Night Vision

In the earliest part of the dream I remember, I'm stepping into an elevator. I seem to be able to see through its walls, into the shaft and the mechanism it runs on, and the rough, dark area around it. I want to go up a floor, but after getting about halfway there, the elevator stops. Then it goes back down, past the floor I got in on – down and at an angle as it follows the track. It seems to be headed down to the basement floors, which annoys me. I hate it when this happens.

I think it must have dawned on me around then that the earlier experience I was thinking of took place in a dream, and that this too was a dream. But it’s hard to remember exactly because once I’m out, the dream turns out to be one of those lucid ones where my senses don’t seem to be working properly. I can’t control the dream; even moving around is laborious. But, knowing that these are problems that often goes away on their own, and that I rarely experience them in outdoor areas, I keep going, trying to make my way up to the surface.

Eventually, I do make it up. I’m in an unfamiliar house with large, light rooms, including a sunporch, visible through a glass window. Since the problems from before don’t seem to be affecting me anymore, I step straight through the glass to the sunporch, then through that glass to the area outside, where there’s a small lake.

There’s ice on the lake, which gives me an idea: I could try ice skating in a dream. But the ice is breaking up and thawing even as I watch, and it doesn’t seem quite right to freeze it again. But this is a dream, after all, so why shouldn’t I be able to skate on liquid water?

I step out onto the lake, surrounding my bare feet with a slippery layer of air, and kick off. It works perfectly, a bit like self-propelled jet-skiing. It’s an exhilarating experience.

The lake is long and irregularly shaped, with small, rocky islands, purple and green with lichens, and beds of rushes and lily pads. It’s bounded by a stone wall too tall for me to be able to see over, not far past the lake’s edge in some places. And there now seem to be a number of cats around, sitting on the rocks – watching me, perhaps. Near one of the wall’s corners, I see one that looks like the feral cat my household took in but who died of cancer the previous week. I reach out and pet him – something he would never allow a human to do – and he responds affectionately.

After making another round of the lake, I’m starting to get curious about that wall. What’s on the other side of it? I circle back, pick up speed, and jump towards it with the intention of going through – and suddenly find myself bodiless in empty space. I guess there was NREM on the other side.

I prepare myself for maintaining awareness in this state – but it only lasts a minute or so before I wake up.

-27.2.20

This dream was interesting: it was like I was playing out a role in a story, aware that it was a story (but not aware that it was a dream). It was being narrated—not by anybody present, but a voice that I could talk to and that seemed to be indicating what I should be doing as much as describing it.

The setting was a building like an airport - at least, in the only part I can remember. But it only appeared that way from the standpoint of the people there: it was really two separate buildings, split by a wall they couldn’t see. Inside the wall were rooms where there were people—people who could see through the wall and observe what was happening on both sides, and people in offices who were presumably working to keep the place going. The camera—for lack of a better word—seemed to make a point of showing this area, even though nothing much was happening there. At one point, it slowly panned across it so that you could see all the people as well as a window showing an entire world outside that didn’t exist from the standpoint of the people in the building where I was.

Right now, I’m concerned with getting into a special event that’s being held by people whose land borders mine. I approach a man I know—maybe in his late 30s, wearing some kind of complex, vaguely tribal outfit—and ask him if he can take me along. He’s happy to accept. He just seems to be a good-natured person who likes helping people get what they want. He probably thinks I just want to get in with a certain crowd, but I have other reasons for needing to be there (unfortunately, not ones I can remember after waking up).

He’s going there now, and I’ll be coming along on a – well, I’m not entirely sure what it is. It has a special name (that I forgot) and seems to be a bit like a jet ski, but attached to a helicopter and with things like leather shields I’m supposed to hold onto. As I look it over, I’m glad this is going to be broadcast over the radio because that gives everyone in the audience a chance to imagine something less stupid-looking. But I get on it, and we head off.

24.4.18