The Oneironaut's Odyssey

Dream
I'm watching TV and it's a news channel reporting on a man who does tourist boat rides down a New Zealand river. He seems to be a bit 'out-of-control' because the boat is skimming against the rocky cliff on one side. He then rams the boat into a rockface, though I'd have expected more of an impact so I thought he put the brakes on or something..

Next thing I know, I'm at the location and the story has progressed. He is wading the water, I'm with a news team and we're watching him as he struggles to dislodge his foot which is stuck. He gets free and continues walking off towards and orange life jacket that's wedged between a crack in the rockwall. Apparently that's why he was driving crazily as he was searching for it. Pretty dumb reason.
I'm kind of the camera in a sense, so what I'm seeing is being conveyed back to the TV. I look down and see HUGE eel heads, there's heaps of them poking their heads out of the rocks in the water. It's incredible because it's a species that is endangered (shortfin silver eel or something)... I hop out of the water immediately, kind of shocked and grateful they didn't bite me. I hear some kind of news person talking into a camera about how we're at the site for the siting of the worlds first fresh water kangaroo. Yes.. FRESH WATER KANGEROO. What the hell? I turn to see a funny looking kangaroo doing a severely retarded paddle-jump through the water. Huh, guess it must be true. I then spot a few more kangaroos, but they all look like different species. Why are there so many different mutations in kangaroos occurring? But then my brain completely tricked me because the next time I look around there's a bunch of mutated seals. I didn't even notice the swap. There's a 4 eyed alien looking seal staring at me.. There's one that looks like it has the face of an asian. Then there's also one that looked almost exactly like a dog which barked at me, I ran away and it chased me. I then decided maybe it wanted me to pet it so I reached out, but someone nearby who had a real dog said that it was a seal and that I shouldn't pet it. I reeled my hands back as she said this, I see my hands in front of my face. Hmmm.. I'm dreaming aren't I? I do a reality check by pushing my finger through the palm of my right hand, it stretches through.

I'm in my room now, definitely dreaming. But this isn't my current room, it's my room from when I was a little kid with a few differences (colour of the room, bed positioning, bedside table and general room content). The dream starts to go dark, fuck. I better stabilize. I make huge force of willpower by straining my brain to hold the dream stable. It's like I was trying to forcibly shut off whatever mechanism causes you to wake up and it only managed to slow down the darkening. As I'm doing this I know it won't work for long and that I needed another course of action to follow it up with, something to restabilize the dream as it wasn't enough to just stay asleep. I decide to 'relax' and release the tension, the world must have been shaking before because everything seemed still all of a sudden. The room got a little bit lighter and less grainy. I look at the bedside table and see a mirror, except inside the mirror is a brighter room. I walk over, pick it up, and then push myself through head first. Half of me from the waist up is in this newer, brighter version of my room, the mirror is caught on my jeans. Damn it. I kind of convince the dream that this didn't happen and climbed into the room properly. Phew. My clothes are inside out though, and the room has a sort of inverted appearance, but the exit and windows are all in their normal places. I should probably do something... I decide to do the waterball challenge me and my dream buddy Emnition are trying. Man this is a long lucid. It feels like a very down-to-earth lucid, as if bending physics would be quite hard unless I did some tricky stuff. I try anyways, I cup my hands in the air as if to summon the water into a ball. I'm facing the open doorway at this point and the background kind of throws me off.. I turn around and re-attempt, facing a lighter and less cluttered background of my rooms wall. Then I say "Now I just need to condense the vapour from the surrounding air", I imagine how this would look in my mind... Particles flying towards a centre point between the space of my cupped hands. Oh look, I'm awake. I woke up very fast :/

I wrote this up earlier and forgot to post so I'm just going to write up a very brief version...

Dream 1 - Gingerbread man
Evil doctor gets put in a sarcophagus by these teenagers who wanted to act as the hand of justice. I'm an investigator and try to find him, I enter the crypt where he's supposed to be and find one of his evil experiments (a zombie). I'm in a room and the zombie is now a small gingerbread man with a missing leg. A delivery man enters and sits down, I tell him not to because the gingerbread man is under the table, it bites him and he gets infected. I try find it but it's missing, which means it's learned to crawl. Me and the man turn to look at one another and share the same thought of "Oh shit... It's... LEARNING?!?".

