Verre

Ritual: WTB 2am, woke up after a couple hours and strapped on the Motivaider, timed for 30m intervals. I woke up again after what I thought must be at least an hour and hadn't felt any vibrations. I decided that my awareness was not sufficient tonight to continue, removed the device, and went back to sleep. But apparently this process created an anchor for the idea of lucidity, because in my next sleep interval I became aware of lying in that intermediate state between sleeping and waking and went through the motions of getting up into a WILD. However, in retrospect it is clear that I was already dreaming at the start of this experience, so it was not a genuine WILD but a dreamed WILD (hence DWILD). It was 5:45am when I woke from the dream.

DWILD, "Another rainbow": I am lying on the flat surface of a wooden table as though it were a bed in a large, strange room with a distant, domed ceiling. I feel groggily half-asleep, but notice the distinctive sensations in my body that make me wonder if I'm close to the dream state. I start playing with it as I would when inducing a WILD, attempting to roll and rotate my body while avoiding real physical movement. When I find myself face down and succeed in getting up on my hands and knees, I'm sure that I'm sufficiently integrated with my dream body to get off the table and explore the dream—and given that in retrospect I know was dreaming all along, it is apparent that the sense of difficulty that I experience as I carefully maneuver myself into a standing position, similar to what I experience in real WILDs, must be wholly a mental fabrication.

My awareness is still low and initially lacking in agency, so I go along with the dream narrative for a while. The space in which I find myself is strange and hard to describe. There's a kind of reflective dome above me that rotates and shifts to reflect different parts of an upper floor or balcony. The dome moves until it is showing a distorted reflection of what looks like an early twentieth-century radio, one of the elegant ones in a large wooden cabinet. I am aware that seated up by the radio there is an older man who owns this place, and I am his guest. After this is a scene in which someone tells my brother that if he wants to get along with this man then he should take up shortwave radio as a hobby.

Then a bunch of us are seated at a long table for a dinner party. [Source: Order of the Phoenix was on TV last night, and it has a number of scenes with people seated at long tables.] Plates are served and they all contain huge sandwiches. The older man that I saw in the balcony earlier is picking disinterestedly at his sandwich and asks where the other food is, the stuff that had been simmering in the crockpot. My brother, who had put together the food, says that it will be coming up as the next course. I'm seated directly across from the older man, who I think of as our "host," and can tell from his expression he doesn't want to eat the sandwich. I decide to be helpful and comment loudly: "That's a huge sandwich! I couldn't eat all that even for one meal." Although this is true, my intention in speaking was to save face for the other man by legitimizing the option of leaving the sandwich uneaten while waiting for the next course.

After the sandwich course, we take a break from the meal and everyone who was at the table, about a dozen people in all, are standing in another room. The host is there, and a bunch of vague random people I don't recognize, as well as DC versions of my brother, mom, and dad. For some reason, maybe because of the lull in the narrative, I finally remember my intended task, the leprechaun TOTY, as well as how I had planned to accomplish it. My chief difficulty in previous attempts had been that once I managed to create the necessary rainbow, I got thwarted in my attempts to seek the end of it. As I had earlier been pondering this difficulty, a straightforward solution, perfectly obvious in retrospect, finally occurred to me: why not create the rainbow such that it ends right in front of where I'm standing?

"Okay everyone, we're going to play a game, kind of like a party game." I smile at the host and add, "It'll give you time to digest before the next course." I reach out and pat his belly, an oddly familiar gesture given that the DC did not scan as anyone I know in WL. [Possible source: yesterday I was doing research related to Budai, the so-called "Laughing Buddha," and rubbing his belly is a recognized ritual gesture. But the DC did not in any other respect remind me of Budai.] I complete my announcement by telling the group: "We're going to make a rainbow!"

The room we are in is walled entirely with glass on two sides, like a skyscraper, and I recognize that this clear view of the sky will be helpful for the task. I'm slightly more concerned about the fact that we're three or four storeys up, which means that if the rainbow ends here and I start digging through the floor, I won't actually be digging in solid ground. I remind myself that it is silly to maintain these kind waking life assumptions in the dream state. It can be solid ground if it wants to be, or maybe I can find the leprechaun in the room below us. Dream is nothing but malleable, so I really don't need to be this finicky.

