Bubble

Original journal entry dated July 7th, 2002:

A lot of people, including me, were going to this one medieval fair thing, and we all had to dress up and stuff. It was really more like a medieval fantasy deal so I was dressed up as a wizard, or something. Anyway, there was the outer fair, which was free, and then the inner fair with all of the special events was behind a wall, and you had to pay a lot of money to get in. I had a sort of miniquest thing where I had to collect various issues of Dragonball, except that I kept getting the same issue over and over again, and it was very frustrating. There was this mad scientist type guy who lived in a tower and he had an issue I really needed, but in return for giving me the issue I had to live there forever. So I figured I'd take the issue, and then run away. Then S__ and everybody else wanted to go to the inner fair and left me behind because I didn't want to pay that much money. A group of people and I tried to sneak in by crawling along the rooftops to get over the wall, but for some reason the old principal from Highschool was chasing us, and we had to get down and hide. So finally, I gave in and bought a ticket, although the real reason for it was sort of different, because in my dream I had this boyfriend (and hell if I remember what he looked like, it was just one of those things that you know when you're in a dream) and I knew this one other girl was after him, and it sort of pissed me off. I got into the fair and she was hanging all over him, and I got mad at another friend of mine for not doing anything about it since he was supposed to be my friend and look out for me. Then the dream sort of shifted and I had to enroll in a school there, and in order to do that I had to get the old crazy scientist guy's signature. So I got it and went to the highschool and tried to enroll but it turned out that I had to go and get the principal's signature too and fill out a form to enroll, and he had the forms, and his office was in the fair, and it was too late to go there because it was closed. But I was allowed to go to all of the classrooms and decide which classes I wanted to take. I went to the language class because a language class was required, except they didn't have spanish, they only had japanese, and I didn't know anything and didn't have a text book. And then I did something wrong I think, and the teacher made me stay after class and said I couldn't leave the classroom until she told me to. For some reason it was then that I realized that I was not wearing any pants at all, but merely had my Star Wars comforter wrapped around the lower portion of my body, and I thought about how silly I must have looked and how drafty it was. In any case, the teacher had to leave to do something, and I got bored and left the classroom anyway because I wasn't supposed to, and some kids started bullying me and took my backpack, so I got mad and beat them up. Then one of the other teachers came along and I got in a lot of trouble, but everything was cleared up and they let me go. I was waiting for my ride, but didn't see the car anywhere, and then wondered if my ride really WAS there but I didn't recognize the car...

...then, for some reason, I was at my grandmother's house. Except it was more like a church, and had pews, but they were all lined up in front of a fireplace. We were supposed to be singing hymns and she got mad at me because I kept interrupting. Then she made everybody move and rearrange themselves on the pews, and I got in trouble for goofing off because I was playing with a raisin.

I dreamed about a cop who looked a little like one of the people I work with (but not really), and he was harassing a woman about her ID card. She'd had her ID stolen, and it was a tribal ID, and the cop was giving her trouble over it not being a valid ID while both of us argued with him that it was. I was particularly irritated since the person that the cop reminded me with would never be such a jerk. Eventually, we convinced him, and he recovered the ID, which had been discarded in a parking lot.

I kept waking up and dozing because I was cold. I finally woke up completely and put a warmer shirt on and turned the thermostat up. I tried some visualization exercises, but fell back asleep.

I don't remember much about my dream, but someone was throwing a party, and there were 3 rooms, and each had a different activity in it. One of them was scrabble, but they were using 5 scrabble boards all at once, and people would keep letters they "won" by spelling words with them. One guy had won a lot of letter tiles and had built a tiny tile city out of them. I recall there being furniture in the room in the most awkward places, like a desk that was just sitting in the middle of the room.

I wake up, back to sleep, again visualizations. I'm frustrated because they haven't been working well the past 2 nights.

I dream that I am eating an apple, and it is delicious. It's huge, the size of a grapefruit. It's soft and juicy, and it's purple inside. I somehow know I am in an alternate dimension on an alien planet, and wonder if the seeds will grow new apple trees if I discard or plant them here. I try to convince another dream character (a recurring character, sort of a witch or sorceress) that she ought to eat some of the apple.

Wake up. Lie on my back and try to relax. I'm making some progress with visualizations and then I snore and startle myself. Ooops. Back to square one. Ok, time to turn on my side so I don't snore again.

I'm visualizing and dozing off and bitching to the wizard-cat (another recurring DC) that I'm frustrated with how things are going this morning. We are both drinking coffee out of mugs. I figure that maybe if I hold a conversation, it'll help draw me in. It's actually starting to work, detail is starting to creep into things (but it's still all very hazy and not at all real or anywhere near a dream). I sniff my coffee but instead of smelling like coffee, it smells spicy-sweet. Suddenly, out of nowhere, instead of the dream gently forming around me I'm fully lucid and the mug is completely real. It startles me so badly that I drop the mug and wake up.

There's a weird interlude before I fully wake up where I'm trying to find my arms and they're invisible. I know I'm dreaming, but at the same time I'm not sure, and I'm also half awake, so it's more like a weird semi-OBE than a lucid dream. I finally manage to actually move my arm and wake myself up.