Dream 2 - Waterfall
I'm on a field trip with a bunch of people, it's a nice sunny day. We're on the side of a road taking a lunch break, there's a waterfall which everyone is keen to jump off but it's too high. A guy told me that my friend Daniel jumped off with goggles, I knew he was lying. I go find my friend Daniel and he tells me he didn't jump, he's also surrounded by girls. Everyone is now heading to jump off the waterfall (it's not too big anymore but it still is.. So it doesn't make sense). I catch up to the people at the back, one of them is a different Daniel I know. We're about to cross the railway, a train is coming so we have to wait while the rest of the class goes ahead. Now there's an obstacle course thing we're navigating, I lose Daniel and this other guy I was following and they hop onto a minecart. I just manage to spot them before they disappear into a wooden tunnel ride. I follow on foot and duck my head to crawl through the entrance. Eventually I catch up and I get pissy, "Where is the waterfall?!?! It was right in front of us so what the fuck is going on?!".
I didn't really understand it was a dream I guess.

I went to sleep again today around 11am, I just felt so comfy and tired and my cat cuddled up to me for a while. I had a similar dream again.. The same idea of trying to get something but not being able to do. It should be right in front of me but just keeps getting further away. Weird, I've only really just noticed that my dreams have a sort of underlying story theme. I'll try pay more attention to this I guess.

Dream 1 - Lord of the Rings
I'm with a group of about 7 warriors on a grass plain with a hill that rises up behind us and a couple other hills in front that are lower down. We had been fighting Uruk Hai and had won so far. I then looked at a member in our group scanning the hill behind us with binoculars. I look up too sensing that he had seen something. I saw a single outline atop the hill with a sword in hand. I instantly knew we were about to be attacked again, as slowly more figures began to line the edge of the hill. There must be a hundred or so Uruk Hai about to attack! I run back a little panicked, they started charging down the slope to engage in combat. I turn to the face the other direction, only to see more Uruk Hai pouring over the hills in that direction. We're surrounded. The dream has a game-like feeling as I approach a horse, I try and mount it but I can't! I open up a skill screen and look at my riding skill, it's level 0! Damn, I need at least level 1 to mount a horse. I think to myself how you have to be selective in choosing your stats in Mount & Blade as investing a small amount in some skills early will help.

Dream fragment - pope
I remember something about a pope in a very grand looking white stone courtyard.

Note: I read Oreo's DJ last night (The Great Sphinx) and was really blown away. Such a cool dream. It affected my next dream a little ^_^

Dream 2 - I screwed up a lucid
I remember the house I was in was wooden with a white ceiling.. I somehow just remembered that I was dreaming and was like 'oh I should RC too'. I pulled the skin on my hand and it stretched out too far, bingo! I then kind of ran around happily thinking about what to do. The dream felt so stable and clear, I knew this dream would just last for ages and I felt like I could prolong it. I shouted 'Stabilize!' and the dream shook a little, losing clarity (oops) and then coming back into focus. I wasn't too bothered as I felt like the dream reaction was a positive one. I then wanted to travel to the desert and see the Sphinx like Oreo had done, so I decided to teleport. Hmm... How to do this? I ran outside, there was a small stream flowing and light green grass, it was night time. I willed myself to be transported to the desert, leaped into the air and fell backwards so that I would land on my back, then as I fell I closed my eyes and willed my body to be teleported. *Thud*. I collide on the ground, but it's warm and gritty. Sand?? I think to myself that it worked I try to open my eyes, but I can't. Oh ****... No, not again . I try and force my eyes open, and end up accidentally open my eyes in real life. My vision is all screwed up though and I see a skeletal-like head sitting next to my bed. Ugh what the hell? I can tell that I'm awake and having hallucinations, I try and reach up for it, but my real arm doesn't move and instead there's a pseudo arm that I feel reach out. I close my eyes again and I don't remember anything past that.

I completely forgot that lucid dream until during my meditation I managed to rebuild it really slowly and in poor detail. I honestly feel like that would have been my longest lucid ever had I not screwed up that teleportation

Black: non-dream
Blue: non-lucid
Red: lucid

Dream - running (semi aware of dream state)
I was at my high school on the grass fields hanging out with friends I had during the first couple years. A guy called Steven was there and he was being pretty funny and the atmosphere of the dream was quite nice. Then for some reason we started running, some sort of race. Johnny, a guy who I was originally friends with (his personality turned extremely shallow and he just seemed to bully others towards the end) was running too. He absolutely shot ahead and I was a bit annoyed when I realized how slow I had become (after the dream I thought back to this and considered doing sprint training when I go running IRL).