I continue with my instructions to the group: "What we need to do is hold hands and create the end of the rainbow right here." I gesture to indicate the patch of floor in middle of our circle of people. "Then we'll go through, fight the leprechaun, and take his gold." I look around to gauge the response and decide the DCs need a little more incentive. "We can split the money," I add, and am pleased to see that this perks up their interest.

We join hands around a large circle. I feel that my shirt cuffs are too long and and getting in the way, so I have to break off and fold them up in order to get proper skin contact with the people around me. Once again I wonder if I'm being too finicky. Probably. Even the hand-holding seems like overkill, but I thought it might help us join our focus on the same goal.

My assumption had been that the assistance of the DCs would help my own confidence and focus on the task. This idea was probably based on my last rainbow-making dream, when I really did feel like I benefited from the help volunteered by the little girl. But this group of DCs is not helping at all. Like typical adults in a social setting, they are only marginally interested in my unusual party game. While I'm trying to concentrate on making a rainbow, the others are getting distracted and starting to chit-chat among themselves. This is distracting me in turn.

"Quiet!" I rebuke them sharply. "No talking, please. I need you to concentrate. Focus your intention." I figure they could use a reminder of the goal of our task: "We're going to create a rainbow"

Periodically I've been glancing out the windows to see if a rainbow is visible in the sky yet. This time I notice that the weather has changed. The sky is grey and a steady rain is now pouring down. Rain, well, that's halfway to a rainbow, isn't it? I let myself be encouraged that the environment is showing some response.

I continue attempting to focus, and the DCs continue to stand around without helping much. They're quieter after my reprimand but still distracted, and I have the impression that they don't seem to know how to focus their intentions properly. This is exasperating. What good are dream characters who don't even know how to interact with a dream? My mom starts speaking and I almost raise my hand to swat at her, irritated by yet another interruption, until I realize that what she's saying might actually be helpful. She is commenting on the light, how it needs to filter through the water particles a certain way to create a rainbow.

I had never intended to create a rainbow with meteorological accuracy, but hey, since it's already raining outside, we might as well give it a shot. If we can just get the right sort of light, it might encourage our expectations in a way that will make this easier. You know how when it rains and then you see the light break through the clouds, and you wonder if you will see a rainbow? That's the expeirence I was now trying to recreate. I look out the window and sure enough, in one direction bright sunlight is now alternating with the dark clouds. Very well, the rainbow can come from that direction.

Once again I concentrate, reminding myself that rainbows consist of light broken into the spectrum of colors. I think I almost see them in front of me, faint and translucent, but I can't tell if I'm only imagining them until the DCs all break out into "oohs" and "ahs," and saying things like "amazing!" I smile triumphantly, amused that everyone is acting so impressed after their earlier disengagement.

(While it seems odd to make the above distinction between something that "happens" in a dream and something I'm "only imagining," given the many times I have attempted to complete some task by imagining the outcome and it has not tangibly manifested in the dream, some such distinction seems warranted, if much less clear and stark than the difference between imagining and experiencing in waking life.)

It is a bit odd to try to look at a rainbow head on, from immediate proximity, but I do see a faint shimmering band extending from the lit quarter of the clouds to the floor right in front of my feet. I remind everyone that creating the rainbow was only the first step. "Now we have to dig through the floor." I start scrabbling at the smooth wooden boards, trying to imagine that the floor is soft and that my hands can scoop it up like clay. I feel everyone watching (no one else is trying to help) and their expressions are dubious. If merely creating a rainbow surprised them, imagine the skepticism they must feel watching me try to break through solid floor with my hands! I wonder if I can better align the expectations of the onlookers if I use some sort of tool to dig with, but I can't think of what might be handy.

This time it is my dad who speaks up with some advice: "The location of the floor isn't localized on the floor." I don't understand what he's trying to tell me, and I don't have long to think about it because I feel myself waking. I lose the dream and lay still for a few minutes, feeling to see if I can DEILD, but no, my body is fully awake now.

Recall: 2/10 upon waking, 5/10 after finding the thread. It was hard to remember anything at all when I first woke up, but I persisted until a few details came back, and that let me pin down a few detailed scenes at least. The overall plot remained vague. There were a lot of additional fragments from earlier sequences or prior dreams that I've left out.