Naturally, I'm irritated. I sigh and work on visualizations again. I explore an imaginary room. I'm in the great room of the cottage near the fireplace when I start to slowly ease into sleep. I'm sitting in front of the fireplace, wondering why there's a fire going and logs in the fireplace, but there's no pile of wood. I reach behind myself, produce some logs, and set them in the bin next to the fireplace. There's suddenly a desk in the middle of the room, the one from the scrabble dream, for pretty much no reason at all. Unfortunately, I lapse into unawareess.

After a gap in time I'm on a bus. I realize that it's almost a completely fully formed dream, but it's so thin and I'm so close to being awake that if I make the "push" that I need to make it super-real (i.e. feel like reality rather than a super vivid visualization) I will probably wake myself up. It's all very flat, like watching a scene rather than being in it. There is another DC there, a sorceress, but she flickers and turns into the warlock character (recurring DC). He is a smart-ass but generally helpful when it comes to gaining lucidity. The bus flickers and fades. I wake up and doze. I am now in some sort of weird geometric environment. Everything is made of white square tiles but it's also like something out of Escher. Warlock DC is there with me, silently walking with me through the scenery. Again, it is close to clarity but not really "there". Instead of trying to brute-force it and try to push through the membrane of the dream all at once to bring it into full focus, I dive to the ground and start running my hands and face on the carpet (that wasn't there a moment ago). I can't make anything focus or make it clear, the sensation is a lot like being really drunk. I go through a door and try to will a scene change even if the dream's not fully formed, hoping it will be easier that way. The room only half-changes, and everything is still white. I rub my hands together, hoping to make things more vivid, but it doesn't really do anything. I get frustrated and wake up.

(original dream occurred June 14, 2008):
I had a dream that my apartment got hit by a hurricane. It rained so hard that you couldn't hear anything, except in the dream, it rained so hard that everything was completely silent. For some reason, peoples' voices were as clear as bells. I couldn't see more than 2 feet in front of myself. My mother and her boyfriend had gone outside to look at the rain, as it was raining pretty hard - the sudden increase in the intensity of the downpour sent us scrambling inside. In the dream, the area must have flooded, because I remember there being a large lake where there hadn't been one, and people perched atop the hills on the golf courses.


(original post titled June 16, 2008):
I had a very, very long dream.

First, I slept for around... probably 14 hours. It wasn't laziness, I simply didn't wake up.

I dreamt that I was a student at some sort of academy, like a wizard academy, but not like Harry Potter in the slightest. This was in a fantasy-type city - first off, think elven architecture. Very elaborate architecture, mostly stone and some sort of golden stuff. Most of it was devoted to the campus of this academy, and the pursuit of wizardry in general.

There were a bunch of other children there - I recall I was a child, just an older child. My brother was also at this academy, if my vague recollection is right. There was a stone ogre/troll in one of the more open areas, except that it was also roofed and fenced... in any case, all of the children who were up to mischief got together, including me, and poured some sort of oil in its ear, which brought it to life. It came to life and wreaked all sorts of havok until it was finally gotten under control. One of the head wizards (of the city) called me in, and told me I'd been the cause of a similar incident involving the same monster before. I remembered it, vaguely, and he showed me a document I'd signed.

The eldest mage commented something along the lines of, although I had learned no magic I had a strong blood-line, and I ought to marry a dragon. I knew the dragon in question, a coppery, gold-colored dragon. Unfortunately, I don't think that giant lizards are very sexy. That was pretty damn weird, although I have to admit that wizards are usually pretty damn weird.

In any case, as the dream progressed, I became the mastermind of some sort of coup of the city. There were rulers, a king and a queen, but their essence was contained in 5 spheres in the heart of the city, that were closely guarded. In the center of the city was a massive lake that was incredibly deep. Anyway, 3 of the spheres were King, Queen, and some sort of snow-man. I don't know what the remaining 2 were. The city's defenses were impenetrable as long as the spheres of the King and Queen remained in place, but I got ahold of all 5 spheres, and I threw them in the lake. The Snow-Man was some sort of guardian of the city, I don't know, but at one point I retrieved him out of the lake. I think the fourth sphere was that of the Master of Ceremonies - in order to actually take control of the city, I had to be sworn in as king. I needed the Snow-Man at my disposal in order to convince him to swear me in.

After this, the dream got more jumbled. I also woke up briefly, although I don't remember much, and I know that I felt really sleepy so I went back to bed.

After this, I had a dream about Cinderella, but not in the sense that we think of her, as this had absolutely nothing to do with the original story. Rather, it was about cinders. Something about a young man, and the girl in question was under some sort of death-spell, and he got a chance to save her by drinking cinders in some sort of potion. But rather than saving her, he wandered off into some sort of dream-land, and failed in his mission. Ever since that point he had been a very morose spirit.

In the dream, there were 5 men who governed various Aspects of something - I don't remember what the thing was. In the dream, it presented itself as a web-page, but I know that it wasn't a web-page, that was just the manner in which I browsed it. It was like a collection of information, and you accessed it through these personalities, and he was one of them. He had a long face and ash-grey hair. Each man had an Aspect, one had the Aspect of Strength, but his was the Aspect of Death (or something like that) due to his history. I was considering switching from the guy governing the Aspect of Strength to this man and his Aspect, because of some information that I needed to browse, but I was reluctant.

I woke up after this. I felt better/not as sleepy, although the dreams were very weird, but I had slept for a disturbingly long time. Usually that happens when I dream actively, and I felt like I'd been dreaming almost the whole time that I was asleep. I think these dreams were influenced by the fact that I've been playing too much D&D. Maybe I should ease off on RPGs for a while.