The characters in the dream seemed to disappear and the scene changed, either that or I just didn't realize I actually DID wake up and then fall back to sleep, starting a new dream. I was with a beautiful pure bred dog that had amazing white fur, it ran alongside me as we headed towards a river. The river itself was quite shallow and probably 5 metres wide. As I ran across the river things slowed down... I had just been thinking about how I was running so slow earlier, then I thought of whether or not I could make the world go slow motion... Upon thinking this, the world DID slow down and everything became suspended in animation. Droplets of water splashing up as I traversed through the river moved so slowly... I looked at my left arm, it had slowed down to a snails pace. I became slightly aware of everything in this state of stillness, it was strange.

Things kicked back into motion quickly as the dream decided to progress, on the other side of the river was my friend Matt, he had a little mutt for a dog that was as big as a chiwawa. He said that he didn't want me on this side of the river because my dog was pure and it'd be bad for it if it had impure offspring, but he said it in such a way that sounded like he was being so sincere and looking out for me out of the kindness of his heart. True bro

Black: non-dream
Blue: non-lucid
Red: lucid

I had a lot of dreams last night... At one point I was helping some friends who got their kayak stuck in a river, I jumped around acrobatically and reached it, then pushed it down towards them. There was a wooden deck with a roof next to this river which we sat down on, my daughter sat on my lap and began singing to me while we were all just hanging out.

Another one is where I was with my close friends Sam and Daniel, I can't recall much but I think we were in a mall and were walking around into shops, I saw my mum there too while she was looking at jewelery..

A lot of familiar faces last night

Black: Non-dream
Blue: Non-lucid
Red: Lucid

Dream - Fishing and D&D
I was in a river and I was a fish, I had to eat more fish to become a big fish, except at some point I become just a normal person and I find a really big fish. On either side of the river is dense NZ trees and bush that I find as quite a common occurrence in my dreams. The river was also quite shallow and very clear. I think the dream progresses on, as I seem to wander off with some people who are friends. I stop as I see something, almost like some has stored their belongings underneath some bushes (it felt like it was underneath a bed)... I stoop to see what's been left and I find D&D rule books, pathfinder rule books, heaps of cRPG computer disks in their cases and some other stuff. I immediately go hard-nerd mode and scoop them all up to take them with me, thinking how awesome it was to find such cool stuff . Must be related to the release of that new Pillars of Eternity game in 3 days and how I've been playing BG2 to fill the time

During my WBTB I had some Mugwort tea, once again nothing really happened except being unable to recall dreams as well I as I usually would (hence only 1 dream). I feel it's caused by a drowsiness effect the tea seems to have... This kind of conflicts with another night where I had slightly more exotic dreams, like "The Wild" where I saw all sorts of crazy cool creatures... So I think there's a minor increase in vividness and exotic imaginings but it's pretty useless if you can't recall your dreams in the end :/. I can only surmise I don't have the right strain of Mugwort, since this contradicts the insane accounts of crazy vivid and strong dreams...

Black: Non-dream
Blue: Non-lucid
Red: Lucid

Didn't fall asleep until 2am, tried FILD and SSILD together but only had a brief moment of 'hmm is this a dream' which I was okay with, it was a pretty cool dream.