I'm hanging out a woman who is at least a generation younger and we're getting dressed to go out. I have a vest in grey and black hues that swirl into one another in a cloud-like pattern, resembling the soft color variations of tie-dye, but subtle and not at all gaudy because of the dark colors. I'm wearing it over a thin long-sleeved, collarless knit shirt. I don't remember the color, maybe sort of mustard or yellow ochre. Then I try on a few pairs of pants to figure out which will match best. I decide on the dark grey corduroys but now I can't find them... where did I put them? I was just trying them on! I go through all the drawers of the dresser and they aren't here. Now I'm stuck wearing dark blue denim pants that don't match at all. I go into the next room and am relieved to find the cords on the bed... not sure how they got there since I didn't remember coming into this room, but I assume I was just spacing out and don't think to RC.

Some unclear sequences. The young woman and I go into town, and meet up with a third woman, who involves us in some kind of conspiracy. There is a fourth woman visiting town that she wants to engage in conversation under the pretext of just being friendly, but she has some more complex, sinister plan (that I don't remember in the slightest). We follow the visitor and after she ducks into a cafe, we follow suit. It has gotten cold and rainy out, so we pretend we've just stopped in for a hot drink. We hadn't intended to engage the visitor yet; the conspirator wants to do so but the young woman and I are afraid it will come across as too abrupt and awkward, so we are frantically trying to communicate across the table with our eyes and subtle shakes of the head that she should not go approach her. (The interior is small and no one else is here, so we can't speak aloud about our plans.)

The waitress comes over to see what we want to order. I see a drink named "Raksiteli" on the menu that I'm sure I remember having here before: I recall it is served hot in a tiny glass, tastes like honey mead but is strongly alcoholic. (I think the dream was merging "rkatsiteli," the name of a grape used for Eastern European amber wines, with "raki," a strong spirit that I did once try in a delicious honey-flavored version.) However, each glass was priced at $22, which seemed way too high! I remembered having four or five in a row last time... did I really pay that much? I thought maybe this time I should just get some coffee. I spent so long browsing the menu indecisively that I started to think I must be annoying everyone, so I told the waitress to get the orders of the other people at the table while I made up my mind.

Meanwhile, the cafe was filling up quickly with other people. The whole time I was inspecting the menu, I was also glancing up occasionally at the woman, the one we were targetting, sitting across the room at the bar. I thought it might help if I caught her eye a couple times, making it seem accidental, so that it wouldn't seem so random if we did decide to approach her. I was startled when she began walking over to us, but it turned out she was joining some people who had recently sat down at the table to our right. This worked out well, because overhearing their discussion (the tables were very close together) we made some comments and soon joined their conversation.

They were talking about apples for some reason—probably also deciding what to order—and I commented that I really don't like apples, especially cold from the refrigerator. "You should warm them up, then," said the woman sitting on the bench just to my right. I admitted sheepishly that the one way I do like apples was to hollow out the cores and fill them with butter and brown sugar, then bake them in the oven until wrinkled and brown on top. After I confessed my sweet tooth, the visiting woman, our target, now sitting across from me but at the next table, took a plate of whipped cream from their table and offered it to me. I couldn't tell if she was just being kind or if she suspected our plot and was getting ahead of it... might the cream be drugged? Was it intended to knock me out? But I thought it would look suspicious if I didn't accept some. I exchanged some silent glances with the people at my own table while we tried to assess her motives and decide what I should do. Without saying a word, we decided that I would try some of the cream, but that my companions would not, just in case the friendly gesture was something other than it seemed.

I used an online program to try to create the floorplan of the cafe. I didn't get the proportions quite right, so there should be four seats at the bar in the upper left corner, and two seats across from the wall benches at each of the small tables (allowing them to seat four people each), but this gives a general sense of the layout. I was sitting with the two other woman at the table on the bottom left side of the room, the younger woman to my left and the conspiratorial woman sitting in the chair across from us. The visiting woman was sitting at the bar at first, then moved to one of the chairs facing the table just to the right of ours, where two or three other people were initially sitting.