hardly impressive. I didn't sleep well so I don't think I could have stabilized these tiny dreams.

But before all that, I once again practiced the daydream while trying to fall sleep. I'm going to make it a part of my regular routine so I'll note it in my journal in green. It's neat that I can recall the daydreams without any written notes. Wow, it's long. This is more like me writing a short story than a dream. If you're just looking for the actual dreams, skip down to the bottom.

Daydream: I'm running down a dark tunnel like a railroad tunnel with a light at the end. I'm going to search for the portal to the dream world, but first I'm going to look for that little town that I was in last night. As I'm running, I wonder what to call this place between the physical world and the dream world. But instead of picking a name, I decide I'll ask someone when I get there.

In the tunnel, a giant spider blocks my way. I'm afraid but I decide to face the fear. I try to talk to him and befriend him. I even pet him. I know that he's not a monster. He is a guardian, protecting me from entering a place I'm not yet ready for. It's the place that is dangerous, not the guardian. When I have faced my fear, I will be ready and the guardian will let me pass. The spider is friendly and lets me past. He will help me again in the future.

I emerge from the tunnel into a sunny valley with a quaint Renaissance-era town with cobblestone streets and houses. I imagine it looks like France and many of the people have French accents. I want to find Juliette and Marie again so we can all go to the dream world together. In the center of the town is a church. I go in and ask a nun where Juliette and Marie are. She says Marie lives across the street. I enter Marie's house and she's alone. I ask where Juliette is. Marie is worried. Juliette has gone missing. I say we'll find her. I grab Marie and jump high above the city. Marie points out Juliette's house and we swoop down. Inside we find Juliette's mother. She is upset. She says Juliette left alone to look for the portal. The mother is angry at me because I was the one that told people about the dream world. I promise I will find Juliette and bring her back. "Which direction would she have gone?" "East," the mother says, "toward the rising sun."

Marie and I head east and talk along the way. She tells me the name of this place is Never. It's a small town in the middle of a varied, realistic landscape. She says it's always been here. Apparently, nothing changes and people don't grow old. Kids go to school to learn Nothing. Marie and Juliette don't go to school, they are a few years older than that. No one has ever left. Juliette was the first one to try to leave. I ask, "What is east of Never?" She says, "The forest, and beyond it the mountains."

We reach the edge of the forest. It's a dark and foreboding woodland forest like one would see in Europe. Marie is afraid but I reassure her that everything will be okay. The giant spider returns. Marie is terrified but I try to stay calm and talk to the spider. I explain the situation and ask for his help. He gives me a rope made of his silk. He tells me to tie the rope to a tree at the forest edge. I can follow the rope back out of the forest so I won't get lost. Brilliant!

I turn around and Marie is happy and has a basket full of muffins. I eat one and it's delicious. I ask where and how she got freshly baked muffins. She says she's the daughter of the town baker and she can bake anything out of anything. She says Juliette is the daughter of the blacksmith and make any tool. She doesn't seem to think these magical powers are unusual.

We walk through the forest, trying to find paths and signs that Juliette would also have followed. We meet a large sparrow and I try to talk with him to ask for help. He doesn't speak, but he comes with us perched on my arm. We come upon areas of bright yellow light that teleport us to other parts of the forest. I check the rope and it's still taught, so I trust it will still lead the way out. Marie and I stop to rest and lo and behold Juliette finds us. We are relieved and follow the rope out of the forest and then walk back to town.

Me, J, and M try to think where the dream portal could me. They really want to know about the dream world and also the physical world. I become aware of physical body and I feel like I'm being pulled out of Never. Eventually I let go come back to the physical world, still awake.

0005: C. My notes are mostly illegible. I remember it being a robust dream but all I can decipher from my notes is this: Hugh, Dave, and I ... Star Trek. Dave ... beer ... has a character like Captain Picard ... They introduce themselves. One girl is a comedian and this intrigues me.

0637: D. I'm in bed and it's dark. I think I have a laptop. I hear Linkin Park music. I'm typing in "laser" to a web browser to search. But I keep spelling it wrong. Then I think I've got it right but the browser shows an error page. I think it's because I spelled it wrong. But I realize it's an internet connection problem. I think, maybe Hugh pulled the plug? Why would he do that? I start to get out of bed when suddenly I'm being dragged out of bed by the wire on my headphones. I'm pulled toward the desk in my room, defying gravity. Ugh. I'm dreaming. But these are hardly good conditions. I'm being ripped through the air by my ears in great pain and darkness. "Stabilize!" No luck. Dream ends abruptly.

0740: D. I'm in bed (again) lying on my right side. I open my eyes and the view is distorted. It's like the picture is being sucked into a vortex somewhere to the upper left. I realize I'm dreaming (again) but these aren't good conditions (again). "Stabilize!" I rub my left hand across the mattress sheet to get some tactile sensation. Dream ends abruptly.

No recall in the first half of the night on account of alcohol. Woke up and was anxious about stuff. Wrote in my journal for a while and watched a movie. Went back to bed, tried to WILD for about an hour. Got really close but eventually gave up. Turned on my side and spent another hour trying to sleep.

1028: D. My eyes are closed and I'm listening to Lance talk. He says, "Sumit isn't taking the union very seriously." I mutter something about not caring. He continues, "What, you don't support the trinity in India?"

I open my eyes. I'm lying on a bed in what looks like a college dorm room with a couple other beds and furniture. There's a window behind me with morning sunlight shining dimly through. The door is at the far end of the room. I don't see anyone. I'm lying on my stomach, propped up on my elbows. I think about what Lance said. What union? What is this "trinity" he's talking about? How did we get on this topic of conversation? Wait, how did I get here? Wasn't I just trying to sleep? I think I'm dreaming.

I think to do a nose plug but my arms don't move. Hmm, strange. I look down at my hands and intent to to rub them. My arms are paralyzed! They are stiff with my wrists together as if in handcuffs. My fingers are interlocked. With great effort I think I manage to barely wiggle a finger. I panic. Dreams starts to fade. Damn it, no! My mind scrambles. As my view goes black I manage to yell "Stabilize!". But it's too late. End.

On waking up, I was lying on my side. I noticed this as unusual because I almost always wake up on my back. I had one arm under the pillow and the other pinned under my body. It seems plausible that the position of my real body was affecting my dream body. I remained still for several seconds, hoping to re-enter. But I could feel I was too awake because I was upset about the botched dream.