Dream 1 - Pedal Plane
So I meet a stranger, he has these blue overalls on. We team up, he's extremely bad-ass, got a cold demeanor about him but is on a quest to do good. He gets into bad ass 'ranger' clothing, like Aragorn or something out of Lord of the Rings... We go on a short-lived adventure to save the kingdom or something, but on our way we find out something changed and we can't do anything anymore. We're in typical New Zealand bushy scenery the whole time, travelling alongside a small stream. The stranger is back in his blue overalls again, and walks away down the stream, I shout out "I'll just stick with you for a while until I find out where I'm going next" since we no longer had any reason to stay teamed up. He says "Fine with me", and sounds subtly happy about it but doesn't show it. I grab my stuff and run to catch up with him, the stream we've been travelling along has grown bigger by now. A couple of people are canoeing up it, the stranger says he'll handle it and proceeds to talk to them. One of the people is the spitting image of a friend, M, and the other is a random girl who is apparently nutty... They converse and M mentions that the way ahead is blocked my a massive boulder landslide about 100 metres high. There is a plane he mentions that is man-powered by a pedal bike too. I spot it stuck in a tree, he said he would have used it had it been possible to get it down and to a decent launching area. I just go for it, I hop on and start pedalling like crazy, the planes propellers rotate like crazy and the plane manages to get off the tree, and over a cliff beneath it. I fall down and jump off the plane, I grab a super-flexible branch on a tall tree that's at the bottom of the cliff, it flexes down all the way to the ground and I land softly. Dayum.
I turn around to see an expansive green grassy field, to my left is a car park. I look up and the bike from the plane is plummeting downwards, it has a pole beneath it that was attached to the plane and impales car. <-- my expression. I know somehow that this is the car of the nutty girl! I hear a scream from the hills above, I just turn around and bolt onto the fields. To my right I see her sprinting out of the bushes and chasing after me just shouting random stuff about beating me up (I found this funny in the dream, like I could talk her down and joke to her about it innocently being an accident or something ). The dream ends here.

I cement as much of the dream to memory, then push it to the back of my mind and start trying SSILD and FILD. I got a bit confused of how I was meant to do this, was I meant to do it at the same time? I ended up giving up on the FILD pretty quickly as I just got confused, but managed a few cycles of SSILD.

Dream 2 - Flying Boat
I'm outside at my home (dream sign), bouncing on trampolines. There's three of them, each is slightly different, two are next to each other at the bottom of the slope in our backyard next to the apple tree, the other is slightly lower and is halfway beneath the trampoline I'm jumping on. I think I might have been doing back flips? Not sure. Anyways. I look up and spot a flying boat, this absolutely blows me away. It's so vivid and clear, it's coming out of a cloud and it's red and huge (like a cargo crate transporter boat). I think to myself how odd and amazing it is, and how there's no way that it could be real... Sadly I didn't get lucid. I notice the boat start to tilt, it's falling. I sprint off the trampoline and up the stairs to the deck. I turn around and see the huge boat crash into the ground. The impact created huge tidal waves of water that swelled and crashed over the trees and surrounded my house. Suddenly it's like we're in the middle of ocean during a storm, it's raining, windy, and now the sky is dark and overcast with flashes of lightning. I spot a wayward yellow boat float upside my house (which has somewhat turned into a boat, there is deck beneath the deck I was on now too). My dad shouts something about tying up the boat, I bolt down the stairs and grab a hook attached to some rope. I seem to fiddle around as if my right hand just became stupid or something, it's pretty much slapping the hook onto a rung but just bouncing off and I can't figure out why. I turn it around and try it again, it works. Yay. My dad says 'well done' or something and the dream ends.

Black: Non-dream
Blue: Non-lucid
Red: Lucid

Tried SSILD again last night, set my alarm for 3:25am. I rolled around in bed a while trying to coax myself to get up, 20 minutes later I did.

Dream 1 - River, rain, and a cave
I'm inside a cave, the ground has dryish dirt on it, it's pretty dark inside because there isn't a light source and it's a rainy day outside. I walk to the exit and look outside, the entrance is blocked by a flowing shallow river (knee-thigh deep). I apparently decided I wanted to leave the cave, and headed into the river which had rounded rocks on the bottom, making it hard to wade through. The river only spanned a short 10 metres wide. I looked back down the river and at the cave behind me too, the cave I was in was apart of a large rocky wall, it looked almost unnaturally hollowed out. I managed to cover about 8/10th of the river and was about to reach the riverbank but woke up.

Dream 2 - In my robe at the mall
Me and my close friend D are at the shopping mall walking around. I suddenly realize I'm in my robe! I head to a nearby store and buy a blue shirt, some shorts, and a red unbuttoned flannel shirt. For some reason this dissatisfies me, and I tell my friend D to go on without me while I go get some 'cool' clothes. I head off to a different clothing store, this one has nice wooden floors and tall wooden shelves, the shop is quite big. I see to my left a bunch of shirts on sale, but they look like they're for kids, so I go further into the shop and keep searching. I either forgot the rest or woke up.

2 exams are over and I got 2 weeks to go until my next one, I started doing RCs again today and will be firing up my determination too